Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Author:Evie Dunmore [Dunmore, Evie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

They went to the dining area downstairs for tea, or suppah, because Harriet preferred eating in public over a more intimate meal in their room, no surprise there. A handful of patrons who had the seasoned looks of regulars were scattered along the poorly lit bar, eyeing them curiously through curls of cigarette smoke, but the waitress led them to a booth at the window front.

“What may I bring you, sir?” The waitress was smiling and addressing him in English.

“What’s your recommendation?”

“We make the best haggis in the Kingdom of Fife,” she said, “served with mashed potatoes and well-cooked turnips.”

“Well-cooked, you say.”

“Then there’s the beef-and-potato stew—best black Galloway beef from the West Country.”

He glanced at Harriet, who seemed apathetic, then back at the lass. “You have a menu?”

“Not on my account,” came his wife’s soft voice. “I’ll take the recommended dish.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “It won’t be to your taste, I reckon.”

“Well-cooked turnips,” she said blandly. “Why, I crave them.”

The kitchen is lacking, was what she really said. She knew without seeing the menu; the place was lacking, Scotland was lacking, he was lacking. He ordered haggis, stew, some wine, and ale, thinking a wooden trow to his head would have been well worth it.

Time passed slowly here in the middle of nowhere. The rack on the wall held the newspapers from three days ago. It felt like eternity until the steaming dishes were placed before them, compounded by the glum silence coming from the woman he had wed.

“You like the haggis?” he said as she ate her meal with a passive expression.

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It reminds me of black pudding, but the taste is more severe. What is it?”

“Sheep’s stomach,” he said, “stuffed with chopped sheep innards and gruel.”

She put down her fork. “Very nourishing, I’m sure,” she said faintly.

She didn’t pick up her cutlery again but kept drinking her wine in tiny sips.

“I can order you a new dish,” he said after a while.

Suspicion flickered in her eyes and his fingers tightened around his spoon. He should be wholly unaffected by her moods and lack of trust, but she had introduced a hitherto unknown complexity to his life: he found he was holding multiple contradictory thoughts—or worse, feelings—at the same time. Her mistrust, her sniping, the sullen, petulant curve of her mouth, bedeviled him very effectively, and yet he still wanted to lean across the narrow table and kiss that mouth. Her expensive burnt-vanilla scent was mixing with the smell of smoldering coal creeping in from the pits, a bizarre, sensual clash of his old life and the new that unmoored him in some fashion.

She finally continued to eat, and once and again her gaze strayed out the window to the dark outline of the far hills gradually fading into the night.

“Were you really hoping to see mountains?” he said, because apparently, he was perverted and craved rejection.

“Of course.” She sighed, her wistfulness sincere. “Looking at them elevates the soul. ‘What are

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