Things did not, in any case, feel as though they would go well. The good fortune he had found in Glasgow would surely not continue; he had no real plan for how he would approach Nicholas Maltravers and had no reason to suppose that he would be a man who would be willing to give up such an expensive prize simply because it was the right thing to do. As the tea turned brick red in his mug, Fergus felt an increasing certainty that his assurance to Shona that he would return before the week’s end would become the first promise to her that he would break.
Jamie did not emerge until a quarter to eleven. The sun had risen far enough to clear the neighbouring block and it cast its light into the kitchen. As Jamie entered, he was caught in its beam.
‘You found the bread. Good. Another cup?’
He flicked on the kettle and, raising himself slightly on his toes, he scanned the top cupboard for a mug, shuffling mismatched crockery on the shelf.
‘No thanks, I ought to be off. Track down this Maltravers feller. I was just waiting on you, as it goes.’
Jamie stopped his search and turned. He grappled for a moment with an appropriate reply, before simply apologising.
‘That’ll be your rounds. Body clock totally unsuited to normal life. No point going until the afternoon anyhow. He’ll be in a better mood after lunch. More amenable.’
He resumed his search and retrieved a brightly coloured mug marked with the logo of some company that Fergus did not recognise. His bare feet crunched through the floor’s desiccated detritus to the table. His dressing gown broke open as he sat, revealing a pale torso and striped pyjama bottoms.
‘I don’t know how you can stay in your bed as long. Have you not got classes or anything?’
He had not grown since Fergus had last seen him. Still a boy, despite his years. His smooth, pink skin, hairless save for the thick pile of curls bursting from his head, had accrued no blemishes in the intervening years, no wear, no gravity. Fergus recalled his friend’s unwillingness to take responsibility, either for himself or for others, and their slow separation became entirely explicable as if for the first time.
‘No, it’s the Easter vacation. Don’t have any lectures for another week. That’s why Phil isn’t here. On that, I got a text: he’s coming back early, so I can only let you stay one more night. Still, if you get this stone sorted out today then that shouldn’t be a bother, right?’
Four zeros flashed on the microwave as they had all morning, but with new meaning. Time sank into the vinyl floor, stuck in its gluey waves. The optimism he had felt the previous evening had already been replaced by resignation by the time he awoke, but this blow ended any remaining hopes of a straightforward resolution. He was not superstitious, but without the luxury of more time than he needed, it was inevitable that he would fail. His entire endeavour had been nothing more than an artifice to engineer his fall. He was not superstitious, he repeated. This is nonsense. This is not an omen, there is no pantheon of gods to work this kind of mischief. This was simply an unreliable friend being unreliable. It could be fixed.
‘I suppose not. Assuming that Maltravers is reasonable, of course, and there is no guarantee of that – you’ll remember what I said about the auctioneer in Glasgow? So, if everything gets messy, could I not just sleep on your floor, once Phil is back?’
The chair creaked under Jamie’s weight. He pulled the dressing gown across his body and held it there while he took a swallow of tea.
‘Well, no, not really. See, my girlfriend is staying this weekend and, well, you’d be a bit in the way, if you get my meaning… anyhow, I’m sorry, but it was short notice, you know. I hadn’t heard from you for years, then a call, last minute, to say you’re coming to London and need somewhere to stay. I did my best for you, and two nights is better than nothing, yeah?’
Fergus knew he was right, that he could ask no more of Jamie. They were quits now; the debt, such that it was, had been repaid.
It was a debt that could not survive being named, did not exist if acknowledged. And now it was spent and there was no longer any reason at all for them to see each other again, once another night had passed. And Maltravers might be a reasonable man. All might well be well, after all. And even if it wasn’t, then there was probably enough money for a hotel for a night or two. Some cheap place; it would be no less comfortable than Phil’s room. If needs be.
‘Right, let me get dressed and we’ll get you some lunch before you face Maltravers. Won’t be long.’
