by A. D. Scott
Mrs. Galloway opened the door to the kitchen. He joined her. It took a moment or so before either could speak, as sadness silenced them.
“We had some nice chats in this place,” Mrs. Galloway began. “To see it like this . . .” Her eyes filled with tears, and Calum, seeing how shook up she was, patted her arm. The gesture was so like his father, a gesture of helplessness when confronted with a crying woman, the tears started to leak even more, but silently, running in rivulets down her cheeks, dripping down from the sides of her chin. She wiped her face with the sleeves of her coat. Taking a deep breath, she blew out noisily. “The court case, the gossip, Alice didn’t deserve all thon nonsense.”
That much of the nonsense had been broadcast to every passing motorist, every townsperson, every countryman and woman, had been discussed, dissected, and exaggerated by his mother, Calum knew. He was grateful he had never once heard Mrs. Galloway criticize his mother.
Dad’s friend was what he called her. Elaine had giggled, saying, “Come on, Calum, she’s more than just a friend.”
Calum asked, “Do you think she did it?” He’d wanted to ask since they’d set out on the eight miles to Alice Ramsay’s lair up the glen.
No explanation was needed. “I believed it at the time,” Mrs. Galloway answered. “Alice was sensitive, artistic, she saw things differently from ordinary folk. Maybe the gossip and rumors was too much for her. Calum, I just plain don’t know.” She gestured around. “All this has got me to wondering.”
“It’s only eejits out for mischief.”
“This far from the road? In this weather?” She was looking at the floorboards. They had been prized up at the nail joins, neatly, regularly. She thought this significant but couldn’t grasp why. “It’ll be a big job to put this lot back.” She kicked a loose plank.
“Do you think someone will ever live here again?”
“You and Elaine could. It would be hard for your mum, though. She’d need a piggy-back up the track.”
Calum grinned at the joke. Then, seeing his sort-of-stepmum’s face, the twin lines between her eyebrows deepening at the thought of his mother, he said, “Likely to be snowed in in the winter, up here.” He wanted to reassure her the suggestion was not taken badly. “But a lovely place in summer.”
“Aye.” She nodded, then smiled. “Up here, for three months it’s spring, summer, an’ autumn, and nine months it’s winter.”
They left none the wiser as to why someone would vandalize the house. Both had theories. Calum thought it was done for the hell of it. Mrs. Galloway thought someone was looking for something and, failing to find it, made their search look like the work of hooligans.
Calum dropped Mrs. Galloway off at the hotel, thanking her for coming with him.
“Calum, do something to please me. Call me Muriel.”
He promised he would, although it would always be Mrs. Galloway when his mother was around.
“Your dad and me, we’ve been talking.”
“Oh, aye?” He didn’t want to hear.
Muriel Galloway sensed his reluctance to become involved. “When Elaine visits, let’s the four of us have a meal out somewhere away from the town. Maybe Mr. Mackenzie and me could drive south to visit you.”
“Thanks. Elaine and me, we’d like that.”
“Us too.” She smiled at him. “You’re a good person, Calum. I’m only sorry you’ve had to put up with . . .” She gestured to everything and nothing. “With all this,” she said quickly, before the words your mother escaped.
The editor offered Calum the use of the office and a typewriter at the Sutherland newspaper. Calum thanked him, said he would write up an article on the vandalism of the house, then told him he would be returning to the Gazette.
“I like it, and I’m learning a lot from Mr. McAllister. He used to be a big-time journalist, you know.”
When Elaine called that evening, he said the same.
“I know,” she replied. “So make certain you’re there on Monday morning; they won’t wait forever. And I won’t either.”
That depressed Calum. And worried him. Never before had Elaine indicated she might not wait for him.
“Who was that?” his mother asked when he returned to the sitting room.
“Elaine.”
“Oh. I thought it was something important the way you took so long.”
Calum was oblivious to his mother’s wee tricks of language and said nothing.
Next day, back in the comfortable and unchallenging atmosphere of his former office, he was typing his notes when the receptionist came in with a note.
