Today, Maggie saw the school as a refuge, an escape from Calvin Struan and the bad news that lay in store. Her parents would be able to tell there was something wrong and she wouldn’t be able to hide it. She would be the one to give them the bad news. As the wind spun the snow, she moved with Ronah to their usual playground place.
3
Father Wittin was about to follow them inside when he heard voices and a shuffling of feet around to the left of the church. Leaning out of the stone arch doorway he caught sight of Deborah Cutter, hiding herself in the shadows. He couldn’t see anyone else.
‘Deborah?’
‘Father?’
‘Is someone annoying you out there?’
‘No, Father.’
‘You sure now? I thought I heard talking.’
She didn’t answer. He went outside.
‘Deborah,’ he said. ‘Come in now, why don’t you?’
‘Why? They don’t want me to.’
‘It’s not their church. Now come on in.’
After some hesitation, she stepped into the porch light. She faced him, her hand open by her side as if holding onto a child. He held his own hand out. She came to him and entered the foyer, brushing against him as he held the door for her, leaving just enough room. She didn’t smell as though she’d been drinking.
‘I’ll just sit at the back.’
‘Sure, that’s grand,’ he said, giving her arm a brief squeeze. ‘Don’t you be letting them make you feel you have no right to be part of this, okay?’
‘Okay. Thank you, Father.’
‘Okay, now.’
Deborah took a back pew as Wittin strode down the aisle.
It struck him, as he stood before the gathering (they could hardly be called a congregation), that Deborah was the only one who really wanted to be here. Her little white face shone from the back, a moon rising over a field of solemn heads. This night was the only time in the year that his pews were anything close to being fully occupied. Even Christmas had the air of a sorrowful ritual. He was, privately, of the opinion that it was only its isolation, its position as an outpost of faith, that stopped the church from pulling the plug altogether on this diocese, instead of using the posting as a form of punishment. He was certainly out of the way.
Wittin wasn’t ashamed that his short sermon was similar to the one that he’d used last year, and the year before. It hadn’t changed much since the first, six years ago, the year after the accident, when the priest he replaced had finally lost his mind and abandoned his fold. He’d given up trying to find new words to deal with this day, words they’d listen to anyway. One or two made the sign of the cross when they were sure he’d finished. Most merely shuffled out. None acknowledged Deborah, not even John Cutter. Some of the men went so far as to walk down the side of the aisle furthest from her; an act as shameful as any Wittin had seen in his time here.
Outside, an avenue of candles lined the sloped tarmac apron that led up to the church, one on each grave. The children had been buried in two rows, either side of the broad path. As beautiful as it looked tonight, Wittin was convinced that this was why many of those that did attend chose to use the side door that led out onto the cemetery proper. It wasn’t the dead. It was those dead.
They were already lighting their procession candles, the flames protected from what breeze there was by a paper cup shield, which also served to stop the molten wax dripping down their hands. Without a leader to speak of, they simply moved away in a silent huddle, heading down Main Street, through the village and out to the school, where they would huddle together again in a vigil that to his mind did more harm than good. Wittin let them get a good head-start. He lit a cigarette and closed his eyes during the long, slow exhalation through his nose.
‘Why do you come? You don’t want to.’
He’d forgotten about Deborah.
‘I’m their priest,’ he said. ‘I should be there. It’s my job.’ He offered her the packet. She took one and lit it from his. ‘They might need me, even if they don’t want me.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’
She lit her candle and they followed the rest, the shepherd and the lost sheep, not trying too hard to catch up.
Adrift in her own loss, Deborah only realised she had caught up with them when she bumped into Mary Magnal. The collision ripped the base of her paper cup. The hot wax that leaked out and ran across the back of her hand took Deborah’s mind off Mary’s sour tutting and frantic checking that her Sunday coat hadn’t been damaged.
They were at the chain-link fence that protected them from the school. It was taking longer than usual to get everybody through. Some were already within its perimeter, while others waited outside, straining to see over them and find out what the hold-up was. Their backs were to her and there was a mumble of disbelief passing backwards from the front that convinced her they were about to turn around and tell her she wasn’t welcome. She looked back; the priest was still another twenty yards behind her, reluctance in every step. Anxiety puckered her eyes closed and tightened her grip around her candle.
She only opened her eyes when she felt the priest’s hand resting on hers. By which time Mary Magnal was stepping through the fence.
When Deborah arrived, she wished she hadn’t. They weren’t together as usual. There was no collective support. They were strung around the space like a cordon, staring, incredulous, at the same thing.
Seven years earlier
Ronah Todd stood alongside her brother Jack. They stared at Calvin Struan as he wiped tears and ice from a reddening face. It was almost a look of pity. They wore spectacles, steel-rimmed and thick-lensed, the deep convexity of which had the effect of presenting their eyes to the world as if held open. Magnified into a state of constant awareness and scrutiny, they hovered above their ever-ready smiles of slightly bucked teeth, hemmed in by dimples. Calvin looked away, uncomfortable under the Todds’ stare. Old for their years, as the adults said.
