Chasing Angels (21 page)

The Mini swept past the monument and lurched to the right up a road that became a hillside track, finally ending outside a large, red sandstone construction. She never settled on what it
actually was, a house, a villa or a small castle, with turrets and arches in abundance, but for years it had been the Major’s domain, stolen though Angus considered it to be, and now it
rightfully belonged to the Macdonalds. Inside the front door, off a long hallway, was a large room that seemed to be built entirely of books. Stacked shelves lined all four walls from floor to
ceiling, with interruptions for doors, windows and the fireplace almost there by sufferance. This, she would discover, was Angus’s room, where he kept the results of his endless quest for
knowledge over the years. Here he would sit most evenings, reading by the big window that looked out over Loch Shiel and the breathtaking monument they had passed earlier. Angus threw his
Tam-o’-Shanter in the direction of a wooden hallstand inside the door, where it landed effortlessly on a hook, then he left her with a brief ‘She’ll be through in a minute.’
She had never seen so many books outside a library – Angus had his own library! – and she walked about, touching them, running her fingers down the spines; it was like discovering
hidden treasure.

‘Is that you back at last then, Macdonald?’ a woman’s voice called from somewhere inside the house. ‘And about time too! Where the hell have you been all this time?
Running after those loose women in the Fort no doubt! You’re always the same when you get let off the leash! You’ll be drunk too, you useless creature!’

‘Och, shutup!’ Angus replied casually. ‘Who are you to call anybody useless? There was never a Campbell anywhere that was any good to man nor beast. And aye, I am drunk, and
there’s not a loose woman within miles I havenae taken care of in the last few hours, now that you come to mention it, and a bloody good time I gave them too!’

‘Then it’ll be the first time,’ the voice responded, coming nearer. ‘There’s nothing under that sporran of yours worth tuppence! Am I not the living proof of that,
and isnae that the very reason you keep me prisoner in this terrible place, so that I canny tell anybody?’

‘No, it’s not,’ Angus called back, his voice receding as the female voice came nearer. ‘It’s because you’re the ugliest old witch for miles around, and I hate
to be pitied by people when they see you with me!’

Kathy was beginning to panic slightly. She had heard many a verbal joust before, had taken her full part in more than a few, but these insults were being bandied around in voices that
could’ve graced a garden party, the words were full of bile but they were delivered in honeyed tones. A fight was a fight, wasn’t it? At least it was where she came from.

‘Hello there,’ said the female voice behind her, in exactly the same friendly tone of voice. ‘And who are you then?’

Kathy turned to see an elderly woman, her white hair caught in a lazy bun at the back of her head with strands escaping in every direction. She was leaning heavily on a stick; the fabled cook
left to Angus in the Major’s will. ‘I’m Kathy Kelly,’ she said. ‘Major Angus brought me here to help you out … I think.’

‘Och, that’s nice!’ said the old lady pleasantly, advancing on her as she stood looking out of the window. In view of the equally pleasant conversation that had started as she
and Angus had entered the house, Kathy wasn’t entirely sure whether she should shake hands or take cover. Bunty made her way over, leaning heavily on her stick, and put out her hand.
‘I’m Bunty,’ she smiled. Her face was covered in wrinkles, yet she was incredibly beautiful, her soft, pink skin glowing through the lines, and smiling eyes a shade or two of blue
deeper than her husband’s. ‘My, but you’re a pale wee thing!’ she said. ‘Are you all right yourself? Here, sit you down by the fire and we’ll get that useless
creature to make you a cup of tea. Macdonald!’ she shouted. ‘Macdonald, whatever you’re doing, stop it this minute and get your idle self in here!’

Angus had been unloading the car and was passing with his arms laden, but he threw the large parcels he was carrying on the floor with some force and entered the room.

‘What is it, you old beast?’ he asked amiably.

‘Get the lassie a cup of tea this instant!’ Bunty commanded. ‘She’s frozen cold, so she is!’

Kathy opened her mouth to protest that she was no such thing, but both protagonists ignored her.

‘Listen to her!’ Angus muttered. ‘Thinks she’s the lady of the manor! Silly old sow!’ but he went out of the door and headed into the depths of the house anyway,
picking up the discarded parcels on the way.

‘And you can stop acting the big man!’ Bunty called after him. ‘You’re impressing no one here!’ She turned to Kathy. ‘You’ve got to treat them
rough,’ she said gently, ‘get them by the scruff of the neck right at the beginning or you’ll lose control for ever, mark my words!’

