Neither of them spoke for a long time. The chaos of cars and people, buses and vans swirled beyond the windscreen and Fergus felt the city to be evermore incomprehensible. It was as if he had arrived for the first time and had forgotten the language of the place. As they twisted through the back streets and thoroughfares of east London, all he had learned unravelled in drab brick and the debris of the street. Blocks of look-alike flats blurred into one, such that he thought they must be lost in an endless circle, condemned to return and to leave and to return forever. Later, they sped along angry motorways that cut through streets, where front doors stepped out directly into the roar of unforgiving mobility. This city seemed, finally, unknowable.
‘This should be fine, Fergus. You know. It should get you home safely.’
He did not have money left for train fares. The idea had emerged last night, looking for all the world like something concrete, reliable. Steve, the man who had made the recovery of the stone possible, had endorsed it, given it credence and validity. He had hitchhiked to Manchester and back only two months previously. All that was needed was to get to a service station on the motorway and find a driver heading as far north as you needed. At the right service station, that would not be a problem. Everyone was sure of it. Even Jacob, who had brooded on the moral content of their actions in Maltravers’ flat since their return; even he joined the chorus of approval. Furthermore, he had offered to drive Fergus to a service station the following morning. Today.
‘You must be glad to be going home.’
Fergus did not answer and Jacob did not press. The road slipped past them with a muffled roar, but the silence built around them, so that neither could breathe. They had arrived at London Gateway and Jacob had stopped the car in a space among a hundred other cars. He rested his hands on the wheel for a moment, and exhaled.
‘Look, I’m sorry, OK? I just think that breaking and entering is wrong; it was stupid and wrong. But, OK, I understand that it was a last resort. You had no choice. I get that. And I am pleased that you’ve got the stone. It belongs on Hinba, I accept that. Just don’t ask me to cheer your exploits, OK?’
He looked back to where the holdall sat safe behind Fergus, and then at Fergus himself. He waited, his face open, hopeful, but his companion simply looked at the hands resting on his thighs. The finger ends were ragged, the victims of a nervous, dreamless night. Only the slow rise and fall of his chest announced his presence in the car. Jacob touched his shoulder and Fergus accepted its warmth.
‘You OK?’
He realised that he hadn’t spoken for over an hour and his rudeness appalled him. Weaving together a smile, he looked up.
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. Just all a bit much, and still not yet done. Won’t be right ‘til I’m back on the island with that. And even then, I’m not sure. You’re right about the break-in. I just hope it doesn’t come back to haunt any of you.’
Jacob nodded. A more comfortable silence grew around them and they headed off to the cafeteria, to get some tea and to search the tables of customers for a lorry driver heading north.
Part IV
The Prince Returns
40
Only his breathing interfered with the sea’s conversation with the wind. The gulls too were quiet today, out hunting on the broad ocean. He turned, his eyes now sated by the blade of Skye’s frosted crags, and trudged further along the beach. Trudged, because there was no other way to describe his daily searching along the foreshore. He had collected already some wood and plastic, all of which had long forgotten their original form, the shapes and colours erased by the workings of the irresistible sea. These pieces he had bundled together and tied with a length of sorry rope, so that they might be carried more easily back to the barn, to be sorted and stored wherever space permitted. Something might be of value to someone, and the wood would heat his water and his food, so that the remains of his father’s insurance money might stretch a little further.
He had not expected to live so long. His calculations had been based on an accident, or worse, finishing him long ago. It was now impossible that the money would carry him to his pension. It was still two months before the man from Mallaig would visit, to weigh the shreds of plastic cluttering the barn and calculate the pittance he would offer for all these days of work. He wondered how he would have survived if he had had any trace of self-respect; if pride had kept him from clearing the beaches of detritus, clipping it by hand into slivers. He most probably would have starved by now. But fortunately his pride had been stolen from him with his father, as a boy. As a man, he had had none left to prevent him from sinking into the filth that the sea did not want.
A lone tern shrieked overhead, its cry carried on the wind high onto the cliffs above. The hidden mainland was surely still there, behind the purple rise of Rum, across the blue water, sparkling with the clear spring light. The brief snow of the previous week had cleared completely now and the wet air had given way to a more seasonal clarity. Had he gone then, after his father had died, to take up the offer of sanctuary with a cousin he had not met, with his wife and daughters in Kinlochleven, he would most probably have been happier. But it was not guaranteed. And he would have had to give up his father’s place, his place, leave it undefended against the Buchannans, their avarice and entitlement. He would have had to give up the possibility of revenge.
The beach began to taper towards the little rocky headland at the point, and he stumbled on the large, flattened rocks that backed the bay above the tide line. He had crossed this bar of gnarled rock a thousand times or more and yet still he stepped gingerly on its slickness. The tern dropped into the sea just beyond the lacklustre surf. Duncannon paused, watching for it to break the surface, to see what bounty it carried; the fish flashed silver in the beak for a moment and then was gone; the tern tore itself from the water and rose again into the air, pulling against the insistent gravity. It wheeled once and set off back along the shoreline.
