In the car-park at Fort William, Andrew Douglas spotted his car with the model plane in the back, and loaded up. It was 5.30 and he felt troubled. He was booked in to a hotel in town and had no particular desire to return there. Nor had he enjoyed shopping for supplies in the busy holiday streets, which seemed packed with passing people moving in the opposite direction to him : a press of visitors, English, French, German, Australian, Japanese, and American like himself.

He longed to break loose from this mêlée of tartan shops, burger bars, mugs, cards, and nasty merchandising : all selling a way of life that had never existed, or else, had been crushed out of recognition in the pursuit of profit. He had become enmeshed in a crowd of middle-aged house-wives, clambering on board a tour-bus which was bound for Culloden. Moreover, the military presence of armed soldiers and officers walking the pavements added to a sense of occupation and intrusion. Newspaper boards announced the 'Search Latest'.

The garden at Ardfinnan would be still and serene just now : he wished that he could return. But tomorrow, he would set off for the hills and try to find himself again. He felt cut off from his deeper roots and out of joint.

As he reversed from his parking-space, a rusty Volkswagen 'Beetle' careered towards him, also in reverse, and Douglas heard - almost before it had happened - the sickening crunch and crumple of contorted metal. Dismayed and furious, he rose out of his car to be confronted by an apparition with bushy side-burns, a wizened shiny face, and a multi-coloured hat the shape of a tea-cosy.

'Didn't you see me coming out?' Douglas asked, his voice subdued, palms pressed forwards, outwards. It was self-evident that he had not.

The elderly man scratched his cheek and smiled. And Douglas noticed his eyes, contradictory, one staring leftwards, the other to his right. Neither seemed capable of finding the target.

'Jings!' he said. 'We'll be needing some work done on these.' The sprightly man, in his sixties, shook his head with a smile. 'D'ye know, I've had this car since 1977. She's an old beauty, is she not?'

Douglas looked at the rusting purple 'Beetle' and then at its owner, speechless. The desire to hit him was compelling, yet he felt disarmed by the stranger's unconscious friendliness, and disorientated by his sandals, grey socks, and jeans; by a pink and grey angora sweater, which he wore in spite of the heat; and that hat, outlandish, perched on his head. Douglas tried to look at him straight, but it was impossible : again, the old man's eyes confused him, not only because they stared outwards in opposite directions, but it was the sparkle, the twinkling which defrayed the damage he had wrought.

People passing by looked on, then averted gazes, and said nothing, negotiating the debris as if it didn't exist.

'It's a fine day for flying planes,' said the man cheerfully, eyeing the craft in the rear window.

Douglas surveyed the wreckage, and surrendered.

'Buddy,' he said, 'I need a drink. Several drinks. Do you fancy a drink?'

'Are ye buying the first round?' he enquired, eyes gleaming. Douglas blinked in astonishment.

'Sure,' he exclaimed, in resignation. 'What's money, after all?'

'Ach! Ye can't take it with you, to be sure,' the stranger whinnied, patting the American on the back, his face creasing with a hundred smiling wrinkles.

And so Douglas retired to the hotel and bought the first drinks, asking who the acquaintance was, as they sat down in a corner of the hotel bar.

'Wilskit's the name.' His eyes twinkled. 'Liam Wilskit.'

He looked at the glass before him.

'Your very good health!' he declared.

'Where are you from, Wilskit?' The American knocked back half of his drink.

'I thought ye'd know that from the accent,' he said.

'Well I don't,' Douglas answered.

'Ireland,' he laughed. 'Mind, from the North of the Island. Have you ever been over?'

'No.'

'Ye should.' He touched his arm. 'Ach, but it's such a fine land...'

'So what brings you over to Scotland?' the American asked, trying to work out where his eyes were coming from.

'We're over for me daughter's wedding,' he said with pride. 'The wife and I. Brigit, she says, that man of yours will not enter our house' - he thumped the table and spilled his beer - 'because you are living in sin. Ah! Those women! I tell you, they'll be the death of me yet.'

'And yet if she marries him then...'

'All's forgiven and he's welcomed into the bosom of the family.' He smiled, then looked around the bar in a dream.