“Don’t tell me, it’s my mother.”
“No, your dad.”
He phoned the garage. “Dad, how are you?”
“Calum, it’s your mother. She apparently had a turn, but nothing serious. The doctor gave her an injection to calm her down, and Nurse Ogilvie says she’s now sleeping.”
“She was fine when I left an hour ago.” He was unsure if it was serious or if she was pretending. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll get home right away.”
“No. Listen, son, come over here first.”
Calum hurried the few hundred yards to the petrol station and garage.
“Hiya, Calum!” shouted Kirsty, a girl he’d been at school with and who was temporarily looking after the shop and the petrol pumps. He waved, having no breath to reply.
“What happened to Mum?” Calum was panting.
“Nothing,” his father said. “Nothing at all.”
“But the doctor? Nurse Ogilvie?”
“Someone telephoned her to tell her you were seen in my car with Muriel.”
“No, that can’t be right.” Yet he knew it probably was. “With her leg in plaster, Mum can’t make it into the hall to answer the phone.”
“With your mother, you never know what she’ll do.” He spoke softly, more to the seagull that was sitting on a rusted wreck of a truck that had been there longer than he could remember and was now so spattered in seagull guano that it resembled some piece of art beloved by Dougald Forsythe. There was no bitterness in his voice, only resignation. He looked at his son, remembered what Muriel had said. He picked up a none-too-clean cloth to wipe the oil off his hands.
Calum noticed the oil and dirt ingrained beneath the fingernails. The palms of his hands and fingers would have made prints admissable in a court of law. This was one of the many faults Mrs. Mackenzie found in her husband. Mrs. Galloway reminded him that those same stained hands paid for her rival’s home and her comfortable life.
Mr. Mackenzie had difficulty beginning what he wanted to say. He called out, “Kirsty, love, any chance of a cup of tea?”
“For two?” she asked as she stuck her head around the door to the workshop.
“Aye, that’d be grand.”
“I need to check on Mum soon,” Calum said.
“No yet.”
The talk was the first heart-to-heart they’d ever had. They took the mugs of tea out the back door to a pile of used tires stacked up against the metal wall of the workshop. They sat on the tires conveniently piled for sitting and smoking and watching the waves only a long hop, skip, and jump from the workshed.
In a watery winter sun, they sat side by side. No wind, no rainclouds, temperature a balmy fifty degrees, they enjoyed this reprieve between weathers, and Calum wondered why they—he and his father, on their own together—didn’t do this more often.
They stared towards the distant headland to the south. The suggestion of a finger pointing heavenwards was the lighthouse. Though often unseen in daylight, during the night the blinking light kept all who went to sea safe. For landlubbers, it was as natural as the landscape of sand dunes and coastal flats and the high hill with the statue of the Duke lording it over them. They watched the seagulls practicing their acrobatics; they watched the waves, soft calm grey-slate-blue, break in and out in the short North Sea swell.
They never once looked at each other.
“Muriel tells me
we should have talked long before now,” Mr. Mackenzie began.
“What for?” Calum asked. Remembering this was the kind of thing Elaine might say, he added, “Righty-oh.”
“Your mother is a difficult woman. And it’s partly my fault, partly to do with thon sad business wi’ her father.”
Calum knew his granddad had blown his brains out with a shotgun. Far gone with the drink was the explanation. He knew his mother had discovered the body. And didn’t want to think about it. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ve known about you and Mrs. Gallo—Muriel—for years. Elaine’s mum told me how you were childhood sweethearts, then her going off to the south and no one hearing from her for years.”
“Four years and seven months.”
“And she came back married.”
“Aye, she did. So was I. Married. Only seven months married when she came back. Mr. Galloway was out of the picture by then. And I—we—knew we had ruined our lives. A year or so went by, but there was no use denying it—me and Muriel, we were meant to be together.”
To Calum, this sounded like something a woman would say, and he understood his dad and Mrs. Galloway had discussed their fate, their story becoming a private legend. Or a justification.
