Hotel By The Loch Read online

  Fenella had been totally surprised by the speed with which Cameron had planted gardens and lawns. When she asked him how he managed it, he replied self-confidently, ‘Merely a matter of men and machines. Just having enough of them.’

  ‘Soon you’ll work out on a computer just how many snapdragons or petunias must fit into a given space. That isn’t really the way gardening should be done.’

  ‘It is if you want quick results. The company employs a mobile gardening staff to cope with rush jobs,’ he told her.

  ‘I’m glad you carted away that artificial grass horror.’

  ‘Why? It served its purpose before we could have the real turf. Better in some ways. Never needs mowing.’

  She looked up at him, aware that he was determined to bait her, but she refused to rise. Instead, she tried another tack. ‘Could you take Angus on? He’s a wonderful gardener.’

  Cameron frowned. ‘No, I think not. I have a young man, a trained landscape gardener, coming along in a few days.’

  ‘Poor Angus! His experience and his love for growing things simply doesn’t count. He’ll have to scratch what living he can during the season by taking anglers out on the loch.’

  She turned away huffily and walked off.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ he said, as he caught up with her in a couple of strides. ‘I could give Angus a fair-sized kitchen garden. Would he take that on?’

  Fenella gave him a long, measured glance. ‘When you and your company come here and upset the economics of the neighbourhood, people can’t afford to be too proud to work. I suppose your fine Capability Brown landscape gentleman wouldn’t want to waste his time on cauliflowers and carrots. But Angus will. Anyway, you owe him something. You wrecked all his garden, kitchen plot and all. I’ll tell him.’

  She ran down the drive and out into the road without listening to his answer. She would go to Angus’s cottage before Cameron could change his mind and go back on his promise.

  Angus welcomed Fenella, agreed immediately, but perhaps remembering that previous occasion when Cameron had ruthlessly discarded him, said, ‘I’ll be coming tomorrow to see Mr. Ramsay.’ He smiled at Fenella and his light blue eyes twinkled. ‘We’ll be giving the man time to change his mind.’

  ‘I hope he won’t treat you so badly this time. The suggestion came from him, anyway, so it ought to work out well.’

  Nevertheless, Fenella was not content to leave Angus’s employment to chance. She made a point of asking Cameron three or four days later if he had definitely engaged Angus.

  ‘I had no choice, had I?’

  He raised his head from the task in hand and gave her an amused glance. He was by the loch shore supervising the erection of a new marquee, a dashing construction of maroon and grey-green stripes. She knew that he had returned the one he had used to wrap round the pavilion.

  ‘You told him rather bluntly on the previous occasion,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Be practical, Fenella. The whole place was then in chaos and I needed gangs of gardeners, not just one competent but elderly man.’

  ‘All right. Well, thank you,’ she acknowledged.

  Cameron laughed. ‘You’re hard to please,’ he began.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d ever tried,’ she flashed back at him.

  ‘You accuse me of robbing the poor of their livelihood,’ he continued as though she had not interrupted him. ‘Then when I try to help, I get small thanks.’

  ‘No doubt you’ve noticed that it’s a hard world, full of ingratitude,’ she retorted, but her tone was mollified now. ‘Here comes Jamie. I promised to take him out rowing on the loch, if there was a spare boat. It’s my afternoon off,’ she added defensively.

  ‘Far be it from me to enquire how you spend you off-duty hours!’ he said with mocking exaggeration. ‘Jamie’s lucky.’

  ‘Well, he’s only recently had the plaster taken off his wrist and he mustn’t do anything as strenuous as rowing.’

  ‘Of course. I wonder what sort of injury I should have to sustain,’ Cameron said mildly, addressing the distant shore of the loch, ‘before you would be my oarsman and row me about in a boat.’

  ‘Your—’ Fenella cut off the words and broke into laughter.

  ‘Yes, you were going to say I’d have to break my neck before that would happen. A pity that such a pretty girl can harbour such black thoughts, but never mind, go along with Jamie. See that the boat is watertight.’

  ‘Angus attended to all the boats for you,’ she told him. ‘Probably on a voluntary basis.’

