A Noble Cause

XIII - Rendez-vous

Thirteen: Rendez-vous

Oban was a small fishing town in Scotland which rapidly grew into a small-sized city after a whisky distillery was constructed a few decades prior. Every day, dozens of workers left their tiny wooden or, if they were a bit more talented with construction, brick houses built on the rocky terrain of the hills around Oban Bay, heading to the distillery where hundreds of barrels of whisky were produced every day and largely sold through the city's harbour. Together, these two places employed almost two-thirds of every worker in Oban and were responsible for double-handedly carrying the economy of the city.

Due to its unusual geographic position, shoved stubbornly between a mountain range and the sea, Oban held a series of breathtaking landscapes, such as the green hills that, during summer, looked like big broccoli, the cliffs dropping vertiginously to the bay waters or the terrifying narrow, curvy roads that lead to the city and had been the cause of many accidents since automobiles were invented. Breathtaking and dangerous as only nature can be was Oban, a city that, at least, had that to offer.

It was also a city that was considerably isolated, as the only way to get there was by either boat - which did not happen often, as most boats that stopped there did it solely for commercial purposes - or by the aforementioned roads that connected the bay to the rest of the country. There had been plans to shorten the distance between Oban and the rest of the world in the form of a railway, but thus far they were exactly that and no more: plans. The cost necessary to make the terrain suitable for the trains to pass, be it via tunnels or flattening, only to serve slightly over 1000 heads and take whiskey from the distillery, - which ships did just fine at the harbour - was always the reason for the plans to remain on paper, from which they would never leave.

The gorgeous landscapes attracted a certain amount of visitors every summer, which made the city quite touristic in that season. During one of those summers, the earl and countess of Argyll visited the city, falling in love with it almost immediately. They bought a house there — a big brown mansion located on a tiny peninsula that entered the bay waters and provided them with a private wharf —, and had been going there every summer since. The summer of 1897 was no different.

The countess was sitting in the parlour, reading a book, recently translated from Portuguese, she had bought from a traveller in Glasgow: it was about a prostitute who found love in one of her clients and, seeing herself unworthy of such feeling, pushes him away and ultimately dies. As unrelated to the countess' story as the book was, she could not help but feel an unsettling amount of empathy towards the main character, for Anne, too, knew a thing or two of complicated relationships.

In a far less entertaining way of passing the time, the earl was attending to his main occupation: letters that needed to be read, replied to and posted. Though most letters regarded businesses, some of them were private and best kept a secret from the countess, who already had several reasons to doubt the irregular schedule of his "theatre nights", which had, over the past years, changed from every Friday to every Thursday, to every Monday and was now any day of the week he felt like having them, really.

Outside the house, the dust of the path that led to the mansion was being raised every time another step of the mailman, running to deliver yet another letter for the residence, was taken. The sun was ruthless, but the road was kindly covered by the shadows of the large trees that grew strong and tall by it. Oaks, spruces and willows, all altercating by the road to create a true carnival of moving shadows on the path every time the wind blew stronger.

The iron gates of the front yard were opened by the mailman, who walked to the front door, finally being able to recover his breathing just as he started to feel as though he would faint. He knocked and was answered by the butler, who asked him what he was doing there, not just because he had already been there, but also — and maybe mostly — because he had chosen the front door.