'The bastard!'

'By Christ, an' he was.'

'Nae wonder they called him Butcher...'

Grouse shook his head, tapped his cigarette, and stared into his glass.

'The fuck! It was ethnic cleansing, that's what it was.' Evelyn speaking, along the bar.

'The destruction of a whole way of life,' her husband MacGillivray repined, ever melancholy. 'The end of a seeveelisation...'

'Oooooh!' said Grouse to express feeling. 'Aye, aye...'

When Butcher Cumberland had routed the Highlanders at Culloden, there had indeed followed slaughter, cleansing of whole areas, the burning of homesteads. And then a sad and lengthy period of repression as the London government regained control and reaped revenge.

It was like a scar that had never healed over.

Friday evening at the Kilchreggan Hotel, and in the public bar the mood swung along with the taped accordion music from laughter and bravado to melancholy and reflection. Recollection.

'Mah mither telled me, that when the redcoats arrived at Craig Bheinn...'

Memories fresh, passed down from mother to son, as if it was only yesterday. Snatches of a tradition; and at the pub, the human flotsam of a vanished society, washed up around a familiar bar, these the remnants, survivors, of a way of life that had been desecrated.

Grouse, his huge paunch pushed up against the shining woodwork, rested his arm around the shepherd MacNichol.

'By Christ, he was a hell of a bastard.' His neat-clipped moustache bristled, his eyes shone. 'But I tell ye, Jimmy, we will rise up and be a nation again...' The whisky talking as he raised his glass to all assembled, his arms outstretched. 'We are the people! Ooooh, d'ye hear? We are the people!'

The spectacle of the obese Grouse - Iain Macdonald before he became synonymous with his regular whisky - rising to follow Charlie and conquer the redcoats seemed surrealistic. And yet he would have, like most of his clan, for his heart was too big and his love of the land was like a passion for a beautiful girl.

The music played on, and laughter resumed; the bar tight-packed, low-beamed, and hung with the fumes of whisky. Along the rough stone walls brasses glowed beside postcards and tartan drapes. The huge fire-place in the corner was stacked with logs in readiness for the storms of early autumn. Old Duncan Ban, a retired shepherd, sat tapping his foot, waiting for the next round, grey-jowled collie patient by his side. Stood next to him Angus McPhail : bright, ninety, and still an old cock, proud, strutting, root-tooting. At the far end of the room, by the door, Jim Wilson and Nick MacFarlane were playing darts and plotting a future sortie into the heather, in hushed asides. Neil MacGillivray, from the Island of Mull, stared thoughtfully into a shining glass, recalling the swell and wash of the sea, with a Gaelic sadness; his life measured out by depressions and western storms; his heart lovely, personal, and somehow intact. Shoulder-by-shoulder along the bar, in an agreeable press, people brought close by their drinking; the atmosphere friendly, a continuing community, alive, in touch with its heart.

'Uisge Beatha!' said Grouse, holding his glass to the light, and pulling his arm around young Sarah Shand. 'Give me a kiss, darling?' his voice pleading, helpless and lonely; hair neatly greased-back for the weekend bevvy. Sarah, young and tough, attractive, agreed and reached over his undulating waist. As they kissed, lip-to-lip, the whole bar cheered and Grouse waved his arms in mock surrender, emerging mouth awash and eyes aglaze, to whoops and laughter. 'Oooh! By Christ! Oooh! By Christ!'

The girl grinned, warm, tolerant, and stroked his shining hair.

'Ye'll no be needin' a lift tonight, Iain!'

'Och, she's a hell of a woman!'

On the other side of Grouse, Jimmy MacNichol was talking to Fraser Maclean, shoulder to shoulder, shepherd and laird. They liked each other. MacNichol was a small man beside Fraser, but they had a natural rapport. Rona, standing at the end, where the public bar led through to the rest of the hotel, was exchanging banter with her barman MacUaig. He was superb at his job, which was surprising really, because he had lost an arm in the forestry, so it was not his first profession. Robert MacUaig was invariably good-humoured. He knew the nuances and calls of his clients intuitively, and picked up orders as an auctioneer notices bids, except on Saturdays when he was always away supporting Celtic. If they lost, his humour might be subdued until Sunday evening, but otherwise he was cheerful and cared for his flock like a priest.

