Flight of the Grey Goose by Victor Canning

Author:Victor Canning [Canning, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub

7. The King Of The Castle

The Laird’s birthday party was the best party Smiler had ever known.

The next morning before lunch two large motor boats arrived from the far end of the loch bringing Laura’s mother and father and her brother who worked on the farm, and six other people, neighbours and friends of the Laird. In a short while everywhere there was a great laughing and chattering, and joking and to-and-froing, and a climbing up to rooms and down again, and people being lost in the maze of corridors, and a stern warning coming from Laura and her mother that nobody, but nobody, would be welcomed in the kitchen.

The sun blazed down on the loch as though its thirst was so great and lasting that it meant to drain it dry and still not be satisfied. Bacon got excited with so much company and ran in and out of legs and got chased out of the kitchen. Midas lay in the sun across the terrace entrance and, as people passed unwarily, nipped and growled until he got tired with the whole process and went soundly to sleep. And the birds, the fantails and the whole coloured collection of jay, owl, magpie, siskin, sat around on the parapets and window cornices and wondered what was happening. But the wild fowl, a little upset by the confusion, kept well away at the far end of the beach, and Laggy paddled out into the bay and turned his back on the whole affair.

On the terrace Smiler and Laura had set up a long trestle table for lunch. One end was covered with glasses and bottles of beer and whisky and cider and jugs of milk and orange juice – and, while they were all drinking before lunch, Smiler’s salmon, yet to be cooked, was brought in on the great silver dish and exhibited. Smiler and Laura had to tell the whole story of its catching and they were bombarded with questions. Smiler, who never meant to part with it as long as he lived, brought the Smiler fly from his pocket and it was handed around and discussed by the men and a note made of its dressing. Laura’s father, Jock Mackay, a craggy man with warm brown eyes wreathed in weather wrinkles, declared, ‘Aye and it must be a bonnie flee that can bring a fish up with the loch as it is.’ Then he winked at Smiler and added, ‘And I’ve no doubt that Laura, here, badgered you with her shouts and instructions. Ye should have been warned that she’s a good but noisy ghillie.’

When Smiler fairly said, ‘She was fine, sir. I couldn’t have done it without her,’ Mrs Mackay, warm-skinned, dark-haired, a big-bodied, handsome woman, said, ‘There you are, Jock Mackay, there’s a lesson in gallantry that all ye men could take to heart.’

The Laird, who was wearing his best jacket and kilt and had banished the mice, grass snakes and other occupants from his clothes for the

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