The Wild Island Read online

'Miss Shore?' he was saying. 'Good morning. I'm Henry Beauregard.'

  " Jemima's first reaction was enormous relief that at last a Beauregard - if not the right one, at least a member of the family - was taking an interest in her cause.

  ' Ailsa at the desk was telling me you were having some difficulty in getting to the funeral,' remarked this Beauregard. He really did have a most attractive voice when it was lowered. In fact altogether Henry Beauregard was an attractive as well as a distinguished-looking man, with his bony face set off by thick hair, grey but showing streaks of what must have been the original black. Jemima thought of Hamlet's father, 'a sable silvered'. Although there was nothing particularly fatherly in the manner of Henry Beauregard. And his hair too was curiously long for a man who in other ways was so conventionally dressed. It added to the romanticism of his appearance.

  However, Henry Beauregard, attractive as he might be, appeared to be under a slight misapprehension as to the reason for her presence in the Highlands.

  'Oh no,' said Jemima quickly. "There's been a mistake. I was trying to leave a message for Charles Beauregard. Your brother or cousin or something? Anyway, he's coming to fetch me. I thought the girl didn't understand at the time.'

  Henry Beauregard stared at her. For such a totally poised man he looked genuinely startled.

  'I'm afraid there's no mistake, Miss Shore,' he said after a pause. 'And my nephew will hardly be coming to fetch you, I fear. You see, we are on our way to his funeral. Charles Beauregard is dead.'

  CHAPTER 2

  Terribly sudden

  The first reaction of Jemima Shore, which she did not in fact express, was: 'Oh God, there goes my holiday..

  Instead she said in a tone of perfectly modulated regret: 'I'm sorry.' She added equally perfectly: 'Was it terribly sudden ?'

  Henry Beauregard continued to stare at her. Jemima felt her cool beginning to abandon her.

  'I mean, I had a letter from him only the other day.' It was a ridiculous remark and the dog seemed to think so too. He looked at her with exceptional mournfulness and wandered away to another table, his tail wagging.

  'You were - great friends ?' Henry Beauregard was purring again. She recognized the note, both sinister and attractive.

  'No, no, we'd never even met.' Charles Beauregard's uncle did not appear to know how to deal with this.

  After a moment he said reverently, 'Charles was a very special person.'

  'Oh, I know,' replied Jemima with equal reverence. Then she thought: This is ridiculous. I never knew him. I have absolutely no idea, no idea whatsoever, what he was like. I must step out of all this. Now.

  'Was it terribly sudden ?' she asked again. There was more authority, less reverence, in her voice. Henry Beauregard seemed to recognize it. He positively drew to attention.

  'Oh God, yes, terribly sudden.' There was a pause while he seemed to be considering what to say next.

  'Colonel Henry, we really must be going,' said a third voice, interrupting them. It was the younger man in the dark suit. The only person now absent from the party was Jacobite, currently sniffing at the feet of the elderly man in the kilt. Jemima regarded the younger man; no, he did not really have the appearance of being related to her interlocutor. Just a generic likeness in the handsome, slightly craggy features. It was the dark suit which had given them a certain funereal resemblance.

  To begin with, this man was not only younger but shorter. And now she examined him, his black suit was fancy and ridiculous where Colonel Henry's was ancient but becoming, while his voice lacked both the seductive purr and the stentorian command of his companion's.

  'Miss Shore,' said Colonel Beauregard. 'May I introduce our local MP, Ossian Lucas?'

  Jemima Shore felt as surprised as if, with memories of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge, she had met Beowulf's Grendel the Dragon. And failed to recognize him. Ossian Lucas!

  The famed MP for the English Highlands, as Time Magazine would put it. And although Lucas had only occupied the seat since the October '74 election, Time Magazine had already found occasion to put it just like that. What with Scottish nationalism and Scottish internationalism and Scottish devolution and Scottish revolution... The great thing about Scotland was that it was news these days. And Ossian Lucas was news too.

  His clothes for one thing. On dose inspection Ossian Lucas's dark suit was waisted as though for Spanish dancing, unlike that of Colonel Henry which proceeded majestically from high neck to lower ankle without interruption as though according to some prearranged law. And was there not some hint of velvet, black but velvet all the same, on his collar and a suspicion of black frogging about the buttonholes?

