Authors: Davie Henderson
Then a horrible notion struck her: the thought that losing her ability to sculpt romantic figures was maybe down to more than a lack of romance in her life …
That maybe it was the first manifestation of an ancient cur—
Don’t even go there, Kate,
she told herself. She tried to laugh at what common sense told her had been a crazy notion, and to put the thought from her mind—but didn’t succeed on either count.
“Is everything okay, Kate?”
Cameron’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she realized she was sitting with a forkful of lamb poised halfway to her mouth. She forced a smile, and then found she had to force down the food because she’d lost her appetite for a meal that moments earlier she’d been eating with relish.
“Do you never try painting or drawing?” Cameron asked.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t give me the same buzz. Sometimes
I used to work right through the night on sculptures when I felt like I was doing them well. I’ve never done that with a painting. It’s hard to explain, but there’s something wonderfully sensual about shaping with your hands, forming line and curve, feeling texture. I don’t want to sound kinky, but it was almost a sexual thrill.”
“I can understand—it was almost a sexual thrill just listening to you there.”
Kate threw her head back a little, the dark thoughts replaced by delightful ones. For the second time that night Cameron noticed the lovely smoothness of her neck, and then he heard the surprisingly throaty laugh he’d already come to like so much.
After taking a drink, Kate said, “It’s such a challenge—making something that’s incapable of thought, feeling, or movement look like it can think and feel and move. It’s immensely satisfying if you pull it off—and frustrating when you can’t. Somehow I don’t get the same satisfaction when I’m painting or drawing. But, having said that, the glen’s so beautiful it’s just a matter of time before I try to capture it on paper or canvas.”
Cameron finished his lamb and said, “I can’t tell you how much better that was than the food I’ve been used to.”
“Which would be army rations, right?”
He nodded and took a drink.
“So, what made you want to join the army?” Kate asked. “From the way you act with a camera in your hand, I imagine you’d be happier as an out-and-out photographer.”
“It was kind of expected of me, joining the army.”
Kate remembered Archibald Cunningham’s comment about Cameron’s ancestors all having a military background.
Cameron’s next words bore out the lawyer’s: “There’s been a career soldier in my family every generation for as long as anyone can remember. You might say it was the family business, and I know my dad would have been disappointed if I hadn’t carried it on. The bedtime stories he read to me weren’t about Noddy and Tin-Tin, they were about my uncle Calum at The Hook in Korea, where the Chinese attacked in a human wave and The Black Watch dug in and called artillery fire down on their own positions when they were over-run; about my grandfather Sandy being lowered down the cliffs at St Valery on a rope made of rifle slings rather than surrendering; and about my great grandfather storming the Heights of Dargai on the North-West Frontier.”
For a few moments Cameron seemed lost in thoughts he’d rather not be having, then he said, “Anyway, you’re right: when I left school I did want to be a photographer. The thing was, my parents’ marriage had broken up and I stayed with my mum, so I already felt I’d let my dad down in a way by choosing her over him, and didn’t want to disappoint him in another way by choosing photography over the army.
“As a compromise I went to college to study photography but also joined the Officer Training Corps. I was hoping the uniform would keep my dad happy, and that
when I graduated I could open my own studio and just join the TA—that’s like your National Guard.”
“But you didn’t, you joined the full-time army instead,” Kate said.
He nodded. “In my last year at college I met a girl who broke my heart.”
“And instead of joining the Foreign Legion to forget, you joined The Black Watch.”
Cameron laughed. “Sounds very melodramatic when you put it like that, but that’s pretty much how it was. About that time, my dad told me The Black Watch had been picked to oversee the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, and were looking for regimental photographers to document what was obviously going to be a historic tour of duty. It seemed like the ideal chance for me to move on, keep Dad happy, and do something I might even enjoy myself, so I took it.”
“Any regrets?”
