That evening was one of the nicest that Smiler could remember for a long time. They had dinner in the main hall and Smiler had to admit that, compared with Laura’s, his cooking was very rough and ready. They began with smoked trout from the loch and then there was roast chicken – served by the Laird at the head of the table with a great flourishing of carving knife and fork – with roast potatoes and fresh green beans from the small garden patch on the slope above the castle. Afterwards there was blackberry pie (the berries preserved from the previous year’s crop) and custard. By the time they were finished Smiler was so full he could hardly move. And, while they ate, the dogs and animals moved around them and a row of fantails and other birds sat on the terrace balustrade outside the open doors and watched them like an audience. Laura had prepared the meal in the two hours since they had come back from swimming.
But when she brought the dinner in Smiler saw, too, that she had found time to change. Her long, brown hair was tied back with a green silk strip and she wore a short red dress with green stripes, and thick-heeled black shoes that went clack, clack across the polished floor boards. Suddenly she seemed very grown up and different. So much so that Smiler couldn’t keep his eyes off her as she carried the dish of chicken to the table – until she said, ‘And which, Sammy, would you be gawping at? Me or the chicken?’
It was during the dinner that Smiler learnt something of the history of the Elphinstones and their castle. While he and Laura drank milk and orange juice, the Laird was treating himself to a small bottle of wine. From the moment he had said grace, he kept up an easy flow of talk, telling stories and making them laugh. But the story that Smiler liked best, although it didn’t make him laugh, was one about another Sir Alec Elphinstone – an ancestor of the Laird’s – whose picture hung at the top of the great stairway. Smiler, who was very fond of history, listened fascinated because the man the Laird was talking about had once lived in this castle, had eaten at the very same table and had fished and swum in the loch outside.
When Charles Edward Stuart – Bonnie Prince Charlie – the grandson of James II, had come back to Scotland to make a bid for the throne of England in 1745, he had landed on the coast not far away and had called all the clansmen to him at Glenfinnan. This was the town to which the truck driver had given Smiler and Bacon a lift from Fort William. The Laird of those days had joined him. He had marched south with the clans to take part in the great victory of Prestonpans, and had soldiered and campaigned with the Prince as far south as Derby where the tide of fortune had turned against Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Finally, retreating into the Highlands, the Prince’s forces had been defeated by the Duke of Cumberland, Butcher Cumberland, at Culloden Moor not far from Inverness. After many adventures Bonnie Prince Charlie had escaped, the country never to return. With him had gone the Sir Alec Elphinstone of those days, after making a hurried visit to the castle to say good-bye to his wife and children.
The Laird said, ’Aye, he went with his Prince. And, like him, never to return. From those days the House of Elphinstone has never recovered. The Butcher’s men sacked the castle of every valuable except a few pieces of silver plate that Lady Elphinstone hid. But the one thing they wanted and didn’t get was the Elphinstone jewels. Sir Alec took them with him, they say, to raise further funds for the Prince. We’ve been poor as cathedral mice ever since. When you go up to bed, Samuel M., you can see the jewels. Next to Sir Alec’s picture at the top of the stairs is a painting of his wife. A grand lady and she is wearing some of the jewels.
‘What would you do with them, if you had them now, sir?’ asked Smiler.
‘Do? Why, laddie, be sensible and sell the lot, and use the money to good purpose. Put the farms in order, plant the forest, break new land, and polish up this old ruin and leave a fine going concern for my son. But most of all – for there would be money to spare – I’d set up a fine wild life sanctuary at this end of the loch. Turn it over to the beasts and the birds. Aye, and have enough money still to pay for wardens to keep people’s thieving hands off the beasts. The sea ospreys would come back and breed in peace from egg stealers, and so would the golden eagles, the peregrines, the merlins and hobbies, and that bonnie bird the hen harrier. When I was a boy there were always two pairs of ospreys breeding here. One on the Hen and the other pair on the far Chicken. And I’d have a surgery and hospital and maybe a wee experimental station for studying. We all have dreams, laddie, and that’s mine. And dream it will stay.’ He looked at them both and slowly smiled. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t forget my friends. I’d buy Mistress Laura here a good farm and leave her to find a fine, hard-working young man to go with it.’
‘And what would you buy Samuel?’ asked Laura.
The Laird turned to Smiler. ‘What would I buy you, Samuel M.?’
Embarrassed for the moment, Smiler said, ‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Then you should do,’ said Laura. ‘You’re old enough to begin thinking about the future. What about –’ she grinned ‘– since you’re so taken with cooking and housework – a hotel?’
