Flight of the Grey Goose Read online

  Together they went across the waste ground at the side of the rails, climbed a fence and then dropped down a steep grass slope to find themselves on a road. Smiler looked up at the stars, found the North Star, and saw that the road ran west and east. He went westwards along it, Bacon at his heels, and after about half a mile came to a junction with a larger road. A signpost pointing south read – Fort William 4 miles. Smiler, having no idea what time it was, but knowing it must be very late because there was no traffic about, decided to make for Fort William.

  He was feeling much better now and, as he walked, he took stock of his situation. He must have been in the truck a long time … a night and a day and almost another night. With luck he must be in Scotland. Sharp against the starlight sky he could see hills around him. He had a sack of provisions, the clothes he stood up in, Bacon for company and – how much money?

  He turned out his pockets. There was a loose pound note in his trouser pocket and a handful of silver change among which were two fifty-pence pieces. Altogether he had nearly three pounds. Well, that wasn’t too bad. He was already feeling better. It was clear to him now that after all that rain and sleeping out in that drainpipe he had caught a feverish chill. Yes, he was feeling much better and, what was more, hungry. But he wanted something better than sardines and bread. A proper breakfast, like the one the Professor (that old devil) had provided. Eggs and bacon and hot coffee! His mouth watered. There might be an all-night café in Fort William. If not, he would have to wait until morning. He moved down the road, his spirits returning. Bacon trotted at his heels and, from somewhere away to his right came the cry of a nightbird which he recognized at once from his days with Joe Ringer. It was the whistle of a lone flying curlew.

  Smiler, in fact, kept clear of Fort William until the sun came up. If he walked around the place on his own at night, he had decided, he might be spotted by some curious policeman. Breakfast would have to wait until the proper time.

  When he did go into the town that morning it took him no time at all to realize from the way the people spoke, that he was in Scotland. He knew the accent well because there was a Scottish family that lived next door to Sister Ethel. And all the things in the tourist shops told him that it was Scotland: the dolls dressed in tartan kilts and the picture postcards. The town itself stood on the side of a great loch with mountains on both sides. He found an early-opening lorry drivers’café and went in for breakfast. While he ate, he decided that he must buy a map. From his expeditions with his father he was fond of maps and could read them well. He had already seen one in the window of a newsagent’s shop. The price marked on the cover was fifty pence. As he ate he debated with himself whether he would buy it or go in, say for a box of matches, and nick it. After a time he decided that, since he was in Scotland and in a way making a fresh start, he would buy it. It would make a hole in his funds, but he was sure that he would soon get a job somewhere. On a farm if he could. He didn’t want any town job. No, thank you. He wanted a job where there wouldn’t be too many people about to ask awkward questions.

  By half past nine he was sitting on a seat on the town promenade that overlooked the loch, studying the map he had bought. He soon found Fort William and saw that it stood at the head of Loch Linnhe where the Caledonian Canal started running up through Loch Lochy and Loch Ness to Inverness. But the thing that surprised him was how far north Fort William was from Glasgow. It was miles away. Still, that was no worry. He had until October to get back to Glasgow and then Greenock.

  By half past ten Smiler and Bacon had walked back through the town and northwards to where another road ran off westwards along the shores of another loch, called Loch Eil. Smiler had picked this road because eventually it reached the sea. If he couldn’t get a farm job along the way, well, he might get something in a fishing village on the coast.

  By eleven o’clock Smiler and Bacon had got a lift in a ramshackle farm lorry that took them well along the road and finally dropped them at a place called Glenfinnan. Smiler and Bacon walked onwards for another two hours but it was hard going because the road was narrow and full of holiday traffic. Smiler decided to turn off down a side road as soon as he could.

