9.A Decision.
The morning had dawned, silent and grey : there was a quiet mood in the glen as Gordon and the children walked along. Quietness that reflected their own moods, too, as they headed down to the track-end : rucksacks on backs and crunch of pebbles underfoot. Here and there a bird called out and otherwise it was just stillness and solitude - the solitude of the deep wilderness which lay before them, and into which they were heading. It always took time to attune oneself to the wilderness, Gordon knew. Days in fact, to find the slower rhythm of the natural world all around. Nevertheless, he noticed that they all seemed quieter, pensive, at the outset of their adventure in the footsteps of Prince Charlie.
It would have been reasonable to expect an almost discordant noise and excitement from the children as they began their journey. But now that they were actually on their way, the sense of being pushed out - of being cut adrift from home - seemed to surface, and they appeared subdued like the morning.
Harry was walking by himself, at the front : watching, alert like a fox, and self-sufficient. It seemed as if he had decided that self-sufficiency was the best way to avoid getting hurt - and, it meant you didn't have to trust anybody except yourself. His eyes looked, this way and that, as he left the defined track and headed for the fallen tree.
Roberta followed at a distance, tall, thoughtful and self-contained. She, too, had an air of resolve and self-sufficiency about her : as if she wanted to prove to her father that she was capable and resourceful, and worthy of being taken seriously as his daughter.
She had the capacity to suspend thought and to simply listen, feel, respond. The mountains seemed inviting to her, full of mystery, beauty and unseen life; and she breathed in the scents and the air, and was quiet and self-contained within. The smell of crushed thyme and bog-myrtle underfoot was seductive, the call of the glen entreating, the moorland whispering to her fancifully. In the silence, there seemed to her to be, almost, a presence, a lurking. And she felt quiet and passive, accepting. It was a consolation for other places in her heart, where she felt only empty and rejected.
Alasdair walked with Gordon, at the back, and their conversation broke the silence now and then. The boy was unhappy at home - he would bury his head in his pillow at night to deafen the arguments of his parents - and he felt inadequate in some way, as if he had disappointed his father and lost his approval. In compensation, Philip Gordon's kindness and good nature seemed to fill some of the loneliness which lingered inside him. It was a relief, in a way, to be off.
Gordon, actually, felt relieved as well. He was glad to have some space for himself, so that he could be himself; and besides, every journey or expedition commenced with a sense of adventure and mystery. In addition, this treasure : it was something he didn't have an answer to. So much in education these days seemed defined, regulated, objective - devoid of feeling. And yet, here was something vague and alluring, into which the children could only grow instinctively, intuitively.
This was the matter Alasdair was discussing with him, as they approached the river, aware of the day all around them, yet engrossed in the past.
'So we will test your theory first,' said the boy.
'Yes. It will take us a couple of days to walk to Glen Pean, and my hunch is that on the pass above Pean the ground becomes so rugged that the Prince's horses would have to be left behind. And so might his treasure.'
'I can see that,' said Alasdair, 'but I think the treasure would have been left nearer the sea, because why carry it all over the place until you need to? That's why I think the cave above Loch Beoraid could be the place. It's wild, high, but near enough that the treasure could be returned to the boats if necessary.'
They walked on, a bird flitting across their path now and then, the day very still, the low roar of the river just audible now.
'How many days would it take us to Beoraid?' he asked Gordon.
'Two days to Pean, and another two to the Cave.' The land was deep and lovely, falling back so far into its recesses and hidden glens.
'Four days. Do you think mum would mind if we were away that long?'
Alasdair needed to relieve himself. Philip Gordon went ahead and called to the others to stop. The boy seemed keen for some privacy and was soon thrashing his way up the hillside towards a boulder. It seemed to take him an age.
Harry called hoarsely, 'What's Ally doing?'
Roberta answered, 'He's going behind a rock for a pee.'
Harry looked bemused.
They arrived shortly afterwards at the fallen tree over the river. The children by now were experts and one-by-one manoeuvred across to the other side. Gordon was last and, with the largest pack, found it quite difficult to negotiate the limbs and needles sticking out from the tree. The Tornish was not dangerous, if he fell in, but the supplies would get soaked.
Alasdair took off his pack and went back to lend support. Harry, meanwhile, had loosened a large rock and threw it into the water just to the left of the teacher, soaking the teacher but not the supplies. Roberta rolled about laughing. Already, a team-spirit and camaraderie had begun to develop, after a fashion. Gordon wiped his glasses when he reached the safety of the opposite bank.
'So this is the Forgotten Kingdom,' he said, in a good humour. It felt to them all, that they had now entered the wilderness and left the other world behind them. They had been here before, of course, but this time they had the supplies and equipment to go deep into the wild country : to explore the unknown interior, to take to themselves the mysterious land with its glens and rivers and woods.

It felt quite intimate to Gordon to be here, alone, with these children in such an empty wilderness. As they marched on ahead, and he brought up the rear studying the map, he felt content and quiet.
After twenty minutes or so, Harry Baxter stopped, however.
'It's Wiggy!' he shouted. The three children all seemed pleased and excited, and pressed on faster. Philip Gordon followed behind, quietly amused and intrigued at the prospect of meeting this 'jolly insalubrious character' - as Caroline had described him. Drawing closer, he saw a kilted man with a telescope, speaking to the little knot of children. The man, with his back to Gordon, was pointing to deer on the hillside. 'I can't see them,' Alasdair was saying.
'Over there,' Harry pointed. And the man passed over the telescope and said 'Here, have a look through this.'