  Jemima, indeed, felt quite surprised that Ossian Lucas, MP; had been sitting in the Railway Hotel, Inverness all that time without one newspaper reporter making an appearance. That must explain her failure to recognize him. Of course she had not seen a copy of this morning's Highland Clarion. That might well contain the headline ossian lucas in Inverness.

  Ossian Lucas. Was he even Scots ?

  There were those, all too many of them, who would swear to having been at a minor English public school with one Oswald Lucas. The trouble with these mischief-makers was that they had all been at different schools.

  Ossian Lucas, like that legendary Gaelic bard for whom he had presumably been named either by his parents or himself, might be suspected of being the product of a forgery. But it was mighty difficult to prove.

  Anyway he was the MP for the Highlands and Islands constituency. On the whole, Jemima felt warmly towards MPs. Her former lover Tom Amyas was a former MP-losing his seat in the October '74 election. He now worked permanently for the vociferous Welfare Now Group, where rumour had it that he had become close to his youthful acolyte Emily Crispin. Jemima believed the rumour.

  Jemima's own affair with Tom had ended with one passionate and prolonged-all night-row; this took place shortly after the strange events involving Jemima at the Convent of the Blessed Eleanor, Churne. In a way they had both turned to acolytes for consolation. Tom had sought out his aide at the WNG, the silent and devoted Emily; Jemima had turned to Guthrie Carlyle, handsome, rather more loquacious than Emily, a few years younger than herself, equally devoted and her producer on the 'Jemima Shore, Investigator' programme at Megalith Television.

  But she remained on the side of MPs.

  She was even prepared-cautiously-to be on the side of Ossian Lucas.

  'Oh God,' cried Ossian Lucas, looking at her. 'The press! Why won't they leave one in peace ?' He struck his temple with what Jemima expected to be one lily-white hand. On close inspection it was not white. Merely a hand pressed to a brow in a slightly extravagant gesture. Rather a muscular workmanlike hand. With a quick look at Colonel Henry Jemima realized that he was the one with the long artistic white hands.

  ‘I’m not the press any more than you are,' retorted Jemima in an equally muscular tone, recalled to reality from fantasies of MPs and Scotland and long white hands. 'I'm here on holiday. Or rather I was intending to be here on holiday.' She gazed at Colonel Beauregard as beseechingly as she could.

  'Colonel Beauregard,' she proceeded with a very passable fluttering eyelash, 'I was renting a cottage from your-er-nephe w - we've never met -I mean we never had met - but he was going to meet me—' Oh, the English language. This was hopeless.

  But Colonel Henry was already purring. There was no other word for it.

  'A tenant!' He might have been saying: A Magician! A Martian! Or whatever your particular fancy was. There was such a mixture of delight and lust in his voice. 'I thought you were a friend of poor Charles.' Into the word friend, it had to be admitted, went a very different mixture of expressions. Contempt. Pity. Almost ridicule.

  'A friend of Charles - Jemima Shore,' said Ossian Lucas. 'That's hardly likely.' There was the same ambiguity, an unpleasant irony, which she remembered from the remark in the train. How she wished, in view of all this unexpected intimacy, that she did not remember that sinister little excha
nge. She felt like someone who arrives to stay in an unknown house, blunders into an unlocked bathroom and finds subsequently that the invaded naked stranger is her host.

  'What are we going to do about you ?' Colonel "Henry was purring again. Jacobite was back, sniffing. He seemed to emphasize the affectionate, even claustrophobic atmosphere produced by Colonel Beauregard's remark.

  It was a question which was beginning to preoccupy Jemima Shore. She was frequently praised for her calm and quick-wittedness on television in difficult situations. For the life of her she could not think what the solution was for a situation where you arrived as the tenant of a man who turned out to be dead.

  But Colonel Henry suddenly knew exactly what the protocol was.

  'We must at least see that you enjoy your stay in the Highlands, Miss Shore. After this regrettable start.' He gave her an absolutely sweet smile, like a benevolent monarch. The effect of such a smile on his normally rather bleak face was delightful.

  There was, then, no question of her rejection. A return to London - and Cherry - on the night train. That was the worst prospect. Jemima had not realized how much she dreaded seeing the nubile enthusiastic Cherry-before a month of recuperation was up.

