Strangers at the Gate

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Right.’ I felt as if I had a lead blanket over me, pressing me into the couch, like for an X-ray.

  ‘I’ll have to take the car, though. So I can nip back. Okay?’

  I thought about being here on my own with no car, knowing they were lying up there, chilling and stiffening. I shook my head. ‘Better not do anything that looks different,’ I said. ‘If you don’t want to cycle, I’ll drop you off and then go in to work.’

  ‘But that’s something different,’ said Paddy. ‘You’re not due to start till Wednesday.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I can’t just sit here. I don’t want to be here when the cops and ambulances come.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Paddy said. ‘You go to work. I’ll phone you and say I’m taking the car for a bit. Will I park it at the office? Or will you park it at the church?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t phone me. There would be no need to tell me anything if you were just nipping out to check on them.’

  ‘There’s no way I’m going to make it believable.’ Paddy’s voice broke.

  ‘You just need to try to forget what we know,’ I said. ‘Act as if we’re starting our lovely new life.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘And soon it’ll be over,’ I said. ‘We’ll be back in Edinburgh. But can we get the tenant out? Will we have to stay with your mum? My lot?’

  ‘I can’t think about that,’ Paddy said. ‘I just need to get through tomorrow without blowing it. I’ll go and check if they’re okay. I’ll find them. I’ll call the cops. And then somehow they’ll find out what happened. Maybe there’s a history. Something to explain it.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Except I don’t think I can do it, Finnie.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. Have you got any meetings or appointments or anything?’

  He gazed blankly at me. ‘I was supposed to be meeting the factor from Blackshaw,’ he said at last.

  ‘You are meeting the factor from Blackshaw,’ I corrected. ‘That’s the big agricultural conglomerate. Farm leases and contracting. Right?’

  ‘And having a quick check-in with Abby to see how she’s doing. I was taking over her training from Lovatt.’

  ‘You are taking over Abby’s training,’ I said. ‘Letting Lovatt take it a bit easy and concentrate on his pro-bono work for St Angela’s. How old is he anyway?’

  Paddy shrugged. ‘Seventy.’

  ‘Bloody lawyers,’ I said, trying for a joke. ‘Never know when to quit.’ But it rang hollow and I saw a tear bulge up in Paddy’s eye. It brimmed there until he blinked. Then it splashed down his cheek.

  ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ I said. ‘We should try to rest.’ Then I burst into tears. I think it was the word ‘rest’. Rest in peace. Eternal rest. There let the weary be at rest. That abomination on the kitchen floor was so busy, even in its stillness. So many colours of blood and so many different ways for it to spill, in smears and drips and blots. Leaking out of the gashes in her hands and seeping up into the tweed of his jacket.

  ‘I really liked her,’ I said, scrubbing at my eyes. ‘I know I moaned on about moving to the sticks but tonight – for the first time – I thought I was going to be happy here, with a friend like Tuft Dudgeon. I thought we were going to be happy.’

  ‘Maybe we will be,’ Paddy said. ‘Not tomorrow and not for a while, but when all of this is over. You’ll make more friends. You’ve never had any trouble making friends.’

  I nodded. I had never understood that difference between us – the way Paddy hung back. He’d pretend he couldn’t go to a party even when he was free. He’d pay for someone’s pictures ticket instead of asking them out for a pint. One time, just after we moved in together, I told him eight pals were coming round for pasta. I didn’t know what I’d done, but I knew I’d done something. He bought twenty-quid wine we couldn’t afford – I had been planning on a box each of red and white.

  But Simmerton had been different, like a new Paddy to go with the new job and new house. He’d been up for this from the start. Even agreeing to go for dinner on the spur of the moment.

  ‘I’m not going to lose my old friends,’ I said. Paddy said nothing but he gave me a look I had to decipher. ‘Hang on. You’re not seriously thinking we might stay here, are you?’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything,’ he said, but I knew him and I knew that wasn’t true.

  ‘Won’t the office close now? Won’t you lose your job? We’ll lose this place.’

