The Madness of July: A Thriller by James Naughtie

Author:James Naughtie [NAUGHTIE, JAMES]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000; FIC031000; FIC006000; FIC031020; FIC031060; FIC030000
ISBN: 9781468310283
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2014-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Babble was in the kitchen at Altnabuie, wrestling with a leg of lamb. He’d pulled four long sprigs of rosemary from the bushes on either side of the back door leading to his vegetable patch, rubbed the spikes to release a good aroma, and laid them with some of his own carrots round the lamb that would sit in the iron cooking pot for hours, with potatoes from the garden thrown in towards the end. That was all. It was how he and Mungo liked it, the way things were done. He had picked up the lamb at Macdonald’s in Pitlochry on Friday and got some fresh salmon at Loch Rannoch, where he’d spent a while at the waterside. He’d poached the fish and it lay in the cold room. Their Sunday lunch had now become Abel’s Saturday night welcome home dinner. He’d laid in a haul of cheese and cobbled together a creamy pudding, with the help of generous splashes of his fifteen-year-old Dalwhinnie. It looked to have worked, and it would be a proper meal for the boys. With luck he’d have Abel home from Edinburgh by six, and they’d sit down to a feast at eight. A night of nights. He hummed to himself in the kitchen, and the dogs responded to his lifting mood.

Babble savoured the excitement of Abel’s coming arrival, and he sensed its importance for them all. He’d become used to Mungo’s habit of talking more about his mother, dead these fifteen years, and knew that he was exploring her history.

Babble had warmed to her from the summer of his arrival here and spent days on the hill at her side, seeing her as the great stabilizer of life at Altnabuie, a fact made more remarkable by her artist’s wayward spirit. She had taken the boys on American trips, to her family’s old haunts and playgrounds, which had left them exhausted and high for months, speaking of beaches that rolled away for miles and dark woods covering hills where they could disappear for days. Babble’s bond was close. Alone of those at Altnabuie, he’d called her Helene in later years. He’d felt her an electric presence in the house and now he knew that she was causing excitement, maybe trouble, from beyond the grave. He cared about Mungo, and had worried on the nights when he retreated for long hours in his study. Now there was Will, in whom he identified an anxiety that ran into the depths.

Mungo and he were planning to spend the next week in London, and both of them were looking forward to a break from the routine they loved. They’d catch the night sleeper from Pitlochry on Sunday, and he wanted nothing to interfere with their plan.

He loved the old house and the hills, and knew he imparted something of his own restless temperament to the place. Life never became too sleepy, nor complacent. Mungo was leading a well-ordered and untroubled life, now that he had given up his university teaching and had rooted himself at Altnabuie full-time.

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