The way, before she reached the loch in its beautiful valley, wound upwards through pine-woods. Although here not strictly, perhaps, a single-track road, it was extremely narrow and the bends followed one another for mile after mile, so that it was unsafe to drive at any sort of speed. Alongside the water it was easier going, but the loch was often screened from the car by trees and on the opposite side of the road there were high banks, more trees and some bracken. It reminded Laura a little of the road alongside Loch Lomond, but it was lonelier, wilder and narrower.
Once past the loch, the view became more open, although the road itself was still narrow. Here Laura became aware that the fine weather was at an end and the clouds had won. The mountains she could see in front and to the right of her were standing starkly against a lowering sky and almost at once it began to rain. The landscape swam in a green haze and soon she was keeping to a road sheeted in the most relentless down-pour. She dared not pull up, for she was by this time on a single-track stretched between high hills on the one hand and the shallow river, beyond which ran the single-line railway, on the other, so that passing-places could not be obstructed by a stationary car.
At last she approached the hydro-electric power station with its pipe-lines. The rain eased off a little and she was able to see that the little river had been diverted and the small, ugly loch into which it flowed had been turned into an even uglier reservoir. Then the rain came down again and blotted out everything. Fortunately Laura met nothing on the road until she reached Tigh-Osda, the little hamlet with a railway station. It also possesed an hotel. At this, most thankfully, she pulled up, deciding to try to get a room there for the night and go on to Freagair in the morning. She wished she had not stopped at Crioch, or else that she had left Gàradh a little earlier.
Drawn up outside the hostelry was an empty estate-wagon, and just inside the covered entrance to the station stood a man and woman whose resigned expressions, as they stared gloomily at the rain, caused Laura to suppose them the owners of the vehicle. She got out of her own car and darted into the inn, but she had only time to wipe her shoes on the mat before a man’s voice said:
‘Losh! You’ve a car!’
Laura turned and saw the man who had made one of the desolate-looking pair in the station entrance.
‘Do you mean you’ve broken down?’ she asked.
‘Do I not! And not a mechanic or a garage this side of Freagair! I suppose you couldn’t give my wife a lift home? I’d be eternally grateful if you could. You see, we’ve had a day out together and left the bairn with the baby-sitter. We promised faithfully to free the lassie by seven o’clock and it’s a quarter to seven now. She lives in a wee clachan about two miles from our house, but, of course, she won’t leave the wean until my wife gets in. It’s ten miles from here and my wife isn’t able to walk so far, especially in this awful weather. I’d go myself, but I must catch the up train, and it’s due any minute. I have to get to Inverness.’
‘All right,’ said Laura, ‘but I’ll just need to reserve a room here first’
‘No, no,’ said the man. ‘It’s an awful poor sort of place. My wife will gladly see you taken care of at our house for the night if you’ll just run her along there. I’m much obliged to you for your kindness.’
Laura went back to her car and in a moment the wife had joined her.
‘It’s awful good of you,’ she said. ‘We telephoned Freagair, but there’s only the one garage there and they said they had nobody to send. We tried the hotel at Crioch, but they said they had no facilities to deal with mechanical faults.’
Laura started the engine.
‘You’ll have to guide me,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s the straight road towards Freagair and then we have a private lane and a bridge, turning off to the right and crossing a wee burn. I’ll give you plenty of warning.’
So Laura found herself again upon the way to Freagair, driving in sheets of dark-grey rain on a single-track road with leviathan, dirty, green hills on her left and a broken-fenced morass on her right. The man had minimised the distance. It was nearer twelve miles than ten before she turned off. A gate had to be opened before the car could proceed bumpily forward on to the so-called drive – actually a causeway across a marsh—and this led to a rickety bridge. The ‘wee burn’ was a good thirty feet wide at this point, and Laura, driving over the narrow bridge with extreme caution in the pelting rain, half-expected the car to go through the rotten planking into the stream below. However, they crawled safely over and then had to negotiate a level crossing of the branch railway-line before they arrived at the house.
This was of fair size but appeared to be servantless except for the baby-sitter, and the woman used her own front-door key to let herself in. The fact of a front door key in itself surprised Laura, who was accustomed to having her own Highland relatives keep open house to the extent of never locking up anything. An open-fronted shed formed the garage, it seemed, so Laura, left alone, drove into it, her headlights showing her the way. She switched off and went to the front door. Then she remembered that the babysitter would have to walk home in the teeming rain unless she was given a lift. Laura groaned.
‘Come in!’ called the woman. ‘Kirsty is just leaving.’ She switched on the light and in the hall Laura saw a tallish, round-faced girl wearing a raincoat, a head-scarf and gum-boots.
‘I’d better drive you home,’ said Laura. ‘Come on.’
‘No, no,’ said the girl. ‘It is pleasant with me to walk in the rain.’ Without another word she passed Laura and stepped sturdily out into the elements.
‘Let Kirsty be,’ said the woman. ‘She’s independent and she’ll take no harm. Come ben.’ She led the way into a room where there was a pleasant fire burning in the hearth. ‘Take off your things and draw up to the fire. The bairn’s sleeping fine, and she’s no trouble once she’s off. Have you any luggage in the car? I’ll go out and get it when we’ve supped.’
Laura’s hostess was named Grant. After the meal the two women settled down by the fire, Mrs Grant observing that the washing-up could wait until the morning.
‘I’m without any help in the house, as you see, Mrs Gavin,’ she said, ‘and the Dear knows I could do with it.’
‘I suppose the local girls all move away to the towns,’ said Laura
‘Och, it’s not only that. It’s the curse that’s been put upon this house.’
‘The curse?’
‘I call it that. It’s that wicked old wretch who lives on Tannasgan—or so I believe. He is harmful to this house.’
‘Really?’ said Laura, not attempting to divulge that she had already heard of the laird of Tannasgan. Mrs Grant, certain of a listener, continued:
‘That old man is the devil himself. He can make anybody who is as simple as some of the folk in these parts believe anything he chooses to tell them. I cannot pin it down to him, and, if I could, I don’t know what I would do about it, because he’s so wicked and because he has influence. It goes ill with anybody who crosses him.’
‘But why should he wish to do you harm?’
‘Well, there are two reasons. It was dead against his wishes that the hydro-electric plant was established way back the other side of Tigh-Osda – you’ll have noticed the hydro-electric plant when you were after passing the loch of Cóig Eich? – it’s a big ugly thing on the left of you along that road.’