the blue - sang, its shrill voice jetting fluid bursts of song.
‘Aw, tell us, Mr McHoan; please.’
‘Yeah, dad; what is it?’
‘Please, Uncle Ken. Pleeease.’
‘Yeah, come on, Mistur McHoan. Tell us. Whit is it?’
‘What’s what?’
‘The sound you can see!’ Prentice shouted, jumping down from the broken wall of the broch; Ashley was climbing higher.
‘The sound you can see?’ he said thoughtfully. He leant back on the sun-warmed stones, looking across the grass circle inside the old ruin, over the spray of grey stones downhill where the broch had fallen or been torn away, over the sharp green tops of the pines to the waters of Loch Fyne. A white-hulled yacht ran gull-winged before the wind, heading north-east up the loch towards the railway bridge at Minard point; perhaps heading for Inveraray. In the distance, a few miles behind, he could see another boat, its spinnaker a tiny bright bulb of pure yellow, like a flower on a gorse bush.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘You can’t see it from here.’
‘Aw naw!’
‘Where can you see it from then, uncle?’
‘Well, where we were when I told you about it; we could see it from there.’
‘In the Old House?’ Diana said, looking puzzled.
‘That’s right.’
‘It isn’t the wind, then,’ Helen Urvill said, and sat down beside him.
Lewis snorted derisively. ‘The wind!’ he said. ‘Don’t be so stupid.’
‘Aunt lisa said it might be breeze block, but I wasn’t to say anything until ... aw ... heck!’ Prentice flattened his hand and struck it off his forehead with a loud slap; he fell over backwards into the long grass.
‘Very amusing, Prentice,’ Kenneth sighed.
‘Hi, Mr McHoan; look at where I am!’
‘Good grief, Ashley; be careful.’ She was at the top of the wrecked broch wall, rising into the sky like a grey sine on a sheet of blue paper; Ashley a point.
‘I’m no scairt, Mr McHoan!’
‘I bet you aren’t, but I didn’t ask you whether you were scared or not, Ashley; I told you to be careful. Now get down here.’
‘I’ll come down if ye tell us whit the sound ye can see is, so ah will, Mr McHoan.’
‘Get down here, you wee monkey!’ he laughed. ‘I was about to tell you, before you started hollering. Down; now.’
‘Aw, dinnae get yer knickers in a twist, Mr McHoan,’ Ashley said, shaking her blonde-haired head and starting to climb down the curved edge of the wall.
‘I won’t, young lady,’ he said. Diana and Helen looked shocked, then giggled. Lewis and Prentice sniggered quietly.
‘She said knickers, Mr McHoan,’ Dean Watt said.
‘Ah’m tellin mum,’ Darren told his sister as she made her way, feet and bum first, down the slope of stone.
‘Ach, away and bugger yourself, Darren Watt,’ the girl said, checking on her next footstep.
‘Haaaw!’ gasped Diana.
‘Ashley!’ Kenneth said, exasperated.
‘Oh, Mr McHoan, did you hear whit she said! Did ye! Yur a wee bissum, so ye are, Ashley.’
‘Yes, I did, and -’
‘That’s very rude you know, young lady,’ Prentice said, wagging his finger at the girl. (‘Oh shut up, Prentice,’ said Lewis.)
‘Ah’m no a bissum -’
‘Uncle Ken: what’s a bu -’
‘Waa! She said -’
‘Knickers knickers kni -’
‘ -buggerlugs.’
‘All right, all right!’ Kenneth said, raising his voice over a high-pitched babble of Childish. ‘That’s enough! Do you want to hear the answer or not, you horrible rabble?’
‘But-’
‘She -’
‘Ah’m -’
‘Stop it!’ he roared. He jumped to his feet and shook one fist in the air, dramatically pirouetting so that the gesture included each of them. ‘You’re all acting like children! If I’d wanted this sort of treatment I’d have stayed a teacher!’
‘But dad, we are children,’ Prentice said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head and falling over in the grass again, sighing loudly.
‘Innocence is no excuse, Prentice McHoan!’ he roared, shaking one finger at the prone child. ‘That was the motto of my old school and you’d all better remember it!’
Lewis was the only one not amused by the performance. He played with a bit of grass. The others were either laughing outright or sat, bunched up, heads down between shoulders, arms tense by sides, making snorting, guffawing noises and exchanging nodding, wide-eyed looks.
‘Oh dear lord!’ Kenneth shouted to the bare blue sky, his arms wide, head thrown back. ‘Look down upon this awful stupid bairn of mine and teach him some common sense before the world gets him!’
‘Ha, Mr McHoan! You dinnae believe in the lord!’ Ashley roared from half-way up the wall, almost level with his head.
He swivelled to her. ‘And that’s enough of your old buck, Ashley Watt! I don’t believe in