A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  That night, the girls in bed, Joanne sat at the fire with her knitting and a play on the Home Service to distract her. Bill came quietly into the room.

  “I didn’t hear you.” She put her knitting away. “Tea’s finished. I didn’t know if you’d be home.”

  All this said quietly, casually, trying to gauge his mood. At least he hadn’t been drinking—that she could tell.

  “It’s all right, I had some fish and chips in Eastgate. I was out that way to pick up supplies. I’m off out west soon.”

  “Again?”

  “Aye. A few problems on the site. Nothing that can’t be sorted out.”

  “Did you hear the news about the wee boy? The one that drowned in the canal?”

  “Aye, they were all talking about it in the chip shop.”

  “The news was probably around the town in five minutes,” Joanne guessed. “It’s so terrible. How could that happen in a safe place like this?”

  “It’s not the same since the war,” Bill reminded her. “Too many strangers have moved here.”

  Joanne was uncomfortable. They had had this conversation before. He disapproved of her friendship with the Corelli family. The air was full of static, their conversation fading in and out. Nothing of importance would ever be said, nothing that mattered ever be talked about. Her thoughts were as tangled as leftover wool in a knitting basket, and she rehashed all the well-worn thoughts that plagued her with increasing frequency: What kind of a marriage is this, we never communicate, we have children, we share a house but not much else. And the thoughts brought her back to the persistent nagging voice, the wee devil over her left shoulder, saying, there must be more to a marriage, to a life, surely there must.

  But she could not give up; for better or worse, in sickness and in health, she’d made her vows. She’d love, she’d honor, yes; it was the “obey” she had problems with. Within the first year of making those promises she had discovered she’d married a stranger, a damaged man, a Scottish man.

  “You have disgraced our family—don’t ever expect any help from us,” her mother had told her. So much for Christian charity, Joanne thought, and ten years on, her parents had not relented. No, there was no way out of a marriage, no place to go except to further disgrace. She couldn’t do that to the children.

  Laying aside her knitting and her frustrations, Joanne asked, “A cup of tea?”

  “Great.”

  She brought the tea. The ten o’clock news came on.

  “Switch that off.” Bill was sharp. “All this Suez nonsense, talk about bringing back conscription, I don’t need reminding. Another thing, they’re saying some maniac killed the wee boy. You stay at home with the girls till he’s caught. You’re only a typist. The Gazette can easily get someone else to fill in.”

  “You’re right.” That surprised him. “I’ll ask Don McLeod if I can rearrange my hours and work only when the girls are at school. I’ll walk with them in the morning and meet them in the afternoon.”

  There was not much he could say to that.

  Careful, scared, but encouraged by his silence and by the fact that he was there, at home for once, sitting by the fire with her, Joanne decided that it was now or never.

  “That Don McLeod in our office”—she tried a laugh—“a big gossip he is and no mistake.” She also knew better than to use McAllister’s name. Bill had vented some bitter remarks about the new editor-in-chief. “Them strangers from down south think themselves the bee’s knees,” Bill had remarked. Often. It was one of his mother’s favorite expressions too. He folded the paper to the sports pages, only half listening; he was not in the least interested in her work.

  “Aye, he’s heard that Mr. Grieg the town clerk is up to some shenanigans with council contracts.”

  Immediately alert, Bill tried not to look up from his page. “What did he say?”

  “Not much. Just that Mr. Grieg had better watch his step, that he was being talked about more than usual, and Don McLeod said he was onto Grieg’s tricks, and if Grieg doesn’t take care, he’ll get found out this time, for sure.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  Joanne was pleased; she’d successfully tiptoed around the subject, given Bill the hint without him blowing up. To her amazement, Bill started to explain some of his business dealings.

  “Thon Mr. Grieg, you’re right, he does throw his weight around. He makes it hard for small contractors to make an honest living. But it’s always the way when you take council contracts, they cut you to the bone, and that’s what they did to me with this job I have on over in the west.” He folded the paper. “But it’ll all work out, you’ll see.” He was sure of himself, something she had always admired. “Come over there with me, next time I go. The weather’s usually terrible but it would be a wee break.”

