Adele Rawlins 4 A fishy tale 1

 

Chapter 4 A Fishy Tale part I

 

Me, I am entirely English. I understand le spirit sportif. I understand le picnic or dejeuner sur l’herbe as one might render it, and I am English, but so English! In that I do not fear flying insects just for being flying insects, and I do not flap at wasps but place a piece of jammy bread to attract them, and then upend a cup over them until they suffocate. I do not have an ounce of romance in my soul, and if I sent for my dear Tony in an emergency, I would expect him to consult a good railway timetable and telegraph ahead for a cab rather than riding ventre à terre across the countryside at great risk to life and limb and probably no faster than going by more regular methods. However, I cannot understand the English obsession with fishing. As far as I can understand, this involves sitting in total quiet, bored to death, for hours, often in the rain, and then heaving a fish in to land on a line which is likely to hurt the hands, and then boasting about the size of it when it shows that fish are smart in their own environment, breaks the line, and gets away. And when the men talk of an old pike which has defied all efforts to catch it, and which eats the edible fish in a pond [for you cannot persuade me that pike is edible] they then look horrified when one makes the perfectly natural suggestion that a dragnet be used to catch and remove the said pike.

It was under the suggestion of my devious father-in-law that Tony and I were staying in a place called Stankriggin in Scotland, which was not odorous and makes more sense if you know that estanc is old French for a fish pond.  The house was set on a ridge overlooking a slow-running stream which opened into a wide pond with rather boggy edges set with reeds, but with wooden structures running out into it like jetties, for people to fish. The pond lay between two waterfalls, and apparently salmon came upstream to spawn there, and get caught by those guests who paid to come and fish. Tony must pretend to be a keen fisherman, and Clara and I were part of the superfluous women whose interest in attending was supposed to be enjoying the air and sketching the scenery.

I was not unhappy to go away for a little while; I had miscarried and was consequently somewhat lachrymose. Clara had been an angel, running errands for me. I had worried that she might be jealous, but she had seemed truly interested in ‘our baby’ and cried as bitterly as I did when I told her about baby being born too soon, and dead.  I was up and about, but Tony said that I had lost some of my spirit. So, we had taken a job for his father, who works at the home office, because one of the fishermen here was suspected of selling secrets to the Russians.

Anyway, I made the comment that the establishment would do better if only the pike was caught and removed, and might be removed humanely and released downriver if they wished, but it would not then be eating young salmon.  And all the fishermen gave me most unfriendly stares.

“Do not look so at Mama! It is a clever idea!” said Clara. She is still shy, but a partisan supporter.

“I fear you do not understand, Mrs. Rawlins,” drawled Sir Jasper Clowchester, whom I disliked cordially for the way he sneered at Tony all the while. “There is sport to be had in attempting to catch ‘The Owd Bysyn,’ and that is what many people come for. It’s worth it for the laird to leave him be, even if he eats some fry. There’s always plenty of salmon to catch and send to Edinburgh, London, or Paris.”

“Aye, and I’ve a braw part cordoned off that yon bysyn canna get intae, for the trade,” said our host.

Well, that made sense.

There was a spur of the pond or lake where the guests did not seem to go; but there was some kind of building on its banks, doubtless for boxing up salmon caught commercially.

“So, is ‘Bysyn’ a word for pike?” I asked.

“It aye means ‘a monster,’” said the laird.

So now I knew.

You are thinking, no doubt, that the secrets were concealed in the fish and smuggled out to France, where they were sent on to Russia.

They had already thought of that, and searched fish before they left the country. Nothing.

The Laird’s man had stood, smirking, whilst home office men unpacked every fish, looked inside it and in the packing. The laird sued. Sir Geoffrey was hurting; and so here we were. Because I was good at finding things out. And because Sir Geoffrey thought that a woman’s point of view might be useful.

A woman’s point of view is that fishing is a damned silly occupation.

Oh, fishing for food is important, and I like salmon as much as anyone. Me, I have gone out of my way to find French ways of cooking, because everyone seems to expect me to know, even though I was eating English food from as early as I can remember, but I do like Salmon Meunière where it is pan fried in butter and served with a lemon caper sauce. First you dredge the salmon fillets in flour to crisp the outside and cling to the sauce, then you fry it in butter, remove, add more butter, parsley, lemon juice and zest, and capers if you like them. Served with fresh asparagus it’s heavenly. And we did eat salmon a lot in Stankriggin, which was somewhere between a hotel and the private home of the laird, who took in paying guests. Mostly they poached it in milk and used the hot milk to make a parsley roux sauce, or fried it with mushrooms, which were dried mushrooms soaked back into life at this time of year. We also had Salmon en croute or baked in pastry, which I suspect might be an English dish despite its French name. The English love their pies.

However, back to our mystery.

Sir Jasper had been searched on boarding the train to come north as well, and had openly sneered at those who had searched him, and who had gone through his luggage, lining and all. It had been done very discreetly on the train and everything made good but he was plainly amused by it all.

Me, I had no doubt as to how he arranged that stage, and I wrote to Sir Geoffrey,  Papa as I like to call him, to inform him that Sir Jasper received a letter addressed in his own handwriting and had probably mailed it as soon as he had anything to send.  You may ask, why go himself, then? But if he did not visit a suspected contact, that contact’s mail would be searched. Mailing it to himself, he allayed suspicion.

How the information was then sent abroad was what was required, because stopping the source was not enough without cutting all the links in the chain. So, Clara and I went out and about, idly sketching. There was a pleasant terrace outside the house, with a good parapet to stop anyone absently falling down the crag, which overlooked the lake, and to the pleasing vista of the mountains beyond. Clara painted the lake, very competently, considering her age, and rather whimsically added a leaping salmon.