‘I don’t want nothing to do with any hotel, thank you. I want to be outside with animals and things. Perhaps, well … perhaps I’d like to be a farmer, or someone like –’
‘Like what?’ asked the Laird.
‘Well, like a vet. So I could look after animals like you do, sir. Only I’m not very good at learning. And I’d have to get exams and go to University and all that.’
‘University – that’s a waste of time,’ said Laura. ‘All they do there is grow long hair and beards and want everything put on a plate before them. You should hear my father about it.’
‘Take no heed of Mistress Laura,’ said the Laird. ‘If you want to do a thing you can find ways. Maybe sometime –’ he glanced at Laura slyly ‘– when we’re not plagued with womenfolk – we’ll have a chat about it.’
‘Well, that’s aye put me in my place,’ said Laura. ‘However, while you’re waiting to decide your future, you can help me carry these things back to the kitchen and we’ll make the Laird some coffee.’
Much later, after they had sat with the Laird having his coffee on the terrace and the birds had gone off to their roosts and purple and grey shadows had claimed the face of the loch and the night sky had turned to a wash of silver light with the stars studding it like gems, Smiler took his candlestick off the main hall table and went up to bed.
At the top of the stairs he held the candle up to throw light on the portraits of Sir Alec Elphinstone and his wife. Sir Alec he had studied before. He was the man holding a sword and buckler. But Lady Elphinstone Smiler had never properly looked at. She was sitting on a red velvet chair in the main hall. Behind her, through the open terrace door, could be seen the sun sparkle on the loch and the distant outline of the Hen and Chickens and the far hills. She wore a tall, white wig with elaborate ringlets falling to her bare shoulders. Her long dress was of grey silk with ruchings of blue ribbons at the neck, sleeves and skirt-hem. One of her hands rested on the head of a black greyhound. On her fingers were three rings set with great sparkling stones which Smiler imagined must be diamonds. About her throat and looping over her bosom was a long necklace of green stones which Smiler guessed could be emeralds. On the fingers of her other hand which grasped a tall, elaborately mounted shepherd’s crook, were more rings. But the most splendid of all the jewellery she wore was on a black velvet band that ran across her high forehead and was caught back under her wig. It was shaped in an eight-pointed star. The centre of the star was an oval stone of a bluish colour, shot with purple and green fire, and each ray of the star was studded with diamonds and pearls. The whole thing, even in the dim candlelight, blazed in a great burst of rippling colours.
Gosh! thought Smiler. Just fancy what all that lot would have been worth! A fortune. And, although he could understand why the long dead Sir Alec had felt he wanted to go off and support his Prince, he couldn’t help feeling, too, that it was a shame that the Laird didn’t have the jewels now. Fighting and battles and putting people back on their thrones was important of course in those days. But today … well, the Laird could have done more good with the money they would fetch. Just fancy, if there were sea ospreys nesting on the Hen right now, coming down, wings up-folded, legs and talons thrust out to take the trout from the loch for their young.
From behind him, where she had come silently up the stairs, Laura said, making him jump, ‘ How much longer are you going to stand there mooning at her?’
Smiler, recovering from his surprise, said, ‘I was really lookin’ at the jewels. But she’s very … well, beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘Aye,’ said Laura judiciously, ‘she is. Though she’d have had trouble doing the cooking and housework in that wig and fancy dress.’
Used now to Laura’s sharp comments, Smiler grinned and said, ‘Anyway, I bet you’d like to dress up like that if you could.’
‘Perhaps I would if I was going to a fancy dress ball.’
As they climbed the stairways and threaded the stone corridors to their rooms, Smiler asked, ‘Is the Laird so very badly off?’
‘Aye, by his lights he is, and that’s what counts. But he’s no so poor as any farmer or fisherman. Did you really mean that about wanting to be a vet?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Smiler. ‘I suppose so – but I got a lot to do first before I can think about it.’
Laura paused at the door of her room. ‘Like what?’ she asked.
‘Well … things.’
‘You’ve told the Laird about these … things?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you can’t tell me?’
‘Perhaps … some time.’
‘I’d like you to, some time. Good night, Sammy,’ She gave him a smile and went into her room.