  Her eternal optimism drowned out the past few weeks, few years, of unhappiness. We’ll give it another go, she thought, another chance, it’ll be different this time. She had said this so many times before, it was getting harder and harder to persuade herself, but what choice was there? She was married—till death do us part.

  “Aye, I’d like a break. I’d like to get away from all this sadness.”

  This Sunday morning in churches and chapels and gatherings throughout the town was a time for fear and a time for reflection. This Sunday’s sermons were all on a common theme, the death of a child in their midst. This Sunday Joanne, along with many another parent, had faced the enormity of what had happened in their quiet community. But with other parents, Joanne had also felt a twinge of guilt as she counted her blessings, saying a quick prayer of thanks to God, who had spared her children.

  “Suffer the little children to come unto me … for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Duncan Macdonald quoted the scripture at his powerful, commanding yet comforting best. The prayers were for the dead, yes, but mostly for the living, those frightened, bewildered, at the very idea that something so terrible could happen. The minister, reminding them that faith and love would see them through, finished the service by leading the congregation in the singing of that ancient song of comfort, the Twenty-third Psalm. “The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want … ,” welled up to the ceiling, sung with spirit and the occasional tear, then a subdued congregation walked home, tightly holding on to the hands of their children, home to the Sunday lunch.

  Sunday lunch with the Macdonalds was always cheerful. Joanne loved visiting her sister and her daughters loved playing with their cousins. Taken around the ten-seater table in the most agreeable room in the house, the kitchen, where big sash windows looked onto the garden, lawn, fruit trees and vegetable patch, lunch was a family ritual. The children had been asked to gather the leaves off the lawn into a pile, but instead, they were playing, chasing and throwing handfuls and armfuls of the crisp autumn leaves. Thrown high into the cerulean blue, they fell from the heavens in gold and red showers onto dancing, cartwheeling children. Orange and gold and bronze leaves and leaf skeletons and earth-smelling dust clung to their jumpers and hair, making the dancing figures look like little leaf creatures from an illustration in a child’s book of Faeries.

  Granny and Grandad Ross very occasionally joined in these family gatherings and somehow it seemed right that they were here, that the whole family was together today. Except Bill Ross. It would have been most unusual if he had been at the table. At the sight of the children enjoying themselves, forgetting the solemnity of the day, Granny Ross couldn’t help herself. She rapped on the window. “Stop that. This minute. You’re in your Sunday best.”

  The children took no notice, pretending they couldn’t hear her.

  Elizabeth Macdonald set the pots with the homegrown vegetables on the Aga top, occasionally opening the slow oven to baste the lamb. They were awaiting the arrival of Duncan from his greeting and hand-shaking duties outside the church. Duties that could take a good half hour or so, as there was always someone who wanted “a wee word.” Joanne set the table, chatting with her sister, usually
about her new job and the people she met. Joanne loved these conversations. Her sister, and her sister’s family, were the only relatives she had left.

  Although Granny Ross disapproved of Joanne, her sister Elizabeth and her brother-in-law Duncan, him being a minister of the church had ameliorated her initial opinion of her daughter-in-law. “Not good enough for my son” was code for “brazen hussy.” Now it was “Too big for her boots” and that other expression, common throughout the land, used to describe any woman who thought for herself, who did not conform, who tried to better herself: “Who does she think she is?”

  Mrs. Ross senior expressed these opinions to no one but Grandad Ross, and he filtered his wife’s monologues as he filtered the background chatter from the wireless, only tuning in when his sixth sense told him that an “oh really?” or an “uh-huh” or a “grand” was needed.

  Granny Ross could stand it no more. She turned to Elizabeth.

  “The bairns are filthy. Look at them.”

  “They’re having a lovely time, aren’t they?” Elizabeth beamed. “Grandad, could you ask them to come in and have a good wash before lunch? Granny, could you look at the lamb for me? I think it’s about right.”

