The Wild Island Read online

  'You must stay close to Clementina. Don't lose her. Don't forget.' Jemima was not sure whether to be reassured or otherwise by this remark.

  As the mist continued to thicken, she herself resolved very firmly if unadventurously to stay on the path and head in the general direction of the shrine. Let the young Beauregards scramble over the hill if they wished. As for stalking Colonel Henry, she had a strong inkling that he on the contrary would be stalking her.

  Like their Prey, the stalkers vanished quickly. Afterwards Jemima would recall perfectly the exact order in which they left. Lady Edith, aided by a reluctant Kim, and followed by a now submissive Jacobite, left first to deposit the remnants of the picnic in the Land-Rover before setting off to join the stalk. They would go separately - Kim having brushed off Lady Edith's suggestion that they should stalk together for safety with a furious 'Oh, Mum.' Father Flanagan strode off too in the same general direction. Jemima personally felt relieved once the mist had swallowed up his tall black figure with its aureole ofwhite hair. He had the air of a prophet going off into the wilderness - a prophet in a bad mood.

  Hamish said, 'Dad mentioned going up the hill, didn't he? I think I'll follow.'

  'Please yourself,' said Rory. 'Knowing Dad, he'll try to trick us. He'll expect us to go up the hill, so he'll lurk close to the house until the last moment. Then he'll dash very fast, over the hill towards the shrine, in order to make it before the deadline. He'll take the rest of us by surprise, kill us from behind, so to speak. No, I'll stay down by the terraces near the house, somewhere in the bushes.'

  He went off.

  Ben, like Rory, voted for exploring the hill but suggested searching the far side, away from the main path, where the cliffs were steepest.

  'I've a notion there's a small cave on the underhang ... Worth a look.' He too set off, saying as he went, 'Coming, Clementina ?' But she did not follow him, announcing her intention rather vaguely of going towards the Fair Falls 'because they are so pretty’.

  Jemima was reminded briefly and nastily of Duncan's sons in Macbeth, dividing their ways for security after their father's death. But no death had yet taken place, had it? The Prey was still at large.

  Jemima was left alone with Ossian Lucas. She half expected him to volunteer to stay with her. Instead he exclaimed, 'Henry and his absurd games! I'll just pad around and keep an eye on things.' And he too was gone.

  Jemima was now aware that although it was not actually raining, the mist had brought a kind of dampness of its own into the air. Moist globules were forming on her face and clothes. She yearned for her Burberry and jeans. Her honey-coloured suede skirt and waistcoat were hopelessly impractical for a stalk. Nor did she fancy chancing her long suede boots, which she had not been able to resist displaying, in the island rough.

  Of course it had been firmly laid down that the house itself was out of bounds to everyone.

  'This is a bracing outdoor manoeuvre, not a damned house party,' Colonel Henry announced. 'No one goes into the house without my express permission.' Jemima had been amused: he had evidently forgotten that she was the house's official tenant. Then she found Colonel Henry looking at her. He gave her a faint smile and lifted his eyebrows. So the gallant Colonel intended the house, not the bracken, as their rendezvous. Well, why not? Feeling rather reckless - besides, she refused to spend three hours combing the hill for a human stag -Jemima gave him a nod. Then she found that both Kim and Rory were looking at her. Kim was glaring again; Jemima felt slightly embarrassed.

  Now she slipped rather furtively into the house to change her clothes. The rhododendrons near the house did not stir. She was fairly sure no one had spotted her.

  The mist was not lifting. From her bedroom window she could see that even the first of the terraces was lightly swathed in it. The course of the river bed had become marked by a thick belt of fog.

  Jemima threw the honey-coloured suit on the bed and began to pull on a black polo-necked jersey as rapidly as possible. It was while the jersey was over her head that she heard -or thought she heard - the sound of someone else in the house. Once her head had emerged, and she was zipping up her jeans, she heard nothing more. Muffled in the wool, it was difficult to be precise exactly what sort of noise it had been: a door shutting or banging somewhere? The front door? It seemed to come from that area. Once again there was complete silence. She did not feel frightened: but her instinct told her quite strongly that she was not, or had not been, alone in the house.