“Not about my time in Hong Kong. It was exciting to be a part of it, capturing a little piece of history on film and seeing an amazing place at the same time. I’ll never forget the first time I took the Star Ferry over to Kowloon and then walked up Nathan Road. It was like nowhere I’d ever been, nothing I’d ever seen. There was so much atmosphere I could smell it and see it, touch it and taste it, so much excitement in the air that every single breath I took filled me with excitement.”
“I love Chinatown in San Francisco, so I can see why
you’d like Hong Kong,” Kate said. “How about after the Far East posting, did you go back to ordinary soldiering?”
He shook his head. “I was a photographer in a uniform. The only shooting I did was with a camera.”
Choosing her words carefully, Kate said, “I can’t imagine you doing the other kind but, earlier today, you acted like you had.”
Cameron looked at her, not understanding.
“When you talked about believing in ‘another kind of ghost’ this afternoon you had a really haunted look in your eyes.”
After a long, reflective look into his drink, Cameron said, “Other people did the shooting, but I saw the bodies.”
Kate thought it seemed like there were times when he was still seeing them. “You’re not just talking about one or two bodies, are you?” she asked.
“No.”
“You must be talking about Yugoslavia, then,” she guessed.
“Kosovo. It’s a terrible thing to say, but they all seemed the same: Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia. It wasn’t a clash of countries or armies. It wasn’t even one village against another, or one soldier against another. It was one neighbour against another, ordinary people doing terrible things to each other for no real reason. It’s bad enough when it’s just one or two psychos, but at least you can dismiss that as an aberration. When it’s whole villages, though, whole countries … When you realize it’s the behaviour that becomes the norm in situations where people can behave
as they please, then you find out much more about other people than you ever wanted to know.” He sighed, and added, “You find out much more about yourself than you ever wanted to know.”
Kate desperately wanted to learn what it was Cameron had found out about himself. However, she sensed that asking him now might only make him regret telling her as much as he had, not encourage him to tell more. So she just said, “I guess all of that makes you want to get away from people, to a place like this.”
He nodded. “Like you, though, I don’t know how realistic it is to think I can stay here. I’ve got vague notions about trying to make a living as a freelancer, specialising in wildlife and scenic shots, but I have an awful feeling that it won’t pay.”
“I guess the only way to find out is by giving it a try.” Cameron nodded again. “I saved a little when I was in the army, so hopefully I’ll be able to renovate the cottage and support myself for long enough to see if the freelance thing is viable.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“I’ll have to try getting a job on the local paper.” “
You make that sound like a last resort.” “
Take a look at the pictures on its pages: three out of four are check presentations. The others are retirals, wedding anniversaries, school plays. Not the sort of thing you can get too creative or excited about. I’m sure I’d end up just going through the motions, and life should be about
more than that, shouldn’t it?”
“Most definitely,” Kate said, her words heartfelt. She took a drink, then asked, “How about opening a studio and doing portraits and weddings?”
Cameron had considered that, but couldn’t see it working out. There was much more to taking portraits than technique. You had to be at ease with people, and able to put people at ease. The best way he could think of explaining things was to say, “It would be like you with your sculptures, Kate.”
And she nodded, because she understood.
For a little while they sat without saying anything, just holding their drinks, gazing into them …
Then Cameron said, “How about you, Kate. What’ll you do if things don’t work out here?”
“Go back to Sausalito, I guess.”
“It must be a beautiful place if it’s a tourist trap, but you don’t sound too enthusiastic about going back.”
“It is a beautiful place. Nothing like this, but lovely nonetheless. When I said ‘back to Sausalito’ I suppose what I meant was back to the feeling that life’s passing me by.”
“At least you’d have whatever money you made from selling the estate,” Cameron said.
“I couldn’t enjoy spending it, not knowing the price other people had paid to put it in my pocket. I’d feel like I was a second Lady Carolyn … And cursed just like she was,” she added.
“How do you mean?”
Kate related what Finlay had told her about the deathbed curse on Lady Carolyn and her descendants.
“You don’t believe in that sort of stuff, do you?”
