Author's Note; Upon googling 'Macaulay' I learned of Thomas Babington Macaulay, a British politician-come-poet who's father had been born in Inverary village in Scotland. When on an epic solo adventure two February's past to climb Ben Nevis, Britain's highest peak, I got lost in the fog around Loch Lomond and ended up in the little seaside village called Inverary. The locals were interesting, and inspired this incarnation of Walter.
Of all his late father's assets, this one property had caused Daniel Macaulay the greatest amount of grief and heartache. Subsequently, he'd avoided visiting the place, putting it off and pushing it to the back of his mind, but it nagged at him like a tender old wound. He couldn't bring himself to sell it and be done with it, for it was the very place of his father's birth, and it embodied everything about his father's proud, Scottish heritage that he'd failed to live up to. His father had started from humble beginnings and battled his way into the socio-political limelight; Daniel had been born with his father's silver spoon in his mouth, but had done little 'worthwhile' with his head start. He made a piecemeal politician, most of his time was spent on 'pointless' literary cavortings, wrapt in childish ideals and fanciful poetry.
Like his father, Daniel had inherited the Macaulay build. He had height, strength and broad shoulders. Dan's secretary said she could see the Scottish in him, that he was built for tossing the caber, but his father had always disagreed. 'It isn't the size of the dog in the fight, lad, it's the size of the fight in the dog', he'd say, in a Scottish accent barely dulled by his decades in the gentle hills and valleys of England's eastern midlands. Dan had always been a big pushover at school, and lacked any of the 'highlander fire' that should have been in his blood.
Thoroughly miserable, Dan rolled his cramped shoulders, stiff from the ten hour drive. He'd made his way through Glasgow, past the infamous 'road to nowhere' overpass that abruptly ended in mid air like a ski jump, vestige of the abandoned ring-road. Over the Kingston Bridge spanning the fog-wreathed River Clyde, and on past signs for the Loch Lomond golf course, also smothered in thick, low mist. Although Dan considered golf the gentle, relaxing kind of sport that he could probably grow to love, nothing about this country was welcoming. Every little detail etched a grand picture of blunt disappointment and disownment. He was a mockery, and not he was not welcome here.
He escaped the fog on the coastal road where conditions were clearer but sunless, the sky an oppressive slate-grey slab overhead. The thin road tracing the sharp contours of the western shore's sea lochs and rugged peninsulas probed through pockets of stunted, moss-strewn trees crowded into the sheltered bays and leas, or picked its way across rocky beaches above the brown seaweed line of the high tide mark. It was a world away from the mild rolling hills and deep cultivated soils of his home county, but this is where the true roots of his heritage lay.
The village of Inverary was surprising in its quaint little rows of white rendered, dark roofed, terraced houses lined up along the seafront. The road became even narrower and wove its way tightly through closely packed shops and a pretty little church, almost built on top of one another. As Dan followed his handwritten directions and his route peeled away from the main road, the more constricted, convoluted and cracked the track became. Eventually, the wheels of his car were mired in the mud of the unpaved, private track that served his father's childhood home, and the overgrown drystone wall embankments on either side brought on a feeling of entombment that was only relieved when he scrambled through the almost too-small window. Muddy, miserable and marooned, Dan abandoned his car on the road that he technically owned on paper but that didn't feel 'his', and continued on foot.
After fifteen minutes of trudging through mud and ruining the socks inside his unsuitable shoes, he came to a small dilapidated shack set off to the side. In a happier mood, Dan might have thought of it as a quaint cottage, but not today. Not while the displeased weight of this place pressed down on his stiff shoulders, sinking his feet into cold mud and not when Dan finally noticed the dwelling's apparent owner standing at the roadside. An angry looking, ginger Scotsman wearing a kilt, a scowl… and a shotgun.
Dan froze and his attention was focused directly on the firearm cocked over the stranger's ropey, freckled forearm. It looked ancient; all dark, carved wood and pale, engraved metalwork. It also looked unfortunately well kept, and fully loaded. Oh God, he'd really stumbled into the unfriendly, backwater glens here.
His silent inaction also seemed to only goad the redhead, who's features roughened further into a deeper snarl while the gun was snapped shut and brought to bear. Dan's innards tried to run away up his throat in terror, which only succeeded in choking his breath away. He did manage to raise his palms in surrender and squeak out a "Don't shoot!"
"What'd be y'r business?" Were the words he spoke, but it sounded more like the redhead was threatening to kill him.
"I, er…" Dan remembered the property deeds and frantically searched himself before realising with a stab of horror that they were lying on the passenger seat of his abandoned car. "I'm Daniel iMacaulay/i!"
The weapon was lowered, obviously begrudgingly. "iDaniel/i?"