  By six o’clock that evening Smiler and Bacon – on Smiler’s own admission – were well and truly lost. They had taken a side road that led up through the lower slopes of the hills to the south. At first the rough road ran through growths of rowan and birch trees. After a time these were left behind and they were out on long stretches of grassland where small parties of sheep with grown lambs grazed. Smiler had decided to ask at the first farm he came to for work. But they passed no farm. They came to a fork in the road on a flat bluff covered with worn grey rocks. There was no signpost, so Smiler tossed up for it and took the righthand fork. It began to drop down through a narrow valley. High above it were steep heather-covered slopes with racing cloud shadows darkening their purple sweeps. The road grew rougher and narrower, dwindling now to a path more than a road, and a small burn ran alongside it. Smiler and Bacon followed this track for over an hour, sometimes going up and sometimes going down, sometimes parting with the burn but always meeting it farther on. As the track grew slimmer, the burn grew wider and became a small river. Quite a few things watched Smiler and Bacon pass by.

  From a tall pine a pair of hooded crows saw them. Couched in bracken on the slopes high above, a roe deer doe with month-old twin calves saw them both, and a golden eagle, circling so high against the sun that Smiler could never have seen him, watched the movement of Bacon on the track and the human being with him.

  An hour later when Smiler had told himself ruefully that he was getting nowhere fast, the track dropped steeply into a narrow, tree-lined glen where the small river rushed over a rocky bed in noisy turmoil. Smiler and Bacon came out of the trees at the foot of the glen to find themselves on a loch shore. There was not a house or a human being in sight, and Smiler groaned at the thought of having to go all the way back along the track. To his right the loch ran away into the distance and disappeared into a grey haze from which rose the dark slopes of a range of mountains. To his left the loch reached back into the hills for about a mile and then swung away at an angle sharply so that the rest of it was hidden from him by a steep craggy shoulder of hill. The loch itself was so wide that the far shore, he guessed, had to be more than a mile away.

  Smiler sat down in a grassy hollow above the shore and consulted his map. Unfortunately it was a large-scale map. Although he could pick out where he had turned off the main road he couldn’t find any track marked after the righthand fork he had taken. And as for the loch – the whole map where he thought he might be seemed to be a blue-marked patchwork of lochs. Stumped for the moment as to what to do, Smiler untied his haversack and he and Bacon had a meal. After the meal they stretched out in the sun and slept, both of them tired out from their long walk.

  While Smiler and Bacon slept, a little farther down the loch-side an old greylag gander was paddling quietly along the shoreline, dipping his long head and neck below the surface from time to time to root and feed in the thin carpet of underwater vegetation. The greylag was a prisoner of the loch for, though it could swim and paddle quite easily and walk when it went ashore, it could not fly. Its left wing had been broken close to the body. When it swam or walked the wing dragged loosely and awkwardly at the side of its body. The greylag had spent the winter on the loch and the moorlands above it. Early in the year it had taken off with its companions to make the long journey north to its Arctic breeding grounds. As the small skein of birds had moved down the loch a golden eagle, not yet a year old, had stooped at the geese.

  The leader, seeing the eagle coming, had raised a quick gang-gang-gang alarm call and the skein had scattered in all directions. The young eagle diving downwards had been confused by the sudden wild scattering of the geese and had lost sight of the goose it had marked out for its prey. It had come out of its swoop and swung in a low curve at the nearest bird which it had hit clumsily on the left
wing but failed to grasp with its talons. The injured goose had plummeted to the water and the golden eagle had soared upwards in vain pursuit of the wildly scattered skein of birds.

  Unable to fly the injured greylag had been forced to stay on the loch. Over the months a great many animals, and a few people, had become aware of its presence. But none of them had ever been able to come near it. Disabled, it had learnt new cunning and each night it roosted well out in the loch on a lonely pinnacle of a small rock island.

  The greylag came now up the loch shore to the little sandy stretch of beach above which Smiler and Bacon slept in their grassy hollow. The bird knew the beach well. At the far end there was a growth of reeds and rushes where food could be found. On the shore above the reeds, too, was a wide stretch of rich grass on which it often grazed.

  This day the gander paddled past the beach and foraged for a while in the rushes. Then, after taking a good look at the lochside, it went quietly ashore towards the grass, its left wing dragging awkwardly. As it did so the greylag was watched by an animal that had often seen it before, an animal that had once or twice stalked it but had never been able to get close to it.

  In a wind-stunted oak close to the mouth of the river which ran into the loch, a wild cat was lying sunning itself in the crotch of a branch. The wild cat had been there a long time. It was a female with young kittens that waited for it now in their lair deep in the heart of a rocky cairn on the hillside above the river.

