by Ian Rankin
She began to check the pots on the cooker, stirred one of them and replaced its lid. Everything was fine, but where was he? It looked as if he was going to be late again. She sighed, but set the table anyway, making sure to put out the tomato pickle to which he had so taken recently. She had found a recipe for it in one of her magazines and would make some of her own soon. She sat at the table and let her fingers dance over the cloth. Dance to your daddy, my little laddie.
She felt most comfortable late in the evening when, Sandy in bed reading and the lights out and the fire still glowing brightly, she would speak to her mother and sometimes even her father. There was comfort in speaking to the dead, and it showed that you had not forgotten them. How could people forget their dead? Yet they seemed to. After a while, the funeral a few weeks past, they would just stop talking about them, and all the traces of grieving would leave their faces so that the living could begin again in earnest. That was unwise. She knew that that was unwise. You had to keep their memory burning brightly and then they did not really die, then you could speak to them at their graveside or in your own living room. You had, in effect, lost nothing.
He's too late now. He's not coming. Probably he's down at the corner with his friends and the girls who hang around with them. He still blushed when she mentioned the possibility of there being a special girl in his life. He still shook his head. He was a fine-looking boy. He would not stay innocent for much longer. Fifteen. Fifteen. That's how old she had been ... But what's the use? No bloody use at all.
Here she was, nearly thirty-two, having done nothing with her life other than bring up Sandy. She knew that she could not put into words how important that made him to her. He was everything, and she thanked God that the townspeople had taken to him at last and let him become one of them.
She had always resented their shunning her. She still felt bitter sometimes. The years had been hard. They could have been harder, yes, but they would have been a lot easier had she been accepted and not made subject to stupid rumours about witchcraft and the like. She felt like sticking pins in the whole lot of them.
If only they would accept her, or even cast her out altogether. But no, instead there were the looks and whispers, the snide jokes. They would go no further. If she pressed them, they would tell her that they were merely having a bit of fun, no harm meant. They were cowards; neither cold nor hot. She found them despicable, and yet this was still her town, and these were still her people. Some of them were reasonable people, of course. The minister was very nice, and Andy made all the difference. Would he visit her this evening? She could not remember having arranged anything, but he might turn up anyway. Her stomach began to growl.
She sat at the table and ate her meal in silence. She heaped food on to Sandy's plate, covered it, and placed it in the warm oven. She then washed and dried the dishes, pots and utensils before making herself some coffee and taking it through to the living room. She looked out of the window for a while, then closed the curtains and switched on the television. She stood in front of the television and sipped her coffee. Eventually she sat in her chair, sighing once before doing so. She resigned herself to sitting like this for several hours. It was a dour prospect. On the screen a quiz show was reaching its climax. A couple from the west coast were dressed up in rabbit costumes and acting out a kind of pantomime. She thought of them sitting at home watching themselves and feeling embarrassed, but laughing it off because they had won the tea service and the grandfather clock and the decanter with six crystal glasses. These prizes would be crammed into their already overflowing house, and if they had video-recorded their efforts they would inevitably show it to any visitor from now until New Year. They would show off the decanter on a shelf in their wall unit. They would open a cupboard, and there, in shadowy hibernation, would be the tea service, awaiting that elusive 'special occasion'. They would squeeze past the dully ticking grandfather clock in their narrow hall when they went to bed at night. Their life had been full. Mary wondered why she watched these programmes at all. They did not excite her.
People shopping on the following morning would talk about the television programmes, would mention the prizes on the quiz shows admiringly. They seemed excited by it all. Real people, she supposed, were being shown winning for a change, but it was a hollow enough victory.
There was a knock at the door: one, two, three in rapid succession -- Andy. She flicked channels to a documentary, and examined herself in the mirror. It was far too late to do anything about her appearance. She hurried to the door and opened it. The street lamp was on now, though the sky was still blue, a deepening blue as if it were a sea rather than a sky. Andy was smiling.
'Sorry for interrupting,' he said, but she was already ushering him awkwardly inside. 'And so late. I hope I'm not. . .'
'Nonsense, Andy. I was going out of my mind. Yet another quiet night in front of the goggle-box.' She felt more relaxed once the door was closed, separating them from the outside world of looks and whispers, whispers and looks. She could feel him relax too. 'Sandy didn't come home this evening, so I've not spoken to a soul all day.' This was a white lie. She had spoken to the usual people whom she met while shopping. She had also spoken to her mother, who would turn in her grave if she heard her daughter lying. Mary giggled to think of it, and Andy continued to smile.
'Anything good on the box?' he asked, still a slight distance from her.
'No,' she answered, nearing him and hugging his waist.
'We'll switch it off.' Their lips touched.
They had met at a parents' night. She had spent an age that evening in her bedroom making herself presentable.
She always liked the teachers to know that Sandy's mother was nicer than local folklore would have them believe. Mr Wallace was quite new to the school then, and quite new to the area.
An outsider, she had thought, a bit like herself.