She turned awkwardly, heading for an armchair beside the fire and Kathy instinctively moved to help her by taking her arm.

‘Och, that’s kind of you, lass,’ the old woman said. ‘I can see it’ll be nice having you here. You’ll be from Glasgow by the sound of you? Aye, I thought so.
I’ve always wanted to go there, but that mean old miser keeps me prisoner here without a penny to my name.’ Just then Angus came in with a tray, and Bunty continued speaking to Kathy
while aiming her comments at him. ‘And I’ll bet he had nothing to do with picking you either,’ she said. ‘Left to him we’d have one of his fancy women under my
roof!’

‘
My
roof,’ Angus corrected her, setting the tray down on a table beside his wife.

‘Some floozy he’d had his way with so often that she’d be giving him discounts!’ Bunty continued.

‘Don’t be so stupid!’ Angus said, pouring tea into three cups. ‘I do them so much good that
they
pay
me
. You just canny bear to face the truth, can
you?’

‘No more than you can tell it!’ Bunty replied, and in the same breath and voice she said to Kathy, ‘Help yourself to biscuits, lass.’

Kathy wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation, so she started to ask about her duties.

‘Just keep her out of my way,’ Angus said. ‘I don’t care if you leave the place like a pigsty, but keep that old woman away from me, that’s all.’ He lifted
the teapot and refilled Bunty’s cup, put milk and sugar in, stirred it, then carefully handed it to her.

‘You’re not married, are you, Kathy?’ Bunty asked kindly.

Kathy shook her head.

‘Good for you!’ Bunty smiled. ‘They’re not worth it, you know. Men, that’s the creatures I’m talking about. Look at the state of
me
, and all because I
got in tow with that bundle of uselessness there!’

The bundle of uselessness continued to munch on a biscuit. ‘And who else but me would’ve taken pity on you?’ he asked. ‘You were only a cook with nowhere to go when I
offered you a roof over your head, and a rotten cook at that.’

‘I’ve been the making of you, Angus Macdonald,’ Bunty grinned knowingly. ‘Everybody for miles around knows what an uncivilized thing you were when I took you on.
Everybody knows what a difference I made to your life.’

‘Aye, you did that!’ he replied. ‘You’ve made it a bloody misery all these years! When the hell are you going to die, woman?’

‘Och, I’ll see you out, make no mistake about that! I’ll dance on your grave, Angus Macdonald, they’ll have to drag me away at nightfall the next day, still dancing! Pass
me one of those biscuits before you eat the lot.’

Angus passed the biscuits politely, and as he did so he said, ‘I’ll poison you first! That’s my next project, I’m studying poisons.’

‘Studying them? Your whole character’s full of them!’ Bunty said.

‘I think you should have a lie down, Bunty,’ Angus said. The tone of his voice hadn’t altered, Kathy noticed, it could’ve been just another barb.

‘Aye, I think I will,’ she replied. ‘Give me your arm, Macdonald.’

He carefully bent to help her out of the chair and looked to Kathy, who took Bunty’s other arm.

‘It’s just through here,’ he said, indicating with his head as they moved down the corridor. ‘I’ve made the big room at the back into a bedroom for the ungrateful
old cripple.’

‘Just so that you can sneak out to meet your harlots!’ Bunty responded, as they eased her on to the bed. ‘I don’t know why I’ve stood it so long, Macdonald,
I’m too damned good for you!’

Angus gently put an arm under her legs and swung them on to the bed so that she could lie down. ‘Go to sleep, woman,’ he said, covering her with a quilt. ‘Only this time,
don’t for God’s sake wake up again!’ He went to the kitchen and collected the large parcels he’d brought from Fort William. ‘You can have the front bedroom upstairs if
that’s all right,’ he said to Kathy. ‘It has a fine view across the loch. And if anyone wants me, tell them not to bother looking for me. I’ve my knitting to do and I
don’t want to be disturbed.’

She took her courage in both hands, addressing his disappearing back. ‘Um, can I ask, I mean, would you mind?’

Major Angus turned and stared at her with those wonderful eyes.

‘What I’m trying to say is, would it be all right to maybe read some of your books?’

Angus smiled at her. ‘Do you hear that, you ignorant Campbell witch?’ he shouted at the closed door. ‘At last we’ve got somebody in this house besides myself who can
read!’

‘Go you to hell!’ Bunty’s voice replied conversationally.