  Surely no one else had cheated? She decided to leave the house herself as soon as possible and honourably join the stalk. Then she found the note: it was scribbled and only just legible. 'See you here in half an hour ? H.B. B.' So it had been him.

  Her heart lightened. Jemima was about to leave the house once more to join the stalk, when another faint sound attracted her attention. This time it indubitably came from the back quarters of the house.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Prey

  The back offices of Tigh Fas, if you could use such a house agent's term for them, were surprisingly extensive and even rambling. They lay beyond a communicating door which shut them off from the front area of the house. Besides the large old-fashioned kitchen with its temperamental Aga there were not one but two deserted pantries, with cracked brown wood surrounds to their sinks where now Formica would have been obligatory; a larder with a cooling grille to the outside world reminded Jemima equally of the pre-refrigerator age; finally there was another spacious room, furnished solely by a broken sofa out of which horsehair tumbled; this Bridie had described without batting an eyelid as 'the staff sitting room: a verra nice room indeed, getting all the afternoon sun'. Outside the back door there were a series of outhouses and sheds, some containing practical needs of the day like wood, some relics of the past like a child's bicycle and a pram without wheels.

  To tell the truth, Jemima herself never penetrated much beyond the kitchen; she did not care for these forgotten service areas haunted not so much by people as by a vanished sybaritic way of life. Now she hesitated. It was possible that Colonel Henry, having deposited his note, had gone out the back way. Yet unless her imagination was playing tricks, she was fairly

  sure that some vague movement was still going on in the house.

  Her curiosity got the better of her. She opened the communicating door slightly and listened. There was someone there-more than one person, for she could, hear talking. So she was not the only member of the stalk to disobey Colonel Henry's instructions not to enter the house (other than the Prey himself). She would investigate; it was after all her house-rented.

  Cautiously Jemima went towards the kitchen. It was empty. She was obliged to pad further down the corridor, until she was brought to an abrupt halt by the fact that the door of the so-called staff sitting room was open,, and she could see inside.

  Lachlan Stuart was standing there. He was wearing a thick jersey instead of the familiar t-shirt, with its flower stain. But he was holding an enormous bunch of roses of the most violent bright crimson in his arms. They must have been plucked from the castle garden. He was saying something about remembrance. He was not looking in Jemima's direction, but fixedly and rather angrily at someone else concealed from her view behind the door.

  Jemima froze.

  'Aye, I ken right well the Red Rose is no more,' he went on, his voice rising slightly. 'But someone must remember us; we must'na be forgotten. And seeing as she's from the television, she'll remember us. Not let the world forget us. Surely you don't want us forgotten, now: you're our Chief.'

  There was a pause. Jemima could not hear what was said.

  'You were our Chief, then! But to me and the others you're still our Chief,' countered Lachlan angrily.

  There was some answer from the person hidden by the door, but Jemima could not hear it. Lachlan looked increasingly distressed and clutched the roses; but there was nevertheless an expression of reluctant obedience on his face. It reminded her of the incident at the funeral when he had b
een commanded to abandon the coffin. Finally he flung the roses furiously away and out of sight.

  He muttered something which she could not hear and then said more strongly, 'I'll be off now, right. I'll be off to the rig. I know: I must'na be seen here now. Dinna worry, Chief, the Haar will cover me as I go.' He strode to the door. His hands were empty. He said defiantly and quite loudly into the room, 'Up the Red Rose! Captain Lachlan salutes the Chief,' sketched some gesture with his fist, and vanished out of the back door into the mist.

  There was a movement inside the staff sitting room. Jemima suddenly and desperately felt that it was essential for her to know who the Chief of the Red Rose was - or rather had been. She had to see, and not be seen, to satisfy her own sense of completeness concerning the weird tale of the Red Rose.

  She shrank back into the larder; the room was both dark and chilly, with no proper window, only its grille to the wooded bank outside. Footsteps approached, calm unhurried footsteps. Jemima peered through the crack of the wooden door; the former Chief of the Red Rose passed so near to her that she was afraid her breathing would be heard. But he did not look back.

  She watched the tall figure of Rory Beauregard walk easily away down the corridor into the house beyond.