Fergus watched Jamie go, the smile still painted across his face, even as he cursed his wasted morning. When he heard the bathroom door bolted, he stepped gently back to Phil’s room to pack his few things and study the A-Z.
23
The city stood on folds of sluggish clays; myriad rivers gnawed their way through it and beneath it. Buildings rose and fell with irrational rhythms and their fluctuations revealed fleeting glimpses of the city’s many faces, until new columns of glass and steel, concrete and stone, arose to conceal and to create once more. The streets pulsed with people and with cars, such that the surface of the earth here seemed to shimmer. It was a transient, unreliable place; unpredictable and capricious. The city creaked and moaned under the weight of its own perpetual motion.
And yet, every block, every building and business, every clutch of neighbours, every chamber and doorway could be pin-pointed in its post code. The city had been mapped rigorously into 199 distinct postal districts and, within them, a further 972 sectors were defined. Within each sector were hundreds of smaller clusters, each designated by two letter combinations that completed the full post code, making for hundreds of thousands of unique variations, each logically classified, identified and mapped. The city was knowable, and the most obscure alleys could be located by anyone who grasped the rudiments of this arcane lore. And yet, the E1 district alone comprised some 26,000 postcodes.
Fergus scrolled through the immensity of the number, humbled and frustrated. Weary, he watched the people milling about the square and allowed the wash of late afternoon sun to seep into his skin while he waited. From his bench against the wall, he had an uninterrupted view of the doorway and of the business of the courtyard. Under a clutch of saplings, a couple of young women sold cakes as people made their way in and out of the library. A statue rose behind the cake stall, a silver ball resting on curved legs and topped with their inverse as wings; Fergus could make no sense of it, and looked away, unnerved.
He had found his way here easily, once he had decided that here was where he should be. He was not yet entirely sure that it was the best decision, but as he had stood outside Maltravers’ closed gallery, it had been the best one he could make. There had been no note in the window to explain when the gallery might next be open and it seemed reckless to leave himself only one morning to conclude the matter of the cursing stone, before he found himself without a place to stay in the strange city. What if Mr Maltravers was away for a few days? He would need help, and quite probably somewhere else to stay. Rather than calling his sister or making another attempt at convincing Jamie, he had been surprised to find that his first instinct had been to turn instead to Ruby Adams.
He had neither an address nor even a phone number, much less a postcode. He did, however, know that she was a student at Queen Mary University. As in Glasgow and at South Bank, it would be the Easter vacation. Ruby had said as much on the train. There would, he had reasoned, be no classes. And Ruby was more akin to Mary than to Jamie and would likely be in the library rather than in a bar or in bed.
Fergus had been disappointed when the woman at the counter was unwilling to let him in, to search the library, despite his explanation. Her glance towards the security guard had persuaded him that another attempt to convince her would be fruitless. So he had withdrawn, to the square outside, to sit in the spring sunshine and wait for Mary to leave, as she must surely do, if his assumptions had been correct.
That the sunshine lingered still meant his optimism was more easily sustained. But as his wait nu
dged passed 45 minutes, the diversion of watching the students pause and pass waned. During his vigil, only two cupcakes had been sold, both to the same young woman. Like the vendors, she wore a scarf over her head and a long plain skirt: they had chatted like friends and Fergus supposed that the sale was one based as much on camaraderie as on market forces.
Soon, he was drifting, becoming lost in labyrinthine thought that led at last to Shona. He should call her later in the evening, if he could find a phone: it had been two days since they had spoken. She would be helping her mother in the kitchen, clearing up the lunchtime things, while her father would be polishing glasses in the bar, ready for the evening session. He thought of her face, assembled her features carefully, piece by piece, and searched for the feelings that she awoke in him. Slowly they rose and raced through him and he settled into contented reassurance. He imagined her thinking of him as she wiped clean the counter, and pictured their thoughts of each other rush across the great distance between them and entwine. Their conversation played out in his imagination as though the sounds resonated on real air, as though her declarations were the autonomous signals of her true feelings, not projections of his own longing. Her joy at his eventual return he experienced viscerally.