At the last moment Gordon, who was trying to locate the deer himself, lost his balance in some wet peat, and the weight of his pack sent him crashing to the ground.
The man turned round and said, drily, 'You don't need to kneel, you know. Are you alright?'
Gordon, looking up, blinked. He picked up his glasses, disorientated, and put them on. 'You mean you...are...'
'Wiggy,' said Wiggy, smiling kindly. 'Oh, I get called a lot of things, but you can call me Wiggy! It has a distinctive ring about it, don't you think?' Gordon nodded.
Turning to the children again, the sad-looking man said, 'Have you seen them yet? If you point it... there.' Then he looked the teacher straight in the face.
'And I assume that you are Mr Gordon?'
'Philip Gordon. How do you do?'
'I've heard a lot about you,' said Wiggy. 'Off looking for treasure, I gather?'
'That's the general idea, yes -' and added - 'not that it belongs to us...'
'Oh, I shouldn't worry about that,' he said. 'Finders keepers.'
The children gathered around again, and Gordon could see that a bond of affection had developed between them. He was struck, too, by the man's kindness. Yet he looked doleful, troubled.

The previous day had, in fact, been dreary. The sun had shone, but he had felt heavy, and Chalmers had been his only companion. In fact, Chalmers was nowhere to be seen - not because he was trying to remain inconspicuous, but because he had been sent off to fetch some spare flies, a newspaper and general provisions. Or to be more precise, because Wiggy was rather fed up with his company. How much longer had he got on holiday, Alasdair asked. It was his last day, he answered, looking even more doleful. He winced.
Alasdair and Harry got themselves ready to go on. Wiggy offered to help with Harry's pack again, but he said, 'I can manage.' Then they set off over the heather into new territory. About ten steps further on, Harry turned round, cocked his quizzical head on one side, and said 'Goodbye.' They headed away. Wiggy looked after them, longingly, and beyond to the wilds. Then he gazed across to the deer, camouflaged on the hill, which he had been watching. He seemed pensive.
Roberta was lingering, and looking at him quietly.
He seemed to be - not thinking deeply, that wasn't it - to be listening to something out there, or deep within himself. She recognised the impulse.
Time seemed to falter. The wilderness called : the day was beckoning. 'Listen,' he said to Gordon quietly, hesitantly. 'Do you mind if I ask you a question?' The teacher waited.
'Could I come along with you? Would it be an awful imposition if I joined the hunt for this treasure of yours?' He bit his lip and anxiously fingered a coat button.
Roberta looked at Gordon. He stood, impassively in thought.
'I think,' he started, 'that would be absolutely terrific. The children would love you to come...' Before Gordon had finished, Roberta had leapt into the air, shouting 'Yesss!' with clenched fists and, rushing to the brow of the bank, yelled 'Wiggy's coming with us! Wait! Wiggy's coming with us.'
At a distance, Harry looked at Alasdair, and repeated 'Wiggy's coming with us!' in a delighted voice. They dropped their packs. Of them all, Wiggy's face looked most moved : his eyes seemed to dance and he grinned broadly, shaking Gordon's hand.
'That's terribly good of you,' he said. They looked face-to-face, and man-to-man, knowing that they shared together in a decisive moment of adventure. It seemed like the sort of spontaneous decision a native Australian might take, to drop everything and set off into the blue.
'I should be able to increase your food supply,' Wiggy added, with excitement and determination. 'Roberta, could you lend me your pack?'
He got down on his knees, picked out food from the hamper and placed it in the rucksack, urgently, with a gritted smile.
Roberta, by his side, saw some peaches and said, 'I'd like those!'
'Well take them,' he said. 'Come on, come on! What about these?'
And so they sorted, and packed, and got ready to go.
Roberta was watching him closely. 'Do you think you should tell anybody?' she asked, aside.
'Don't worry,' he said. 'I think I can leave that to Chalmers.'
'Come on,' said Gordon. 'Let's go! The map says that we should follow that burn up to the ridge over there, then drop down into the next valley. Then we will really be on the trail of Prince Charlie.'
Harry eyed the route up the hillside, and Alasdair hit the front at the thought of the treasure. Roberta dreamed along in a world of her own.
As they left, Wiggy picked up a piece of paper that was lying in the peat - a wrapper of some kind - and stuffed it in the back of Philip's pack.
'Nice to know my proper station in life,' said Gordon drily.
'Litter!' Wiggy complained. 'I do dislike litter.'
They overtook the children halfway up to the ridge. Wiggy's limp had almost gone. He looked the part of a Jacobite in his flailing kilt.
'Hot work!' he puffed.
'We've got a good party,' said Gordon. 'The children are doing well. Though I'm not too sure -' he paused for some breaths - 'why we are really doing this.' He looked to the other man for suggestions.
'Sometimes, I think we just need to let go a bit. To put ourselves back in the perspective of the vast natural universe, and bury ourselves in it. Go down into it. Instead of asserting ourselves with our tiny minds all the time. Do you know what I mean?'
Gordon nodded, and glanced across the glen at the opening views.
'"Skulking",' he said. 'I think that's what the Jacobites called it. Hanging about in woods, in glens, and just being there; getting in touch a bit; doing nothing in particular.'
'Quite. You see, archaic societies, ones that are more organically in touch with nature around them, have always recognised the need to periodically enter some kind of ritual or mythic state.'
'You mean, go walkabout?' asked Gordon, trying to understand.
'If you like : to get away deep, to recede into nature, to let go of cerebral controls, to regenerate. It's so important. Also, I think we all lead such repressed lives that, in a way, we need to exorcise demons, lay to rest subconscious conflicts.'
