Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  It had been hot, the summer they’d turned twelve, the island golden and turquoise in Donald’s memory. They would both try and finish working by two o’clock, Malcolm on the croft, Donald at the creels, racing through a checklist so they could meet at the cross and run out to the rocks, strip, and launch themselves off the overhang. The trick was to time it just right so that they hit the water together, the force of their two skinny bodies creating a dizzying ricochet of noise around their heads as they went under. Then the few seconds of panic, scrambling frantically to bring yourself back to the surface, battling against the pull of the sea, that strange part of you that wanted to stay under there and just be taken. Then the burst of air, the gasp, the coming back to yourself. Then Malcolm, spitting, inhaling, laughing. Wet arms would wrap round necks, and they’d wrestle each other and the tide, forcing heads below the surface, treading water till one of them pulled back to the wee beach, then it became a race, swimming and running, back to the top of the rock again. Coming near enough to death for the thrill, saving yourself. Rehearsing.

  Donald had been feart to do it for the first few times.

  ‘My mam says a boy died here. She made us all promise we were never to even go near the edge. You can’t break a promise to your mam. Malcolm. Wait!’

  ‘That’s an old wives’ tale,’ Malcolm yelled, already naked and backing up along the rock face for his run.

  ‘I mean it, Malcolm. You’ll drown.’

  ‘You’re just a shiter, Donald Bain!’

  And he disappeared over the edge, thin arms flapping like a hopeless fledgling. Malcolm was taller than him then, but in that second Donald was struck by how very small he looked. Donald ran to the edge, laid himself down cautiously on the surface, stomach first, and hooked his head over. The rippling circle gave him a good bullseye point as to where Malcolm must be, but it was fading fast. A couple of bubbles broke the surface, then nothing. The panic hit Donald in the stomach, twisted there.

  ‘Malcolm? Malcolm!’ he yelled, even though he knew that no-one could hear him. His breath was heavy. He wasn’t going to cry, just in case. He wasn’t.

  It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds until the bubbles began again, until Malcolm’s slicked-down head broke the surface, his hair like wet sand and his face red, coughing. He craned his neck up the rock face to Donald and started laughing, pulled a hand out of the water and flashed him the V-sign.

  ‘You’re a bad bastard, Malcolm Campbell,’ Donald yelled down to him.

  ‘And you’re a shiter! Get down here. SHITE-ER! SHITE-ER! SHITE-ER!’

  Home. He put his hand on the door knob and paused, was momentarily surprised by the loose old skin. Inside, the house sat emptily around him. There was a note on the kitchen table and he held it to him, counted to three under his breath before turning it over.

  D –

  Ishbel’s in labour! I’m off to Inverness to become a granny. Soup in the pot & I’ll call when I’ve news.

  Love M

  Donald took the stairs at a speed he hadn’t managed for years.

  At first glance the room seemed empty, until he noticed the fingers on the bed. Malcolm was slumped on the floor on the far side, one hand stretched up against the cabinet, presumably to pull himself back up. He gave off a strong, strange smell. He was dead, and he’d died alone, falling out of bed, in pain.

  Donald gathered the bent body in to himself, scooped it to his chest, then eased it onto the bed, foetal. He didn’t want to look at the face. He wanted Morna, or someone else, anyone, to be there and take care of this.

  This is what you get, he thought. No more than you deserve, shiter.

  ‘Almost as if he’d just given up,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ve seen it before, with patients who know they’re terminal. The emotional weight of it can be a lot to bear, and they can seem to bring it on themselves, decide to embrace it. Even though the body might have lasted a few more months, if the will’s not there – well, it often seems like a mercy.’

  It. It. She patted his arm awkwardly, trying to spread comfort. Donald thought of the hand gripping the bedsheets, trying to pull itself back up. If that were true, Malcolm had changed his mind. He said nothing. Just the effort of making the call to summon the woman had exhausted him.

  ‘Have you got someone who can be with you tonight?’

  ‘Yes, yes. My wife will be home this evening, I’m sure.’

  She signed the papers and let him herd her out of the door.

  Morna phoned at nine, teary and tired. Ishbel had had severe complications, and the baby had been cut out of her, half-choked, in emergency theatre. They were holed up in separate special units.

