The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga

by Adrian Harvey

  Instead of the sixty minutes that Jamie had insisted such a journey would take on foot, he had needed fewer than forty, including the time spent marvelling at the view from Westminster Bridge. The parks had been his favourite part of the journey, more so even than the sweep of the river and the grandeur of the buildings. He had paused beside a small lake to watch the pelicans stretch the morning light into their wings. There, in the shadow of palaces, a ramshackle man, encased in a greasy anorak despite the spring sunshine, was eating a breakfast of tiny biscuits pulled from their packet. As Fergus passed him, he dropped a couple of the biscuits onto the ground and crushed them carefully under his slack-jawed boot, leaving small mounds of crumbs; he then wafted his hand in welcome to the curious pigeons. Hunger and fear led them to approach with caution, hobbling on their malformed feet. One wary eye was turned to the man, the other devoured the crumbs in anticipation. The man grinned and coaxed them onwards in a surprisingly gentle voice. As the birds ate, he admired his work, washing himself in the company of other living things. Their combined vitality was comforting: Fergus had dreamed of ghosts and, unusually, he had been unable to contain them in his notebook that morning; they had pursued him from his bed and into the street, where they wandered freely, aimless, through his daytime thoughts.

  Ruby’s touch upon his shoulder startled him more than it should and he turned a little too quickly, his haunted eyes not yet calmed before she faced him. Claiming tiredness, he accepted her embrace awkwardly, her reassurances unconvincingly.

  Slinking through the narrow streets, Fergus led Ruby towards the gallery on Half Moon Street. Neither spoke, and Fergus’s only thoughts were to wonder at what might be in Ruby’s mind. In the canal-side pub the evening before, they had postulated, over the noise of the bar, about how they might approach Maltravers. Despite two pints, there had been no inspiration: he found no advance on the simple idea of challenging the man to return the stolen stone, while Ruby tried vainly to escape the conclusion that it was a hopeless errand. By the time Fergus had accepted that he should allow Ruby to return to her planned evening, it had been nine thirty and their only plan was to meet at Green Park station in twelve hours and then to see what transpired. He watched Ruby ride away along the tow path, and headed to the tube, to return to Jamie’s flat at Elephant and Castle to pack his few things and dream.

  They reached Half Moon Street, where the day before Fergus had found only darkened windows and a locked door. The sun had not yet cleared the buildings to the east and the roadway and houses that lined it remained in shadow: it was already clear that no light was lit in the window of the gallery. Undeterred Ruby rattled the door in its hinges, while Fergus pressed his face to the glass. He dropped his holdall to the stone flags so that he could cup his hands to get a better view inside. The sparse interior housed a few cabinets, and the walls carried a number of paintings, but there was much less clutter than at McAteer’s. There was no sign of movement, nor that any was imminent. Perhaps the trail had gone cold after all.

  Peeling his face from the glass, he found himself alone in the street. After the frenetic adjacency of only a few minutes earlier, his isolation unnerved him; then Ruby’s absence washed through him, the confusion replaced by concern almost immediately. Maybe she had found a way inside, had shaken the lock loose with her obstinacy? But the door looked as firm as it had always been. Perhaps, her assistance had been a joke, a trick, a raising of his hopes simply to watch them crumble. He scanned the nearby doorways to see if he could glimpse her, sniggering. Or perhaps she had simply had second thoughts, decided that she did not want to help, did not want to have him stay on her sofa, disrupt her remaining days of leisure. Forlorn, he peered once more through the window.

  ‘You won’t see anything.’

  Her voice was as if nothing had happened, but her face wore a new self-satisfaction; her short, dense eyebrows hovered as she waited for him to provide her cue.

  ‘Where did you disappear to then?’

  Her head twitched backwards to indicate the dry cleaner’s shop behind her. Fergus followed the trajectory with his eyes, but had still not caught up. His bewilderment was too obviously entertaining and Ruby curtailed her game.