  The wild cat had seen Smiler and Bacon pass by and disappear into the grassy hollow beyond the beach, and then had seen the greylag working its way up the shore line. Curled up in the angle of the tree trunk and the branch, its grey-brown streaky coat merged in a perfect camouflage against the weathered bark. With close-lidded amber eyes it watched the greylag finally come ashore and begin to graze on the grass ten yards from the water’s edge. The wild cat watched for a time and then saw that the usually cautious greylag was slowly grazing farther and farther from the water.

  The cat rose, arched its back and stretched its legs, and then dropped quietly to the ground on the far side of the tree. It was a big female, weighing over twelve pounds. Slowly it began a long stalk of the feeding greylag, keeping as close to the loch edge as it could so that it would eventually come between the water and the greylag. It moved – a grey-brown shadow, short ears close to its flat skull – foot by foot closer to the greylag, taking advantage of every heather and bracken patch and inching across the more open ground pressed tightly to the thyme-studded grass. Within five minutes it was only a couple of yards from the greylag, hidden behind a weathered piece of old tree-trunk drift stranded on the shore by the last high water rise of the loch. It eyed the greylag, marking the dragging left wing, the flesh-coloured bill and feet, the ashy, greyish-brown plumage and the dull white belly and white tail tip as the unsuspecting bird moved a little closer to the piece of old drift wood. Suddenly the wild cat’s mouth opened, moving in a silent spasm of excitement, and its hind-quarters rose slightly and waggled as the strong rear legs drove against the ground and launched it into a fast running leap. The cat landed square on the back of the bird, its claws raking at the plumage, its mouth clamping on the base of the long neck. There was a scurry of grey and brown feathers as the greylag was bowled over. The gander hissed with fear and then gave a long, panicking gang-gang-gang call of alarm.

  The noise woke Bacon immediately. He jumped up and barked and saw at once the confusion of fur and feather on the sweep of grass by the loch side. Catching at once the strong smell of cat, Bacon raced towards the fight, barking as he went.

  His barks woke Smiler. He sat up sharply. For a moment his eyes were dazzled by the westering sun, and he wondered what on earth was happening. He was so dazed with sleep that for a moment or two he could not remember where he was. Then he saw Bacon racing towards the cat and the greylag.

  Smiler jumped to his feet and went after Bacon. Long before he reached the patch of grass the fight was over. Clamped as it was to the bird’s back, the wild cat had seen Bacon coming. It leaped away, turned for a second arching its back and lofting its tail as it spat defiance at Bacon, then it raced along the shoreline and reached its tree yards ahead of the dog. It went up the trunk and lodged itself in the highest branches while Bacon circled round and round below, barking and growling.

  When Smiler reached the greylag it was lying on its side, its broken wing spread awkwardly out from its body, paralysed with fright. The ground around it was covered with feathers and wisps of down from the bird’s breast. Smiler bent down and picked the bird up. He guessed at once that something was badly wrong with its wing. He settled the wing gently against the bird’s flank and cradled it in his arms. For a moment or two the greylag struggled and hissed and then was silent, fear and shock overcoming its natural instinct to struggle for freedom.

  Far up the beach Bacon was still barking and dancing around the tree. Smiler, who had seen the wild cat streaking away, shouted to Bacon. Bacon came reluctantly back, turning every now and then to eye the tree and to growl menacingly. When Bacon reached Smiler, the greylag struggled wildly at the sight of the dog. But Smiler held it gently, talked to it and finally the bird settled down in his arms, giving an occasional loud hiss if Bacon came too close.

  So, there was Smiler standing on the edge of the great loch, lost, with not a house or a human in sight, and with an injured bird in his arms, a bird that he was pretty sure if released would not survive long. Softly he caressed the bird’s neck and back. He liked animals and the sight of one in distress always upset him.

  He stood now with the bird in his arms and said, ‘ Samuel M., here’s a proper do. You don’t know where you are and you got an invalid on your hands.’ Then to the greylag, he said, ‘And you stop hissing at Bacon. Weren’t for him you’d be a goner.’

