Corsair Pt. 01 Ch. 01: La Petite Voiture Gris

Andrew pressed the interrupter switch, and the steady tacketa-tacketa-tacketa rhythm of the little engine died with a disappointed cough and a wheeze. In the sudden silence the clatter of the handbrake ratchet sounded loud. He jumped down.

Over by the steamer peir stood half a dozen shaggy orange cattle, looking morose; two black and white dogs, looking eager; and one old man leaning on a staff, looking contemplative.

Andrew walked over. "It's a fine afternoon, for the time of year."

"Aye," said the old man. "It is not a bad one."

He spoke with the careful enunciation of one who had learned English at school.

"That machine of yours," he said, "that will be a motor car, will it?"

"It is, aye," said Andrew. "French made - a Renault."

"I have not seen such a thing before," said the old man, looking only mildly interested. "You will have come far?"

"From Rosyth," said Andrew, and then, seeing the name meant nothing, "from the east coast, from Fife. Near to Dunfermline."

"From Fife? And you have come all that way in a day?"

"No, no," said Andrew, laughing. "She is not so fast as that. It has been four days; but I stopped for one day with my parents in Dumbarton."

From Dumbarton, indeed, it would have been quicker to have loaded the car onto one of the ubiquitous little steamships and made the journey across by sea, but instead he'd gone northabout, up Loch Lomondside to Arrochar, and then up over hills and down Loch Fyne to Inverary.

"I was looking for a road to the house of Sir Roderick Campbell of Tarbert," said Andrew. "I believe it's on the north shore of the loch here; but I did not see a turn."

"I doubt Sir Roderick will not be home," said the old man. "I hear he's kept to London since his sons were killed."

"So I believe," said Andrew. "However I met with Lady Campbell and Miss Fiona in Edinburgh at the time of the armistice, and they desired me to visit them if I should be passing."

"They did? You'll be wanting to go back along the road towards Tarbert, beyond the head of the loch, maybe a mile; not so far that you're at the top of the hill. You'll see a roadend on your left, but... it is no more than a trackway. I doubt you'll not get your motor car along it. And then, perhaps half a mile? another left, so you're coming down over there" - the old man extended a long arm out towards the further shore - "and then, aye, five miles, perhaps?"

Andrew thanked him, and walked back to the car. He turned the crank against the back pressure in the engine, and then gave it that little flick than Iain MacPherson, who had been engineer with him in all three submarines, had taught him. The engine caught at once, tacketa-tacketa-tacketa. Andrew smiled with satisfaction, and climbed in. An engine Iain had lavished care on would always run sweet.

-----

It was no surprise that the old man had doubted the car would manage the lane. It was no more than a pair of narrow wheelruts, running fairly straight through sedge meadows, through thorn, hazel and willow scrub, past little tree-grown mounds. It splashed through a small ford and immediately after, by a low cottage, found the second turning to the left.

An old woman, sitting spinning on her step, confirmed that aye, this was the way to the big hoose.

Andrew turned the car onto it and began gingerly to ease her southwest, bouncing and jumping down the track, grass brushing her sump and bushes her sides. She ran steadily, tacketa-tacketa-tacketa. For the first couple of miles Andrew's face was tense, thoughtful; and then, coming over a rise, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled broadly.

He stopped for a moment where a wee streamlet crossed the road, and, wetting his handkerchief, carefully wiped his face. He took off his jacket and folded it neatly on the passenger seat; brushed down his waistcoat and breeches although they hardly needed it; straightened his cravat. He tried to find a reflection in the windshield, and then, as though amused at his own vanity, climbed back up into the seat and put the car into gear again.

-----

Fiona, arranging flowers in the dining room, froze for a moment, listening to an unfamiliar sound. The noise of something mechanical - tacketa-tacketa-tacketa - drifted in through the open window. She looked towards it, startled.

"Today?" Under her breath. "Damn! I'm not ready!"

Leaving one vase of flowers half finished she siezed the other, and ran out onto the steps.

Yes, there it was again: tacketa-tacketa-tacketa, north east, up the loch; still some distance off. She hurried across the weed-grown carriage sweep, through the screen of pine trees, out onto the croquet lawn by the maze, and over to the bothy. The key was on a ribbon round her neck, hanging between her breasts; she stooped awkwardly to unlock the door, went in, looked around, set the vase down on the cabinet by the bed, turned it to what she thought the best angle, rearranged a poppy where it lay against a fern.

It would have to do. She looked at her face in the mirror over the bed: colour a little high, and no make up. Clothes... well, tidy enough, but not alluring. She unbuttoned her short-waisted jacket, and then opened the collar of her blouse a little - as much as she thought she might get away with without Mama's censure.

She had imagined that she would be wearing a dress. She had imagined she would have her hair brushed out and dressed loose, not tightly braided. Tacketa-tacketa-tacketa! It was close now. There was no time.

