Chapter 3: Unsophisticated Fish

I stood on the porch of my chalet to watch the seaplane land on Lochan Glas. I had decided to go hungry rather than face Kate and Jon over the breakfast table. The plane looked quite large when it swept overhead above the loch, almost disappearing behind the ridge before it turned and came towards us, rapidly losing height as it approached.

It seemed to almost brush through the heather as it cleared the ridge, sinking rapidly to land on the calm surface of the loch, leaving twin lines of white water in its wake. It visibly tilted as it turned towards the jetty, with the wingtip dipping close to the water surface. About seventy metres from the shore, the propeller stopped turning and a moment later the door just in front of the wing opened and a man stepped out onto the float.

The aeroplane was visibly slowing down as it approached the jetty. It finally stopped so close that the pilot was able to step from the float onto the wooden pier. I know very little about flying and nothing at all about boats, but I was conscious that I had witnessed a virtuoso performance both in the air and on the ground.

It wasn’t until the pilot yelled ‘Hi Kate’ that I realised the audience had grown. Elaine was still in a dressing gown although her make-up and hair were immaculate; Jenny was dressed in a smock that completely hid her figure; Kate and Jon were standing together at the door of the house shouting and waving. Phil was coming down the path carrying fishing rods and an old pair of waders from the empty chalet.

Rob, the pilot, walked forward to chat to the youngsters while I helped Phil load the plane. Up close it was small, and the six seats looked crammed together.

“Your man’s coming for a couple of days, Phil tells me,” Rob was saying. “I’ll see if I can talk Anya into taking a break with someone there to keep an eye on Hector.”

They went on to talk of people and events that meant nothing to me, so I concentrated on Phil’s last-minute instructions. Very soon, Rob was checking that I was securely fastened to the narrow seat alongside his command post. I had frequently travelled as a passenger – even in an aircraft as small as this six-seater – but this was the first time I had been faced with controls and an instrument panel.

“What do I do?” I asked, waving my hands aimlessly.

“Don’t touch anything,” Rob growled.

Phil pushed us off from the jetty while Rob was completing a printed check list. He pressed a button to fire up the engine and completed his checks until we reached the far end of the loch, close to where he touched down. I felt the plane tilt as we turned to face roughly south-west and then we were rumbling across the surface of the loch. Before I was aware, we were climbing over the ridge and out of sight of the Retreat. Rob said something into the microphone at his lips before he indicated to me a switch on my own headset.

“We’ll turn south and follow the peninsula until we reach Helensburgh,” Rob informed me. “The Navy aren’t too keen on us flying over them, so we’ll skirt Ben Bowie and head for the Bonnie Banks.”

“I was born and brought up in Helensburgh.”

“You don’t have to apologise to me,” he turned to grin at me. “I was born and bred in Glasgow, so I don’t have much to boast about either.”

Flying at low level, it is surprisingly difficult to judge your height. When we turned east, I would have sworn that we were below the summit of the rounded hill to the south of our course, but Rob assured me that we would clear the top by a couple of hundred feet if we drifted in that direction; we were certainly looking up at the peaks to the north of us that mark the start of the Highland massif.

“That’s Inchmurrin dead ahead,” Rob pointed out the low-lying island. “We’ll turn north there and follow Loch Lomond right to the end.”

The loch is wide where we joined it with lots of little islands dotted about the surface. It quickly narrowed as we neared Luss and from then on, we flew in a canyon with the water below us and mountains rearing on both sides. We were level with Ben Lomond when Rob put the plane into a steep climb that soon had us above the highest peaks.

As we climbed, I caught some glimpses of water off to our right that quickly resolved as we ascended, into a massive loch running east-west, almost at right angles to our course. My awed astonishment delighted my pilot. I could now see that there were in fact several lochs forming a chain. The largest is Loch Katrine, source of much of the drinking water to Glasgow, nestling below the horizon.

Still chuckling over the success of his coup de theatre, Rob began to tell me about our destination. Loch Dochard is a slightly larger version of Lochan Glas, which we had left behind us. The area of water is larger, and it is surrounded by hills high enough to be called mountains.

