Kissing Toads by Jemma Harvey

forgot myself as to blurt out: ‘Are you all right? Your eye . . .’ In all the things I had heard or read about him, no one had ever mentioned him losing an eyeball.
    â€˜Cataracts,’ he said briefly.
    Cataracts ? A legendary rock icon couldn’t possibly have cataracts. Syphilis, yes, even AIDS, hepatitis, beriberi, swamp fever – any disease that was either sleazy or exotic. But not cataracts .
    Next thing, it would be lumbago.
    â€˜I’m so sorry,’ I said, feeling gauche.
    â€˜It’s still a bit red,’ he explained. ‘More comfortable if I block out the light. How do you like your room?’
    Was he joking? ‘Lovely,’ I lied, thinking of the tin cans and the lilac-and-lime bed.
    â€˜My wife’s taste.’
    â€˜Yes, Dorian did mention . . .’
    â€˜Did he tell you about our ghost?’
    â€˜I’m afraid I’m a bit of sceptic,’ I said apologetically.
    â€˜Me too,’ said HG. ‘But there’s no doubt we have something in the oldest part of the castle – a presence, an absence, the feeling of eyes on your back . . . a touch on the nape of your neck. A draught where no draught should be, the rustle of a curtain, a footstep. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.’
    â€˜Does it throw things?’ I asked.
    â€˜A poltergeist? Nothing so vulgar. But see for yourself.’
    â€˜Clanking chains? Skirling pipes?’
    â€˜No chains. But I think I’ve heard the pipes once or twice, faint and far off, when I’ve woken up before dawn.’
    â€˜Maybe you did,’ I said. ‘Some villager practising beside the loch in order to get the right atmosphere.’
    â€˜Maybe.’ He smiled, deepening the lines in his cheeks. It occurred to me that in an elderly, wrinkled sort of way he was attractive. Charisma. Charm is superficial and beauty fades, but charisma only increases with time. HG had buckets of it.
    Whoops! I was being thrilled, if not overawed. I tried to look at him through Dorian’s eyes – an awkward father who wouldn’t act his age, constantly dating women who were too young for him. Still cavorting on stage occasionally, thinking he could dance – the ultimate horror for any teenager is their seniors wriggling around to old pop songs. Put that way, a rock-star dad would be about as embarrassing as a parent could get. Hot God’s pelvic lunge was famous, but, to his son, it would probably be excruciating. Mind you, at his age it might well be excruciating for him too.
    The voice of Morag broke in on my thoughts. ‘Ye shouldna mock the powers o’ the dark,’ she intoned in a superb Scottish brogue that rolled off her tongue like porridge. Sooner or later, I deduced, she’s going to say: ‘We’re all doomed.’ It was inevitable.
    â€˜Morag’s very religious,’ HG offered.
    I’d never have guessed.
    The conversation moved on to matters historical and horticultural, with Nigel Willoughby-Purchiss holding forth authoritatively on the gap between legend and fact. After dinner, I was promised a sight of the long-lost plan of the maze, carefully restored from a few lines on ageing and discoloured paper to a feasible sketch of the layout.
    â€˜It’s incomplete, of course,’ HG said, ‘but Nigel reckons there will be clues in the terrain to help us fill in the gaps.’
    â€˜The ground will be uneven,’ Nigel elucidated. ‘There will be little ridges – dips, nuances – which only the trained eye can perceive.’ Clearly his was the trained eye in question.
    â€˜Ye would do better tae let the ghaisties lie,’ Morag remarked predictably, pausing as she tidied the tea things.
    â€˜I keep her around for the atmosphere,’ HG explained when she had left. ‘I suspect she plays up to it, but that’s okay. At least she provides an authentic feel of Scottish