Gordon frowned. 'Otherwise?'
Wiggy shrugged his shoulders. 'Auschwitz? Pol Pot?'
'The burning of heretics?' Gordon added pointedly.
Wiggy laughed. 'Exactly. They're all the outcome of repression. If you keep the lid too tight on your subconscious, it just surfaces in ugly, unnatural ways. Whole societies can go that way, I think.'
They walked, groaned, and heaved their way upwards. The children had stopped further down for a rest, so they paused to take in the view. 'Look! There's another deer, a hind,' said Wiggy. 'Do you see how it's camouflaged? Did you ever watch a film called "The Invisible People"? About the rain-forests and how a simple tribe just merged with the landscape.
'That's the thing,' he continued. 'We have to live in harmony with the landscape, recognise ourselves as only part of it, respond to it.'
'No monstrous carbuncles?' Gordon jested.
'Well exactly. Why do we have to be so bloody assertive about everything? You asked why we are going on this walk a few minutes ago - I'd say, the surrender of pride. Otherwise, if you don't strike a balance with nature : well, nature will have the last word... it's too big not to. I've seen the camouflaging of past civilisations, you know; visited the ruins. What will become of ours?'
They pressed on to the top of the ridge, and smiled at each other, over the shared effort and shared satisfaction, both breathless. Wiggy grabbed Gordon's sleeve. 'But you and me,' he said, panting, 'we agree not to ask too many questions, be too cerebral... we do it because we do it. We take each moment as it comes... let the wilderness... speak to us...'
Gordon nodded. They had lunch, just over the brow of the hill, with a view down into Glen Mallie, over the remains of an old Caledonian pine wood. The day was hushed and overcast, and they spoke quietly to one another, Harry sitting a little way off - self-contained, watchful.
As they walked down through the ancient wood, with the lovely, lonely sweep of hills to the west, it felt like a going back : these were hillsides that the Jacobites would have walked, round the back of Loch Arkaig, toward the boats and the sea.
Old, moss-covered trunks lay scattered across their paths, other trees swaying with their huge contorted boughs overhead. The smells of the undergrowth and of greenery all around; the land wilder, untamed, full of quiet hollows and shadowy dark recesses. It felt as if Lochiel had only just passed, through the same wood, just around the next spur of the hillside; or rested under the same branches, so near to them, over the cycle of the seasons, as the world wheeled and turned.
Alasdair and the others went ahead again, with the two men walking more slowly. The children seemed so small against the great shadowy hillside, inheritors of the years to come, passing and going across the ageless face of the mountain.
'This wood must have been here hundreds or thousands of years,' said Wiggy. 'It has repeatedly regenerated and settled into the glen slowly and deeply. What I really object to are blocks of indiscriminate forestry, planted for profit, with no sympathy for the landscape. Man's domination again, you see : crass, short-term, doing untold damage.'
A red squirrel scraped up the bark of a nearby tree and watched them calmly, more out of interest than fear. As they approached the valley bottom, the trees were starting to dance gently in a rising wind, the sky looking grey and watery on the western horizon.
'It feels like there could be some rain later on,' Gordon said.
They got to the River Mallie where the children were waiting for them.
'Where now?' said Alasdair.
'Across the river,' Gordon answered, watching their reactions.
'There's no bridge,' said Harry.
'Then we wade,' smiled Wiggy, and took off his kilt, wrapping it in the top of Roberta's rucksack. He led the way, yelling 'Hee-ooh!' as the high mountain waters slapped cold against his knees. At the far bank, he turned and splashed his head in the chilly current, lifting it afresh and looking around at the ancient glen. It felt good to be alive : elements, rough simple pleasure, and physical sensation. The others stripped to their pants, and Wiggy watched them cross, screaming against the cold, each brought alive by the physical insistence of the elements, all united by the shared experience and relationship with the environment.
'I can see Roberta's knickers,' laughed Harry hoarsely.
'Piss off!' She splashed him.
'Hoi, stop it!'
Gordon watched on and said nothing.
On the opposite bank they dried and struck off up the glen along an old track. They came to signs saying 'Private: Keep Out' - erected by one of Fraser's friends, no doubt - and Alasdair said, 'Can we go any further?'
'No-one's going to stop us,' argued Roberta.
'I think,' said Gordon, 'that these are red-coat signs. From now on, we are outlaws - at least, if you want to find the Treasure?'
They agreed : it appealed to them to be on the run like Charlie, and the free spirit of the wilderness had already infected them. Harry, in any case, had ignored the sign and was a hundred yards on up the track, blazing a trail. As they walked on up Glen Mallie in the early afternoon, past ruins and broken walls, Gordon warned Wiggy that they were heading for a rough shelter where they could stay the night. It had no comforts.
'Why should I mind?' Wiggy replied. 'The thing is, a few days living rough like this is as good as a year in a bloody fitness club : and it serves the whole person, puts things in perspective.' He looked around him to take in the valley and the day. 'I mean, where's the spirituality in weight-training... idolatry of the body, I'd call it.'
Gordon demurred. 'I think that's going a little bit far.'
'Maybe,' continued Wiggy, appreciating his honesty. 'But I do think a little asceticism from time to time is good for anybody : a bit of endurance instead of instant kicks. Do you understand?'
Gordon clearly did, and Wiggy beamed because he was succeeding in making his point.
'The trouble is, there is too much of a bloody theme-park mentality these days - a half-hour run down the rapids, instead of really getting to feel the wilderness. Kids grow up with a kind of facile, pleasure ethic.
