The Chessmen l-3

by Peter May

Fin shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I knew her too well. She never cared much about anyone or anything, except herself. It was all me, me, me.’

  Marsaili dried her hands on the dishtowel and there was a sadness in her smile. ‘A bit like someone else, I know.’ And she walked past him to the living room.

  II

  Mairead’s voice rang around the rafters of the church, clear and pure and unaccompanied. The doors were open so that those outside could hear her, and in the still of this sad grey morning, her voice drifted out across Loch Rog, a plaintive lament for a lost friend and lover.

  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

  I fear no evil,

  for you are with me;

  your rod and your staff,

  they comfort me.

  Somehow, in the Gaelic, both the words and the melody were more powerful, more tribal, of the land and the place and the people. And Fin found the hairs rising up on the back of his neck. He had missed the original funeral, but the others were all here to bury Roddy again, just as they had done seventeen years before. Only then, the coffin they had carried was empty, save for some rocks and a few personal items from childhood. His parents had wanted it that way. To give a sense of closure. A chance to say goodbye.

  Now the coffin with his body in it awaited them outside his old home overlooking Uig sands from the north shore. His parents had been returned to the earth now themselves, but the new owners of the house his father had built had given permission for the funeral procession to start from there.

  As the mourners streamed out of the little church at Miabhaig, Fin reflected that it was more like a circus than a funeral. The Scottish media had descended en masse, along with stringers for most of the English press. Cameras flashed and pencils scribbled in notebooks, and digital video recorded all for posterity — and the six o’clock news. The discovery of Roddy’s body had been occupying pride of place on the news schedules for days. Archive footage from seventeen years earlier had been unearthed and hastily cut together with the latest video to feed the public’s voracious appetite for celebrity news. Celebrity death appealed even more to popular prurience. Throw in a little murder and mystery, and ratings were guaranteed. Sales of Amran’s CD backlist had soared.

  Fin had expected Whistler to show up. He had disappeared again following their encounter outside the Sheriff Court, but there was no sign of him at the church. And it wasn’t until Fin stepped outside that he set eyes on Strings and Skins and Rambo for the first time.

  He was shocked by how both Skins and Rambo had aged. Rambo was almost completely bald, and looked twenty years older than the others. Skins’ hair was streaked steel-grey, and swept back from a face devoid of its once boyish charm. Strings, too, had slipped quietly into middle age, perhaps hoping that shoulder-length dyed hair tied in a ponytail would create the illusion of a younger man. But he was thinner, meaner somehow, the fingers that spidered over his fretboard longer and bonier now than Fin remembered. Only Mairead seemed to have the Peter Pan touch. She looked as radiant and beautiful as she had as a teenager. She had never lost that certain something which had bewitched so many boys, and no doubt so many men in later life. She was the sole identifiable image of Amran. It was always her face that featured on the covers of their CDs, on their website, on their concert posters. No one but the most ardent of fans would have recognized Skins or Rambo, or even Strings. They were background. Wallpaper. Just musicians. Mairead was Amran.

  Many of the mourners drove straight to the cemetery at Ardroil. Those who intended to make up the procession gathered outside the former Mackenzie home on the road above the beach, along with the media circus.

  Fin was astonished to see Donald there, come out of his self-imposed exile in Ness to expose himself to public scrutiny for the first time since the shooting in Eriskay. And he was as much a source of interest and curiosity to the crowd as the presence of the celebrities of Amran. He was, it transpired, to be one of the primary coffin-bearers, at Mairead’s request, along with Fin, Strings, Skins, Rambo and Big Kenny. All of them together again for the first time since fifth year at the Nicolson.

  But since it was a two-mile walk to Ardroil, there were another six men standing by to provide periodic relief in relays. The coffin itself weighed much more than the remains of the man inside it, solid oak resting heavily on the broad shoulders that raised it from the chairbacks on which it had been resting in the road. A helicopter hired by one of the news networks flew overhead.