  Immediately Rory was gone, Jemima tiptoed back into the staff sitting room and saw the abandoned roses on the floor. There was a white card attached to them. She picked it up and read: 'Farewell to Jemima Shore from the Red Rose. Remember us.' She dropped the card and left it lying with the flowers.

  Then she sank onto the sofa with its broken springs.

  Rory Beauregard. The quiet deep brother who travelled about mysteriously; Rory Beauregard, in his own way a second son just as his father had been. The second son, siding with his cousin against his elder brother as being the lesser of the two evils. The second son who would do anything to gain Eilean Fas and had presumably organized the Red Rose to that end. Land hunger or land passion once again lay at the heart of it all.. .As Ossian Lucas had said: If you knew who the Chief was and why, you would understand more about this part of the world than you do at the present time.

  A vignette came to her: Rory Beauregard commanding Lachlan to abandon his plan for the coffin. The words of Lachlan, 'Mr Rory...' Then he obeyed. Another vignette: Rory commanding his brother Kim to stop drinking, and Lachlan again at the Castle: ‘You know how strong the Chief is against the drink’ Rory Beauregard: a silent determined man, determined not to stay in the secondary position to which he had been born.

  The sofa's springs hurt her and reminded her that it was neither pleasant nor politic to remain inside the house. Time was passing. She would have to think about it all later; perhaps one day, with tact and circumspection, she could induce Rory to unbend and tell her everything. Now that really would be a programme worth making, even if he sat with his back to the camera, like a terrorist. In the meantime she really must join the stalk.

  Jemima left by the back entrance of the house, as Lachlan had done, carefully inspecting the bushes surrounding it to make sure she was unobserved. She decided to set off down the path which led to the Fair Falls.

  She knew that Clementina had gone that way because the girl had advertised the fact; Jemima might be able to keep an eye on her. It was true that it was also the most exposed route from the point of view of the stalker. There was no cover to the right of the path, where the hill began to ascend, only low scrub, and Jemima had no intention of cowering to the left, within dangerous reach of the cliff edge, even to avoid the Prey's piercing gaze. But she had every reason to suppose that the Prey would not 'name' her and thus 'kill' her even if he did see her. The Prey was expecting her, alive and well, back at Tigh Fas in the not too distant future. He had no reason to draw attention to her whereabouts.

  She proceeded, as discreetly as possible, along the crunchy gravel path and turned down the silent mossy track which followed the contour of the island. How different the Wild Island looked now from that first idyllic ramble! It was all very well for Lady Edith to talk about 'our dear changeable Scottish weather', but the swiftness of the transformation from sunlit Paradise to Wagnerian haunt still amazed her.

  There were the usual rustlings and bustlings in the undergrowth, but she guessed they were animal not human. She felt rather happy and, now, not the slightest bit alarmed. After all, compared to her usual solitude, she was surrounded by people, even if most of them were invisible; she was enjoying her birthday —

  At which point someone screamed very loudly and sharply just ahead of her on the left. Then there was a splash. Then silence. Jemima ran forward. Somebody else broke cover from behind her. She did not pause to see who it was. After running about fifteen or twenty yards and stumbling slightly, she ran round a corner and slap into Clementina Beauregard who was sobbing and being comforted by Ben. Kim too had come from somewhere. Then Ossian Lucas joined them. Clementina was saying something like this:

  'I tell you, I nearly fell in! I was pushed, shoved, I tell you, I nearly went over the bloody cliff! The actual log I was sitting on went in, didn't you hear it?'

  'What happened exactly?' Ossian Lucas was breathing heavily but sounded calm as ever.

  'I sat down. On a log. I decided to light a cigarette. I began to rummage in my handbag. Flora lay at my feet. The first thing I knew Flora was growling slightly and I knew someone was coming. Then a voice said in a whisper: "Clementina, I name you. You are dead." And then I was shoved, shoved from behind and shoved bloody hard.'

  'D'you mean Dad shoved you? Why, that's impossible,' said Ben.

  'I don't know who shoved me. That's the whole point.' 'I don't believe you were shoved at all,' exclaimed Kim. 'I never said it was Uncle Henry. But someone gave me a push. Whispered and then pushed.'

