by Ian Rankin
He looked at her casually, but her face was innocence. She spoke on. The first time she had seen Robbie drunk. The first time she had been sent to beg for money. The time they had moved to the mansion. All the times. The sun was coming down low over them, curving down from its once great height until it swathed them in gold. Sandy thought that it must be getting late. Finally Rian coughed and said, 'Sandy, I've got to tell you. Promise you won't say anything.
Promise.' Her insistent eyes made him nod his head. She lowered her eyes then and spoke on, while gulls played on the seashore and a small boy poked with a stick at shadowy things by the waterline.
'I told you that you must trust me and not believe anything Robbie tells you. You've got to believe what I'm telling you now. Robbie is fed up with me. He's fed up of having to go out begging. He knows that it's me that brings in the money anyway. He's started to sell me, Sandy.' Her voice faded to nothing for a second. She coughed again, swallowed, and continued. 'I've got to do things for money, you know, with men. Nothing really serious. But it's horrible.' Her voice became a whisper, like a ghost in his burning ear. 'Robbie makes me give him the money. It saves him having to do any work himself, you see. That man in the alley ... You almost ... Well, you know.'
I don't really know, Rian, he wanted to say. Tell me. Tell me. He was ashamed of his grown erection, but there was disgust in his heart. Beer and pie and fruit churned uneasily in his stomach.
'It's not anything too serious yet, but I'm afraid. We had to leave the camp, you know. It was because our Auntie Kitty wanted to use me for much the same thing, I think. I'm not sure now. But Robbie still goes to see her. I think she's poisoned his mind against me. Oh, Sandy.. .' Tears glimmered in her lashes, but would not fall. 'I don't know what to do. Robbie's all I've got. Don't tell him I told you. Please don't. But I had to tell you. I had to. I love you, Sandy.' She looked at him and sniffled.
Sandy was staring hard at the beach where two gulls fought over a scrap of food. He was thinking back to his evenings in the mansion. It did not seem to fit. Hadn't Robbie been the one who looked scared? Hadn't Rian seemed the strong one? Robbie had been quite good to him, had said things. He could not think straight. Sandy thought that it must be after five. The film would be coming out. He had to catch the bus. His mother. His friends. What about Robbie?
'What about Robbie?' he said.
'What time is it?' she asked. He shrugged his shoulders.
Easily, she slid from the sea-wall and walked coyly over to a strolling man, who told her the time with a leer. Sandy examined her, this girlfriend of his. He realised that he had not the power to make her truly his, that any decision would be hers and hers alone. He shrugged off the knowledge, but felt wounded by it all the same.
'It's just five o'clock,' she said. 'I suppose I should go and get Robbie.'
They walked along the esplanade together, their bodies about a foot apart, their arms dangling close to each other.
They spoke little. He left her near the snooker hall and walked back along the esplanade towards the bus stop. He went into an amusement arcade and was asked by the proprietor if he could prove his age.
'I'm just past eighteen,' he protested.
'Well, you don't look it, son. If you don't have any means of proving your age then you'll have to go.'
'But I got served at the Harbour Tavern!'
He found himself astonished and back on the pavement.
Seagulls laughed overhead. He glared at them as they swerved high in their inviolable space. He would build wings and swoop up beside them, grabbing with nimble hands and throttling them into his sack. Nobody would laugh at him then.
Colin, Clark and Mark were unmistakable, even against the low and orange sun. They were coming down from the High Street like spent gunslingers. Sandy walked towards them.
'Hello, Sandy. What was the film like?' asked Colin before Sandy could ask him the same question. 'Did you get in?' It took a second for the truth to dawn on Sandy.
'Of course I did,' he said. 'Where were you lot?'
'We didn't get in. Not old enough,' said Colin, while Mark and Clark asked Sandy for details. The four young boys, nearly men but not quite accepted as such, walked with hands in pockets towards a revving bus, Sandy lying to his friends gloriously about a film he had just not seen.
