The Steep Approach to Garbadale (45 page)

‘I see.’ She smiled broadly, too. ‘You’re showing off.’

‘Nah, me bum was getting sore,’ he said, gesturing.

She nodded. ‘Well, if you are going to fall overboard, be sure to give me plenty of warning.’

‘Will do.’

She turned to face the wilderness of water, hill and sky that was all that was ahead of them.

 
They ate their lunch while still under way, to make more time for fishing when they stopped.

Half an hour later they moored at the little sun-bleached, pale orange buoy floating fifty metres or so off the portion of shore between the two burns draining the north-west slope of Meall an Aonaich. The sky was almost clear of cloud, though they were in the shadow of the long western ridge leading to Ben More Assynt, so the air felt cool. The wind had dropped a little here in what was essentially a wide bay between the two mountains. Almost the only sound was of waves slapping against the clinkered planks of the boat.

After he’d shut down the outboard, the silence had rushed in like something more than absence, like some anti-sound that was still somehow as loud as the noise it had suddenly replaced. He remembered the burglar alarm, heard from his bedroom during that summer night in Richmond, twenty years earlier. He recalled it as though it was for the last time, gently pushing it away as if it was something that he could now safely consign to the shadowy depths beneath their little boat.

Alban closed his eyes at one point to concentrate on what he could hear. He heard the sound of Sophie’s clothes sliding over each other as she reached back and forth, arm swaying, casting. He heard the faint, rasping sound of the reel. Somewhere a seagull called, sounding plaintive and lonely and lost, unechoing.

He opened his eyes, glanced at Sophie - she didn’t seem to have noticed him closing his eyes - and felt - even though there was a hint of sadness in there, too - oddly, almost blissfully happy.

‘Bit choppy for fly fishing,’ Sophie said after a few casts.

Alban was inclined to agree. They switched to spinners, using the smaller rods, casting differently, further, reeling in smoothly.

‘How close do you think this vote’s going to be?’ Sophie asked him, flicking the rod back and then snapping forward, sending the little spinner up just far enough to rise above the ridge shadow and into the sunlight, making it glitter briefly before plunging first into the shade and then into the deeper darkness of the loch.

‘Closer than most people think,’ Alban said, reeling in with a slow, measured motion. ‘Close enough to make Spraint raise their offer.’

Sophie glanced at him. ‘You reckon?’

‘If they see the way the wind’s blowing they’ll raise it before the EGM. If they’re as smart as they should be.’

‘They have the authority for that?’ Her voice was quiet. They were both speaking very softly now with so little other sound around them. Stuck out in the middle of a chopping loch in broad, slightly chilly daylight it gave their conversation an oddly enclosed, even intimate feeling.

‘Up to some unspecified point, allegedly,’ Alban said. ‘Feaguing’s senior enough to double their initial offer, I’d guess. Aunt Kath feels the same way, and Win. She insisted they send people who could negotiate on the ground rather than just some ceremonial team with a rubber stamp, a crate of bubbly and some pious words about the proud family tradition being safe in their hands. Above a certain point - which they’re not giving away, obviously - they have to phone home, but even if they seem to do that it could be a ploy. You know, like when a car salesman says he has to go and talk with his manager to discuss what you’re asking for your trade-in and just goes for a coffee or a dump instead and then comes back shaking his head and saying, sorry, if it was up to him, but, gee, his boss is such a hard-ass.’ Alban retrieved his lure, cast it again.

Sophie nodded slowly, gathering her own small silvery spinner back in. ‘I think I’m going to vote no,’ she said.

Alban looked at her. ‘Well, that’s a surprise. I was sure you’d be for selling.’

‘They’ve offered me a job,’ she told him.

‘Spraint.’

‘Yeah. Say they’ll keep me on, with promotion, more money, stock.’

‘You got that in writing?’

‘No.’ She sounded amused.

‘And? What? That made you change your mind? Somehow that offer was counter-productive?’

‘No, but it got me thinking.’

‘Always dangerous.’

She grinned. ‘I realised I like what I’m doing just now. Maybe in five or ten years’ time I’d be ready to take on something like what they’re offering, but right now I’m happy enough. And in addition I don’t know that we have the right to sell out the firm when there’s another generation that might criticise us for it.’ She glanced at Alban.