She touched her throat to check she was wearing the locket he had given her, although she could see it in the mirror. She turned to run out of the door, and then, pausing suddenly, she looked round again sharply. Yes, everything was in order. Everything. She'd checked it again and again. She stooped again, awkwardly, to get the key to the lock.

She fled towards the house, as fast as her ankle length tweed kilt would let her.

-----

Tacketa! Tacketa! Tacketa! The sound of the engine echoed back from the grey granite frontage of the house. Andrew braked to a stop just at the foot of the steps, and pressed the interrupter. The engine coughed once, wheezed, and was still. He stepped down, and as he did so, Fiona came out of the house.

"My dear Commander Smith!" she said, "how very good it is to see you again. It has been so long!"

"Much too long, Miss Campbell," said Andrew. "But I am here now. I trust your mama is well?"

"Indeed she is," said Fiona. "And so this is la petite voiture? My, but she is smart. I thought you said she was a poor old thing?"

"Indeed she was," Andrew patted the dove grey bonnet with its maroon and purple coachlining. "But we lay three months in Rosyth docks awaiting our demobilisation orders, and the men had little to do. So they took her apart and rebuilt her completely - entirely out of the goodness of their hearts. I am most deeply grateful to them; I swear she runs more sweetly than she can ever have done before."

"She is so very smart," said Fiona again. "Before you leave from here, you must take me in her for a day - or perhaps more. On an adventure."

"Two minds with but a single thought," said Andrew, smiling. "I have telegraphed ahead to the Royal Hotel in Campbeltown, to ask them to hold two rooms for me on Thursday night - in case you might want to accompany me. If Lady Campbell permits, of course. But I must make my greeting to her."

"Of course you must," said Fiona. "Come within."

-----

The drawing room windows faced south across a lawn towards the loch; below the lawn was a birch and hazel coppice, but the trees were small enough that there was a view over them to the water. Out on the loch, a bluff, cobby little steamer towed a long wake south west towards the open sea. Lady Campbell got up from a chaise longue, where she had been reading.

"My dear Liuetenant Commander, how nice to see you again." She gave him her hand, and he kissed it, decorously.

"Come," she said, "sit, and pray tell us all the news. How long shall you stay? Fiona, my dear, have you set them to prepare a room for the Liuetenant Commander?"

"I have prepared the bothy for him, Mama, I thought that he would be more comfortable and... quieter there."

Something unsaid passed between the women, something that Andrew couldn't interpret. Chiefly between their eyes, as though, he thought, each were daring the other to say something. It was the mother who broke the look, who looked down, who looked flustered. She retired to her chaise longue, and rang a little hand bell.

A maid came in silently with a tea tray, which she placed on a low table by the chaise longue; there was a little business while tea was poured, which broke the awkward pause.

"And what of your command, Commander?" asked Fiona. "When last you wrote you told me you had orders to take her down to Sunderland, to be broken up."

"Yes," said Andrew. "In truth it was a melancholy voyage. We were down to ten men - which made for more room, for she was never a spacious boat. We submerged her one last time for the - I don't know, to pay our respects to her, and because in a lumpy swell she runs - she ran - more comfortably beneath the waves. For all her reputation for being an unlucky boat, she always served us well, and on that last voyage we had her in perfect condition, as good as when she left her makers. I think we were all very sad to leave her, and to come north again by the railway."

"If she was in perfect condition," asked Lady Campbell, "why was she broken up?"

"All the C class boats are to be broken up," said Andrew. "They are not so fast nor so well armed as modern submarines, nor have they great endurance. But they served us well during the late war; I had the honour to be second officer when we sunk a German submarine off Shetland in October '15, and in command when we crippled a German light cruiser in the Gulf of Riga in '17."

"I see," said Lady Campbell. "You say she was thought unlucky?"

"Indeed. She had been in collision with a collier - in peace time, before the war - and all hands were lost. She was refloated, and served as a training boat but was thought unreliable. When we returned from the Baltic, she was offered to me as part of a flotilla doing anti-mine and anti-submarine defence on the east coast of Scotland. I accepted, and my engineer - an excellent man - was quickly able to resolve all her problems."

"I don't understand," said Fiona. "In the collision - how did all hands come to be lost? A submarine, surely, is designed to survive beneath the water?"

"For a limited period," said Andrew. "But the air becomes stale from the men's respiration, and also foul from gas from the batteries. After at most ten hours she must surface to replenish the air. Being damaged, she could not refloat herself."

"And so now you are without a ship," said Lady Campbell. "Tell me, what are your prospects?"

"In peace time, the navy, like the army, will be greatly smaller - something of which, surely, we must all be glad. I have been advised that I need not resign my commission, but it is not clear whether there will be a command for me, and in the meantime my father wishes me to complete my studies and then join him in the business. I am not certain what I shall do."

"The business?" Lady Campbell's voice was not warm.

"My father designs and builds ships," said Andrew. "Smaller ships and yachts we build in our own yard, but he also designs larger ships to be built in other yards."

