Miss Pink at the Edge of the World Read online

Miss Pink smiled. “I’d hoped so. He is so kind — and solid. Steady, I should say.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  They walked on a little way, Miss Pink wondering why these two hadn’t married. As if divining her thoughts Leila said: “He’ll talk to me about Bridget. He wants us to marry, you see, so there’s rather a special relationship between me and Bridget.”

  “But you know about the trouble already —” Miss Pink remembered that Leila didn’t know of Marcus’s revelation; a convenient moment hadn’t presented itself. Last night, when he had gone, her hostess had looked too exhausted to take more unpleasantness.

  “Why did you go away when Marcus came back last evening?” she asked curiously.

  Leila looked at her in surprise. “He’s an old friend of yours; I’ve only met him since I’ve been here. I thought that if he was going to unburden himself, he needed an intimate, not an acquaintance.”

  “Unburden himself?”

  “Didn’t he come to talk about Bridget? Hadn’t they quarrelled?”

  “No, they hadn’t quarrelled.”

  She repeated the story about Bridget’s narrow escape from death in Derbyshire. Innate caution ensured that she didn’t say Stark had attempted to kill the girl, but to a climber that pull on the rope, associated with his telling her not to secure herself and his rage after the event, could mean only one thing. Leila’s eyes filled with horror.

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered.

  “Does Bridget exaggerate?”

  “Never to that extent. Oh no, she wouldn’t fabricate a story like that. Why should she?”

  “On the other hand, it accounts for her fear of him.”

  Leila looked back at her cottage.

  “That’s all right,” Miss Pink said. “Marcus won’t leave her till Stark’s gone.”

  “Why did he do a thing like that?”

  “Stark?” The older woman hesitated, unwilling to worry her friend further with Marcus’s assertion that the man was a psychopath. “He’s inadequate,” she said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Er — sexually.”

  Leila stared at her with dawning awareness, then her eyes dropped. “Poor sod,” she said.

  Miss Pink was astonished. The other went on quickly: “He’s dangerous. I’ll have to tell Clive myself if she won’t.”

  “I think you should. Now you’ve told me what your relationship is with Clive, I don’t think feelings of delicacy should stand in your way. If Bridget doesn’t like it, that’s immaterial in comparison with possible consequences. She is frightened and if, as you say, she’s speaking the truth, then she has good reason to be.”

  “I’ll tell him tonight.”

  They turned inland towards MacKenzie’s croft. Roddie MacKenzie was sitting on a bench outside the open door, repairing a net. He got up at their approach and touched his cap. He was introduced formally to Miss Pink who was struck again by the size of these men. He was well over six feet tall, and the broad frame and pale eyes spoke of Norse blood. He asked how she was enjoying her holiday and told her that she’d brought the good weather. She responded courteously and admired a couple of Welsh Blacks beyond the fence.

  “Aye,” MacKenzie said with a trace of contempt, “but I’d like Jerseys.”

  “Oh Roddie!” Leila sounded exasperated. “With MacQuarrie!”

  “I’m after persuadin’ my cousin at Kinloch to buy a Jersey bull. We’re not progressive in Scamadale,” he assured Miss Pink. “You’ve got to move with the times. Mr Perry’s improved the grazin’ no end, but we’re just raisin’ beef. Think what we could do with the milk from a Jersey herd!”

  “What would you do with it?”

  “Why, we’d be after sellin’ it to the tourists.”

  Miss Pink raised her eyebrows and looked meaningly up the glen.

  “I’d widen that road,” he went on with enthusiasm, “and I’d buy a good big van and take the milk out every day to Kinloch — and in the season we’d have caravans down here!”

  “Now Roddie,” Leila warned.

  “But they was sayin’ so last night.” He jerked his head towards the broch. “That one with the short hair was tellin’ me. A caravan site, he said, and a shop to sell things. We’d have a toilet bloc and a tarred parkin’ ground and what he called a play area for the children with swings and things. We’d get all kinds here: climbers as well. They do it on Skye: two hundred tents they have in one place, that’s just climbers alone. We’d soon get known.”