They’d been adopted as babies and raised by the Red Todds, the only communist family in the village. Both had been brought up to sing ‘The Red Flag’ instead of praying, which, the teacher insisted, they were required to do outside the classroom, sometimes in the rain. Although they refused to draw the Saltire on St Andrew’s Day, rejecting both religion and nationalism as crutches for the weak, they were keen readers of Robert Burns because their adoptive parents said he was one of the most widely read poets in Russia.
There was nothing frivolous about the way they acted or dressed. Their boots were always polished, from the toe to the heel, the laces to the welt, though the soles were sometimes over-worn. Skirts and trousers, washed and ironed, could be too short for too long before replacement, depending upon when exactly during the school term the growth spurt took place. Their wardrobe was simple and broadly seasonal.
They respected the workers – which meant their parents, employees of the Struan estate – and had been made aware of the limitations that often came with that work. They were the only conspicuous sharers of sweets, biscuits or fruit with Dog Evans and they came to no harm. They were not bullied because they couldn’t help it or be blamed. They were just children.
‘She’s right, you know,’ said Ronah.
‘What?’ said Calvin.
‘If you don’t change your ways, you will be responsible for other people’s misery.’
‘Go away. Father says you’re silly.’
‘Your father is wrong.’
‘But he’s the laird.’
‘That’s silly.’
Jack and Ronah grinned at each other.
‘Stop laughing at Father.’
‘We’re not.’
‘We’re laughing at what you said.’
‘Your father isn’t funny.’
Ronah offered Calvin a tissue from her pocket.
‘You should b
low your nose.’
Calvin ignored the tissue. Ronah shrugged, then she and Jack turned and walked away from him towards the rest of the class.
4
Dog Evans had opened his eyes at the sound of approaching footsteps. In the dark interior of the trees, lights flickered as they drew close. A disembodied face fluttered above each flame. He smiled. The children had come, stepping from their own storeroom back into the classroom. All he had ever wanted. But now they hesitated. Candlelit faces shimmered like waiting souls. There were many more than twenty-one. There was a silence of disbelief amongst these people who had stumbled without warning into the past. He could hear weeping. He saw moonlight in tears coursing down lambent cheeks. Pain and turmoil weakened the voice that asked him, ‘Why are you here?’
‘It’s my birthday,’ he said, smiling at Jenny Cutter’s mum.
Deborah Cutter covered the dark space of her mouth, suffocating her response.
Dog Evans didn’t hear the branch on its sweeping trajectory; or the crack of his skull and splinter of his teeth as his head was punched forwards and down, his chin driving into his chest.
Wittin saw candles fall from shock-slackened hands and splutter on the ground as the body lurched forward, extinguished. John Cutter let the makeshift club drop to his side but retained his hold. He heaved with release as the knees of Dog Evans snapped and twisted under the dead weight of his torso. The witnesses, many hiding their faces, were privy to the sound of the elastic rupture of tendon and cartilage, sharper than the snap of a falling tree. John Cutter shed tears like sap, slow and from the core. A pitiful keening escaped from him, childlike and unbearable. He was held, his face drawn into the heavily coated chest of Ruaridh Struan, who murmured something about justice as Cutter’s call to the dead was smothered within olive herringbone.
The remaining villagers contracted around the twisted form of the once-surviving child. They didn’t stare for long.
‘We need to get rid, out of sight.’
Nobody told Ruaridh Struan he was wrong.
John Longfield took the initiative. He knelt beside Dog Evans and gripped a handful of the sod with his farmer’s paw, ready to peel it away from the body. A tap on his back caused him to pause. Dr Corggie placed two flat fingertips on the boy’s wrist. When he was satisfied there was no pulse, he put the hand back on the ground.
‘Okay.’
John Longfield removed the sod. Nugget Storrie followed his lead, pulling another corner away. Dr Corggie and Robert Walker stripped the remaining quarters back as Ruaridh Struan picked up Dog’s spade.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Father Wittin.
He was universally ignored.
‘Enough now, I’m telling you. You think I won’t say anything; that you’ll actually get away with this?’
As Wittin rushed to stop them, John Cutter swung the club again, smacking flat across the priest’s stomach, taking his speech from him.
‘Do what you need to do,’ said Cutter as Wittin stumbled backwards, the nearest tree halting any fall and knocking the last of the wind from his body. He slid down the trunk, mouth gaping, struggling to catch his breath, looking on, horrified, as they proceeded to bury the remains.
Ruaridh Struan began, sweat soaking through his tweeds as he moved the dirt away. Tina Louise Raffique took it from him and contributed with a few spadefuls. From her it was passed from hand to dirty hand in village complicity as the soil around the boy was cleared afresh. They scraped and dug and swore and laughed and the hole grew deeper and wider. Eventually Dog Evans’ body crumpled to the bottom on top of his clothing. He was then covered with the dirt; his cooling corpse inhumed without being handled. Many willing feet tamped down the corners of turf.
Wittin felt totally alone. He closed his eyes to the desecration before him; the small circle of trees planted in memory of lost childhood being poisoned from the heart with the death of another innocent. When he opened them, he was searching up through the criss-cross of branches for shifting flecks of the starry sky and beyond.
