We walked a few hundred yards before Jamie stopped outside a terraced cottage and pushed open a wooden gate. The cottage door was pulled, and a melodious voice said,
“Welcome, Ian McGunn! You’ll stay for tea.”
“Shona,” Jamie introduced. “That beast’s Ranter.” A dog the size of a horse stared at me with less than ecstasy.
“Er, hello,” I said. The impression was swirling blue, gold, yellow, and a smile. The bird, not the dog. “I, er, trust I’m not inconveniencing…”
“Come in, man. Us here waiting and you so long to call I’ve to send Jamie Innes combing the town seeking you out, wandering all the county before setting foot in the house…”
Gasp. “Erm, thanks, er, Shona…” I honestly believe that a woman meeting a man only takes him in piece by piece—eyes, height, age, smile, face. But a man’s different. We take in the complete woman at one swallow. That’s why particular points—
remembering the color of her eyes, for instance—aren’t really important to a man. It’s also why women get very narked, because they assume we use their scoring system. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Shona, and struggled to keep from being too obvious. She was lovely.
The cottage was prepared for action. Linen tablecloth, plates just so. The most formal tea table you ever did see, while Shona swung her long bright hair and spun herself fetching the teapot and piles of sandwiches. She told Ranter to wait outside. It left calmly, giving me a warning glance.
“And what’s this about you in a common lodging like that MacNeish’s tavern, no more than a pub and you not even bothering to knock on a door—” et cetera.
“Give the man a chance, Shona,” Jamie pleaded.
“Aye, well, if he’s come through the south he’ll only be used to them Edinburgh folk…”
Jamie winked. “We blame Edinburgh for giving us all a bad reputation. There’s a joke.
Edinburgh folk tell callers: Welcome—you’ll have had your tea!”
“What did that MacNeish give you for your dinner, Ian?” Shona demanded from the kitchen.
And we were off into woman chat. By sheer skill I managed to keep off my relatives for the whole visit. Shona was lovely in that spectacular way some women are. Jamie Innes obviously worshiped her, laughing appreciatively at her stories of the schoolchildren even though I’m sure he must have heard them all before.
Getting on for six, Shona rose to shoo Jamie away and summoned me to walk her out.
“Time for chapel,” she commanded. “The Innes clan being famous heathens, Jamie doesn’t go, so you’ll walk me down, Ian.”
“Er, if you wish.”
“And while we do,” she said, bright with anticipation, “I’ll exchange tales of the McGunns with you.”
“Shouldn’t I go with Jamie…?” I tried desperately.
Jamie said, “But I’m outnumbered, Ian. You McGunns use unfair tactics.”
We parted at the gate, Jamie turning up the road, leaving me and Shona to start towards the chapel by the waterfront. She slipped her hand through my arm. There was a low rumble behind us, Ranter stalking. Its eyes were almost on a level with mine. A stair-carpet of a tongue.
“Take no notice of the beast, Ian,” she said happily. “Now we can have a really good gossip.”
“Gossip?” This was it. My heart sank. I invented desperately. “Well, er, I think my granddad came from Stirling…”
“Not that, silly.” She was laughing prettily at me. “What I really want to know is, are you and Jo lovers, Lovejoy?”
« ^ »
—— 11 ——
That stopped me. She was rolling in the aisles laughing.
“Your face!”
Women really nark me. “You’re sly.”
“Oh, whist, man! I guessed when I heard you’d been telling George MacNeish about his old things. And you couldn’t take your eyes off my old father’s mulls.”
These are peculiarly Scottish containers for snuff, made of horns, silver, sometimes bone or stone. It’s easy to pay too much for these, because usually they’ve bits missing. The complete ones have a decorative chain holding tiny tools—a mallet, scoop, prong—also of silver, and of course it’s these that have casually been nicked or lost.
Mulls come in two sorts, the larger table mull with casters for use after posh dinners, or the personal mull. Antique dealers invent wrong names, being too thick to learn the right ones, and call the portable sort a “baby” mull, it being small. I’d never even seen a matching pair of snuff mulls before. But Shona had such on her mantlepiece, lovely horn and silver shapes with all the accoutrements. I’d only given clandestine glances, but should have remembered that women can always recognize a drool.
She was enjoying herself. “Handed down. Family.”
“From about 1800,” I said with a moan of craving.
She fell about. “Well, you can’t have them,” she said at last, recovering. “Jo said you’re a terror for old things.”
“Jo said I was coming?”
“Yes. She’s been ringing every couple of days.” Shona grimaced at me. “That’s why I suspect you and she of—”
“None of your nosy business.”
She hugged herself as they do. “I like you, Lovejoy. Secretly, I’m glad you won’t tell.”
“Only women gossip about lovers.”
She thought a bit before beginning an argument about diarists. I was too impatient to listen. “Where did you get the bureau from?”
“The one Jo said got lost? Oh, a place I know.”
“A place with antiques?” I asked evenly. I’m not devious like other people. I honestly say exactly what I mean practically always.
She gave me a look, women being of a suspicious nature. “Very well,” she said at last, some decision made. “You’ll come up to Tachnadray with me tomorrow.”
Tachnadray? I said great, never having heard the name. For the sake of propriety, off she went to kirk and I went to read Untracht’s monograph on jewelry. Each to his own religion.
That evening I had a demure supper ritual in the hotel lounge served by Mrs. MacNeish.
It was like a barn. Dead fish and stag heads on wall plaques and sepia photographs of ancient shooting parties proudly dangling dead birds. I’d have to send somebody up here to buy these exhibits on a commission job. Someone else. I’m not a queasy bloke; I just can’t rejoice in extinction. Mary MacNeish laid up for major surgery. I’d never seen so much crockery and cutlery in my life. I told her cheerfully, “Just met Shona.”
“Aye, I heard,” Mrs. MacNeish said.
We bantered a bit while I tried to keep my knees together and hold off the slab cake till the starting gun. Politeness is a killer. Also, something wasn’t quite right. In the woman’s prattle a discordant note was sounding. You can always tell. The publican’s wife was open-faced and friendly, but she was having her work cut out to stay so when Shona was mentioned. Yet Shona was pally and really something to see. I wondered if it was me, and like a fool put it out of my mind.
During the gluttony I had the sense not to mention Tachnadray, and eventually returned to reading Untracht’s methods of inlaying silver strips in English boxwood bracelet carving. Maybe for once I should have thought deeply instead.
Next day I consulted the Register of Electors. They’re those cob-webbed, yellowing, string-hung pages of local names in every village post-office-cum-stores. Pretending idleness—nothing new—I found that Tachnadray listed umpteen McGunns, plus one ectopic: plain James Wheeler. Yet even here somebody had inked in the McGunn surname, converting him to clan. Odd, that. Amending electoral rolls is illegal, even if you changed your name lawfully. I checked its date: Printed twenty years previously, and that ink had faded. I wondered if Lovejoy McGunn sounded better than Ian, then decided to let ill alone.
Shona brought Jamie’s van about ten o’clock. She drove as fitted her personality, with good-humored extravagance, and asked if MacNeish’s pub was comfortable.