The Singing Loch - Michael Graeme

The Singing Loch

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A Novel

Michael Graeme

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The Song of the Singing Loch

At last I hear you Singing Loch,

Sing out your song I pray,

And gather up the pilgrim,

Who honours you this day.

You are the ageless anchorage,

You are the universe,

And if you die then so shall I,

And fools shall have the earth.

They say they own you Singing Loch,

But how can that be so?

For though they see you shining,

Your song they'll never know.

Indeed they'd sooner pawn their souls,

And drain your waters dry,

And sell them off as Angel's tears,

For people who can't cry.

So sing to me of lands set free,

Where all mankind may range,

And death stalks not your children,

To pay the landlord's wage.

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Prelude

In my mind's eye, I see a cold, grey dawn, with a grey city silhouette like a cardboard cut out, set against a grey sky. Grey people sit in grey motor cars, bumper to bumper as clouds of grey poison swirl about them. They stand on the streets, packed tightly, grey figures without faces, afraid of touching and yet hardly able to move without doing so. They work, they reproduce and then they die in a slow, painless, soulless cycle.

The City moves. It creeps invisibly, like the hands of a clock, like warm tar, spreading and sprawling. It lives and grows, fed by the souls it steals, but beyond the gloomy boundaries of this strange place, people dance under blue skies, on Summer scented lawns. They dress in bright colours and sing songs. Then the skies darken as the City draws near. Their bright faces shine for just a moment before the warm tar engulfs them. They become petrified and emerge as yet more grey people without faces and without souls, while their Summer scented lawns become roads and streets choked with motor cars. Then the poison seeks them out and fills their lungs as they too join in the slow cycle of work and death. Their songs are forgotten and the intricate patterns of their dance is lost for ever.

Some of the grey people manage to hide a piece of their soul. It survives and grows, filling them with horror at what they see around them. They break away and search for a Summer scented lawn on which to lay down and rest, somewhere far from the City where they can breathe clean air and listen to the singing of the trees and feel the good, sweet scented earth all around them.

They imagine themselves free at last. But the greyness is with them and like Midas and his gold, everything they touch turns to grey. The grass withers beneath their feet, concrete springs up as if from wells beneath the ground and another city is born, poisoning, spreading and sprawling. This inexorable process consumes whole continents, fouling land and sea until there is nothing left but a kind of grey, living death.

Finally and in despair, the earth splits and great fires shoot out, creating vast rivers of molten rock. Storm clouds gather, unleashing a terrible revenge, while the land undergoes convulsions of unimaginable proportion, throwing up mountains where there were none before and creating new oceans where once stood grey mountains, befouled and exploited. The storms last for ten million years.

But none of this is real. It's just a dream; something inside my head that brings me pain when I'm asleep. I wake up sweating and then a woman's hand curls around my arm easing me onto my pillow. I hear her voice, soft and gentle and then she runs her fingers through my hair while I slip back into the dream.

Sometimes, I see the storms subside. The clouds part and I see sunlight playing upon a new world, a world that has become one big Summer scented lawn and I see creatures, strange, yet wonderful, flitting about in an unexpected paradise. But this is no happy ending; my dream is still the nightmare it started out to be; there are no people here. I travel far and wide and see only simple creatures living out their lives, oblivious to the paradise around them. There is nothing that is conscious of its existence and no one to see the beauty of it all except for me through the windows of my dream.

I cannot look upon it for long, for I too am one of the grey people. I reach out and pluck a flower from the ground but it withers in my hand; I have yet to learn I am only passing through; the flower was not mine to pluck. I should've been content with admiring it for what it was and breathing in the scent it freely gave, instead of trying to claim it as my own, guarding it jealously within the palm of my hand. Then my window breaks and there is darkness once more until I'm wakened by the dawn and the sound of a woman singing in the kitchen, downstairs.

I drag myself from bed and draw the curtains so I might look out across the waters of the loch. It sparkles with gold dust in the yellow light of sunrise and beyond, I see moorland, dark with bracken and heather. Hills rise behind the moor, low and rounded and then, almost hidden by a veil of blue haze, there are the mountains. I see the fold and the silver thread of water leading to a pool of morning mist. In my mind, I trace the thread to its source in the mountains, and to the place whose lure I find so irresistible, to the loch whose strange songs have changed my life.

Through the Singing Loch I've glimpsed the Summer scented lawns and I've listened to its song from inside my own head. It has much to tell and in a way, these are its words, words embracing the mystery and the passion that compels us all. But also, for those who would claim the wild flowers as their own,....