‘Lord, help me. I am sick unto death of dead children, the parents of dead children and this sour little village whose name is synonymous with dead children. Sure, this whole fucking village is misery distilled.’ He lowered his gaze to the crime scene. ‘Will you look at them?’
The ground they stood on was flat and had a dull sheen of forced compression. Even though tears were still being shed, there was happiness in the snivelling and nose-wiping, restrained hoots born of disbelief and tinged with desperation, accompanied by hugs, arm slaps and pulled punches in a scrum of togetherness, the steam of their exertion rising through their breath in the moon’s light; and kisses, congratulatory, liberating.
‘This is the happiest I’ve ever seen them, stamping on the grave of a child.’ He got to his feet. ‘Is it any wonder they don’t attend? They don’t believe. They can’t allow that their children are in a better place, an everlasting life.’
When they had finished their bonding, an unspoken acknowledgement of their deed, the villagers turned to leave. Feeling empty of conviction, Wittin moved to stand astride the path. He raised his hands to stop them. He was thankful they paused, some bowing their heads.
‘We should at least say a prayer,’ he said.
Seeing the confusion on their faces as they looked at him, he was stunned to realise that they had been expecting his benediction. It was his turn to laugh, aghast. ‘You want my blessing, after what you’ve just done? Sure, there isn’t a true Christian among you. There can be no forgiveness.’ They were already moving away. ‘Do you rejoice that your children are in heaven?’ he asked. Angry turns of the head, a hardening of stance and the resentment of their stares showed they didn’t. ‘Well, I do.’ He pointed to the fresh grave. ‘And that poor child is with them now.’
Mary Magnal moved quickly to slap him across the face. Further violence hung in the air. His cheek stung as he saw himself reflected in Mary’s spectacles. Her chin was firm below tight thin lips.
‘I’ll be taking confessions,’ he said to them all. ‘Tonight. All night, if needs be.’
Twigs cracked underfoot as they left him behind.
Deborah looked back briefly, yet left with them nonetheless.
At the grave, Wittin picked the spade up and drove it into the ground, the only headstone Dog Evans would be getting. He went to put his hands in his pockets against the cold but stopped himself. He joined them, raised them to his chest and after a moment bowed his head.
‘Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born into eternal life.’ He sighed, as if the prayer was inadequate. ‘Sorry it was so general. I didn’t know you. Sure I’d say it was more for those left behind than yourself. Those needing it.’
Wittin crossed himself, found the warmth of his pockets and left.
Seven years earlier
Ed Munson looked up from the newspaper opened out on his counter as the paperboy, Norrie Storrie, came back into the shop at the end of his round. Norrie lifted the empty delivery bag over his head, careful not to dislodge his woolly hat or get tangled with his binoculars, and handed it to Munson.
‘Good man, Norrie,’ Munson said. ‘Not easy when it’s heavy going underfoot, is it?’
Norrie shook his head, sending the dewdrop from the end of his cold red nose away to his left, where it landed on the tiled floor. Munson’s Scottie dog, Ivor, left the warmth of his basket next to the storage heater to lick at the drop. Norrie stamped his fe
et and pulled the mitten covers of his fingerless gloves back over the ends of his frozen fingers.
‘Still snowing, I see.’
‘Aye.’
‘Three days now.’
‘Aye.’
Ivor returned to his basket.
Norrie blew warm air into his cupped hands.
‘Why don’t you get a heat?’
Norrie stood next to Ivor and placed his hands on top of the heater.
‘Manage to see anything?’
‘Not really,’ said Norrie, sniffing. ‘I saw the barn owl again, over at the graveyard.’
‘She’ll be struggling to find food, with all the snow.’
‘I would say so, aye. Oh, and a heron, down at the edge of the marsh, spearing something he was.’ Norrie looked up at Munson. ‘What would a heron be spearing in the middle of winter?’
‘I couldn’t say, Norrie. That’s your area of expertise.’
‘I’ll find out, let you know tomorrow, in case anybody asks.’ Norrie bent to give Ivor’s head a wee rub.
‘You do that,’ said Munson. ‘Anything else?’
Norrie hesitated for a moment. His face flushed, redder than it had been from the cold. He stepped closer and whispered, ‘Alice Corggie. She’s outside.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Munson, his voice low as he leaned over the counter to Norrie. ‘And she’s some bird, wouldn’t you say?’
Clamping his mouth tight, trying not to laugh, Norrie snorted, sending another watery dribble down into the left eyepiece of his binoculars. The old man chuckled as he reached beneath the counter and handed the flustered boy a pack of tissues.
‘Here, take these.’
Norrie took the tissues and pulled at the cellophane wrapper.
‘See you tomorrow, okay?’
‘Okay, thanks, Mr Munson.’
Norrie was still cackling as he walked away, pulling a tissue from the packet and wiping the snot-wet from the lens. He turned in the doorway and looked back through the cleaned sights to see a magnified Ed Munson put his finger over his lips and gesture to where Alice Corggie was standing, feet away. Norrie covered his own lips, sealing the pact. Munson was smiling as he returned his attention to his newspaper.
The Wrong Child Page 3