'Look at this...' he swung his arm round at the scenery. 'They'd probably turn all this into a theme park if they had the chance.'
'They wouldn't if they ever came here in the winter,' replied Gordon.
'I know,' muttered Wiggy deeply. 'In the winter they can be like death.' He repeated, 'Those mountains - they can be like death in the winter.'
By the quietly flowing river, further stilled, Wiggy asked after the children, bobbing on ahead of them in the russet heath. And when Gordon explained, he seemed sad and tender. Something else was playing on his mind.
'When they offered a thirty thousand pound reward for the capture of Bonnie Prince Charlie, any one of those highlanders could have made a fortune, but they didn't did they?'
'There was one incident at Scalpay - a place of betrayal - when a local vicar tried to capture him.'
'If there's one thing I can't stand,' said Wiggy, a little anxiously, 'it's disloyalty. He wasn't betrayed by his friends though, was he?'
'No, he wasn't. Murray of Broughton turned King's Evidence afterwards.'
'Spilt the beans, did he?' Wiggy looked closely at Gordon.
'I couldn't do that to a friend, could you?' said the teacher.
Wiggy seemed re-assured. 'What time is it?' he asked.
'I don't know. I left my watch in my pack. One o'clock? Two o'clock?'
That seemed precise enough.
The day held them quietly as they passed by, the mountains, huge, looming, ever-present. 'Take each moment as it comes' he had said. They passed on calmly in the silent valley.

10.A Round Of Golf

'What time is it?' Ellie asked her friend. Caroline checked. 'It's 2.25, no... 2.26 I think.'
'Just wondered.'
Caroline's mind was on the game, and on Andrew Douglas, as the three of them walked up the fairway of the seventeenth. It was a par four hole.
The afternoon was grey and cloudy, a breeze blowing in off the sea, a change on the way. It seemed cool and quiet. Few people were out on the course. As they strolled over the rolling ground, there was just the squeaking of Ellie's trolley and snatches of disconnected conversation. Caroline was intent on winning. She and Douglas were level on eighteen over par with only two holes to complete. She wanted to show him that she was on top of things, still capable, still in control. It was fortunate actually, that so few others had come out to play. Perhaps some form of mass premonition had warned them off : because Ellie was playing a round out of hell. She usually did. There seemed to be an instinct in her which sought out every burn, dune, thicket and pond. She seemed full of interest in everything except the game, looking around her, recognising onlookers, talking on pet subjects, noticing, laughing. The trouble was, in so far as it was a trouble, that Ellie had no competitive instinct whatsoever : no drive, no urge to win or overcome. To her, golf was a game a bit like life. It was just fun and an impulse. On the other hand, Caroline had a very definite competitive streak, which sharpened and became more acute as the round drew to its conclusion. She measured angles, checked scores, and watched anxiously over Andrew's successes.
'So you mean,' Ellie continued, picking up a conversation with Andrew that she had left lying on the fifteenth green, 'you came over here looking for a rabbit!' Her eyes sparkled. 'A bonking rabbit!'
'A hare, Ellie. A golden hare.'
Caroline could make out the ominous shape of Hell Bunker on the fairway ahead. It filled her with vague foreboding.
'And you're telling me,' her friend persisted gaily, 'that because of some boss-eyed artist who'd hidden this golden rabbit, hare, whatever, you came over to Britain to dig it up? I can't believe it!' Caroline smiled.
'It's worse than that. Tell her the whole truth, Andrew. The hare had already been found.' If she hoped to tease the American to a gentle discomfiture, she failed. Douglas was wholly relaxed, breathing in the salt air, surveying the links.
'The Hare had already been found?' Ellie was giggling.
'At Ampthill,' said Andrew. 'It was in the papers. But as far as I was concerned, that felt like a place of betrayal. I felt let down. Something in my bones said Woah!'
'Well either it was found or it wasn't!' Ellie laughed.
Andrew smiled contentedly. 'It depends on which way you look at it.'
Caroline stared at the bunker. She could clearly see a ball - no, two balls - on its lower edge.
'So I asked myself - which way would he look at it, the artist? And the answer was in the question, staring me in the face. Behind a masquerade presented to the press, I wondered : what if he was looking at two places at the same time? Then I remembered that his eyes did just that.'
'But why North Wales?' Caroline interposed.
Andrew chuckled. 'Look! We could wander around all day looking for treasure like three blind mice, when all the time, it's looking us in the mouth! Oh, hunting for treasure can be a devilish business. If you get locked into linear ways of thinking, you could follow an infinite number of lines to eternity. The beauty of the good hunt is in its charm, in its renunciation of conformist logic... in the look before you leap.'
Ellie was intelligently engaged by this idea.
'Maybe, to paraphrase Stevenson, it's the hunting that matters, and not the finding?'
'I couldn't agree with you more!' clapped Douglas cheerfully. 'It makes life much more relaxing if we're not so darned acquisitive - and besides, once you've found a treasure, it could all be a bit of an anti-climax, water under a bridge... but to be on the trail!'
'Tell that to Alasdair! He's convinced there's treasure up in those hills,' Caroline complained.
'Ha! He showed me the very spot on the map, when I arrived yesterday. But I figure it's the romance and adventure of the hunting that he's really after.'
'So did you find the treasure yourself?' said Ellie, chirpily.
'Nope,' he replied carefully. 'I can't honestly say that I did.'
The truth was now in front of them.