Angus laughed softly and turned away without answering Kathy’s question, so she presumed he had no objections. He went off to do his solitary knitting, leaving her in his wake feeling more
than a little bemused. From the moment she had entered the house the entire conversation between its inhabitants had veered between insults and kindness then back again without a moment’s
pause, yet there hadn’t been any hint of venom throughout. No one had called God’s wrath upon anyone else, no one had slumped to the floor sobbing like a child or singing a maudlin
song. Was there something in the water up here?

9

It soon became clear that her duties with Bunty and Angus were whatever Kathy wished them to be. As long as she was there to help Bunty get back on both feet she had the run of
the house, and she found that she wanted to help Bunty. She was a different person up here, there was no impulse to hit first just in case, no anger. She wasn’t sure if it was the place or
the people, or a combination of both, she only knew that she felt at home here. Bunty was still mistress of her own house, her mind was active and clear and all she needed was time for her hip to
mend. They were in the kitchen and Bunty was baking, with Kathy as her fetcher and carrier.

‘You must be fed up with hanging around an old woman!’ she said.

‘Fed up? No, no,’ Kathy protested, ‘I love being here with you!’

‘My, but you’re such a kind lass. Could you get that big sandwich tin out of the cupboard there and grease and flour it? Aye, that’s the one, the big shallow affair. Have you
done much baking, Kathy? No? Well, this is your chance to learn. I’m the best for hundreds of miles!’ She chuckled loudly. ‘You’ll have to be able to cook and bake or you
won’t get a man!’ she continued.

‘Who says I want one?’ Kathy replied wryly.

‘Ah, so it’s like that, is it?’ Bunty laughed. ‘I thought I sensed a sadness!’

Angus came into the kitchen carrying a piece of knitting with six different coloured balls of wool and several needles attached. ‘Dear God!’ he said, making himself a mug of coffee.
‘Now the daft old woman’s got the second sight!’

‘I can certainly tell that you’re not wanted here!’ Bunty responded quietly. ‘So be off with you before this bowl lands on your head, Macdonald!’ She turned her
attention once again to Kathy. ‘We need the mixed spice and the ginger,’ she said, and Kathy handed them to her. ‘So!’ Bunty said happily, adding treacle to the mixture in
the bowl. ‘You were going to tell me all about this love affair of yours that went wrong. He let you down, I’ll bet.’ She glanced at Angus as he left the kitchen, shaking his head
and grinning. ‘And we won’t even look at that one, we’ll just treat him with the contempt he deserves and ignore him,’ she said dismissively. ‘Well?’

Kathy laughed. ‘It’s no big deal,’ she said. ‘I was engaged and I called it off, that was all.’

‘Och, away with you!’ Bunty said. ‘Anyone can see that you’ve been badly let down by some man who didnae deserve you in the first place!’ She raised her voice.
‘The way that one has been letting me down all my married life,’ she called down the corridor, then lowering her voice again she said, ‘What did he do then, this blaggard of a
man?’

‘I just didnae want to marry him,’ Kathy said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘I didnae want to marry anyone, he just took it for granted that I did.’

‘Aye, well, they’re all good at that! Macdonald himself would’ve been married sooner if he hadnae assumed that I’d jump at the chance,’ she said happily.
‘Took it for granted he was the only one interested, so I kept him at arm’s length. So this man. You just broke it off? It was that simple?’

Kathy smiled but made no reply.

‘Ah, I knew it!’ Bunty said smugly. ‘He had someone else, didn’t he?’

‘Well, in a way,’ she said. ‘He’d got this other lassie pregnant and he told me that if I didnae marry him soon he’d marry her instead.’

‘Oh, the swine!’ Bunty said in a quiet, shocked tone. ‘He would’ve left the other lassie on her own with his bairn if you’d married him? He really said
that?’

Kathy nodded.

‘Well, you did the right thing there!’ Bunty told her, wiping the sticky gingerbread mixture off her hands with a cloth. ‘Even if you had wanted him, you wouldnae’ve
after that, would you? You wouldnae want a man who could do that to any lassie, would you?’

‘I didnae want him before that,’ Kathy said. ‘I kept trying to tell him without hurting him, only I left it too long and everyone got hurt.’

‘Not you, surely? You knew you were better off without him?’

‘Aye,’ Kathy said, ‘I knew that for sure.’ But she had been hurt, of course she had. She would carry the grief for her lost child for ever, and even in those early days
after it had happened she knew it would always scar her. Bunty had managed to get more out of her than she had ever told anyone or intended to and she had no idea how the old woman had done it, so
to protect more secrets leaking out she changed the subject and asked how Bunty had hurt her hip.