  It took the procession of well over fifty people more than an hour to reach the turn-off to the cemetery. There was a hand-painted sign with a white arrow pointing past a tubular agricultural gate, and a rough track wound up over the machair to the walls of the cemetery itself beyond the rise. Shoulders were aching, hands numb, by the time they got there.

  The mountains where Roddy’s plane had come down all those years before loured over them, dominating the skyline to the south. The cemetery itself sloped down to the west, and the rain began as the procession made its way among the headstones to the small walled extension which had been built on to it at the bottom end. Its original planners, apparently, had not taken account of the relentless nature of death.

  It was a fine rain, a smirr, little more than a mist. But it almost obliterated the view beyond the wall towards the beach, and made the last few yards treacherous underfoot. The lowering of the coffin on wet ropes by hands and arms which had all but seized up was made perilous by the rain, and it bumped and scraped the side of the grave on its way down. The grave itself had been excavated the day before, and the remains of the coffin they had placed there seventeen years earlier exhumed. Beneath the grass the soil was pure sand, without rocks or pebbles, and was already crumbling as the coffin settled at the bottom of the hole. The original headstone lay to one side, to be replaced once the grave had been refilled.

  Although the tradition of men only at the graveside was still universally observed, nobody was surprised when Mairead ignored it. She stood among the men, pale and unflinching, a sombre figure dressed all in black, Roddy’s intermittent sweetheart and lover.

  It was then that Fin glanced up and saw, with a shock, Whistler standing at the top end of the cemetery, detached from the mourners. Gone was the suit, to be replaced by his waterproof jacket and jeans, and his hair hung loose, tumbling to his shoulders. He had stopped shaving again and had penumbrous shadows beneath his eyes. His usually healthy outdoor complexion was muted by an underlying pallor.

  For a moment Fin thought that Whistler was simply gazing into space, somewhere above and beyond the little clutch of mourners, before he realized that his eyes were fixed on Mairead. Was it possible, after all these years, that he still loved her? And yet there was something in his expression that spoke more of hate than of love. Of contempt rather than affection. And Fin was startled by it.

  His attention returned to the grave as Donald read a text from the Gaelic Bible. ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ A handful of sand rattled across the lid of the coffin. And when Fin looked up again, Whistler was gone.

  III

  It was with no little surprise, then, that Fin caught a glimpse of his old friend at the wake organized by Amran at the Cabarfeidh Hotel in Stornoway. The bar was packed full of mourners who had heard that there would be free drink, and members of the press were mixing freely among the crowd in search of an angle, a personal slant, something different for the evening bulletins and the morning papers.

  Fin was standing at the bar with Strings and Skins and Rambo, sharing beer and recollections, and not a little fond laughter at stories of Roddy and their adventures during the early years. The spectre that hovered among them, however, and which no one dared address, was the fact that Roddy had not just died. He had been murdered. It was a spectre without a voice.

  Fi
n caught sight of Whistler pushing his way out through the door. He put his pint down on the bar. ‘I’ll catch you guys later.’ And he hurried after him.

  By the time he reached the lobby there was no sign of Whistler. Fin hurried through to the lounge, but there was only a handful of people standing chatting in groups, or sitting around coffee tables. He returned to the lobby and was about to go back in to the bar when he heard the sound of raised voices from outside in the car park. A woman’s voice, and a man’s. Speaking Gaelic. Fin went out on to the step and saw Mairead and Whistler further down the drive. Whistler was trying to walk away. Mairead was grabbing at his arm to try to stop him. He turned suddenly and shouted at her, inches from her face. Fin was not close enough to make out what he said, but there was no concealing his anger. Mairead flinched. And then Whistler glanced beyond her and saw Fin watching. He said something and Mairead turned, too. By the time she turned back to him he was on his way, walking briskly out through the gate. This time she let him go, and Fin saw the slump of her shoulders.