Ellie's ball, miraculously, had fallen short and to the left of the notorious Hell's Bunker. Caroline and Andrew had both found the lower lip of the bunker and their balls were nestling side-by-side, virtually touching. Caroline nervously checked the scores again : yes, they were equal. Yet Ellie, for once, had the initiative - however irrelevant it was in the grander scheme of things. However, as she lined up for the second pitch onto the green, exuding ingenuous confidence and exclaiming 'Watch the pro, watch the pro, you guys,' she caught sight of a couple of men on an adjacent hole, one of whom she recognised. 'Oh my God!' she whispered. And then in a rising crescendo, 'Oh my God, Caroline. Can you see who it is? It's Dominic West!'
Caroline frowned uncertainly.
'You know - Dominic West. That incredibly dishy pilot I crashed into on the Oban road, when we thought we were going over to Mull. You remember?'
Caroline, with a grimace, remembered.
'He flies from Connel airfield' Ellie explained to the American. 'He was so nice about my car - insisted on driving us back. Excuse me...'
She waved and yelled : 'Dominic! Hi! Dominic!' How could she get his attention? She reached for an iron from her trolley. Caroline stood motionless, frozen, as Ellie swung and drove, supremely direct and free, and the ball lofted straight over the bunker towards the dark-haired god on the opposite fairway. 'Dominic...' she cried feebly, as it neared him inexorably. 'Dominic...' The next moment, he was sitting, dazed, on a hummock. Yes, he could see her now.
It was alright.
'Oh my gosh, I got him,' Ellie stammered, wide-eyed with wonder. 'I got the poor boy...' It was undoubtedly the finest stroke of her life.
'All day you've been trying to hit the pin,' Caroline gasped in amazement, 'and now... the chances of anyone hitting him like that must be thousands to one. In Ellie's case, millions to one!'
Ellie shrugged and smiled. She would go and retrieve her ball. 'I'll leave you two buddies together : you just play on.' She skipped across the heathery roughs. 'Dominic! Yoo-hoo! Hi, do you remember me?' The airman stared in calm disbelief and remembered.
'She's good company,' Caroline laughed, relaxing a little.
Andrew smiled good-humouredly, crows-feet darting at the side of his eyes, and his furrowed forehead tilting. He reached for Ellie's trolley with one large hand and pulled it along like a toy. 'She seems like the best kind of friend, Caroline.'
'Oh yah, she's my best friend. She knows how to make me laugh and she's good at listening if I have problems.'
'And do you?' he asked, acutely.
'Have problems? Oh no, no. I'm pretty happy. My life is good. I mean, we all have problems sometimes.'
Douglas felt a swell of affection surge out to her as she floundered, and he wished he could put his great arm around her delicate shoulder. But he was afraid to. Her delicate beauty seemed almost brittle now. A gull called out across the sands. It sounded dolorous. Great grey clouds rolled in from the ocean. 'That was some shot she just played,' he laughed. 'So - this is Hell's Bunker?'
Their balls crouched vulnerably in its jaws. Blocking the upper lip of the bunker was a large boulder which was known by locals as Tom's Rock. It impeded their escape.
'Ladies first' he said in mock-deference to Sir Walter Clifford's daughter.
'Oh no!' she replied fondly. 'You're the visitor. You go first, please.'
He scowled with amusement at his predicament.
'You have a choice here,' Caroline said. 'You can pitch it wide onto the right-hand side of the green, or you can take a risk and aim direct for the flag over Tom's Rock.'
Douglas shrugged. 'What the hell! I'll take a risk and aim over Tom's Rock. Life's not worth living without a few risks...' He chipped casually up and cleared the rock. She watched the ball as it bounced straight across the hole and came to rest at an awkward spot on the very edge of the green.
Caroline played safe. But with a concentrated putt she had soon holed in three and taken a one-stroke lead, as Andrew faltered.
Behind them, a ragtaggle group were shambling their way to the green.
'God! Look at him,' Caroline complained.
Wearing a long green and white scarf, a one-armed golfer was swinging his course cheerfully up the fairway with his friends. He was playing with a kind of manic deliberation and abandonment, engrossed in the game and relaxed. 'The fuck!' she could hear him cry, as his shot fell short.
She frowned. 'I'm afraid our local courses are a bit proletarian,' she sighed.
Douglas rebuffed her. 'Good.' His look challenged her and she laughed, letting go.
'You never put up with my airs and graces did you?'
'Never did. True beauty needs no adornment, no pretensions.'
She felt her cheeks burn like a girl's. 'True beauty fades, I'm afraid...'
'No it doesn't,' he insisted, firm and confrontational. But his eyes shone.
They walked in silence, more contented.
'And Fraser,' said Andrew, eventually. 'Does he play golf?'
'God, yes,' she replied. 'We play as often as we can. It's good to do things together, don't you think?' She felt, and sounded, hollow.
The eighteenth hole was a par three. There were spots of rain on the wind. As they were teeing up, Ellie returned.
'Hi guys!'
'What did he say?' Caroline gasped.
'Well - he wouldn't give me my ball back, the meanie... but he was very nice though... I mean, he really was very nice... apologised for getting in the way... quite sweet really.'
They laughed together. Ellie decided to retire for the sake of humanity. Andrew said she could save herself for the nineteenth Hole. Caroline got ready to swing.
As she did so, she noticed some Labour fellow - a councillor or something - walking up the side of the fairway, intruding, distracting. Her ball splayed right, towards him. She was cross with herself for letting it bother her. But it did.
