William had thought he might have to remind him who he was, but apparently that was not needed. "Mr French." said Sebastian. "I take it all is well."

"That's what I'd like to find out," said William.

Sebastian Duck understood. Freddie de la Hay, he explained was now in "the field"; William would be very welcome, if he liked, to telephone Tilly Curtain and get a first-hand report.

William's heart leaped. It was exactly what he had hoped for. He noted down the number that Sebastian gave him, engaged in a few pleasantries about the weather, and then rang off. Next he made the call to Tilly Curtain, who answered almost immediately. He explained who he was and there was a silence. Had something happened to Freddie? But then her voice came down the line, warm and encouraging: "I'd hoped that you might phone."

William closed his eyes in sheer ecstasy. "Look, I know it's absolutely no notice at all, but would you by any chance be free for dinner tonight?" he asked.

Again there was a silence. And then, once again, came the words to boost any heart even that of a middle-aged wine dealer, a failed Master of Wine, and a failed everything else "What a lovely idea! Yes, of course."

Chapter 52: Dinner at Racine.

William chose Racine in the Brompton Road because he knew Henry Harris, the proprietor, and was sure that Henry would always find him a table, no matter how short the notice. And indeed a table was available at eight, and the staff said they looked forward to seeing him.

Now that he had invited Tilly, William found himself trying to remember what she looked like. It was almost like going on a blind date, he thought, something that previously he would never have dreamed of doing, but which he now found rather exciting. She was certainly attractive, he was sure of that, even if he had seen her only once, and for a very brief period. He had a memory of light brown hair, cut fairly short, pageboy-style perhaps, and he remembered, too, an appealing smile. Or was her hair more blond than brown, and was it maybe longer than he remembered? She was in her late thirties, he thought, or perhaps early forties. He could not be certain of that either, and even thinking about her age made him feel anxious. If she was in her early forties, then that would be fine, as he was in his very late forties, or had been last year, before his fiftieth birthday. If there were eight, or even ten years between them, it would not matter; in fact, it would be ideal, at least from his point of view, and probably even from hers. William had always believed that women liked men to be a little bit older than they were, even if there were some women these days who went in for younger men. He was not so sure about that; he knew there was no reason at all why women should not have younger partners, given that men often did how many men in their fifties did he know who had girlfriends in their early thirties? Legions practically everyone. Yet the thought that women might choose to do the same thing, to seek out younger men, secretly unsettled him. If more and more women chose younger men, then how many women would be left over for the likes of him?

More unsettling than this speculation about age was the realisation that he had no idea whether Tilly Curtain was single. He had not noticed a ring, but then he had not looked for one. Of course, if she were married she would never have accepted his invitation to dinner; she would have said something like, "Should I bring my husband?", which would have had the merit of directness and unambiguousness. Or she could simply have made an excuse about having other arrangements. It was possible that she was enc.u.mbered in some way by a boyfriend but was looking for a way out. That notion was equally unsettling; William did not wish to become involved in anything messy.

He put these ideas out of his mind and set about preparing for the evening. Going to his wardrobe, he surveyed the jackets hanging within. He had neglected his clothes for a long time and it showed, but at least there was a navy-blue blazer in reasonably good condition, and there was a timelessness about blazers. He took it out and tried it on; the cut was good, and he had not put on weight since he last wore it. It would do, he thought. Trousers were more difficult. Two pairs of the charcoal-black trousers he favoured were out of commission, one because of a broken zip and another because of bad fraying at the cuffs. Jeans? He remembered that there was some of Eddie's clothing still in the flat. He and Eddie were the same size, more or less, and when he lived with him his son had regularly borrowed William's clothing admittedly, though, and insultingly, for fancy-dress and retro parties.

He went to the cupboard where he had stored Eddie's remaining possessions. There was, as he had remembered, a pair of jeans, and he that took these out and unfolded them. They were distressed, but no more so than new jeans were these days, and they appeared to fit. William examined himself in the mirror; the jeans took off ten years, he thought, possibly more, and they were perfect with the blazer. This was the very essence of casual smart, he thought that vague concept that allowed you to wear anything as long as you looked as if you had at least made some effort. He could hold up his head in any company in an outfit like this.

The hour between seven and eight was an ordeal. He tried to relax. He tried reading, but could not concentrate and put the book down; he tried listening to music, but found that he was not in the mood; he tried writing a letter, but found that he had n.o.body to write to and put the pen and paper aside. At last it was time to go, and he made his way downstairs, conscious of the fact that his heart was beating faster in antic.i.p.ation.