  Jemima, in her infinite relief, even patted Jacobite, newly returned to their side.

  'And how do we get you to Eilean Fas ?'

  Executive problems had overcome family considerations in the Colonel's mind. 'We can take her with us, don't you think, Ossian ?' he went on.

  'Wouldn't look right, Colonel Henry,' said Ossian solemnly. 'Commerce before mourning.'

  'You're quite right. Good point.'

  'How about those dreadful hearty boys of yours ? Ben, for example. Can't he help?'

  'Ben! My dear Ossian, Ben has other fish to fry. Royal fish. It's the Visit. Besides, Ben and Charles... had you forgotten ?' Colonel Henry paused and muttered. He continued more aggressively. 'And why aren't you involved, may I ask? MP and all that.'

  ^Oh, policy, policy,' replied Ossian airily. 'It cuts both ways. Royalty, rah, rah, on the one hand. The Red Rose, rah, rah, on the other. Most of my supporters go for both, I suspect. Much better to keep clear. Besides, I loathe tagging along-Royals, don't you know, so inclined to upstage one-so I pleaded parliamentary duties’

  'But it's the middle of August. Parliament isn't sitting,' put in Jemima. She had become interested in this amazing creature in spite of herself.

  'A good MP never rests in the service of the electorate,' replied Ossian Lucas suavely.

  Ten minutes later Jemima found herself sitting in the back of an enormous estate car, surrounded by her personalized luggage.

  'How pretty !* said Ossian Lucas. 'Of course I prefer travelling incognito myself.' Jemima cursed Cherry.

  'Probably have to have everything marked in television,' said Colonel Beauregard safely. 'Big place. I remember in the War Office—' But Ossian Lucas was already bundling him into an expensive-looking and undoubtedly foreign car.

  Jemima proceeded towards Eilean Fas in the Colonel's own-car. She was accompanied by Jacobite, who settled himself on top of her, and driven by Young Duncan, a retainer whose youth, it transpired, was not in his years but in his style of driving. As they left Inverness for the west, Jemima expected pigs and hens to scatter under his wheels. As it was, he challenged successfully the vast lorries and tankers of the North's oil boom.

  'What a friendly dog,' observed Jemima. She felt she had to say something. 'He doesn't mind leaving his master.'

  'It's Lady Edith looks after him for the most part,’ commented Young Duncan. 'What with the Colonel visiting London so often for his business affairs. She's wonderful with dogs, her leddyship, trains them herself. He wouldn't be bothering you now if Lady Edith were in the car.'

  'You do know the way?' Jemima said rather nervously to the left shoulder of Young Duncan.

  'Aye. Ye'll be going to the Wild Island.’

  'Well, Eilean Fas, actually. Is that the same?'

  'Aye. Eilean Fas. The Wild Island. And a good name for it I'll be thinking. The way things have turned out.'

  Young Duncan chose that moment to overtake two cars towing caravans on the main road out of Inverness. To the right of them, very close, lay the lapping waters of the Beauly

  Firth. It was summer, but all the same, Jemima did not fancy total immersion. Seagulls rose and screamed. She knew exactly what they meant. Seagulls welcome careless drivers.

  'Puir Mr Charles’ said Young Duncan after a pause, dramatically punctuated by feats of daring on his part, gasps from Jemima. Only Jacobite slept on unperturbed. 'Will you be going to the funeral now ?'

  'No, no I won't. You see we never actually met. The Colonel will be going, I understand. It must be a great shock to him. His nephew —'

  'Aye, a great shock. You could put it like that. When a mon is brought up to be puir and own nothing and suddenly in the twinkling of an eye finds himself verra verra rich. A most unexpected development.' His strong Highland accent positively lilted on the last precise words.

  'Are you referring to Colonel Beauregard?' Jemima was a practised interviewer. She wanted to make no mistakes on this matter-a matter of growing interest.

  'Aye, Colonel Henry as we-call him hereabouts to distinguish him from Colonel Carlo, his brother who was killed in the war. Father of Mr Charles Beauregard. A hero. Mebbe you saw the film —'

  Jemima did dimly remember seeing some film. Brother Raiders it was called, or something equally straightforwardly swashbuckling. Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas - was it? -played a couple of Scottish aristocrats. Brothers. One had ended by dying in the other's arms. There had been so much nonchalance about the place, with English butlers serving tea impeccably in desert tents, that she could hardly remember the intermittent bursts of heroic action. However, she was confident that all concerned-including the butler, possibly Ralph Richardson or maybe that was another film-had acquitted themselves admirably.