“Can I ask if they would like to use it on their labels?” she asked me. Clara had no idea why we were there.

“‘May I,’” I corrected, absently. I would not correct at first when she was so shy, and when speech did not come readily.

“May I?” she repeated.

“Certainly,” I said. “Please will you ask them for refreshments on the way back up.”

She galloped off coltishly.

She was back far too quickly, sobbing, a hand mark on her face, and her sketch crumpled.

I gave her a cuddle.

“I will see the laird,” I said, grimly. “His men have no business treating you like that.”

I confess, I slammed into his office.

“Mrs. Rawlins! Wha’s got ye in sich a taking?” he asked.

“One of your men hit my little girl hard enough to leave a hand mark,” I snarled. “She’s seven years old,  and vulnerable, and she was intending only a kindness in offering her sketch to be used as a label. She wanted to show off her drawing of a salmon leaping, and it is, perhaps, that they were busy, and that she was in the way, but that is no excuse for a grown man to hit so little a girl so hard when she had no intent of anything but being well-meaning!  I will expect a written apology from him to her, and your assurance that your servants will learn not to strike the paying guests!”

He had gone white.  I should think so, too!

“Yer bairn will hae her apology,” he said. “It’s best for her tae stay oot o’ the way o’ the men packing fush, for they’re rough fellows.” He paused. “Has she a favourite meal? I should like to have it served tonight as my apology.”

“She has expressed a fondness for your haggis with neeps and tatties,” I said.

“Ah, we’ll mak’ a Scot o’ her yet, forbye,” he said.

I went back to Clara, having acquired a pot of tea for me, milk for Clara, and a two-decker plate of biscuits and small cakes.  I was gaining a taste for the triangular sections broken from a large biscuit of Scottish shortbread, myself, but Clara had discovered Dundee cake and carefully picked all the almonds from it to eat afterwards.

“I will permit you to leave the almonds if you do not like them,” I said.

“Oh, I like them, mama, I just like them better out of the cake,” she said, seriously. Well, to each their own, and we  had no audience to censure her for playing with her food; I am just glad to get her to eat anything, for she picked at her food when we first had her.

“Feeling better?” I asked. She gulped the last of her milk, and nodded, solemnly.

“I said I wouldn’t mind if they wanted to use it as the under-label,” said Clara.

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I suddenly had an idea that I knew.

“Why, they paste a little label firmly in place, then put a larger one over it,” said Clara.

“Ah, well, Papa will frame your picture and we will hang it to remember a mostly very pleasant holiday,” I said. It pleased  Clara well enough.

 

I spoke quietly to Tony as we dressed for dinner; Emmie was helping Clara. She is a perfect maid for Clara, being  young enough to enjoy playing with dolls with her.

He stared.

“I need to get this information to Papa,” he said.

“No; I need to get the information to Papa,” I said. “They will watch you.”

“I will play cards with the other men in the evening instead of coming to bed with you,” said Tony. “I will tell them you have a megrim after being upset today.”

“Oh, how clever,” I said. “They will watch the door of my room, but probably not the window.”

I had a word with Emmie. My clever little maid knows most things about me, and nodded gravely over the importance of not letting Clara find out that I was not there.

“I will stay in her room, ma’am,” she said, earnestly.

“Get comfortable, and sleep,” I said. “I don’t know when I will be back.”

“The laird didn’t half lay into one of his men,” said Emmie, in satisfaction. “Told him how stupid he was to antagonise the guests by hurting their children.  The man said that she, by which he meant Clara, had seen something, and the laird cut him off and told him that the child wouldn’t understand what she saw. Of course, they were speaking their own uncouth idiom but I can follow it,” she added, with a sniff. Emmie also speaks fluent French, for I taught her, and refers to it as ‘that heathen tongue of foreigners.’ I am very fond of Emmie.

 

We endured dinner, and Clara shyly thanked the laird for making her favourite Scottish meal to make up for her fright. As there was a bruise on her poor little face, he was well reminded of what had happened, and thanked her for not spreading the story about.

“I’m not a tattle-tale-tit, and you told Mama you would deal with him,” said Clara, scornfully. “But Mama was right to tell you, because bullies did not ought to make children have their little secrets.”

Had there been anyone who knew anything, that phrase would have given away a lot; Clara saw her father kill her mother and he told her to say nothing. It had frightened her so much that she had not spoken a single word until she spoke to me at Christmas last, and we adopted her. One day I would tell her that we help out catch bad people, but not yet. She did not need to have more secrets until she understood that there are good and bad secrets.

After dinner, I swept her off for her bath before bed in the antiquated manifestations of plumbing which passed for bathrooms in this ancient pile.

Me, I like things to look ancient, but have every modern convenience. What is the point of having inventors if you do not make use of them? The picturesque is for the eyes and the eyes alone. All other senses demand the most modern way of doing things so that the nose is not assailed by what should be carried by good drains, the ears not assaulted by pipes groaning as if the familial banshees are trying to learn the bagpipes and failing mournfully, and the taste buds not let down by food cooled by having to have it brought two miles or more down rambling corridors. Though I will say this, for the laird, he did have kitchens close to the dining rooms.

His drains needed work though.

You would have thought that if he was smuggling secrets he could have afforded to have his plumbing, in both directions, upgraded.

I let Emmie undress Clara in the usual way; which is to say, helping with things like the middle button Clara could not reach, and then came in to tell her a story. I extemporised a story about a family of rabbits whose laird was a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who dug an underground trench all around the camp of the rebels so that their tents collapsed, and dug through to the English camp to warn them of the impending attack. She was mostly asleep when I kissed her goodnight, and wanted to know only if the good bunnies were rewarded.  I promised her that they were, and she was making sleeping noises as I went out of the door.

It was time to get ready to leave.