They had got on famously. It had been a few weeks later, however, when they had bumped into each other in Kirkcaldy, that he had actually asked her if they might go for a drink some evening. She had asked him if that were not rather irregular, having already decided to go. He had mumbled something flattering. Yes, it was that meeting that stayed in her mind rather than the more formal first encounter. She had wondered at the time about the propriety of the thing, but Sandy had not batted an eyelid on discovering their attachment. Word spread like wildfire, of course, and the town saw it as a bewitchment. She had made a schoolteacher break the silent golden rule. Andy's headmaster had spoken to him twice about it, but as yet the young man was refusing to give in to any discreet pressure.
He still saw the mother and he still taught the son, and the town still whispered with hissing venom behind their backs.
Carsden had become just a little colder since then, but Andy did not care. He knew that he was infatuated, and he knew that the infatuation was worth anything, even if it meant having to resign. Sometimes he wondered if the woman with the old hair and young face, who could tell so many bitter tales, really was a witch. Sometimes there seemed no other explanation. Then he would become rational again and smile at his foolishness. Just as he was smiling now, sitting with a cup of coffee in one hand while the other curved against Mary's back. The radio playing old songs. The newly kindled fire sparking its way into life.
'I had a letter from my brother this morning,' Mary said.
'He's very interested in you. He likes to take an interest in what's going on.'
'He's never been back here, has he?' asked Andy, pushing gently at the tight contours of her spine.
'Not for a long time,' she said.
3
Weeds sprouted regally through the growing mesh of lawn around the mansion. They crept, too, along and up the cracked and flaking walls. Silent, insidious, they coloured the air with an aroma of rank and abundant decay, and tinted the house with the hue of disuse.
The mansion was silent beneath their onslaught, like an exhausted and dying elephant, once majestic. Its large g
round-floor windows were securely covered by sections of wood which had dried and moistened through recurring seasons, twisting and knotting their sinews like those of a living thing. The upper floor, with its slightly smaller windows, had shutters too, but parts of these had slipped and fallen, allowing areas of glass to appear as targets for an evening's energetic and restless children. These jagged edges of glass caught the red of the early evening sun and seemed to run rust-coloured streaks to the wood beneath them.
People usually averted their eyes from this building whenever they passed, for they felt chilled by the boarded up windows, by the complacent and public display of what was, after all, a slow death. The grand illusion of ownership.
The mansion, built in the late nineteenth century at the request of, it was said, a close friend of the Earl of Wemyss, was best known for the role it had played of hospital. No local knew its complete history, but it was known that it had once been Fife's first hospital for the treatment of tuberculosis, and many patients had entered through its doors for the promised revolutionary treatments. Its wards had quickly filled with those admitted by the local doctor and those from further away who hid in small private rooms and were visited daily by well-dressed people burdened with flowers and boxes of delicate chocolates. Curiously, the patients themselves all looked the same: the same pallid faces and heavy chests, the same defeated eyes. They would sit all day in front of the large windows and soak up what sunshine there was. This was in the early 1900s. Later, with tuberculosis a menace of the past, the hospital became a home for shell-shocked war veterans. Cries could be heard over the growing hamlet, the cries of men for whom war was still a raging demand on their nightmares. Later still, the local doctor moved into the sprawling house, but, finding it ghost-ridden and difficult to heat, soon moved out and into a smaller house which had once belonged to one of the local pit managers. People knew even then, in the 1960s, that the town was in some way preparing for its last stand, and the mansion became a symbol of incipient decay and neglect. No one, it seemed, wanted a ghostly house, a large damp house, a rambling hospital which had once been splashed with blood and bile and the echoing groans of madness and death.
So it was that, after countless raids by gangs of children, the edifice was nailed shut. A local solicitor still held details of its owner and value, should any offer be forthcoming, but that was just so much dust and fawn-edged paper in some long-forgotten file. Much of the lead now gone from the roof, tarpaulin and polythene having taken its place, the mansion was a soiled relic, a fitting beast to be overlooking the smoky town from its slight and now anachronistic prominence, its quarter-mile of distance.
But home still to some.
Home almost to Sandy, who kicked at the pale yellow heads of the weeds as he crossed the raging lawn, scraping mud from his shoes on to the grass, hacking out the roots of purple-headed thistles with the heel of his left foot. He aimed at a dandelion and it swirled into nothingness with a feathery puff, its seeds scattering on the air towards the house itself. Sandy felt one strand tickling his nose. He sneezed and wiped his nose against the sleeve of his jersey, having pulled the arm down past the cuff of his jacket. 'God bless,' he said to himself. He made his way around to the back of the house. From here he could see across the low wall to the golf course and the countryside beyond. Very occasionally there was money to be made in the summer by caddying for those golfers who wanted their friends to see how affluent they were. He would have to keep that in mind now that the warmer weather was bringing those types out of hibernation. The only figures he could see on the course at present were already walking away from the first tee, and so had their backs to him. He clasped his hands around the drainpipe, tested it for the strain, and began to climb, his shoes scraping hard at the wall for support, kicking off tiny chippings of plaster, exposing even more of the brickwork beneath. His cheek grazed the rusting drainpipe. It was cold and ragged. When he looked up, the sun tried to blind him by flashing its light on to the shards of the window above.