Laura stayed the next day and night and then went back. The Laird and Smiler were on their own again. For Smiler the days went by like a dream. He worked hard, looking after the animals and clearing up the castle rooms as best he could. Even so, he found that he had a lot of spare time on his hands. By now he knew every bird and beast about the place and they all knew him. Wherever he went or worked there was always one or another of them with him as well as Bacon. But there were two animals which had taken a particular liking to him. One was Laggy who, by now, was growing fat with good and regular food. The greylag would waddle alongside of him, wing still bandaged to its side. In the evenings when he went out in the boat to fish it would swim behind. When he hooked a trout some of the excitement of the catch seemed to pass to it and it would raise its long neck skywards and cry gag-gag-gag as though applauding the catch. The other animal was the otter, Dobby. From the Laird Smiler knew now that the otter was so called from the Gaelic word for otter – Dobhran. Laggy would never follow Smiler beyond the limits of the small bay, but Dobby did not mind how far they went.
On the still evenings, when there was only the occasional breath of a breeze, Smiler liked to let the boat drift down the far side of the island towards the spot where the big salmon had its lie. There had been no rain for weeks now. The level of the loch was dropping fast and the water, though it always held a faint umber stain of peat, was as clear as glass. Smiler would hang over the side of the boat and drift right over the big fish’s lie and the salmon would not move until the following shadow of the boat, cast by the westering sun, touched it. Then it would move off slowly. But sometimes it would see Dobby swimming underwater first. Then, with a great sweep of its noble tail, it would be gone leaving a puff of stirred-up sand and gravel rising like a small cloud from its lie. Dobby, Smiler noticed, liked this side of the island, where the water went down deep from the steep cliffs. It was a good place for trout and finnoch. Dobby would roll over lazily on the water and then go under and soon be out of sight. Sometimes he would be underwater for so long that Smiler would become anxious about him, but eventually the otter would surface with his catch and then lie on his back in the water and eat it or swim to a favourite rock at the foot of the cliff and eat there. Once or twice, however, he was down so long that Smiler was sure something had happened to him. On the second occasion he rowed back to the castle jetty almost in a panic to tell the Laird about it. But, as he got out of the boat, Dobby surfaced at the steps and came ashore.
Although he only rowed over twice to the far south shore of the loch, Smiler knew from the talks he had had with the Laird a great deal about the wild life over there, and sometimes the Laird would get out his maps and show Smiler the maze of lochs, burns and hills that stretched away southwards from the loch.
The days and weeks passed and August was running out. The purple of the heather was fading a little and when Smiler walked through it little clouds of pollen rose from it. Up on the hills the roe-deer and red-deer calves were growing fast. Soon it would be autumn and the red-deer would start their rutting, the echoes of the calling stags roaring and rolling through the tops. And soon, Smiler told himself, it would be October and he would be off to meet his father. When the moment came he knew he would be sad to go.
One evening after they had had their supper, the Laird rose to his feet and said, ‘ Samuel M., we’ve both got a job to do before Mistress Laura comes up on Friday. I’ll show you yours – which is not difficult. Though mine may not be possible unless we get some rain or a good stiff breeze on the water. Come with me.’
He led the way to the foot of the great oak stairway. The big bottom post was decorated on top with a carved lion holding a shield between its forepaws. Puzzled, Smiler followed him.
‘Take the beast’s head,’ said the Laird, ‘and give it a good twist clockwise.’
Smiler did as he was told. As the head turned he noticed that the carved collar about its neck hid the moving joint. There was a faint click and, lower down the big post, one of the small decorated panels flipped open on a spring. Behind the panel was a narrow cavity with a heavy, old-fashioned key in it.
The Laird took it out and shut the panel door. As he did so the lion’s head turned back to its original position.
‘Gosh, that’s very dodgy, isn’t it, sir?’ said Smiler.
‘Dodgy, my lad, is the word,’ said the Laird. ‘And dodgy in my ancestors’ day they had to be. This castle is full of hiding places. Hiding places for men and women in trouble and for money and the good Lord knows what. This is the key of the antiquated safe in my study.’
‘Do you always keep the key there, sir?’
‘No, Samuel M., I do not. It would not be prudent in a good Scot. I hide it where my fancy takes me.’
The Laird led Smiler into his crowded little study where an old-fashioned safe sat on the floor in a corner. It was a big safe, taller than Smiler. The Laird opened the safe and from it he drew out four bundles wrapped in green baize cloth.
He put the bundles on the table and unwrapped them. Smiler’s eyes grew round with surprise. There was a pair of eight-branched silver candlesticks, two wide shallow silver bowls, their rims decorated with a running relief of birds and animals and their centres engraved with the arms of the Elphinstone family and two sets of condiment dishes. Reclining mermaids held the salt dishes and there were two leaping salmon with large perforations in their heads through which to shake rough ground pepper. The most magnificent of all was a long, narrow dish, which was supported at each corner by royally antlered red-deer stags rising up on their hind feet. All the silver was dull and tarnished, but the beauty of it made Smiler catch his breath.
