They talked of the weather, the winter gales (which made today, according to Father Heslop, a thing of zephyrs), the penetrating damp, the occasionally idyllic summer days.
Why had a place of so few attractions captured the imagination of so many people, Grant wanted to know.
Well, partly it was that they saw it only at high summer, and partly it was that those who came and were disappointed, were reluctant to admit their disappointment either to themselves or the friends they had left behind. They compensated themselves by talking big. But it was Father Heslop’s own theory that most people who came were unconsciously running away from life, and they found what their imaginations prepared for them. Through their eyes the Islands were beautiful.
Grant thought this over, and then asked him if he had ever known a Charles Martin, who had been interested in singing sands.
No; Father Heslop had never met a Charles Martin, as far as he could remember. Had he come to Cladda?
Grant did not know.
He went out into the blast, and was blown back to the hotel at an undignified trot, teetering on his toes like an elderly toper. The bare lobby at the hotel smelled of unidentifiable hot food and sang like a choir as the wind came shrieking in under the outside door. But they had managed a fire that looked like a fire, in the sitting-room. To the scream of wind in the passage and the yowling of wind in the chimney he ate beef from South America, carrots tinned in Lincolnshire, potatoes grown in Moray, milk pudding packaged in North London, and fruit bottled in the Vale of Evesham. Now that he was no longer conditioned to magic, he filled his stomach thankfully with what was put in front of him. If Cladda had denied him spiritual joy it had provided him with a fine physical appetite.
‘Don’t you ever bake scones, Katie-Ann?’ he said, when he was arranging the time of his high tea.
‘Is it scones you’ll be wanting?’ she said surprised. ‘Indeed, yes, I’ll bake you some. But we have baker’s cakes for your tea. And biscuits, and ginger-snaps. Would you rather be having scones than them?’
Remembering the ‘baker’s cakes’ Grant said enthusiastically that he would, he would indeed.