  She knew full well Granny Ross would sniff at the lamb, “Underdone,” she’d mutter, but that was how the minister liked it. The vegetables were almost raw, the tatties still had their skins on and Duncan insisted on draining the curly kale water into a mug, adding a good pinch of pepper and drinking it. Then he, a minister of the kirk, would serve himself and her husband, George, a glass of stout. He even offered some to the womenfolk.

  Duncan’s Ford Prefect crunched up the gravel driveway. The ordered ritual of the Sunday lunch began.

  Church first, Sunday school for the children, family lunch, then the Sunday Afternoon Walk, that was the time-honored ritual for most families. Unless they were Wee Frees. To Granny Ross’s eternal shame, her son refused to join them, hating church. Usually it was back to the house for dinner (she would have nothing to do with calling it lunch), where Granny Ross cooked; Grandad Ross read the Sunday Post; the children read the comic section of the paper starring Oor Wullie and the Broons; Grandad would check the football pools, listen to Two-Way Family Favorites on the Home Service and snooze in his chair.

  Then, early afternoon, come rain or shine or snow—maybe a blizzard would stop them, but nothing else—they would set off, dressed in their Sunday best, hats and all, on the Sunday Walk. The girls knew that sulking or complaining would get them nowhere, “fresh air makes children big and strong.”

  The Rosses’ route never varied. So, once out the garden gate, across the road, along past the rows of neat, tidy, identical bungalows, Granny Ross would start her monologue on the state of the neighbors’ gardens. The children had to be restrained from skipping too high or chatting too loud, and a shriek or a shout would result in a slap from their grandmother. It was Sunday, after all. Soon they reached the imposing iron gates of the cemetery.

  Granny Ross always read the Gazette in unchanging order. Births, Deaths and Marriages first, though in her case the order was Deaths, Births and Marriages. Who died, their age and where they were buried was of great importance. The volcanic plug and its surrounding acres, densely wooded, deeply mysterious, was the cemetery, Tomnahurich. On each side of a narrow spiral path winding to the top of the plug were the graves of previous centuries. Newer graves spread outward along wider gravel pathways on the flat. But the only place to wait for the Second Coming was right here. Granny Ross knew that and pitied anyone who had to lie in lesser grounds. There were burying places where others went to wait for the Resurrection. For Catholics, as they are going to hell for their popery, there was no need for a burial at all as far as Granny Ross was concerned. Religion for the north of Scotland was tribal. Ecumenical causes and the Iona idea of a loving Christianity were mostly ignored. The answer to “What church do you go to?” told more about a family than their profession or trade. The river was not the only divide in the town.

  Once through the gates, Annie and Wee Jean ran to the start of the climb. Up the winding paths, past lichen-covered gravestones, some staggering, some fallen, some placed flat, spiraling round the hill, up through the cold canopy of laurel and cypress and holly and oak, jumping over fallen tombstones, daring to tread on the dead, up to the top, to the panorama of town and firth and canal and river and off in the distance the snowcapped mass of Ben Wyvis, the children ran. Grandad, using his walking stick on the steeper parts, followed steadily, slowing to tip his hat to ladies and his betters, his wife following in his wake. The grandparents reached their favorite bench in their favorite spot, with a great view of the town gasworks, a good five minutes after the girls.

  “I’m fair peched,” Grandad said, as he said every Sunday.

  “That’s ’cos you’re old, Granda.” Wee Jean cooried into the old man’s side, hiding from the North Sea wind.

  “Where do we go when we die?” Annie started.

  “Heaven,” Granny sighed.

  “But maybe I’ll go to hell, like the Bible says.”

  Grandad said immediately, “Of course not,” but Granny secretly thought that there was something about this child that would lead to no good.

  “Good girls go to heaven and bad girls to the other place.” Granny had to get her bit in. She was ignored.

  “Grandad, tell us about the faeries,” both girls begged. They had heard the stories many times before and never tired of the telling.

  “Once upon a time there was a faerie queen. …”

  “And she lived in the woods on the hill called Tomnahurich,” they joined in.