  Fenella walked towards the boathouse, untied the boat and propelled it to the edge of the loch. Jamie and Cameron were deep in conversation, the tall man’s head bent to listen to the boy’s laughing remarks.

  Fenella called to the boy, ‘Jamie!’ but he seemed reluctant to tear himself away from Cameron, until the latter gave him a gentle push towards the boat and helped him in to sit in the stern.

  ‘You like Cameron Ramsay, don’t you?’ she remarked when they were out in the middle of the loch and completely out of earshot of anything except the curlews.

  ‘Aye, he’s fine,’ answered Jamie with enthusiasm. ‘He’s given me a book of all the clans and their arms and their history.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. Have you looked up your own?’

  ‘Aye. But I found Mr. Cam-Ram’s, too. It’s two black eagles and a lot of red stars,’ he informed her.

  Fenella laughed and momentarily lost control of her oar stroke. ‘That’s appropriate enough. A zigzag of lightning and a thunderbolt might also be included some day.’

  ‘Yours is a bit simple, Fenella.’

  ‘I know. Three yellow or gold stars on a red field. We Sutherlands can’t keep up with the top flight like Erskines or Ramsays.’

  ‘He’s not a bad fellow, you know,’ remarked Jamie after a long, silent interval. ‘He can talk about all kinds of interesting things. He told me lots about Canada—things you’d never learn at school.’

  ‘You mean about the lakes and mountains?’

  ‘Aye, and a lot besides. He says they have fields of wheat so big that you can’t see the end. He tells me about people, too.’ He gave Fenella a mischievous glance. ‘He says you’re nice, but awful big-headed.’

  Fenella’s eyes opened wide. ‘Oh? Does he? Bigheaded or pig-headed?’

  ‘Both!’ declared Jamie, doubling up with laughter and forgetting which steering cord he was supposed to be pulling.

  ‘Hey! You’d better stop trying to steer or we’ll be ramming the bank opposite,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘But ye’d best keep it all a secret—what I told you, I mean,’ said Jamie, repenting perhaps of his candour.

  ‘Oh, I take no notice of tittle-tattle,’ she assured him.

  ‘This wasn’t tittle-tattle. This was a serious talk,’ protested the boy.

  Fenella nodded, remembering Laurie’s assessment that Jamie was no child, but already a small old man.

  ‘Well, I still won’t give you away,’ promised Fenella. ‘Who else do you chew up and talk about with Mr. Cam-Ram?’

  ‘All sorts, but I’ll not be telling you. It’s confidential. Mr. Cam-Ram would skin the hide off me if he thought I was telling.’

  Fenella did not press the boy. No doubt he thought he had already been indiscreet enough and she was sharply remembering the warnings by the Irish waitress, Norah. ‘How will we know that you’re not going to peach on us?’

  In some ways, Fenella was in a tricky position. An employee, but one with rather more than her share of access to the management through her father. No doubt it was widely known throughout the staff that she usually attended the weekly conferences that took place every Wednesday morning in the manager’s office, a small apartment attached to Cameron’s bedroom on the second floor in the new wing.

  True, she was there only for the purpose of taking notes and not because she held equal rank with the heads of departments. Miriam was always present, Ernesco, the chef, as representative of all the cateri
ng side. Sometimes Mr. Sutherland came in and occasionally Cameron invited Mrs. Robertson for discussion of some point arising from the accounts.

  Thus Fenella was in the know about future projects long before the actual details were available to the rest of the staff. Cameron’s imagination, apparently, had taken flight now that the Gairmorlie was open and in reasonable working order. During the summer months there would be an Italian week-end followed by a Spanish one. In the autumn and winter, Austrian, Swiss, Norwegian week-ends would be slotted into the general programme.

  ‘The idea,’ Cameron had explained, ‘is that a certain amount of local advertising will bring people to us out of curiosity. We’ll have the appropriate food at these times, national dishes, foreign chefs imported for a small amount of work and enormous prestige. I’ve put the winter sports countries into the end of the year and January to March quarter, because that’s the time when they could be the greatest attraction here.’

