Highland Laddie Gone (3 page)

“Positive,” said Cameron, trying to smile back.
And you’re sure you don’t wrestle alligators?
he wanted to answer.

“Dawson—what clan is that, anyway?” asked Andy Carson, the assistant dean of biology. Opinions in the department were divided over whether he had taken up the study of salamanders because he looked like one, or whether he had grown to resemble them after long years of close association.

“Clan MacThatcher,” said Cameron, going for broke.

Betty Carson giggled. “You can’t fool us! There’s no such clan. I’ll look you up.” She held up a small book called
Scottish Clans and Tartans,
which Cameron realized he was expected to know by heart. “Dawson … Dawson …” she murmured, flipping pages. “Ah, here it is! ‘Dawson is a corruption of Davidson, and the Davidsons are now a branch of Clan Chattan.’ I’ll turn you over to one of them for the parade of clans. I expect you’ll want to be with your clan, won’t you?”

Cameron blinked. “Do any of them know anything about porpoises?”

Betty Carson considered it. “If they’re like most clans, they’ll be M.D.s. Andy always introduces himself as
Professor
Carson, rather than
Doctor,
so that people won’t try to talk to him about AMA politics.”

“Or tax shelters,” Andy Carson grunted. “They certainly prescribe good Scotch, though, at these festivals. What’s your brand, Scotty?”

“Schweppes,” murmured Cameron. He’d be damned if he’d be called Scotty for the duration of his stay. If they persisted, he’d have to think up a nickname “that they called him back home.”

“Well, maybe they’ll let you enter the sporting events without the kilt,” said Betty Carson. “Since you’re a real Scot. Is there any particular one you specialize in?”

“Soccer.” He remembered not to call it football.

She frowned. “Not Scottish. The choices are caber toss, sheaf toss, hammer toss, stone throw—”

“Betty won the haggis hurl last year,” said her husband proudly.

Cameron tried to imagine a group of women vomiting
suet pudding in a distance competition. That couldn’t be it.

Ice. Americans were really quite demented on the subject of ice, thought Heather McSkye.

While her new husband, Dr. Hutcheson, was conferring with festival officials, Heather climbed into the camper to check on the ice supply. She had filled the cooler before they left, but in this stifling climate it might have melted; and if so, she would have to send Batair to town for more. He would insist on having the other clan chiefs in for drinks tonight, and they would need more ice than a fishmonger to accommodate that crowd.

Usually Heather enjoyed entertaining: sheathed in a black dress to accentuate her blondness, she would glide among the guests, murmuring introductions or offers of drinks, and accepting compliments on the newly redecorated house. Batair had protested, of course—men are such sticks about change—but she had told him she simply couldn’t live with Marge’s old chintzes and cottage oak antiques. She’d wanted to hold a yard sale, but Batair, in an uncharacteristic display of firmness, insisted on sending the old furniture to Marge at the farm. He hadn’t even wanted to readjust the settlement to compensate for it. The divorce agreement had allowed Marge to keep their farm, where she raised her border collies, and Dr. Hutcheson had kept the house in town and most of the stocks and bonds.

Heather would have liked to see more acrimony in the relations between her husband and his first wife, but she was too clever to instigate it. She contented herself with
the purchase of some lovely chrome and glass furniture to complement the scarlet settee and the black pile carpet.

Batair seemed to think that, since she was from Scotland, she should be as daft about antiques as he was, but it wasn’t as if she’d grown up in a sodding castle, then, was it? Heather liked new things; in fact, she would have preferred motor racing to Scottish games for entertainment, but the games were not entertainment as far as she was concerned. They were a means to an end.

She had sized up the Scots-Americans and decided that they were the U.S. equivalent of the Sloanes back home: conservative snobs with more money than sense, in search of a bit of antiquity on which to hang their pedigrees. When Heather mentioned her ties to the Scottish nobility, Batair had practically drooled, hadn’t he? If the other Americans’ reactions were as funny as that, it should be an amusing weekend indeed.

James Stuart McGowan hadn’t said anything for quite a long time; but since he was only ten years old, his parents considered that a blessing. Even an ominous silence was better than the leveling remarks that were his usual conversational contributions on outings.