  ‘She canny even be with her baby. She’s lost that much blood and the wee one needs to be in an incubator. She was just lying there too weak to even cry. They won’t even let her be with her baby.’

  He couldn’t add to that load. He couldn’t. And yet, he found the words coming out of his mouth regardless.

  ‘So, Malcolm died today.’

  As though he was telling her a piece of village gossip.

  ‘What? What? Oh Donald. When?’

  ‘Sometime before you left and before I got back. The doctor says he just gave up.’

  ‘I don’t – oh love. Oh God, I can’t come back tonight. I need to stay here. Will you – could you go and get a room somewhere else? You shouldn’t be alone. Oh dear, oh dear.’

  He should have kept quiet, old fool he was.

  ‘No, no. It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t worry about me. You just concentrate on the bairn.’

  ‘Well, is his sister coming over? It’s a family business now, sure enough. Don’t do this by yourself, lovey.’

  Malcolm’s sister, Elspeth, arrived the next day. She brought a list with her, arranged an undertaker within half an hour of arriving, filled the house with brisk movement and clearly had no time for his hapless faffing. She gave no quarter to their shared childhood, allowed him no more acknowledgement than she would a passing acquaintance. Clearly he and Malcolm were both black sheep on the island these days.

  ‘And what about the daughter? His girl. Whatshername. She should be notified. Have you done that? Shall I?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll do it. I’ll tell her. Let me.’

  The dawning of the mobile phone had not made Clio much easier to contact. They continued the way they had for years: he stayed in the one place and she sent postcards with cryptic messages and no address every six months or so. Genoa. The Isle of Eigg. Berlin. An ironic one of a plain brick wall from London. A nice little inversion of his technique for staying in her life when she was a girl, or so he’d thought until he actually needed to contact her.

  She did have a mobile, and a couple of years ago had sent him a two-months-late birthday card with the number in it, but while he left a message on the answerphone from time to time he had never received a call from it and only had one instance of proof that it had worked. There was no reception for the damn things in his village, so it wasn’t anything he or Morna had ever thought they’d need. He didn’t trust them and had always ascribed Clio’s failure to respond to its demands as further proof that the things were useless, rather than any fault on her side.

  Three days after they’d journeyed back up north with Malcolm sleeping or singing in the back seat, once they’d showered him and settled him in in his ground-floor room, Malcolm had once again turned that ovine face to Donald, those long yellow teeth, and demanded his daughter. He’d behaved as though Donald was her captor, deliberately obstructing the way, keeping her from him, Donald complained to Morna.

  ‘The man’s dying, love,’ she’d said. ‘Let him be. Help him out.’

  So Donald had clenched his teeth and pulled out the little address book where he’d dutifully transcribed the stupidly long number, which seemed to have no natural breakpoints in it. He misdialled twice, once getting a strange foreign hello, the other a flat Cockney accent on an answerphone. When he finally reached the same mes
sage he’d always heard – her voice, an awkward breathy laugh – he paused, suddenly shy.

  ‘Hello Cliodhna. It’s your Uncle Donald here. Donald Bain. I just wanted to say that – well. It’s your father. He’s back, my love. He’s here. He’s staying with me and Morna. Back for good – well, maybe not for – anyway, he’s not well, m’ghaol. He’s not. I think you’ll be needing to see him. We’ll be here, in the house, you know where. Not going anywhere. Call me back, eh? It’s Donald. Donald Bain.’

  ‘And you definitely called. You’re not stalling me now, Donald?’

  ‘Malcolm. Malcolm, man. Calm down. This is just how it is with Cliodhna. It’s just how she is. She gets in touch when she wants to—’

  ‘Oh, so you’re saying she doesn’t want to.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing of the sort. Cliodhna’s ­– she’s a free spirit, Malcolm. There’s no pinning her down. You hear nothing from her for years and then she might just turn up. I hardly think you’re in a position to judge that sort of behaviour, are you, now?’

  ‘Well. Call again. It’s been almost a week.’

  ‘It’s Donald. Donald Bain here. Your Uncle Donald. Sorry. Just – about your father again. He’s – he’s very anxious to see you, lass. Maybe just give us a wee call? I hope everything’s all right. I hope you’re safe.’