Not far to go now, though.
The first time he had climbed this drainpipe he had been petrified, had needed a push from below and the hissed advice not to look down. That had been when the house was a haven for children. They had wandered its corridors, let loose in an adult and sacred environment. They had made play of its rooms and its staircase. Now Sandy climbed quickly and skilfully, his legs sliding behind him as he moved in peristalsis towards the window ledge. That was always the most difficult part: at the top he had to swing towards the sill. His eyes would be catching side-swipes of countryside and he could feel the space beneath him trying to pull him down. His hand would rake across the sill, pushing at the wooden board until it fell back with a clatter into the dusty gloom of the house. The slight smell of mould caught his throat then, and made his heart beat a little more strongly. The feet swung out, caught the sill, hung over it, one hand still grasping the drainpipe while the other gripped the window frame. Then he had to release his hold on the pipe and heave himself inside. For a second he would be hanging back into space, his legs threatening to weaken as they tightened on the sill. Fear as much as anything drove his slow body through those few final inches. His arms ached from overuse, but he was safe. Looking out he saw only the vertical drop which would once have made him dizzy. He replaced the wooden board and was suddenly in a deep, shadowy half-light.
He was in a large room which would once have been a ward. The floorboards creaked from his unusual pressure upon them. The walls were grey-green, histories almost in themselves. The door was closed. He held his breath a little and turned the handle, then opened the door quickly in order to have it over and done with. He was in an empty corridor. The windows along its length threw substantial shadows across his path. He walked uneasily along the corridor, past several open doors which, thankfully, let him peer into their dull interiors to assure him that nothing was there. He found himself, in the end, confronted by a closed door which had to be opened if he was to continue. By now, though, it was more a game than anything else. No surprises had been planned today, and he could relax. He opened the door easily, just as he would have the living-room door at home, and walked into a room which contained two dark figures who shuffled away from him.
Sandy smiled at them. The man came forward and ruffled his hair.
'And how are you, Sandy boy?' His voice was clear and deep. It might have been Irish, sounding as if it had been arranged specially for the occasion, as one would have arranged a room in which to receive visitors. Smooth as a velvet dress, it faded behind him as its owner left the room:
'Just going to take a leak.' The door was pulled shut until only a gash of crimson light was left to lend any reality to the scene.
There she was, though, crouching low by the fireplace, her arms stretching down to the floor as she balanced herself on her toes. She felt comfortable like that, she had told him.
She was a black cat about to strike. Sandy smiled towards her blurred face, etching her with an inner eye before approaching. He squatted down near her.
'Hello, Rian,' he said. She brushed her hair away from where it lay across her solemn face. Her eyes seemed to cut through the space between them like metal through water.
He was, as always, affected by her, and he coughed his nervous little cough and bowed his head to a meditative silence. Bugger you, he thought. I'll not speak again till you do. They sat and awaited the brother's return. Sandy was about to speak when the door opened behind him.
'Hands off, Sandy. That's my bloody sister that you're manhandling there.' He adjusted his crotch as he entered, as though he really had been urinating. Sandy smiled and the young man chuckled. 'I know you young lads,' he continued, 'and you're all after just one thing. You won't let up until you get it. Well not from my sister you don't.' He chuckled again and Sandy smiled compliantly. The man was glancing nervously towards the girl. Sandy knew that for all his bravado, all the shoulder-punching and joking, Robbie really feared the girl. It was t
he fear that he would go too far in his jokes, in his teasing, the fear that she was more than she seemed. It appeared to Sandy that this somehow gave him an amount of power over the brother. He could sit in silent naivety and wait. Wait for all time. His eyes now sought those of the girl, but they were not yet to be had.
Robbie lit a candle between them, kneeling so as to make a triangle of crouched figures.
That's better,' he said. 'It's definitely getting lighter these evenings, though, Sandy.' The boy nodded. Robbie, for all his ways, was only five or so years older than him. His growth of beard was thin and slow, and his eyes were playful and filled with a bright life still to be lived. Yet he was his sister's protector, and so was a man. He had been a man almost from the day Rian had been born. His aunt had provided the feeding of the pair of them, it was true, but the small boy who had watched his mother's newly dead face being covered with a lace handkerchief and who had touched her cold forehead while simultaneously hearing the mewling of the new-born baby had known at once that he had somehow become his own father, though he could not be allowed to run away as his father had done so bitterly. His sister and he were inextricably joined by thick blood, and he would be a little soldier, as his Aunt Kitty repeatedly told him to be, and fend for his sister until the time came for an adult parting. Thereafter he had held tiny, rubber-bodied Rian in his arms as gingerly as if she had been a good china plate.