Gently North-West (8 page)

They came down out of Glen Donach and bowled along a strath road into Kinleary, a prim, stone-built town with a torrent funnelling under a graceful bridge. Its main street was very broad and the houses were capacious and large-windowed; it had an air of detachment, as though waiting for something to happen. Beyond, the road climbed again for its fifteen-mile stride beside Loch Torlinn, and looking back one saw Kinleary riding its image in a bay of the loch. The lines of the mountains and the loch converged on it in a Turner-like construction, and the tidy, austere little town now showed an aspect of extravagant beauty.

They met little traffic. The road stayed high, with emptiness always at its elbow. At long intervals they would pass a cottage, where a steep path would sag down to the loch-shore. Across the loch, at the width of a mile, the braes were thinly planted with deciduous trees, giving the effect of a vast park rolling endlessly along with them. The peaks behind the braes were dark, their faces to the loch being in shadow; and between them one caught glimpses of peaks yet more wild and inaccessible.

At last they could see the loch ending squarely and rather tamely at Torlinnhead, and a sudden sharp turn and descent brought them into the village. There was one hotel, the Honest Highlandman, whose sign represented a clans-man carrying his head; Gently ran the Sceptre into the yard behind it and they went in to lunch.

At coffee, which they drank alone in a lounge that faced straight down the loch, Brenda unfolded the map again and began poring over routes. Because of the arbitrariness of mountain highways they had either to return the way they had come, or make an extensive circuit back to Lochcrayhead by way of Logie, Bieth and Ardnadoch.

‘Of course, its all ravingly beautiful,’ Brenda frowned. ‘But I just don’t like having it forced on me. I’m tired of going longways through the glens. What I want now is a bit of sideways.’

Gently looked at the map. Their line of red certainly offered no alternative. It stretched crookedly and compulsively to Logie, and only to Logie would it go. But reaching south-east from Torlinnhead was a rambling, hatched double line, crossing direct over the massif top of Glen Knockie. He put his finger on it.

‘There’s your bit of sideways.’

‘Oh my gawd,’ Brenda said, looking. ‘That’ll be another of those ‘‘guid paths’’ – and a really hairy one this time.’

Gently referred to the legend. Its grading stopped at ‘Other Serviceable Roads’ which came below ‘Roads Requiring Special Care’; neither were indicated by hatched lines.

‘Not much encouragement,’ he grimaced. ‘But it must be some sort of a road. Look, there’s a farm or something along it. The hatched lines probably mean it’s unfenced.’

‘Why,’ Brenda said, ‘don’t I keep my big mouth shut.’

‘We could just take a peep at it,’ Gently grinned.

‘We could just jump in the loch,’ Brenda said. ‘Oh, George, I took you for a
restful
man.’

But the hotel-keeper confirmed the road was ‘no’ a’ that a bad ane’, and spoke lyrically of the views they could expect ‘off the tap’; so the Sceptre, after idling along the road by the top of the loch, ignored the broad way to Logie and turned its bonnet to the mountains.

The road began deceitfully. It was at first a lane sheltered by high, English hedges, apparently leading only to a barn which stood blocking the way ahead. Then it turned, narrowed, lost its metalling, lost its hedges, lost its innocence; became at one stroke a brutal rock-track with a gradient that made Brenda catch her breath. Gently slammed into second and the Sceptre grovelled its way upwards. The ground fell away sharply on the right, to the left rose menacingly above them. The Sceptre moaned and bumped and grumbled, heaved itself round an S-bend, lifted its bows to a suicidal hairpin, stalled, and refused to restart.

‘And that’s that,’ Brenda said. ‘You’ll never get her out of this, my son. You can’t go up and you daren’t back down – you’re stuck, period. And serve you right.’

‘I’ll have to drop her back,’ Gently said. ‘You can get out if you like.’

‘Oh,’ Brenda said, ‘I’ll die young too. This or the bomb, it doesn’t matter.’

Gently took reverse and very delicately braked-and-powered the Sceptre down. Then he restarted on the lesser gradient, and this time the Sceptre gnawed round the hair-pin.

‘Which is more than you deserve,’ Brenda commented scathingly.

Gently chuckled and kept going.

The track improved. Obviously the trick had been to get through the steep going at the commencement. Now they rose by straight, moderate gradients which the Sceptre took easily in second. Hill-pasture, grazed by sheep, swelled up on the one hand and lapsed gently on the other, permitting, as they climbed, a series of viewpoints into a tremendous glen eastwards. The glen was filled with trees but at times one glimpsed a river serpenting through it, and twice they caught sight of a castle, or castellated house, suggesting a picture snatched from a child’s book. Then the glen receded behind the expanding hillside and suddenly was gone like a dream.