  ‘You’re determined to remain open all the winter, then?’ queried Mr. Sutherland on this particular Wednesday morning.

  ‘Of course,’ returned Cameron. ‘All the brochures advertise that we’re open all the year round. Can’t go back on that.’

  ‘I think that’s one of the best ideas,’ put in Miriam. ‘When the winter is so dormant, it takes extra effort to get everything moving again.’

  Cameron gave her an approving glance before he took up the next point for discussion.

  During the last week in May the hotel was filled to capacity by a large party taking a well-advertised early holiday. They came in two motor-coaches, starting from Liverpool, taking three days on a leisurely journey that took them through the Trossachs, staying a full week at the Gairmorlie and then returning by way of a detour through the Great Glen and Inverness, then down the eastern part of the Grampians and Perth.

  To Laurie, the passengers seemed incredibly old.

  ‘Really,’ she said to Fenella, as she watched several rheumaticky elderly women totter towards the sun lounge, ‘you’d hardly think they’d bother with holidays at their age.’

  Fenella laughed. ‘Wait until you’re in your sixties,’ she advised. ‘Then we’ll see whether you want to vegetate in your own back garden. They come early in the year because it’s much cheaper than in the high season. They couldn’t afford our prices then.’

  Many of the party were glad to sit about in the lounges or garden, or go out in the coaches for an occasional trip to Loch Ness or Glencoe or the high spot, the day trip to Skye, for their days for hiking over the hills were past. The pavilion was available in the evenings for whist drives or old-time dancing, a separate television room was provided or the guests could cluster in any of the three lounges and chatter and drink tea or coffee or something stronger just as they pleased.

  But, most of all, what took their fancy was the marquee down by the lochside and its new accompanying outdoor cafe.

  ‘Why should foreign parts have the monopoly of garden cafes?’ Cameron had demanded when Fenella was down there one day. ‘Take Paris, for instance. Their climate is no better than ours.’

  ‘But perhaps it’s the attitude of the people,’ Fenella pointed out. ‘Even London doesn’t go in for outdoor places on much of a scale, and then only in a heatwave.’

  Cameron shook his head. ‘Slavish convention, that’s all. When it rains, all right. We serve in the marquee or up at the hotel.’

  The white-painted tables and gay umbrellas added a Continental look to the lochside, and one woman declared that this was just as nice as Switzerland where she had spent several holidays. ‘Without that nasty Channel crossing or the dread I have of flying,’ she added.

  Fenella was delighted that the weather was good and that so many people could enjoy sitting outdoors without shivering or walking about in raincoats.

  When the two coaches left the Gairmorlie on the Wednesday morning, their shouts of ‘Goodbye! Good luck! Love to Bonnie Scotland!’ echoed down the drive and died away, leaving the hotel atmosphere slightly quieter than usual.

  But this was only a small breathing space. On Saturday, Cameron had a huge wedding reception to cope with. The daughter of a titled farmer some thirty miles away was marrying the younger son of a Scottish earl. How Cameron had persuaded the bride’s parents that the Gairmorlie was the ideal setting for wedding high jinks was a mystery to Fenella.

  Ernesco was touchily temperamental, and even Alvaro, the head waiter, had failed to soothe him. Far from enjoying a couple of quiet days, the hotel staff seemed to be in a ferment of ill-temper, imprecations, accusations of slackness and many other minor crimes.

  As soon as she had free time, Fenella went down to the loch. Rowing a boat always soothed her and she counted that she was well out of the way, especially with so many foreign staff hurling insults in half a dozen languages.

  To her surprise, Cameron was sprawling in a chair at the lochside cafe, a pot of coffee in front of him and the inevitable sheaf of papers in a folder beside him.

  ‘Heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought you’d be running about in the hotel pouring oil on troubled waters.’

  ‘No fear,’ he answered. ‘The staff are best left alone to settle their differences. I doubt if they will come to blows or use long knives on each other.’

  ‘I suppose you know best.’

  ‘I do,’ he returned with the arrogance that Fenella had come to understand was really a self-confidence in his own attainments. ‘Managers are superfluous just now. If there’s any real trouble, someone will think fit to make a very loud complaint.’