As he set it out the Laird explained that the silver was all that was left of the Elphinstone treasure and that it had been a gift from Charles the First to one of his ancestors.
‘Crikeys, sir,’ said Smiler. ‘It must be worth an awful lot of money.’
‘A fair bit, Samuel M. A fair bit, laddie. And many’s the time I’ve thought of selling it. But it canna be done. ’Twas the personal gift of a king. Also, there’s a saying that if it ever leaves the castle for good then the last of the Elphinstones goes with it. Personally, being a rational man, I doubt it, but like a good Elphinstone –’ his bright blue eyes twinkled and he scratched at his beard ‘– I’m in no mind to take any chances. Anyway, there’s your job. You have the key and you know where it lives and it has to be cleaned by this weekend. Aye, lad, it must shine so bright that your eyes will blink to see it. With this drought going and the loch like a sheet of glass you’ve got the easier job.’
‘What is your job, sir?’
‘To fill the big dish there, lad. What good is it without a royal fish to grace it?’
‘You mean a salmon, sir?’
The Laird gave Smiler a mock serious look and said, ‘Samuel M., learn one thing fast. When a good Scot or a good fisherman talks of a fish, only one thing is meant. A salmon. And for this occasion there never has been a fish lacking.’
‘But what is the occasion, sir?’
‘Can ye not guess? The silver, the fish, Mistress Laura coming on Friday and the rest of her family and a few others on the Saturday. A real ceilidh – and one that happens only once a year.’
‘I know,’ said Smiler quickly, ‘ it’s your birthday, sir.’
‘Aye, it is, Samuel M.’
Before he could stop himself Smiler said, ‘And will you be very old, sir?’
The Laird grinned and then said, ‘Old enough to want to do better, lad, and young enough to keep on trying – which makes me somewhere between one and one hundred. Now then, I’m away on my own to try for a fish before the light goes.’
But when the Laird came back as the last light went he brought no salmon. The next morning, when his round of work was finished, Smiler took one of the silver candelabra into the kitchen and sat in the sunshine at the window and began his polishing. The cat and her kittens were on the long seat beside him. Bacon was curled up in a patch of sun on the floor and Midas was lying full stretch across the open doorway. The small yellow-brown bird which Smiler had first seen perching on the Laird’s sporran came and sat on the window ledge. Smiler knew now that it was a siskin which had suffered from a bad infection that the Laird had cured.
Smiler polished and polished as though his life depended on it. Because he liked the Laird so much he wanted the silver for this birthday to be brighter than it had ever been before. Also, as he worked, he considered the problem of money. He was a practical, straightforward thinker and he liked to have a problem to work on. He knew by now all the things the Laird would like to do on his estates and also for the animals and birds which he treated. If he were the Laird and wanted all that … well, he wondered what he would do about the silver? It was nice to have, of course – and it was a present from a king. But, gosh – it would sell for enough money to do some of the things. Still, it was a kind of family thing. Like the big silver watch his father always carried. That had belonged to his father’s greatgrandfather and, although it had long stopped going, he knew nothing would ever make his father part with it – and there had been hard times in the past when even a few pounds would have helped. It was a kind of good luck thing. And so was the silver, too. And you didn’t sell your good luck.
When they were having their lunch on the terrace, the sun beating down on the still loch, making the Hen and Chickens dance gently in a heat haze across the water, he asked the Laird:
‘You wouldn’t ever sell the silver, sir, I know. But then – why did you say you would sell the jewels if you had them?’
‘A good question, lad. A gift is one thing. But a handful of jewels bought by the family out of its wealth in the past – they’re just possessions. And as a family’s fortunes go up and down, so they buy or sell. Some of my land I’ve sold to put the money to good use on the estate. And the jewels I’d sell for the same reason. They came from and belong to the Elphinstones and every head of the house has a right to make his own decision about them. But it is also an idle question, lad. The jewels have long ago departed. The big question now is – when am I going to get a fish?’
That afternoon the Laird and Smiler took Laggy into the surgery. The Laird had decided that the wing had had long enough to set. The bandages were cut away and the splints removed. Laggy squatted docilely in Smiler’s hands while this was done. The Laird examined the wing, his long, capable fingers probing and pressing carefully.
‘As good as new,’ he said. ‘He’ll be flying within the week. But first he’s got a lot of preening and oiling of the wing to do before he’ll feel like taking to the air.’