Andrew surveyed the last hole, and just hit the ball, reckless, at ease. It swung wide to the left. 'Oh-ho!' he chuckled. He felt relaxed and released. Just the pleasure of being out there was an end in itself. His ball landed in the rough by a notice which solemnly warned "Private : Keep Out : Permit-holders only allowed." He quite liked the roughs that skirted a course. Things could be too trim. A golf-course, it seemed to him, was a fair compromise between wilderness and civilisation : a place where you could get things in balance. But it seemed a shame to be too exclusive, too territorial. His second shot reached the left-hand edges of the green. Caroline's rolled up on the other side of the flag, just clear of some longer grass. The game had reached its finale.
The squeak-squeak-squeak of Ellie's trolley closed in on the climax. Standing by his ball, Andrew could hear the sound of the pipes drifting over the sward from the adjacent Clubhouse. He found his mind drifting too : drifting away to the mountains, to the Jacobites, to the whisky awaiting in the bar. Scotland! It had been a long time.
Drawing his thoughts back to the game, he chuckled to himself : he'd have to raise his standard before he got back home.
'So did the ancient Celts play golf?' he asked Ellie, weighing the putter in his hand.
She held the flag at its hole. 'Well! Have you seen the fella with a club on that hillside in Dorset? I'd give him a game any day.'
'Were they any good at it?' He swung his putter.
'Judging by the size of their clubs, I'd say yes.'
Douglas under-hit, and his ball stopped short. He laughed with Ellie and knocked it again. On the fifth stroke he sank it, finally.
Caroline now lined herself up behind the flag, checked the score, and got ready to putt. Something in the banter made her think of Rona, and she felt concentrated aggression as she tapped the ball. It rolled right up near the pin. She putted again, but even she was losing focus by now. The ball tickled the lip of the hole, wiggled, and just dropped in. She had won. She turned to her friends, who were talking happily together about the Cerne Abbas giant, about druids, Anglesey, the drinks they would soon be ordering.
'Have you won?' asked Andrew, looking up like a boy. She knew that she had. 'I'll count up the scores.'
Caroline checked the cards triumphantly on the way to the Clubhouse. 'Caroline 41 out, 40 in. Andrew 37 out, 46 in.'
'Excuse me,' said Ellie, in a small voice. 'I think you left somebody out?'
'As far as I can fathom it, and it involves a bit of guesswork, your score-card finished at 77 over par.'
'Yippee!' squealed Ellie. 'A personal best.'
'But that doesn't count the last two holes.'
'I think we must blame Dominic for those,' said Douglas.
'Quite so, amigo,' she replied, clapping his back. And then...'Oh, I don't think I could blame Dominic for anything really.'
Caroline shuddered, and they hastened to the nineteenth Hole. Getting inside the Clubhouse, as quickly as they could, before the rain intensified, the women found a corner near the bar and Andrew offered to buy a drink for them both. Untidily, a circle of beer-mats and an ashtray littered the table-top, and Caroline proceeded to straighten them up. Ellie, though she lost, was in a celebratory mood and said, 'I'll have a teeny martini, please,' her voice bright and cheerful. Luckily Caroline was driving and not her friend, and she cautiously asked for a fruit juice. Perhaps Ellie's car crash and then this latest encounter with Dominic had aroused a feeling of déjà-vu. Having identified Drambuie, Douglas elatedly now found refulgent old memories : something indefinable got him thinking.
Unobtrusively, the only other people in the bar slipped away. The quietness in the room was measured out in the beats of a clock on a side-wall. The large American brought over the drinks for his friends. Then he asked for a Drambuie for himself. After all, he was in Scotland again. He was trying to remember where he had had it before.
'Extremely sorry, sir, but the bottle appears to be empty.' The ex-serviceman behind the bar held it up to the light. 'We keep a hoard of our finest stuff down in the cellar. Fetch it out for an inner circle of customers who only appreciate the best. I could go and see for you?'
'Look there's no need to trouble' said Andrew Douglas, still chasing the elusive moment which he, somehow, associated with great light. That liqueur : it was like a pinnacle of heather smell and barley taste : he knew nothing like it. But he associated it with romance and magic. Maybe, for now, he should accept something more mundane.
'Perhaps I'll have - what do you Scots call it? - a half and a half? Can you recommend a really good malt?'
'Here in our cellar, even the fairies would be spoilt for choice, sir, and the boss hides his favourites in the darkest recesses : down there you'll find Talisker, Glencoe and Glenfiddich; Bowmore, Morangie; Farclas and Fettercairn, Lagavullin or Livet (you name them - he'll have them in abundance); Dalwhinnie or Oban Whiskies, sir, except intentionally Lochnagar's Royal Ancient he's concealing. Probably I could get you the 30-year malt, but the Royal Ancient is the one I doubt I could find you.' Lochnagar sounded just fine by the American, whatever the age. Eventually when he'd taken his glass to the table, subdued by the mellow glow of reflected light through the golden water of long lost summers and a vanished youth, he sat, reminiscing, trying to recall. Under the circle of a suspended mirror, the portrait of Queen Victoria stared down - the girl who became queen - gazing forlornly at the quiet reposing group. Glass inside the bar mirrored glass on the wall and glass in the two windows was reflected in the glass looking back at them both.
Andrew gazed at the dram in his glass, lingering in the golden gleam, fingering the stem, feeling the after-glow in his body, in his being. He looked up at the portrait on the wall. 'I picked up a book about her,' he began.
'What?' Caroline laughed. 'I can't believe you, Andrew. You're a dabbler. Always dipping into this, delving into that!'
'I'm naturally curious,' he conceded, warmly.
