After many months at sea, our voyage came to a merciful halt. My mouth felt like the bottom of an ashtray as I got back into the car.
Angus’s place was located on a mostly single-lane B road, running over the hills from just north of Dunoon towards the Isle of Bute, a beautiful and enjoyable drive in good weather. That afternoon, with sleet again beginning to fall, the trip was automobile hell, consisting solely of trying to prevent two lives from coming to a premature end by sliding across the ice into a tree, another vehicle, a rock face or falling off a cliff. The laybys are decidedly narrow, and full-length transports zip over the road without a care. Even the thought of meeting a Mini Cooper had me breaking out in a sweat.
That Regina proved to be a nervous passenger didn’t help matters. “Jesus! You didn’t tell me your friend lived in the back of beyond,” she said after a particularly nasty slide that ended far too close to a rocky outcrop. “Why would anyone live in this desolation?”
“There’s a good reason,” I said, pulling hard on the wheel in an effort to straighten out.
After another hair-raising quarter of an hour, we’d slid our way down off the hills to the end of Loch Striven, passing the small hydroelectric power station there, then started up the steep road on the other side. If it hadn’t been recently sanded, we’d never have made it. About halfway up the hill, I turned left off the road and down the icy drive, gingerly pulling to a stop next to a beat-up green Land Rover Angus had purchased from a local sheep farmer.
The drive ended in a few boulders, all that kept the unwary from tumbling down a steep slope and into Loch Striven below. In summer, the grass-covered hillside would be dotted with contentedly munching sheep while gulls, calling raucously, wheeled in the air above. The ever-present wind blowing up the loch would carry the wanderlust-inspiring tang of seaweed and salt water on its wings.
“This is why my friend chooses to live in the back of beyond,” I said, indicating the breathtaking vista with a sweep of my hand.
Even with the heavy, leaden sky, driving sleet, and the teeth of a frigid wind bearing down at the bad end of a January day, the view was still worth taking in.
In clear weather, you could see far down the loch towards Bute. Angus’s stone farmhouse, clinging to the side of its hill like some sort of mad architect’s nightmare, had, in the owner’s words,“as fine a view as many a laird would pay good money to possess.” There was no place in the world Angus would rather live than in this place in his beloved Argyll. No matter where he might be, organizing the loading of mountains of gear on the never-ending tour of some band on the other side of the planet, or getting on yet another tour bus, his heart and soul were always firmly here.
I’d barely had time to switch off the engine when the “Laird o’ the Manor” bounded out the side door, no shoes, no coat, red beard and long red hair blowing in the gale. “Michael! I’ve been keeping my eye out for you since noon, what with this weather and...bloody hell!” Poor Angus braked to a halt and gawped, shock covering his face. “What have you done to her, you bloody great bastard!”
I got out. “I’ll pay for the damage in full, Angus. It was beyond my control.”
“But what happened?”
“Well...it’s like this,” I began, but got no further.
Regina was out of the car, hugging her coat around her to keep out the wind. “It’s my fault.”
“Who the hell are you?” Angus demanded.
“Michael stopped to help me and...this happened.” She faltered, looking rather intimidated by Angus’s bristling beard, not to mention his bristling tone.
“All right,” I said to both, “can we at least go inside to talk about this? It’s brutal out here.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Angus responded. “In we go, then.”
Life at Chez Angus revolved around his sitting room and kitchen, which shared the front wall of the house, both of which had enormous picture windows framing the vista down to the loch. We’d spent many an evening sitting in front of one or the other, drinking single malt and talking quietly while daylight drifted away to darkness. There were three other rooms on the ground floor, and I don’t think I’d ever done more than stick my nose in them.
Stomping our feet in the hallway, I noticed that the sitting room beyond looked as if an avalanche of loose paper had recently passed through, leaving the floor, tables, furniture, every horizontal surface buried.
“Please excuse the mess. I’m in the middle of doing my taxes. I didn’t know that Michael would be bringing a guest, or I’d have straightened up a bit.”
I let the little dig (and major lie) slide. Regina stood in the doorway, and it finally twigged with Angus that she expected someone to help her off with her coat. Behind her back, he raised an eyebrow, but kept his thoughts to himself as he took Regina’s coat, hanging it next to mine on the pegs beside the door.
We picked our way through the sitting room and into the kitchen, where it was warm and steamy and smelled as if Angus had been doing his laundry in the new little washer/dryer set he’d recently purchased—a big step up from the old laundry tub and drying room.
“Can I get you something to warm you? Coffee? Tea? A wee dram?”
“A dram for me,” I said. “I need it after that drive.”
Regina seemed hesitant, then shrugged. “I’ll have some, too.”
Angus went over to a cupboard. “Then I’ll just have to join you.”
Sitting down at the table, he lined up three smallish tumblers andpoured an amber measure into each. From a pitcher of water, he then doled out the merest splash into each glass. As we each took one, Angus intoned, “Slainte mhath!” and swallowed his scotch in a gulp. Slamming down his glass, he fixed each of us with a hard stare. “Now tell me just what the bloody hell happened to my beautiful automobile!”
***
“I still think you’re a great fool to get yourself boxed in like that. I wouldn’t have slowed down until I’d put a hundred miles or more between myself and those bastards,” Angus said from over by the stove, where he was cooking. “I’m lucky there’s anything left of my car!”
Regina and I had given Angus an edited version of what had taken place the previous night. Even though we hadn’t discussed what to say beforehand, working in tandem, we supplied enough information to satisfy him, the interesting thing being what we’d left out. I felt it was up to Regina if she wanted to be as frank with him as she’d been with me. She said nothing. I also left out the part about the handguns. They aren’t seen that much in the UK —being highly illegal. Knives and pieces of pipe Angus could understand. Guns were a different matter. He would have questioned those. So as far as he knew, two carloads of thugs had been after Regina, and she didn’t know why. I’d happened along, tried to help, and the bashed-in Jaguar was the result.
“It just shows you can’t go anywhere these days,” Angus told us unnecessarily.
By that time, we were all growlingly hungry, and Angus offered to make some neeps and tatties and sausage—about the only thing he eats or can cook, for that matter. Regina had to have it all explained to her and looked as if she’d rather be served something else, but in the end gamely decided to take a chance, the alternative being a bowl of porridge.
“It’ll be good. You’ll see,” Angus said as he came over and poured another ‘wee dram’ in each of our glasses. “I have some rather splendid venison and oatmeal sausages.”
Regina looked rather appalled. “Venison and oatmeal?”
“Aye, lassie. Tuck into a couple of those, and you’ll soon be farting like a hero!”
The poor girl coloured deeply and hastily took a gulp of her whisky—too big or too quickly because she began coughing, to the point where