James Stuart, who had the soul of an aging Baptist minister, had been cursed with whimsical parents. They were always trying to drag him off to carnivals and ball games, where they’d buy noxious quantities of hot dogs and cotton candy that they attempted to pass off as dinner; God knows what this cuisine had done to his metabolism. If his parents didn’t get a grip on themselves by the time he reached puberty, he’d probably die of terminal acne. At least he’d gotten them to stop swiping his copy of Nietzsche and
replacing it with
Paddington Bear,
the threat to call the child protection agency had finally done it. He wondered which of his parents had put the sign on his door:
Killjoy was here.
This latest obsession of theirs, the Highland games, appeared to involve leaving a perfectly comfortable home to camp out like gypsies on the top of a mountain amid bears, poison oak, and fellow psychotics. His mother and father (he steadfastly refused to call them Babs and Stewie) even wanted to buy a kilt for him, insisting how adorable he’d look in the family tartan. James Stuart had countered by demanding to see the family checkbook, and pointing out that $150 worth of cuteness was clearly beyond their means.

Although he felt obliged to radiate displeasure at his parents’ latest escapade, James Stuart secretly felt that the Highland games might prove interesting after all. There should be crowds of people there, so that he could easily give his parents the slip and stay gone for hours. Besides, feeling superior and contemptuous was James Stuart’s favorite pastime, and the weekend promised a limitless opportunity to indulge in it.

Lachlan Forsyth counted the campers in the parking area and decided that it was time for him to set up his souvenir stall. He could afford, at most, a two-drink delay. The opening ceremonies were set to begin at 6
P.M
., by which time an assortment of the curious, the obnoxious, and the deluded would be packed three-deep around him, demanding tartan ties, Nessie key rings, and directions to the loo. His answer to all of these queries was: “Right over there on the table.”

Often people would recognize his burr and want to know where he was from, in which case a glance at their tartan was always helpful. He told the MacDonalds that he was from Kintyre, while the Campbells were led to believe that he hailed from Argyll; no one ever knew the difference.

Occasionally a well-traveled soul would try to chat him up about various places in Scotland, but Lachlan, well-traveled himself, could field questions indefinitely. He could always recommend a pub or a bed-and-breakfast anywhere between Orkney and the Borders. He could, with equal ease, recite Burns, tell instantly which tartan went with which surname, and settle arguments about the minutiae of Scottish history. It was all part of his job as a professional Scot. The least agreeable part of this lucrative business was having to suffer fools gladly; but he always managed with a straight face to find a tartan for an Olaffson (MacDonald of the Isles: Viking intermarriage), dredge up a family ghost for any family at all, and listen sympathetically to one more “direct descendant of Flora MacDonald and Bonnie Price Charlie.”

Lachlan began to dust off his Highland games coffee mugs and straighten his tartan scarfs and ties. The new blue and beige ones should go like hotcakes—the Princess Diana tartan, that was. And the Royal Stewart was always a big seller. Never mind that none of the purchasers had the least right in the world to wear the colors of the royal family. It was pretty, easy to find, and usually cheaper than special-ordering the tartan of a lesser-known clan, so it always did well at Scottish gatherings. Lachlan always laid in a generous supply before the festival, and he had never failed to sell out. Between the ignorant and the deluded
“descendants” of the Prince, business was always brisk.

“Excuse me,” said a woman at his elbow, “could you tell me what tartan my family should wear? We’re kin to Mary, Queen of Scots, on my mother’s side.”

Lachlan Forsyth smiled. Let the games begin.

   T
HE
Western Virginia Scottish Festival was held each year on privately owned Glencoe Mountain, a high-altitude tourist attraction a few miles outside the tiny community of Meadow Creek. For most of the year, Glencoe offered (for a modest admission fee) nature trails, camping facilities, hang-gliding exhibitions, and a habitat zoo; but on Labor Day weekend, the mountain was packed with kilted visitors, and the overflow was lodged in motels from Blacksburg to Pulaski. The mountain’s owner, Margaret Duff-Hamilton (of Hamilton textile mills), presided over the event as honorary games chairman, and welcomed all the clan chiefs at a sherry party in her summer home. Out of earshot, in the campground, lesser folk had tailgate picnics to the accompaniment of pipe-band practice.

“We’re not staying here, are we?” asked Geoffrey, recoiling from the sound of an untuned bagpipe. “I would have nightmares of moose in labor.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Elizabeth assured him. “We’re staying in one of those tourist cabins on the creek. The clan reserves one every year for the Maid of the Cat.”