'Well - what was it about, this book? Victorian values?'
'No, all that came later,' he said, staring in his glass, reflecting. 'No - it was stranger than that. It concerned a theory... well, more than a theory : missing papers... that claimed that as a young girl, she disappeared on a tour of North Wales... just disappeared!'
'And then, presumably, came back' Caroline smirked, nodding at the matriarch opposite them.
'Something like that' Andrew said in resigned tones. 'But where did she go? What intrigues me are the things that get left unaccounted for. The gaps in the ledger, where the logical fabric seems torn... or gets covered up.'
'You seem to have an obsessive interest in loose ends,' she teased.
'That's why I'm here!' he laughed.
Ellie had been looking closely at the ice in her glass, studying the wallpaper, and picking up snatches of their chatter. She looked, in the mirror, out through a window to the 17th Green she had never reached; and at the same time, straight through the other window, could see the desolate first tee and beyond... and beyond, she heard the sound of the pipes coming to the end of a tape. And beyond that... Andrew and Caroline, over the table, seemed closer and personal now, with that private familiarity that some lovers never can lose. Caroline, in particular, felt so much more lively in his company. He always seemed, well, so interesting.
'There's one Victorian who has always fascinated me,' he was saying, finishing his drink.
'Oh yes?' she asked.
'Dodgson,' he said. Ellie looked up.
'Who?'
'Charles Dodgson.'
Caroline was about to ask what he meant, when the irrepressible Celtic supporter crashed through the door, his clubs knocking pictures, his feet tripping up over stools, with a cheery face and unselfconscious grin. 'By Christ!' he exclaimed, bright-eyed, excited. 'It's gettin' up some, oot there. I tell ye. The rains on proper noo. The fuck! It'll be pissin' on they buggers afore they get roond half the course, ye all mark my words.' And he laughed. He was answered by the slow, almost static, tick of the clock.
Later - much later - as the rain beat down on the windows of Ardfinnan, and the wind knocked and tiraded against the Castle walls, the Macleans and Andrew Douglas talked around the large mahogany table in the dining room. Ancient portraits stared down from the walls and seemed to be listening. Outside it was blustery, pine trees unsettled, tossing in the darkness. But over the supper, the candlelight cast a warm glow across shadowed faces; glinting in the silver, reflecting off the mirrors, diffracting through the cut-glass decanters and goblets.
'So you got beaten by a woman, eh? Got beaten by a bloody woman!' Fraser coughed with amusement, and reached for his whisky in mindless good humour.
'I was outplayed on the day' Andrew answered 'but I gave her a run for her money.'
'Anyway, you always honour us with your sexist attitudes after a few drinks, don't you Fraser dear?' Caroline said, making light.
'Not sexist at all!' said Fraser, throwing his arms up in surrender. 'I appreciate women. I just like a woman to be...' he scanned for words '... a woman.'
'Which means losing at golf!' rebuffed Andrew, who found Fraser's openness relaxing. Caroline didn't.
'Which means kept in their place. Sons go out and prove their manhood. Daughters stay at home, wearing pretty frocks, and looking beautiful.'
Fraser struggled to finish his mouthful. 'Caroline thinks I favour Alasdair. It's not like that at all. I simply don't see why my daughter can't act like a daughter.' He was addressing the American, trying to have a meaningful conversation.
'Dang! Not all my cowhands are men these days. Got some terrific women in the saddle : hardy, strong, independent. Don't you reckon it's good to have women who can hold their own with a man?'
Fraser smiled and relented. 'It's true' he replied, trying to be reasonable. 'I like a strong woman who knows her mind.'
Caroline straightened up her napkin and glanced tensely at Fraser. She knew the sort of woman he liked. Not like his daughter though, not like his wife. He seemed, crude, to her - brutish - yet darkly good-looking in the candle-light.
'But you don't want Roberta to know her mind?'
Fraser shrugged his shoulders and smiled. 'She's only a child.' He looked at his wife. For the first time, he noticed her dress hung lightly from her shoulders in brushed velvet blue, sky-blue. She was made up as well, for her guest, he presumed. Looked, almost, attractive if only she'd eat. 'I'm just saying, I'd prefer my daughter to be more refined, more like you,' he said gently, more tenderly, appealing.
Caroline looked aside. The table was handsome, flowers arranged beautifully... a life in order. She wouldn't let him subvert her. Fraser felt her rejection. 'Anyway, where the fuck is my daughter?' he asked, more darkly.
The rain plashed sombrely against a window. The deerhounds stirred, then settled themselves, trying to get comfortable. Fraser got up and stalked to the window. 'And with this rain. Where are they sleeping? Have they got tents?'
Caroline felt agitated. She didn't know. And she hadn't consulted with him. 'It's summer,' she appealed, vulnerably. 'Surely no harm can come to them in summer?'
Fraser relented again. 'Aye, it's just a passing front,' he suggested, reassuring her. But he knew the wilderness : was more attuned to it. Even in summer he was wary of what could happen to Alasdair, and the girl. And Harry Baxter, too : there was that to think of.
'I mean, who is this Wiggy? What if he fell in with them?' She twisted her napkin. 'I'm sure Gordon wouldn't allow them to get involved with anyone like that.'
'Balls. It would be just like that nancy to let some no-hoper tag along with them all for the ride.'
Caroline recoiled. His unrestrained wildness encroached upon her tidy world. The wilderness encroached. People like Wiggy and the one-armed golfer : they encroached and threatened disorder. And Douglas was watching her too. He would see how things were between them. She felt she was being laid open.