'It was the clearances that destroyed the clan system for ever,' MacNichol was saying to Fraser. 'That was the death-blow. Cumberland started the job, but when they cleared the glens for sheep...'

'But it gave you your own job, Jimmy.' Fraser was baiting the shepherd. 'You can hardly fucking complain!'

'Och, but Fraser, we are the only inheritors. Thousands were forced to emigrate to America ...'

'Where they made their fortunes...' the big man goaded, smiling and jostling.

'Ye ken well fine what I mean. See when I'm up the brae wi' the sheep? I could show ye a dozen ruins on one side of the burn alone. By God! The glens are lonely. They seem tae echo wi' memories that are past...'

A voice at the other end of the room drifted across into the present.

'Twa treble tops an' a treble nineteen. Good throwin' mo bhalach! Ye need a nine and a three tae finish.'

'Och! Ye're lookin' at your own score, ye fool!'

'Ah'm nae drunk yet. What ye havin'?'

'Half and a half.'

MacUaig washes a glass, flips it over, catches it and fills it up. He repeats the motion.

'And one for y'sel, Robert?'

'Aye.'

He turns round to face the bank of malt whiskies, lined up, bottle to bottle, golden in the glow of the bar-lights, mirrored, and shining : Uisge Beatha - the Water of Life. Rona Malcolm has collected fifty or sixty different malts, and more in her store, and their names beckon, evoking the flavours of peaty burns, pure mountain water, springing from the deeps of the hills - Talisker, Glenfiddich, Bowmore, Glenfarclas, Lochnagar - reflecting the warm summer sun of the past, when the golden water had sparkled in the sunlight. The years passed. The years of youth. MacUaig was greasing the conversation, with local talk and news from near or far, anecdotal. 'I hear young Archie Campbell hit a hind down the way at Braevallich?'

'Ah wouldnae tell Fraser that,' Evelyn nodded.

'Archie's alright' said Fraser, finishing a glass. 'It's poachers I'll chase. Shoot the lot of them.'

Nick, the long-distance lorry-driver, raised an eyebrow to his friend Jim Wilson and carried on drinking his Morangie.

'Ye ken The Dog?' Grouse was saying. The Shepherd knit his brows for a moment. 'Yon Jock the Dog, who lives over Moidart?'

'Oh aye, aye.'

'Left the brakes off his truck at Mallaig last week : ran it straight doon the harbour intae the sea. Ooooh!'

'My, he's some boy...'

'Och! A hell of a mess, an' it wasnae insured. Aye, aye.'

The door of the public bar swung open and a great giant of a man walked in. Big Alec : in from the forests where he worked alone as much as he could - a man of very few words. He could stand all night at the end of the bar, his body stooped over to avoid the beams, listening, chuckling shyly to himself, and say not a syllable. Whisky was his friend, half his pretext for being there : for the company, he would suggest, in his lilting western voice; I come in for the company. He fumbled for scrumpled notes in his handkerchief, with his huge hands which smelt of pine.

'Half 'n half.' A conversation with MacUaig.

'No, ye're alright, Alec' the barman said. 'This one's found.'

He nodded to the end of the bar.

'One fur yersel', Rona.' Rona smiled.

'Cheers Alec!'

He loved the woman. So did they all. She took and she gave : took their money and their liberties, and gave them the dignity of respect, when half the world did not. She was local, she had grown up with them. But she had not left them. Even though the reputation of the Kilchreggan Hotel attracted tourists and business people, and its complex had grown with success, leaving the public bar as an adjunct at the back : she still preferred drinking in there, when she could. They had only to stray down the corridor to the foyer, looking for the toilet on a drunken Saturday night, and wealthy clients and visitors might eye them, dubiously. But here, in this bar, they knew their own worth, their community : a fragment of Charlie's world, not yet lost.

