‘It’s run off from the rains we’ve had, but don’t worry, I’m a local boy.’ Atholl was already stalking off alongside the burn, stopping at a great rock jutting out amongst the heathers. Passing behind it, he reappeared after a second carrying a long plank over his shoulder and proceeded to set it down over the water.
‘A bridge?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he nodded, and she walked over, not attempting to hide her surprise at Atholl’s resourcefulness. Following after her with the picnic basket, he left the plank in place.
‘I spent my childhood playing out here. My granny’s house was just over that pass there.’ He pointed into the distance, but Beatrice couldn’t make out any buildings at all. ‘Now it’s my mother’s. She lives there with my sister Sheila and her man Teàrlach and their bairn, Archibald. He’s only a month old.’
‘Archibald? That’s quite a name for a little baby.’
Atholl was smiling and talking about his little nephew, but Beatrice could feel the pull of her own thoughts dragging her attention away from him. Abigail. Natalie. Rosie. These had been her favourite baby girl names, and she’d written them neatly inside the jacket of her copy ofYour Pregnancy: Week by Weekback in the winter months. Gabriel, Charlie and Ruben were inscribed there too. They had never settled on a name for their son, but had they been afforded the luck and luxury of nine months to decide, Archie could well have ended up as one of the top picks, and Richard would have been a nice middle name, after his daddy. She found herself wondering if Rich had dreamed of a son bearing his Christian name as well as his surname. She’d never know now.
Although they were walking downhill the terrain was pitted and ridged and Beatrice’s thigh muscles began to ache. The burning woke her from her reverie again. Atholl had been talking all this time, but about what she didn’t know.
‘Can I?’ he was saying, while jutting an elbow out to her. ‘You’re wearying.’
She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. Weary? Yes, that was the word for how she’d felt these last few weeks. Weary. But somehow walking steadily in silence with Atholl, matching his long strides step for step, was bringing her back to herself, and when they at last reached a narrow valley and she heard the rush of many little waterfalls cascading into deep pools arranged down the valley in tiers, she began to smile again.
‘The fairy pools?’ she cried.
‘Aye.’
The scene held her transfixed for a moment. She understood how these pools had got their name. The waters were clearer even than those at the coral beach but instead of a tropical turquoise their depths shone with a silver glimmer. Tiny waterboatmen rowed across their bright surfaces, winged insects flitted between the minuscule wild sweetpeas that bloomed yellow like Highland butter and grew everywhere around their banks. The pointed spires of purple bee orchids flowered a little further off in the longer grass alongside tough little thistles and clovers. A damp, mossy, sweet smell rose from the soft earth which was everywhere dotted with rabbit holes, grassy tuffets and exposed grey stones.
Beatrice could well imagine that the Skye fairies were watching her from their magical little hideouts as Atholl asked her where she wanted to sit and she picked out a dryish-looking spot on a grassy bank under a cluster of scrubby bushes right by a flowing shallow rivulet filling one of the wider pools. Atholl spread the blanket on the ground and joined her on it. When she leaned over and dipped her fingertips into the inviting water, she found it was freezing cold and snatched her hand back with a yelp.
‘Changed your mind about swimming, Atholl?’
‘Possibly.’
She laughed with relief and took her time looking around at the clustered mountains surrounding them in the near distance at every point of the compass, dwarfing them in the landscape.
‘I feel tiny in scenery like this,’ she said at last.
‘It’s always good to get a bit o’ perspective. This is where I’d come to think… and to get away from my family.’
‘What are they like?’
‘They’re fine. They’re loud. A wee bit intense. It could be a bit much sometimes living on top of one another at the inn. I was glad tae get away every day on my willow apprenticeship. Mum and Dad kept Granny’s cottage here on Skye even while they ran the inn. They had a lot of staff so we could sometimes get away to the island, and Gene did a lot at the inn back then too. When everyone moved back to Skye somehow I ended up staying on permanently at the inn wi’ my brother.’
‘Didn’t you ever want to leave, move in with someone, maybe?’
Atholl took a while answering, focusing on unscrewing the lid of a thermos and pouring out steaming coffee into two plastic mugs. ‘Iwasready to leave at one point, but alone. I never met a lassie who’d want to take on me and my family.’ He laughed.
‘You almost moved out? But what happened?’
‘My old willow teacher had planning permission to add a mezzanine loft to one end of the But n’ Ben for a bedroom and to put a partition wall and kitchen into the downstairs, and between us we planned the building project. When he retired I was ready to do it, had the quotes from Davy McTavish the builder and everything, and it wasnae all that expensive either. I’d been looking forward to living and working there, but then Lana left Gene… and what with looking after him and the inn… well, you’ve seen it for yourself.’
‘Oh.’ Beatrice sipped the coffee contemplatively. ‘There really wasn’t ever anyone you wanted to move in with?’
Atholl peeled the lid from a box full of flat little cakes. ‘Bannock?’ He held the box out to her, and a delicious floury, sweet smell circulated in the clean, warm air. ‘For someone who keeps herself to herself, you like to go delving into other folk’s business, don’t you?’
This, she was grateful to see, was said with a wink. But Beatrice took the warning, and a bannock, and instead of pushing him further, she watched the water flowing past, glittering in the sunlight.
Atholl spoke eventually. ‘I’ve had girlfriends in the past, if that’s what you want to know, but none of them ever wanted to settle in Skye or in Port Willow. They went off to colleges or jobs in the South, and there was a fair amount of competition for the lassies who stayed.’ Another wink as he bit at the bannock. ‘And none of them ever fancied me anyway.’
Unlikely, thought Beatrice.
‘They all liked Gene back before he married.’
