Three days after the ‘event’ Margaret stepped off the train in the small town of Tain in the Scottish Highlands.
She walked towards the familiar battered Landrover. A man in the driver’s seat, his face almost concealed by a dark red beard called,
'Hey………Maggie?’
The sound of her nickname from long ago and the Scottish burr in his deep musical voice made her want to cry.
She was home.
Just the sound of bagpipes would have completed her homecoming she thought ruefully. Then she reflected, she would have broken down into full scale sobs!
‘I’m Cal under all this foliage in case you dinna recognise me, and that door’s still a B… to close. Lift it and pull and slam! There you got it in one,’ he said in playful admiration.
A hairy hound stuck his wet nose into her neck from the back seat and a warm lick up her cheek strangely comforted her.
Margaret……… Maggie once again, shivered in spite of Thor’s shaggy grey warm head on her shoulder.
In the grey drizzle the memory of the humiliation of being literally ‘left at the altar’ came back to haunt her. She cringed inwardly at the dreadful ‘hoo hah’ as her cousin Wil put it. The formal letter apologising, the sympathetic guests………her step mother’s tight lips holding in ‘I told you so,’ and her dad’s warm hug. He was the one who said, ‘go home to Tain, you’ll heal there.’
She looked furtively at Cal who was peering through the intermittent windscreen wipers.
‘It’s a B of a day and that’s for sure, but we’ll get there in a wee bit,’ and they slid towards a high bank. He righted the vehicle with ease and said, ‘ we call her Demoina now after a hectic hurricane on the coast of Africa. She will get you anywhere though. Whines constantly!’ He shot her a glance and noted her clenched hands.
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The mist lifted as we rounded the bend and the lake revealed itself as a shining mirror in a stray sword of sunshine. The purple heather lined the rolling hills like a fleecy blanket.
‘It’s going to be beautiful tomorrow,’ announced Cal, 'and I want to show you the herd of deer and I have a feeling that the rare white hind will want to welcome you in all his glory.’
As Maggie heard the crunch of the gravel under the tyres outside the front door of the Laird’s house where she was born, the heavy door flew open and a rotund Bessie in her floury apron that spoke of scones and fresh bread wrapped her in her arms as Maggie put her foot onto the loose stones………..
‘Yes,’ she thought as she absorbed a hug that had comforted her from the day of her birth, ‘it certainly is going to be beautiful tomorrow. A new beginning entirely,’
Thor barked and pranced, ‘never you mind’ whispered Bessie in the middle of the hug and Cal picked up Maggie's bags and said loudly,
‘and where might the tea and scones be, woman?’ as he kissed his wife on the cheek in passing.
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