  He watched as she turned and walked back up the tarmac drive towards him, composing herself as she approached, concocting some lie, Fin had no doubt, about what it was that had transpired between her and Whistler. By the time she reached him her eyes were clear and smiling, and he remembered only too well her capacity for deception. She pre-empted his question with a sad smile. ‘You told me once you thought that Whistler had never stopped loving me. And that’s why he didn’t come to Glasgow.’ She paused for thought. ‘Removing himself from the pain. I think that’s how you put it.’

  Fin nodded.

  ‘Well, I think I just brought the pain back with me.’

  But Fin knew that it wasn’t love he had seen in Whistler’s eyes at the cemetery. And there had been only anger in his voice when he shouted at her. If there was pain, then something else was the cause of it. She must have seen the lack of conviction in Fin’s eyes, because she abruptly changed the subject.

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad I caught you. I brought a photo album up with me. Full of pics from the old days. You’re in a lot of them. I thought you’d like to see them.’

  ‘Maybe another time.’ Fin glanced at his watch. ‘I should really be going.’

  But there was an insistence in her voice. ‘There might not be another time, Fin. I’ll be gone in a couple of days, and I can’t think of a single reason for ever coming back.’

  Fin was surprised. ‘What happened to your folks?’

  ‘I took them down to Glasgow years ago. I’ve no family left on the island. And, to be honest, the reason we were here today has cast a shadow over all the good memories. It was hard enough dealing with Roddy’s death at the time. But losing someone twice? Well, that’s a killer, Fin. I would never have believed it, but it’s a whole hell of a lot harder second time around.’ She slipped an arm through his and turned him back through the door into the lobby. ‘Give me just a little of your time. I think you owe me that.’

  Fin stopped and she was forced to turn and face him. ‘I don’t think I owe you anything, Mairead. You were the one who walked away, remember?’

  Her eyes were wide and moist, and impenetrably blue. ‘And there’s not a single day that I haven’t regretted it.’

  Heavy blue curtains were drawn across the windows in her room. A chequered blue-and-cream bedspread was neatly folded across a bed long since made up by room service. A large suitcase sat on the floor below the window, its lid up resting against the curtains. Mairead crouched to rummage through a mess of clothes to find the photo album, and she stood and threw it on to the bed before slipping out of her coat and draping it across a chair. Beneath it she wore a black blouse and a three-quarter-length black skirt over black boots.

  ‘You don’t mind if I get changed, do you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, and Fin wondered what difference it would have made if he’d said no. She kicked off her boots. ‘Nothing you haven’t seen before.’

  But he turned away, embarrassed, to pick up the photo album and open it at the first page. The most prominent image immediately to strike him was Roddy’s official school photograph from fourth or fifth year at the Nicolson. The school blazer with its prefect’s piping, the crisp white shirt and school tie. Roddy’s slightly lopsided smile, blonde curls tumbling all around his head. He glanced up to see Mairead slipping into her jeans. She wore a skimpy black bra and panties, her skin like ivory, the smooth curves and lines of a body he had once known so well. And in spite of himself he felt the stirrings of remembered lust deep in his loins. He turned back to the album and flipped over a page.

  There were several photographs glued across both of the next pages. One of a very young Mairead on stage. How much rounder her face had been then. The band setting up for a gig somewhere. Donald, sitting in an armchair at a party, red-eyed from the flash, and looking very drunk. And there was Fin, with Whistler and Strings, aged maybe seventeen. All with beers in their hands, arms around each other’s shoulders, and making faces at the camera. He had no recollection of it being taken, and it gave him a start to see himself. He had no photographs from that period of his life. He’d had no camera, and his aunt had never been one for taking snaps. The young Fin, grinning like an idiot. But he could look at it now and see the pain behind the eyes, the denial of a truth he had been unable to face.

  ‘They’re good, aren’t they?’ Mairead leaned in beside him to take a look. She wore a sweatshirt several sizes too big for her and was still barefoot. ‘I’ve got hundreds of pics. I’m so glad I kept them now. They trigger memories I’d have forgotten otherwise.’ She reached across him to flick over a page, and he felt her breast brush against his arm.

