‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, and disappeared.
‘Aye, fine, Rory,’ Bunty smiled from beside the fire, barely looking up from her crossword.
Kathy had no idea what caused that tight feeling in her throat. Maybe it was the wheels of the van spinning more than usual as he drove off; he wasn’t like his father, he drove well. She picked up the discarded binoculars and sat by the window, spinning the focus adjustment till Angus’s boat came sharply into view. He was still there, like a rock. Then she moved slightly to where Rory was launching the old rowing boat and pulling hard towards Angus, and somewhere, somehow, she knew. Time stood still as she watched Rory tie his boat to his father’s and jump aboard. Holding her breath she watched him bend over Angus and touch his shoulder, his face inclined towards the sitting figure. She saw Rory’s head drop, a gesture so heavy with meaning that she had to bite her lip to stop from crying out, then he knelt in front of Angus and put his arms around him.
‘I’ve got this one wrong,’ Bunty said behind her. ‘Damn the thing to hell! Why does no one ever help a senile old woman with these crosswords?’
‘Because,’ said Kathy from a long, long way away, ‘you curse us all if we offer suggestions.’
She was wondering what to do next, thoughts rushing frantically about her mind. Rory was on his own out there, he would need some help.
‘That’s only because you get them all wrong,’ Bunty said. ‘Macdonald himself puts you up to it, I know that fine, he bribes the lot of you to give me bum steers.’ She looked up at Kathy and smiled. ‘What is it you’re watching this long time?’ she asked.
‘Oh, the loch, you know,’ Kathy said brightly. ‘I think it’s being away from it that makes it look so perfectly when you come back again that you can’t stop looking at it.’
‘Aye, Rory used to say the same every time he came back,’ she said, returning to curse her crossword once more.
Kathy raised the binoculars to her eyes once more. She could hear her own breathing and heartbeat so loud in her ears that she wondered if Bunty could hear them too and tried to calm them. Rory was still kneeling in the boat holding his father; she would have to do something. Just then the phone rang and she got up as slowly as she could and went to the kitchen to answer it.
‘It’s Father O’Neill here,’ said a voice. ‘I was wondering if Angus was on for a game tonight?’
‘Father! Thank God!’ Kathy whispered.
‘Now that can’t be you, Kathy Kelly,’ he chuckled.
‘Father, shutup and listen—’
‘Ah, now that’s more like it!’
‘Father, this is serious! Angus is out on the water, but something’s wrong. Rory’s with him, but he’ll need help bringing him in. I can’t leave Bunty, she doesn’t know. Get your boat and go out and help him.’
She replaced the phone and went back into the reading room. ‘It was Father O’Neill,’ she said brightly. ‘He’s after another drubbing at chess, I told him to call back later.’
Bunty nodded. ‘You know, I think I’ll have a lie down,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to get heated up at all, maybe I need my rest a wee bit early today.’
Later, Kathy would go over that remark and wonder if Bunty already knew, if some sixth sense had alerted her. She helped Bunty to bed and put her electric blanket on.
‘Now, you’re sure this is safe?’ Bunty demanded. ‘I’m never sure if you’re in cahoots with Macdonald. Maybe he has put you up to this for a cut of the insurance money, frying a helpless old woman in her bed!’
‘A helpless old woman!’ Kathy scoffed. ‘Listen to you, you’re more lethal now than you ever were! And yes, it is safe to have it on these days, move with the times, woman!’
By the time she got back to the window and lifted the binoculars to her eyes the three boats had reached shore, Father O’Neill’s tied to Rory’s and trailing behind Angus’s as the priest sat at the back, steering homewards, and Rory still holding his father. She watched as Rory jumped from the boat and made for the van, leaving Father O’Neill to hold Angus, then between them they lifted him gently into the back of the van. As they brought him up the hill Kathy opened the front door.
‘My father’s dead,’ Rory said.
‘I know.’
‘Where’s my mother?’
‘She went for a rest, she’s probably asleep now.’
‘Good. We’ll take him into the reading room. Call the doctor.’
She nodded, but as she turned she caught sight of the lifeless figure in the back of the van and, feeling all the strength suddenly going from her legs, she steadied herself by holding on to the door for a moment. She couldn’t take it in, it couldn’t be happening.
Rory looked at her sharply. ‘I don’t need this!’ he said angrily. ‘Pull yourself together and stop indulging yourself, there are things we have to do!’
A retort stuck in her throat, though she had no idea what it would have been.
‘Move!’ hissed Rory. ‘Now!’ and he pushed her roughly inside the house.
It seemed that Angus had been having heart trouble for years. When he first found out he wrote to Rory, and Rory had immediately come home. Many of those trips Rory had taken him on were for checkups; he could’ve gone any time, but he’d lasted years longer than the doctors had predicted. He had told only Rory, he had even kept it from Bunty. When she woke from her sleep that autumn day the doctor had already signed Angus’s death certificate, but he decided to stay on in case Bunty needed him. Rory went into the room alone and told her of Angus’s death. Kathy never knew what words he used, but when she went in afterwards, Bunty was suddenly years older than she had been two hours before. Kathy sat on the bed beside her, the two of them wordlessly holding hands. What was there to say when they were beyond grief?