'I'm sorry,' said Mary. She was sobbing. Her blouse was disarranged. She plucked fibres of wool out of the travel-rug.
Andy rubbed his hair, scratching at the scalp. He sighed.
'No, I'm sorry, Mary,' he said. 'I shouldn't even have tried.
I apologise. I don't know . . . the wine and everything. I just felt, well, I'm sorry.'
Mary's sobbing increased. She shook her head violently.
'No, no, no,' she said, 'it's not you. It's me. Me. I'm to blame.
But you've got to listen to me, Andy. I don't want to talk about it, but you must listen.'
Andy lay back. The sun was low over the hills. They seemed so very far away from everyone and everything. Yet it had not happened. He had planned it all to perfection, but Mary had not allowed it to happen. He felt embarrassment more than anything else. He had timed everything so well.
The second bottle of wine had been finished. Mary had been lying on her back with her eyes closed. A light breeze had curled around the rock, wafting over her face, drawing fine strands of silver hair across her eyes. Andy had bent low over her and kissed her neck, then her chin, then her ready mouth. He had slid down beside her and held her in his arms. Finally, and a long time later it was, she had panicked and pushed him away, gasping. She had sat upright and rigid. She had begun to weep.
Now she summoned up the courage to speak.
'Andy,' she said, 'I've not slept with a man for over sixteen years.' She was still pulling fibres out of the travel-rug. Andy watched her fingers as they slashed at the wool. 'In fact, since the night .. . the night Sandy was . . . was conceived.
I've slept with no man since that night.' She looked up at him. Her eyes were difficult to interpret, melting yet defiant.
'I'm frightened, that's all. I need time. Please give me time.'
These words were evenly spaced by slight pauses, as if she were rehearsing a speech. Andy's eyes were on hers as she spoke, but she closed her eyes suddenly as if fatigued. A single tear pushed from her eye like a chick escaping from its shell and wriggled its way down her cheek.
'Do you want to talk about it?' he asked softly. She shook her head. He wanted to press the point, but could not. She lay in his arms and slumbered until the sun fell away from the earth and the evening grew too cool for human sleep. It was time to return home.
9
The elderly man, hands dumped in his pockets as if stitched to the material, spat on to his favourite spot of pavement and watched the boy through slanted eyes. He had just left the bookmaker's, having lost a couple of crucial pounds, and was now, in his eternal bitterness, confronted by the memory of his only son's tragic death. He watched closely as the boy jauntily walked down from the direction of Cardell towards him. He curved his hands into taut fists. He was old perhaps, but there was strength in his heart for hatred, and hatred was what he felt for the boy and the whore of a witch who was his mother.
Sandy came to the low wall around one of the elderly persons' bungalows. He hoisted himself on to it and, dangling his legs, thought about Rian and her cryptic words to him. Could he believe her? And if he did, what more was she hiding from him?
The sun was shining again, and there was even sceptical talk in the town of a drought. Sandy looked across the road to where the fruit shop sat. He had no money today for fruit.
A small foreign car slowed as it near him. It stopped. The window was rolled down slowly and a voice called him over to the car. A bearded but young man craned his head out of the window as far as his seat-belt would allow. His blue eyes glistened.
Sandy could not meet their intensity. He looked casually off into the distance as he crouched beside the yell
ow car. He saw an old man's figure hunched outside the betting shop. He knew who that man was. His eyes found their only shelter on the mottled tarmac of the pavement.
'Sorry,' the man was saying, 'but I'm trying to find St Cuthbert's Parish Church. I think these instructions must be wrong.' He rustled a piece of paper on which were drawn several black lines. His voice was Scottish, but never Fife.
He was certainly educated. He sounded like a television presenter. 'I've been there before, but I'm afraid my sense of direction must be hopeless.' Sandy nodded and creased his brow.
'Well,' he said slowly, 'you've got to go back the way you just came, but then turn left over the bridge.' The man nodded. He had come from the right, from central Fife, from further afield, from Edinburgh perhaps.