.....there is a message.

Chapter 1

The Greyness

As the tube hurtled its weary way through the darkness, I took a long, hard look at the reflection of a man, in the window, opposite. He was thirty-ish and pale with a lanky sort of build and a thick mop of dark hair that looked a fortnight overdue for a good cut. He was wearing a Marks and Spencer's suit which he didn't fill out very well and on his lap was a battered, black briefcase. He was wearing spectacles, too, with round wire frames like the ones you used to get on the National Health forty years ago, only now they were fashionable again.

The briefcase gave him an air of sophistication. What was inside? Business papers? Some earth shattering thesis? Reams of mathematical formulae? No, it was a sham: his case was empty but for a copy of New Scientist and a Tupperware carton containing his hastily prepared lunch of limp Tuna Fish sandwiches and a carton of Pasta Salad.

He looked sour, as if his way of life did nothing to sustain his spirit. I tried to smile but the reflection didn't respond, which was odd: it was me.

It was early on a Monday morning and the compartment was crammed with bodies, all making their way to work. A girl shifted her weight and hid the view I'd had of myself. She was tall and shapely, a model, I guessed from the designer clothes case slung over her shoulder. Her bleached blonde hair was tied back tightly and held with a comb, exposing every contour of her unblemished face. It was one of those classical faces, a Greek sculpture almost, with the pale neon light casting fine shadows over its surface, picking out a seemingly boneless structure.

She glanced at me once or twice as she hung from the rail. I suppose I should've given up my seat for her but there were dozens of other blokes sitting down as well as me and anyway, you had to be careful these days. I'd only done it once before, travelling home late one evening. The poor girl had got the wrong idea. She'd thought - I don't know that I was about to start harassing her or something. I'll never forget the expression on her face. I hadn't been living in the City for long and when one's trying to adjust to a strange environment, one tends to be conditioned by experiences like that.

I was paranoid; I think we all were. There must've been forty of us crammed inside that compartment and yet, in spite of it, not one of us was touching; we were all safe, crouching tightly inside our precious body space - forty pairs of eyes shying from contact. What's more, we were silent, each of us tuned in to the miserable whine of the machine that bore us, each of us afraid to speak for fear of being overheard by someone else, as if we all had to watch out, to be on our guard.

It was eight forty. At eight forty two, the machine would stop and we'd all file out like robots, like well oiled components moving swiftly to take up our positions in the great clockwork machinery of the City - millions of us, tiny gears in a Newtonian Universe all meshing together, yet somehow carefully lubricated so we could function without actually touching.

That morning, I recall smiling inwardly as I rode the escalator to the surface. You see, not long ago, I'd been one of those out-of-towners who stood on the left while the smart City people knew to stand on the right. It was simply a question of adjustment; you either adjusted to the ways of the City, to its unwritten rules, or the gears jammed and tore you to shreds.

I'd been in London for about five years after a failed career in physics. My degree had gained me a rather poor salary and a dead end research post in a laboratory that had since been turned into bicycle shed. I'd moved here in the same way many people before me had done, down through the ages like poor, ragged Dick Whittingtons in search of golden pavements: I'd come for work, a green Northerner from the frozen wastes with a big chip on my shoulder.

At two minutes to nine, I pushed through the pretentious, smoked glass doors of the office block where I'd worked for most of those five years. I know it was two minutes to nine because that's what it always was; I didn't even need to look at my watch. There was a pretty receptionist on duty and I smiled at her as I walked past. She stared back without seeing, a perfect mannequin without a soul. I'd been trying for years to get her to respond, not because I fancied my chances; it was more I'd wanted to score a point - you know what I mean? by detecting just the tiniest flicker of warmth in her. Instead all I'd seemed to do was watch the light in her eyes fade a little more each day as she aged long before her time.

The office was filling up when I sat at my desk. At last then, safe in the office confines, safe amongst familiar faces, there was easy talk, a burst of laughter and some girlish prattle. Drawers began to open and designer pens were drawn. Then computer terminals bleeped as they were logged on and the vending machine in the corner began to whine out the first cup of coffee of the day.

I worked for Effham Brothers - an unfortunate name but rather apt as it turned out. The Company was the name behind a chain of national hotels, but it had money in just about any other form of business you could think of from theme parks to junk food outlets. Its empire was vast, its tentacles for ever growing, yet the chances are, you've never heard of it.