  “Don’t let Mr Perry hear you talking like this.” Leila was serious and annoyed.

  “It’s progress, ma’am,” he protested, countering Leila but addressing Miss Pink. “Do you know, we haven’t even got television. Even people in slums got television. With the money from the tourists we could put up a T.V. mast on the top. We could have coloured television: think of that! I’d buy a Lambertini.”

  “What’s that?”

  He shuffled his feet and grinned shyly. “Italian motor car: better than an E-type; he said so —” jerking his head towards the broch again.

  “Lamborghini?” Leila was incredulous.

  “That’s it: Lamborghini. He’s going to send me a picture.”

  “Did he tell you what they cost?” Miss Pink asked curiously.

  “Ach, I’d get one second-hand.”

  “But why?”

  “I got a craze for speed, ma’am.”

  After a tense silence Leila said flatly: “I need some prawns, Roddie; when are you going out?”

  That matter settled, and having made sure that a kitten would be kept for Sadie, the two ladies made their way towards Thundergay.

  “He’s a little subversive,” Miss Pink remarked.

  Leila exploded. “Everything’s going wrong! It’s that wretched man. He’s upset Sadie, and now MacKenzie. You notice how he gravitates to the most vulnerable people? MacKenzie always gets these silly ideas with the holiday season and trippers wondering what we find to do here, but this is the limit — Lamborghinis! I expect Stark improved on the model as he was talking to him and gauging his ignorance. Now I see what Bridget meant. He’s a true agitator. You can imagine him getting a big strike going, or starting a revolution — and not from pecuniary motives either; he’d do it out of mischief.”

  “Like Iago.”

  Leila looked at her friend morosely. “I’ll have to tell Clive.”

  Miss Pink thought that she’d already decided to do that.

  They were walking through the woods and now the trees thinned to reveal a cottage with a hedge of flowering currant beside the gate. Ian Morrison appeared at the open door and invited them inside. His living room was comfortably if sparsely furnished, with shelves of Penguin books rubbing shoulders with large technical works that must be his own. They chatted about his writing and Miss Pink remarked that he would find an enormous difference between Scamadale and the campus of an American university. He acknowledged the truth of this ruefully.

  “I feel I’ve been here for far longer than two months. The place seems to have a kind of magic about it. Did you know that MacLeod’s grandfather’s cousin caught a seal-woman?” He smiled shyly. “An anthropologist would say the place is different because the community has had such a hard struggle for survival, but magic was integrated in that. It will be a terribly hard place to leave.”

  Leila, who had been glancing through a book, looked up at this. “You could do worse than stay,” she said gently.

  “I would prefer to stay,” he assured her. “I mean, America, well, could orcinus orca compensate? I know Clive would like me to stay but he’d be thinking in terms of a permanency, wouldn’t he?”

  “Why not?”

  “Alone?” He looked quite forlorn. Miss Pink moved to the door. Behind her Ian burst out: “She doesn’t know I’m there, as a man; she’s like the Sleeping Beauty —”

  She was watching the bees in the flowering currant when Leila emerged. They set off towards the woods in silence, disregarding
the lambs which they’d come to see. In the shelter of the trees Miss Pink remarked facetiously that spring could be a troublesome season.

  Leila sighed. “He’s gone to try to find her. I told him about the cat and he can’t bear to think of her grieving on her own. I hope he doesn’t find out where she was last night.”

  “You think she was with Stark?”

  The other shrugged. “Sleeping Beauty! She was wide awake last night.”

  “But mentally blind,” Miss Pink said.

  *

  Clive had not returned to the glen when Hector came to Soutra to take them out in the boat, but he said Elspeth and Jessie would mind the sheep. The two ladies agreed to go with him, Miss Pink privately thinking that a sea trip might allow them to forget unpleasant events for a while; in any case, Stark would be fully occupied with the Old Man and could cause no trouble before evening, by which time they would have returned themselves. The task of telling Clive might be left until later.