“If you have to clean up after
him,
you will earn the title,” said Geoffrey, frowning at Cluny. “What do we do now?”

Elizabeth stopped the car beside a whitewashed cabin
with a tartan ribbon tied around a porch railing. “Chattan colors. We’re in here,” she announced. “Let’s take in our suitcases, and then go to the meadow and register. We’ll get a schedule of events, then decide.”

“Is
he
coming?”

“Cluny?” Elizabeth smiled. “He’s the guest of honor!”

The tourist cabin was sparsely furnished but clean, and its pine beds and dressers smelled of lemon oil. Geoffrey wandered over to the picture above the table and began to study it with interest. In it a kilted young man was bending over the hand of a pretty woman in green.

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”
said Geoffrey cheerfully. “I’d always thought of Lady
Macbeth
as older somehow.”

Elizabeth set down the ice chest beside the small refrigerator. “Let me see that.”

“I wonder if it’s unlucky to have
Macbeth
pictures in your room? Of course, I just quoted from it, so we’re doomed anyhow.”

“Except for your theatre superstitions, you are practically illiterate,” Elizabeth informed him. “That woman is in an eighteenth-century costume. How could it be from
Macbeth?”
“David Garrick production, I expect.”

“That,” said Elizabeth, tapping the painting with her forefinger, “is a print of a Joy painting of Bonnie Prince Charlie bidding farewell to Flora MacDonald.”

“Who is …?”

“After Culloden, the British were searching the Highlands for Bonnie Prince Charlie, so he hid out on the Isle of Skye. Flora MacDonald helped him to escape from
Scotland by disguising him as her maid and smuggling him across the inlet in a rowboat.”

“I suppose that involved putting him in a longer skirt,” murmured Geoffrey. “He seems to be back in full kilt for the farewell scene, though. Say, are you
sure
this is supposed to be the prince?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why?”

Geoffrey pressed his tie against the kilted figure in the painting. “Because he’s not wearing the Royal Stewart tartan!”

Elizabeth sighed. “Clans have more than one plaid, Geoffrey. There are patterns for dress, for hunting, for—Well, never mind. I don’t have time to explain it to you because I have to change into
my
kilt. Which bedroom do you want?”

“Whichever one
he
doesn’t sleep in.”

“I thought I’d put him in the bathroom.”

“Not unless you brought a bedpan.”

“All right, I’ll keep him in the room with me. He’ll be good protection.”

“Protection from whom? If you’re referring to me, cousin dear, the dust bunnies under the bed are all the protection you need. More than enough.”

Elizabeth smiled sweetly. “I know.”

The Highland festival was held in a large meadow several hundred feet below the peak of Glencoe Mountain. Already the well-mowed field was ringed with open tents, each bearing the standard of a different clan. Early arrivals were strolling about, visiting the hosts at the various tents and studying clan displays. Others gathered around the wooden dance platforms to watch the costumed dancers
practice, or inspected the wares at the souvenir stalls. By far the largest crowd had collected around the refreshment tent, a testimony to the effect of ninety-two degree weather on persons in wool outfits.

“How do you stand it?” asked Geoffrey, fanning himself with his program. “You look like a stewed sheep.”

Elizabeth dabbed at her forehead. “Well, perhaps this velvet jacket is a bit much, but since I’ve got Cluny, I think I ought to be in full dress.” She straightened the lace jabot at her throat. “Thank goodness I have an extra blouse. Isn’t this a pretty kilt?” She twirled to show off the red and blue plaid of Clan MacPherson.

“That’s right,” said Geoffrey. “Shake and bake. I’m going to the refreshment tent. Want anything?”

“Not now. It would only give me more to sweat. I’m going to check in at the Chattan headquarters, and then I’ll see if Marge and her dogs have arrived.”

“I’ll find you.” Geoffrey nodded toward the bobcat. “You’ll be easy to spot.”

Elizabeth started off in the direction of the clan displays. Cluny, who was by now used to Highland festivals, put up only a token resistance when his leash was tugged. He could behave perfectly if he chose to, but he always made it clear that his cooperation could not be taken for granted. His yellow eyes flickered around the meadow, sighting nothing of interest, just the black-and-white shapes of noisy primates which matched the sweaty man-smells he’d been getting all afternoon. Cluny yawned.