Chasing Angels (28 page)

‘I told you at the outset, Macdonald,’ Bunty was saying, ‘I do not want a Fair Isle cardy, and I won’t have one!’

‘Did anybody offer to make you one then?’ Angus replied, calmly knitting.

‘But I know you, don’t you think I don’t! I can see that you’ve been knitting that thing hanging on they needles there, in my favourite colours! You don’t fool me,
Macdonald, you can put it on one of the hill beasts, but you’re not putting it on me!’

‘It would look better on one of the hill beasts than on you,’ Angus replied. ‘You black lass that’s about to calve any minute, she’d set it off with more style than
you ever would, that’s for sure.’

‘Well, you’ll be the expert on cows,’ Bunty replied sweetly, ‘seeing as you’re always running after them in the bars of Fort William!’

‘I keep telling you, woman,’ Angus said happily. ‘They run after me, there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s this natural attraction I have.’

‘Like dung has for dung beetles!’

Into this came the tray-bearing Kathy, her feet almost screeching along the corridor in Rory’s wake. ‘Here you!’ she called furiously after him.

Rory turned round in the middle of the room and looked at her with his easy, calm stare.

‘Is there something you want?’ he asked, so casually that she felt like throwing the full tray at him.

‘You could’ve asked if there was enough tea to go round before you poured yourself a cup!’

‘And was there?’

‘Aye, but –’

‘So you didnae have to go down the hill to the well and haul up a bucket of water, then hike back up again and boil another pot because I’d poured a cup of tea in my own home?’
he asked sarcastically.

‘You know fine well –’

Rory shrugged his shoulders and sat down by the window; conversation over.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody as ignorant as you!’ Kathy protested. ‘Do you know the meaning of civility?’

‘Why?’ he asked, without looking up. ‘Don’t you? You’ll find it in one of the dictionaries on the shelf there.’

‘That’s what I mean!’ Kathy exploded. ‘Never a polite word when a nasty crack will do!’

Rory made no reply. He sat sipping his tea and turning the pages of a newspaper on the table in front of him. The silence stretched.

‘Well?’ Kathy demanded, marching close up to him.

He looked up. ‘Well what?’ he asked, totally unfazed.

‘Have you nothing to say?’

‘No,’ he said, and turned his attention once again to the newspaper. ‘I see,’ he said to his father, ‘that Lochaber are doing well at the shinty.’

‘Aye, they had a bad patch for a while there, but they’re coming away fine again. I saw them rattle a few past Kingussie the other week, and I was thinking to myself that it was the
best I’d seen them for a good few seasons.’

Kathy looked across at Bunty, who was doing a crossword puzzle by the fire as though nothing had happened. She couldn’t believe it. Her attack on Rory was all but an invitation to see him
outside, and not only did no one seem upset, but they hadn’t even noticed. Placing the tray on the table she left the room and sat in the kitchen, listening to the amiable chatter coming
along the corridor as the Macdonalds finished their tea. After a time she heard Rory’s footsteps coming towards the kitchen and she made a dash for the sink so that she would appear to be
doing some urgent cleaning instead of stoking her wrath. She heard the tray being placed on the kitchen table and then he left without a word. She tried, she really tried, but she had to say
something
. ‘So why have you nothing to say?’ she asked.

Rory stopped at the door and turned to look at her. ‘Why have you such a need to be spoken to?’ he asked.

‘I don’t! I just think that if people are living in the same space they can at least be polite to each other!’ Where was this coming from, she wondered? It was the exact
opposite of the way she had lived her entire life. She decided not to think about that now.

‘I don’t have anything to say,’ he replied calmly, holding his hands out at his sides, palms upwards. ‘Are you saying I have to make small talk with you even though I
haven’t a word I want to say? Would it make you feel better if I commented on the weather?’

Kathy felt she’d been manoeuvred into a corner.

‘Maybe,’ he continued calmly and quietly, ‘that’s what really annoys you, the fact that there isn’t anything I want to say to you?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, chum!’

‘Och, well,’ he replied with a slight smile as he turned to go, ‘I don’t suppose I could’ve expected anything more original than that from you, could I?’