'I guess we could root them out pretty easily' the American intervened, his warm voice steady and calm. 'If we know where they're heading...'
'They'll head for the end of Loch Arkaig,' said Fraser. 'That's where the Prince fled after Culloden. The treasure's always been linked with Loch Arkaig.'
'Do we know about his route?'
'Bishop Forbes,' said Caroline, absently. 'Bishop Forbes of Inverness. He recorded the events that followed Culloden.'
Fraser glanced across, surprised, almost put out, that his wife should know about that. She caught him and read his look.
'Oh, Ellie told me. Said his book was worth reading.'
Fraser finished his glass and lit a cigar. He turned to Andrew Douglas. 'We've got a copy somewhere in the study. Have a look if you like...'
'I may do that. Thank you.'
Wanting to fill his own glass, Fraser leant over. 'Here let me pour you another.' Caroline reached for some water. 'I'll tell you what -' her husband continued. 'He liked a good dram, Prince Charlie. All through the mountains, out in the islands, he could always drink with the best of them.'
'Slainte!' they chorused.
'Whisky!' said Douglas, looking at it, tasting it. He frowned; his magpie brain trying to recall... 'Wasn't there some island, where a whole cargo of whisky was washed up ashore...'
'The S.S.Politician,' said Fraser. 'Ran aground in the Western Isles.'
Caroline stirred : 'Whisky Galore! They made a film of it.'
'That's it!' said Andrew, excitedly. 'That's it! Now there would be a place to go...'
Fraser demurred with a laugh. 'There'll not be much of it left there now,' he said.

Andrew sat back in his chair and enjoyed the warm course of the afterglow, as the golden malt reached down his throat. The light glinted and gleamed on the top of the dram... not much of it left... he seemed to recall a desolate valley... something in the fragrance re-captured a hillside... the scent of the heather... and light gleaming gaily. It came to him now, with a flush of emotion like the warm well-being inside as the whisky settled.
In the garden, Caroline denied coming climbing with him. But she was wrong. Just once she had come. All day they had walked the high tops, with the spring of heather underfoot, and she had seemed herself, seemed free. A hillside, a glen, all those years ago... the one time Caroline had come out with Gribbon and him... and Ledingham had shown up with a bottle of Drambuie. She'd taken off her top, and lain back beside him, and as he had looked up it had seemed all light, all brilliant, like glass... small birds chattering in the rough scrub around them, and the stream babbled, music and light, the wilderness savage : and Caroline, soft, all feeling, all release, all beauty.
He looked at her, over his glass. How had he forgotten that? Fifteen Montana winters must have snowed and sleeted up his brain. Fifteen long years of loneliness and rejection. He scratched his greying hair and he smiled, but his furrowed forehead frowned. Daughters lost, daughters lost, and how much else?
Fraser was talking about his family portraits. 'One day my boy Alasdair will be up there too' he was saying... 'He's a great lad.' A father's pride. Douglas understood.
'And Roberta?' he jibed.
Fraser studied him with narrowed eyes - then laughed a great roar of acceptance. Fuck! So what if he fancied his wife? He liked the bugger.
'I'll find a place for the bitch somewhere,' he smiled. 'Maybe over the sink in the kitchen.'
Caroline looked at Fraser. The housekeeper came in to clear the plates.
'Isn't that right, Annie? A woman's place is in the kitchen?' She smiled wryly. 'There's plenty of cloths if ye'd care to come and give me a hand, Mr Maclean.' She turned to the visitor. 'It's the whisky talking, ye ken. Hopefully he'll have a sore heed in the morn.'
'Good-night, Annie.'
'Get ye tae bed, Mr Maclean,' the old woman replied as she passed through the door.
Fraser and Douglas caught one another in a momentary big-hearted gaze.
'Well,' said Maclean, 'if you'll excuse me, I will turn in for my bed.'
'Yes, I figure I'll put my head down too,' said Andrew Douglas, and he rose to go.
Caroline thought : so he knows the truth. He must have seen how things are between us. She felt exposed and threatened by his knowledge. And she went to her separate room. She lay awake long in her bed, agitated, unsettled; drifting in and out of consciousness but finding little rest. Around three in the morning she thought she heard police-sirens along the glen-road. Then wind and rain had enveloped the night. The front passed over before dawn. In the morning, Fraser had already set off early, by the time she came down in her dressing-gown. The day seemed grey and showers still came and passed outside at irregular intervals. She found Andrew standing in the library with a book in his hand. Her friend had already finished his breakfast and looked fresh and washed.
He was reading Bishop Forbes. The room smelt musty, of leather and old books. He looked up and grinned. 'The boy was right you know,' he said. 'Seems like there really was a treasure... strange how the past keeps its hold on the present.'
The room seemed shady and quiet. 'What were you thinking of doing today?' Caroline asked, stretching, half-awake and feeling out of sorts.
'Well looking at the weather I thought I might visit the Cameron museum this morning - see what I could unearth. Then in the afternoon, when you've had time to rouse yourself, how about you take me for a drive round the coast to Glencoe?'
He was kind. She appreciated the gentleness at the heart of his strength. 'Sounds good' she yawned, smiling through bleary eyes.
The deerhounds loped through and entered the room. 'Come on Bruce. Come on Jingo,' she said. 'You know you're not allowed in here.' He thought she sounded like a girl again.
One other thing he wondered. 'Did you hear police-cars in the night?' he asked, as she led the dogs to the door. She raised her eyebrows.
'I thought I dreamed it.'
He frowned thoughtfully and returned to his book once more.