The Hill of the Red Fox (2 page)

Aunt Evelyn saw us off at Euston Station on a sunny Monday morning. In the dim cavern of the station all was bustle and movement. Porters rushed here and there with trucks piled high with baggage; long queues formed outside the ticket offices, and latecomers hurried for their trains. At regular intervals a voice blared over the loudspeakers announcing train departures.

“Attention, please,” boomed the voice. “The eight-thirty to Glasgow will be leaving Platform Twelve in five minutes’ time, calling at Rugby, Stafford, Crewe, Carlisle …”

“Oh, hurry,” I urged, one eye on the large black minute-hand of the station clock, slowly creeping round to the half-hour mark, “or we will miss the train.”

Aunt Evelyn was calmly selecting magazines at the bookstall, and all she said was, “Don’t fuss so, Alasdair. I have never yet missed a train, and I do so hate spending hours over farewells.”

She collected several magazines and paid the girl, then added in a kindlier tone, doubtless conscious of my squirming impatience, “Don’t worry, I promise you we shan’t miss the train.”

Aunt Evelyn was as good as her word. She found us two corner seats, settled our luggage on the rack to her own satisfaction, and kissed my mother good-bye before the guard’s whistle shrilled.

She shook hands with me through the open window and when I withdrew my hand I discovered a pound note in my palm. I blurted out my thanks, but the train was already moving slowly out of the station, and I doubt if Aunt Evelyn heard me. But she smiled and waved, and I felt, without knowing why, that she was pleased with me, and the realization of this was so unexpected that I wanted to cry out to her that I was sorry for all the things that I had said and done in the past. But such thoughts always come too late, and, as if
to make up for all that I had left unsaid, I waved and waved until she was a tiny speck in the distance. I was still waving when the platform could no longer be seen, and my mother called to me to come away from the window.

I hardly remember anything about the journey to Glasgow, although most of the time I gazed out of the window watching the green fields go spinning by. My mother never spoke, except to answer my questions, but from time to time I felt her eyes on me. Whenever I looked up she smiled and went on with her reading, but I knew that something was troubling her. I could not understand why she could not accept my holiday in Skye in the same happy spirit as Aunt Evelyn had shown. But such dismal thoughts were soon forgotten in the growing excitement of the journey ahead. In a few hours we would be in Glasgow, and the very next morning I would be starting out on my own, like any lone adventurer from a tale of long ago.

We stayed overnight in Glasgow at an hotel near Queen Street Station, for the train to Mallaig left at four minutes to six in the morning. After dinner I had a bath and got into bed. I lay with my eyes closed, listening to the noise of the traffic in the street outside, hardly able to believe that I was at last in Glasgow and that tomorrow I would be in Skye.

My mother came into the room so quietly that I did not hear her until she whispered, “Alasdair, are you asleep?”

“No,” I said, opening my eyes. “I was just thinking.”

She sat down on the side of the bed and I noticed how tired she looked.

“What were you thinking about?” she asked presently.

I rubbed one foot against the other, feeling pleasantly drowsy in the cool comfort of the bed.

“Just thinking,” I answered and then, knowing the angry retort that would have sprung to Aunt Evelyn’s lips if she could have heard me, I added, “I was thinking how good it is going to be staying in Skye.”

“Is it?”

The words were spoken gently, sorrowfully almost, certainly not with any bitterness or malice, but I was suddenly angry. I struggled into a sitting position and said hotly, “You don’t think I am old enough to go to Skye on my own, do you? You think I am just a baby.”

My mother put a hand on my arm and shook her head.

After a while, she said, “I don’t want you to be disappointed, Alasdair, that’s all.”

“Why should I be disappointed?” I demanded, not wanting to argue with her, but still feeling angry.

“Well, it is all so different to your life in London,” replied my mother. “It is all so … so much rougher.”

“Aunt Evelyn says it will make a man of me,” I retorted.

“Aunt Evelyn hasn’t the faintest idea of what it is like to live in a black house in Skye,” she said quietly.

“What’s a black house?” I asked. It was the first time I had heard the phrase.

“It’s an old thatched cottage,” said my mother, “with poky little rooms and great thick walls with tiny windows that let in hardly any light at all.”

“Is my cottage a black house?” I asked eagerly.

“Yes, it is a black house,” she said quietly, “with bare stone floors and no water and no electric light.”

“But what has that got to do with it?” I cried, caught up in a sudden surge of resentment. “It’s not fair, you spoiling it all for me like this. Why can’t you be glad like Aunt Evelyn?”

“I am glad, Alasdair, awfully glad that you are not afraid to go to a strange place by yourself,” said my mother gently.

“But it’s not strange to me,” I insisted. “I know all about it. I have read dozens and dozens of books about Skye and the Highlands.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s the trouble.”