Tilly Curtain arrived at Racine a few minutes after William. They recognised one another immediately, and she came over to the table where he was waiting and shook his hand warmly. "I hope I'm not late," she said. "You've probably been waiting for ages."

He shook his head. He had been right about the smile it was wonderful, transforming.

She sat down and William ordered drinks from the waiter who appeared at the table. They both took a gin and tonic. He looked at her and she smiled. It's the teeth, he said to himself, that's what I remember.

"I'm glad that you were free," he said. "I was at a loose end and I thought ... Well, why not?"

"Why not indeed?" she said. "No, I was glad that you phoned. I was going to phone you."

"About Freddie de la Hay?"

The smile disappeared. She looked grave. "Yes."

William knew immediately that something was wrong. "How's he doing?"

Tilly looked about her. Her voice, when she replied, was lowered. "Well, it started pretty well. They took the bait, and we heard a certain amount. But then Freddie's transmitter suddenly went dead."

He stared at her without saying anything.

"We tried to locate it," she said. "But there was no signal. None at all." She paused, watching his reaction. "We fear that they discovered it. They might have been suspicious of the weight of the collar or something like that. Anyway, we have to a.s.sume-"

He stopped her. "Are you telling me my dog's disappeared? Is that what you're saying?"

She nodded. "I'm very sorry. I really am. But that's what we have to conclude. It's a missing-in-action case. It happens."

Chapter 53: Meeting Sorley.

The sleeper train carrying Barbara Ragg and Hugh Macpherson drew into Fort William Station shortly before ten in the morning. The days of generous train breakfasts, served with copious quant.i.ties of then guiltless grease, eaten at table, and with cutlery too, had long gone, to be replaced by continental fare, conveniently healthier, served in sterilised plastic and cellophane, and eaten, of course, with one's fingers. Perched on the edge of Barbara's bunk, Hugh tackled just such a breakfast while both of them gazed out of the window of the train. They were making their way past the still waters of Loch Treig; like gla.s.s, Barbara thought; like gla.s.s reflecting the mountains and the sky in perfect inversion.

She had no appet.i.te. To eat in the presence of such an inspiring landscape would be, she felt, like munching some pre-wrapped snack in front of a Botticelli in the Uffizi; the spiritual and the corporeal were not always appropriate bedfellows.

"You're not hungry?" asked Hugh, brushing from his fingers the last crumbs of a desiccated croissant.

She shook her head. "Not here. Not in front of all this." She gestured out of the window.

"It's very beguiling, isn't it?" he said. "I never tire of it. Never. It's home, but it never seems to me to be anything but ... Well, just the way the world should be, if we hadn't messed it up. The perfect landscape. What heaven will look like, if we ever get there."

She looked at him. She had always hoped to meet a man who would react pa.s.sionately to landscape; now she had. "You must miss it."

For a few moments he was silent. He continued to stare out of the window. "I do. I miss Scotland every day. Every day."

Barbara saw that the sky was reflected in his eyes a tiny spot of light. Would she pine for England if she were ever to move away? Who spoke now of missing England, in the way in which Rupert Brooke had? To do so would be to invite a sneer from the sophisticates who thought it naive, even simple-minded, to love one's country. Of course a country had to be lovable, and if people lived amid ugliness and squalor, or if their country became a stranger to them, then perhaps they might be forgiven for not holding it in affection. It was easy enough to imagine what one might distil from a landscape such as this a feeling of emptiness and s.p.a.ce and sheer physical splendour but what could one take from the litter-strewn streets of a city, from a forest of tower blocks? What niche in the heart could such a place occupy?

Of course Barbara loved London, as so many Londoners did, in spite of their occasional complaints. She loved it because it was her place, and anybody with any soul to speak of would love his or her own place. But it was more than that; she loved its little corners, its poky little shops run by shabby eccentrics, its oddly named pubs, its gardens, its sudden turns of architectural splendour. She loved its extraordinary tolerance, which felt like an old slipper, she thought as uncomplaining and as pliant as such footgear is in the face of all sorts of pressures and provocations. In fact London was exactly that an old slipper that had been home to countless feet and still welcomed and warmed the feet that came to it fresh. It was not a bad thing for a city to be, when one came to think of it, an old slipper. You could not call Paris an old slipper, nor Berlin, nor New York. Only London.

