Chapter 16: Noon at Dunmorrow

We took the glen road in a farm cart with twelve crofters hanging off the rails and Morag driving.

She did not once stop swearing at the horse.

The kitchen door at Dunmorrow stood wide open.

There was a gouge in the frame where a shoulder had gone through it.

I ran in ahead of the others with the cellar key bumping on its cord against my chest.

I had locked the iron door at grey light, and I had never been so glad of anything as that cord.

The kitchen was empty.

The pantry wall that Morag and I had broken for the fire lay open to the sky.

Somebody had pulled away the rest of the boards and the rotten lintel, and wrenched the iron shutter off the passage window.

White noon came in through the gap and fell down the black throat of the coal chute.

At the bottom of the chute, a pale square lay across the cellar stair.

I went down.

The stair was half burned, black and soft under my boots.

At the foot of it stood the iron-bound door, and in front of the door stood Hamish Gow.

He had thrown off his coat.

His shirt was open at the throat and his arms were bare to the elbow, and I did not know the arms.

They had been a heavy man's arms, soft and white.

They were cords and ropes now, the veins standing out grey under the skin.

He had his hands flat on the door, and he was pulling at it.

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