There was no undue ceremony. Angus was placed in the coffin he had carved all those years ago just as he was, wearing the garb he wore every day of his life, and arrangements were made to take him for cremation in Inverness, some seventy miles away. Bunty asked for a few moments alone with him before they left the house. ‘So, Macdonald,’ Kathy heard her say as she closed the door behind her. ‘You’ve done it again, have you, you blaggard, gone away and left me behind here again?’
Kathy began weeping quietly, and Rory immediately grabbed her arm and held it hard.
‘Stop that right now!’ he said sternly. ‘My mother needs you, stop thinking of yourself!’
She hated him so much that she could’ve put her hands round his neck and choked him to death. Who did he think he was, the emotionless pig? She loved Angus, she worshipped him, which he obviously didn’t, who was he to tell her not to cry? ‘Have you any feelings at all?’ she demanded. ‘Because it seems to me that I care more about your father than you do!’
‘That’s enough!’ he said. ‘This is neither the time nor the place!’
Bunty was too frail to go with Angus to Inverness the next day but she demanded her right to do so anyway, and all the way there she kept repeating, ‘This isn’t how it was meant to be! I was supposed to go first!’ It was frightening how childlike she had become in little over twenty-four hours, looking to Rory and Kathy for reassurance on every detail, and much as she hated him, Kathy was secretly relieved that Rory was there. Had she been left to cope with this on her own she didn’t think she could’ve done it. At the crowded crematorium Father O’Neill gave a speech that was entirely non-religious. He spoke as Angus’s friend, not as a priest, and told some of the old stories, of the legendary bareknuckle fights with the old Major, of his endless quest to learn as much as he could about every subject, of how he had no time for ‘things’, religion or religious people, except to beat them at chess. There were murmurs of laughter, but Kathy couldn’t join in. She could only think of how impossible life would be without Angus, not only for Bunty, but for her too. And somehow her mother was mixed up in the event too, it was almost like reliving the day they’d buried Lily in St Kentigern’s all those years
ago. ‘It’s me,’ she thought miserably. ‘Everybody I love dies, it must be something about me.’
When they returned from Inverness Kathy had expected Angus’s ashes to be scattered, but Rory shook his head. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because I say so,’ he replied.
‘But I know that’s what he would’ve wanted!’ she protested. ‘He would’ve hated being kept in an urn like some bloody icon! Why are you doing this to him?’
Rory stared out of the window silently.
‘Why won’t you answer me?’ she demanded angrily. ‘You’re the most ignorant bastard I’ve ever met, but you could at least have the decency to explain this! I knew Angus, I loved him, I know he wouldnae have wanted this!’
‘Control yourself!’ he said, his voice full of contempt. ‘You’re behaving like a fishwife. Maybe that’s what you are, but I know he wouldnae have wanted this kind of behaviour in his house, on this day of all days, with his widow in the other room!’
The following week felt as though it had lasted a year. Bunty had withdrawn into herself, not leaving her bed and barely eating and, even then, only to please Kathy or Rory. Most of the time she slept and they could hear her calling for Angus in her sleep. Kathy came downstairs one morning just after eight o’clock and headed for the kitchen, thinking what she could make for Bunty’s breakfast that might tempt her to eat. As she passed the reading room she heard Rory’s voice. He was sitting at the table by the window.
‘Did you say something?’ she asked.
‘I said don’t bother.’
‘Rory, we’ve got to get her to eat again.’
‘She’s gone,’ he replied. ‘She died in her sleep. I heard her call for my father about four o’clock and when I came down she was dead.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ she demanded.
‘And what exactly do you think you could’ve done?’ he asked. ‘You’re good at resurrection, are you?’
Kathy stood by the window, looking out over the loch, her mind in turmoil once again.
‘Thank God she’s dead, it’s over,’ Rory muttered.
She gasped. Suddenly all the anger she had been holding in check, about losing Angus, losing Bunty and her happy home here, about Rory Macdonald himself, boiled up, and she slapped him hard across the face. He put a hand up to grab her wrist and fixed her with a cold stare.
‘Don’t you understand anything? She couldnae have lived without him, you stupid bitch!’ he said sternly. ‘It’s a blessing for my mother that she didnae have to go on too long. And I’ll give you that one slap, but you ever try it again and you’ll be leaving here in a hearse yourself!’ Still holding her wrist, he shook her so hard that she felt the pain in her shoulder. ‘Understand?’ he asked, then he let go of her abruptly and left the room.
She looked at her wrist, the white patches left by his fingers were taking a long time to turn pink again, but more than that, she realised that she had been frightened. For a split second there as he held her gaze, she had been scared of him, and she couldn’t figure out why. She had been battling people all her life, she had been facing them down and scaring them, yet with a few stern words and the look in his eyes he had terrified her so much that goose pimples were standing out over her entire body.
