‘I thought ye micht be wanting help, like, wi’ the stove.’ He brought the cold in with him, clinging to his jacket like the briskness of the salt wind off the sea. I couldn’t see too far behind him for the fog that hung above the waves was like some great cloud that was too heavy to get airborne. Leaving his mud-bottomed boots at the doormat, he went past and into the kitchen and opened the stove door to peer at my coal fire. ‘Ach, it’s gone and deed on ye, it’s fairly oot. Ye should’ve ca’d me.’
Sweeping the dead ashes out, he relaid the coals, his rough hands so quick and neat in their movements that I wondered again what he did for a living, or what he had done. So I asked him.
He glanced up again. ‘I was a slater.’
A maker of slate roofs. So that would explain why he looked like he’d lived his whole life in the open air, I thought.
He asked what I did, and there was the ‘f ’ sound again, in the place of a ‘w’—making the word ‘what’ in Jimmy’s speech come out as ‘fit’： ‘Fit aboot yersel?’ He gave a nod to my laptop computer, its printer still humming away on the long wooden table against the far wall. ‘Fit d’ye dee wi’ that?’
‘I write,’ I told him. ‘Books.’
‘Oh, aye? Fit kind o’ books?’
‘Novels. Set in the past.’
He clanged the door shut on the Aga and stood, looking fairly impressed. ‘Oh, aye?’
‘Yes. The one that I’m working on now is set here,’ I said. ‘That’s why I wanted this cottage. My story takes place at Slains Castle.’
‘Oh, aye?’ Jimmy repeated, as though he’d discovered a thing of great interest. I had the feeling that he would have asked me more if someone hadn’t, at that moment, knocked again at the front door.
‘Yer in demand the day,’ said Jimmy as I went to open it, and found, as I had half-expected, Stuart on the doorstep.
‘Morning. Thought I’d come and see how you were getting on,’ he said.
‘I’m fine, thanks. Come on in, your father’s here.’
‘My father?’
‘Aye,’ said Jimmy, from the kitchen, his eyes crinkling at their corners. ‘I’ve nivver seen ye up sae early, loon. Are ye a’richt?’
Stuart parried the jab with a smile. ‘It’s after eleven.’
‘Aye, I ken fine fit time it is.’
He finished restoking the fire in my stove and stood when I thanked him. But he didn’t look as though he were in any hurry to go anywhere, and neither did Stuart, so I asked, ‘Does anyone want coffee? I was just about to make a cup.’
To both Keith men, apparently, a cup of coffee sounded fine. They didn’t sit while waiting. Jimmy wandered out into the main room, whistling faintly through his teeth, while Stuart came after me into the kitchen and leaned with his back to the wall, his arms folded. ‘So, how did you like your first night in the cottage? I should have warned you that the bedroom window rattles like the devil when the wind blows off the sea. It didn’t keep you up, I hope?’
‘I didn’t actually make it to the bedroom last night. I was working,’ I said, with a nod to the long wooden table.
Jimmy, who’d been having a look at my computer, added, ‘She’s a writer.’
‘Aye, I know she is,’ said Stuart.
‘She’ll be writin,’ Jimmy said, ‘aboot oor castle.’
Stuart looked at me with what might have been pity. ‘It’s a big mistake, to tell my Dad a thing like that.’
I set the kettle on to boil. ‘Why’s that?’
‘He’ll be up to the St Olaf for his lunch, that’s why, and by this afternoon the whole of Cruden Bay will know exactly why you’re here, and what you’re doing. You won’t have a moment’s peace.’
‘Ach, the loon disna ken fit he’s on aboot,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ve nae time fer claikin.’
‘That’s “gossiping”，’ Stuart translated the word for my benefit. ‘And don’t believe him. He loves telling stories.’
His father put in, ‘Aye, and lucky fer me I’ve yersel tae keep geein me somethin tae tell aboot. Is that the kettle?’
It was. I made the coffee, and we sat around companionably and drank it, and then Jimmy checked his watch and said, ‘Weel, I’m awa hame.’ He jabbed a finger at his son. ‘And dinna ye stop here lang, either.’ And he thanked me for the coffee, and went out.