"I see," said Lady Campbell, again.

-----

"I should take Commander Smith out to the bothy," said Fiona, "so that he may make himself comfortable before dinner."

"We are informal when in the country, Lieutenant Commander," said Lady Campbell, clearly dismissing them. "We shall not dress for dinner."

They went out.

The little grey car still stood at the foot of the steps; a little dusty from its travels, but very trim.

"Oh!" said Fiona. "These little roses on the ends of the lining - are these not Mr Rennie Mackintosh's work?"

"In slavish imitation only. I drew them carefully, and Crawford - one of my able seamen who is a very steady hand with a brush - painted them in for me. I thought that you might like them."

"I do indeed," said Fiona. "May I get up?"

Andrew offered her his hand, and she got up and sat in the passenger seat.

"It is remarkably comfortable," she said. "How is it when she moves?"

"I should take her round to the stable yard, should I not?" asked Andrew. "Why not try it?"

Again, he turned the crank to feel the pressure, and then flicked it over.

Tocketa-tocketa-tocketa...

He climbed into the driver's seat; it was the first time he had shared a car with a woman. Her hip and shoulder pressed against him.

"My, this is pleasant," she said.

Andrew smiled, eased the car into gear, and pulled smoothly round the side of the building and under the arch into the stable yard. He parked neatly away from any other doors, helped Fiona down, and erected the hood against the risk of night rain.

"The bothy..." he said.

Fiona flushed.

"We - you - will have privacy there. And you will be comfortable. I have made everything ready for you there. Myself. Come!"

Still flushed, she led him quickly out of the yard, across the carriage sweep, into the pines, and out onto the croquet lawn.

"What is beyond the hedges?"

"Oh, that is just the maze," Fiona said. "Do not go in it without me - strangers can get most horribly lost, although it is not large and I have known its ways since childhood. It is sadly overgrown now, for we have but one gardener left, and he is an old man, now."

She'd had old Alasdair mow the croquet lawn each Monday since May. She had wanted it smooth and even and short and green for this day, and it was.

"It is strange," she said, nervously. "This is not how I had imagined it."

"You had imagined?"

"I don't know. I am dressed in my country... well, they are practical..."

"Your clothes? Miss Fiona, you look both smart and engaging in them."

"Thank you. But yes, my clothes. I had not imagined... these clothes. But here is the bothy. Come."

A building - no larger than the smallest cottage, built mainly of wood but with one stone gable which held a chimney, and with the largest possible windows facing south across the croquet lawn.

Fiona, flushed again, pulled the key out of its hiding place between her breasts, unknotted the ribbon, and held it out to him.

"Here is your key, Commander."

"Why, thank you."

Andrew bowed over her hand and kissed it formally, taking the key. They smiled at one another, warmly. He unlocked the door.

The interior was still brightly lit, although the sun was well past the zenith; the big windows threw bright diagonal parallelograms across a polished hardwood floor with rich Persian rugs. Surprisingly heavy joists held up the matchboard ceiling. Nearer to the windows, there was a closed stove, a basket of firewood for it, another basket lined with blankets that looked as if it might be a bed for a large hound, and a large easy chair. Beyond was an enormous four-poster bed built into the fabric of the bothy, made up with a sheet, a quilt and many pillows. The wall behind the bed was lined with mirrors, and Andrew noticed with surprise that the ceiling above it was also mirrored.

He lifted the vase of flowers from the bedside cabinet, and smelled the roses, before setting it down again carefully. He turned.

On either side of the big windows, heavy curtains were drawn back. On the wall facing the stove, a Mucha poster of Sarah Bernhardt - one they'd admired together in Edinburgh - covering a place on the wall where it was clear some other picture had hung.

"It is very charming," said Andrew. "I'm sure I shall be very comfortable here."

"Yes," said Fiona. "I hope that we... that you... that is to say..."

Her voice petered out in nervousness. He reached out a hand, tentatively, but she evaded it, her colour raised.

"We should go back to the house," she said, backing out through the door. "Dinner will be served shortly."

He followed her out. Set into the lawn, on the side away from the house, was a stout post, not quite chest high, on top of which was at first seemed a board with three holes in it.

Fiona looked at him, and then a the stocks.

"Oh!" she said. "Yes, it is a stocks. The upper board hinges, thus..."

She lifted it. It swung up, on a finely crafted bronze hinge obviously recently oiled, assisted by a hidden spring. Andrew was yet more surprised: this was no antique, not was it crudely made. It was not precisely new, but sturdy, well maintained, and even a little elegant.

"The woman -- that is to say, the prisoner -- places her hands in these slots, thus, and her neck thus..." she demonstrated, briefly, and then straightened. "And then the upper board is swung down, thus, and fastened with this pin..."

A bronze pin hung on a short chain; she demonstrated the holes through which it should pass.

"And then the prisoner is quite helpless, and cannot see what is done behind her... but there is no time, and I had not imagined I should be dressed... Come, we should go in. There is no time."