Grouse was smiling at Rona.

'Och ye're with us tonight, are ye darlin'? Ooooh, not flirting wi' the sassenachs? They're the ones wi' the money.'

'I'd rather flirt wi' you, Grousie.' She pouted her lips and put her hand on her breast.

'Aye, aye.' Then to MacNichol, 'Listen carefully, Jimmy - she'll tell you she loves you but she always looks south tae England for her true loves. Always looks south. They pay better.'

It was a dangerous remark.

Fraser was downing some export, spectating. His girlfriend felt teased by a comment which bit near the truth.

'Listen cunt' Rona snapped. 'I'll aye serve a Welshman or even a Cornishman, but as for the English : they can drink piss. And you can go drink wi' 'em.' She pointed to the corridor.

Grouse capitulated, waving his arms.

'Ooooh! By Christ, I love it when ye get mad! I can aye see yer nipples standing on end.' Rona grinned. It was an acceptable riposte, particularly as she was wearing no bra. She relented -

'The fuck! Give they bastards another round on me.' Co-existence.

Fraser leaned back and he smiled. Spoken well. Like a lady. They made abrasive contact with their eyes; his not averting, hers sharp and clear. The rest of the chatter had soon swept by them, and they could talk on without being disturbed or overheard.

'How are your plans for the Highland Ball?' he asked. 'What numbers have you got so far?' This was an annual occasion for the notables and dignitaries of the area, prior to the summer show and games. She used her hotel with added marquees and musicians. It was a different world to the bar-room camaraderie. The English would be served, after all, along with their Scottish friends and worthies.

'Almost two hundred definite' she said. 'It's only a week away. I could do with some more salmon?' He nodded.

'Do you enjoy it - the organisation, I mean? It's not one where things should go wrong, is it?'

'I'm good at it,' she replied honestly. 'Like I am at most things.'

Her foot brushed his leg and she smiled a little girl smile.

Then she knocked back her dram, signalling to the barman to refill their glasses : her stance now confident, defiant.

'So what's this teacher like who's staying with you? Is he good-looking?' She looked at his hand, turning the glass, pushing it to the barman.

'One of those paper types,' Fraser replied. 'Always into books, but no balls, you know?'

'Mmm,' she said, stroking her skirt straight. 'I go for the intellectual type. About my age, is he?'

Fraser looked most unimpressed, but wholly unthreatened. He felt happy, relaxed. They enjoyed being together and liked each other's company. He found her interesting, independent, answerable to herself.

'Don't you ever wear a bra?' he asked.

'I hate the things' she complained. 'I don't want to be trussed up.' She was wearing a scoop-necked body, sleeveless, tight; and a short pencil skirt, but no stockings. She dressed to please herself. 'But I'll tell you something...'

She leant over, as if to whisper, and licked his ear. He could smell her perfume, her body, and her insistence.

Down the bar, Grouse and MacGillivray were chuckling to each other, hands screening eyes, wincing. 'Oooh! By Christ - dinnae look!'

'What I want, I get,' she was whispering fondly. He was such a beautiful man, straining to get free. She fingered the buttons on his double-breasted jacket, light and flecked, and could smell him under the black sweat-shirt beneath. She drew close to him, quietly, finger to finger, hand in hand. He smelt her perfume again, like a caress.

'So what's Caroline doing about us?' she cut in sharply, ruthlessly.

'Ach! What can she do?' Fraser said. 'I've a right to lead my own life. But she keeps trying to talk things through.'

'She's not right for you,' Rona murmured softly. 'Why can't she let you be yourself?'

Fraser laughed.

'And you're no help, bitch! You and your fuckin' postcards!'

'Don't call me bitch!' she protested, sharply.

'Don't send me postcards then!' he threatened.

'I don't' she whined. 'I send them to Charlie.'

They laughed and her eyes shone. She licked her upper lip and fingered her glass. He wanted to handle her, closely, roughly; reason and order almost subverted by naked desire. Her breasts and nipples, pushing out through the light top that she wore, were like an affront to his senses. She turned and placed an arm round his broad shoulder, pressing a thigh lightly up against his.