  Jemima, however, was not interested in dead war heroes. She wanted to know more about Henry Beauregard now.

  'And now I'm thinking he's inherited it all,' continued Young Duncan with a dramatic flourish.

  The car had turned to the right, Duncan proceeding straight across the main road to achieve this change of direction without a pause. He drove over a narrow stone bridge. Now the car was at a halt. There was a gate before them, padlocked, three padlocks; a lodge to the left, small, stone-built

  Before them stretched a valley, broad but clearly denned with high mountains on either side. Glen Bronnack, valley of weeping, but looking happy enough now. Jemima knew all about it from Charles Beauregard's original letter. The road stretched forward, winding, until it vanished behind a wall of mountain. The mountains themselves were covered with dark trees, then grasses, then grass and rocks, then pure rock. There was heather-yes, it really was heather-that brilliant purple flower. The sky was still the improbably vivid blue it had been since her arrival in Scotland a few hours earlier.

  There was a feeling of pristine innocence about the scene.

  Once again Jemima Shore thought: this is Paradise. This is what I've come to find.

  'Aye, yon's a beautiful glen true enough,' said Duncan, getting out of the car. He returned with an ever older version of himself-Old Duncan perhaps?-who was unlocking the padlocked gate.

  'There's many a mon would commit murder to own a bonnie glen like that,' continued Duncan. 'And those were Colonel Henry's own words to me. The very day that Mr Charles Beauregard was drowned. And him on his way to London, and never knew the poor laddie was dead in the river.'

  So saying, Young Duncan got behind the wheel again and started to drive purposefully towards Jemima's Paradise.

  CHAPTER 3

  Nature red

  A bird rose above them into the azure sky. It seemed to hang painted above the mountains. A hawk? An eagle? Jemima knew even less about birds, she realized, than she knew about dogs.

  'Colonel Henry getting the property. Of course
you'd no be agreeing with all that,' observed Young Duncan. There were silver larches, she thought, or birches-anyway exquisitely beautiful trees and in such profusion, lining the road and beginning to hide the river bed. The occasional glimpse of the water showed her, however, that the gorge was deepening, the torrent increasing. The sun still shone. Jemima felt in that kind of mood when she knew that the sun would shine for ever. For her, and never mind the fact that it was Scotland. Silver and gold. The sun on the trees and dappling the water. But in patches of shadow the water was so black that she could not guess at its depth.

  'You'd no agree with that,' repeated Duncan with gloomy satisfaction.

  'Inherited wealth ?' enquired Jemima cautiously. Experience had taught her that radically left-wing views were frequently ascribed to those who appeared on the box, without any evidence that they actually held them. Not, however, on the whole by the Duncans of this world. More by the

  Colonel Beauregards. She was slightly surprised to find Duncan the victim of the fashionable delusion about left-wing trendies. Jemima herself, while she had never yet voted Conservative, had years ago inherited nearly £10,000 on the deaths of both her parents in a car crash. It had bought the lease of her flat.

  'Women's rights, now. That's what you'll be for, I'll be thinking. My wife watched your programme the other night. She found it most instructive.'

  The road was starting to ascend and curve at the same time. Duncan warmed to his theme, and turning his head on the word 'instructive', produced a dramatic roll of the car. It was not, Jemima felt, an ideal time for the discussion of women's rights.

  'So you'll be thinking Miss Clementina Beauregard should inherit the property,' continued Duncan, nodding vigorously and slewing the wheel to navigate a particularly sudden corner. 'And so will she be thinking the same, I'll be bound. And so will she.'

  He cackled. There was no other word for it. 'And there'll be others thinking that on the Estate too, mind you. Colonel Henry is a fine gentleman. I'm no saying any different. But there will be those saying that it should go to the lass all the same. Seeing as her father Colonel Carlo, who was a hero, as I was telling you, built the Estate up when he was young, and her mother, who was an American lady, verra rich, the sort they have over there, made it all into such a fine place.'