by Peter May
Fin took it from her and read aloud. “When I am writing letters I cannot avoid making feeble mistakes in my words. My loss, of course, didn’t come suddenly. It began about the end of the eleventh year, but it was hardly noticed at all at first. However, as time went on, and on, and on, I began to realize that I was more and more losing my ability to remember things. It is a dreadful thing, and I am very near the moment when I realise I am helpless.”
Fin laid the sheet of paper on the table. Outside, the wind still howled around the door, rain pounding against the window. He ran his finger along the ragged edge, where the sheet had been torn from some jotter. Almost worse than the disease itself, he thought, must be the knowledge that it was taking you. That inch by inch you were losing your reason and your mind, your memories, everything that makes you who you are.
He glanced at Marsaili, who was breathing deeply, drying her cheeks with her palms. There was only so much crying you could do. She said, “I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
As she busied herself with the kettle and the mugs and teabags, Fin crouched down again to open more boxes. The next was full of ledgers, incomings and outgoings at the farm over all the years he had worked it. He lifted them out one by one, until at the bottom he found a large, soft-covered cuttings album bulging with articles taken from newspapers and magazines over many years. Fin placed it on top of the box next to him and opened it. At first the cuttings had been neatly stuck to the early pages, then later simply shoved, loose-leaf, between them. There were so many.
He heard the kettle coming to the boil, the weather at the door, music vibrating distantly through the floor from the kids’ room, and Marsaili’s voice. “What is it, Fin? What are all these cuttings?”
But at Fin’s very centre all was still. His own voice came to him from a long way away. “I think we should take your dad back to Eriskay, Marsaili. That’s the only place we’re going to find the truth.”
Thirty-five
Marsaili’s here! I knew she’d come for me some day. And the young chap. I’m not sure who he is, but he is kind enough to help me pack some of my things into a bag. Socks and underpants. A couple of shirts. A pair of trousers. They are leaving a lot of stuff in the wardrobe and the drawers. But I suppose they’ll come back for it later. It doesn’t matter. I feel like singing! Good old Marsaili. I can’t wait to get home, although I’m not quite sure now that I remember where exactly that is. But they’ll know.
Everyone’s sitting smiling at me as I leave, and I wave happily at them. The lady who is always trying to make me undress and get into that damned bath doesn’t look too pleased. Like she squatted down on the moor for a pee and sat on a thistle. Ha! I want to say. Serves you right. But I’m not sure what came out in the end. Sounded like Donald Duck. Who said that?
It’s cold outside, and that rain takes me back. All those solitary days out on the land with the beasts. I used to love that. The freedom of it. No more pretending. Just me and the rain in my face. The young man tells me to be sure and say if I need a pee. He’ll stop anywhere, any time, he says. Well, of course, I say. I’m not likely to pee my pants, am I?
We seem to have been driving for a very long time now. I’m not sure if I maybe slept for a bit. I look at the land passing by the window. It hardly seems familiar at all. Not sure if it’s the grass bursting through the rock, or the rock bursting through the grass. But that’s all there is. Grass and rock over all the hillsides.
Oh, and now, down there in the distance, I see a beach. You wouldn’t believe a beach could be that big, or the ocean that blue. I remember seeing a beach like that once. Biggest beach I ever saw. Much bigger than Charlie’s beach. But I was filled with so much grief and guilt that I hardly noticed. I was driving Donald Seamus’s old van. Peter was still in the back, wrapped in the blanket I took from the bedroom to carry him down to the boat.
Mary-Anne and Donald Seamus were dead to the world. It seemed that nothing would shake those two out of their sleep once they got their heads down. It’s just as well, because I was in a panic that night, and still weeping. And I suppose I must have left blood everywhere. But I was hardly in a state to care.
By the time we got to Ludagh I was a little more controlled. I had to put a face on it for Ceit’s sake. I can remember looking in the wing mirror of Donald Seamus’s van, and seeing her standing there on the jetty in the dark, watching me go. And I knew, even then, that I would never see her again. But I had her Saint Christopher around my neck, so she would always be with me. One way or another.
