Now she’s intrigued. ‘I was going to go down and see Cal later on. Take Hector down to say hello. Do you think that would be a good idea? I don’t want to walk in on a row of any kind.’
‘Yes. Maybe you could do that. Galbraith is booked in for an early dinner at six o’clock. He said he didn’t want any lunch so he’d eat dinner early. You could go down then. That way you’d be sure of missing him.’
‘I was going to take some stuff to the charity shop at Keill anyway. So it would be fine. I’ll have a cup of tea if there’s a café or a pub there and wait till almost six.’
‘There’s a pub. The Ferryman’s. They’ll do you some tea.’
‘But I still don’t quite understand the problem.’
‘I can’t explain. I’ve just got a bad feeling about all this and I don’t know why. But I’ll feel a whole lot better if somebody goes down to make sure that everything’s OK. Cal loves the bones of that dog. You and Hector ought to go down and make sure he’s all right.’
*
Mrs Cameron leaves Daisy alone to finish her sandwich in peace. Before she sets off to drive to Keill with the charity shop donations, she puts Hector in the car and heads indoors to the lavatory.
She’s passing through reception when she almost bumps into a tall man who looks vaguely familiar. She realises it’s only because there’s the faintest resemblance to Cal. He’s in his sixties, tall, very slender, with floppy grey hair receding at the temples. Unlike Cal, though, he has pale grey eyes. He has a handsome, hawkish face: lined, distinguished, full of a certain confidence, the kind of man who always walks with his head held high, ignoring anyone he deems to be unworthy of his attention. But perhaps she’s been too easily swayed by Elspeth’s prejudices. Maybe she should give him the benefit of the doubt.
‘Sorry,’ she says, smiling at him. Why do women apologise all the time when there’s nothing to be sorry for? Should she introduce herself?
He doesn’t give her the chance.
‘Oh, excuse me!’ he says, with a brief, chilly glance at her. She’s nobody of note. Keys in hand, he’s heading for his beautiful car, the most expensive in the car park. Her muddy Polo seems remarkably shoddy by comparison. He seems intent on something and very much in a hurry, in his smart leather jacket, a man bag over his shoulder, shiny brown brogues on his feet. There’s an atmosphere of money and sophistication about him that she suspects his son will never quite possess, or even want to possess, no matter how apparently successful he becomes. Cal is good-looking and charming, but charmingly ordinary. This man, striding along with his head in the air, has an elegance about him that seems the epitome of success. Doors will slide open for him. Life will be easy on him. And even if it isn’t easy, he won’t care. He won’t even notice the hurdles, because he’ll walk straight over them, mowing them down in the process, as well as anyone who has the misfortune to get in his way. The door to the car park is open, and she sees and hears Hector making a racket as William passes her car. He is up at the window of the car, barking but wagging his tail at the same time. William casts a look of immense irritation and perhaps puzzled recognition in the dog’s direction. It’s only when he’s gone, folding his long limbs gracefully into the sleek car, that she realises something else about him. Where Cal is all warmth and energy, with a certain vulnerability, there is nothing remotely warm about his father at all.
As soon as he has gone, Elspeth Cameron emerges from the office at the back of the desk like a rotund cuckoo from a clock, to hiss, ‘See what I mean?’
‘He’s a bit...’
‘He’s absolutely full of himself. You go and see Cal. Find out what’s going on. Lend him some moral support. Because nobody else will. Or nobody who can make a difference, anyway.’
All the way along the meandering coast road to Keill, she thinks about this and wonders what kind of difference she can possibly make, what is it that is worrying Mrs Cameron so much? After all, Cal’s a grown man, a significant part of his parents’ antique and fine art business, with talents of his own. William Galbraith is ridiculously successful as an artist, but surely that means that he can do without his son. And surely that would suit Cal himself. He seems to be a gifted dealer with the knack of finding a bargain, but he’s also a clever restorer. If the worst-case scenario involves closing the Glasgow shop – and she can see that Fiona might be finding it a bit of a trial, having to work with the appalling Annabel, day in and day out – then surely she could retire from the shop and do her own thing: research or teaching. Cal could set up his own business, buy and sell online, do restoration and upcycling in Argyll, sell in Glasgow and Edinburgh and further afield. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. But it’s really none of her business, is it?