Dan had never seen or heard his name snarled so viciously before, not even by his own father. Despite the threatening gunman's mono-word response, it was plain that he knew the Macaulay name, but no Daniels from that family. "I'm Zachary's son." He was still standing in his father's shadow, even though the man was dead and buried years ago.
The shotgun was lowered, instantly forgotten, as the redhead took a brief trip down memory lane. "Y'd better come inside then."
Daniel was less than enthusiastic about following an armed, slightly unhinged Scotsman into a tiny shack after being threatened at gunpoint moments before, but he had the feeling that it would be really, really stupid to argue. Where would he run to anyway? His shiny city shoes would give him no grip, and his car was stuck in the mud. The gunman looked like the kind of local man who'd never left this corner of Scotland, but had spent all his days becoming intimately acquainted with every tree, rock and trail in this glen. What other option did he have? He followed the wiry man inside.
The house was small, but was further compounded by being full of boxes. The walls were stacked high with them and the impromptu seat that his crazed-gunman-come-host set up for him was a crate topped with a hastily thrown together pile of blankets and what looked like an animal skin. Then his host turned to the small hearth, which was very close in the confined space between the boxes, and threw another quartered log amongst the crackling embers. "Tea?"
"Oh, uh, yes. Yes please."
"Got no milk, y'll hafta take it black."
"Uh, that's fine. I can drink tea black." Daniel hated black tea, but he wasn't going to say so, not while the shotgun was still propped up so close by.
His host put a little metal kettle over the rousing flames, and pulled a wire rack out from between the mounds of boxes. It was a little clothes horse, which was unfolded and dumped unceremoniously before the fire. "Y' can dry y'r shoes 'n' troos on 'ere."
Daniel did as was suggested, feeling frightfully uncomfortable but unwilling to be an ungrateful houseguest in present company. He was stirred into motion when his host reached for the gun, but was doubly relieved when the redhead busied himself with unloading and cleaning it. Daniel removed his socks, shoes and trousers in record time, placing them all on the clothes horse to dry before retreating to his crate-seat. He pulled a blanket over his legs, feeling more horrifyingly naked than cold.
The tea was dispensed into tin mugs, and Dan gawped at the five or six teaspoons of sugar that went into the redhead's brew. "I'da offered y' some whiskey," he pointed to a shelf in the corner stacked high with glass bottles, sounding vaguely apologetic "but it's not mine ta give."
Dan couldn't imagine that this tiny shack was capable of housing a second occupant. "That's quite alright. To whom does it belong then?" He asked, purely for conversation's sake as he sipped his tea.
"Y'r father."
"Oh. I'm sorry but he, uh, he died. Several years ago."
The redhead looked surprised but not shocked. "Good. The man was an arse. The whiskey is y'rs."
Dan couldn't help but smile slightly at that, strangely relieved that he wasn't alone in disliking his father's attitude. Better still that a Scotsman, born of the land his father boasted about, thought the man was 'an arse'. It was fantastic to find some common ground. Dan remembered his host apologising for not offering him some of the whiskey, was it customary to offer it around? Perhaps he should offer? Why not, it might even be an improvement over the black tea. "Well in that case, if it's mine, please feel free to help yourself to some."
That seemed to almost cheer his sour-faced host up. "Ta. Y'know, y'don't look much like y'r father." The kilted redhead climbed up the wall of boxes to pull a dusty bottle from the shelf.
Dan looked away, embarrassed. He'd seen nothing more than the backs of the man's knees really, but it was the thought of what he icould/i have seen. Did Scotsmen really go naked under their kilt? "I know, uh, God bless small miracles, huh?"
"S'pose so." His host smiled. It looked a little forced, like the other man wasn't used to pulling that expression. Dan noticed that he was missing a canine tooth. "Y'do look like your grandfather though."
"Really?"
"Hurm." He growled affirmatively, as he poured the whiskey into a pair of small, expensively cut and engraved glasses retrieved from one of the crates. "John MacAulay. Older than you are now in all the pictures. Bigger. Broader. Bearded. Can still see the likeness 'round the eyes, though. Was a good man. Died when I were still a wee bairn, but I still remember him well."
Dan accepted his glass "I had always been under the impression that I bore no resemblance to the rest of the Macaulay family at all."
His host uttered a gruff, guttural huff of displeasure. "Trust Zachary t' say that. Jean told me he never got on well wi' their father. Disgraceful. No mind fer his elders."
"Jean?" Dan queried. He didn't mean to pry, but there was obviously so much he didn't know about his family.
The redhead looked horrified. "Y'don't know of Jean? Jean MacAulay? Your Aunt?"
"No, I didn't know my father even had a sister."
"Then y'don't know who I am either?"
"No."