“After what Finlay told me about the fate of some of the people in these portraits it’s difficult not to,” Kate said, looking over Cameron’s shoulder at the wall of paintings. “And it’s difficult not to get the feeling that history’s repeating itself—that I’m destined to be responsible for a second clearance, and punished accordingly.” She hesitated, afraid that what she was about to say might seem foolish, but then said it anyway because for some unaccountable reason she was sure that Cameron wouldn’t laugh: “Besides, there’s the way my sculptures have gone bad … It’s almost like a curse caused that.”
Cameron didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he was relieved when Finlay and Miss Weir came in to clear the trays, and the four-way conversation turned to the meal and how much it had been enjoyed.
After a beaming Miss Weir and Finlay had gone, taking the dishes with them, Kate and Cameron were left in silence.
Kate was berating herself for having mentioned the notion of a curse—things had been going so well, then she’d gone and put a downer on the evening and probably made herself seem a little kooky in the process.
Cameron was kicking himself for mentioning the things that weighed him down. He’d been trying to appear bright and funny but, in the end, hadn’t been able to keep what was inside from showing.
Kate got up and walked over to the wall of portraits, looking at Lady Carolyn.
Cameron got up and walked over to the picture of Jamie.
Turning to her guest, Kate said, “We make quite a pair, you and me, don’t we: a woman with a curse on her family and a guy with a haunted house?”
Suddenly they were laughing at each other and with each other …
And then they weren’t talking or laughing, they were kissing, neither of them making the first move or thinking about what they were about to do, both of them moving together and acting from feeling rather than thought.
“I didn’t think anything like this could happen so quickly,” Kate told him after they’d drawn apart, her hands on his shoulders, his clasped around her back.
“I didn’t think it could happen at all,” Cameron said.
For a few moments they stood like that, suddenly awkward, the way two people are when they’ve stumbled into the uncharted territory which separates friendship from love.
“Would you understand if I said I didn’t want things to happen too fast?” Kate said, finally breaking the silence.
Cameron nodded.
“Would you be disappointed?”
He nodded again.
“I’d have been disappointed if you weren’t disappointed,” Kate told him.
They laughed easily and together. Some of the awkwardness disappeared, and this time Kate felt able to fill
the next silence by asking, “What are you thinking, Cameron Fraser?”
“I’m not thinking, I’m hoping.”
“What are you hoping?”
“That you manage to hang on to Greystane, Kate Brodie.”
He felt her stiffen in his arms, saw a sadness in her smile.
“That’s why I don’t want things to move too fast, Cameron—in case I don’t manage to hang on to the estate,” she said. Then her actions were giving a lie to her words about not wanting things to move too fast, because her hands were running over his shoulders, her fingers clasping behind his neck, her lips pressing against his.
And for Cameron the past suddenly belonged to another time, the faces in the forest belonged to another world.
His heart belonged to Kate Brodie.
And that was when it happened: without any warning, the picture of Jamie Chisholm fell off the wall.
The painting had been hanging directly behind Kate, and she literally jumped with fright as it clattered to the polished wooden floor at her feet. The color drained from her face and, in a shaky voice, she said, “Was that what I think it was?”
“If you think it was a painting falling off the wall then, yes.”
Kate broke away from Cameron to turn around and look at the picture lying face-up on the floorboards.
“I wonder if that means Jamie’s jealous,” Cameron said, trying to make a joke of it.
“I hate to think what it means,” Kate said.
Cameron knelt down to examine the painting, and said, “The picture wire snapped.” Seeing that Kate was still shaking, he said, “That’s all it was, Kate, just an old picture wire that was ready to snap.”
“Maybe, but it’s really got me spooked.”
“I’m not surprised. I got a real fright myself,” he admitted.
“Are you going to be okay spending the night in the camper?” Kate asked.
He nodded.
Kate hesitated, then told him, “I meant what I said about not wanting things to move too fast, but you’re welcome to the guest room here. In fact, you’d be doing me a favour if you stayed. It’d be nice to know there’s someone through the wall.”