“Why?”

She smiled, a strange, crooked smile, and said earnestly, “Can’t you see, Alasdair, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“But I’ll be careful,” I said. “Promise. Cross my heart.”

It was an old game of ours, and my mother laughed as I marked a cross on my pyjama-jacket.

“Not that sort of hurt,” she said seriously. “A hurt inside of you. You see, Alasdair, you have read too many books about things that happened a long, long time ago. You think that everything in the Highlands is wonderful, that it is all flashing tartans and pipers playing and noble clansmen. But all that sort of thing died out a long time ago, if it ever existed. It is as far away as Prince Charlie. Why, some of your Highlanders are mean and nasty, just like some people in London. Some of them would lie to you and be deceitful, if they thought it would help them. They are just the same as other people, no better and no worse. I do want you to realize that, Alasdair, or you are going to get hurt.”

“But you are English,” I said stubbornly.

“Well, that makes you half English,” she said, smiling.

“But I was born in Skye,” I said quickly. “Besides, I am going to a friend of my father’s.”

“Was Murdo Beaton a friend of your father’s?” said my mother softly, half to herself.

“You know he was,” I retorted. “He said so in his letter.”

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning, “I just don’t know.” She bit her bottom lip, and I could see that she was undecided whether to continue or not, but then she went on, “Black Alasdair never spoke to me of Murdo Beaton. He spoke of many of his friends in Skye but never of Murdo Beaton.”

“But my father let him have the croft until we wanted it again. You told me so yourself,” I said, trying to keep sufficiently awake to digest this bewildering piece of news.

“Murdo Beaton
said
your father let him have the croft,” my mother replied slowly. She sighed and shook her head wearily. “I just don’t know for sure, Alasdair, that is what upsets me. I never saw Murdo Beaton when we were in Skye. He was working somewhere on the mainland in those days. It was only after … after your father was lost that I got the letter from him. You were only two. But now — well, now I am not so sure.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about Murdo Beaton,” I declared. “He must have been a friend of my father’s or he would never have dreamed of writing you in the first place.”

“I suppose so,” she said doubtfully, and then, smiling, “I don’t know what made me indulge in all this silly talk. What I really came in for was to give you this present.”

My mother handed me a small rectangular parcel. The wrapping was sealed with Sellotape and the package felt hard. I turned it over in my hands and looked at her wonderingly.

“It’s a present for you to take to Skye with you,” said my mother.

“But what is it?” I asked. “It feels awfully hard.”

“Go ahead and open it,” she smiled.

“Oh, but what is it?” I cried, fumbling at the adhesive tape on the wrapping paper.

“It is something you will be looking at an awful lot,” answered my mother, but more than that she would not say.

I broke the tape with impatient fingers and ripped off the wrapping paper, revealing a small cardboard box. I plucked off the lid and there was a wrist-watch with a leather strap.

“Gosh!” I exclaimed. “It’s just what I wanted,” and I tried to strap it on my wrist, but I was so excited that I could not get the metal prong through a hole in the stiff new leather of the strap.

My mother fastened it for me, but there were not sufficient holes in the strap to fasten the watch securely to my thin wrist. She saw my disappointment and hurried to her room to fetch a hatpin, and pierced a new hole in the strap so that the watch fitted snugly against my wrist. I wound it up and set it to the right time by my mother’s watch, and held it to my ear and listened to the steady tick.

“It has got luminous hands,” my mother said. “You can tell the time in the dark.”

I burrowed under the blankets, making a dark cave to test the luminous dial of the watch.

My mother laughed when I emerged with tousled hair, and said excitedly, “You can too, it’s as clear as can be.”

“Well,” she said, “I am glad you like it,” and we sat together in a
companionable silence as we often did in the flat at home when we were alone together.

After a while, we started to talk again, but this time it was of small things, like looking after the kitten while I was away, and arranging to write home as soon as I got to Achmore, and we laughed together when we remembered the large woman who had got into our compartment at Crewe and eaten her way steadily through an enormous box of chocolates.

My mother went on to tell me about the first time she had gone away from home on a school trip to France, and I felt myself becoming steadily drowsier. I struggled hard to keep awake, but there were leaden weights on my eyelids dragging them shut, and my mother’s voice merged with the sound of the traffic in the street outside, and that too faded, and was suddenly still.

From a great way off, I heard her say, “Alasdair, are you asleep?”

I rubbed my eyes and stretched and yawned.

My mother bent down and kissed me lightly on the forehead.

“Off you go to sleep,” she said. “We have to be up at five in the morning, and you have a long journey ahead of you.”

I wriggled down in the bed and she tucked in the blankets.

“And Alasdair.”

“Yes?” I said.