  They arranged themselves in the boat and Hector pushed off. The outboard fired at the first pull of the string and everyone smiled. They were all familiar with the vagaries of outboards. The gap between the boat and the shore widened, the sun sparkled on the water, and Miss Pink turned to speak to her friend to find the latter staring at a plastic bucket in the bottom of the boat.

  “What’s the bait for, Hector?”

  “For the pots,” He was surprised.

  “Which pots?”

  “At the back of the Old Man. I’ve no’ put the others down yet.”

  Leila made no further remark and Miss Pink reflected that, really, it would be carrying things too far if they were to allow Stark to disrupt the normal working of the community — and why should they be worried about lifting lobster pots underneath his climb? They didn’t have to talk to him. But it was a pity they weren’t going north instead of south. As it was, one must concentrate on other matters; the seascape and the cliffs were huge compared with one climber. Here he might be cut down to scale. She started to question Hector about the wildlife.

  Hector was an authority. What she had taken for duck some distance away, he told her was a raft of black guillemots. They talked birds then and he went closer to the cliffs so that she could see the nesting colonies: fulmars and gulls, rock doves, auks and cormorants. The tide had turned now but had not yet covered rough boulder strips at the foot of the cliffs. The rock was red, darkening to black with vertical intrusions of brown earth, but the lower cliffs, those which rose out of Calava Bay, were all shades from faintest rose to carmine, set off by greys and streaks of ivory.

  As the tiny boat puttered under the cliffs, cormorants dived from ledges and popped up behind them; auks came in to a three-point squat, fulmars paced the boat lazily and gulls watched like dogs, ready to scream a protest if the bows should turn shorewards.

  As they approached the stack, Hector headed out to sea, giving the plinth a wide berth on its northern side. No one was visible.

  On three sides the Old Man was fraught with over hangs, in fact, as they passed beneath it, it appeared to be in a state of disintegration: about to topple into the sea, an effect which no doubt originated in the movement of the boat, and clouds above the summit.

  They came round the seaward end of the stack and as its southern aspect came in view, they saw the climbers immediately, floodlit by the sun. They were halfway up the tower and Stark was climbing a crack immediately above Pincher. The leader looked round when he heard the engine, then back at the rock. Directly above him, the crack ran into an overhang, and on a level with that and to the left, was the smooth slab which Pincher had remarked on yesterday from the cliff top. Beyond the slab again was the outer corner of the stack, layered intricately below what looked like a spacious if airy ledge.

  The engine idled with a strangled chuckle and small waves splashed against the hull. Hector made no move to lift the first pot, and the climbers in the boat watched the climbers on the rock, forgetting, for a moment, the significance of Stark. They could follow every move: the twisted ankles in the crack, toes wedged in hidden nicks, an arm reaching easily over the bulge, searching until the fingers found a hold, the leg out at a long angle, the other foot brought high in the crack. The movements were slow and deliberate and Stark flowed up the overhang with the elegance of a cat.

  Miss Pink’s neck ached. She lowered her head and looked at the sea. There was no sign of the killer whales. When she looked again, Stark had crossed to the left and was above the slab. At this point he stopped and, in what looked like a precarious position, extracted a piton from the cluster at his belt and reached for the hammer.

  “Curious place for a piton,” Leila observed.

  “You don’t usually put one there?”

  “No, we go straight on to the ledge on the corner and bring the second man up.”

  Stark selected a tape sling from the bunch round his neck and clipped it to the piton. He added two more, and a long red ribbon, the parts joined by snap links, hung down the slab.

  “I don’t understand what he’s up to.” Leila sounded almost surly.

  To their astonishment, he retreated: down the overhang and the crack, and rejoined Pincher.

  “You’d better lift your pots, Hector,” Leila urged. She indicated the climbers: “They’re not doing anything interesting.”

  The crofter nodded and opened the throttle to come up to the first float. He caught the line with a short hook and hauled in the pot. It was empty and he rebaited, throwing out the old piece of fish. A waiting black-back splashed in like a porpoise and gulped down the bait as if it were a sprat. He threw back the pot and started to come round to the second float.

