He had time to spend, and spent some of it in a small village on a small island. He'd been here most of a week, with his sketch book and his paint box and his walking stick, and the weather had been glorious.
This morning was not glorious but overcast; rain had fallen overnight, and more was predicted for the afternoon. Sketchbook and paints did not fare well in the wet, but he was less delicate. He loaded his backpack with rain gear and a few prudent essentials – first aid kit, his passport, dry socks, water bottle – then told the landlady he'd be hiking up the coast path for the day, and walked up the high street to where a footpath led away to the north. It wasn't three mile by road to the next village, and the footpath that skirted the coast ran perhaps four miles to the same end. He could be in a pub by lunch time and back well before dinner.
He had spent most of his life in offices, in cities, in the States. This complete change of situation was a delight. Damp grass, cloudy sky, muddy path, and brisk wind were not new experiences for him, certainly, but he was on holiday and he welcomed them as if they were a new world worth exploring. When the path first came close to a cliff above the shore he stopped for several minutes, looking west out to the loch and the sea beyond, and up and down the coast. He set his pack down, got his camera out, and took photos; he hung the camera around his neck, then shouldered his pack again and set off to the north.
There was no one expecting him at the pub, no schedule but his stomach, no one alongside him to keep pace with. That was sad, yes, but here he was on his own and that's how it was now. He stopped when he felt like it and took pictures of sheep on the hillside above the path and of birds scavenging among the seaweed on the pebbly beach below. The path wandered away from the sea for a stretch, over a rise, then down again. A wooden bridge crossed a rill swollen with last night's rain. He leaned on the bridge railing and pulled at his beard and looked for some way down to where the stream splashed its way down the rocks and to the loch. The grass and rocks both looked treacherous when wet. He took a few photos and stayed on the footpath.
Beyond the bridge the path climbed the shoulder of a hill. In steeper parts a few stones were placed to form steps, but elsewhere the mud and gravel underfoot were slippery. He relied on his walking stick to keep himself upright. A drystone wall was on his right, and a dozen or so sheep beyond. Near the crest, as the way leveled out, there was a stone cottage to the left, separated from the path by a fence and a small flower garden, with a short stretch of grass below the cottage before the edge of a cliff above the shore. A woman stood in the garden, her back to him, hands on hips, surveying the flowers. Still twenty paces away, he raised his camera and took one photo of the scene, then walked closer, tapping his stick as he went, until the woman heard and turned toward him.
Her look was neutral, neither surprised nor pleased nor displeased to see a walker. He nodded to her, smiled, and said "Good morning."
"Yes, it is. So far."
"Would you mind if I took photographs of your house and garden?"
She looked at him a second longer. "Snap away. They aren't mine, anyway. They're MacKeith's." She gestured up the hill to where a stand of trees might conceal a farmhouse. "I just rent." She walked along the fence toward him and on past, to give him an unobstructed view of the cottage.
He took several shots, some wider angle capturing the surrounding scene, others zoomed in to catch some detail. The clouds had thinned enough for the sun to cast weak shadows, but nothing clearly defined. A bright day, with the sun past noon, would make for better pictures.
"I may come back another day when the light's better. Thank you, it's a lovely scene."
"What do you think is lovely about it? Mind, I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just curious what it is you see in it."
"Oh, the dark gray of the slate seen against the sky and the light gray of the stone walls against the green of the grass and the garden, with all the spots of color from the flowers giving a sort of liveliness to the lower right patch of the scene. It'd be different under a blue sky. Maybe if I stood on top of the wall there, or climbed the hill, I could look down and get a bit of the ocean in the background."
"Well, there's a stile up ahead that'll get you to the top of the wall if you're careful."
She came through the gate and walked up the path, leaving him to follow. She was a big woman, nearly as tall as he was, and wore trousers tucked into knee high, bright green Wellingtons, with a long sleeved, cream-colored blouse that had precious little slack in the bodice. He followed her a short way to where several long stones had been built protruding from the wall bounding the pasture, forming stair steps.
"Ah. This might be better navigated with fewer encumbrances." He unfasted his pack and slid it off, propping it on top of the wall. "Would you hold my stick?" He held out the walking stick and she took it. He climbed to the top of the wall holding his camera in one hand and extending the other for balance.
"Oh, this is a sweet view!" He was looking back at the cottage, with some contrast now between its east wall in the watery light and the north wall still in shade. From here the ocean was indeed visible beyond points of land embracing the loch. He took photos centered on the cottage, of the horizon with the cottage filling only a part of the frame, of the path and garden with the cottage as backdrop, then climbed carefully back down.
"Thank you! An excellent suggestion!" He fished the lens cap out of his pocket and put it back on the camera. "My name is Andrew. I should have introduced myself sooner."
She half smiled. "I'm Florence. You're American?"
"The speech impediment gives it away, heh? Yes. Taking a long holiday. Are you from the island?"
"Me? No! Not Scots at all! You have a thing or two to learn about accents. But I'm on a sort of holiday myself. Rented the cottage for four months so I could hide from the world and get some writing done."
"Well this is the place to hide, I should think. A long walk into town."
"Nah. Just up the hill to the MacKeiths' and they'll give me a lift when I need to go in for groceries. And they won't let me starve or I couldn't pay the rent."
"Speaking of starving, I'm aiming at having lunch in Roskhill so I need to walk on. And you need to get back to writing!"
"Not till you've shown me those photos, I don't." She pointed at his camera.
Andrew smiled, flipped the screen at the back of the camera open, pushed the button for review, and held the camera out to her. She took it and squinted at the tiny screen.
"That's the last one I took. Click the left arrow—" He pointed at the button on the back of the camera "—to scroll back through all of them."
Florence did so. "You know, I think the cottage is more interesting when it's just off to the side and you only see a small part of it, like this." She turned the camera around so he could see which photo she was referring to. "It's better, somehow, being part of the scenery when you're centered on the ocean than it is being the center of attention with the ocean in the background."
"Quite right! It's hard to know until you've looked at it both ways, but it's often the case that the best way of looking at something is sidelong. This backside of the cottage is a good backdrop for your flowers, and a good bookend for a view out over the loch, but it doesn't want to be the star of the show."
"Good writing can be like that, as well. Mine's not there yet."