‘Getting broody?’ he asked, making a wild guess.

‘It’s something I’ve thought of,’ she admitted. ‘There’s a guy I’m seeing, back home.’

‘Ah-ha.’ He still got this odd feeling when she said ‘home’ and meant the US.

‘Same guy I’ve been seeing all this time. Same guy I switched courses for, way back.’

Ah-hah, he thought. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You have been patient.’ Maybe, he thought, too patient; like me.

‘Yeah,’ she said ruefully. ‘You’re not kidding. He’s been married, had two kids and divorced again in the meantime, but,’ she sighed, ‘we’re back together again. After all that.’

Dear God, he thought. I knew nothing of this. What a gulf, what an ocean, what an Atlantic between us. If we are so much the sum of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us, I barely know this woman at all. Who - where - is the Sophie you think you know?

‘I guess we’re pretty serious,’ she said. ‘We’ve talked about marriage, kids. I’ve always been, I don’t know; unsure, but, hey,’ she glanced at him again, ‘just getting to that age, you know? Don’t want to leave it too much longer.’

‘I’m sure you’d make a wonderful mother,’ he told her.

‘Gee, thanks.’ She said it like she thought he’d meant to be sarcastic.

‘Seriously,’ he said.

She looked at him again, then lifted the dripping lure from the water, swung it back, clicking the reel and casting again. The spinner headed high and struck sunlight once more, glinting briefly. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Okay. But. So. I think I’ll vote against.’

‘Me and my pitiful hundred shares will be with you. Much to my surprise.’

‘Yeah, I think Win was surprised too.’

‘You told her?’

‘She just plain asked, dude,’ she told him. ‘Came right out with it, as though she was confused and thought I’d already told her, which I hadn’t. And I’m pretty sure she knew I hadn’t. Good acting, though. She’s a manipulative old bird, isn’t she?’

Alban laughed. ‘Yes. Yes she is. I thought I was the only person who felt that way.’

‘No, I wouldn’t put much past her.’

‘Same here.’

‘We’re sure nobody’s done any private deals with Spraint?’ Sophie asked.

‘Hard to see how they could. The family trust has first refusal on any proposed share sell.’

‘Okay.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Is it true you and Fielding made up some sort of road show, drumming up support for the Anti cause?’

‘Yeah, at Win’s suggestion, too, apparently.’

‘Uh-huh. I had her down as a seller, too.’

‘Not that we had much effect, far as I could see,’ Alban said.

‘No?’

‘Well, not much.’ He stopped reeling in, letting his spinner sink a little. ‘Though it did occur to me,’ he said, ‘that what we were really doing was upping the price.’

Sophie glanced at him.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe Win does want to sell, but not at the current price. She reckoned we were rolling over for them too low, so she thought she’d try and up the numbers who’d vote against. The idea being that Spraint realise there’s more opposition than they were expecting so they have to offer more. Win gets her way. But what she wants is just a higher price, not outright rejection.’

‘Hmm.’ Sophie did not sound as impressed with this bit of vicarious Machiavellianism as Alban had hoped. ‘But you’d think she would be the one person who wanted to keep the family firm together,’ she said. ‘She’s the matriarch, this is her watch. She ought to be the guardian of the family values. And the family valuables.’

‘I think Win’s secretly - actually, not that secretly - an egomaniac,’ Alban said. ‘Everything has to revolve around her. Soon she’ll be dead, or so infirm she won’t be able to control the family and the firm any more, and she hates the thought of somebody else being in charge. Better to sell up, liquidate it all, dissolve it into some big corporation. So she gets to be like a bookend, founding father Henry being the other. A fitting sense of finality for her.’

‘Okay,’ Sophie said, nodding slowly. She seemed slightly more taken with this piece of analysis. ‘Well, I suppose.’ She looked at Alban. ‘What if it’s worked too well? What if nobody wants to sell now?’

‘Well, some people definitely do; Aunt Kath for one. But I’ve been doing the arithmetic and it’s tighter than anybody was expecting.’

‘Interesting,’ Sophie said.

‘Oh,’ Alban sighed, reeling in, ‘isn’t it all?’

