She tapped her fingertip angrily against his head and he shrank into his chair, hoping that his meekness would be enough to placate her. But Mary had not finished.
‘Mr Galbraith was the only person – the only person – who encouraged me to follow my own path. To study, to read, to learn about the world. About Hinba too. You and dad, and granddad especially, were always laughing at the things that were important to me, wanted me to be something that I didn’t want. Mum, she was pleased when I said I was going to university, but only because it meant I’d see something of the world, not because she thought studying was anything important. So, no I didn’t have a crush on Mr Galbraith, I had a supportive teacher, who provided me with the self-esteem that my family didn’t seem to think I deserved.’
Fergus started to shape his apologies, but his sister had still not finished.
‘And another thing: granddad wasn’t hurt by my leaving, he was upset that he hadn’t got his way this time. It was me that was hurt, by him washing his hands of me, of his own granddaughter, because I wouldn’t bend to him quite as easily as you…’
It was Mary’s turn to stop, to realise she had gone too far. The tourists were watching, disturbed by her raised voice, and she could feel the colour flooding to her cheeks. She turned to face them and glared until they returned indignant to their guidebooks.
‘Taking account of your family isn’t being weird, Mary. It’s normal. Sometimes that means compromises, and maybe when you’re a little older and a little less self-absorbed you’ll realise that.’
She was beaten. The heat in her cheeks had started to mass behind her eyes and she was pleased to see the girl coming with the pot of tea and the éclair. The siblings sat quietly, politely, dressed in cordial smiles and thankyous, while the woman set out the crockery so carefully that the clinks of china on china were dampened to whispers. The hush accentuated the disturbance of moments before, and Mary felt the girl’s eyes as a judgement. She was relieved when they were once more alone.
‘We’ll leave it there, shall we? Unless you want to continue the discussion? Just to say that I apologise for what I said about you and Mr Galbraith. That was wrong of me and I am sorry for jumping to conclusions. Sorry Mary.’
His blue, blue eyes ached with kindness. Mary could not, could never, be angry at her brother for very long and she sighed a weary smile to let him know that everything was still good between them. Fergus gave her a wink and bit deeply into the éclair. They both watched the gout of cream that burst from its startled side tumble towards the floor.
12
The train did not move. The little speakers whined, and a weary voice explained that the train would be held at Fort William while the replacement driver was found. Fergus explored his seat for the comfortable spot, while Mary muttered that she didn’t see why the driver that had brought the train from Mallaig could not be persuaded to finish the job.
That first train driver had left promptly enough: finally driven from the café by boredom and a surfeit of tea, they had ambled over to Mallaig’s small stone station ahead of time, where thankfully the train that had been waiting at the railhead overnight opened its doors just as they arrived. Within minutes the doors had slid shut again and the train had pulled out. Fergus had watched the cloaked islands slide away while Mary had chattered about people they had both known at the school that hung above them on the hillside.
As the open sea vanished behind them, Fergus looked out at the changing landscape. Presently, the train plunged into a tunnel and, when it broke again into the light, a valley opened up below them: a chain of lakes stretched down to the vanishing point. By the trackside, a brick fire place and chimney were all that remained of a long forgotten cottage. The window filled with yellows and browns, granite grey and autumn’s rust, the ruby remnants of dead heather; the deer on the hillside blurred into the season’s palate, lost among the pale browns of last season’s bracken which clustered in defeated clumps.
The rhododendrons at Glenfinnan station brought a surprising display of deep and solid green. Some of the plants had escaped the bounds of the manicured station precincts and brought a little of the Himalayas to the Highland valley. Just as vivid was the passenger that had boarded there: a girl wearing a blue and white striped jersey, and blue cotton slacks. Her wavy blonde hair was swept back into a short pony tail, and the remains were held in place by a thin white Alice band. Her face was composed of calm innocence and blue, serious eyes. She took up the seat facing Fergus across the aisle; only when she returned his gaze did Fergus realise that he had been staring at her for some time.
‘I think she fancies you.’
Mary had breathed the words into his shoulder with a practiced discretion. It took a moment for their meaning to solidify. Fergus’s first reaction had been to smile a bashful smile, to ask his sister if she really thought so, but he had caught himself in time and instead dismissed Mary’s silliness. Still, the thought was an appealing one: she was pretty. Almost as pretty as Shona.
The train had picked its way through rocks and gorse and pines, past a ruined castle by the river, and an equally ruined go-cart track, until the wide expanse of Lochaber opened on the trackside. Low, grey houses crowded in on the landside and young silver birches lined the track. The mountains receded behind the low pebble-dashed houses that had clustered around the train as it made its way into Fort William and stasis.
‘Is this normal? I mean, for trains?’
Before Mary had a chance to accept that, yes, this was far from an unusual state of affairs on the railways, the carriage jolted into motion and the weary voice above them returned to explain that they now had a driver and as a consequence would be able to continue their journey. The voice was able to specify by how many minutes they were now delayed.