I was lucky with the tides, able to cross at the fords without waiting. I knew I had to put as many miles between me and the island as possible before morning broke. It wouldn’t take Donald Seamus long to realize that Peter and I were gone, with his gun and his money, and that his van was missing, too. Likelihood was that he would call the police straight away. I needed to put distance between us.
I was waiting at Berneray for the first ferry of the day when dawn came pale out of the mist across the Sound of Harris. Most of the other vehicles waiting there were commercial, and no one paid much attention to me. But I had my dead brother in the back of a stolen van, and I was nervous as hell. Here was where I would be most vulnerable, and at Leverburgh when the ferry berthed. But I tried to put myself in the shoes of the police. I had stolen a gun, some money and a van. They didn’t know about Peter, of course. They would assume we were in it together. Where would we go? I was sure they’d think we would try to make it back to the mainland. In which case we would have driven to Lochmaddy to catch the ferry to Skye. Why would we head north to Harris, or Lewis? Well, that was my reasoning, although right then I didn’t have that much faith in it.
The ferry crossed the Sound like a ghost that morning, just a gentle swell on a pewtery sea, the sun obscured by thick, low cloud. And then I was off up the ramp at Leverburgh and on the road again.
That’s when I saw the beaches for the first time, at Scarista, and Luskentyre, and drove through the tiny village of Seilebost, realising that’s the place I was supposed to come from. I stopped there for just a few minutes, following a track out on to the machair, and gazed over the golden sands that seemed to stretch all the way to eternity. I was Tormod Macdonald now. And this is where I grew up. So many people I had been, and was, and no doubt would be in the future. I got back in the van and drove without stopping, passing the outskirts of Stornoway, across the Barvas moor to the west coast road that led to Ness. I could hardly get much further away.
At Barvas I turned off on a bumpy dirt track that led out past a few houses dug in at the roadside, to a windswept loch almost entirely locked in by the land. I could see the sea breaking all along the shore in the distance, and sat there with Peter, waiting for dark.
It seemed to take forever to come. My stomach growled and snarled at me. I’d put nothing in it for nearly twenty-four hours, and I felt quite light-headed. At last, I watched the light dying into darkness along the western horizon, and Donald Seamus’s old van coughed its fumes into the night. I bumped back along the track to the main road and turned north.
At Siader I spotted a track heading off into the dark, towards the sea, and I turned off on it, extinguishing my lights, and making my slow, painful way out towards the cliffs, navigating only by infrequent fleeting patches of moonlight. Within sight and sound of a sea that seemed to glow almost phosphorescent in the dark, I killed the motor and got out of the van. There was not a light anywhere to be seen, and I retrieved Donald Seamus’s tarasgeir from the back of the vehicle.
Even though the bog was soft and wet, it took me nearly an hour to dig a hole in it big enough for Peter’s final resting place. First I cut turfs off the top and laid them to one side, and then dug, and dug, deep enough that the water seeping into the hole would be displaced by the body. Deep enough that when I had filled it in, and replaced the turfs, no one would ever know it had been disturbed. And even if they did, would probably think it had been some abortive attempt to cut peat. But I
knew the land would knit together in no time, sealing him in, folding him into its arms and holding him in its embrace for ever.
When I had finished, finally, I unwrapped my brother from his blanket and laid him carefully in his grave. I knelt at his head, and kissed him, and prayed for his soul, even although I was no longer certain that there was a God out there. Then I covered him over, so consumed by sorrow and guilt that I could hardly wield the spade. When I had replaced the last turf, I stood for ten minutes or more, letting the wind dry my sweat before lifting the bloody blanket and trudging over the moor and down across a jumble of rocks to a tiny, sandy inlet.
There I crouched in the sand to give shelter from the wind as I set light to the blanket, then sat upwind of it to watch its flames flare and dance briefly in the dark, carrying sparks and smoke off into the night. A symbolic cremation. My brother’s blood returned to the earth.
