He came back to the hotel ravenous, and was gratified to be given no fewer than two items of local manufacture for his high tea. One was a plate of Katie-Ann’s scones, and the other was ‘sleeshacks’: a delicacy he had known of old. Sleeshacks were mashed potatoes fried in slices; and they certainly helped to make appetising the remains of cold beef from lunch which was the pièce de résistance of the meal. But as he ate his first course he kept smelling something more evocative of those early Strathspey days than even sleeshacks could be. An aroma both sharp and subtle it was, floating and circling about his brain in a nostalgic tantalisation. It was not until he had put his knife into one of Katie-Ann’s scones that he knew what it was. The scone was yellow with soda and quite uneatable. With a regretful salute to her for the memory (platefuls of yellow soda-laden scones laid out in the farmhouse kitchen table for the farm-hands’ tea: Oh, Tir nan Og!) he buried two of Katie-Ann’s scones under the glowing coals in the grate and made do with the Glasgow bread.
And that night he fell asleep without looking at the wallpaper and without remembering the closed window at all.
7
In the morning he ran into the Reverend Mr MacKay in the post-office and felt that he was distributing his favours very successfully. Mr MacKay was on his way down to the harbour to see if the crew of a Swedish fishing-boat that was lying there would like to come to church if they were still there the day after tomorrow. There was also, he understood, a Dutch vessel, that might be presumed to be of a Presbyterian persuasion. If they showed signs of wanting to come he would prepare a sermon in the English for them.
He condoled with Grant about the rough weather. It was early in the year for the Islands, but he supposed that one had to take holidays when one was given them.
‘You’ll be a schoolmaster, maybe, Mr Grant.’
No, Grant said, he was a Civil Servant. Which was his normal answer to questions about his profession. People were prepared to believe that Civil Servants were human beings; no one ever believed that a policeman was one. They were two-dimensional characters with silver buttons and a notebook.
‘You’d be amazed, now, you that has not been here before, if you could see what the Islands are like in June, Mr Grant. Not a cloud in the sky, day after day, and the air so hot that ye’ll see it dancing before you. And the mirage as mad as ever it was in the desert.’
‘Were you in North Africa?’
Och, yes; Mr MacKay had been in North Africa with the Jocks. ‘And believe me, Mr Grant, I’ve seen odder things from my window up in the manse there than ever I did between Alamein and Tripoli. I’ve seen the lighthouse on the point there standing up in the air. Yes, halfway up the sky. I’ve seen the hill there change shape till it looked like a great mushroom. And as for the rocks by the sea, those great pillars of stone, they can turn light and transparent and move about as if they were walking through a set of the Lancers.’