As the train pulled out at last from Fort William, the girl in the Alice band changed her seat so that she faced the new direction of travel. Fergus felt a slight twinge of regret, before he hauled from his bag the tinfoil package that his mother had given to him and pealed open its silvered skin to reveal two more tinfoil packages; one he held out to Mary, impatient. She took it with a shrug and watched while Fergus tore into his own like a fox in a chicken coop. She remembered childhood mealtimes, the frantic scramble of the men to devour whatever was on their plates, to be first in the queue for seconds. She had tried to compete until she decided that she had better things to worry about.
Absently, she gave the last half of her sandwich to the empty-handed Fergus and pulled a hesitant book from her shoulder bag. She found her place within its pages and so indicated that that was her for the remainder of the journey. Fergus was surprised that the book was not some stick-dry academic volume, but was instead a supple, garish paperback. He realised of course that Mary was not simply her studies, that she too must have an interior, emotional life. It was simply that Fergus had never seen it; or perhaps more accurately, had never noticed it.
Following her lead, he retrieved his copy of the most recent edition of The Postcode Atlas of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and started to flick through its familiar pages, alighting at Glasgow. His index finger slid down the list of codes as he interpreted the characters, building concrete, breathing places from numbers and letters, tracing their adjacencies and connections in his mind. He saw Mary’s Hall of Residence in its proper context for the first time since she had written to him that first week she had been away, and he had taken her postcode from its return address and placed it within the mental map he carried within him. He felt her eyes on him, knew without having to look that her expression was one of soured incredulity. He wondered when they had become so different, he and she, wondered if it mattered, if difference was the same as distance, as estrangement.
The world outside the train’s blurred window was a sodden grey. They had left the town behind them now and the landscape felt comfortable, familiar. Less and less attention was paid to the booklet that lay limp in his lap, and Fergus was drawn into the slow d
rama outside. He stared emptily at the smear of green and brown that enclosed sections of the track, until it broke into the more stable clarity of the wider vistas. The constant shifting of the shapes beyond, married with the rattle and jolts of the carriage, was irresistible and Fergus’s mind wandered aimless, as it did sometimes out on the moor, or when he stood on the low cliffs above Sgorr nam Ban-naomha, watching the waves and the terns perform their constant dance.
They were out into open country by now, back among the glens. But the mountains soon stepped back and the trees fell away, thinning until they vanished completely. In their place, the vastness of Rannoch Moor appeared, its full extent lost in the low cloud. Soon there were only streams and pools and the rain-filled air, a fluid world suitable only for herons, moss and the tangled wire of long abandoned fences. Patches of snow clung on in the gullies and creases, and last year’s bracken bled rust onto the slopes of hummocks, islands in the peaty ocean. On a small rise, an abandoned house stood in the midst of the mire. It lacked a roof and windows and doors, but the stonework was still crisply defined, as though its inhabitants had left only recently, taking every stick with them.
Deeper into the gloom, the moorland cascaded in every direction towards lakes that collected under the bounding mountains. In the midst of this nothingness, the train slowed to a halt. The world was silent, save for the sounds of steel settling and the hesitancy of Mary’s sleepful breathing. Fergus peered out into the greyness, but aside from the small platform and a sign reading Rannoch, there was only a thin road that ran to the station and simply stopped, no longer sure where else it might go. They appeared to be as far from civilisation as it was possible to imagine. Even on Hinba, the constant movement of air and sea, the cries of the seabirds above and the expanse of the distant horizon meant that he felt less isolated than in this closed and muffled enclave.
The sudden imposition of the door’s mechanism startled Fergus. The sigh of its opening, and the trill of the beeping that followed, announced the entry of their new fellow. Quite how he had materialised mystified Fergus. There appeared to be no buildings nearby, certainly not a settlement: it was as if the old man had simply condensed from the mist. His waxed coat and lank white hair dripped sufficiently to suggest that he was in fact made of the drizzle that had filled the earth since Fergus had left Hinba.
Tall and lean, the newcomer carried an old leather suitcase, small but evidently heavy. This he placed with great care on the rack above the seat across the aisle from where Fergus and Mary sat. He was close enough that Fergus felt some of the spray when the old man removed his coat and hat; both were placed just as carefully onto the rack, and in the same movement the suitcase was taken down again, before being placed on its owner’s lap once he had taken his seat.
He left the window seat vacant, so he was less than a metre distant from Fergus, facing him diagonally across the suddenly too narrow aisle. He spent a moment with his eyes closed, as if in prayer or meditation, or in grateful relief. The man was clean shaven, but the nicks and grazes on his face suggested that this was both a recent and an unusual development. A slow swallow moved down his throat, his Adam’s apple sinking like a crease being smoothed from his neck by an invisible hand: a vivid, fluid cut just above his collar threatened to stain the white cotton at any moment.
The train jolted into motion and the old man’s eyes opened. Fergus looked away, stared at the back of the seat in front of him, then out of the window which was filled still with indistinct greys and browns and greens. The desolation of the emptiness without filled him with a welling disquiet and he turned back into the warm brightness of the carriage. The old man was looking intently at the suitcase, which he bookended with his hands. Fergus considered the etiquette of the situation for a moment, before disturbing the old man’s solitude in any case.