I sat on the beach until the cold nearly took me, before walking stiffly back over the moor to the van and starting the motor. Back along the track to the road, and then south through Barvas, before turning off east on a narrow track somewhere near Arnol. A track that wound out through the bog towards a rising of hills. I had been going to set the van on fire, but always feared it would be seen, no matter how remote I went. And that’s when I saw, in a moment of moonlight, the loch shimmering below me. I took my stuff out of the back and drove it to the edge of the drop. Then I cut the engine and jumped out into soft turf, my shoulder to the door, helping it the last few feet, till it took on its own momentum.
Off it went down the hill in the dark, and I heard more than saw it hit the water. In brief blinks of moonlight over the next hour, sitting up there on the hill, I saw a part of it still visible above the surface, and I thought perhaps I had made a terrible mistake. But by morning it was gone.
I used the hours of darkness to dismantle the shotgun that Donald Seamus had used to shoot rabbits, so that I could fit it into my bag. Then at first light I hoofed it back across the moor to the road. I had only been walking five minutes in the direction of Barvas when someone stopped to give me a lift. An old crofter on his way into Stornoway. He talked and talked, while I felt life slowly coming back to my limbs, warmed by the heater in his car. We were about halfway across the Barvas moor when he said, “It’s a strange sort of Gaelic you speak, son. You’re not from around here.”
“No,” I said. “I’m from Harris.” And I reached across to shake his hand. “Tormod Macdonald.” Which is who I have been all my life since.
“What’s your business in Stornoway?”
“I’m taking the ferry to the mainland.”
The old crofter grinned. “Good luck to you, then, boy. It’s a rough crossing.”
I had no idea, then, that I would come back when it was over. Drawn by the need, somehow, to be near to my brother, as if that could in some way make amends for my dismal failure to keep my promise to my mother.
“Where are we now?” I ask.
“This is Leverburgh, Dad. We’re taking the ferry over to North Uist.”
North Uist? I’m sure I don’t live there. I scratch my head. “Why?”
“We’re taking you home, Dad.”
Thirty-six
Marsaili and Fin had left Fionnlagh with no idea of how long they might be gone, so she had given him her phone in order that she could always reach him. And late that morning he had driven down to Crobost stores to stock up the larder for the next few days.
It was a filthy morning, the wind sweeping in explosive gusts across the point, bringing with it waves of fine wetting rain, and laying flat the new-growth spring grasses. But he didn’t mind. He had grown up with this. It was normal. He loved to feel the rain stinging his face. He loved, too, the way the sky would open up at unexpected moments to let the light through. Flashes of cold, blinding sunlight on the surface of the ocean, like pools of mercury. They could last minutes or seconds.
Dark clouds lumbered across the landscape in folds so close to the earth it was almost possible to believe you could reach up and touch them. The top of the hill was nearly lost in cloud as Fionnlagh drove back up to the bungalow. Donna had promised to have lunch waiting for them. Nothing special. A bacon and egg salad, she had said. He was surprised to see a white Range Rover drawn up on the gravel above the house where he would normally park his Mini. He didn’t recognize the licence plate. On Lewis it was customary to look at the number of an approaching vehicle and wave if you recognized it. Faces were rarely seen through windscreens reflecting light, or smeared with rain. This wasn’t an island number.
He drew up beside the Range Rover, and as he got out of his car saw a copy of the Edinburgh Evening News lying on the back seat. He grabbed his bags of provisions from the back of the Mini and made a dash through the rain to the kitchen door. He managed to stoop down and turn the handle without dropping the paper bag he was supporting in his right hand, and as the door swung in he saw Donna standing in the doorway to the hall. There was an alien smell of smoke in the house, and Donna was holding Eilidh to her as if she might fly away if she dared to let her go. Her face was the colour of the Range Rover parked at the top of the path, her pupils so dilated her eyes looked black. He knew at once that something was very wrong.
“What is it, Donna?”
Her frightened rabbit’s eyes darted across the kitchen, and Fionnlagh turned to see a man sitting at the kitchen table. He was a big man with cropped silver-grey hair. He wore a white shirt open at the neck beneath a Barbour jacket, jeans and black Cesare Paciotti designer boots. He was smoking a very large cigar which had already burned halfway down to his nicotine-stained knuckles.