“It was no your mum’s fault. She was a lovely lass when she was young, but she aye had a sharp tongue on her. As the years went by, it got worse, and well, I was lonely. So I took to going to the hotel for a wee drink or two most evenings.”
Calum seemed to remember some fuss—was I eight or maybe nine?—when his father had been caught drunk driving and almost lost his license. The sheriff took into account his job—collecting and delivering vehicles for his customers was part of a garage operation—and let him off with a caution. As far as Calum knew, his father hadn’t touched spirits since then.
“Then I took to staying out overnight.” There was no need for him to say staying overnight with Mrs. Galloway. “Though I always had my tea and my breakfast with you and your mum.”
Calum said nothing. This was the routine he’d grown up with. In the small community, where many households had been disrupted by war, by emigration, by the old way of life on the estates, in the woolen mill, on the fishing boats, fading, changing, ending, theirs was only one household amongst many where a maelstrom of anger and resentment was concealed behind Presbyterian ideals of respectability.
Calum was uncomfortable discussing his parents’ personal life, even more uncomfortable at the thought of his father having a love life. They’re nearly fifty, he thought, far too old for all that stuff.
“Why did Mum take against Miss Ramsay? She really had it in for her.”
Mr. Mackenzie shook his head slowly, trying to make sense of the senseless. “It was not long after she came to live here. Miss Ramsay came into the garage in a right old state. Her brakes had gone spongy, and she’d nearly come a cropper on thon bends at the top o’ the brae. Anyhow, apparently Miss Ramsay rushed past yer mum into the workshed, wi’out saying hello and all that. She wanted me to fix the Land Rover immediately, cos the tide was about to turn, and she needed to take pictures o’ the mudflats for a painting she was working on.”
As his wife would get worked up about nothing, he’d thought little of it at the time.
“When she told me, I asked, ‘What of it?’ Your mother was right angry. ‘That woman, who does she think she is? Coming back here like she owns the place?’ ” He sighed. “Your mum never forgot being ignored. ‘I was black affronted,’ she said.”
Calum smiled. “Artists get like that—really distracted sometimes.” He was remembering Hector.
“Aye, so Miss Ramsay explained. ‘Forget my own name when I’m working,’ she told me. But there was no changing your mother’s mind, and when she sets herself agin someone, she can be a right good hater.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Calum said. But he knew his father was right. When Mrs. Mackenzie made up her mind, nothing would change it—not reason, not evidence, not even an abject apology.
“So, me and Muriel were thinking.” Mr. Mackenzie had at last reached the point of the father-son chat. “What with you and Elaine leaving for new jobs, we can be together all the time.”
“Divorce?”
“Oh, no! Nothing as drastic as that. Just carry on the same as now but me move in full-time to the hotel.”
Calum could see no reason why not. Then again, he knew what his mother’s reaction would be. “Does Mum know?”
“Not yet. We wanted to tell you first.”
Calum could think of no objections. “Who do you think knocked Mum down?”
“Some eejit wi’ too much drink in him. But your mother is telling everyone it was Muriel.” From his fist clenching and tapping his thigh, Calum could feel his father’s anger.
“No one pays any notice to Mum’s havering.”
“Tell that to Miss Ramsay.”
The bitterness in his dad’s voice shocked Calum. “You can’t think Mum had anything to do with—”
“Calum. Son. Elaine is the best thing ever to happen to you. You need to get away from . . .” He looked around at the home he loved dearly. “You need to make a life for you and Elaine away from a’ this.”
Calum looked at his dad, stared at the reflection he saw when he shaved, only with more lines and grey hairs. He saw a sadness he hoped would never happen to him. “Elaine agrees with you. But I can’t just abandon Mum. I’m all she’s got.”
“She’s not as helpless as you think.” A seagull swooped close. Finding no food, it shrieked in disapproval. They both laughed. “Flying rats,” Mr. Mackenzie said.
They went quiet again, contemplating their first-ever conversation.
