Being a Girl Read Online Free PDF

torchlight ran over us like eager hands.
    â€˜We’re lost,’ Binky said in her little girl voice. ‘Our car broke down . . .’
    â€˜You’re trespassing on private property.’
    Binky dropped her head to one side. ‘Can you help us?’ she pleaded.
    â€˜Just the two of you, are there?’ the man asked, the flashlight probing the corners of the barn. ‘No other vagrants hiding in the hay?’
    â€˜No, just us.’
    He shined the light on me. ‘You’re the quiet one, are you, the dark horse?’
    â€˜No . . .’
    â€˜Well, now, we’d better see what the Laird has to say. He knows how to deal with young girls.’
    â€˜We haven’t done anything,’ I said.
    â€˜Aye,’ he replied as he led us out and closed the barn doors.
    He pocketed the broken lock. We climbed into the muddy Land Rover parked outside, and I thought at least we were going somewhere safe and warm. We sat in the back holding hands. The man was whistling to himself, and drove for ages over dark fields that looked like the sea at night, on and on, and it was arelief when a big manor house came into view in a dip between the hills. There was a warm light behind the ground-floor windows and I squeezed Binky’s fingers to show her I was enjoying myself.
    The man opened the car. He urged us up the steps and we passed through the high arched doors into a wood-panelled hallway. He hung his waterproofs on the stand, and I noticed now that he was wearing a kilt, the pleats swaying hypnotically above sturdy calves as we followed him along the passage below the glassy eyes of numerous stags’ heads. He stopped at a closed door and rapped with his knuckles.
    â€˜You can wait here,’ he said.
    He went in and we looked at each other. Binky grinned and, as she raised her thin shoulders, I knew she was busy inventing some excuse for breaking into the barn.
    When the man opened the door, we entered a baronial hall dominated by a big log fire roaring between pillars of marble. There were various pieces of dark, heavy furniture: chests, a sideboard, a black piano. The extended dining table was framed by tall windows, and wood smoke clung in the defiles between the beams on the ceiling. Crossed swords and old blunderbusses decorated the walls among portraits of stern men with red beards and dour women who gazed out with severe unforgiving expressions. Above the fire was a life-sized painting of a beautiful woman with dark hair and dark unfathomable eyes.
    Like the men in the portraits, the man in the winged armchair at the fireside was red-bearded, his hands dwarfing the leather-bound book he was holding. He showed no interest in us as we stood before him. He finished reading to the end of the pagebefore closing the volume. He stretched out his long legs, his feet crossed at the ankles. He was dressed in the classical Scottish way with a short black jacket, a dark plaid kilt and a ruffled shirt. His laced shoes nestled in the fleece surrounding the hearth and the sporran resting in his lap was the size of a small dog.
    â€˜Are you related by any chance to the Laird Hamish of the Black Watch?’ He spoke quietly and seemed genuinely puzzled.
    We shook our heads, and he raised his voice.
    â€˜I didnae hear you. Are you deaf?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜I didnae think so. I’m the Laird Hamish of the Black Watch and I didnae believe you had naught to do with me.’
    â€˜We were just . . .’
    Binky started speaking, cooing in her little voice, but he cut her off, holding up a huge hand the size of a dinner plate. ‘Can you kindly speak when you’re spoken to,’ he said, and turned to the other man. ‘Byron, did you get those logs in like I asked you?’
    â€˜You know I didnae, Milord.’
    â€˜Then what are you waiting for, mon? There’s no time like the present.’
    Byron nodded meaningfully