  ‘Then you can be Solomon,’ she said.

  ‘Are you in a touchy mood, too? If so, don’t tell me. Let me drink my coffee in peace. You can share it if you want to.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ she said airily. ‘I’m going out on the loch.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes, why not? I’ve pottered about this piece of water since I was Jamie’s age.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he suggested. ‘That is, if I may be allowed to.’ His eyes flickered with sparkling lights as though daring her to object.

  ‘You’re the manager. The boat belongs to you, so I suppose you can use it.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want us to have a boat each and row alongside each other?’

  ‘That might be fun. We could race.’ Her tawny eyes were alight with mischief.

  ‘I’m afraid you might beat me!’ he mocked.

  ‘Hypocrite!’ she flung at him, but laughed and went towards the boat.

  She was aware that he followed her. ‘A good opportunity for me to get away from the hotel clutches,’ he said. ‘If I’m out in the middle of the loch, I’m inaccessible unless the Gairmorlie catches fire.’

  ‘Then I suppose you’ll dive overboard and swim to the shore.’

  ‘There would be other ways of reaching dry land,’ he reminded her, ‘unless the boat capsizes.’

  Without her volition, it seemed, he had stepped into the dinghy, helped her in and started rowing strongly out into the loch.

  For a time they talked of hotel matters, and he seemed particularly interested in Laurie’s progress.

  ‘She loves it,’ answered Fenella. ‘She has a charming manner and is very popular with the guests. She always gives the impression that she cares. If she’s asked for information she’ll always find out for people.’

  Cameron’s face looked thoughtful. ‘I’m glad to hear it. I feared she might be an unnecessary ornament to the reception desk—and I have enough—’ he broke off provocatively.

  ‘You were going to say that you have enough of those already?’

  ‘Always over-anxious to put the worst construction on my thoughts,’ he murmured.

  She had been looking towards the farther shore, but as she turned her face towards him, she saw an odd expression in his eyes, a look that she found mysteriously disturbing. Then he bent over the oars and she could no longer see his eyes, but only his untidy dark hair. It occurred to her that
out in the middle of the loch she and Cameron were cut off from the tentacles of the hotel. It might be for only a short time, but they were insulated and isolated here.

  After a silence Cameron spoke. ‘Tell me, Fenella, how long are you staying here? What plans have you made about your dressmaking?’

  ‘Dress designing,’ she corrected.

  ‘Or is your career to be forsaken in favour of Alex?’ He rested on his oars for a moment or two and she noticed that a strong wind had sprung up, for the boat bucked up and down with the small waves.

  She considered his question and somehow this time felt no resentment at his poking and prying. On the contrary, she was glad to talk to someone about her dilemma.

  ‘Alex is a wonderful friend,’ she began.

  ‘Nothing more to you?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ she admitted candidly.

  ‘If you loved him you’d know for certain.’

  ‘Yes, I think I would. I can see that he would be a marvellous husband, but you can’t marry your childhood friend just like that.’

  ‘Some people do,’ he pointed out, ‘and live happily ever after.’

  ‘Maybe I need something forcible to make me realize that he’s the right man for me.’

  ‘A catalyst? Something to spark you off one way or the other?’ he queried.

  ‘That’s it. Then I shall know what to do.’

  Behind Cameron she saw heavy banks of scudding grey cloud piling up across the western sky. She pulled her thin cardigan closer round her shoulders, but almost without warning the first drops of rain fell like half-crowns plopping into the boat and striking the water as though they would make dents in its surface. Hurriedly Cameron pulled at the oars, swinging the boat in a wide circle to head for the shore, but the wind nullified his efforts and the boat merely bounced up and down making practically no way.

  ‘We’ll run before the wind,’ he yelled to Fenella, who had now slid off the stern seat and crouched as low as possible to escape the wind. Waves slapped against the sides and occasionally came over the top, drenching her with spray and already the floorboards were awash.

  Cameron was wearing a thin checked shirt which now clung to him in wet folds. ‘Can’t you find something to put on?’ he shouted to Fenella. ‘A raincoat or oilskin?’