  ‘The guy. In there. He told me that it’s appointment only. He was surprised that we didn’t know that, seeing as how we’re clients of Mr Maltravers. Don’t worry: I’ve got a number. When would sir like to make an appointment?’

  His astonishment was struck numb onto his face. After all the difficulty and cost that had been expended in Glasgow to acquire no more than his name and yet Ruby had simply walked into a neighbouring shop and left with his phone number. The secrets of this man that was hidden even on the internet fell open to her. He speculated on what his new friend’s capabilities might be.

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  Ruby just smiled, her nose wrinkling slightly.

  ‘Well, let’s just say I have my methods. Now, if my work here is done, how about we go look at stuff in shops we can’t afford?’

  She led him back towards the church, sunlight now bouncing from the white stone. They rounded the corner and they also were bathed in its rays. Ruby’s hair was aflame, burning red like a torch. She was still smiling, still beyond any questions he might ask.

  Ruby pulled back sharply on his arm as he stepped off the kerb. As the car flew past, scything through the space where he would have been had she not intervened, Ruby stared wide-eyed, horrified, incredulous at Fergus, her head shaking slowly. Then the tension broke with a snort. Ruby’s laughter was infectious, and Fergus could only giggle with weak indignation.

  ‘We do have cars where I come from, you know?’

  Except they didn’t. Hinba was home only to a couple of quad bikes and a tractor: the sound of internal combustion was, for the most part, the product of marine diesel and could be heard for miles. There had been a car once, but then MacLeod’s old Mercedes had been dragged off to Duncannon’s barn, to be dismembered and used for who knew what alchemy. Even before that, the car had stood immobile outside the Bell for three years, until the sea air and winter squalls did for it. The rust had steadily eaten under the paintwork, gluing its gears and other moving parts, so that the awkward carcass would no longer move of its own volition. Even before that, the car had only moved on a handful of occasions: a couple of tours of the harbour-side, and two trips to the mainland.

  Despite its immobility, Shona had loved to sit in the back seat of the car and watch, aloof, demur, while the world whirred by to its own rhythm; sometimes she would ask Fergus to sit behind the wheel and take instruction as if he were her driver, and he would comply willingly, happy only to be with her, to complete her game.

  Ruby took his hand and led him safely across the road, into a warren of tight alleys and streets bounded by narrow-fronted houses. Beside him, she bounced slightly with each step and, when they burst once more into a broad and handsome street, the brilliant red of her top-knot quivered and shimmered in the returned sunlight.

  25

  For all she hated Mayfair, she had to admit that its streets were much more pleasant than Stepney, or even than Preston. As they crossed Berkley Square, the thought of nightingales insistent, she realised that she had never walked through the neighbourhood at any point during her four years in the city. Often she had circumnavigated it, by bus or on foot, but had seldom ventured onto its streets. The buildings and plane trees were much as those around Gower Street, where she had reluctantly discovered London’s grandeur as a cocksure student, but here they were more assured, sumptuous. The sunshine lit the greening tree tips as if they were properties on a film set; the blackened bricks of the townhouses bore no resemblance to the stains of industry that discoloured the terraces at home. The place was not simply a square on a board game, but it still felt like somewhere too expensive to linger.

  Her mother would understand, even if her housemates would not. Perhaps that was why she had not told them the night before that they were to hav
e a houseguest. Bridget had been out until late, rushing for the door as soon as Ruby had returned, running for the bus, her record bag over her shoulder. There had been no time to tell her, but Matt and Jacob had been in, had eaten with her, had watched the television, described their days, asked after hers, and she had not mentioned Fergus once. They would have taken it in their stride, of course, used to Ruby’s lost causes. At least that was what she hoped, what she was relying upon.