“It’s only a matter of ten miles from the main road but it’s rough going. I’ll show you where you can park your car, and we’ll fly along the track. Not that I advise that route. I wouldn’t do it myself nowadays but it’s not the first time I’ve trudged along there – and not always sober at that!”

Below us were rivers running white, spruce and Douglas fir and a lot of moorland with the occasional glint of water showing through the heather. We had passed Crianlarich and Tyndrum so I knew we were on the fringes of Rannoch Moor, one of the bleakest stretches of moorland in Scotland. Rob pointed out a bothy used by mountaineers before we flew out over a substantial area of water with three buildings hugging the shores.

The only sign of life was a column of dark smoke rising from the chimney of one of the cabins but, by the time we had turned and were dropping down towards the surface of the loch, two human figures were standing outside. A slight increase in vibration was the only indication I had that we had landed safely. There was no jetty in Loch Dochard, so Rob dropped an anchor while one of the welcoming party rowed out to us in an inflatable dinghy.

“It’s yourself, Anya,” Rob cheerfully called.

“Who were you expecting, you old bugger?” the woman grinned up, as she handed a mooring line to the pilot.

She helped to load my fishing gear and then the three of us landed close to the smaller of the two cabins. I was ushered inside with my loads.

“You get settled, Fergus, while Biggles and me go up to see my Dad.”

With that, she took Rob’s arm, and they walked the few steps to where an older man was standing, leaning on a sturdy walking stick in the doorway of the bigger cabin. I was left in a single room with walls and ceiling of roughly dressed planks of wood. There was a double bed opposite the door that had obviously been freshly made-up. There was a sink against the left wall with a cooker beyond, under which I could see a cylinder of gas.

On closer inspection, there was only one water tap which gushed rather brownish water for a moment or two before clearing. There were cupboards beside the cooker containing cups and plates and a box with a metal mesh in place of a door, containing a small pat of butter and lump of cheese. On a shelf beside the door there were two large torches, but they were, so far as I could see, the only electrical equipment in the place.

“The bed’s comfortable and I aired it as soon as I heard you were coming. I’m Anya and I’ve been here since Hector – that’s my dad – had a stroke about four years ago now. Is the water running clear; just let it run for a minute or two before you make a cup of tea. It’s only peat and it won’t do you any harm, but I’ll admit it makes the tea look funny.”

Still talking, she moved to the bedside table and lifted a gas cylinder about the size of a coke can with a little shade attached.

“This is your night-light. They’re really good and won’t strain your eyes if you like to read in bed. I used to be an ophthalmic nurse, so I know about these things.”

Turning to the cooker she continued the lecture: “The gas is on if you want to cook something, but Dad and I want to invite you to dine with us tonight. We’ll go up now and have a sandwich before Rob leaves.”

With that, she was out the door, and I followed in her wake like the tail of a comet. She had talked constantly but none of it was idle chatter: she was brief and informative throughout. It seemed clear to me that she had experience in giving precise direction to others and I guessed that she had been more than just a simple nurse.

She has slim legs ending in top quality hiking boots, but I couldn’t make up my mind about her top half since it was enveloped in a large, shapeless jumper extending from her neck to halfway down her thighs. Her pretty face was well but subtly made-up; the big shock was her hair which was wild and unruly. It was a muddy-brown colour with flecks of grey at her temples.

Inside the cabin, Rob was sitting on a kitchen chair close to a much older-looking man quietly rocking beside an open fire. It was furnished as a living room with closed doors leading off and it was rather too well heated for my taste. Rob is my height but bulkier and I had been puzzling over his age since we met. His competence in the air and his sprightliness had me estimating late sixties but now, seeing him beside Hector, I realised that he was probably a few years past his seventieth birthday.

Anya’s Father looked a decade older than that, but he had suffered a stroke. In fact, as I became accustomed to the aromatic scent of burning peat, I began to detect an air of something – call it sickness or old age, but there was an unhealthy atmosphere around Hector.

She bustled through a door, returning moments later with four plates of sandwiches.

“I baked the bread fresh this morning,” she assured me, as she handed me my plate.