Mr. Mackenzie sighed. “I made a marriage vow. I’ll not put your mother through the shame of a divorce. But maybe we can—”
“Mr. Mackenzie, Mr. Beattie is on the phone asking when his van will be ready. What’ll I say?” Kirsty shouted into the garage. Her voice was loud and carrying after years as a Girl Guide leader. She’d initially suggested she use her whistle whenever he was needed on the phone. Carried above the noise of the machines, she’d said. But Mr. Mackenzie told her a whistle would remind him of his old dad calling his gun dog, so no more was said.
“Calum, wait a wee minute, will you?” he asked. “I haven’t finished yet.”
“I have to get back to see how Mum is.”
Mr. Mackenzie nodded. “An’ I have to talk to auld Beattie. You know what he’s like. ”
“Aye, I know.”
Calum watched his father disappear towards the office, and for the first time, he acknowledged what Elaine meant when she said, “Like two peas in a pod, you and your dad.”
Whatever else Mr. Mackenzie wanted to tell his son was left unsaid. And the chance to talk again never arrived.
“The doctor says I’ve no to leave ma bed.”
“What happened?”
“You broke ma heart, that’s what happened.”
Calum stared at her, stared at her wee brown eyes flashing malevolently, and he was reminded of a teddy bear his father had won at the Sutherland Highland Games, a bear bigger than his five-year-old self, a creature that had terrified him and had made his mum laugh and tease him and remind him of the incident in front of friends for years.
Elaine hadn’t laughed. “I always hated those things,” she’d told him when Mrs. Mackenzie brought up the incident.” I had nightmares about one, a giant pink thing. I was terrified it would fall on me and stop me breathing.”
“Calum?”
“Sorry Mum. I was remembering . . .”
“What were you doing wi’ thon b—witch? She was the one caused ma accident, I know she was.”
“Mum, you told the police you never saw the car.”
That quieted her.
“How do you know someone was with me up the glen?”
“Ina phoned. She saw you. That woman, bold as brass, sitting alongside you for all to see. Inveigling you into leaving your job, your home.”
There. He had her. “It’s good you’re able to make it to the phone.”
“I had to practically crawl—”
“I’ll be off now, Mum. Nurse Ogilvie is calling by later.” He leaned over and patted her arm. “I’m sorry I wasn’t back sooner, but I was at the office. I have a story to write.” He hoped being back at the Sutherland Courier, if only temporarily, would placate her.
“Aye, see you later.”
Her reaction astonished him. He was expecting tears, tantrums even. On the walk down the cobbled lane to the car and on the drive from the village the eight miles into the town, he was tormented by endless questions. Why? What’s she up to?
“Stop it,” he muttered. “She’s your mother. She only wants what’s best for you.” But he had seen a side of his mother that everyone else saw, a side of her he had never acknowledged. Dad’s right. I have to get out of here.
Elaine had the weekend free, so Calum left on Friday, not Sunday as planned. “First time since I started nursing I’ve had two whole days off together. Let’s do something.”
“In November?” he’d asked.
“I want to go dancing at the Caley Ballroom on Friday night. And there’s a film on at the La Scala I want to see, so we’ll do that Saturday. On Sunday, we can drive out to Loch Ness and look for the monster. Or just walk round the Islands. There’s heaps to do down here.”
On the Monday, he was there for the morning news meeting and had little to contribute except the details on the break-in at Miss Ramsay’s cottage.
“No use to us; it’s a local matter,” Don said. “Nothing else happening in the wilds of Sutherland?”
“No really,” Calum replied.
Lorna was next. Using her notes, plus a folder thick with backing documents, she detailed her findings on the redevelopment of Bridge Street. Calum had no idea what she was talking about. He felt worse than useless when he saw Mr. McAllister, Mr. McLeod, Rob, Frankie Urquhart, and even Hector listening intently.
“This is the plan, and here’s an artist’s sketch of the building.” Work had already started. “But see, if you look at it from another angle”—she turned the plan around—“if you’re seeing it from downriver, it’s a real eyesore set against the castle.”