Douglas, astonished once again by the sight of the tea-cosy perched on his head, decided to issue a complaint.

'Don't you ever remove that hat, Wilskit? However little you see it, the rest of us have to live with it!'

'Bejabers, you'll not be insulting me hat?'

Laughing, he finished the drink in his hands. But wincing a little, he lowered his head and a shadow of sadness passed over his eyes.

'Owning nice hats is a pastime of mine, and besides since me hair started falling out : well, I hardly ever take the things off now.'

'I often worry about hairs disappearing, myself,' Douglas replied, more soberly, as Wilskit took off his tea-cosy and revealed the balding head it was resting upon.

'Guess it's a case of hair today, gone tomorrow; at least, that's what me doctors seem to think,' he said, looking in the mirror and wistfully smiling. 'Hold on and I'll get ye another wee tot.'

Ransacking his pocket for loose change, he shambled across the room and gave the barmaid a nod.

'Expensive business, this drinking' he told her. 'But as he's a resident, perhaps we could settle up later, if ye have no misgivings?' Any reluctance she had soon dispersed as he smiled at her sweetly and cheerfully.

Douglas looked on, all rancour long gone, just wanting to drink away troublesome thoughts and forget, forget for a while.

Wilskit returned with a toothy grin, bearing a wobbling trayful of beers and whiskies.

'Do ye play poker?' he said with a laugh. 'The lassie gave me a pack of cards.' He emptied matchsticks across the table and waited.

'For matches?' asked Douglas, picking up the cards.

'Well I was just thinking,' the Irishman said. 'I have some nice fishing tackle back in the car, and I happened to see your wee plane, you know...'

'Are you kidding, Wilskit?'

'I always wanted a plane like that. Even tried to join the airforce, but - well...' His eyes stared wider than ever.

'Listen Wilskit! You've already had my car. Do you want the shirt off my back as well?' 'Ach, I wouldn't be going as far as that...'

An hour later, Wilskit was sitting behind a handsome pile of matchsticks, cheerfully asking Douglas what he was doing in Scotland. The table was cluttered with empty glasses.

'Treasure, Wilskit! Treasure. I'm off hunting for some golden treasure. Taking the train tomorrow, seeing as you've wrecked my automobile.' Wilskit raised his eyebrows and smiled.

'Aye, well, seek and ye shall find - the good Book says - if...' he tugged a sleeve 'you seek with all your heart.' The sprightly old chap let out a whinny.

'You -' Andrew Douglas pointed, his eyes crossing - 'You religious, Wilskit?'

'I was born a Catholic, became a Protestant, married a Pentecostalist, but now, I'm not quite sure...'

'That must make things difficult?'

'Jings! Why people can't live with each other - it's beyond me...'

He pushed up some matches.

'I'll see you.' Douglas lost again.

'Ach! What I will say is this : Our Lady always helps me. I know there are those who object, but -' his eyes were bright and happy - 'it seems to me unless there is this queen in heaven, then somehow something's missing.

'Oh, I've seen visions as well.' He continued dealing. 'But I'll tell you something strange. In a true vision, what you see is so real, so physical, it makes this' - he knocked on the table - 'seem like a photograph, like something ye could put your hand through. I'm thinking the realm of the spirit is more physical, not less physical, than this world that we inhabit. Well that's what I reckon anyway.' He looked at his hand and smiled. 'But religion...' He thought, and shook his head. 'No, I wouldn't say I was religious.'

They drank and talked on.

'Well it's been nice bumping into you,' he said at length, clasping both of the American's hands.

'Seems like my flying days are over,' Douglas intoned.

'Well, I hope ye find what ye're lookin' for!' said Wilskit whose eyes sparkled, danced, veered, and came to rest.

Andrew Douglas smiled, shrugged his shoulders and lifted his glass. Wilskit returned to the warm car-park, forgetting to pay the bill, and as the vehicles were left unlocked he picked up his trophy and got in his car.

As he drew away to find his wife, a woman leaned out of her car window, shouted, 'Stop! I saw you take that!' and gave chase all along the road. Three miles further on, Ellie Botwood and Liam Wilskit converged on the A82, just before a military road-block. Neither vehicle benefitted greatly from the inevitable collision.

* * *