Rob joined me at a drop-leaf table while Anya took the chair beside her father, handing his sandwiches to him one at a time. Eating was a serious business so there was nothing to be heard but sounds of mastication until we were finished. Anya collected the empty plates and returned from the kitchen bearing three cups of tea. She put a blanket round Hector’s knees before she took her cup and gave Rob and me the sign to follow her outside.

“He’ll sleep for an hour,” she sighed. “Did you bring the stuff I asked for, Rob?”

He said that it was all in the plane and they could collect it after they finished their tea. I offered to help but Anya, rather sharply, told me not to bother. It took a couple of trips in the little dinghy to bring ashore the boxes of supplies. They worked together to bring them to the house, while I wandered down towards my little cabin. An hour later they came back to the beach where Rob took his leave, promising to be back for me in three days. He had gone back in to put a handful of damp grass on the fire.

“The dark smoke from the wet grass lets me see the wind speed and direction, just like a windsock at an ordinary airfield,” Rob explained.

“I still wish you’d change your mind and come with me, Anya,” were his last words before he pulled up the anchor and closed the door of his aeroplane.

She came and sat beside me on the thin grass that fringed the loch.

“I’m sorry if I sounded sharp, Fergus. Rob and I know where everything goes, and the truth is that you would have been more hindrance than help. Me, Dad and him go back more years than I care to remember. Living alone out here does nothing to improve your diplomatic skills, and I was always challenged in that area, even when I worked in a team.”

“It’s not my place to say it, but are you doing Hector or yourself a service living in this isolated spot?”

“Now I know why Kate and Jon speak so highly of you,” she laughed, punching me on the arm. “Politely impudent or impudently polite was the way Jon described you!

“Dad was born only a few miles from this spot, and I believe that it would literally kill him if we tried to take him to hospital. They fixed him up in Glasgow after the stroke, but he was fretting so much that they let me bring him back here. That was four years ago, and the consultant expected Dad to die within three months.”

She rose and dusted the seat of her jeans.

“We’ll have dinner at four, when Dad’s at his brightest. He’ll enjoy the company for an hour, as he did Rob’s visit, but then I’ll put him to bed. After that, if you’re up for it, I’ll tell you his life story – and mine.”

I sat where I was, wondering what it must be like to have such a sense of place. I was born and raised in Helensburgh, but I feel no particular urge to return there. My childhood was happy, but I have no expectations that returning to live in Helensburgh would restore the joys of youth. If I was as ill as Hector, I certainly would not want to live very far from the best medical care.

The weather was still holding fair but there were more clouds this afternoon and they were darkening, although they did not yet threaten rain. I wandered along the shore of the loch and then returned to my cabin to freshen up before I joined father and daughter for dinner. Anya served venison steaks with potatoes boiled in their skins and tinned carrots. She cut up the meat for her father and kept one eye on him, but he fed himself, emptying his plate.

The evening did not go as Anya had planned. Hector was lively after his afternoon nap and he reminisced about his boyhood for almost two hours, after which his eyes abruptly closed, and he was asleep on his feet as his daughter manhandled him to his bedroom. I wished them ‘goodnight’ and returned to my cabin.

Hector’s father had been head gamekeeper to the Earl that owned the estate. The boy was born in one of a row of cottages close to the stables and less than quarter of a mile from the mansion which the owner and his friends occupied for about six weeks in the year. It was during that brief period that Hector’s most vivid memories were formed.

Loch Dochard only holds trout, so it did not feature in the parties formed to catch salmon; the laird and his family often picnicked on the shores, however, with the children pulling brown trout from the lochan while the parents took their ease. The area around the loch was at its busiest in the stalking season.

On the far side of the water from the cosy cabin where Hector was reminiscing, there was a stone-built stable with a slate roof, the remains of which Anya promised to show me before I left. Hector and the other boys brought the gearran down from the big house and slept in the loft above their charges, while his father organised the stalking of the deer.

The gearran is a Highland pony specially trained to carry the carcases of deer off the hill. Horses become very uneasy around dead animals, so the ponies are introduced to the pelt of deer. It is first laid on the ground and a treat such as carrots or apples is strewn on it. When the ponies are comfortable with that, the skin will be placed on their backs. Hector played a big hand in the training, and he was the acknowledged leader of the horse boys sleeping rough at the loch-side.