  ‘I signed the partnership papers, Finnie,’ Paddy said. ‘And I signed a lease on this cottage. Let’s see what’s what when the dust settles.’

  When the blood dries, I thought. I shivered again. Not the port this time. Probably just the time of night and nothing but cold ash in the fireplace. January setting in.

  ‘I don’t think I can do it either,’ I said. ‘I want to phone the police now and get it over with. Get away from here. We can say we went back for my bag. Saw them, came here, locked our doors and phoned.’

  ‘But they’ll be able to tell they’ve been dead too long. What will we say we were doing?’

  I tried to think about it. Five minutes to walk down the drive, two minutes to look for our key and realise we’d left it behind. Five minutes back up the drive. The bodies would still be warm when the cops got there. The blood would still be running.

  ‘Or we say we used your keys to get back in here and I didn’t realise I’d left my bag until … well, now. Then we went back.’

  ‘On foot? At this time of night?’

  ‘Or by car,’ I said. ‘I tell you what. Let’s do it. Let’s drive up there now and walk in, “find my bag” and then “see them” and then phone the cops. Eh? Why not? Then we’ll tell them the God’s honest truth.’

  ‘Without phoning?’

  I could feel a scream beginning to build in my chest.

  ‘Phone, then!’ I said. ‘Phone them and get worried when they don’t answer. Then drive up.’

  Paddy hauled himself to his feet and went through to the kitchen.

  ‘It’s ringing,’ he said. ‘Oh, God, it’s Lovatt’s voice on the machine. Will I leave a message?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘No. Hang up, Paddy. I’m sorry.’ I felt as if all my energy was draining out through the soles of my feet, but even as I had the thought, it made me picture the blood again. The spreading puddle of bright red under Tuft’s body and the seeping black stain on the back of Lovatt’s jacket.

  Paddy was back beside me. He reached out and cupped my cheek, rubbing my temple with his thumb. It was usually comforting, but his hand was icy.

  ‘I don’t think we can go back now,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t, would we? If we phoned at this time of night and they were in their beds and didn’t answer, we wouldn’t go bothering them.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, we wouldn’t. It’s crazy.’ I grabbed his hand, pulling it away from my cheek and squeezing it. ‘Look, we’ve done nothing really wrong, have we? Just a bit misguided. Let’s call the cops and tell them everything. Tell them why we didn’t phone. My prison sentence, your loan. Everything. How bad could it be, now that we’re not keeping it from each other any more?’

  Paddy didn’t answer me. He changed the subject. ‘Is that – the conviction – is that why you’re only a deacon when women can be ministers?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting till the twelve years are up and it disappears off my record.’

  ‘Not long to go.’ He sat down on the arm of the couch and pulled me towards him. ‘You’ll make a great priest, Finnie.’

  ‘I’m the lucky one,’ I said. ‘Twelve years and it’s gone. Gossip lasts for ever.’ I felt him flinch as it hit him again and we fell away from each other. ‘I’m trying to say I know we can’t phone the cops,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  * * *

  I double-checked the locks while he was in the bathroom. I’d been brought up on the seventeenth floor. The lifts were sometimes a slice of life but once we shut our front door we knew we
were safe. Even the balconies had dividers that stuck away out, impossible to clamber round from one into another. And then Paddy and me’s flat was at the top of a tenement – the penthouse, I called it, only half joking – with an entry-phone. This little gingerbread cottage felt about as safe as sleeping under a bridge. There was the bay window and a side window in the living room, the bowed bedroom window, one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom and two doors. Nothing to stop someone lobbing a brick through any of them and just climbing in.

  At least they couldn’t see us sleeping. Not unless they came right up and pressed their nose against the glass. Because the mattress was on the floor, the bedframe still in bits. The sight of Paddy lying down there with piles of clothes all around him made me feel better. It looked like a nest.

  ‘Turn the light out,’ I said, looking at the naked pane facing the drive. When he clicked the switch, the sheet of shining black glass glowed pale instead, from the fog pressing up against it.

