Scotch Mist
BY EMMA CORDINGLEY
Emma lives in Hampshire. She’s a pilates teacher and a busy Grandma and dog walker. She finds walking is the best time for making up stories… and then tapping out inscrutable reminders on her mobile and banging into trees a lot. This is the first time she’s entered a writing competition and hopes that it will inspire her to keep on going.
By late afternoon the drab colourless day has leached into an early night, the dull pewter of the water and the far shoreline merging into the darker imprint of the hills. The Jenny May pitches and rolls her way through the waves, the occasional gout of spray slapping the wheelhouse windows and falling away into the dark, surroundings diminished to the green glow of the binnacle and the comforting hammer of the diesel engine.
Dougal steers for the deserted jetty at the base of the castle ruins, the jagged walls silhouetted against the wash of uplighting and cut with narrow black gashes where, over the centuries, archers have stood defending the castle from successive armies. He has hooked a couple of illegal salmon as well as the brown trout and it’s better not to draw attention to his luck. He can sell the big silver fish to the new and fancy restaurant on the waterfront (no questions asked) and then take the trout to the hotel. And afterwards he’ll blag a few drams from the credulous Americans crowding the tartan riot of the hotel bar; the visitors always ready for stories of Nessie and entranced by Dougal’s bushy beard and dour delivery, the reek of fish and engine oil clinging to his old arran growing ever more pungent in the warmth of the room.