‘What am I like?’ she asks Hector, who is on the floor beside her.
Everything is easier when there’s a lot of cash floating about, she thinks, and has to remind herself that if she sells Auchenblae there will be quite a lot of cash floating about in her life as well.
In Keill, she leaves the dog in the car with the window open and drops off several bin bags full of clothes and bric a brac to a pair of delighted charity shop volunteers, retired ladies, and asks the way to the church of St Columba and the adjacent cemetery. When she tells them whose grave she’s looking for, she can see that they’re curious, but politeness prevents them from enquiring too closely.
‘It’s my grandmother,’ she says, taking pity on them.
Now they will be able to place her. They obviously know all about Auchenblae and Viola and everything that has gone before. They direct her to a narrow road at the back of the village. ‘Follow the signs to the distillery,’ they say, which amuses her, but the distillery is apparently a couple of miles beyond the church. She has picked a bunch of wild flowers from the garden and she takes them out of the back of the car.
The headstone is easy to find, because the charity shop ladies have described it to her, one of those ostentatious Victorian affairs, with Viola’s name the last one on it: Viola Neilson, born in 1920 to Hugh Neilson and Lily Galbraith. Lily’s surname startles her for a moment. Could her great-grandmother have been related to Cal’s family in some way? But Galbraith is a common enough island name and like the McNeills there would have been plenty of them. There are other names on the stone: Hugh’s parents, Alexander and Mary Neilson, who both seem to have lived well into old age in the 1950s, with Mary outliving Alexander. Hugh Neilson ‘fought for his country’ but the year of his death is 1921 at the age of thirty, not long after his daughter, Viola, was born. There is no date of death given for Lily on this big, ornate stone, but glancing to one side, she sees a plain granite headstone, very much smaller than the Neilson edifice: ‘Sacred to the memory of Lily Galbraith, beloved daughter of Islay and Iain, who passed away on the 24th December 1930. Sweet flower transplanted to a clime where never comes the blight of time.’
How odd, she thinks. This separation. She senses a story here. Were Lily and Hugh engaged to be married? Had the war intervened? Had Hugh been injured, but not too badly to father a child? Presumably, after his early death, Viola had been brought up by her mother and her Neilson grandparents, who had assumed guardianship after Lily herself died. She notes that after Lily’s death, Viola had clearly remained at Auchenblae, rather than being brought up by her other grandparents, Islay and Iain Galbraith. She thinks, with a little frisson, of her father saying, ‘Viola would have wanted you, and back then she might have got you.’ The Neilson family had clearly been wealthy and powerful. The Galbraiths, possibly tenants, would have fallen in with their wishes. That was the world into which Viola would have been born, even though things were already changing.
Then she notices that, already almost obliterated by yellow crotal, the name Jessica May Neilson has been carved into the big stone between Mary and Viola Neilson. Jessica May, ‘Sadly missed, never forgotten’ without any date at all.
How
could she?
How could Viola ignore Jessica’s marriage?
It occurs to her that for a long time, Viola couldn’t have known where her daughter had gone, and had probably found out about her early death only long after the event. Her father had been so worried about Viola claiming custody that he had kept everything as quiet as possible. There had been no newspaper intimations, only a small, sad mention in one or two of the folk magazines; but Viola wouldn’t even have been aware of those. And back then, social media hadn’t got going. It would have been good to have got to know her grandmother. Good to have found out more about her mother and her Neilson forebears, about Hugh and Lily. And why Lily Galbraith, who outlived her husband by only ten years, was buried in a separate grave. It occurs to her that perhaps the answers to some of these questions might lie in Auchenblae. There must be papers somewhere: letters, birth and death certificates perhaps. She’ll have to hunt for them.
