They began to talk about the Islands. Tommy had a fine tale of a man whose hat blew off as he was boarding a boat in Barra and who found it waiting for him on the pier at Mallaig. Laura was funny about the impossibility of carrying on a conversation in a language that has no words for anything less than two hundred years old and supplied an imaginary account of a road accident. (‘Blah-blah bicycle blah-blah S-bend blah-blah brakes blah-blah traction-engine blah-blah ambulance blah-blah stretcher blah-blah anaesthetic blah-blah private ward blah-blah temperature-chart blah-blah chrysanthemums freezias ranunculus narcissus carnations….’) Zoë had stayed in the Islands as a child and was very knowledgeable about poaching salmon; an art she had been taught by local talent under the very nose of her host’s game-keeper.
Grant was pleased to find that the family atmosphere of Clune had been in no way disturbed by the presence of this guest. She seemed unaware of her beauty, and unexpectant of attention. He was not surprised that Pat had been ‘bowled over’.
It was only when his bedroom door finally closed on him and he was alone that his mind went to that waiting sack of letters in the post-office at Moymore. A sack of them! Well, that was not unbearably surprising, after all. A life in the C.I.D. conditioned one to the existence of the letter-writer. There were people whose only interest in life was writing letters. To the newspapers, to authors, to strangers, to City Councils, to the police. It did not much matter to whom; the satisfaction of writing seemed to be all. Seven-eighths of that pile of letters would be the product of those whose hobby was writing letters.
But there was still the odd eighth.
What would the odd eighth have to say?
In the morning he watched the guest getting her tackle ready for the river and wished that he was going with her, but still more he wanted to go to the post-office at Moymore. She set off without fuss, self-sufficient and unobtrusive, and Grant, watching her walk down the path, thought that she was more like an adolescent boy than a prospective dowager. She was wearing very elegant trousers and a disreputable old lumber jacket, and he remarked to Tommy that she was one of the few women who looked really well in trousers.
‘She’s the only woman in the world,’ Tommy said, ‘who looks beautiful in waders.’
So Grant went away to interview Mrs Mair at Moymore. Mrs Mair hoped that he had a secretary and presented him with a paper-knife. It was a thin silver affair, very tarnished, with a thistle head made of amethyst. When he pointed out that the thing was hall-marked and of some value nowadays and that he could not accept expensive presents from strange women, she said:
‘Mr Grant, that thing has been in my shop for twenty-five years. It was made for the souvenir trade in the days when people could read. Now they just look and listen. You’re the first person I’ve met in a quarter of a century that needed a paper-knife. Indeed, by the time you’ve slit open all the letters in that sack, you’ll need more than a paper-knife, I’m thinking. Anyway it’s the first and last time I’ll ever have a sack of mail addressed to one person in this office and I’d like to mark the occasion. So you take the wee knife!’
He took it gratefully, hoisted the sack into the car, and went back to Clune.