'Thank you very much,' the man said. 'I'm to be the new minister here, God and the people willing. Can I expect to see you and your parents at church some day?'
Sandy stared at him. The cheek of the man! He was grinning through his beard, and Sandy creased his own mouth wryly.
'Some day,' he said. 'Some day.' The minister laughed. It was a great big open natural sound. Sandy liked the new minister so far. The window was rolled up. The car drew away, did a quick three-point turn, and, with a toot of its horn, a toot Sandy acknowledged with a casual wave, made off. Sandy had decided to ignore the old man. Let him stare.
He had as much right to be here as anyone.
Matt Duncan spat again. He had been in this town for sixty years. Was he not the man to ask directions off? But no, someone had stopped and asked the dirty black little upstart. Well let them, and let everyone forget about his son Matty. Let the town forget that tragedy; the wickedness of the witch. He would never forget. He forged horseshoes made of fire in his heart. There could be no forgetting. His son had died by fire. Now fire burned within the father. Let them all forget. But before he, Matt Duncan, died, there would be a reckoning. He screwed up his eyes until only a thin sliver of vision remained. In this sliver, the boy, seated again on his wall, became a blurred thing, a crouched goblin, the spawn of a witch, something insignificant which Matt Duncan would have squashed with a hardened and unfeeling palm as if eradicating a sin.
There were some little notebooks in a cupboard, and inside these discoloured relics, in the tiniest, neatest script, her grandmother had written down recipes for certain herbal curatives. This, to Mary's knowledge, was as close as her grandmother had ever come to witchcraft.
She took the biscuit tin full of notebooks to her bedroom, closed the door properly, and sank on to the bed. She had let herself down. If she was frightened by Andy, gentle Andy, then she was ruined and would be better off dead. She did not seek a poison yet, but was looking for some recipe for the relaxing of women under stress. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that the problem was deeper than could be cured by any drug, yet she had to try, had to do something. Else she would go off her head. For Sandy's sake, she could not do that yet. Sandy. Sandy. He was her life's work, her everything. If only he was a little older. He seemed in a limbo: still tied to school, and yet not doing anything with his remaining time there. He was at an age that was no age.
She wished she could help him, but then who was she to help anybody? She leafed through the fragile books, but found the writing difficult. Photographs showed that her grandmother had been a tiny creature with a pointed, puckered face and childish hands. White strands of hair flaked loose from her bun. She looked comical, ancient and wise. Sandy used to marvel that, to an extent, he was her kin. He would study her photographs for hours when a child, asking his mother and grandmother impossible questions as to identities of people and places. The album of loose photographs was now left untouched, and only seldom added to, such as in the period immediately after she had given Sandy a camera for his eleventh birthday. Photographs were memories of happy times. Perhaps that was why the album had become so little used. Ever since . . . Oh, she could burst that knowledge from her mouth! It was intolerable. Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, why have you never asked who your father was? Why? And why had she kept it bottled up all those years to have doubt and rumour still cast upon her?
She put a notebook to her nose and, sniffing its powerful smell, closed her eyes to let the weeping begin. She sat there, convulsed, and allowed her tears to drop noisily into the biscuit tin, splashing the ancient mementoes within.
The Reverend Iain J. M. Darroch, MA, BD, looked around his new church. It was a dull, dreary old building, smelling of polished pews and damp rafters. The only ornamentation came from the brass rails, the stained-glass depiction of Christ, and the empty vases on the window sills. He paced the floor between the aisles. He had been driven here for a preliminary look at the place a few days before, but had not really been looking at all. He looked now, though. A regular congregation of one hundred and thirty. One hundred communicants. It was dreary, but then he liked the prospect of a challenge, after the stuffiness of the degree itself and the nightmare time he had spent in the Oxgangs district of Edinburgh as an assistant. That had been a terrible year, a year which had cast doubt on his abilities. But here he was: his first full parish, if he were accepted. Things could only get better.