  But her mother would throw herself gladly in with her daughter’s lost cause, would sense the adventure it contained, just as she did. Since her father left them, her mother had encouraged her to explore, always to explore; through those last difficult months of primary school and through the defiant time at secondary school. Always books and learning and escape. University had been the way out of Preston, just as it had been for her mother. Only she had stumbled back there, for love and for the want of other ideas beyond a vague notion of healing the planet. So when Ruby graduated, she had not returned, had left her mother and Alex in Preston, one willingly, the other resistant, and she had conducted the two relationships through train rides and telephones and emails while she embarked on her Ph.D., pursuing her own route to heal the world.

  She had been seeing Alex since she was sixteen. Much of the fire had died since they had passed their exams and headed off to their new cities to study and plan. In her heart, Ruby knew that Alex’s plan had been their reunion in Lancashire, or Manchester, or anywhere but London; but she had pretended it had not been understood. Another year of long-distance love, while Ruby read books about Cambodian genocide and the slow rebuilding of an ancient society, and Alex tried his best to understand, bound together through history and commitments made in the ever-dimmer past.

  ‘Your hair looks really red in this light.’

  They had found themselves among the glossy shops of South Moulton Street, the sun arcing its way towards its zenith, casting its glow along the street. There were no cars here and the two of them ambled carelessly. Ruby had paused to glance in the window of a shoe shop and, seeing nothing that caught her eye, had turned to see Fergus a view paces ahead.

  ‘What? You’re one to talk!’

  ‘Well, yeah, but mine comes from a bottle. You’re proper ginger.’

  It was not a thing that Ruby would say in normal times. The red-headed boy at her school had been teased without mercy. Ruby would make it her business to take his tormentors to one side and explain the genetic composition of the complexion, its scarcity. By the time she had explained that the Viking’s fierce thunder god had had red hair, they had invariably become bored and wandered off in search of other distractions. Perhaps that memory had led her to adopt Fergus as a cause.

  ‘No, not ginger. Mr Robertson, my granddad’s friend, now he was what goes for ginger on Hinba. Me, I’m what my mam calls copper. My fiancée, she says it’s like warm honey, but I guess that’s just her being poetic and so.’

  The news that there was a fiancée broke the steady pattern of her breathing. It was quickly recovered, unseen, and Ruby stored the niggling puzzle it provoked for later. Instead, she apologised, even though she had caused no offence, and asked if he was ready for a cup of tea. Fergus had had no breakfast once again and eagerly accepted the offer.

  ‘Righto, there’s a place just up here. After that, I’ll introduce you to Selfridges, then we can get a bus back east, get you settled in, make some plans.’

  Later, she would call the number on the business card that the man in the dry cleaning shop had handed her. She would endure the sound of condescension and let the pampered young woman, who had never had to work for anything, arrange a meeting for the following Tuesday morning at the shop. The young woman would not call it a shop and so Ruby would delight in shaping the word in her mouth and hurling it at her in confirmation of the appointment.

  26

  Grey light suffuses the street, blurs its low walls and shallow spaces, the houses that stand beyond them, continuous, opaque. Through the drabness, you glide smoothly, passing each gateway in turn until at last you reach the one that you know to be home. It has been so long since you have seen it, and a thick gloom shrouds it so that you can barely recognise it. But your memories are awakened, fuzzy like the sky, by the black lacquer of the metal gate and the cracked paved path leading to a bright red door beneath its white-rendered arch and you know, without seeing, that this is home.

  Yet the windows are blank, closed, shuttered, sheaved, stopped up like dead eyes. The door does not respond to the gentle press of your hand, or the rapping of your fist. There is no light, no movement, within. The still shadows remain lifeless, dappled through the window’s distortion. A voice behind you. A woman, her hair white and her face of crinkled alabaster, bloodless lips. You recognise her as your old neighbour, left to watch over your home in your absence. You have been absent for such a long time, and she is grateful at last to return to you your key.

  Its heaviness lies in your palm as you pass through the opening door and into the empty hallway. The air is dead. No-one is left. The old woman, too, has gone, vanished into the closing gloom outside. In turn you pass through empty rooms, each cold and lifeless; the colour drained from carpets and curtains, pictures still hanging where you left them on the wall. Despite the comfort of familiar things, the fading light outside and the stillness within disturbs you, makes you fearful, anxious. You return to the hallway and lock and bolt the door against intruders, usurpers, then begin again your tour, securing each window in every room.