'Oh Fraser, you're too good for her. You're just asking to be fucked.'

'Aye?' he asked.

They looked face to face, eyes soft, surface still, and were quiet.

'You are such a beautiful man,' she said gently. 'I just want to see you let go and trust me.'

Their eyes confronted each other : hers turning sharp, provocative; his exchanging insults, strong. As they carried on searching each other, Rona felt his hand slip free from her fingers and reach across her thigh. She breathed in deeply and bit her lower lip. Then, in an act of aggression and independence, she squealed and wrestled him aside.

'Turn off the music,' she said to MacUaig.

'My friends,' she shouted, jumping to her feet. Along the bar, heads turned, sentences tapered away. 'I gi' ye a toast.' General assent at the prospect of whisky.

'A toast to Charlie!'

'Aye!' said the whole room. 'Tae Charlie!'

'We are the people!' said Grouse.

'The people, aye! We are the people!' they chorused.

Fraser choked, and smiled to himself. She looked at him, eyes ablaze, fond, desirous, challenging.

'I'm not an easy woman,' she warned.

'I never thought you were.'

'Look at them, drinking to Charlie!' she joked.

'Will you?' he asked firmly.

'Aye?' she said hesitantly, and raised her glass to his, reconciled.

Down the bar, Jim Wilson was giving MacUaig his orders.

'Give the fuckers a round,' he waved at the whole of the room, his eyes unsteady.

'I'll double that up,' said MacGillivray. The barman was now at full stretch.

'And buy them a half from me,' said old Angus.

'The fuck,' said the cheerful MacUaig, grasping a malt, and pouring direct from the bottle. 'Ah've only got one pair o' hands.' The sunlight, ripe barley and burn water splashed from one glass to another, spilling out over the woodwork.

'Slainte Mhath, mo bhalach!' Rona laughed, watching her profit margin awash on the shining surface.

'Slainte.'

Only got one pair of hands. MacUaig was rushing from end to end, making up numbers in his head on the way to the till, away with the whisky himself, unbothered, shambolic. The sun would still rise in the morning.

'They set a reward on the heed o' the Prince - thirty thousand pounds. Naebody gave him awa'.'

'Would ye hae taken the money, Jim?'

'Would I fuck.'

'Oooh, oooh, but Culloden.' The nightmare, the disaster for a race.

'That march in the night,' said MacNichol. 'It was a shambles. They should never hae fought the redcoats there.'

'It was the last battle...' Old Duncan Ban at the fireplace, reflecting. The bar fell hushed as he spoke. 'They waited in vain for the word to charge - Claymore! - but by then they were being cut to pieces, falling where they stood : Glenbucket, Pitsligo, and a' the clans.'

'Oooh!' Grouse whispered. 'By Christ.'

'And mah faither used tae tell me this,' Old Duncan continued, his shepherd's face weathered like the landscape by winter of many years. 'When the Laird Strathallan lay dying, he was gived his last rites on the ground in oatmeal and whisky. Oatmeal and whisky. They led the Prince greetin' from the field.'

'Greetin' ye say?'

'But he fought on the side o' the people, and he took on they bastards, come what may.'

There was a pause, faces staring into glasses, for some explanation of an indescribable calamity.

'Why d'ye mind he nither come back?' MacUaig pondered, struggling for an answer to a haunting question.

'I'll tell ye this - '

The high, quavering voice of the giant forester, Big Alec, at the back of the room. They all turned round, in surprise, in a silence you could finger. His gaelic tones, lilting, sibillant -

'If it's a Scottish hero ye'll be wantin', it wisnae Charles Edward Stuart. He left the land in tears and blood, tae feast anither forty years abroad.

'Robert the Bruce? He was just an Anglo-Norman thug.

'Na mo bhalaichean! If ye want the gie true champion of a' the land - who was o' the people, and for the people - there has only ivver been one. His name was William Wallace and they carried him tae London toon and he died on Tower Hill.'

'By Christ.'

* * *