Smiler carried Laggy outside and set him down. For a while the gander just stood still, unused to the freedom of its left wing. Then it gave itself a little shake and followed Smiler down to the water’s edge. Smiler watched it paddle out into the shallows. Floating in the slow current drift Laggy began to preen and sort the long primaries and the secondaries of its left wing flight-feathers. It gave Smiler a good feeling to watch the gander. After all, if it hadn’t been for himself and Bacon the greylag wouldn’t have been sitting on the water as right as rain again. That was a good thing to see. Probably that’s what a vet was nearly always feeling. Feeling good because he had put some animal right. He sighed suddenly. Blimey, it was still a long way to October, and then there would be everything to be sorted out by his Dad, and then … How could he ever get to be a vet? He’d have to go back to school, or something, again. And all that studying! And, anyway, his father wouldn’t be able to afford things like college and so on. He grinned to himself suddenly – not even selling great-grandfather’s ropey old silver watch would help!
During the next three days the Laird fished early morning and late evening for his birthday fish without any success. All day the sun was a brazen orb in a cloudless sky, and the loch was a great sheet of tinted glass with only now and then the breath mark of a feeble, fast-dying zephyr to flaw it. From time to time during the day Smiler would see the Laird straighten up from whatever work he was doing, raise his eyes to the sky and say, ‘Oh Lord – if it’s no great inconvenience to you, please send a roistering south-westerly with rain in it!’ But the good Lord showed no signs of being willing to oblige.
Smiler’s interest, apart from polishing the silver every day, which he did in order to keep it bright, was in Laggy. Watching the gander on the bay he would sometimes see the bird half-raise himself in the water and flap both of his wings. But he never did it with any great effort. It was almost, Smiler thought, as though the gander wasn’t ready yet to trust the mended left wing for flying.
On the Friday morning Laura arrived just before lunch. The boat was heavily laden with supplies which Smiler helped her to carry up to the castle.
While they were having lunch together in the kitchen Laura said, ‘Of course you’ve thought up a birthday present for the Laird?’ One look at Smiler’s face told her that he hadn’t. She raised her eyebrows in despair. ‘You men! You’re all the same. My father, now, never remembers for my mother until the last minute and then he dashes into Mallaig or Fort William and pays a lot of money for something she doesn’t want.’
On the spur of the moment Smiler said, ‘Well, I did think I’d make up a special fly and tie it for him.’
Laura tossed her hair back and said sharply, ‘And that’s something you’ve just thought of, Sammy, and you know it. Anyway, if it’s a fly that can catch a fish in these conditions, he should have it now or I can see him going without his birthday fish for the first time for years. You’d better put your thinking cap on and decide on something for him.’
A little cross with her and himself, Smiler stood up and said, ‘You don’t have to worry. I’ll think of something.’
He went off to do his early afternoon jobs, cleaning out pens, cutting more stakes for the wild-fowl enclosure, and milking Mrs Brown. All the time he worked, he was wondering what he could give the Laird. What on earth could he give him? There weren’t any shops around. He could have tied him a special fly if Laura hadn’t been so scoffing about that. Often these days when the darkness drew in he would light the oil lamp in the Laird’s study and sit at the bench tying a fly. He had become reasonably expert with the simpler ones. But salmon flies, he knew, were big, complicated affairs and very difficult to tie. One evening, working at the desk, he had remembered what the Laird had told him about the Parmachene Belle being fashioned after streaky bacon. Bacon was his dog. He had thought that if his dog, in a way, had a fly called after him, it would be nice if he had a fly called after himself. A Smiler fly. So he had set to and invented a Smiler fly, chuckling to himself as he had worked at it because he had used only colours that had something to do with himself. He had made the tail from a few wisps of fibre from a cock pheasant’s tail – because the feather was sort of freckled like himself. The body had been easy. He just wound on yellow silk for his own fair hair. For the little throat hackle under the body of the fly he had used a tiny scrap of jay’s feather because it was blue like his eyes. For the wings he had used two small slips from grey goose quill feathers – because it was through Laggy that he had come to the castle. But although he had used the fly once or twice he had never caught anything on it. Most likely, he felt, because the hook was a bit big for trout or finnoch to fancy in such hot weather and low water conditions. Anyway, he couldn’t tie a special fly for the Laird now. Laura had made that impossible. There were times, he told himself, when he could give that girl a good thump! Would have done had she been a boy.
The thought of the present worried him all the afternoon. In the end he decided that the best he could do was to make a birthday card for the Laird. He was a fair hand at drawing and printing. He would get some stuff from the study tonight and take it up to his room when he went to bed and work on it quietly.