My actual job was a bit odd, or so I thought. I was one of a small team of average Mr. Smith types who went around the company's hotel network, incognito, as a paying guest, checking up on service and staff attitudes - a bit sneaky, I suppose - but that's what had attracted me to it. Actually, most of it was routine office work, filling out standard reports. I was never away more than once a month and then for only two or three days at a time. What's more, most of the hotels were in Greater London anyway so it was hardly a job that qualified me for the Jet Set.

So much for my Physics degree, you might say and quite rightly. But Effham's had taken me on when there'd been little chance of work elsewhere. The money was about the same as I'd earned as a researcher and even though, one way or another, the City took most of it back, I'd found myself a bit of security I was loathed to sacrifice.

I had a desk and a plain chair in an office full of pretty girls. In another five years, I'd have a personal waste paper basket and maybe a luxury padded chair with plastic armrests. Who knows, one day I might even have had my own private office and a key to the senior staff toilet.

If you stood back from it, the system was a farce but people took it seriously. In fact, I've known friends become enemies over a disputed right to having their name included in the company phone book. But I speak as if I were immune. Don't be fooled; I'd be the first to admit to the seductive power of the promise of your own computer terminal.

I had dreams, of course, dreams beyond Effham Brothers. I still had a passion for the natural world, for science, for the unknown. I dreamed of changing things with a fantastic discovery, some fundamental law that explained everything, something everyone else had overlooked. But they were just dreams. In the mean time, I worked and the years passed.

I remember that morning well. I'd been at a hotel in Harpenden for most of the previous week. Now I had to sort out my notes and jot them down in the proper format. It had been an easy job, or "Mission", as the company liked to call them.

One of the breakfast waitresses had been a bit surly when I'd deliberately asked her to change my scrambled egg, but that hardly seemed worth mentioning. The only other thing I could think of was the used condom I'd discovered, floating in the toilet bowl in my room. It had steadfastly refused to be flushed and I suppose I should have called room service but I was too embarrassed in case they'd thought it was mine. Anyway, I didn't know how to word it right in my report so I decided to forget it.

This is trivia - forgive me. My story as you would call it, began at about half past ten that morning when I received an internal phone call from a man called Eric Bowker.

"Scott? Scott Mathews? Yes - come up and see me will you? Good Man! About eleven - nothing to worry about. Might have a bit of a job for you, that's all - bye for now...."

Bowker was the head of my department, though in all the time I'd worked there, I'd met him only once. He worked on the fourth floor. It was all hushed corridors and expensive carpets up there which the likes of me didn't visit very often. My immediate supervisor was a man called O'Grady. I reported to him and he, in turn, reported to Bowker, but O'Grady was on leave for a few days and that's why, I supposed, Eric Bowker had spoken directly to me.

I just about had time for a coffee so I searched my pockets for some change and headed for the vending machine. I was beaten to it by a busty young woman wearing a pencil skirt and a semi see through blouse. This was Tina, which was a coincidence since I'd heard she'd recently been appointed as Bowker's secretary.

About twelve months before, I'd asked her out twice, and she'd turned me down both times. She had a reputation for being a bit of a raver, so I guess she didn't think I was her type. She was always pleasant to me when we met though, very gently spoken and sweet, which made it all the worse. A man can't help lusting after what he thinks he can't have and so it was with Tina.

Partly to cover up my embarrassment, I asked her if she knew what Bowker wanted to see me about; I was always wary when someone said they had a job for me but wouldn't tell me, there and then, what it was. It made you think it might be the sort of job you'd want to duck if you had fair warning of it.

She hadn't heard anything.

"You still seeing Jenny?" she asked, changing the subject, as I took my cup from the machine.

I said I was, trying to shrug it off casually and I asked her about some bloke whose name I struggled to recall.

"Geoff," she said. "No, that was over ages ago."

I looked at her and imagined she was secretly longing for things to be different between us. She shook her great bush of tightly permed auburn hair and smiled. Her heavy lip gloss glistened in the dim light.

She said she'd see me around and then, carefully holding her plastic cup, she headed for the stairs. I watched her bottom as she walked away and I admit that I undressed her with my eyes.

Bowker was short and fat, with unruly white hair and rickety spectacles. He reminded me of a Professor who'd once lectured me, back at University. He was Scottish and there was a rumour that he'd left his other job under a bit of a cloud.

He was tending a small display of tropical plants in his window when I walked in.

"Ah, Scott," he said with a faint wheeze as he straightened himself up. "Garden at all?"

