The Fish Ladder by Katharine Norbury

Author:Katharine Norbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

I shivered as I turned the key in the door to my room. I put the bivouac bag and the map of Caithness on the bed. The map looked innocuous in its orange and silver covers with a photograph of a lone cyclist. Yet somewhere among its creases was the place where I would be sleeping the following night. Given how cold I was feeling the idea seemed at best unlikely, at worst foolish. I decided to have a bath. Going back into the corridor, I found a bathroom tucked beneath the eaves. I brought the towels from the bedroom and placed them on a Lloyd Loom basket; the cracked floor was ancient lino. I ran the bath using only the hot water tap because a granite chill permeated everything, even though it was August. An art deco mirror above the sink, which was flanked with engravings of angular sea creatures, steamed over quickly. Condensation trickled down flaking tongue-and-groove walls. The water in the bath cooled as rapidly as it filled, the cast iron stealing the heat. I ran the hot tap constantly, the water gurgling into the overflow, until I felt warm enough to turn it off, whereon a protest broke out in the pipes. The rain, which seemed to have set in for the night, rustled at the window, slipped across the slates, and I seemed to lose my grip on time, in this space beneath the roof, the old house becoming a memory box, where recollections matted with dreams.

An hour later I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater. I tried to call Rupert, and then Evie at her cousins’ house, but there was no cover for my mobile and the rooms didn’t have telephones. I took Neil M. Gunn’s Highland River from my holdall. It described, in the form of a novel, the exact journey I hoped to make the following day.

A table had been set for me in the dining room, silver service, a crisp white damask tablecloth, but I had been alone all day. I suddenly craved the intimacy of the bar. There was a deep Knole sofa, next to an oak coffee table, in front of the fire, so I sat down and ordered a venison salad, followed by salmon. I watched the young barman talking to a German couple about whisky. He was tall, fair and blue-eyed, and exhibited an authority beyond his years. I wondered if he was the absent Callum who the receptionist had referred to earlier, the one who had failed to collect my bag. The German couple wanted to know if a single malt whisky was better than a blend, and if age was an indication of quality. He answered them knowledgeably, yet evenly, exhibiting no personal preference, nor implying any hint of stigma or qualitative judgement, so that while being very well informed about whisky – in the abstract – they did not seem any the wiser, with regard to making a decision, by the time he had finished.

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