  ‘Sorry I never got the curtains up,’ I said, shedding my dressing-gown and sliding in beside him. ‘I was going to ask you to help with it tonight.’

  ‘Right. If we hadn’t gone out,’ Paddy said. ‘What did we do if we didn’t go out, Finnie? Did we unpack?’

  I leaned over him and switched the light on again. ‘Come on, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll sleep better for being tired out anyway.’

  I started talking again, while I was holding the two sides of the bed and he was bent over the footboard, screwdriver in hand. His scalp was beginning to show through his hair at the crown. I wondered if he knew. I wondered if I should tell him, now we were done with secrets. Then the new secret, the one we were sharing, came screaming in again: her open mouth, the red underneath her blue pleated skirt, the black stain on his tweed jacket. So really I opened the subject to chase away that one.

  ‘Pad?’ I said. He grunted. ‘I don’t want you to tell your mum what you found out about me tonight.’

  He sat back on his heels. ‘Good call,’ he said. ‘She’d definitely judge you. She’d recategorise you. Stop resenting you for being perfect and start looking down on you. She’d love it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know. Oh, God, maybe you should tell her. Maybe if people stopped hiding things and pretending life was better than it is, they wouldn’t crack up so much. They wouldn’t…’

  As we both remembered why we were up after midnight putting our bed together, he bent his head again and picked up another one of the tiny screws.

  ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ he asked, just once.

  ‘No,’ I said. He froze until I went on: ‘We missed the chance to do the right thing. But we’re doing the best thing that’s still an option.’

  It was gone three o’clock before we were done. All the curtains were hung. The bed was up, the kitchen sorted. The boxes were flattened, tied with string and stored in the shed. It certainly looked like the house of someone who’d spent their evening unpacking. And when we fell back into bed after another shower, Paddy was asleep on his second breath. I started the Lord’s Prayer and I was pretty sure I got as far as begging for forgiveness and promising to pay it forward before I drifted off. That was the bit that mattered right now anyway.

  I dreamed of knives. Figures flitting between the dark trees throwing switch-blades that whistled through the air towards me. I caught them in my slick grip, gasping from the pain as they sliced into my palms, but knowing I couldn’t turn my back or the knives would bisect me.

  Tuesday

  Chapter 6

  Paddy woke from a nightmare of his own when the alarm went off. ‘Too dark! Too dark!’ His voice was ragged.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said, over our first coffee. Paddy’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t want to go in to work.’

  ‘Jesus, Finnie,’ he said. ‘Give me heart failure, why don’t you? Do you mean in case you can’t act normal? You were quick enough to tell me it was a breeze.’

  That was part of it. What if the news broke when I was standing chatting to the minister and I passed out? What if the sirens went past and everyone else belted out to see what was going on but my legs wouldn’t carry me?

  ‘Not just that,’ I said. ‘I want to stay close so they’re not alone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I know it’s daft but I hate to think of them up there.’

  Paddy shuddered as if I’d reminded him, as if he’d forgotten. Maybe he was doing a better job than me of blocking it out. Maybe his ‘too dark’ nightmare was just a bog-standard anxiety dream and nothing to do with this place. ‘So will you give me a lift?’ he said. ‘Or should I cycle?’

  ‘You can take the car,’ I told him. ‘It feels okay in daylight. I’ll be fine here.’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Paddy said. ‘And I’ll phone you when—’

  ‘And I’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘I’ll say I was too tired to cycle. I’ll say we were up late unpacking and—’

  ‘No! Don’t say anything. If anyone asks— No one’s going to ask. You’ve got a parking space – but if anyone asks just say you need to get better waterproofs or a new back mudguard or something. And if they give you a slagging, just take it. Don’t outline our busy night unpacking.’

  ‘And you’ll be okay?’

  ‘I’ll go out for a walk maybe. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘But be careful.’

  ‘I can’t be careful. I need to be carefree. Just till they find them. Sometime today.’