He squirted some vapour over one of the plants with an atomiser and then turned back into the room. He had big, clumsy hands and his face was kind.

"No garden," I replied.

I'd expected a better office for a man in his position. If it hadn't been for the window plants, the place would've been very drab. His swivel chair must've been twenty years old and it squeaked as he sat down. His desk was badly scraped, too. It was obvious Bowker was not well liked at Effham Brothers.

"No Garden!" he exclaimed. "Every one should have a garden. Live in a flat then, do you?"

I replied that I did and he grimaced.

"Like it much?"

I said it was okay even though it was crap, and at the same time marvelled at how out of touch these people were. I could barely afford the flat. You had to be a millionaire to own a garden in London.

He shuffled through some papers on his desk. Then he pulled an ash tray towards him and lit a cigar. As he puffed away, I noticed a large brown envelope with my name written on it.

"Got a job for you, Scott," he said with a sudden burst of energy. "Another hotel, I'm afraid - a bit different this time though. We don't own it yet...."

He'd been approached by the Acquisitions Department and asked to make a report on this place they were interested in. Normally they would have sent one of their own people but it was all a bit sudden and they'd no one to spare. They had to have the report by the end of the month so they could get the go ahead at the next board meeting.

Now, as I explained earlier, I'd only just come back from a week-long trip. I wanted a break and there were others in the office who hadn't been away for six months. I was peeved. Why couldn't he pick someone else?

I made up some lame excuse about having to get my paperwork sorted out and that O'Grady had wanted my report ready for when he came back on Wednesday. It didn't work. Bowker had been a manager for a long time and he was too wise to swallow any rubbish I might try to feed him.

"All's square with O'Grady," he said buoyantly. "I've spoken to him."

It seemed I had no choice then and as I resigned myself to yet another trip, I tried to remember if I had enough clean shirts and underwear to last the week or if I'd be spending all evening washing and ironing again.

"Okay," I said, thinking about the chances of a personal computer terminal. "But why me, Mr. Bowker?"

"Why?" he said. "Because you're the best I've got. Don't think your reports just end up in some filing cabinet, you know. I do read them. I've had my eye on you, Scott. I like your style."

Bollocks, I thought. He didn't know me from Adam but he was in a tight spot and O'Grady must've said he could spare me.

"So where is this place, then?" I asked him, wondering if it might be abroad, on the Continent or Bermuda even.

"Craigaline," he replied. "North West Scotland."

I'd never heard of it but the mention of the word Scotland contoured up an image of sluicing rain and wet socks; it didn't exactly have the same appeal as Bermuda.

His instructions sounded straight forward at the time; all I had to do was turn up at the hotel and make notes on its location, accessibility, standards of service and soon. Then I was to approach the manager ...

"You mean the manager knows we're interested?" I said. "But doesn't that sort of defeat the whole object? He'll have his staff on their toes. They'll see me coming a mile off, surely!"

"We're not concerned with the staff, here, Scott; if we take it over they'll all get the chop anyway," he said.

It made sense, even though the brutality of it stunned me for a moment and all my questions dried up. He handed me the envelope with my name on it.

"There's a couple of thousand in there. If you need any more, ring me here and I'll have it mailed to you, but I think it should be enough." That wasn't unusual; I never used company credit cards for obvious reasons. This case was an exception though and a company card would've eliminated the need for most of that cash but I didn't question it at the time.

Then, he went on to explain that Craigaline was part of a large, Highland estate. By this time, though, my mind was beginning to swim with all the detail; I only half listened but I managed to remember the name of the head man: Macraven. He ran the estate as well as owning the hotel. He was the man I had to see.

When Bowker had finished, I tried to think of some more sensible questions to ask but, you know how it is: at the time, you never can. He'd already made a reservation for me at the hotel and I was to leave the following morning. We shook hands and he wished me luck.

Back at my desk, all those questions I should have asked, began to penetrate my dense skull. I phoned Tina, only to be told that he'd gone out for the rest of the day and that she couldn't help me. I chatted with her for a while and toyed with the insane idea of asking her for a date but the buzzer sounded for lunch and brought me back to my senses.

During the lunch hour, I browsed through an Atlas in W. H. Smiths, across the road and eventually found Craigaline. Then I picked out the right Ordnance Survey map for more detail. It was remote, nearly twenty miles from any other habitation and there wasn't what I would have called a town on the map at all. It appeared as a cluster of dots by a single track road which skirted a huge sea loch called Loch Sheil. It seemed a mountainous place, judging from the contours on the map, with a couple of peaks over three thousand feet, one of them called Beinn Mhor, which, like Craigaline I'd never heard of.

