Rannock

‘Hi, I’m looking for a Coroline Urquarhart.’

He didn’t need to hear any more. Maybe it was because he didn’t like her coming to his home unannounced and expecting to be invited in, the entitlement of high cheekbones, the nobility of long legs that seemed to say every door is open to me. And although he knew she wouldn’t think of herself as being young, at the wrong side of thirty: youth brought with it hopeful expectations. The slight touch of understated expensive perfume said everything about her. It was all very beguiling, a witches brew and, of course, there was that little girl lost look, which might have been the only honest thing about her, for it was Rannock and sometimes when the clouds came down and the hills seemed to push in closer to the croft it was as if him and a few sheep dotting the hills were the only creatures on earth. Her car, one of those shiny new fangled beasts, sat purring behind her, but on a single dirt track road it would be like turning a Clipper into the wind.

‘I don’t speak to the press,’ he said, pushing the croft door shut.

‘You don’t understand.’ She put her arm up and out blocking the door from being shut. It was as practiced a movement and as foreign to him as Shiatsu. The toss of her long shiny hair, the serrulate sweep of skin and silk and hint of breast seemed to cut his senses adrift, ‘and besides,’ she added with the ghost of a vermilion smile, ‘it’s raining.’

This is Scotland, he was tempted to say, but simply nodded.

Her long fingers and painted nails fluttered, like an Admiral butterfly on the wood panel of the door, unsure whether it was safe to leave. She looked back at her car, with the engine running and then at his face. ‘I would have called, but you’re not in the book. And there doesn’t seem to be a mobile number for you.’ The wind began its slow long whoop through the Glen driving the rain before it and as she looked at the mountains shivered, her hand falling to her side. ‘And I don’t know if you get a signal up here’. The assignment was not going as she’d planned and it would soon be getting dark. ‘Do you still indulge in…Art?’ She knew she made it sound like pornography, but felt it was time to be blunt.

‘I’m not in the book,’ he said simply.

She should have worn her sensible black shoes, but couldn’t resist the kick of a heel, and was caught between going or staying. ‘It’s a hired car,’ she offered, as some kind of explanation.

He didn’t reply just seemed to look through her at the remains of an old cottage with a gap-toothed smile with rotten lathes and the white plaster breaking away, with a lean-to attached, some kind of bothy, or something. She couldn’t remember the right word for that sort of thing. ‘This rain,’ she said, pushing her chest out and holding her bag over her head to protect her. ‘I did write.’

‘I don’t get much mail.’ He pulled the door open a little so it didn’t snag on the lintel when he closed it.

‘I’ll just get the car, shall I?’ She turned up her collar of her expensive coat and her heels went clacking down the path. The engine died and seemed to bring a mouthy silence between them.

The cottage walls were thick. It was too early in the day for a fire, but he sat in his rocking chair, with his collie dog's cold nose nudging his hand to be petted, with his head cocked, listening, waiting and half hoping to hear the engine starting again and the big car pulling away.

The rap on the door was not a surprise. He rocked back and forth, looking into the hearth as if the fire was lit. He could sense rather than hear her scrambling around the side of the cottage like booted mice and smiled thinking of her fancy shoes leaving the stony paths and meeting the sump and the marshy ground outside his windows. The dog growled as she circled the cottage like a wraith. It didn’t take her long until she was back standing at the door. He stroked the dog, fluid movements down its flank, now an expert at waiting, until she was away.

The latch clicked up and the dog barked. ‘Co-ooh,’ she whispered at him or the dog he wasn’t quite sure. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I’ve hurt my ankle.’ The light left early when the clouds set in. She stood like a high stepper on a diving board, the long drip of her nylon-clad leg out for him to inspect.

The dog trotted over to sniff at her proffered hand and to inspect her scent up close, before rolling over on its back to be petted and fussed over with baby talk. She tried not to show the cottage was a shock to her. There was a heavy sea chest and the walls were daubed white inside and out, but it seemed as hollow as a biscuit tin.

‘You want tea?’ he asked poking his toe against the kettle, hung on a hook and pushing it to the middle of the metal griddle and searching through his pockets for matches. ‘Or whisky,’ he said, running the match along the edge of the kindling with the threat of an eternity of burnt thumb and forefinger.

She hobbled over to the fireplace; the dog following his new mistress and settled into the rocking chair across from him. She leaned forward her cleavage peeking out and gradually eased her foot of out her shoe. She was a bit worried about splinters, and the chair didn’t help, but eased her foot down onto the rough tread and rolled it on the ball of the joint as if still practicing for en pointe.

‘Do you see the bruising?’ She looked at him through her long lashes, abandoning the dog lying on the hearth waiting to be pampered and petted and giving him her undivided attention. She eased her foot up and out and he found it fluttering in his groin, her skirt riding up on the snagging on the chair, taking her time to smooth down the gawky adolescent awkwardness and the unseemly nature of him inadvertently looking up and perhaps seeing too much.

‘Whisky or tea?’ he asked, gently easing her foot off his lap.

‘Emmm both.’ She eased her foot down slipping it back into her shoe. ‘I hope that doesn’t sound too greedy.’

He crouched down and adjusted the kettle over the fire. ‘I’ll get the whisky and the glasses.’ He seemed taller somehow in the half-light of the cottage, dancing above her like a shadow, before striding through a closed door at the back of the room.