So there they were, just over a week later, returning to Inverness with the other carved coffin. They spent the journey there and back in silence, as they had the days since Bunty’s death, but when they arrived back at Glenfinnan Rory appeared in the kitchen doorway.
‘Come on,’ he said, and she followed wordlessly as he led the way to the hill outside. It was now October, dusk was falling and the wind was rustling the trees. Rory set the two urns on a flat rock, poured the contents of one into the other, then threw them into the air. They stood for a few moments, then he left her, returning to the house in silence. So that was why he hadn’t scattered Angus’s ashes. He had known from the start that Bunty wouldn’t survive long and he had wanted them to be together. She made her way back to the house. ‘Why didn’t you tell me when I asked you?’ she asked.
‘Why should I?’ he replied calmly, but it wasn’t really a question.
They lived in the house for a few days more, passing each other in silence and making sure they didn’t have to meet, at least Kathy did, knowing Rory wasn’t bothered one way or the other. Within a week her entire world had changed and she couldn’t quite work out what she should do next. There were phone calls for her about Con, as the doctors in the Southern General tried to work out what had caused his sudden paralysis, but she couldn’t have cared less. She knew they thought she was heartless, but she didn’t care about that either, she had something else on her mind, a numbing grief that had paralysed her just as surely as Con’s drinking had paralysed him. Then gradually she began to see a little more clearly. She would leave here, she told Rory, she couldn’t stay any longer.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘This is your home,’ she shrugged. ‘I was brought here to look after Bunty, and now Bunty’s gone.’
‘My father left a will,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a while before it’s sorted out, but he told me what was in it. The house and the grounds were to be left to both of us once my mother had died.’
‘What?’
‘Which of those words did you have trouble understanding?’ he asked.
‘But I don’t want it! This is your house, not mine!’
Rory shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about,’ he said quietly. ‘It doesn’t matter a damn to me, it’s only a thing, after all.’
‘But it doesnae make any sense!’ she protested. ‘I canny take your house! Honestly, Rory, I swear I didn’t put him up to this!’
He sighed. ‘Why is it that you have this need for melodrama?’ he asked. ‘It’s simple enough, surely? Why must we have these hysterics at every turn?’
‘I’m not hyster—’
‘And it says a helluva lot for your knowledge of my father after all these years if you think you could’ve influenced him about anything!’ he said scathingly. ‘He was his own man till the day he died.’
She sat down in Bunty’s chair by the fireside and, looking up, noticed that he was watching her. ‘I’m sorry!’ she said, jumping up. ‘I shouldnae have sat there!’
‘Christ Almighty!’ he said, getting up from the table and throwing the chair back so hard that it fell on to the floor. ‘Here we go again! Everything always has to be a drama with you! It’s only a bloody seat, woman, my mother’s not sitting there you know, you havnae sat on top of her!’ And with that he stormed out of the room. She had never seen him genuinely angry before these last few days. Mostly he said little to her or quietly ignored her, so his sudden rage added to the general sense of the world being out of control. Two more days passed in mutual avoidance before she tried to talk to him again, and she resolved to be as calm as she could. ‘We need to talk,’ she said, standing beside him as he read a newspaper in his usual place.
He folded the paper. ‘As long as we can do it without the Oscar-winning performance,’ he said without looking at her.
She sat as far across the room from him as she could. ‘About Angus’s will. It doesnae matter what he wanted, I don’t want this house.’
‘You’ve only got a half share,’ he said.
‘Stop it, Rory,’ she said quietly. ‘Who’s acting up now?’
He didn’t answer.
‘And I’ll have to leave, we canny stay here together like this. You know how people talk.’
‘Is your mind that narrow that you’d care about that?’
‘Aye, it is.’
‘So where will you go?’
‘I was thinking. The wee cottage down the road at Drumsallie, your father said it was yours.’
He looked up in surprise. ‘Old Edith’s place?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Is it?’
He laughed. ‘Aye, it is. But you wouldnae want that, it hasnae had any work done on it for yea
rs now, I’ve just let it go.’ He sat in silence, looking at her. ‘It would take a while to do it up, mind.’
‘Who was she? Edith?’
He laughed again. ‘She was a spinster lady of these parts!’ he said. ‘She was never married, but as they say, she was never neglected either! She dyed her hair orange, smoked fags, drank whisky and entertained many men.’
‘She was an old slapper, then?’
‘No, she was not!’ he said sternly. ‘No money changed hands, there’s a subtle difference. Edith just lived life as she wanted and didnae give a damn about what people thought. I used to drop in on my way back from school, got her messages, lit her fire, made sure she was all right. There was a lot of gossip about it at the time, she was seen as a bad influence on a growing boy. People even took it upon themselves to talk to Angus about it.’ He gave another burst of laughter.
‘What did Angus say?’
‘He just laughed at them! You know that way he had, you didnae so much hear it as see it in his eyes?’
Her eyes watered and she looked away.
‘Edith left me the cottage when she died. I was abroad at the time, I only found out when I came back years later. You havnae even seen inside it. You’re sure you want it?’
Chasing Angels Page 25