As I strolled back to the office, I began to have my first doubts. Effham Hotels were all close to areas of commerce or industry, in order to take advantage of the travelling business man. There was more to be made from that market than from one that catered purely for the tourist who, as a rule wasn't prepared to pay so much.

All the busy oil fields were off to the east and the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh were way, way south. Craigaline, on the west coast, seemed a lonely spot. Apart from a few grouse shooters, mountaineers and fly-fishermen, I couldn't think of anyone who'd want to go there. However, there was nothing I could do and no one I could check with. I had to assume Eric Bowker knew what he was doing, which of course he did but not for any of the reasons I'd initially supposed.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out my travel arrangements and I wrote a note for O'Grady, explaining when I expected to be back. I left it with his secretary, Sharon, a podgy young lady with cherub like features. She promised to give him the note on Wednesday, when he came back and then she started to pry into the state of my relations with Jenny.

While preparing to leave the office, I couldn't help but ponder upon the fact nobody seemed to know anything; it made me feel insecure, but I told myself not to be so pathetic. All the trip needed was a little more initiative than I was normally given credit for and when I came back, the personal computer terminal would be mine for the asking.

Chapter 2

Children of the dark

It was six thirty when I reached home. I was living in a small, upstairs flat in those days, in a respectably poor part of the City, which meant the walls were thin, the carpets smelled and the paper was peeling. However, there was no immediate danger to health other than a depression of my spirits every time I walked through the door. Jennifer was already there; she was cooking something and the rich smell of it greeted me like a warm sun. She hadn't said she was coming round that night; we'd made no plans and the unexpected sight of her filled me with a sudden sense of well-being.

She smiled and wrapped herself around me snugly. "I could always go home, if you like," she said, playfully when I expressed my surprise. Then she giggled and pulled me to the sofa, taking my bag and expertly snatching my glasses away so that I could hardly see her.

It was a game we often played. I pretended to make a grab for them but she kept just out of reach, dancing and laughing at my clumsiness. Finally, she pushed me down onto the cushions and, still giggling, she went back into the kitchen.

Jennifer was beautiful; beautiful like the fashion model I'd seen on the tube that morning, like the T.V. ads and the way the soft porn pin ups condition all us adolescent brained men to think: slim, blonde hair, big breasts, long legs.

Her taste in clothes was extravagant and insatiable. Whether she was messing about in my kitchen or turning out for a night on the town, she was always immaculate, well made up and surrounded by a subtle force field of the latest sophisticated offering from Guy Laroche or Yves Saint Laurent.

Truth be told, it flattered me to think of such a woman having anything to do with, let's face it, a plain and dowdy chap like me. I thrilled to the touch of her electric body, and when we made love I imagined I went in to spasms of ecstasy.

You might think me lucky and in a way I was, but we were not well matched. It was really only loneliness that held us together. Some women have a way of finding out quickly how a man sees his dream-girl and is then able to adapt herself to fit that image, for a while. Gradually though, she slips back into her true self and it's then the doubts set in. I'm not telling you it's deliberate or premeditated; more likely, it's done unconsciously. Whatever, Jenny and I had reached that stage: I was beginning to feel let down. She was not the dream girl I'd first thought her to be and I was trying to decide whether or not I could accept her for what she was.

She shared a flat with another girl, a plain but dotty young thing called Carol. Privacy there was impossible so, whenever she came to my place, she usually stayed over. We'd make love then with a manic urgency, each trying to soothe an ache we assumed lay deep within the other but, looking back, I think it was just an ache; anyone would've done.

That night, afterwards, we lay talking in the strange, unguarded way that always seems to follow sex. You say things then you wouldn't normally say, in the safer, more guarded hours of daylight and sometimes, you regret it.

"A whole week?" she said. "You'll be gone a whole week? I don't understand. You've only just come back from the last job! Can't they send someone else?"

Loneliness again. She had few girlfriends; they were fickle, most of them driven off by the bright light of her beauty and her vanity. Men were more constant, dazzled like rabbits in a headlight's glare. I told her I'd be back before she knew it, though it was to comfort myself as much as her. I didn't exactly relish the prospect of spending another week alone.

We dozed for a while and then she asked me how long we'd known each other. It had been just over a year:

"It's just that I've been thinking," she went on.

"Oh?"

"You do love me, don't you?"

