10

A Harebrained Plan

CHRISTMAS 1932 WAS a good one in the small white house on the cliff top, because for once Father was at home for it. What’s more, since his next voyage was to be a short one, he would have leave again, he told them, at the end of March or the beginning of April. “And by then the Water Horse will be three years old, isn’t that right?” he said.

They nodded.

“And Heaven knows how much bigger he’s going to grow,” said Father. “We must move him. We must move him then, this coming spring, or else he’ll likely be too big to move at all.”

“But how can we, Father?” asked Kirstie.

“By road, of course.”

“What in?”

“Well, what would you put a Water Horse in?”

“A horse trailer,” said Angus.

“Not big enough.”

“A moving van?” said Grumble.

“Difficult,” said Father. “Moving vans are quite high off the ground and it would be very hard to load him. You’d need a crane, like we use at the docks. Anyway, what about the moving men? They’d be bound to see him and the story would be out. No, it seems to me there’s only one kind of vehicle suitable for the job.”

“A cattle truck!” said Mother.

“Exactly, you’ve got it. They’re just big enough, they’re strong enough to carry about a dozen bulls, they’re covered so that he won’t be seen on the journey, and they have a good long tail ramp to let down for him to scramble up. And one last thing— there’s a wee door at the front end of the body, just behind the cab, so that whoever goes into the truck before Crusoe to lure him in with food can get out without being squashed.”

“Just one thing you’ve forgotten,” said Grumble. “What about the driver of this cattle truck? There’s no way of keeping things secret from him.”

“There’s no need,” said Father. “He knows already. The driver of the cattle truck will be me.” One of his shipmates, Father went on to explain, had a brother who was a cattle hauler in the district and would, he felt sure, rent out one of his trucks. “My pal tells me,” said Father, “that his brother is not the most honest man in Scotland. Now and again, apparently, one of his trucks might pick up a bunch of cattle from an outlying field on a dark night and put them down in a different field forty or fifty miles away.”

“Rustling, you mean?” said Grumble. Father nodded.

Mother looked worried. “You mean,” she said, “that you’re planning to let this hauler think you want his truck to go cattle rustling?”

Father grinned. “A nod and a wink and a bit of extra cash in his hand should do the trick,” he said. “I’ve a clean driving license, and though I’ve never driven a truck, I expect I’ll soon get the hang of it.”

Mother opened her mouth to question such a crazy idea and then shut it again. Just as she had been pleased to see Crusoe’s departure from the goldfish pond to the lochan, so now, she realized, she was glad to think he would be going many miles away, out of their lives forever, perhaps. It was not that she bore the Water Horse any ill will. It was simply that for nearly three years now he had occupied so much of everybody’s time, besides demanding (she told herself, unfairly) constant supplies of sardines and herring and chocolate chip cookies. Her children, she felt (unfairly again), had neglected their homework and her father had done less in the garden. Now her husband was proposing to remove the creature. Good.

“Hmph!” she said, with the look and tone of Grumble. “I never heard of such a harebrained plan. I wash my hands of it,” and she marched off to the kitchen to wash the dishes.

“But where are we going to take Crusoe?” asked Kirstie.

“It’s got to be a really big loch, hasn’t it?” asked Angus.

“You’re right, Angus,” said Father. “Get the map out of the drawer, will you? It’s the one marked ‘West Scotland: Islay to Gairloch.’ ” And when Angus had gotten it, Father spread it out on the table.

“Now, then,” he said, “first of all, we could always put him in a sea loch. We could also let him go here, into Loch Moidart, and he’d be free to make his way anywhere in the world.”

“No, no!” the children cried. “We’d never see him again!”

“Then it’s one of three, isn’t it?” said Grumble. “There’s Loch Morar—that’s the nearest sizable one to us, and deep, very deep. Maybe the Water Horse that was said to live in it when I was a boy is still there. Might be company for him.”

“Wait, though,” said Father, looking at the map. “See here—he could easily get down the River Morar to the sea. That’s no good.”

“Well, then, what about Loch Lomond? That’s big enough.”

“Too far,” said Father. “I don’t want to have to drive all that way.”

“That only leaves one, then,” said Grumble, and he pointed to a long blue stretch of water that ran diagonally up to the northeast. “Twenty-four miles from end to end and maybe the deepest of them all. There’s all the space he could want there.”

“You’re right,” said Father. “That’s where we’ll take Crusoe. That’s the loch for him. And it’s not as long a drive as all that—say, thirty miles to Fort William and another thirty to Fort Augustus.”

“When he’s living there,” said Kirstie, “will we be able to visit him sometimes?” Her voice sounded a bit shaky.

“Of course we will,” said Father. “It’s no distance really, make a nice outing in the summer. We’ll go and we’ll call him and he’ll come for a tickle.”

“But suppose other people catch sight of him?”

“They could, I suppose,” said Grumble, “now and again. If he’s absent-minded and forgetful and shows himself for a moment. Or if he gets overexcited hunting fish near the surface. Or if he bumps a boat, like he did Postie’s. We must just hope he behaves himself.”

“Even if folk catch a glimpse of him, they’re never going to be certain what they’re seeing,” said Father. “They’ll think to themselves, oh, maybe it was just a log of wood or shadows on the water or salmon leaping or otters playing or a dead stag floating among the waves. They’ll never be sure. We are the only people who will ever know for certain that in that loch there lives the Water Horse.”