He smothered his smile, suddenly conscious that he was grinning like a fool; he could not be sure that he had not been talking to himself. Self-consciously he scanned the faces of the people that still circulated in the red brick square, looking for any sign that they had witnessed his embarrassment. But no-one paid him any regard, almost as if he were invisible. Unnoticed, like Duncannon. Duncannon on the beach. Through his shirt, his fingers searched for the pendant that hung around his neck and absently traced its outline. In Glasgow, before boarding the train, he had asked Mary what she thought it might mean. She had turned the trinket in her fingers with the same incomprehension as had he. But while he had speculated as to how Duncannon had come into possession of something belonging to his grandfather, Mary had been puzzled as to who might have been gifted with her grandmother’s affection in that way. The two questions returned to him now, blending into a larger conundrum. Suppose that the pendant had not belonged to his grandfather, but to another; suppose that his beloved, saintly grandmother had become embroiled in some sordid liaison: even if such a thing were true, the mystery of how Duncannon could have come by the piece remained. Fergus wanted so fervently to believe that his friend was not a thief, and yet it seemed unlikely that he could have found it lying on the beach. The only other possibility, that the love token had been meant for Duncannon, was scarcely believable. Moreover, even if Duncannon were a thief, or an unlikely lover, none of that explained why he had presented Fergus with its proof.
‘I thought it was you. You gave me a right fright – are you stalking me or something?’
The sun had dipped behind the building across the square and, while dusk was still some little time distant, the women under the tree were packing their cakes into Tupperware tubs. Somewhere, Fergus had lost the best part of an hour and, had Ruby not spotted him, it would all have been in vain: she would have slipped unseen into the swirl of the city. Fergus touched the pendant once more, to thank his grandmother for her watchfulness.
‘Me? No, I was just passing, you know? Bit of a coincidence, really. Fate, maybe.’
His relief at finding her, his pleasure at the sound of her voice, the sight of her welcoming smile, washed through Fergus and he winked as he finished speaking. She laughed, and her laughter emboldened him. He stood to level the terrain.
‘Honestly? I was looking for you. And I didn’t know how else to find you. So I’ve been waiting here a couple of hours, hoping you might pass. Knew you would. Something told me.’
‘Well, that’s very clever of you. A bit creepy, but clever all the same. Anyhow, you’ve found me now. What’s up?’
Ruby settled on the bench next to Fergus. His story fell out of him with ease, and he related all that had happened with a fluidity he had not expected. All the while, Ruby watched him attentively, her body turned in to face him, her right leg hooked under her left knee, her right elbow over the back of the seat, her hand cupping her face. The ripples of her steady breath reached out across the space between them. Somewhere on campus, a clock struck five times and he paused to soak up the bell’s warm tones. The square was largely empty now and the remnants of the fifth chime lingered in the stones.
When the air had cleared, Fergus tried to continue, but his fluency was spent, and there was only Ruby’s breathing and his discomfort left. He had set out the situation objectively, but could not ask, with cool blood, the question that his circumstances necessarily required. His hands sought to mould his words, like kelp in a languid sea. He could no longer look into her face and so instead watched no-one leave or enter the library.
‘Look, if you want to stay with us, you only have to ask. We’ve got plenty of room, if you don’t mind a sofa. It’s not a problem, really. No need to stress about it.’
Her right hand balled into a loose fist and bumped gently against his shoulder, and there was her smile, her eyes bright and round, a little laugh to fill the silence he had left. His pride mended quickly with his relief and soon he was thanking her as well as he might with dignity intact. The matter of the cursing stone and the elusive Mr Maltravers still remained, and while Fergus had neglected it in his anxiety about where he might sleep, it was this that most concerned Ruby. Even if he could be found, a more sophisticated approach would be needed if the collector were to accede to the demand for the return of the stone.