There’s an empty stone vase with a metal flower holder, misshapen with age, fitted into it, at the foot of the larger grave. Nothing for Lily. She has brought a plastic bottle from the car. She finds a tap, fills the vase with water and arranges the flowers, but she makes up a separate posy and puts it on Lily’s grave, drenching it with water to keep it fresh.
There’s a church, lower down the hill, dedicated to St Columba, with a stained-glass window of the saint, standing up precariously in a small boat with an island behind him. It makes her think of the islet, Eilean a Cleirich, she can just see from the upstairs windows at Auchenblae. Cal told her that one of Columba’s monks built a cell there and spent his time praying for the souls of the islanders who converted to Christianity. There’s an ancient graveyard there too, where the old lairds and their ladies were traditionally buried. Here, at Keill, she sees the ruins of an older church, a shell only, with more tombstones round about: a mouthful of grey teeth, yellow with crotal. It’s a peaceful place, but sad too.
She’ll come back here again. Where is Lilias buried, she wonders? On the islet maybe? But there are other ancient graveyards on Garve. She has left Hector tied up to the gate and he is delighted to see her all over again. For now, it’s time to find somewhere to get a cup of tea and then she’d better drive down to Carraig and see what has been happening to Cal.
TWENTY-SIX
She parks the car outside the swing gate and holds it open to let Hector through. He disappears round the side of the house, delirious with delight at being home again. The world would be a nicer place if people could be as open to joy as most dogs. She hears a couple of barks of recognition and then silence, except for the usual chorus of birdsong and the sound of sea on shore. She ventures round the house more slowly. The back door is standing open, but there’s no sign of Cal. She becomes aware of a distant banging sound, like somebody hammering in nails. It stops and starts again. Perhaps he’s working on something. She pokes her head in at the cottage door and is alarmed to see pieces of smashed porcelain on the floor but it’s only a broken mug, a splatter of coffee beside it.
Hector rushes in, laps at the coffee, sneezes and rushes out again. She follows him as he trots into the lean-to at the side of the house. She hasn’t been in here before, but it’s more spacious than she realised: a room tagged onto the house, where Cal and his sister had once slept during their island visits. Now, there’s a long bench, tools, the usual clutter of a working craftsman. Cal is sitting on a high stool, leaning on the bench. There’s a heap of wooden drawers, large and small, in front of him. He’s been working on them, or trying to, but he’s not working now. He’s sitting there, staring into space. Hector jumps up and paws at him, but he pushes the dog away, not violently but more brusquely than usual. Hector decides he’s not wanted and disappears into the garden. To her considerable alarm, Daisy sees that Cal is holding a hammer. He seems to have been bouncing it, rhythmically and persistently, against the hard wooden bench, making little dents all along the edge of it. As she watches him, he starts up again.
‘Cal!’ she says, but he doesn’t seem to hear her. She’s unwilling to go any closer. It strikes her that she doesn’t know him well at all, and they are surrounded by potentially dangerous implements: knives, files, chisels, saws and hammers. ‘Cal,’ she says again, more loudly.
He stops hammering, gives himself a shake and looks at her. ‘Daisy!’ he says, dully. ‘What are you doing here?’
He looks absolutely furious. Not with her, but furious all the same. His dark brows are gathered together in a frown and his eyes are gleaming with suppressed rage.
‘Just visiting. I’ve been to Keill. To the charity shop and the cemetery.’ She finds herself trying to distract him. ‘I took some flowers to Viola’s grave. We passed your road end on the way back. I thought you might like to see Hector. Maybe not, though.’
He follows her gaze, looks at the hammer in his hand, says, ‘Oh, sorry. What am I thinking?’ and sets it down, carefully. His face clears.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks, although it’s clear that he’s far from OK.
