Wild Island (16 page)

She ducked and stepped into daylight. They were among the ruins of the old castle, once again neatly finished off with new masonry, and adorned here and there with wooden identifying tags in the grass: The Great Hall, The Chapel, and so forth. The stone was grey, like Eilean Fas, in contrast to the dark red brick of the nineteenth-century edifice behind them, and the crimson roses which lay ahead.

The beds of flowers stretched almost as far as the loch, which curved round to meet the Castle on this side; but the garden itself was sheltered from both the wind and the view, which explained why she had never before glimpsed this monstrosity either from the road or the castle library. For monstrosity it was: seeing what must once have been an exquisite grey and white vista transformed into a fiery demonstration of family hatred made Jemima understand for the first time the nature of Colonel Henry's personal outrage against his nephew and his followers.

She kept these thoughts to herself. She felt the Colonel needed no encouragement in his feud.

They parted at the side of the loch, still hidden from view from the Castle. Equally Jemima could not see the courtyard, nor whose car it was which had arrived at the Castle while she was in the dungeons - assuming she would have recognized it.

As she tramped, wearily but curiously elated, along the road which led down to the Eilean Fas bridge, she thought about cars and how sometimes, though not always, they were significant expressions of the personality. Her own Volvo sports car expressed a passion for fast but safe driving, a recklessness which did not find many other expressions in her character -except possibly in the present instance, in her submission to the adventurous plans of Colonel Henry, against the judgement of the cooler part of her nature.

She was meditating on this and allied topics concerning her nature and that of Colonel Henry, as she reached the narrow 
wooden-slatted bridge. The noise of the water was loud in her ears. She reached out for the sagging rope which served as a handrail.

It was only at that moment that she became aware, quite suddenly, that a car had come up right behind her, was in fact touching her with its bumper nudging at her - the rushing of the water had totally masked its silent approach. Jemima stepped instinctively sideways to get out of its way, nearly slipping off the wet bridge as She did so. She clutched once more at the rope, for a moment swaying perilously over the water, fighting for her balance.

'Why, my dear Jemima,' said the drawling voice of Ossian Lucas. 'I hope I didn't startle you. I was just coming to pay my respects. Don't look so frightened.'

CHAPTER
16

Appearances

The last stretch of the journey up to the Wild Island, in Ossian Lucas's car, was a silent one. Neither the MP (wearing velvet trousers and an exgravagant silk shirt, patterned with lilies) nor his passenger had anything to say. Jemima Shore, as she watched his strong hand in its fanciful cuff on the driving-wheel, was glad to leave the rickety bridge behind.

She looked back at the black waters as the car climbed the winding gravel path-waters which had already claimed two victims in the shape of Charles Beauregard and Bridie Stuart and might even just now have claimed her. After her recent experiences, she badly needed a sense of security, protection; she wasn't quite sure whether the presence of the enigmatic Lucas provided it.

As if in answer to a prayer - an analogy which seemed peculiarly apt under the circumstances - there was a letter waiting for her on the stained and cracked hall table. She did not know what agency had brought it here, but since the house had been generally tidied, she imagined wearily that since life must go on in the Highlands, some substitute for Bridie had been found.

Jemima recognized the neat precise handwriting and thin, cheap paper immediately. There were the initials A.M.D.G.
- ad majorem Dei Gloriam
: To the Greater Glory of God – in the corner. Mother Agnes had written from her convent, that ivory tower from which she saw so many things so much clearer than ordinary mortals.

'Excuse me,' she burst out impulsively to Ossian Lucas. 'I must read this - a very valued friend - a nun as a matter of fact. A really good woman. Then I'll find you a drink; only wine, I'm afraid.'

But as they proceeded into the drawing room, a quarter of a bottle of malt whisky, neatly placed beside two clean glasses, contradicted her words: Colonel Henry's residue. Ossian Lucas helped himself, a dram, no water at all, and drained it.

Jemima was busy scanning her letter. It was extraordinary; one of these days she would really have to accept the powers of divine inspiration. Or rather, one of these days she would really have to examine the whole subject of religion seriously, i.e.
not
from the point of view of television programmes... As she had once told Mother Agnes, only half joking: 'I never seem to get time to think about God. It's all right for Him -if He exists - He's got all the time in the world.'

Mother Agnes had merely smiled politely.

Divinely inspired or not, Mother Agnes's present letter showed an extraordinary percipience about the situation in Glen Bronnack, although she had no means of knowing how much of dramatic import had taken place since Jemima wrote her letter recounting a tale of two brothers.