  Your circuit takes you back to rooms you have already visited and, with growing unease, you find things moved, broken or dirtied. Windows that you have only recently fastened are once more unlocked. In the dining room, you find a pile of chicken bones, neatly stack beneath the table; in a bedroom, the sheets are ruffled, creased, still warm to the touch; in the hallway the locked door stands open, swinging on its hinges. With desperate urgency, you repeat your tour, closing tight all that you can, watching for signs that others might be inside, hiding or hidden.

  Night falls in a hurry and the house is dark now. So very dark. And the noises begin. There should be no-one in the house, you tell yourself, since everything has been locked up. It is simply your imagination. You are lost to foreboding, irrational fears, the clamour of night terrors. The darkness beyond is such that you cannot see anything beyond the window glass; your faint reflection, indistinct, surprises you. There should be no light inside; you have lit no lamp. And yet light crawls up the stairs, riding on the indisputable noise, the sound of muffled voices, rising from the kitchen.

  You creep to the stair head and see light oozing under the kitchen door. You can hear voices and clanking and the shuffling of feet. Already you are in the hallway, caught between the kitchen and the front door, between danger and safety. But you do not know which is which: the voices in the kitchen might be your family, your mother making dinner, talking over the day with your father, or they might belong to thieves and villains; outside, you might find the kind old woman who has been watching over you, or you might fall prey to wraiths and harpies.

  Within an instant of willing it, you burst through the kitchen door. The four men, lost in thick red hair and beards, are making food at the stove, setting the table, slicing through meat, glossy and slick, near the sink. They look around, surprised but weary, then angry. They shout at you in a language you can no longer understand. They wave their arms and spit imprecations at you in a thick and angular tongue. One picks up the kitchen knife from beside the sink and plants it cleanly in your chest, puncturing your heart, its point coming to rest against your spine. You can feel it scratching there, can feel the blood pumping in hot waves out of the hole in your chest and from your mouth. Oceans of blood, seeping out of you, and you are on your back on the kitchen floor, dead.

  The men have gone and it is daylight, and you can see your corpse more clearly, prostrate on the lino. The woman from next door is discovering your body, stepping gingerly in the
pool of thick black blood that is congealing, cold, around you. The woman is screaming, silent, and it is simply cold, the empty damp coldness of death, noiseless and distant.

  27

  There was a cat: black and imperious, blacker than the mouth of hell. It sat on one of the arm chairs, facing the sofa where Fergus lay. Although seemingly unimpressed by the interloper, it kept its half-closed eyes fixed upon him. The day had come suddenly to Fergus, as if he were anxious to be free of sleep. The jolt of his awakening stirred the cat too, and it slipped from its place and padded across the floor towards the sofa. Fergus could see now that the cat was not entirely black, its feet stained white, as if it had been dipped in milk. His eyes gradually assembled the impression of its slinking approach, such that by the time the animal had leapt up onto his chest, he was at least prepared for its landing.

  Fergus was not a great friend of cats. He had never had a pet of any kind, but all the same he could understand why someone would keep a dog. Yet a cat seemed pointless. He thought of the farm dogs on the island, their energy, intelligence and loyalty. Often he would see them on his walks, never far from their owner, always industrious.

  There were no cats on the island, not since old Mrs Muir’s ratter had disappeared one night a few years before. There had been a storm and Mrs Muir had not been able to call the cat in: off chasing mice or what have you. In the morning, Jerimiah had still not returned, nor the next morning. Mrs Muir’s son had been despatched, and he in turn had recruited the island’s young people, including Fergus, to hunt out the errant cat. But there had been no trace. Jerimiah had vanished into thin air. For a few nights, his fate was the topic of distasteful speculation in the Bell, but soon he was forgotten, never to be replaced.