What if she had to leave London? She had never even entertained the idea after all, where was there to go, after London? but now the possibility crossed her mind that Hugh did not feel the same way. And if Hugh wanted to leave then she would have to face the prospect of moving on herself. Could she do it? She would lose her stake in the firm and how that would please Rupert and she would also have to find something else to do. It was a depressing thought, not one to be considered even for a few minutes. New Yorkers, Parisians, Londoners: you could hardly expect any of them to move, could you? Unless, of course, New Yorkers went to Paris, Londoners to New York, and Parisians to London. That made sense enough.

They pa.s.sed the rest of the journey in silence, not because of any awkwardness, but because neither wished conversation to break the spell that the unfolding Highland landscape was weaving about them. And what remarks were needed here? If one listens to the talk of people looking at scenes of great natural beauty, their words are often revealing. "Isn't it beautiful?" is what is most frequently said; to which the reply, 'Yes, beautiful," adds little. What is happening, of course, is a sharing. We wish to share beauty as if it were a discovery; but one can share in silence, and perhaps the sharing is all the more powerful for it.

Hugh had said that his father would meet them and drive them to the farm on Ardnamurchan. Now, as she peered out of the window of the slowing train, Barbara had no difficulty working out which of the small number of people waiting on the platform he was. "That's him?" she asked Hugh, pointing at the tall man in a Barbour jacket.

Hugh nodded. "His name is Sorley," he said. "Sorley Macfeargus Macpherson. Sorley to everybody except my mother, who calls him Somerled."

"Somerled?"

"It's a complicated story," said Hugh. "Later."

They got down from the train and made for the barrier. The air, Barbara noticed, smelled different:; it was fresh and clear; air that had rain on its breath, and salt, and the sweetness of seaweed.

Sorley stepped forward and Hugh took the proffered hand. Then he leaned forward and the two men embraced, awkwardly, as men always embrace, but with clear affection and perhaps even relief, thought Barbara. Had a stranger witnessed this scene, she told herself, he might have imagined that here was a son coming back from a long and dangerous trip and being greeted by a relieved parent. But Hugh had not really gone anywhere, other than London, which was only five hundred miles away and hardly dangerous. Yet perhaps that was the way it looked from this part of Scotland; in which case how would she appear to them? Would they think her some exotic metropolitan, some femme fatale who was planning to take their son away from his home and family? It was tempting to imagine that they might.

Sorley disengaged from the filial embrace and turned to Barbara. "So you are Barbara," he said, leaning forward to embrace her too. "My dear, you are so very welcome to our family."

She felt his lips upon her cheek; the lightest of kisses. And then, looking into his face, she noticed that he had the same eyes as his son, and the same fine features. For a few moments she stared at him.

"I hope that I meet with your approval," he said gently.

She laughed. There had been no barb in his comment. She could not tell him, though, what she had been thinking, which was that here before her was her future husband as he would be in twenty-five years' time. It was rather like looking at one of those pictures that forensic artists draw of the missing person as he would be now, after many years. With deft pencil strokes, the years are added, and there, before our eyes, the missing person, more weary, more worn, is suddenly revealed.

She looked at Sorley, and realised, more strongly and with greater conviction than ever before, that the planetary movements that had brought her and Hugh together in Rye could only be the result of divine blessing or sheer good fortune on a cosmic scale.

Chapter 54: Words of Welcome.

Sorley led them to an ancient green Land Rover. Their cases loaded, he ushered Barbara into the front seat while Hugh prepared to climb in behind. "I don't mind the back," she said. "Let Hugh ..."

"Certainly not," said Sorley. "Hugh is perfectly accustomed to being back there with the dogs, if we had any aren't you, Hugh?"

"Of course."

"And we would never expect a lady to sit in the back, would we, Hugh?"

"Certainly not."

Sorley unfolded a tartan rug and laid it across Barbara's knees. They drove off. Hugh pointed to a mountain that rose almost sheer from the other side of the sea loch and named it. It was a name of liquid sounds, a Gaelic name she feared she would never be able to remember.

After ten minutes following a winding coastal road they came to the Corran ferry, a five-minute crossing of Loch Linnhe that would take them into the hills of Ardnamurchan. As they waited for the ferry to disgorge its last few cars and allow them to drive down the ramp, Sorley told a story.

"There was a doctor round these parts," he said. "He was a very popular figure. But he liked his whisky. n.o.body minded that, of course, as everybody likes his whisky in Lochaber. Anyway, he drove onto the Corran ferry one day after he'd been up to the Fort to visit some friends. He'd had a few drams up there and decided to get out of the car to clear his head. When he got back in there was a terrible fuss and he called one of the ferrymen over to the car. 'Somebody's stolen my steering wheel!' he complained. The ferryman had a look and said, 'You're sitting in the back seat, doctor.'"