On the subject of the family:

 
... At its best an incarnation of the highest principles of human conduct, a source of wonderful comfort. Yet isn't it distressing how the Devil will never leave even the most sacred institutions alone? He is so determined to spoil things, if he can. Members of a family are also subject to special temptations of jealousy towards each other. Remember Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau in the Old Testament. Passions so often run high in big families; such feelings are of course intended by Almighty God for the preservation and protection of His ordained unit, the family, but in certain cases, as with all human passions, the instinct, being perverted, can go awry. It can be turned towards evil. Sometimes I think Our Blessed Lord tests a pair of brothers with special temptations. He Himself of course was an only child
..
.

It was Jemima's turn to smile at the last sentence.

'Christ,' said Ossian Lucas suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. 'I hate this house. I don't understand how you can stay here, and alone. There is such a feeling of sadness about it. A sort of doom hangs over it.'

'More than sadness: menace, threat,' responded Jemima

'Then you feel it too. You didn't say.'

'You are the first person who has mentioned it to me.'

'An unhappy woman. Maybe she haunts it now, poor soul. God rest her too.' He poured and drank another dram of whisky.

'Sighing Marjorie?'

Ossian Lucas looked surprised. 'That's a long time ago. I meant poor Leonie Beauregard.' 

'What?'

'Didn't you know? She committed suicide in this very house. Upstairs. When the twins were about twelve or thirteen. Shot herself with one of the guns from the Beauregard Armoury. A shot-gun: an appalling death for a pretty woman. The worst of it was that Charles found her. It was no wonder that the poor boy turned odd as he did. And they left this house to rot. That's why Father Flanagan has always wanted to take it over for the Church - put matters right, in his not so humble opinion. As you may or may not know, and it's of absolutely no relevance now, our Henry and his beautiful American sister-in-law were not unattached in those far-off days. Father Flanagan first tried to persuade Charles himself to found the mission ostensibly in memory of his father; but of course for Charles the experience of being tutored by the turbulent priest was enough to lay the foundations of a most sincerely felt dislike for him and all he stood for. Seeing as he had a hatred of authority in any form, and Father F. seemed a particularly large and grim embodiment of it.

'Now Father F. is going on at Henry about it, but Henry knows how to deal with him all right. He replies most smoothly that if he had Clementina's money, coupled with the Beauregard land, he would be only too delighted to found a mission; as it is, with large estates to handle, a vast family, and not a great abundance of cash, it's out of the question for the time being. One day perhaps...'

'Is he sincere?' asked Jemima curiously.

Ossian roared with laughter.

'Absolutely not. Frankly, now he's managed to inherit it all, I can't imagine Henry handing over anything, let alone an island in the middle of the Estate. But the point is that Father Flanagan is kept quiet and the old dragon keeps hoping and waiting without too many sermons on the subject of sin and expiation in Henry's unwilling ear.'

A sort of doom hangs over it: his phrase echoed in her mind. There was certainly a sort of doom over Eilean Fas, with violent death polluting her Paradise down the ages from Sighing Marjorie and her baby to the widowed Leonie Beauregard two hundred years later.

Not a lucky house: the words of Mother Agnes suddenly appeared more relevant. Passions intended by nature for the preservation of the family had indeed in this case turned to evil, the evil of self-destruction.

Had the suicide been on account of Henry Beauregard? In that case it was no wonder that the twins had grown up to hate and resent him.

Jemima tried to tell herself that the house no longer felt evil to her, only tragic, now that she knew its secret. But she was happy all the same to accept Ossian's invitation for a stroll round the bland, out into the mellow sunlight, the dancing yellows and greens of the afternoon.

"The land, the island,' said Jemima at one point. 'How obsessed you all are with the island.'

'Land equals the lure of gold in a primitive community. Are you surprised ? Besides, it's our history. It's difficult to understand from outside. Take a previous tenant of Eilean Fas, in a manner of speaking - Bonnie Prince Charlie. Did he really come to rescue the people of Scotland from English thralldom ? Or did he come to set up yet another form of dominion ? Admittedly Catholic where the Hanoverians were Protestants, but since not everyone in Scotland is or was a Catholic by a long chalk, he could have represented slavery too.'

'I suppose he represented independence,' suggested Jemima hopefully; once again she cursed her English ignorance of Scottish history.

'Wouldn't true independence have been represented by setting up an independent kingdom of Scotland? Ignoring the English throne for better or for worse. As King James the Sixth and First might perhaps have ignored the throne of Elizabeth, and his mother Mary too.'