They came to a fieldgate of steel tube and beyond it the track levelled between shallow banks. On the left, among stunted trees, was the farmhouse Gently had seen on the map. It was a respectable, two-storey, stone-and-slate building occupying a site in a fold of the tops, with nothing but its ragged oaks and thorns to suggest the location was out of the ordinary.

As they approved it they heard a rushing and barking and sheep came pouring out of a gateway. A flock of them spread across the track in a trotting river, sweeping round the Sceptre and forcing it to halt. Men, dogs appeared, running. A youngster dashed along the bank to open a gate. There was an uproar of baa-ing, barking, shouting, along with the rustling drum of small hooves.

‘Foo!’ Brenda murmured. ‘Truly rural. I’m not sure I appreciate tweed on the hoof.’

‘Hush,’ Gently muttered. Perhaps we’re not welcome ourselves. The gaffer over there seems to want a word with us.’

An erect, hard-faced man, dressed in a sagging jacket and muddy jodhpurs, stood apart from the others, waiting for the sheep to go by. When they had cleared the Sceptre he came striding over to it. Gently wound down his window. The man stared at him, at the car.

‘Are ye freends o’ the laird’s, like?’ he demanded, tapping his palm with a thick ash-stick.

‘Just tourists,’ Gently said. ‘This is a public road to Glen Knockie, isn’t it?’

‘Ay, you may say it’s public,’ the man said, his eyes roving about the back of the car. ‘But it’s not a usual road for tourists – who would be puttin’ you on to it, now?’

‘We saw it on the map,’ Gently said shortly.

‘Ay, it’s on the map, that’s richt.’

‘And we wanted to try something out of the way.’

‘Somethin’ out o’ the way,’ the man repeated. He caught his palm a smack. ‘Ye ken where ye’re off to?’ he asked.

‘To Glen Knockie.’

‘Very true. But d’ye ken through what sort o’ country?’

Gently shook his head.

‘I’ll jist tell you then – in case your map didna give ye the information – ye’re headin’ into a deer-forest, man – so go canny – that’s a’.’

He stared again at Gently, very hard, then turned to follow after the sheep.

‘Hold on a minute!’ Gently called. ‘What’s so special about going into a deer forest?’

The man came back. He bent down to the window. ‘Either ye ken or ye dinna ken,’ he said softly.

‘I don’t ken.’

‘Then no harm’s done. Jist hauld to the track like a douce mannie – it’s a guid road if you take it quietly – jist go your ways down Glen Knockie.’

He strode away, his stick swinging, and began shouting unintelligibly to the others. Gently shrugged and looked at Brenda, who made a face and shrugged back.

‘There’s no doubt about it – we
dinna
ken,’ she said. ‘Do we go on?’

‘We go on.’

‘That’s my man,’ she said. ‘Damn the torpedoes.’

The track still continued to climb, though at a much easier rate; but the extreme roughness of the surface prevented Gently from raising the pace. They were well on the tops now and the pasture had given way to heathy moorland, a dark, sad, desolate plain enclosed by rounded shoulders and fretted rockrims. It was high. There was a shelterless bleakness that carried a sure stamp of altitude, though no contrasting depth was at hand for reference. Vegetation was scant, loose rocks and boulders were plentiful; bare rashes of rock and peaty soil showed picked and scoured by violent weather. A few curlews, tame as sparrows, were all that stirred on the tops. They rose limping-winged to sail a few yards, their liquid yelping sharp and spirit-like.

‘I keep watching for the deer,’ Brenda said. ‘But I’m darned if I’ve seen a single antler. And I keep watching for a forest, but the last trees we saw were at the farm.’

‘Perhaps a deer-forest isn’t what we think it is,’ Gently said.

‘I think it’s a forest with deer in it,’ Brenda said. ‘That’s the impression one gets in Hampshire.’

‘Well, perhaps the car scares them away.’

‘Perhaps,’ Brenda said. ‘And perhaps.’

They bumbled on, and even the curlews seemed to be losing heart and falling behind them. For huge distances in every direction the black, boulder-strewn plateau stretched away. To the west a declivity was appearing, slanting in from between two shoulders, on a line suggesting that eventually it would converge with the track. Brenda compared it to the map.

