The Shadowy Horses

"The Auld Kirk," said Jeannie, and indeed it could be nothing else. The golden walls and arching windows and beautiful bell-tower could only have belonged to an old church, no longer sanctified but still demanding reverence. Below the graceful dome and weather vane that capped the hexagonal tower, a working clock declared the time to be 11:30.

Jeannie, looking at the clock, informed me we'd be lucky to be out again by three. "She likes to talk, does Granny Nan."

"But what about Robbie?" I asked.

"Och, he'll be fine. My dad collects him from his piano lesson, see, and they have a wee walk around the harbor, look in on Dad's friends. Robbie loves it. Besides," she added, "he'd be bored, here with us. He's been through the exhibits a hundred times, and Granny Nan will be wanting to show you everything, especially since she kens you're a museum person, too."

"Has she worked here a long time, then?"

"Aye, since it opened. The doctor tried to make her give up working after her heart attack, but she'd not hear of it. Might as well try to make the sun set in the east."

As we walked the final few steps, heads bent low into the blowing rain, Jeannie glanced sideways and shot me a mischievous smile. "You'll want to be taking your raincoat off, though, afore we go in."

I looked down. "Is it really so awful?"

"No, but it belongs to Davy," she informed me, smug at having twice caught me wearing the big Scotsman's clothes. "And Granny Nan's a noticing sort of woman."

XI

The wind slammed the door at our backs as we came in through the vestibule, but no one in the lobby took much notice. Two couples stood pressed close against the long reshaped reception desk—young couples, smartly dressed and out of sorts. I couldn't see the woman who was helping them, but I could hear her talking on the telephone, asking someone if they had a room. Which seemed an odd question, until I remembered that David had told me the Eyemouth Museum was also the local tourist information center. Finding rooms for frazzled holidaymakers who hadn't had the sense to book ahead for the Bank Holiday weekend apparently went hand in hand with showing visitors around the exhibits.

A large part of the lobby had been set aside for wall displays and standing panels, spread with maps and scenic views and photographs of local B & Bs. Bus and train schedules jostled for rack space with a dizzying assortment of free pamphlets promoting everything from stately homes and gardens to a self-conducted walking tour along the rugged coast.

Folding the dripping yellow raincoat more tightly over my bent arm, I stepped aside to let a young man, loaded down with pamphlets, pass me by. He started up a flight of metal stairs that ran along the nearest wall, and I tipped my head up, curious. "Is there a floor above, then?"

"Aye," said Jeannie. "That's where the temporary exhibitions go. But the main displays are down here, through that door beyond the main desk, d'ye see?"

I looked, and saw an open doorway, double width, with swinging gates that marked the way in and the way out.

"We'd best wait for Granny Nan, though." Jeannie smiled. "She'll want to take you around herself."

My gaze moved once again to the reception desk, but the young couples were still tightly clustered around it and I only saw their backs. Denied a glimpse of David's mother, I pretended a keen interest in the shelves of souvenirs that lined the wall behind us.

One silly toy did catch my eye—a small around puffball of pale fur topped by a red tartan tam. Two beady eyes peered at me from between the tufts of fur as I picked the strange thing up and turned it over. "What is this supposed to be?"

"Och, have you never seen a haggis? Canny wee creatures, they are. You almost never see them, in the wild. This one sings, like." She pressed its little tam and was rewarded by a high-pitched rendition of "Scotland the Brave."

I laughed, I couldn't help it. It was so delightfully ridiculous. "A singing haggis?"

"Aye. The real ones aren't so friendly looking ..."

"Oh, give it up," I said. “I may be English, but even I know a haggis is only a sheep-stomach sausage."

“Is it?'' Jeannie made her dancing eyes deliberately mysterious, and moved away, to scan a nearby bookshelf. “Here you go," she said. "Here's what you're wanting."

Keeping hold of my haggis, I came across to join her, but before she could show me what she'd found we were forced to stand aside again to let the smart-dressed foursome leave, and in their wake I got my first good look at David Fortune's mother.

Having heard her called "Granny" so often I'd fully expected her to be like my own grandmother, a small saintly woman with withered cheeks and soft white hair pulled back in gentle wings. But Granny Nan, decidedly, was not my Granny Grey.

She put me in mind of those marvelous film stars of the thirties and forties, who'd flouted tradition by dressing in trousers and throwing off wittily crafted one-liners. She stood tall for a woman and ramrod straight, with the same strong, uncompromising angle of chin and jawline that she'd passed onto her son. Her eyes were wider apart than his, and the mouth was different, but her hair, like David's, had once been dark—there were traces of it in the short cropped steel-grey curls which framed a face that must have been pretty in youth, and in maturity was striking. Although her ailing heart had flushed her face with color her complexion remained clear, with hardly a wrinkle to mar the mobile features, and her blue eyes held a warm blend of intelligence and humor that I recognized.