  There were more photographs of the band on stage at a ceilidh somewhere, and on the page opposite several taken at the Bridge to Nowhere. So many of the same faces as had been at the cemetery today, but so much younger.

  Mairead took the album from him and sat on the end of the bed with it. She patted a place beside her. ‘Sit down.’

  But Fin knew it would be fatal. ‘I’ve got to go, Mairead.’

  She held his gaze for a long time, eyes laden with disappointment, before closing the album and standing up. She was tall. Almost as tall as Fin, and stood very close to him. He could feel her breath on his face. ‘Don’t go.’ Her voice was barely a whisper.

  He could almost hear the beat of his heart, the blood pulsing through his head. It would be so easy. He touched her face with the tips of his fingers. He would be lost in her in seconds. Again. All those primal passions she had aroused in him all those years before, reawakened, as powerful and seductive as they had ever been. And he thought of Marsaili, and the way he had treated her during those first weeks at university. And of Mona, and how he had never tried after the accident to find a way with her, even although they had both needed someone to share their pain. He thought of how he had taken the wrong turning at almost every crossroads in his life, even when he knew which was the right way. And he wondered how it was possible that Mairead could want to make love to him when she had just put the love of her life in the ground.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry, Mairead.’ He leaned forward and softly kissed her forehead. ‘Have a good life.’

  And he left her standing there, alone in the middle of the room. She didn’t turn as he opened the door and slipped out into the hall.

  He felt an enormous sense of relief as he drove across the wide open spaces of the Barvas moor, like a weight lifted from his shoulders. A burden he had carried for years, almost without realizing it. The sky ahead reflected his mood, grey breaking to blue, flashes of sunlight falling in dazzling patches on distant tracts of peat bog scarred by generations of cutting. Colour appeared all across the moor with the change of light, gold and purple, the wind rising now to whip through the long grasses and usher in cooler, brighter weather.

  In denying Mairead, he had somehow felt himself more committed to Marsaili, and he was anxious now to get home. To hold her. To tell her how he felt
about her. If anyone deserved better from him it was her.

  She was hanging out washing on the line when he drew his Suzuki in beside her car. He stood for a moment on the road above the bungalow looking down at her, hair streaming forward in the wind, like the sheets she was pegging to the rope. Her face, pink from the effort of fighting the breeze, was still lovely, even without make-up, and he remembered the little girl with pigtails and blue ribbons who had stood up for him on his first day at school, who had shortened his name to Fin and who had taken his heart from the first moment he set eyes on her. And he felt an ache somewhere inside him. A sense of grief for their lost innocence, for half their lives squandered and gone for ever.

  He walked slowly down the path and stopped at the steps to the kitchen door. She hadn’t heard him or seen him yet, and he watched as her still-slim body arched itself against the wind, arms reaching and straining to hold the rope and manage the furling and unfurling of the sheets. And then she turned and saw him. She stooped to pick up her empty laundry basket and wade wearily up through the grass towards him. Pale-blue anxious eyes searched his face. ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon.’

  He shrugged. ‘A funeral’s not something you hang around at.’

  ‘Didn’t you go to the wake?’

  ‘Briefly.’

  There was the hint of a query in the tilt of her head, in the gaze with which she examined him. ‘And how was it?’

  ‘The wake?’

  ‘The funeral.’

  ‘As you’d expect. Donald was there, and helped carry the coffin.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Unexpected.’

  He smiled. ‘It was.’ Then hesitated. ‘Mairead sang the twenty-third psalm in the church. Unaccompanied.’

  ‘That must have been moving.’ There was no hint of sarcasm in her tone, but Fin felt it there.

  ‘Yes.’ He wanted to tell her how it had been in Mairead’s room. How he had resisted her, and turned his back on her. But he knew it would only ever be open to misconstruction. He reached out to touch her face, as he had touched Mairead’s less than an hour before. But she turned away towards the steps.