M.C. Beaton - Death of a Scriptwriter

Hamish watched the quickly moving pen. “If it’s that easy, why don’t more people use it?”

Angus said, “You know how it is. Climbers like a difficult climb, and the locals neffer go up there. Why should they? I mean, local people don’t go mountain climbing. It’s only the oddball like me and the tourists. And talking of the tourists, they get sillier every year. Down in Glencoe in the winter, you haff to keep ducking, for they are falling off the mountain like dead flies. No respect for the Scottish weather. Up they go, down comes the blizzard, out comes the mountain rescue and the taxpayer foots the bill. Then some silly bugger who’s cost the nation a fortune sells his story of ‘How I Survived’ to the tabloids and keeps the money. If I had my way – ”

“All right, all right,” said Hamish, cutting short the lecture. “I’ll take this map and I’ll let you have thae trout by tonight.”

He made his way to the door.

“Hamish!” called Angus.

Hamish turned round. “Aye?”

“It iss no use you getting your hopes up about that pretty little blond lassie. Ambition will get her chust the way it got the Fiona woman. Be careful there, Hamish.”

“Oh, aye,” said Hamish cynically. “I’ll be leaving you to look at your crystal balls.”

As he strode off, he wondered if the police had found that other path.

♦

Eileen Jessop sat at her dressing table in the manse in Drim and looked dismally at her reflection in the mirror. She felt she had not really looked at herself properly in years. Her eyes blinked back at her through her thick glasses. She studied her iron grey hair and her dumpy figure.

She had been a pretty girl when she had got married all those years ago…well, she had thought she was pretty. But somehow, right after they were married, Colin Jessop had begun to frown on anything he thought of as frivolous in the way of clothes and hairstyles. Makeup was definitely out, not at all the thing for a minister’s wife.

At first she had stood up to him, but he had gradually become more bullying, more aggressive, until slowly her personality had become submerged under his. It was so much easier to give in, to bend to his will, than face another of those angry scenes she had come to dread.

When he had been preaching at a church in Edinburgh, life had been easier. She had friends in the parish, she could go to theatres and cinemas. But he had resented her having any sort of independent life. When he had accepted the position of minister in Drim, Eileen had felt her very last little bit of freedom had been taken from her.

She had felt isolated and shy. There was an odd sort of pecking order in a Highland village, and the minister’s wife was expected to keep a kind of distance between herself and the ordinary village woman. Until the idea of the film, she had not known any of the women very well. Normally Colin Jessop might have objected, but he had recently been spending a great deal of time during the week in either Strathbane or Inverness on what he described as ‘religious business.’

For the first time in years, Eileen was free of his demanding and bullying company for long periods and felt that something inside her spirit was beginning to grow, giving her a restless springlike feeling.

And yet, she thought, looking at herself, her appearance only reflected the old Eileen. It would be grand to go down to Alice and get her awful, awful dull grey hair dyed. But then he would notice and there would be a scene; he might even stop her film, and she could not bear that. She had a great deal of tape. Eileen wanted to ask someone on the television company for advice about cutting and editing. Colin had forbidden her to go near them, and so far she had obeyed him. But she could approach one of them when he was away.

There was a ring at the doorbell and she went to answer it. It was Ailsa Kennedy. She and Eileen had quickly formed an odd sort of friendship.

“Come in,” said Eileen. “What brings you? I thought you would be watching all the detectives and police.”

“It’s half day at the shop,” said Ailsa. “I was thinking of taking the car for a drive into Inverness. Jock doesn’t need it today. Fancy coming along?”

Eileen brightened, and then her face fell. “Colin likes me to be here when he gets back, and I never know when that’s going to be. And he always likes dinner to be ready for him. But I’ve actually cooked a stew for tonight. It would only need to be heated up.”

“Then leave him a note to tell him to heat it,” said Ailsa.

“Oh, I c-couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” demanded Ailsa, tossing her red hair.

“He’d be so very angry.”

“Husbands are always angry. That’s their nature, and the nature of us women is not to pay a blind bit o’ notice.”

A little spark of rebellion ignited somewhere in Eileen’s brain. Ailsa was always talking about ‘us women,’ making the lonely minister’s wife feel she now belonged to a freemasonry of women who were not afraid of their husbands.

“I’ll go,” she said. “Wait till I leave a note.”

Ailsa glanced in amusement at the minister’s wife as she drove competently along the one-track roads, for Eileen was singing ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking.’

Then Eileen broke off singing and asked suddenly, “What do you think of my hair?”

“Very nice,” said Ailsa with true Highland politeness.

“I hate it, hate it,” said Eileen passionately. “I hate being dumpy, and I hate having grey hair.”

“Then that is easily solved,” said Ailsa. “We’ll drop in at a hairdresser’s in Inverness and you can get it done. You don’t want to go to Alice. I don’t know what dyes she uses, but she still turns out bottle blondes or dead, lifeless black. Your figure’s probably not that bad. You just need new clothes. Does he keep you on a tight budget?”

“No, I’ve a bit of money of my own.”

“There you are, then.”

“He’ll be so angry.”

“Of course he will. They always are. It’s their way,” said Ailsa sententiously, as if explaining the strange ways of some native tribe up the Amazon. “Take it from me, you do what you want, they rave, and after a few days, they forget what you looked like afore. Now, seeing as how you’re getting your hair done, we may as well have the top down.”

Ailsa was driving an old Morris Minor with a soft top. She pulled to the side of the road and folded back the roof.

Then they sped off in the sunlight again.

Eileen was to remember that journey for the rest of her life, the wind tearing through her hair and sending hairpins flying back on the road. Ailsa had put noisy pop music in the tape deck, and they sailed over the bridge from the Black Isle into Inverness, all racing wind and vulgar music and Eileen feeling young for the first time in her life.

Ailsa parked in the multistory car park at the bus station. “Hairdresser first,” said Ailsa, “and then we’ll have a late lunch.”

The hairdresser Ailsa led Eileen to was a new one, quite terrifying to one timid minister’s wife. But the girls were Highland and so had that gentle friendliness and entered into the interesting business of choosing colour and a hairstyle for Eileen.

Two hours later, Eileen emerged blinking into the sunlight. Her hair was black and shining and cut in a smooth style. She clung to Ailsa’s arm and kept glancing at her new appearance in shop windows. Ailsa came to a sudden stop. “Thon’s a grand dress for you.”

Eileen looked at it. It was a conventional shirtwaister but of soft silk, with a swirling pattern of peacock greens, golds and blue. She took a deep breath. “I’ll buy it.”

Ailsa insisted she wear it, and then they walked to a restaurant which Ailsa said was open all afternoon because all the normal lunchtime places had closed.