It was the most beautiful clear day she had yet experienced on the island. The misty beginnings, during which she had, as it were, stormed the castle perilous, had given way to unusual heat. The dampness of the undergrowth still exuded a jungle atmosphere. The cliffs fell away beneath them through the frondy bracken and other foliage. Her island Paradise was once more in evidence. Yet glancing at Ossian's face beside her, in profile strong, even goat-like above the striking silk shirt and purple trousers, she thought how little she knew of this stranger. How little she knew of any of them in this part of the world, a primitive community as the MP had said, obsessed by so many things: land and inheritance and history and a view of the past and the future which she did not understand.

'You don't take that point of view, surely,' Jemima countered. 'You're a democratically elected representative, for a Scottish constituency, sitting in an English Parliament.'

Ossian Lucas smiled: the satyr-like impression was enhanced and then faded.

'British Parliament,' he corrected her.

'But you don't share the wish for independence—' she persisted.

'You have to see all the sides of the question when you are a Scottish MP. If you want to survive. It's called the pragmatic approach. Come, let's look at the Fair Falls.'

The torrents of water dashed away from beneath their feet like a suicide's desperate jump. Sunlight played on the corner of Marjorie's Pool: they could both hear the high mourning sound of the water in the rocks, the voice of the Prince's lost love.

'You're very brave to come here among us like this,' said Ossian suddenly. He spoke in a low voice, but she could still hear him above the waters. 'Aren't you afraid of the passions you might stir up ? As that waterfall stirs the dark waters of Marjorie's Pool.'

'There were passions enough before my arrival.'

'True enough. But perhaps there was a kind of balance, evenly matched forces—' He broke off. 'Jemima, I don't want to say more at the present time, but I do want you to be very careful whom you trust. Even the best of us, the good ones, can come to believe that the end justifies the means. Things here are seldom all they seem. I have a feeling that, coming from your world of television, sophisticated as it may be, and don't forget I'm no stranger to it —' he smiled as though in pleased personal tribute to his own publicity-seeking image -'you may trust too much to appearances.

'Take our evening at Kilbronnack, the dinner party for the Princess. Perhaps you saw Colonel Henry only as the ideal of the handsome laird, Ben his dashing son, Rory the quiet good sort, Kim the charming young boy and so forth. Don't forget that the Glen has also brought forth the hysteria of Clementina Beauregard, the bitterness of Aeneas Stuart, to give only two obvious examples. If this were a television programme - and once again I'm by no means averse to these things - appearances would be everything. But we are far from television, are we not, in this particular closed-in valley ? Besides, there is such a thing as the manipulation of appearances, is there not, even through the ever-truthful medium of television ?'

He was teasing her. 'If you were to make a programme about me, for example-and don't let us rule it out for a minute by the way, the eve of the next election would suit me best, just outside the electoral period, suggested title "The Tales of 
Ossian Lucas", all aspects of Highland society-if you were to do that, do you not think I would manipulate my own appearance? Beginning but not ending with my wardrobe, I should certainly try.'

'And I should certainly try to stop you,' replied Jemima with spirit. Still, 'The Tales of Ossian Lucas' was not to be rejected totally; it might be nice to get something positive out of her Highland holiday, weird experience as it had turned out to be.

Ossian Lucas had become serious again.

'I warn you: there's something going on in this glen, something dark and primitive working itself out. I'm not even sure about it myself yet. You could be hurt. Come, let's see the shrine.'

He took her arm and gave a light push. Jemima gasped. Ossian immediately steadied her. 'You see what I mean ? You too could be hurt as Charles was and Bridie was. You nearly slipped on the bridge just now. Be careful. Watch your step.' His words gave an extraordinarily sinister impression. 'Go back to London,' he said, 'before it's too late.'

Then they walked in silence down the soft path to the shrine. Something red and fiery glowed there through the Gothic windows. Jemima stepped inside. Beneath the shrine to Charlotte Clementina Stuart was a bunch, an enormous bunch, of blooming red roses.

She touched the petals, damp and velvety.

'Why, they're quite fresh,' she said in a startled voice.

'So they should be,' Ossian's voice came from directly behind her. She turned round. His figure filled the doorway, another pattern of red against the bright light.

'I only put them there this morning. The dew was still on them. Don't you like red roses?' His tone was mocking.

'Not particularly, as it happens.' She added, 'And it seems rather an inappropriate gesture to come from you.'

'Oh, do you think so?*

'Don't you?'

'Hardly. As a loyal member of the Red Rose,
I
find it very appropriate indeed.'