‘I think we’re getting there,’ she frowned. ‘That ravine would probably be the beginning of Glen Knockie. In about a mile we’ll be going down – there’s a delightful double-hairpin – then we cross a bridge, and it’s level strath: about twelve miles to the main road.’

‘It’s always twelve miles,’ Gently grumbled. ‘That’s standard measure in the Highlands.’

The declivity broadened and deepened, and revealed a stream gushing down its bottom. Soon the track joined it to begin a sharpish descent along its flank. The ground fell away on the right and a vista of glen began to grow, with a carpet of tiny trees, oaks and ashes, and level panels of pasture. They came to the hairpins. It was a rugged step of a corner with violent wrong-way cambers. Gently dropped to first, clawed in, out, in and out again. Then his nearside front wheel touched the heathy verge and dipped suddenly. Before he could react, the rear wheel followed – and the Sceptre listed to a halt.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ Brenda said disgustedly. ‘You’ll never get out of this one, George.’

Gently switched off and climbed out ruefully to inspect. The wheels had run into a mud-filled gully which the heath had effectually hidden from view; they were in to the axles, and the side of the car was canted hard against the bushy heath.

‘We’re stuck – aren’t we?’

Gently nodded reluctantly. ‘I’m afraid it’ll take a tow to shift her.’

‘And where,’ Brenda said, ‘do we get a tow from – in the middle of nowhere, West Perthshire?’

‘Perhaps there’s a farm—’ Gently was beginning, when an unexpected sound cut him short. From the glen below a series of ragged, quick-fire shots had echoed up.

He stared at Brenda. ‘Bring the glasses,’ he said, and moved quickly across the track. Beneath, at a distance of perhaps half a mile, he spotted a house standing in a wide clearing. In front of the house were a group of men. A man was running across the clearing. Then the man fell, and shots sounded again – six, accompanied by a faint whiff of smoke.

He grabbed the glasses from Brenda and focused them on the house. There were eight, ten men, dressed in a grey battledress and armed with rifles. As he watched another man began to run, apparently following some obstacle course, to throw himself down, his rifle smoking, the sound of shots dragging behind it.

‘My God,’ Brenda gulped. ‘So there aren’t any guerrillas up the glens!’

‘Here – look,’ Gently said. ‘It’s just possible they’re military or police.’

Brenda took the glasses and looked. ‘Military or police my foot,’ she said. ‘This is Popski’s Private Army doing their Operation Gorseprick. And another thing – this is Glen Knockie – and one of those aliases was Knockman. George, we’ve stumbled into a wasp’s nest. You’d better get us mobile quick.’

A sharp, metallic rap sounded behind them, making them jerk round suddenly. Beside the Sceptre stood a man in grey battledress. He had a rifle. He was pointing it.

Will ye no wait for Tammie Laurie,

Laird o’ a’ our scaur an’ fell?

Later Border Minstrelsy
, ed. McWheeble

A
N’ HAVE YE
a guid view for your keekin’ – or will you gang down a bit closer?’

He was a young man, not more than eighteen, a head shorter than Gently, but stockily built. He wore a slouch bonnet over his carroty hair and a cartridge belt about his middle; he had a broad, freckled, squash-nosed face with a wide mouth and sharp hazel eyes. On the sleeve of his tunic was sewn a stripe and above it appeared the letter K. On his bonnet, securing the band, was pinned a badge: it was the silver dirk of the S.N.A.G.

He stood with a sort of careless alertness, his right hand curled about the rifle’s trigger-guard. Where he’d come from was a mystery, because only the open braeside stretched behind him.

‘Suppose you stop pointing that gun at us,’ Gently said. ‘We don’t want an accident to happen, do we?’

‘You needna fear that,’ the youngster said scornfully. ‘When this gun gangs aff it isna an accident. But get on wi’ your spying’ – it’s whit ye’re here for – an’ there’s plenty to spy at down at the house. Put thae bonnie glasses to your een an’ see what’s stirrin’ up Glen Knockie.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ Gently said. ‘We didn’t come here to spy. We’re simply tourists who’ve had a mishap and need some help with our car.’

‘Simply tourists, the man says!’

‘Have you reason to think otherwise? Naturally, when we heard the shots down there we looked to see what was going on.’

The youngster cocked his head to one side. ‘An’ I’ll be for believin’ that, won’t I?’ he said. ‘I’m jist a puir, innocent, up-the-glen laddie who’ll take in whitever an English cratur’ tells me.’