  Malcolm’s attitude toward Donald shifted again. The bleached eyes stared at him contemptuously now, as though they were back at school and Donald had been caught out in a lie to make himself look better.

  After the third message, a letter had arrived. Cliodhna explained she didn’t want to phone the house; she didn’t say why but he knew fine it was just to avoid speaking to Malcolm. Leave me a message, she said, or send me a letter back. The address she gave was a London one, in a place called Homerton. It had taken them a further month of back and forth, Malcolm fuming and beating his thin fists on the table (‘For crying out loud why won’t the girl just talk to me on the telephone? I’m her father!’), to agree on a date and a place – Edinburgh. Morna and Donald hadn’t been sure that Malcolm was up to the trip, but he’d insisted. He’d returned a day later, in high spirits, although the journey had clearly taken it out of him and he’d needed two days of bed rest, enforced by Morna. He kept talking about Sandy Bell’s pub, about how he and Cliodhna were about to embark on a tour of the country, doing father-daughter gigs. Knowing both as he did, Donald kept his own counsel.

  ‘She’ll be up here for a visit soon, and I thought you could help us out – just a little local thing, start us off?’

  Cliodhna did not arrive. There were no more letters. And slowly, the light behind Malcolm’s eyes had gone out.

  There were many reasons why Donald had put off calling again. Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. Nobody wants to hear it. Not in an answerphone message. While Elspeth was dealing with the undertaker, the body leaving the house finally, he slipped out and took a short letter to the roadside, flagged down the post van.

  Surely. Surely this time. Then, in the middle of the night, unable to sleep properly in the house without Morna’s comforting presence in the bed, he was gripped by a terrible panic. Why was the lass having to learn of her father’s passing by letter? No, no, it wasn’t right. He counted down the hours till dawn, then till eight, drinking endless cups of tea as Elspeth sighed and packed her smart little suitcase back up, then gritted his teeth and left another damned message.

  ‘Hello lass. It’s Uncle Donald here. Donald Bain. Your uncle. I’ve got some bad news, my love. Can you phone me? Just give me a call, here at the house. Before you open my letter, anyway. Any time. I’ll be here any time.’

  Nothing, nothing.

  She’s maybe abroad again, he told himself, realising he had no idea how the girl filled her days now. He imagined her as a female version of himself at the same age, travelling between gigs, eating only when she could afford it, taking the odd lover, man or woman, when the spirit moved her. It had been a good life; he liked to think of it continuing. That’ll be it, he told himself. She’ll get the message once she gets back.

  Elspeth wired the details of the funeral – on the island, family only (she acknowledged that he would be the exception), no flowers, no music; everything Malcolm would have hated, but well, he wasn’t here to complain. It arrived two days after Morna returned, exhausted and wrung out, living on the edge of her nerves and permanently awaiting news of the baby. He waited until she was napping before trying the bloody phone one last time.

  Next morning, the light on the answer machine was blinking when he went downstairs to get the breakfast started. Her voice spilled out from somewhere far far away.

  ‘OK, yeah, I didn’t think anyone would be up. I didn’t – God, it’s really late, isn’t it? I mean I just got in and I didn’t realise. I got the letter. I got the message. I got them.

  ‘I’m sorry Malcolm is dead. I probably went out to – ha, yeah yeah, let’s psychoanalyse me. Ooh, I wonder why I went out to have a drink tonight. Sorry. Sorry, this is totally bad. What am I doing? Talking to you. Right, but it’s Malcolm. I know. I know I should be there and go to the funeral and sing a song. I sing songs at a lot of funerals these days.