“Always remember, whatever happens, that you are Black Alasdair’s son, and that everybody you meet in Skye will be thinking of him when they see you. Just try to be a man … like him.”

“Be a man,” I murmured drowsily.

I rolled over on my side and was asleep before the door closed behind her.

It was raining in the morning, a fine persistent drizzle, and Queen Street Station, without the noise and bustle of hundreds of holidaymakers, looked as drab as an empty football ground. My mother and I walked down the long platform in silence, and I climbed aboard the train and stowed my luggage on the rack. Now that the time had come to part, I did not know what to say, and my stomach felt curiously empty, although I had just eaten a good breakfast of bacon and egg and sausages.

I leaned out of the window, wishing that the guard would blow his whistle, and my mother stood on the platform, one hand resting on the carriage door.

“Don’t poke your head out of the window when the train is moving,” she said, “and when you get to Mallaig just follow all the people and the porters from the station to the pier. You get on the
Lochnevis
and stay on her until you reach Portree. If Murdo Beaton doesn’t meet you, get on the red bus at the pier and ask the driver to let you off at Achmore.”

I nodded absently, because I had heard the instructions so many times before that I knew them off by heart, and an awkward silence came between us. It is strange how some silences affect you more than words, so that your skin tingles and you feel that if you don’t speak you will have to creep away and hide, but you remain rooted to the spot, speechless and tongue-tied.

Before I realized what was happening the guard’s green flag was waving up and down, and the train had started with a sudden jerk. I was caught unprepared and the sudden movement threw me off balance. By the time I had regained the window the train was moving out of the station and I could only clasp my mother’s hand for a brief moment.

I leaned out of the window, waving furiously, and felt a lump rise in my throat at the sight of her standing there alone, waving back. I had never thought of my mother as being small; indeed, she was a
good head taller than Aunt Evelyn, and Aunt Evelyn was not a small woman. But seeing her standing there on the almost deserted platform, dirty with the unswept litter of the previous day, she looked curiously small and frail, and I waved and waved long after she had disappeared from view and the train was clanking over the network of points outside the station.

I stood by the window until I felt myself shivering in the chill morning air, then I turned and made my way blindly into a compartment and sat down and gazed fixedly out of the window. The window was misted with rain, but I could see row upon row of dingy houses, tall factory chimneys and the spidery network of cranes down by the river. It was all drab and grey, and I had a sudden longing for the familiar, cosy flat; supper on a stool by the fire with a book on my knees, and lazy Sunday afternoons in the park or on the river. For the first time in my life I was alone, and instead of rejoicing in my freedom I felt utterly defenceless and afraid.

I wished that the sun would come out and shut my eyes and counted ten and said to myself, when I open my eyes again the sun will be shining.

I had counted up to eight when a man’s voice said, “Where are ye bound for, laddie?”

I started and opened my eyes, and he laughed, seeing the evident astonishment on my face.

“You were in a wee bit dream,” he said, in the broad friendly dialect of the Scottish Lowlands. “You didna notice me at all.”

“No, I didn’t,” I stammered. “I didn’t see you.”

He was a very fat man with a red, kindly face, and when he laughed the watch-chain across his waistcoat joggled up and down.

“I didna think I was the kind to be overlooked sae easily,” he said dryly, “but maybe you had mair things on your mind than admiring the likes o’ me.”

“I am going to Skye,” I said proudly.

“Well, well,” he exclaimed, “that’s a gey long road for a wee fellow.”

“I’m nearly thirteen,” I said, flushing.

I half expected him to laugh, but he did not. Instead he looked at me with kindly eyes, and said slowly, “This is your first time away
from home, is it no’?”

“Yes,” I said, swallowing hard, and thinking that my voice sounded like a stranger’s. “But how did you know?”

“Och, well,” he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully with a great ham of a hand, “Jamie Finlayson was no’ born yesterday. You see, laddie, I’m a man who was travelling the world when I was no’ much older than you are yoursel’, and I’m thinking that the first time I took the lang road frae home I was looking much the way ye’re lookin’ yoursel’ this forenoon.”

“Well, I’m glad to be going,” I declared, although I did not really feel very glad at that moment.

“Good for you, laddie,” he cried. “And what’s your name?”

“Alasdair Cameron,” I said.

“A good Hielan’ name,” said he, “and if I may say so, Alasdair, it’s mysel’ wishes I were away to Skye along wi’ you. A good man is a good man onywhere, but a good Hielan’ man is a king o’ men.”

“Have you been to Skye?” I inquired timidly.

He slapped his thigh and let out a great bellow of laughter.