  'You're exaggerating as usual, Clementina,* said Kim scornfully.

  'It couldn't possibly have been Dad,* continued Ben in a worried voice. 'He's just named Hamish on the other side of the hill by the far cliff. We both spotted Dad and started to stalk him in the bracken. Hamish like an idiot lifted his head and Dad turned round and bagged him. So I skedaddled as fast as I could back through the bracken. Dad did try a long shot after me! "I name you, Rory. You're dead." But as I wasn't Rory, I naturally paid no attention. I've no idea where Rory was. Then I heard Clementina scream. So it couldn't have been Dad.' There was a pause. 'It couldn't have been Dad anyway,' Ben added rather belatedly.

  'She's made the whole thing up as usual to get attention.' Kim remained contemptuous. 'I'm getting back on the trail. IfDad was by the cliffs, I'll trail him round the other way, giving the shrine a wide berth

  In the absence of any visible proof of Clementina's ordeal, Jemima had to concede that Kim was probably right. Clementina was in a sufficiently nervous state to have imagined the incident. It was eerie in the mist, near the falls. The high sighing noise made by the rocks did not help matters. When Ben promised to stay close to Clementina for the rest of the stalk, Jemima decided it was time to back away. Perhaps she should retrace her steps; the time of the rendezvous was approaching.

  As she reached the gravel path once more, she had the impression that the mist was receding somewhat: at any rate she could see the shape of Tigh Fas distinctly, black and churchlike in its outline. In a way she would rather not have glimpsed it at that particular moment, since the familiar feeling of foreboding concerning the house returned more sharply than ever; surely a lady should be feeling joy at the idea of an encounter with her lover, on a romantic Scottish island?

  It was more with the idea of galvanizing herself into appropriate feelings of joy, than with any real zest, that she ran up the house steps, through the open door (she must have left it open) and into the hall. There was silence. She heard a

  movement in the bedroom, then Jacobite came happily tumbling down the stain, licking her hand gleefully and positively nipping - in a playful manner - at her jean-clad ankles, as though to shepherd her back up the stairs again. Resisting slightly and looking roun
d, her eyes fell on a piece of paper on the hall table; for a moment she thought it was the original note. Then she read: 'I'm upstairs, H.B.B.’ He was here!

  In her relief, excitement filled her, happiness, and she ran with the dog, up the stairs, and threw open her bedroom door.

  'Colonel Henry Beauregard, you are my Prey,' she began to say according to the traditional formula. The phrase was already out of her mouth, the word Prey dying away foolishly, desperately, on her lips, when she realized that the inhabitant of her bedroom was not in fact Colonel Henry.

  'On the contrary. Miss Shore, it is you who are my Prey,' said Lady Edith Beauregard in her most pleasant manner. She might have been greeting a guest at Kilbronnack House. But she was standing by the large bed holding a double-barrelled shot-gun which was pointing directly and not at all shakily at Jemima's head.

  CHAPTER 20

  Before you die

  'I'm so glad you managed to come,' continued Lady Edith, the gun unwavering in her hands. 'I've been waiting for this. You see I'm going to shoot you like the other one. Like my sister-in-law Leonie. Isn't it odd,' she said with a fleeting smile, 'that was on my birthday too. But I'd have done it anyway. I'm awfully determined when I set my mind to anything. You have to be, when you have a family like mine to look after. The maternal instinct, you know. No, of course you don't know, do you? And now you never will.'

  The sinister phrase struck a reminiscent note. 'The instinct, being perfected, can go awry. It can be turned towards evil..." Mother Agnes's letter, which she could see still lying on her dressing-table where she had left it. Oh, Mother Agnes, you who can see into the human heart. Not Colonel Henry, not Ben, not Rory - but all the time Edith the mother, the centre of it all.

  Jemima felt quite frozen, numb. For one thing Lady Edith continued to talk in her familiar nervous voice, as though apologizing for some fault of whose exact nature she was unaware, while accepting without reservation the fact of her own culpability. The whole situation remained quite unreal. How could Jemima reconcile the fussy, placating personality of Lady Edith with the extraordinary revelation which were now - without hesitation - pouring from her lips?