"Might have bloody known. Might have bloody known you would be. Bloody typical, if you ask me. You're a Bolshie bastard, McHoan."

"And you are the unacceptable face of Capitalism, Ferg."

"Don't quote that fairy at me, you Bolshie bastard. And don't call me Ferg."

"Beg your pardon. Some more whisky?"

"Don't mind if I do."

Rory got up out of the creaking wooden seat and walked unsteadily over to where Fergus lay on the bare wooden floorboards, head against the ancient, burst couch. The fire crackled in the grate, its light competing with that of the little gas lamp. Rory unscrewed the top from the bottle of Bells carefully and topped up Fergus's little silver cup. Fergus had brought a leather case with him; it held three of the silver cups and a big hip flask. Rory had brought the bottle in his rucksack.

"There you go."

"Ta much. You're a decent fellow for a Bolshie bastard."

"One tries, old bean," Rory said. He walked carefully to his seat, picked his little cup up from the floor and went to the room's single window. It was black outside. There had been a moon when they'd first arrived, but the clouds had come while they were chopping wood, and the rain while they'd cooked dinner on the two little primus stoves.

He turned from the darkness. Fergus looked like he was almost asleep. He was dressed in plus fours, tweed waistcoat (the jacket, and his waxed Barbour were hanging behind the door of the bothy), thick socks, brogues, and a fawn country shirt with a button-down collar. God, he even had his tie on still. Rory wore cords, mountain-hiking boots and a plain M&S shirt. His nylon waterproofs were draped over a chair.

What an odd pair we make, he thought.

He had been back from his travels for a while, staying first in London then at Lochgair, while he tried to work out what to do with his life. He had the impression things were sliding past him somehow. He'd made a good start but now he was faltering, and the focus of attention was drifting slowly away from him.

He had returned to discover that — like his brother before him — Ken had given up being a teacher. Hamish had taken up the managerial place at the factory that everyone had expected would be Kenneth's, when Kenneth had decided to teach. Now Ken too was quitting the profession to try something else: writing children's stories. Rory had always thought of Hamish as a sort of ponderously eccentric fool, and Ken a kind of failure because he had so much wanted to travel, and instead had settled down with Mary, stayed in the same wee corner of the world as he'd been born and raised in, and not only raised his own children, but chosen to teach others', too. Rory had felt slightly sorry for his elder brother, then. Now he felt envious. Ken seemed happy; happy with his wife, with his children, and now with his work; not rich, but doing what he wanted to do.

And why hadn't Ken told him he was writing too? He might have been able to help him, but even if Ken had wanted to do it all without any assistance from his younger brother, he might at least have told him what he was doing. Instead Rory had found out only when Ken had had his first story published, and now it was as though they were passing each other travelling in opposite directions; Ken slowly but surely building up a reputation as a children's story-teller while his own supposed career as a professional recounter of traveller's tales sank gradually in the west. Books people forgot about and articles in Sunday supplements that were only one notch above the sort of shit tourist boards put out.

And so he'd left London, to come here, hoping to lick the closing wise wound of whatever talent it was he had.

He'd spent a lot of time just wandering in the hills. Sometimes Ken came too, or one of the boys if they were in the mood, but mostly he went by himself, trying to sort himself out. What it boiled down to was: there was here, where he had friends and family, or there was London where he had a few friends and a lot of contacts, and it felt like things were happening, and where you could fill time with something no matter how mixed up and fraudulent you felt… or there was abroad, of course; the rest of the world; India (to take the most extreme example he'd found so far), where you felt like an alien, lumbering and self-conscious, materially far more rich and spiritually far more poor than the people who thronged the place, where just by that intensity of touching, that very sweating crowdedness, you felt more apart, more consigned to a different, echoing place inside yourself.

One day, on a long walk, he'd almost literally bumped into Fergus Urvill, crouching in a hide up amongst the folds in the hills, waiting with telescope and.303 for a wounded Sika deer. Fergus had motioned him to sit down with him behind the hide, and to keep quiet. Rory had waited with the older man — silent for quarter of an hour apart from a whispered hello and a quick explanation of what was going on — until the herd of deer appeared, brown shapes on the brown hill. One animal was holding the rest back; limping heavily. Fergus waited until the herd was as close as it looked like it was going to come, then sighted on the limping beast, still two hundred yards away.

The sound of the shot left Rory's ears ringing. The Sika's head jerked; it dropped to its knees and keeled over. The rest raced off, bouncing across the heather.

He helped Fergus drag the small corpse down the slope to the track, where the Land Rover was parked, and accepted a lift back to the road.

"Hardly recognised you, Roderick," Fergus said, as he drove. "Not seen you since Fi and I got shackled. Must be at least that long."

"I've been away."

"Of course; your travels. I've got that India book of yours, you know."

"Ah." Rory watched the trees slide past the Land Rover's windows.

"Done any others?"

"There was one about the States and Mexico. Last year."

"Really?" Fergus looked over at him briefly. "I didn't hear about that,"

Rory smiled thinly. "No," he said.

Fergus made a grunting noise, changed gear as they bumped down the track towards the main road. "Ken said something about you living in a squat in London… or something ridiculous like that. That right?"

"Housing cooperative."

"Ah-ha." Fergus drove on for a while. "Always wanted to take a look at India myself, you know," he said suddenly. "Keep meaning to go; never quite get around to it, know what I mean?"

"Well, it isn't the sort of place you can just take a look at."

"No?"

"Not really."

The Land Rover came down to the main road between Lochgilphead and Lochgair. "Look, we've got a do on this evening, in the town — " Fergus glanced at his watch. " — bit late already, to tell the truth. But how about coming round tomorrow for… In fact, d'you fish?"

"Fish? Yeah, I used to."

"Not against your vegetarian principles, is it?"

"No. India didn't change me that much."

"Well, then; come fishing with me tomorrow. Pool on the Add with a monster trout in it; been after the swine for months. Plenty of smaller stuff too, though. Fancy it? Course, I'll never talk to you again if you catch the big feller, but might make a fun afternoon. What do you say?"

"Okay," he said.

So they became friends, after a fashion. Most of Rory's pals in London were in the International Marxist Group, but here he was wandering the hills with an upper class dingbat who just happened to be married to his sister and who lived for huntin', shootin" and fishin" (and seemed to spend the absolute minimum amount of time in his castle with his wife), and who had just last year rationalised half the work force in the glass factory out of a job. Still, they got on together, somehow, and Fergus was an undemanding companion; company of a sort, but not taxing; none of Ken's garrulousness, Lewis's moodiness or Prentice or James's ceaseless questioning. It was almost like walking the hills on your own.