When he got back to the castle later that afternoon it was to be met by Laura whose face was red and hot-looking. She said, ‘That kitchen’s roasting with the range on. I’ll do the rest of the baking for the party when it’s cooler tonight. Let’s go down to the Hen and have a swim.’
So Smiler rowed them down to the Hen, beached the boat, and they had a swim. Then they got back into the boat and Laura lazed in the stern while Smiler sat up forward. There was no need for either of them to row because the loch current set in a gentle drift westwards back to Elphinstone castle. Smiler, who didn’t like sitting and doing nothing, picked up the fly rod which now – like the Laird – he always carried in the boat. It was an old split cane rod, which the Laird had handed to him for his own special use, saying, ‘It’s called a “Knockabout”, Samuel M. But if I ever see you knock it about I’ll put you on bread and water f or a week.’
With Laura half asleep in the stern, Smiler flicked his line and cast out ahead as they drifted. Then, as the Laird had taught him, he began to work his flies back just fast enough to beat the drift of the boat. He was using two flies, one on the tail of the nylon cast which sank quite deep and another, a dropper, much higher up the cast. Smiler liked to work the rod and line so that the dropper just came tripping and bobbing along the water surface. Mostly, he had noticed, he got trout and finnoch to the dropper more than to the tail fly.
From behind him as he began to fish, Laura said sleepily, ‘You dafty, you’ll never get a fish on a day like this. The trout have more sense than to come up and risk sunburn. They’re all tucked away, cool and easy, in the shade at the bottom.’
Smiler said nothing. All right, he might not get a fish – in fact was pretty certain that he wouldn’t – but he just liked the ritual of fishing. He liked the sweet action of casting and seeing the two flies drop gently to the surface.
And, anyway, you never knew. If he was daft enough to be fishing, then there might be a fish daft enough to come to his fly. How often had he heard the Laird himself say, ‘Laddie, if there’s one thing for certain about fishing it is that there is nothing certain about it.’ So sucks to Laura, thought Smiler.
The boat drifted down towards the castle. Behind Smiler, Laura went to sleep. As they neared the little bay, Smiler saw Laggy swimming near the shallows and he wondered when the gander would fly again. It had been so long since Laggy had flown that Smiler wondered if the bird had forgotten how to do it. What a stupid idea, he told himself. One day Laggy would take off.
Normally, when they were abreast of the bay, Smiler would have taken the oars and pulled in to the jetty, but today it was so much cooler on the water that he let the boat drift on into the shadow cast by the tall cliff face of the island. Looking at the rocks some twenty yards away on his right he could see how much the loch had dropped in the last weeks. He reckoned it was a good four feet already. The big boulder at the foot of the cliff which was Dobby’s favourite place for eating fish was now high and dry.
As Smiler’s eyes came back from Dobby’s boulder, his right arm moved automatically sending the line and cast out ahead of him. The flies dropped gently to the smooth surface and he watched the slight ripple die as the tail fly sank. Gently he began to work the line in and lifted the tip of the rod to bring the dropper tripping on the surface. The fly had dapped along no more than a couple of feet when Smiler saw something which he had never seen before in his life.
A great head and a curving length of smooth, dark, steely back broke water like a porpoise surfacing. The whole action was so lazy and slow that it seemed to go on for ages; seemed in fact to Smiler that it wasn’t happening, that he was imagining it, that it was all a warm, lazy daydream.
A few seconds later, though, he knew that it was no dream. The head and tailing fish sank out of sight. Almost immediately there was a hard tug as the dropper fly was taken, and line began to scream off Smiler’s reel.
Smiler sat and held the curving rod and wondered what on earth he was supposed to do. His heart began to pound wildly with excitement. Then, when Smiler felt that all the line must be off the reel, the wild, first run of the fish stopped. The line went slack and the rod straightened.
It was at this moment that the boat rocked a little and Laura, her voice calm, spoke from behind him. ‘You’re into a fish, Sammy. Wind in the slack quickly and get in touch with him – if he’s still there.’
Hardly knowing that he was obeying her, Smiler began to wind line back as fast as he could. He got about ten yards in when he felt the pressure of the fish on the line and the rod bent again.
Behind him Laura said quietly, ‘Easy now. Keep your head. Make him do the work. If he wants to run let him, but the moment he stops – get in touch again. And don’t worry about him taking all your line. I’ll see to that, or my name’s not the same as my father’s.’