 
They were both standing up, letting their feet take their weight for a change, confident that the boat’s gentle rocking wasn’t close to tipping them overboard and used enough to the motion by now to be easy with it, casting smoothly without disturbing the boat appreciably. They’d caught a couple of slim, glistening brown trout each. They had been borderline small so they’d thrown them back.

He’d wondered if they’d talk much about the old days, about what they’d meant to each other, but they hadn’t. They’d mentioned Lydcombe a couple of times, San Francisco just once:

‘I’m not sure I ever apologised to you properly for getting you into trouble with your boyfriend,’ he’d said.

‘Dan? Yeah, that was a tad embarrassing.’ Her eyes had gone wide. She’d shrugged. ‘My own fault. I got us both drunk, I’d been thinking about our grass-flattening escapades at Lydcombe. I just felt horny and you were there.’ She’d smiled. ‘Also, I was kind of doing it for closure, though I somehow neglected to inform you of this at the time. I always worried you were doing it because you wanted us to be together for ever or something.’ She made a snorting noise.

I did tell you you were the love of my life
, he’d thought. He hadn’t said it.

‘Scarred me for life,’ he’d said instead, in a manner to make light of it. ‘Well, up until you told me to get out of your sight that time in Singapore.’

‘Yeah,’ she’d said, turning to him, eyes big again. ‘You were
so
drunk then!’

Yeah, he thought. Just drunk. Not sincere or ruined for other women or still burning for you or anything. Just drunk.

Oh well. The stiffened breeze blew some of his hair into his eyes. He brushed it away again.

Alban checked his watch. ‘Want to do the last hour or so trawling? We can keep the engine on idle and start to head back up the loch.’

Sophie nodded. ‘Yeah, okay. Want me to cast off?’

‘Thanks. If you would.’

He put his rod down in the boat, turned and squatted to face the engine, pumped the bulb on the fuel line, adjusted the choke and then grasped the plastic handle of the starting lanyard and began a strong, smooth pull. ‘This old thing usually takes a couple of—’ he was saying when the starting lanyard broke and he went flying backwards, staggering, falling across the midships seat and whacking his head on the bottom boards.

He looked up. Sophie was looking down at him, a concerned look on her face; her arms were outstretched as she balanced in the rocking boat. ‘You okay?’

The back of his head hurt a bit. He was lying in the bottom of the boat with his legs up over the central seat, as though preparing to give birth. He looked at his right hand, which was still holding the lanyard’s handle. He listened; waves slapping hull. No engine sound. Shit.

‘I’m okay,’ he said, and accepted Sophie’s hand, lifting himself back up and turning to sit down on the seat.

‘Garbadale we have a problem?’ Sophie said, squatting in front of him.

He stared at the lanyard. Looked like it had broken near the engine end. Frayed, worn-looking fibres waved in the breeze when he held them up. He felt like throwing the damn thing overboard, but didn’t.

‘Will we have to row?’ Sophie asked.

‘Christ, no,’ Alban said. ‘I’ll just take the top of the engine off and reattach the lanyard.’ He turned, hoisted his feet over the seat and knelt on the boards in front of the transom seat. ‘There’ll be a . . .’ His voice trailed off as he looked and felt under the seat. ‘A fucking tool-box, which is not here,’ he finished. There was a small plastic crate under the seat. He brought it out. It contained the fuel funnel, a little hand-bailer, a small first-aid kit, a reel of floating line and an empty cardboard spark plug carton. Alban sat down on the bottom boards, looking round the boat to see where else the tool kit might be. Not anywhere else, really. He put the lanyard in the crate with the other stuff.

‘So now are we going to have to row?’ Sophie asked.

Alban looked at his watch. ‘It’ll take us till fucking midnight to get back.’

Sophie had her phone out. She started pressing buttons, then stopped. ‘Ah,’ she said.

‘You’ll be lucky,’ Alban said. ‘Barely works at the house. Nothing down here at all.’ Alban sat up on the seat and turned to the engine. He took the plastic top cover off. There were eight twelve-mill bolts that had to be removed before you could get at the drum that housed the starting lanyard. He tested them, on the highly unlikely off-chance they were only finger tight, but they were solid. He looked at his Swiss Army knife. That wasn’t going to be adequate.

They checked beneath the bottom boards, in case the tool kit had got down there somehow; all they found was dirty water. Sophie’s fishing paraphernalia had nothing any more hardcore than Alban’s knife.