She stood with her back to the fire, her eyes searching for some hint of his past life, but apart from the big trunk there was nothing and she thought it might be locked. He was back too soon, carrying the two glasses and bottle like an awkward boy, before she had a chance to find out.

‘Do you still?’ She couldn’t find the right words, ‘Dabble?’

He fiddled with the kettle. ‘How do you like your tea? I’ve no milk.’

‘That’s fine. That’s fine.’ The loose tea floated in her mug made her want to scream: had he never heard of teabags?

He passed her a glass of whisky so that she could put the pond-life he considered tea down on the floor. She tried not to screw her face up as she took a sip. But she smiled instead, showing the white dental perfection of porcelain coloured teeth and clinking her glass against his, as if toasting him.

‘Did you say something?’ she asked, ‘was it Gaelic?’

‘No. I think it was just idiot English.’

She was sure that he’d been involved in all that kind of Nationalist rot before… ‘Chin. Chin.’ She raised her glass to cover her embarrassment.

‘Yes.’ He nodded curtly, cupping the glass of whiskey as if it gave off heat.

She looked about her. There was no sign of anything. Perhaps in the other room, she thought, then her eyes settled on the trunk. She estimated that any pieces in it would be worth tens of millions. She’d thought about bringing a photographer, but nobody was sure it was THE Jake Tilby and the man was a notorious hermit.

‘This is nice,’ she held up her empty glass, ‘when was your last visitor?’

His knee bumped against her leg as he poured her another drink. ‘What year is it now?’ he asked.

She laughed uproariously, flinging the mane of her ebony black hair back and exposing her long white neck to the firelight. He’d said nothing more and she wasn’t quite sure when she looked at him again, in the flickering shadows, that he had been joking.

‘Can I see your latest piece?’ She ran her lips around the rim of the glass.

‘There is no need,’ he said, sniffing the delicate bloom of the whisky glass. ‘You are already in it.’

She looked out of the side of her eyes. Then her head rolled in a most unlady like manner from side- to- side, scanning the cottage like a burglar casing the joint. She could see nothing, but that fixed smile on his face.

‘I work with different materials now.’ He took a small sip from his glass.

‘What kind of materials?’ she finally asked.

He took a while to answer, as if words like his whisky had to be rolled around his tongue a sparrow’s drop at a time. ‘Sound.’ He looked at her and then after what seemed a decent mourning period for having spoken, added, ‘land’ and ‘scapes,’ as if the two words didn’t quite fit together.

Landscapes she could understand. His earliest work had been famous for its immediacy and otherworldliness as if he’d been taking pictures of one of the moons of Jupiter. The sound stuff seemed like all that modern rubbish, about dislocating and frightening people. She was no expert, but guessed they wouldn’t be worth anything unless the man came as part of the exhibition package. ‘What’s a soundscape?’ she asked, all business now.

He sat down, his body rocking back and forth in the chair, as if he was waiting for the right moment.

‘You remember the story about…’ He stopped the slow squeak of the chair.

‘…Different people…’

‘…And how…their size was dependent on how much wealth they had…those the size of pin were…and then there were the Rockerfellers the size of city-block walking along, blocking out the light for everyone else…’

She snorted in derision. ‘The Gates, the Buffets, the Mittals, the Murdochs.’

He nodded. ‘I’ve done something similar only with sound. A Sound-scape mimics the wealth of individuals and translates it into noise.’

‘Is it on just now?’ She looked about her for the source of power. ‘Is that what you mean by I’m part of it?’

He nodded.

She cocked her head to one side and listened to the fire crackling and the dog scratching and wind and rain battering into the walls outside and the drip, drip of water falling into water. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she whispered.

‘It’s the pitch,’ he said.

She forced herself to sit completely still. A vision of her sitting in Mrs King’s class when she was little listening to Rhyme Time crept into her mind. That seemed like the last time she listened so intensely. Still, with a shake of the head, she had to admit defeat. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she whispered.

‘The human ear is attuned to frequencies of 1000 to 4000 hertz. But our range extends from 20 to 20000. The big hitters, the Rockerfellers of this world, make the smallest noise and are drowned out by the chatter of everyday wealth and the jungle drum roars of bankers. The poor and dispossessed ring starts early in the morning around 2am at around 180 000 Hz.'

She frowned suddenly conscious of making too much noise as she sipped at her whisky. ‘You mean then that we can’t hear it?’

She seemed to hear him shrug rather than hear him. ‘What’s the point in that then?’ she whispered, her hand snaking into her pocket and turning the recorder off.

‘What about this landscape thing then?’ she asked, making a face as she flung back the last of the whisky and banged the glass down on the hearth.

The engine started first time. The radio didn’t work, just seemed to produce a high-pitched squeal. She had to make a twenty-two-point turn rather than a three- point- turn and as she came down the bray she had to brake hard and there were two or three corners that she didn’t remember seeing on the way up the hill.

The old man sat patting the dog in front of the newly lit fire.

‘The noisy English woman is away,’ said a quiet voice from the back room, before sitting in the other rocking chair.

‘She’s not the nosiest’ said the old man, sipping at his whisky, watching the play of firelight.