Mr Ancram, the elder he had met on his first visit, came into the church through the small door beside the pulpit. He greeted the young minister cordially, apologising for not having been present on his arrival. Did he wish to go across to the manse? Did he have his things with him? Iain Darroch replied that the car was pretty full, and that a furniture van would be bringing the bulk of his possessions in a few hours' time. Mr Ancram nodded. Mr Ancram and two other members of the Vacancy Committee had been to see the Reverend Darroch preaching at Oxgangs on the previous Sunday. All three thought that there would be no problem regarding his acceptance by their congregation. The minister looked around his new church one last time. He knew that his first sermon would have to be stimulating, or else he would soon lose his parishioners and his congregation.
They feared young ministers around here, the minister of nearby Cardell Parish Church had written to inform him.
He hoped to meet with that minister, the Reverend Walker, soon. But first he would have to get settled in and finish the inaugural sermon, which he had been preparing for the past three days. He would lose no kirkgoer without a fight. And he would succeed, with God's grace.
Iain Darroch had been born in the East Neuk of Fife, the nose of the Scottie dog when Fife is examined on a map.
Crail had been a quiet fishing port, more a tourist spot than an actual working harbour, though once it had been industrious and important. As a child, he had been uninterested in the quayside, in the lobster creels and their dark snapping catches. He had been a bookworm; not enough in the sun, his parents contended. They might well have been right. He was now pallid and skinny. The beard had been grown to hide his sallow face, but still it could be seen in his watery eyes. His mother had been proud of his intention to become a minister. His father had been surprised, but had said little. So, without much of the congratulation which the boy had assumed would be his, he had entered the local university of St Andrews, going on to do his Divinity degree at Edinburgh. This was his end. A town in Fife, more dead than alive.
Not one of the East Neuk's prosperous and civilised villages, but a redundant mining town, a town where God was needed, but was perhaps so seemingly absent as to have been rejected altogether by the majority of the inhabitants. Yet the town boasted two kirks - his own (his own]) and Reverend Walker's. He hoped that there would be no poaching, then rebuked himself to the cloudless sky.
'Couldn't have asked for a nicer day,' said Mr Ancram.
'Very true,' said Iain Darroch. He crossed the busy road.
'Where does this road go?' he asked.
'Kirkcaldy that way,' said the elder, 'and Lochgelly the other. Which way did you come in?'
'I think I misread my directions. I came in through Lochgelly, but then ended up coming through Dundell.'
Tes, that's a
long road round all right. Still, it's the only way to find your way around, isn't it?'
'True, very true.' Iain Darroch was aware that, in his attempt to impress Mr Ancram, he was sounding boringly ministerial, very self-righteous. He sounded like his minister at Oxgangs. He rebuked himself again for that cruel thought. The Devil was afoot today.
The manse was a small detached house. 'Used to belong to one of the pits,' explained Mr Ancram. 'One of the foremen or something used to stay in it. Belonged to St Cuthbert's since about 1965,I suppose. A nice little place. Maybe a bit roomy for a bachelor. The Reverend Davidson and his poor wife liked it well enough.'
Ancram looked at him. It was the first hint. They liked their ministers to be married, thought Darroch. He said,
"Yes, I saw it when I was here on Monday. Do you remember? Yes, it is a nice house.'
Mr Ancram opened the door with a small batch of keys, then handed the whole bunch to the minister. 'All yours, Mr Darroch. You'll find out what they're for.' He smiled. The minister smiled back. He felt thankful for his beard. It could be used as a defence against the outside world. He hid behind it now as one would have hidden behind a clump of gorse. He entered his home, his new home. It smelled of past occupants. He blessed it silently when he entered, hoping that the past occupants would take the hint and skedaddle with their aromas of old beds and polished dressers. He opened the doors and some of the windows that would actually open. He looked in drawers and cupboards and was pleased to find that, as promised, the house boasted sufficient linen, cutlery and crockery for his immediate needs. He brought in some of the boxes from his car, aided by Mr Ancram. From the first of these he took an electric kettle. He let the tap in the kitchen run for a full minute, then filled the kettle and plugged it in to a handy socket.