  “And one day …” He continued with one of his many versions of the legends that added to the mysterious allure of the hill that physically and psychically dominated the town.

  Annie tried to pretend that the story was for babies like Jean but, as always, she too became absorbed in the tales. A girl who lived in her imagination, she often wondered if she was adopted or, more likely, kidnapped by the faeries and returned to the wrong family. But no, that couldn’t have happened as she was too like her mother; tall, skinny, thick brown hair with a curl and passionate green-gray eyes. But eyes that betrayed a suspicion of people.

  “Time to go,” announced Granny Ross. “My old bones are feeling the damp.”

  At the bottom of the hill they passed the new graves.

  “Will the faeries look after Jamie?” Wee Jean asked Grandad.

  Granny Ross grabbed the girl’s hand to hurry her out of the cemetery and continue the walk to the Islands, and to evade the question, scolded, “If you want your Sunday treat, we have to hurry.”

  It was most unusual for Mrs. Ross to forgo the pleasure of checking the new graves. Examining the wreaths, counting their number, reading the cards, this was the highlight of her week. Family wreaths were judged by their cost, others by the importance of the sender. The usual morbid questions from her eldest granddaughter were not what she needed, today of all days.

  The Islands were just that, a group of small, scattered islands in the middle of the river linked by a series of footbridges. Tunnels of trees, waterfalls, rapids, birdsong, benches along the sandy paths leading to the Island Café, serving Italian ice cream and teas, this was a favorite place for the Sunday walk and for courting couples.

  Annie and Wee Jean waited in the queue clutching their threepenny bits for an ice cream. Granny Ross settled on the veranda of the café with a group of lady friends, each surreptitiously eyeing up any new hats and all trying valiantly not to be the first to broach the subject on everyone’s thoughts, the death of the boy. Grandad stood outside the café raising his hat to a passing stream of acquaintances. He was a well-known, well-liked man, champion of the local bowling club and member of the British Legion and a singer of renown. And he had once had a reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man, so Joanne had heard.

  Ice cream in hand, Annie ran ahead and was now jumping on the suspension bridge, fi
nding the exact spot to make it sway up and down in a caterpillar motion. Granny Ross and her friends were regathering on the pathway about to go their separate ways, still chattering away like a gathering of rooks at twilight. “Oh really?” or “Oh I know!” they cawed from time to time. Grandad and Wee Jean waited patiently. Between licks on her cone the wee girl was explaining about her friend Jamie.

  “My friend Jamie, he’s dead.” She started in a matter-of-fact six-and-a-half-year-old way.

  “Aye, it’s very sad.” Grandad held on to her free hand, treasuring the contact.

  “We saw him,” she explained, “me and Annie, we saw this great big black hoodie crow. He opens the door, all of a sudden like, an’ he spreads out his wings”—she flung her arms up and open in a wide circle, splatting ice cream like seagull poo down her Sunday coat—“and he picks up Jamie in his wings and takes him to Heaven an’ now baby Jesus’ll play with Jamie an’ when he’s in the hole in the ground in the cemetery the faeries’ll be his friends too, so he won’t be lonely and he won’t be feart of the water nor the dark like he used to be.”

  Grandad stared down at the child. At first he was confused, then astonished, then a little worm of concern started to burrow its way into his subconscious; what on earth was the child on about? Granny came up from behind. He jumped. His first conscious thought was relief that his wife hadn’t heard the child’s ramblings.

  “I hear Joanne’s friends, they foreigners, have got themselves into a right pickle.”

  There was a note of satisfaction as she explained what she had heard about Peter Kowalski sheltering a fugitive from justice. She got no answer but was used to that. There had been other, much darker rumblings on the subject of the two Polish men, but she judged that now was not the time to raise the subject.

  “Those Italian friends of hers, the ones with the café and chip shop, they’ve done well for themselves.” She jumped from subject to subject like fleas on a dog, but Grandad Ross was used to this and never made any attempt to follow his wife’s logic. All would be revealed in due course, this he knew only too well.