  It was at this moment that a noise came to his ears. It was a gentle put-put-putting. He looked up and saw coming down the loch, about two hundred yards away, a small boat with an outboard motor.

  Smiler went down to the water’s edge and, holding the greylag with one firm arm and hand, took off his cap and waved it, shouting at the top of his voice. The boat proceeded serenely up the loch. For a while Smiler thought that he was not going to be seen. There was only one person in the boat, sitting at the stern and steering. Then, when the boat was a good way out and almost past him as he shouted and waved, he saw it alter course.

  The boat came slowly into the shore. As it entered the shallow water the person at the stern cut out the motor and tipped the engine forward so that the propeller should not foul the bottom. As the boat ran straight into the beach the helmsman jumped overboard into a foot of water and dragged the bows up on to the sand.

  The person turned and faced Smiler. It was a girl. She was about the same height as Smiler and, he guessed, about his own age. She wore a floppy green beret with a yellow bobble on top and her long hair was tied at the back of her neck with a yellow ribbon. Her smooth skin was as brown as a berry and she wore a loose grey jersey and blue denims rolled up to her knees to show bare legs and feet. She was a pleasant looking girl with dark brown eyes. Bacon went up to her and sniffed at her bare legs and she put down a hand and teased one of his ears as though she had known him all her life.

  She said, ‘What are you doing here?’ She had a nice, soft, Scottish accent.

  ‘I’m lost,’ said Smiler. ‘And this here is a injured bird. Some old cat thing went for it just now. Bacon chased it off, but I think it got its wing broken.’

  The girl came up close and looked at the bird and then said, ‘No old wild cat did that. That’s Laggy. We’ve tried to get him often but he never lets you get near. Had that broken wing for months, poor laddie.’ She gently touched the white nail on the tip of the gander’s pink beak and went on, ‘Where you from?’

  ‘England,’ said Smiler.

  The girl laughed. ‘I can tell that from your voice. But England’s a big place. What’s your name and how did you
get here?’

  ‘I’m Samuel Miles. But how I got here is a long story.’

  ‘Then save it for some other time. We’ve got to do something for poor old Laggy. Come on, we’ll take him to the Laird.’

  ‘Who is the Laird?’ asked Smiler.

  ‘Who is the Laird?’ The girl echoed him, and then laughed. ‘You are a stranger around here for certain. The Laird is the Laird. He owns this beach we’re standing on, the whole loch and half the mountains around.’

  ‘Gosh, he must be a very rich man.’

  ‘Rich, aye. But not in silver. Come on, in you get. By the way –’ her face went suddenly serious as though she were aware that she had been lacking in courtesy – ‘I’m Laura Mackay. My father farms down the far end of the loch.’ She reached her hand out and took Smiler’s. She gave it a shake that crushed his fingers.

  Laura Mackay pushed the boat back a little way into the loch and Smiler, holding the greylag, waded through the shallow water and got in. Laura slipped an arm round Bacon and lifted him aboard. Then she got aboard herself, went to the stern and lowered the outboard motor and started it. They circled away from the beach in a tight curve and began to move up the loch. In the bottom of the boat, Smiler noticed, there was a small battered suitcase and three large, bulky sacks.

  From the shore the loch had looked quite smooth. As they moved out on to it Smiler found that there was quite a wind blowing and driving up a long series of choppy waves. Now and again one of these would smack against the bows and come spraying back over them. So far as Laura was concerned, Smiler noticed, she seemed unaware of the flying spray.

  It was getting late now and the westering sun, although it held the southern shore of the loch in bright light still, had thrown dark shadows over the side on which Smiler had been resting with Bacon. The south shore was mountainous. Steep crags and cliffs came right down to the water’s edge. As it was impossible to talk above the noise of the motor and the loud smack-smack of the waves against the bows, Smiler sat in silence, nursing the injured greylag, and watching the moving shores of the loch. It seemed a very long time since he had got off the train at Fort William that morning. The day had gone by like a kind of dream so that up until now it hadn’t really come home to him that he was actually in Scotland. But he knew he was there now, with the fresh loch spray dewing his face, the stiff breeze flattening his anorak against his body and, everywhere he looked, rowan and pine-marked crags and cliffs and beyond them the rising sweeps of mountains.