He runs his hand through his hair, shakes himself again, like Hector. ‘Not really,’ he says, but he’s smiling at her and looking more like himself. ‘But all the better for seeing you.’
‘Come inside. I’ll make tea or something.’
‘Yeah. Or something.’ He gets off the stool and heads for the back door. She wonders how long he’s been sitting there, hammering viciously at his bench.
‘Be careful where you walk. I broke a mug.’
They pick up the pieces and put them in the bin. She mops up the spilled coffee with some kitchen towel.
‘My father was here.’
‘Cal, I was in the hotel. I saw him there. Elspeth Cameron was worried about you.’
‘Did she send you down to rescue me?’
‘I was going to come anyway. But did you not know he was coming?’
‘He never says. Just turns up and expects everyone to fit in with his plans. Which they usually do.’
He goes over to a cupboard and fetches out a bottle of Eilean Garbh malt and two glasses. He pours himself a large measure and holds up the bottle to her, raising his eyebrows.
She shakes her head. ‘I’m driving.’
‘You could stay again.’
‘OK. Just a small one.’ She could stay for a while, drive later.
The spirit is extraordinarily peaty with a definite tang of iodine. It catches in her throat but she can feel the wonderful warmth of it spreading through her. She could get used to it. He downs his own drink in one and pours himself another. ‘That’s better.’
‘What’s happened, Cal? Is there something wrong in Glasgow?’
‘The only thing that’s wrong in Glasgow is my fucking father.’
The raw viciousness of this alarms her all over again, but she waits quietly for him to calm down and explain. He’s practically trembling with rage. Vibrating with it.
He sighs, shakes his head. ‘He wants to put this place on the market.’ He drinks again, gazes at the floor. ‘A holiday cottage by the sea with potential for development. It’ll sell in no time at all.’
‘This place?’ She looks around. This is only her second visit but even she can see how much Cal treasures it. What a sanctuary it seems to be for him. ‘Why would he do that? Do they need the money?’
Cal bursts out laughing but it’s obviously not very funny. ‘No. Of course he doesn’t need the fucking money, hen. He’s rolling in it. You should see his personal VAT bill, the one for his art sales. And that’s nothing to do with the shop. A separate business altogether.’
‘Then I don’t understand. Doesn’t he know how you feel about it? How much you love it?’
‘Of course he knows. That’s one of his reasons for doing it. He likes to be in control and this is just another way of making sure everyone including me is under his thumb.’
She’s speechless for a
moment or two. The thought of her dad, of Rob, doing something similar, is so far beyond her imagination that it’s hard to understand why any father would contemplate doing it to a child, unless in desperate circumstances.
‘Why?’ she says again. ‘I mean, what’s in it for him?’
‘What’s in it for him is that he thinks I’ll have to go back to Glasgow and take over running the shop. He sees this as my bolthole. My sanctuary. Which it is, of course. He thinks I make excuses to be here all the time, working on my fancy bits of furniture. Upcycling. You should have heard the way he spat that word out!’
Maybe he does make excuses to be here all the time. The thought had certainly crossed her mind, although she can’t say that to him now.
‘Can he do it?’ she asks instead.
‘Of course he can do it.’
‘But what about your mother?’
‘Well, yes. Her name is on the deeds right enough.’
‘I thought the house was in her family originally.’
‘It was. But she added his name when they got married. She once told me she wanted to share everything with him, and he was painting over here back then.’
‘So it’s in both their names?’
He looks exasperated, as though she’s being obtuse. ‘Yes, of course. She would have a say in it. As his wife. But you know, Mum tends to do as she’s told. And if he wants to sell, that’s what he’ll do.’
‘Does she? Do as she’s told, I mean?’ This is more or less what Mrs Cameron said too. But Fiona hadn’t struck her as being particularly meek.
‘Oh, Daisy, you don’t know the half of it. Years of living with my dad.’ He shakes his head. ‘What do they call it now? Coercive control? Gaslighting.’
The Posy Ring Page 26