"Yes," I said, preparing my defences.

"Well, isn't it about time I moved in, then?" she asked.

Poor Jenny! She was so transparent. The only times she ever cooked me anything was when she was manipulating me. Having said that, she usually got her own way, because I rarely felt it worth an argument. I responded by asking her if she loved me.

"You know I do," she replied.

"Then marry me," I said.

We hadn't discussed it before. I wasn't light headed and in spite of my doubts, I was apparently willing to go through with it. My words spilled out, totally sincere but, I have to admit, not at all romantic.

She drew back and switched on the light.

"Are you serious?" she said, incredulously. Then she told me nobody got married these days, that I had to be completely out of my mind. She shook her head and screwed her face up in disbelief. Confused, she threw the sheets aside and left the bed leaving me to feel robbed of her warmth.

"No," she said, "I don't understand you..."

I hadn't expected any other answer, in fact I hardly listened, and certainly I felt no pain at such a blunt rejection. I think, perversely, I'd simply wanted to prove something to myself.

She stood in a corner with her back turned. Her nakedness still thrilled me but it was a thrill now cooled by the readiness and the frequency with which it was given. It must be like that in marriage, I thought; no more the heady excitement of unbuttoning a girl's blouse; no more the lusty fascination with every inch of newly uncovered flesh. Something else must take it's place, something more powerful and not as transient. But what?

"If you love me enough to want to live with me," I said, "Why won't you marry me?" It was foolish: this was no time for logic.

She said I was naive; that it wasn't as simple as that and I knew it. I hardly listened, telling her instead we could do it next month, that maybe I could get back into research, that maybe we could even leave the City.

She looked at me gently, almost, I think, with pity.

"It's just talk, Scott," she said.

She'd heard all this before, all my dreams. I was turning into a vegetable at Effham Brothers, going nowhere, and I didn't care. All I could do was talk about it, with her, with the girl I'd known before and the girl before that.

It always hurts when someone hits upon a truth you're trying to hide from everyone, including yourself. Jenny saw it in my face and she was sorry. She came back and put her arms around me.

"Perhaps if I moved in for a while," she said, "it would give me time to consider...."

She didn't press me on it though, sensing I might be against it and told me instead that we should sleep on it.

That was the way with Jenny. If things weren't going in her favour, she'd change the subject and try a different approach later on, when I was tired or when my guard was down. We were children, neither of us knowing the meaning of the word love, yet holding onto each other because it seemed, amid the horror and the darkness of the City,....

......there was no one else to turn to.

Chapter 3

Into the North

I reflected on all of this the following morning as the train crept out of Euston, as if untangling itself from the graffiti-fouled girders and the crumbling brickwork of the City's backside. Eventually it emerged from the lead grey skies and greasy air which overhung the place, and began picking up speed, punching its way into the greener, cleaner spaces further north.

I could still feel Jenny's hot body melting into mine as the dawn light seeped through the curtains. Of all my memories of Jenny, I'd say those first waking moments were the best. There was a magic about lying there, with all of yesterdays doubts forgotten, just basking in her warmth.

It had been difficult leaving her and she hadn't tried to make it any easier. Each time I'd made an effort to move, she'd countered by snuggling closer, trying to prolong our last cosy moments together. I missed her already. Or did I? Was it not simply that I needed her, her or someone else who could sit me down and tell me where it was all going wrong?

__________________

By mid morning, my thoughts had slowly turned to the job in hand and I was beginning to grapple with an uncertain future waiting for me at the end of the railway line. I had to keep reminding myself that everything was real, that I had spoken to Bowker yesterday and that I hadn't simply imagined the whole thing. What if I finally arrived at this place and it was fully booked?

I could just imagine it: "Scott who?" It was just my nerves, I suppose but the more questions I asked myself, the more unsettled I became.

Putting all this aside, the journey was a revelation. Being suddenly well off, I'd booked myself a first class ticket and I rode in the hushed comfort of a Pullman carriage as the train headed north. Rugby, Birmingham, Wigan, Carlisle; they were just names, milestones separated by hours; yet this was all my country, all those faces whizzing by on unfamiliar platforms, my fellow countrymen. But they seemed alien.

Even at break-neck speed, it was two in the afternoon before I arrived at Glasgow's Central Station, with an aching bottom and yet only half of my journey was over. Take a look at the map some time and study Scotland. You'll be surprised how big and how far away from London it is. Caithness is about as near to Westminster as Switzerland, and Ben Nevis is as near the coast of Norway as it is to that of Southern England.