“Man alive!” he roared. “Have I been to Skye! See that?” — and here he patted his great belly — “it wasna always there. Listen, Alasdair, I’ve climbed Sgurr nan Gillean in the Black Cuillin; I’ve scrambled my way to the top of the Storr Rock and walked by Beinn Edra all the way to the Quiraing; I’ve lain in the heather up beyond Earlish watching the sun setting over Uig Bay, and many’s the braw salmon I’ve lifted out o’ Glenvarragill River an’ no’ with a fly either. Have I been to Skye, laddie? I’ve tramped the hills o’ Skye from Ardvasar to Duntulm and ye can take it from me there’s no’ a place like it on the face o’ God’s earth if ye’re strong in the leg  and no’ afraid o’ a good drooking.”

“I suppose you have got lots of friends in Skye?” I said.

“Och, I was aye blessed wi’ good friends,” he replied. “But, mind you, Alasdair, there’s mony a gamekeeper in Skye would like to lay hands on Jamie Finlayson.” He laughed his great, roaring laugh, until the tears started in his eyes. “Ye’d hardly credit it tae see me now, but there wasna a keeper in Skye could get his nose to my heels. But those days are lang past, lang past.”

My friend got out at Helensburgh, but before he left he shook
hands solemnly and wished me luck.

He was easing his great bulk out of the door, when he turned and said quietly, “I was aye a friend o’ the tinkers, Alasdair, guid folk too, for a’ that’s said aboot them. If ever you need the help o’ a tinker in Skye, tell them Jamie Finlayson sent you.”

And then he was gone with his great rumbling laugh echoing through the corridor, and I little thought that the name of Jamie Finlayson would come to my rescue in the dark days that lay ahead.

I was sorry when he left, but his company had cheered me, and I watched eagerly as we made our way north by the sealochs, past Garelochhead to Arrochar into the heart of the great hills of Argyll. The train cut through the glen, to Loch Lomond, and I craned my neck out of the window trying to get a glimpse of Ben Lomond, but the mountain was shrouded in mist. The rain dripped down steadily, and the sound of running water was everywhere as the rushing burns streamed down the flanks of the hillsides. Everything was grey and weeping, so much so that a thin spiral of brown smoke, rising from a newly kindled fire in a wayside cottage, made a splash of colour.

We reached Ardlui, the gateway to the Highlands, and I remembered how many times I had traced the route on my atlas at home. From Ardlui the train climbed steadily through silent hills, with never a house in sight, until we were speeding across the desolate wastes of Rannoch Moor. Two fishermen in oilskins, their rods slung over their shoulders, got out at Rannoch Station, then the train moved on again into a grey, featureless wilderness.

On and on over the unending moors, pitted with peat bogs and lonely lochans and north by Loch Treig into the Glen of Spean. The rain drifted down unceasingly, and, looking out at the wet moors, I was sure that the sun never shone on this lonely land. We travelled along by the side of the River Spean, until we were under the mist-wreathed shoulder of Scotland’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, and the train slowly came to a standstill in Fort William.

We were a long time in Fort William, and I leaned out of the window watching the restaurant car and two coaches being uncoupled and shunted away. The station was crowded with holidaymakers,
and dotted with islands of luggage. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and the noise and bustle and shouts of laughter made me feel my own loneliness and isolation more keenly than when we had been travelling through the silent hills. Nobody on the station, it seemed to me, was alone. Everyone seemed to be happy and excited, as one should be when starting a holiday, and I was miserably conscious of my own wretchedness. If only I had someone to talk to, I thought, I would not be feeling like this, but I comforted myself with the thought that once I reached Skye and the welcome of my father’s friends my loneliness would vanish.

The crowds had drifted away from the station, and a porter was clearing up the last island of baggage, when the train moved forward again. The porter looked up and saw my face at the window, and he smiled and waved to me. I waved back, wondering if he knew how much his friendly gesture meant to me.

The train was winding round the bend at Corpach when I first noticed the strange behaviour of the man in the corridor. He was standing with his back to my compartment, his hands behind him gripping the bar that crossed the window. At first I glanced at him idly, then turned to look out of the window again. I don’t know what made me look round a second time, but when I did, I noticed his hands. They were clenched so tightly on the window bar that the knuckles were white. There was a scar on the man’s left hand; a long red weal stretching in a jagged, diagonal line, from the knuckle joint of his little finger to his wrist. I watched the man’s hands for a long time. They were straining at the window bar as if trying to snap it in two, relaxing for an instant only to grip it again in a desperate clasp. I never took my eyes off those hands. They were gripping the window bar in the way that a drowning man would seize a life-line. But this man was not drowning. He was standing in the corridor of the Glasgow to Mallaig train with people within call on either side of him.

I could not see his face, or even the back of his head, only his shoulders and his clenching hands, but I knew there was something wrong. I knew that even before he turned round and slid the door open, and I saw his face.