  ‘But see, I met with him, Uncle Donald. He was there and I was there. And I didn’t feel anything. He looked a bit like a man I knew once, that was it. There wasn’t even that shock you get from recognising a face. I mean, I’ve felt more about seeing, like, random people off TV in the street than I did about this man. I sat there and he was there, and I realised we just didn’t have enough in the bank to make it worth anything. I could tell he didn’t feel that. He cried. It meant something to him. And I could tell he didn’t have long to go, even though he said he was fine, so I just let him have it. But he wasn’t what I’ve been looking for. You know what I think? I reckon if you go on missing something for long enough, you just learn to grow around the space. So I’ve grown up with a huge chunk of me absent and that’s who I am now. It was too late for him to try and put himself back in there. The space is all different-shaped. I haven’t got room for him in my life because I learned not to need him. I don’t know if I’m making sense. I don’t. I’ve had a few drinks, Uncle Donald; I’m not gonna lie to you. Anyway, I was sitting there and I was angry with him, and he was trying to give me all this advice like he thought he knew me, or like he had any right to have a say on how I lived my life. I last saw him when I was eleven fucking years old and twenty-six years later, he’s all telling me not to waste my time on things that have defined my life? I grew up with one parent and that was fucking Eileen for God’s sake, but at least she was there until she bloody wasn’t. And then there was you. There was you, Uncle Donald. And that’s who my family is. And he wasn’t. So I won’t come to this funeral and shake hands with people I’ve never met before and put up a façade of grief so as not to offend anybody, because I won’t be feeling anything. If I go there as his daughter people who really did love him will want to see me in him; they’ll want to see me distraught. It will become this big deal if I’m not. That becomes the story. You can’t go to a funeral and not be sad. You can’t go to your fucking biological father’s funeral and not be sad. So I’m not going to. I spent so long hanging on to an idea of who my father was, and I loved that idea, but I buried it last month. I had all this anger that he just didn’t understand. He has spent all that time, almost thirty years, absolving himself of any wrongdoing for leaving his daughter, for just dropping out of her life, because of how much he hated his ex-wife. It was like, any time in his life that he might have needed to think about that, he’s just looked away and blamed Eileen instead. So, I’m asking him, Uncle Donald, I’m asking him where were you? How come I just didn’t hear from you. Where did you go. And he looks over my head and he tells me, well, what you’ve got to understand is your mother did this and that and the other. I’m no fan of bloody Eileen’s and I actually started feeling sorry for her. For Eileen. That’s the power of that man’s denial. Never mi
nd me trying to say, being nice about it, well, you should have dealt with that because I’m your daughter. He might have known that at some point, but he’s built a wall and painted Eileen’s big face all over it, and now he’ll never have to look behind it because he’s dead. And nobody ever called him on that, did they?

  ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m saying all this to an answerphone. This is stupid. I’m not crying for him. I need you to know that. I’m not crying for him.

  ‘Anyway, there was someone who was there for me and someone who wasn’t. And I don’t see why I have to call the person who wasn’t there my dad when you did the job much better. All right? You get me? That’s what I’m saying. That’s my thing that I’m saying now. So, I’m not going to my dad’s funeral because he’s not dead. All right? That’s what I’m saying. Right. I’m going to go now. This isn’t something I want to think about any more. OK. Bye.’

  ‘So, she feels that you’re her father but she won’t come to support you when you need her.’

  ‘Come on now, love. There was a lot more going on than that.’

  ‘Is that right. We maybe listened to different messages, because I heard a grown woman, almost forty, drunk and dreaming up excuses like she was a child, with no thought for someone else’s pain or grief. At a time like this, you swallow that nonsense and you come through for the people who’ve been there for you. Otherwise it’s no kind of relationship at all is what. Feels like she’s your daughter, but couldn’t make it to your wedding either, I notice.’

  ‘Morna. Please. Don’t do this just now. Not just now.’

  ‘All right. All right, Donald Bain. But it’s frustrating watching you hurt like this.’

  ‘Morna.’

  She was only raking it up to look for a fight. Ach, they were both thinly stretched. Ishbel and the baby had just been released from hospital after a week of complications and worry and he’d watched Morna tearing herself in two, pinballing back and forth, driving long, long nights to support husband and child both. They’d had two guests booked in for B&B this week and she’d had to cancel them, find them alternate places with neighbours, after he’d nearly set fire to the kitchen when he lost track of himself cooking bacon. Just stop lass, he’d wanted to say to her more than once, just go and be with your daughter and I’ll muddle on through, and yet he’d kept quiet, needing every bit of her time he could get, desperate to be with her. Now he was heading off to the island where his family had all lived and died to bury the last remnant of an old life, and she was staying here, and they were putting even more space between them.