Deep down in the water, twenty yards from the boat, the fish tugged hard and then began to run again. This time Smiler, coming more to grips with the situation, let him have the line but held the rod tip up so that the fish had to work against its gentle but insistent power. Once, thinking to steady the fast run, Smiler put his hand down to try and brake the revolving face of the reel, but the spinning handle smacked his fingers sharply, drawing blood from them. From behind him Laura, now on the centre-thwart and unshipping the oars, yelled, ‘Don’t do that, you loon. He’ll break you!’
The fish took thirty yards of line and bored deep. Suddenly, the strain went off rod and line. This time Smiler, beginning to be steadier now, reeled in until he made contact. But the moment he did he put no great pressure on the fish. He just held the rod so he could feel the fish at the other end and the fish could feel him, and he said aloud, ‘Holy Crikeys! What am I going to do?’
Laura, the oars out now and gently paddling, looked over her shoulder and said, ‘You’re going to do what I tell ye, Sammy, and if you do you’ll have the finest birthday present the Laird could wish for. But if ye don’t then ye’ll have lost the first salmon you ever got into. What’s the breaking strain of your cast?’
Now, from his father and Joe Ringer in the past, and from the Laird since he had been at the castle, Smiler knew all about the breaking strains of nylon – and he knew exactly what his was.
He said dismally, ‘ It’s only five pounds.’
Very calmly Laura said, ‘That’s aye fine for a big trout. But yon’s a handsome fish. You’ve got to treat him like a baby, nice and easy. And don’t think it’s going to be a quick business – because it isn’t. And sooner or later, when he jumps, and jump he will, lower your rod point fast or he may break you and –’
But Smiler didn’t hear any more. The line began to sing from the reel again. The rod point bowed and there was no thought or feeling in Smiler except the deep, agonizing excitement that came from the almost magical contact between himself and the fighting fish.
From behind him Laura, no stranger to this situation, helped him. As the fish ran she rowed hard on the same course and called to Smiler that, whenever he could, he was to take up line, but without using any force that would put too much strain on the thin nylon cast.
So began for Smiler one of the most exhausting, demanding, and exciting thirty minutes of his life. The fish ran, and Smiler gave it line, and Laura rowed after it and they gained line back. The fish ran again and took them well out into the loch, away from the island. Then it lay still, deep down, and Smiler just kept in touch with it, realizing now that each time the fish ran it was tiring itself a bit more. And so far, except for the paralysing moment when the fish had head-and-tailed to take the fly, Smiler had seen no sign of it.
The sulking fish moved unexpectedly and, this time, headed straight back for the boat. The line went slack across the water. Laura, pulling the boat around and away from the line of the run which would have taken it under the keel, shouted instructions at Smiler. He swung the rod out clear from the bows of the boat and reeled in fast. To his relief, in a few seconds he felt the fish again. But no sooner did he feel it than the fish was off, away at an angle back towards the island, and this time it jumped.
Twenty yards from the boat the salmon came out of the water with a sudden explosion of surface spray. It soared upwards in a great flashing curve of silver flank and gleaming yellowy-white underbelly. For a moment or two it hung in the air as though fixed and carved in its power leap for all time.
‘Rod tip!’ shouted Laura.
But Smiler scarcely heard her. He just stared at the leaping fish, transfixed by the beauty and exciting splendour of the sight – and he forgot to lower his rod tip.
The great fish crashed back into the loch, spray spouting high in the air, a rain of water glinting in the sun, and then was gone from sight. The rod in Smiler’s hand straightened and the line running from its tip went still and slack.
Behind him Laura shouted, ‘You loon – you’ve lost him!’
And Smiler was sure he had lost the fish. He began to reel in, yard after yard, and there was no sensation of contact at all on the line. A terrible wave of disappointment swamped him. ‘You fool, you fool, Samuel M.,’ he lectured himself. ‘You’ve lost the Laird’s birthday present and the first salmon you’ve ever hooked!’ He turned towards Laura and, long-faced, gave a despondent shrug of his shoulders. He was about to say something to her when the loose line coming back through the rings of the rod suddenly jerked, tautened, and twanged into life. The next moment line was running out faster than it had ever done before.
It was from this moment that Smiler really became a fisherman. He was trembling with excitement, and he had a lot to learn, but there was a resolute, fighting part of him now which kept saying, ‘Keep your head, Samuel M. Keep your head.’
And as far as he could he did keep his head. When the fish ran, he let him go. Then, as Laura rowed after the fish, Smiler took in line and made gentle but firm contact with the salmon. Now and again he could feel the fish give savage tugs with its head to try and free itself from the fly. A few minutes later it jumped again. But this time Smiler was ready for it. He lowered the rod tip and, as he recovered line, felt the fish still on.
