‘Good-morning,’ he said amiably to Yughourt. ‘I’ve had some very good fishing since I saw you last.’ And was pleased to notice the hope grow on Yughourt’s face.
‘I’m glad of that, sir, very glad,’ he said, pretending to remember Grant. ‘The Tay, is it?’
‘No, the Turlie. By the way, what did your dead young man die of? The one I left you trying to waken.’ Antagonism began to wither the eagerness on Yughourt’s face. ‘Won’t you join me?’ Grant added. ‘A whisky?’ Yughourt relaxed.
After that it was easy. Yughourt was still prickled with resentment at the inconvenience that he had been caused. He had even had to attend the inquest in his spare time. It was, Grant thought, as easy as dealing with a toddler who has just learned to run. It needed only a touch to steer him in any required direction.
Yughourt had not only hated having to attend the inquest, he had hated the inquest and he had hated every single soul connected with the inquest. Between his hatred and two double whiskies he provided Grant with the most detailed account of everyone and everything. He was the best value for money that Grant had ever had. He had been ‘on’ in the affair from first to last; from the first appearance of B Seven at Euston to the coroner’s verdict. As a source of information he was pure horse’s-mouth, and he ‘gave’ like a beer tap.
‘Had he travelled with you before?’ Grant asked.
No, Yughourt had never seen him before and was glad that he was never going to again.
This was where Grant’s satisfaction suddenly changed to satiation. One more half-minute of Yughourt and he would be sick. He pushed himself off the counter of the Eagle bar and went to look for the Public Library.
The library was frightful beyond description: a monstrosity in liver-coloured stone; but after Yughourt it seemed the fine flower of civilisation. The assistants were charming and the librarian was a thin little piece of faded elegance with a tie no broader than the black silk ribbon of his eyeglasses. As an antidote to too much Murdo Gallacher it could not have been better.
Little Mr Tallisker was a Scot from Orkney—which, he pointed out, was not being a Scot at all—and he was both interested in and knowledgeable about the Islands. He knew all about the singing sands on Cladda. There were other alleged singing sands, too (every Island wanted to have what its neighbours had as soon as they heard about any new possession, whether it was a pier or a legend), but the Cladda ones were the original. They lay, like most of the Island sands, on the Atlantic side, facing the unbroken ocean. Looking out to Tir nan Og. Which, as Mr Grant might know, was the Gaelic heaven. The land of the eternally young. It was interesting, wasn’t it, how each people evolved their own idea of Heaven? One as a feast of lovely women, one as forgetfulness, one as continuous music and no work, one as good hunting grounds. The Gaels, Mr Tallisker thought, had had the loveliest idea. The land of youth.