Barbara laughed, and, glancing behind, she noticed that Hugh looked pleased that she had found the story amusing. She would tell him later, she decided, that her own father, Gregory Ragg, used to tell stories too; subst.i.tute Soho for Argyll and the stories were the same.

The farm was a good distance down Loch Sunart, in the shadow of a towering hill that Hugh identified as the Holy Mountain. Sorley had become quiet; he had engaged Hugh in desultory conversation but this dried up as the journey continued. Then they were there, at a set of stone pillars between which an ordinary stock gate had been hung. An untarred road wound its way up through a stand of broad-leafed trees; beside it, down a bank that was covered with rioting whin, a burn, wide as a river in places, made its way seawards. Barbara looked up and saw that there was a long, wispy waterfall where this burn tumbled down the hillside. Hugh, following her gaze, reached forward from the back seat to touch her arm gently. "I used to go up there every day when I was a boy," he said.

"Can we?"

"Of course we can," he said. "There's a pool up there. Right under that high bit see? where the water falls about thirty feet. Look." He addressed his next remark to his father: "The hydro scheme. How are things going?"

His father sighed. "Where does one begin?"

"Not going well?"

"No."

Barbara looked enquiringly at Sorley. "A hydro scheme?"

"Hydroelectricity," he said, pointing up at a far place on the mountain. "Over there we have another body of water coming down the hill. Quite a decent volume of it. If we lay a pipe down the hill we get a terrific drop, which means that we can generate hydroelectricity down at the bottom."

"For the house?"

Sorley shook his head. "Far, far more than that. We can probably get eight hundred kilowatts. We could sell it to the electricity people. Pump it back into the grid."

"It's very green," said Hugh. "It's far better than making electricity from coal or nuclear reactors."

"Exactly," said Sorley. "And this part of the world is full of energy. Wind energy. Tidal energy. And so on." He sighed again. "That's the theory. But try getting any of this started and ... Well, there are all sorts of difficulties and problems put in your way. And contractors too. Don't talk to me about contractors."

The farm road veered sharply to the right and the house came into view. Barbara almost gasped, but stopped herself in time. She had expected something simple; they had pa.s.sed a number of farmhouses on the way all of which had an air of solid, rural simplicity about them. This house, which was painted white, was considerably larger than the others she had seen, and considerably more beautiful.

"Is it Georgian?" she asked.

"Yes," said Sorley. "At least, in its inspiration. One of my forbears was a great devotee of Georgian architecture. He built this in the middle of the nineteenth century, when everybody else was building great piles like Glenborrodale Castle or Ardtornish. He went in for simplicity."

They went inside. Hugh's mother had waved to them from a window and now appeared in the hall. "Stephanie," whispered Hugh.

Stephanie smiled at her son, but went first to Barbara. "My dear," she said, "you are so very welcome to our family."

The words were the exact ones used by Sorley, and Barbara had to make an effort not to register her surprise. Had they discussed in advance what they were going to say to her? If so, it disappointingly diminished in her mind the warmth of Sorley's welcome at Fort William station; rehea.r.s.ed words always struck her as being so much less powerful than those that are spontaneous and unprepared. And yet there were so many occasions when there were no alternatives to stock phrases that might mean little but nonetheless oiled the wheels of social life. "Good morning" in one sense meant nothing, but in another meant everything. "Have a nice day" in one sense meant nothing and in another ... meant nothing too.

Chapter 55: Martin Makes a Proposition.

Early that week, Dee received a letter from Richard Eadeston, the venture capitalist. The letter arrived at the Pimlico Vitamin and Supplement Agency with the morning post, which was delivered while Dee and her a.s.sistant, Martin, were enjoying, during a slack period, a cup of redcurrant infusion. Their conversation had been wide-ranging and frank, comparing the merits of various products and even touching on a subject that they had not visited recently but that Dee now felt sufficiently emboldened to raise.

"Have you given any further thought to the thing I spoke to you about a while ago?" she asked Martin Her a.s.sistant looked blank. "What thing? Echinacea?"

She took a sip of her redcurrant, looking at him over the rim of the cup. "No. The other thing."

She could be oblique, he thought, needlessly so. "I really don't know what you're talking about. What other thing?"

"Colonic irrigation."

Martin blushed. "No," he said bluntly. "No, I haven't."

"You really should," said Dee. "There's been another article on it in the mags. They're talking about making it available on the health service. About time too."

Martin looked away. He said nothing.

"Not only should it be freely available," Dee went on, "they should make it compulsory. On health and safety grounds."

Martin raised his eyebrows. "Compulsory!"