At the same moment, Donna was propelled forward into the kitchen from behind. She took two or three forced steps before steadying herself, and a man appeared behind her. He was much younger than the man sitting at the table. Thick black hair gelled to a shine was scraped back across his head. He was dressed casually in a blue shirt and charcoal trousers beneath a long, brown, waxed raincoat. Incongruously, Fionnlagh noticed that his fine black Italian shoes were caked with mud. But it was with a sense of shock and disbelief that he saw what looked very much like a sawn-off shotgun half-raised in his right hand.
“What?” The word was out of his mouth before he realized how foolish it sounded. His first thought was that this had to be some kind of a joke, but there didn’t seem anything remotely funny about it. And it was real fear he saw in Donna’s face. He stood, his arms full of shopping, wind and rain blowing about his legs in the open doorway, and had no idea what to do.
The man sitting at the table was leaning back in his chair watching him speculatively. He pulled gently at the wet end of his cigar. “Where’s your grandfather?”
Fionnlagh turned consternation in his direction. “I have no idea.”
“I think you do. Your mother and her friend took him out of the care home first thing this morning. Where did they go?”
Fionnlagh felt his hackles rising now. “I don’t know.” He hoped to sound defiant.
“Don’t get cute with me, sonny.” The cigar smoker’s tone remained even, unruffled. His eyes slid towards Donna and the baby. “That your kid, is it? Old Tormod’s great granddaughter?”
Fear spiked through Fionnlagh. “You lay a fucking finger on them . . . !”
“And you’ll what? What’ll you do, sonny? Tell me.”
Fionnlagh glanced towards the man with the gun. His face was completely impassive. But something in his eyes counselled against foolishness.
“Just tell me where they took your grandfather. That’s all you have to do.”
“And if I don’t?”
There was an imperceptible shaking of the cigar smoker’s head before he drew another mouthful of smoke to let it escape with his smile. “You don’t even want to know what I’ll do to your girlfriend and your daughter.”
At first Fionnlagh couldn’t breathe, and he panicked. Before realising it was a dream. It had to be. He was at the bot
tom of the ocean. It was very dark and cold here, and he was aware that if he drew a breath his lungs would fill with water. So he kicked off for the surface. Somewhere very far above him he could see light filtering down. Slowly, too slowly, it grew brighter around him, but still the surface seemed a long way away. His lungs were bursting now. He kicked harder, all his focus on the light. Until suddenly he broke the surface in a blinding flash, and pain splintered all conscious thought.
His head was filled with it, and he could hear his own voice gasping from its sheer intensity. He rolled over, wondering why he couldn’t move his arms and legs, eyes screwed up against the light until gradually the kitchen took shape around him. But his thoughts were still unfocused, confused. Clarity and recollection returned only slowly.
He lay still, controlling his breathing, trying to ignore the pain in his head, and forced himself to recall his return from the store: the white Range Rover, the man with the gun, the man with the cigar threatening harm to Donna and Eilidh if he didn’t tell them where his mother and Fin had taken Tormod. But no matter how hard he tried, he had no memory of anything beyond that. Which is when he realized why he couldn’t move.
He was lying on the floor, ankles bound, hands tied behind his back. There was blood on the tiles, and he panicked, shouting, “Donna!” as loudly as he could. His voice resounded in the empty kitchen and was met by a deep, troubling silence. Fear and panic nearly paralysed him. It was pure adrenalin that fuelled his frantic attempts to get himself up into a sitting position.
When finally he managed it, he saw that his feet were bound by a dishtowel, twisted and tied in a clumsy knot. With a huge effort, he succeeded in getting himself on to his knees, and then sat back on his feet, allowing his fingers access to the knotted dishtowel behind his back. It took a matter of minutes to untie it and struggle to his feet. He called out Donna’s name again and followed his voice through the house. It resounded around empty rooms. There was no sign of either Donna or the baby. In the bedroom he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, blood trickling down his face from a head wound. The only comfort he took from it was the thought that the blood on the kitchen floor was his own and not Donna’s or Eilidh’s.