I hired a car from an office where a girl spoke with an accent I could barely follow and as I strained to catch her words, I imagined she was thinking to herself: "Another Bloody Southerner", even though I'm from Halifax. She seemed as foreign to me as I no doubt did to her and then, suddenly, I was aware of how parochial I'd become. Could the City have changed me so much in only five years?

Having said that, Glasgow's streets did not seem much different to those I knew in London. There was the same traffic noise, the same carbon blackened walls, the same dustbin bags stacked high on street corners. But the similarity went only skin deep. There was a taste to the air, if you like; a strange light reflected from the sandstone faces of old buildings and above all, an atmosphere, cool and sharp, magnified by its unfamiliarity. It was just another city, but it made me feel as if I were on the verge of something new, something unexpected.

It began three quarters of an hour later, when I discovered Loch Lomond. The sun was shining and the water, appearing suddenly, was an impossible shade of blue, while everything around was green and bright and crisp. It was the first real countryside I'd seen for a long time; in five years, I hadn't even left The City for a holiday. Small wonder then that it was like being sucked into a vacuum as all that space opened up before me. It was like peeling off a heavy overcoat. Suddenly, I felt light and free.

Loch Lomond, Crianlarich, Rannoch Moor, Glen Coe: I'd found, it seemed, an infinity of space. And threading its way through all of this was an open road with just a few cars here and there but no one pushing, no one crowding in.

There were mountains of course, one after the other, great folds of them marching off into the distance. They were nameless to me then, like strangers you'd pass in the street, strangers that looked down upon you from a great height, shrinking you to an atom. Yet as I passed each seemed to nod their acquaintance.

I recognised Ben Nevis rising like a knobbly green wall. Brilliant white vapour poured down from notches on the skyline, a skyline so high I had to crane my neck to see. It towered monstrously with its head in the clouds, like a wrinkled old man engrossed in a newspaper.

I was staggered by it all: Loch Lochy, Fort Augustus, Loch Ness - I drove for nearly two hundred miles and not once did I see a landscape that was dominated by mankind.

By early evening, the sound of the tyres on the road had begun to drive me mad. I was heading west, now, towards the sea. The long journey had begun to take its toll. I was growing tired and I pulled over to nibble a sandwich I'd bought on the train. Up ahead, a signpost pointed down a single track road. Craigaline - fifteen miles, it said. I'd be there in half an hour.

From the road side, I could see clouds hanging low over a range of distant mountains, giving them a flat topped appearance like the truncated cones of old volcanoes. It was my first glimpse of the mountains of Craigaline and they did not welcome me.

The sea shone through gaps in the peaks as a pool of sunshine blazed like molten bronze beyond them. In contrast, all around lay bleak moorland, dark and speckled with cold, innominate lochans, like pearls from a broken necklace. All this was Craigaline.

I drove on and for ten miles, I saw nothing, not a single house, not even a hill farm. The road, frost damaged and dangerously narrow, snaked on and on, the distance punctuated by crude wooden poles painted with flaking bands of black and white paint. These marked passing places, rough laybys hacked out of the surrounding wilderness, without which two cars could never pass.

It was a wilderness that seemed permanently on the verge of taking over. For parts of its length, the road was divided along its middle by grassy hummocks and reeds that brushed the underside of the car. Craigaline was a place that time, and the local council had apparently overlooked.

At last, I came upon a farmhouse; a grim and broody monstrosity, half hidden behind a great stone wall. A sign on the gate told me that it was strictly private, that there was no phone, that permission for camping would not be granted and that trespassers would be prosecuted. There were even metal spikes sticking out of the top of the gate to discourage the most persistent visitor.

Of course the house had a phone, anyone could see the wire. I imagined myself broken down and lost, maybe with a wife and kids in the car, having to go banging on that gate. What then? Would I have been seen off with dogs? It wasn't right. Surely, all those paranoid ravings didn't belong here. Craigaline was what I'd glimpsed back there wild, impassive, I suppose, but not this, not this hostility, this baring of teeth.

The words did seem familiar, in tone at least; they were the words of men, the same men who built clockwork cities and put people into boxes. I heard the meshing of gears and I felt the skies darken. I was still thinking about it when I rounded a tight bend and nearly ran into a stationary Landrover. It was slewed across the road, completely blocking it. Unable to drive past, I opened the door, stepped out and breathed clean air. It's taste distracted me. It was as if the moors themselves were absorbing it, taking it in and adding the flavour of their own wildness.