  * * *

  It felt different once he had gone, though. When the noise of the car engine died and I stopped waving at the empty road, when there wasn’t a single sound to be heard, except the wind clattering in the dead orange leaves of the hedge, I huffed out a huge sigh and watched the steam of my breath slowly fade. What kind of plant was it that hung on to its dead leaves all the way through till January? It wasn’t right. It was like people lying cold and stiff on a kitchen floor with their eyes wide open and their mouths wide open, instead of tidy on their backs in the undertaker’s, eyelids weighted with pennies and mouths tied shut. Of course, undertakers don’t weight eyes with pennies any more or tie jaws shut with a mutch. They use little jagged contact lenses and bigger jagged gumshields. That’s just one of the things I wish I didn’t know. But I’ve visited more than one remembrance room, chumming along with someone who needed a restraining arm or a shoulder to cry on.

  At least the wind had blown the fog away. In the ribbon of sky between the treetops in this slit of a valley, pale wisps of cloud scudded across dark banks of higher cloud, cloud so black the tips of the big trees disappeared against them.

  I walked out across the paved bit of our front garden to the gateposts. The carving had softened and blunted over the years and there was moss in the dents. ‘Widdershins,’ I said, trying to trace the letters. But that wasn’t what it said at all. It was two short words, one on each gatepost, not one long one repeated. The gates weren’t in great shape either. They’d been propped open for years and now they were deep in weeds and rusted at the hinges. I gave one a bit of a tug but it didn’t shift. Just as well. How would I explain closing the gates against the world for no reason?

  ‘Get a grip, Finnie,’ I muttered to myself.

  About half one in the morning, Paddy had put our coat pegs up just inside the door and now I unhooked my warm jacket and pulled on my thick boots. I wished for a minute I had a dog to take with me. And the next minute I thought, Why not? I could get a dog. If we were really staying. And Paddy seemed to think we were. I’d never had anything bigger than a gerbil, but a great big dog with strong jaws sounded great right now. A docked tail too, so even if it was friendly no one would know.

  I made sure I had my phone and my key and pulled the door shut behind me. I stood at the end of the drive and looked both ways, up the narrow gap in the trees towards the big house and out at the wider gap – not much wider, mind you – where the lane threaded through. The drive was more inviting, curving away into soft
green darkness. If I didn’t know what was up there, I’d be enchanted.

  But if I hadn’t met Tuft Dudgeon I wouldn’t know we were allowed to go tramping all over their land, would I? So I turned away from the gateposts and went out onto the lane. There was no pavement, of course, just a single track and high verges of yellow grass and brown nettles on either side. If something big came round the corner I’d be in trouble. But I’d hear it and have time to scramble out of the way. I set off walking right in the middle, where the white line should be.

  I thought what I was seeing, a minute later, was the fog coming back again or maybe some even paler, even lower cloud. Then the smell reached me and I knew it was billowing smoke. I quickened my steps. I could see the gable end of a house but the smoke was lower than the chimneys, belching out from behind a clipped hedge. I stepped up my pace a bit more until I reached open gates leading to a carport.

  It was nothing to worry about, just a bonfire in the middle of a paved yard. I should have known. There were no kids lighting mattresses in skips round here. There was even a garden hose lying coiled up nearby in case of trouble. And there was a man looking on with a rake in his hand. I didn’t know you were still allowed bonfires, what with the planet, but I wasn’t sure enough to challenge him. I started walking again.

  ‘Hello there!’ He’d seen me. I heard a sound that might well be a rake hitting the ground as he chucked it down, then the walloping sound of someone hurrying in wellies. A dog, shut in somewhere, whined and scratched at the sound of his master’s voice.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Not much of a day for it.’

  ‘Just burning some autumn leaves,’ he said, a bit too heartily. Sounded like a guilty conscience. Maybe bonfires weren’t allowed after all.

  ‘Are you the new folk at the lodge?’ he went on, coming and leaning over his gate. Add a straw in his mouth and he’d be Worzel Gummidge to the life, except that the hedge on either side of the gate was trimmed into perfect right-angles and flat on top, its tiny bottle-green leaves looking like something manufactured rather than anything that grew up out of the ground.