For ages it seemed to Smiler, the fish took them up and down the loch. They went beyond the end of the castle island and then back almost as far as the Hen, and then back until they were off the small bay – and, with each passing minute, Smiler wondered how long he would be able to hold out. His arms and hands ached and under the hot sun he was running with sweat – and it didn’t help that every time he made some small mistake Laura shouted a correction to him from her place at the oars and he wished she would shut up. But he had to admit to himself that she knew how to handle the boat, following the fish fast, swinging hard aside when the fish ran for them, and holding it gently in position when the fish halted and sulked far down in the deep water.
It was during one of these lulls in the battle that the fish slowly came up from the depths and rolled briefly on the surface, its belly flashing.
Laura said, ‘Aye, Sammy, that’s the sign. The beast’s tiring. Keep your head now and we’ve got him.’
Eyes on the skirl of foam-flecked water where the fish had gone out of sight, Smiler said despairingly, ‘ But how are we going to get him? There’s only a small trout net in the boat. That’s useless.’
‘You’ll no need a net, Sammy. We’ll take him into the bay and beach him. Just you do what I tell you.’
So, under Laura’s instructions, the operation began. She started to edge the boat beach wards while Smiler gave or took line as the fish followed or moved away. But, minute after minute, the fish was worked slowly towards the beach, and every little while the salmon came to the surface and rolled, showing gleaming flanks and pale belly, and then dived away into a fast but much shorter run.
Suddenly behind him Smiler heard the bows of the boat grate on the gravel of the beach.
Laura said, ‘Keep your eyes on him. Keep the pressure easy, and step out.’
Holding the bending rod high, his eyes out on the water where the fish was, Smiler stepped overboard and almost up to his waist. He waded ashore and, from the corner of his eye, saw Laura jump out and pull the light boat up on the beach clear of the water.
The next moment she was racing past him down the beach and shouting, ‘Now bring him in below you and leave it to me. Don’t force him. Just baby him. He’ll come now.’
Gently Smiler began to put strain on the fish. Not much, but enough to show the tired salmon who was master. Slowly the fish obeyed and Smiler won line.
From the beach below him, Laura called, ‘ Watch him. When he sees me waiting he’ll make a last run.’
And, sure enough, as Smiler shortened line and slowly swung the great fish into the shallow water at the beach edge, the salmon saw Laura. The fish turned and ran and Smiler, in command and clear-headed now, let him go. But the run was short and he worked the fish back until it was held in six inches of water over the gravel slope of the beach. The fish rolled once or twice, struggled briefly, and then was still from exhaustion.
Laura went into the water and slowly around the fish so that it was between her and the shore. She bent down with an easy, confident movement and caught the wrist of the fish’s great tail in one strong hand and – each action flowing sweetly into the next – she lifted the salmon high and walked up on to the beach.
Before Smiler could move she dropped the arching, struggling fish to the ground, picked up a large stone, and gave it two quick, expert taps on the head and killed it.
Smiler ran up and stopped, staring down at the fish. It was enormous. It lay there quivering gently, its spotted, steely, silver flanks and belly just touched with the coming rusty red of its spawning colours, long curving underjaw showing it to be a cock fish and – deep set in the scissors of its jaws – the tightly bedded fly which it had taken.
Suddenly a great surge of elation swept over Smiler and he did two things which, in his calmer moments, he would never have dreamt of doing. He tossed the rod to the ground in a way which would have got him bread and water for a week and then began to dance around the fish, shouting, ‘We’ve done it! We’ve done it!’ And then, the second thing, he suddenly grabbed Laura and danced her around with him, hugging her to him and kissing her, and his excitement was so great that it was not until a long time afterwards that he remembered that she had hugged and kissed him back.
But all victories bring dark moments to the conquering spirit. The fish weighed eighteen pounds when the Laird – full of praise for Smiler – put it on the scales. And there was more jubilation when it was discovered that it had been caught on the Smiler fly. But there was an agony in Smiler during all the jubilation. The moment he could get free, he slipped out of the castle and raced with Bacon up through the woods to the cliff edge overlooking the spot where he had first hooked the salmon. Lying with his head thrust out over the cliff top, he looked down, knowing that, if the salmon he had so often watched was not there, then wild horses could never drag him to eat a mouthful of fish at the birthday party.
To his great relief, the fish was still there, a long dark shadow, lying in the lee of the boulder. Smiler got up, and with Bacon at his heels, went happily back to the castle.