  “What an odd thing to do.” Miss Pink was staring upwards and they followed the direction of her glance to see that Stark was climbing again, but left of his original crack, making for the slab.

  “But that looks much harder,” she protested.

  “Well, he’s got the slings for a handhold across the slab,” Leila pointed out, “though why he wants to do the slab at all I can’t understand. He’s been above it once. Why make it awkward?”

  “Perhaps Pincher isn’t competent to follow the crack?”

  “It’s not hard; you saw Stark on it.”

  Stark came to the slab and reached high to touch the lowest snap link at the end of the slings. He drew them towards him, moved up another foot or so, then sidled to the right, away from the slab. He glanced down at his second and his lips moved. Pincher shifted his feet and nodded. Stark took a grip on the slings and ran — leftwards, across the rock and the slab, reached out with his left hand and gripped the far corner. Released, the slings dropped back to the vertical. He crouched for a moment, a bunched spider silhouetted against the sky, and then with a couple of moves he was up and standing on the ledge.

  Hector drew in the second pot while the others murmured their astonishment at Stark’s strange manoeuvre when he could have reached the corner simply by stepping across to it from the highest point he’d reached the first time.

  There was nothing in the second pot. Hector re-baited and as the wet line ran through his hands they were hailed from the stack.

  “How’s the channel?” Stark called.

  Hector glanced towards the shore. “It’s full,” he shouted back.

  There was silence from the stack, then: “Take us across,” Stark shouted.

  Hector looked at Leila.

  “Miss West!” Stark called.

  She stared upwards. There was another pause. “Cut the engine!” he shouted.

  “Switch off,” Leila said urgently.

  Hector stopped the engine and they heard the water washing on the plinth and the cries of the gulls.

  “Will Miss West allow MacKay to take us across the channel?” Stark called mockingly.

  Leila’s hands were trembling. Miss Pink raised her voice. “How long will you be?”

  “A few minutes.”

  “Have you looked at the overhangs abov
e you?”

  “Don’t antagonise him,” Leila pleaded. The others stared at her.

  “We’re coming down,” Stark shouted.

  “Oh Lord,” Miss Pink muttered, “another day spent here.”

  “Tell him if they go to the top, I’ll send the boat back for them,” Leila urged.

  Miss Pink repeated this but was ignored.

  “I’m coming down,” Stark repeated. “Have the boat ready.”

  “Ach,” Hector grunted, his hand on the string. “It’s home for us — and when Mr Perry hears about this, he’ll run them out of the glen.”

  “Put us down on the beach,” Leila said. “Then you can take them across the channel.”

  “You’re no’ goin’ to do as they say!”

  “Take us ashore, Hector.”

  He put them down on a small dry beach round the corner from the great cave. They watched in silence as Stark returned to Pincher, not by way of the slab with the slings, but by stepping across to the piton and reversing the crack for the second time.

  “There’s something queer about those slings,” Miss Pink muttered.

  Pincher started down the bottom section of the stack, Stark paying out his rope. Miss Pink turned to study the cliffs above the beach. There was a deep depression, too steep to be a gully, running upwards to twist round the back of a buttress. The rock was rough and clear of vegetation.

  “This looks like a climb.”

  Leila turned. “It is,” she said without much interest. “It’s a Severe called Tangleblock.”

  “Why didn’t they approach the stack this way?”

  Leila stared at her blankly and Miss Pink was suddenly angry, realising how much the exchange with Stark had upset her friend. It was Hector who answered: “There’s the mouth of the big cave between here and the Old Man; they couldna get across.”

  Now Pincher was on the plinth and Stark was descending. The crofter pushed off and made for the channel.

  “I’m sorry about this.” Leila sounded abstracted.

  “As you said: it’s better not to antagonise him.”

  “I mean, I’m sorry you’ve been involved.”

  “My dear! What are friends for?”

  Confidences, Miss Pink thought, answering her own question, and waited.