She couldn’t explain why he irritated her so much. Maybe it was because everything in her new life had seemed so perfect, then along he’d come like a big, black cloud and spoiled it.
Or perhaps it was because he had effortlessly usurped her role as annoyer-in-chief. That was what she had done all her life, so she should know how to handle this situation, but she couldn’t;
with Rory Macdonald she was always that one vital step behind. Not that it mattered much, because the situation was soon brought to an end. Rory walked in to the kitchen one day and said to Bunty,
‘That’s me off now, Mother.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Bunty replied, scarcely looking up from the pastry she was rolling. ‘Have you seen Macdonald?’

‘Aye, he’s driving me to the station.’

‘Well, then, keep in touch!’ Bunty replied, still rolling her pastry.

Kathy was washing up at the sink and looked up as he left, but he didn’t say a word or return her glance.

‘Where’s he going?’ she asked Bunty, thinking that it couldn’t be what she thought it was.

‘Och,’ said Bunty, looking up, ‘isn’t that daft of me? Do you know, I forgot to ask! It’ll be somewhere,’ she said decidedly.

‘You mean that’s him gone away? He’s not just going down to Fort William? He’s
gone
?’

‘Aye,’ Bunty smiled gently. ‘He’s gone back. Where was it he was before he came home? Argentina was it? Maybe that’s where he’s gone then.’

‘Just like that?’ Kathy asked.

‘Well, what would you expect?’ Bunty laughed. ‘How else would he go?’

‘Did you know he was going?’ Kathy persisted.

‘Well, not in so many words,’ Bunty said cheerily. ‘I had a kind of feeling he’d be away soon.’ She looked up at Kathy. ‘You’ll miss him, won’t
you?’

Kathy didn’t know what to say. She put her head down at the sink and ran the water. ‘No’ if Ah had a hatchet in ma hand, Ah wouldnae!’ she muttered under her breath.

‘I was pleased that you two got along so well!’ Bunty continued, as Kathy looked up at her sideways to see if she was joking. ‘He doesnae take to many people the way he took to
you.’

‘
Dear God
!’ Kathy thought. ‘
Whit’s he like if he really hates somebody
?’

‘He’s that like Macdonald when he was young!’ Bunty continued.

‘I didnae think he was anything like Angus!’ Kathy said, almost unable to control herself.

‘Och, but he is! He’s like him in every way, even if he has got my eyes. That same friendly nature when he likes somebody, but nobody has ever crossed our Rory twice, not even when
he was a laddie. And he looks like his father too. You didnae know Macdonald when he was young. Oh, but he was a handsome brute! I’d watch him from the kitchen as I was working, and
he’d be outside there, chopping wood or digging a tree root up, and the sight of him stripped to the waist, the sweat on his back so that you could see every muscle, those broad, broad
shoulders!’ Bunty had stopped rolling her pastry and was gazing into the distance, a happy smile on her face. ‘I’m telling you,’ she said with a sudden laugh, ‘there
were times I had to lock myself in to stop from rushing out there and ravishing him!’

‘Bunty!’ Kathy laughed, slightly taken aback.

‘What?’ Bunty asked. ‘Just because we’re a pair of decrepit old creatures doesnae mean we havnae had our times, I can tell you that! He could keep going all night in his
prime, and all day too, and so could I for that matter! Many’s the time we did!’

Kathy gasped. ‘I don’t think I want to hear this!’ she laughed, not altogether in jest.

‘Och, you don’t know you’re living till you’ve been lying out in the heather together, going at it like knives! I’m telling you, Kathy, Cromwell’s army coming
up the hill there couldnae have stopped us once we’d started!’

‘Bunty!’ Kathy said, brandishing a washing cloth, ‘if you don’t stop it this minute, I’ll let you have this wet cloth across the face!’

Bunty giggled. ‘Aye, well,’ she said wistfully. ‘The memories are still there, that’s all I’m saying, and Angus and me have more than most folk! Angus did what he
always did, he learned everything there was to know about sex, and by God, he put it to good use!’

‘Maybe I’d better run the cold tap on this cloth before I throw it!’ Kathy threatened, as Bunty turned once more to her pastry, giggling delightedly.

Later that day Angus came back from taking his son to the station and started moving things from the upstairs bedroom he shared with Bunty before her accident, to the downstairs room where she
had been sleeping to save her climbing stairs.

‘I’m being forced to move in to her bed,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘I’ll be dead in a week, the woman’s insatiable!’

Bunty was cutting the pie she had made earlier, Kathy holding a plate by her side.