I heard a voice, pin sharp and angry. "What do you mean I can't go up there?"

It was an old bloke in a chequered shirt and knee breeches. He was facing a couple of men in waxed jackets. They had shot guns tucked under their arms. One of them was saying something about not wanting anyone going around trampling about and causing damage. He was the taller of the two, stouter and clumsy looking with a fat neck and, surprisingly, a London accent.

"Damage!" said the old man. "Damage! I'm only bloody walking, not herding cows."

The other man with the waxed jacket began to stab the air with his finger. He wasn't going to tell him again. There was no route through the plantation and that was that. He seemed more wiry and athletic than his friend. He had a severe haircut and sharp features like a weasel.

The old man seemed even more angry now: "You can't bar access," he said. "The Glen's the only safe way up to The Singing Loch. You can't - you simply can't...."

Then I watched the fire in his eyes fade as the words trailed away in disbelief. He'd been caught trespassing and yet he appeared to feel no guilt, as I might've done. If anything, he gave the impression it was he who'd been wronged.

Until that moment, I'd gone unnoticed but then, Weasel Features caught my eye. He prodded the arm of the bigger man who turned slowly like a giant lizard and rooted me to the spot with an expressionless stare. I asked if there was a problem but I was told to keep my nose out of it - more mad dog aggression, unprovoked and undeserved. It was none of my business but I was irritable. I was also hungry and dying for a hot bath.

"You're blocking the road," I said indignantly.

"You'll have to wait," I was told. "We haven't finished here."

"Seems to me you've made your point," I said. "What else can you do? Shoot him?"

The old man laughed. "Don't tempt him, lad," he said.

I smiled at him but the wiry, weasely man startled me by making a sudden, aggressive move in my direction. The big man held him back.

"Not so fast, Spike," I heard him say.

Spike! Can you believe it?

We stared each other out and for a moment, I was frightened; Spike had the bearing of a violent man. I was relieved when they both backed down and climbed into the Landrover. There was a lot of noise as they turned it round and then, with the nearside wheels climbing up the banking, they squeezed past my hire car. That's when Spike lowered his arm from the window and casually scraped his penknife blade along my door. I swore at him but it was useless. All I could do was stand there. He glanced back at me briefly and then they sped away.

I remember walking across a tube station platform, not long after I'd first come to The City. A couple of youths had run up to a girl, on her own and tried to snatch her hand bag. She'd struggled and screamed and ended up being dragged to the floor where she was then kicked and punched until she finally let go of her bag. The place had been crowded at the time but people had pretended not to notice. I'd stood there, horrified. One of the youths had caught my eye and stared me out. His expression had been the same then as Spike's had been, a moment ago; cold, contemptuous and thoroughly assured I hadn't got the guts to do anything about it.

I turned to the old man. He produced a pipe and stuck it in his mouth. His face was a healthy colour of brown and it was furrowed with deep laughter lines. It was the sort of face that looked as if it would live for ever. He smiled and we shook hands.

He thanked me for supporting him but I'd hardly said anything and even then I'd been more concerned about myself.

"Will you carry on?" I asked him.

"I don't think so," he replied.

"You think he'll come back?"

"Maybe. I'll let him waste his time. He guards his land jealously does that one. Besides, he's spoiled it."

"What? The land?"

"I was meaning the walk," he said. "But he's spoiling the land, too." I asked him where he'd been going to.

"To the Singing Loch," he replied.

And what was so special about this Singing Loch that he should risk trespassing to get there?

"It sings," he said simply and then, upon seeing my sceptical smile, he added that I wouldn't understand and that it probably wouldn't sing for me anyway. It was as if he'd looked me up and down and passed me off as a moron or something. Why wouldn't it sing for me?

"Up there," he said, tipping his head towards the mountains. That was where it was, this Singing Loch, though he said it might as well be on the moon, because in a couple of years the trees would be too thick to get through.

It turned out we were staying at the same hotel which wasn't surprising , considering the fact it was probably the only one in two hundred square miles. I offered him a lift but he declined, gruffly, declaring he had to make it back on foot or not at all. We arranged to eat together later on and I drove off. I glanced back at him in the mirror. Head down, he slogged away at a steady pace, his red check shirt, the only splash of colour in a drab landscape.

The Singing Loch! I didn't know it then but Bill's words had already hammered it firmly into my brain like a wedge. It was there now, among my thoughts,....

......and I would never shake it free

~ The Story ~

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