‘It’s a miserable day out there today, isn’t it? I bet you’re glad to be indoors at last?’
The man looked up, his watery eyes finally finding their focus. His was face was set in stony weariness for a long moment, before it softened, as if remembering the warmth it had once had for other people. A weak smile appeared and his eyes creased into themselves.
‘It’s not so bad, although on a sunny day the moor is magnificent at this time of year. You can see clear across to the mountains, still under snow, and the spring flowers are just beginning to dress the peat in pinks and yellows.’
Fergus found it hard to see any of this in the opaque drabness beyond the window. But he had been out on the moorland of Hinba in bad weather, when its beauty was sheathed in rain or sea mist, and he found that he could paint the colours of spring at home onto the canvass of drizzle that cloaked Rannoch Moor.
‘My wife, God rest her, loved the moor in Spring, after the snow and before the midges. Never wanted to leave, said they’d have to take her away in a box. Which is what they did, in the end, of course. Me, the bank might get rid of in other ways. It depends.’
The old man patted the little suitcase at this and Fergus was sure that he saw him wink. He did not want to intrude on the old man’s grief any further, but was overcome with curiosity and could not contain a quizzical look at the case.
‘This? Oh, these are some old books I’ve had for a very long time. They belonged to my great grandfather originally. A set of Walter Scott first editions. Taking them to Glasgow to get them sold. Worth a packet, I’m told.’
He dropped his voice at this, and looked around the carriage suspiciously, horrified that he had said too much for his own good. His tone now hushed, he continued, never questioning the trustworthiness of his young confidant.
‘Yes, well. A little. Enough to sort out some debts, in any case. If I don’t get myself robbed before I get to McAteer’s tomorrow, that is.’
Seeing the confusion on Fergus’s face, the old man snapped open the locks on his little suit case and carefully removed a magazine, which he offered across the aisle. On its cover was a photograph of an old wooden clock, the face of which was ornately shaped in engraved gold and silver. Curled black pointers indicated that the photograph had been taken just before eight o’clock. It was unclear whether it had been the morning or the evening, and of course assumed that the clock was running correctly. Across the top of the cover Fergus could read the words McAteer’s Auctioneers – Summer Catalogue.
‘Page forty seven is the start of the antiquarian books section. I have some of the editions listed on page forty nine. As I said, worth a packet.’
Beyond the window’s glass, the moor became more stable, the ground firmer and forming into low hills. Stags and deer stood to watch the train as it passed, before running on in skittish enthusiasm. The trees reappeared and the mountains gathered. Fergus took the magazine and flipped through it looking for the right page, all the while wrestling with a sense of inexplicable familiarity. The tiny images of objects, the strange abbreviated captions, the colours and typeface, all nagged at him, but it was not until he reached page forty, midway through the Rarities and Miscellany section, that the noise in his subconscious broke through into conscious recognition of the torn page in his pocket.
The spires of Helensburgh prompted Fergus to wake Mary, to ask if this might be the beginnings of Glasgow, but Mary simply shook her head with a smile. The train ran through well-tended fields and it struck Fergus that the grass was greener here than on the island. The approach to Dumbarton announced their final crossing into the city. The town was ringed with towers, within which families lived stacked one upon the other. Pulling out of town, there were more houses being built beneath a small mountain split in two by quarrying. Presently the train reached the outskirts of Glasgow. There were what seemed like hundreds of towers here, spreading across the horizon. Looking out onto the trackside, there was so much debris in the fences and hedges that Fergus wondered what could have carried it here, if not the tide.
13
‘Can you spare a little change there, pal?’
Fergus stopped and could only
stare at the man facing him, blocking his path. He was large and solid and in plain sight, but Fergus could tell little about him from his appearance. He may have been anything from twenty five to sixty years of age. His face was a mask etched in greasy lines and brittle bristle; his body was lost in the bulk of sweaters and scarves and lumps of fabric squeezed into an oily overcoat. The hand held out, cupped upwards, might have been made of plastic, so lifeless and inert was it. His other hand clutched a can of lager so tightly that its metallic blue dimpled a little under his waxy fingers. Fergus could not even be sure if the fellow had two human feet, since one leg ended in a plastic carrier bag, tied at the ankle.
Perplexed, he sought explanation from his sister’s face. Mary had at first tried to continue onwards, circumventing the man as if he were any other obstacle on the street, but she had been held there suspended beside her frozen brother. Aware that he was watching her now, she tilted her head onwards in silent encouragement to continue.
‘Just a couple of quid, pal. Just to get something to eat. It’s a miserable day out here.’
Fergus and Mary had emerged from Queen Street Station and into the dull light of Glasgow’s drizzle. As they had crossed onto George Square, the beggar had appeared, blocking their path. He did not intend to let them pass with their consciences undisturbed.
Fergus failed to heed his sister’s signal, so Mary reached out to her brother to take his hand and break the spell that held him. But Fergus stuck to the block-work pavement. Mary tried a new tack. Looking directly at their challenger, she shook her head.
‘Nah, sorry pal. Got no change on us. Sorry.’
The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga Page 9