‘I know that!’ Kathy murmured, nudging Bunty with her elbow. ‘I’ve heard all the gory details, no need to tell me!’

Bunty leaned against her, shaking with laughter. ‘Not all of them,’ she giggled. ‘There were times I could tell you about would make your hair fall out, never mind put a curl
in it!’

‘Well,
don’t you dare!
’ Kathy scolded her, and the two women stood together giggling.

‘I won’t get a minute’s sleep tonight,’ Angus muttered in mock complaint as he passed. ‘Whatever you’re making for the tea tonight, you could maybe do me a
favour to save my life. Could you put in a wee nip of bromide, do you think?’ and he winked at Bunty.

Kathy looked at the two of them and the obvious adoration that passed between them. Rory like Angus? Never!

The years she spent with Bunty and Angus were the happiest of Kathy Kelly’s life, that would always be her view. Though Bunty recovered from her broken hip it had weakened her, and she and
Angus never moved out of their bedroom in exile, it became a permanent fixture. Bunty was still fit and agile, though judging from Angus’s attitude, she wasn’t as she had been before.
Between them Kathy and Bunty kept the house running smoothly, and Angus had someone there, just in case. His enthusiasms absorbed him and took up his time as they always had, but he wasn’t a
selfish man, he was thinking of Bunty all along. If he’d changed his lifestyle to care for her she would’ve known it was because of her failing health and she would probably have failed
faster, but this way he knew she was being looked after without sending the message to her that her usefulness was over. She was still his wife, she cooked for him, baked for him, washed, mended
and argued, but Kathy did the legwork and the fetching and carrying. After two years she went to them and asked them to stop paying her. Bunty and Angus exchanged a look. She was happy with them,
she argued, she was part of the family, they had given her a home, she didn’t feel like an employee. Bunty and Angus exchanged another look. ‘It’s only money,’ Angus
commented with a shrug.

‘I know,’ Kathy replied, ‘but I don’t need it. I’m so well looked after here, what do I have to spend it on?’

Angus shrugged again.

‘But you’re a young lassie,’ Bunty said kindly, ‘stuck here with us old fogeys when you could be out there having a good time. Of course we should pay you for looking
after us so well.’

‘Bunty,’ Kathy said quietly, ‘my mother died years ago, I grew up with a drunken father who had to be lifted off the floor and put to bed every night. I didn’t know what
a family was till I came here.
You’re
my family, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if I hadnae found you. I should be paying you!’

Bunty put her arms round her and hugged her. ‘All right then,’ she said, wiping her eyes, ‘have it your own way, but you’re a daft lassie!’

Angus looked at the two of them, hugging each other and crying. ‘Women!’ he muttered. ‘Never happy unless they can have a good greet!’ and shaking his head he wandered
off.

But she did get out, of course, sometimes she met Seona and Kirsty in Fort William for a drink and a gossip, and very soon the trio expanded to include the women in the National Trust’s
Tourist Centre below the house, it coming as no surprise that Mavis, the manager, was Seona’s sister and Kirsty’s mother. Mavis had been a History teacher at Lochaber High School until
the form-filling got on her nerves, and now she was the local authority on the ’45 rebellion. On their nights out she and Kathy would sit over a drink in the bar of the Nevis Bank Hotel,
arguing about Bonnie Prince Charlie, neither one ever giving ground, even on this night, the occasion of Kirsty’s hen party. In two days’ time she would marry Kenny, the chef from the
Glenfinnan House Hotel just beyond the monument, but before the fun could begin Kathy and Mavis had to discuss the Young Pretender, or ‘that bloody liar,’ as Kathy called him. ‘He
was a chancer!’ was her opinion. ‘He came over here, got a lot of poor people involved, then scarpered back across the Channel, leaving them to deal with the aftermath. That’s not
what I call a leader, you wouldnae find me being loyal to a weak creature like him!’

‘Aye, well, I used to think that too,’ Mavis answered as always, ‘but he must’ve had something about him. Think of those months hiking through the Highlands with a huge
bounty on his head, yet he was never given away. And there he was, sleeping in caves to avoid the Redcoats, never warm or dry or safe, and no matter what you think of him, he did it, he stuck it
out.’

‘Only till he could get to hell out of it to safety!’ Kathy responded. ‘He didnae exactly hang around to face the consequences, did he? But the Highlanders had no
choice.’

‘No, no, no,’ Mavis insisted. ‘He had something about him!’