Wordlessly, Ruby unhooked her leg and stretched it back into life before trusting it with her weight. She reclaimed her back pack from the bench and, at her command, Fergus rose yet more easily than the straining bag. He followed her without question, feeling the texture of dependence wrapped around him like a blanket, his fate entrusted to this strange woman.
She led him from the square and deeper into the campus; he no longer knew which way was north, nor the meaning of the signs that marked the way. The weightlessness of his ignorance made him giddy, and he felt a spiral of effervescence run up through his spine: for this moment, everything no longer depended upon him.
While he watched Ruby unchain her bike, he imagined himself walking behind his grandfather and Mr Robertson across the island’s moors, where rolling grass and heather rippled out to the open seas and the rabbits wormed their way into the heart of the earth; he thought about the sunshine on his face and the sweet June winds; about the time before he had been sent to Mallaig, when the island was his and open and light, and whatever worries he had were left each afternoon in the classroom with Mr Galbraith. But now Galbraith, and even his grandfather, had tied him to the cursing stone and its weight fell upon his neck.
‘It’s the old Jewish cemetery. What’s left of it, anyway. You’re probably standing on some of the rest of it. I guess in time, when everyone has forgotten about the people here, when no-one cares, they‘ll build on it.’
Ruby’s bike had been chained to a rail beside a wide gravel expanse between awkward buildings made of metal, brick and glass; the space was littered with grave stones and tombs. The rows of low, flat, grey stones stretched away from them. Fergus wanted to count them, but the graves became lost among the greyness of the gravel, a confusion of dead stone. That some had significance, while others did not, seemed remarkably arbitrary. He imagined the cursing stone lost somewhere in the expanse, and the weight of his duty returned.
‘Pub? We need a plan of action and I think a pint might help.’
24
With each gust, the wind scooped up the noise of the traffic and stirred it into the tops of the trees. Their branches were already vivid with new growth, their leaves still bright with innocence, and the daffodils that gathered around them in the park nodded with delight, safe behind their bars from the fevered motion of the street. Buses and taxis bustled in the road, while the pavements throbbed with the incomprehensible dance of rush h
our. People scurried in every direction, but a few minutes of observation revealed that they moved with detached purpose, as if on tracks that brought them close to each other but guarded them from collision.
The blur of faces, and the constant shuffling out of and into the way of harried commuters, meant that Fergus could learn little of the people with whom he shared the morning. Among the movement, however, a handful simply stood, like him, conspicuous in their immobility: they handed out newspapers, or checked their phones; others expectantly scanned the faces of the crowd around them. A young woman, pretty, in a blue skirt and glinting heels, stood near the entrance of the Tube station, her anxious eyes flitting between the people emerging from underground to her watch to the street; every so often, knees together, she would bounce rapidly on her toes, her face twisting into an almost tearful terror.
In those places where there were benches, each was occupied by a solitary person: a woman smoking, her face distant and calm amid the proximate chaos; a man, his arms folded across his prodigious belly, watched the passers-by with disdain; another man struggled to keep the contents of a burger between failing pieces of bread as he forced great mouthfuls into himself, greedily, hungrily. Fergus wondered if he should take up one of the vacant seats while he waited, but each occupant created distinct disincentives. Instead he checked his watch, already knowing that he was still early, and shuffled from foot to foot.
He wanted to go back into the park, of course, but he feared that he would miss Ruby when she arrived. He wasn’t sure from which direction she would appear in any case, only that she would not come from the Tube station. When he had suggested to Jamie that he would walk, his friend had been horrified, as if he had suggested something unimaginable, much as he had greeted the news of the time at which Fergus intended to depart. He had not thought to tell his friend that he would be staying in London, and as they shook hands at Jamie’s bedroom door he knew that they would not see each other again; their long estrangement now a thing of permanence.
The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga Page 14