Alone again, Duncannon dropped heavily from the rock onto the beach. His knees complained in clicks and pops, but he walked on in spite of them. At the far end of this beach was a squat basalt stack that had been a fortress once, before the Christians and the Vikings came; after that, the Clanranalds had made it a gaol, which had passed on their leaving to the Buchanans. The stone remains of grim walls still clung to the crag, high above his barn. He had lived his whole life beneath the Buchanans’ ancient prison and had not thought to escape.
Half way between the headland and the stack, he stopped. A large blue drum lay forlorn among the tufts and boulders at the cliff ’s foot. It was open at both ends, but nonetheless contained a great deal of plastic. It rested between two painfully familiar rocks. It was here that his father’s head had split open. The barrel lay over the place where James Duncannon had stopped rolling, lifeless and bloodied.
It was a place he passed everyday but never now approached. Then, he had run to it, the hot blood of youth pushing him on, convinced that if he could reach him he could save him, could put right the crime. But his father had been dead before Duncannon had placed his hand on his chest. The bloody misshapen mass that had once been a handsome, noble face was smeared and distorted yet more by the tears that hung in the boy’s eyes. But even through the distortion, the figure on the cliff edge above had remained as clear as before, when the wrestling and shouting had begun. The noise had startled him: his father had sent him out, so that he might receive a visitor, but Duncannon had assumed that it would be the woman, not the man; that the house would be closed up and silent. And yet instead, there had been his father, outside and arguing, up on the crag. And then he had been falling, and then he had been dead. Duncannon had been just a boy that day, but in the endless time that followed, weeping over his father’s corpse, he had become a man.
He bent down by the barrel, one knee on the cold rock, and turned it in his hands, felt its weight, tried to calculate its value. His hands shaking, he took a length of rope and looped it through the empty dru
m, and tied it tight, like a chain through a pendant’s clasp. And then he could avoid it no longer and he looked up to the crag above, expecting to see him staring down once more.
After the doctor had been, and the priest, Buchanan had visited the farm. He had not knocked, and had found the boy sobbing by the fire. He had been brief, wanting only to make sure that the Duncannon boy had understood him, to understand what had been clear from the stony face that had stared down at the beach, so long such that there could be no mistake: he did not care that the boy knew, only that he should be silent. And so he had been and so he was.
Behind him, the stutter of McCredie’s boat coughed in the distance. Grateful for the intrusion, he rose to his feet once more, turning to watch the thin line of the Tern’s wake cut the flat sea. Maybe this would be the day that the Buchanan boy would return with the cursing stone. If not today, then surely soon. Duncannon let the thought slip from him, as he had every day he had watched for McCredie since the boy had left.
When the boat had disappeared around the headland, he took up the loose end of the rope and slung it over his shoulder. The bright blue barrel rattled and jumped over the stones behind him, and he trudged on with his treasures towards the kettle by the hearth.
41
The kitchen was empty. Only the garden door, swinging gently on its hinges in the morning breeze, betrayed the presence of others. Her mother would be out in the sunshine, cutting flowers for the table or hanging washing that would swell with fresh spring air. Tea warmed by the stove and she dashed red-brown gouts of it out of the pot into the cup that had been left for her. Taking her tea to the table, she waited, heedless of the need for the day to begin.
There were no sounds either, not even from her grandfather’s room. No creaks or coughs, nor those frightening noises that had burst into the night, waking Mary and her parents, shaking the floors with their force and malice. She had let them go to him, fearful that it was the sound of death that raged in the darkness. He had looked so near to dying that evening. When she had arrived from the harbour she had been full of optimism and fortitude, enough to sustain the whole family; but at the sight of his paper skin and dull eyes, all her courage had fled. She hoped only that he was sleeping now, as near to peace as life would allow.
Her mother had told her what to expect, but with such little gravel in her voice. It was a story that had to be told as if it were true, so that her husband would be reassured in his anxiety and her daughter would come home to comfort him. But Mary had not believed it and now knew that her mother could not be blind to these simple facts: Fingal Buchanan would be dead before the end of the week. It would be a painful death.
‘Your father’s sleeping. It’s a Sunday, after all, and he was with Fingal most of the night. I suppose you heard him well enough.’
She was silhouetted in the doorframe, and only the daffodils in the crook of her arm shone with their own colours. She was shorter and her shoulders were defeated by gravity, by hard work and worry. Yet her mother had managed a little joy for Mary, some shred of gladness, and her smile when it was revealed was effortless. The flowers were leant in the sink and, without question, Morag brought the pot and replenished Mary’s cup. As always, she added too much milk and as always Mary did not object. Especially not today.
She was busy with the bread, her body swaying with the knife, her back to Mary, talking about the garden, about the characters of the island and their goings-on. Mary let her talk, let her escape the facts upstairs through other less desperate lives, through the colours of hyacinths. And then they were eating, mouths occupied with other things, safe from naming their fears for some moments more.
‘I’ve been elected President of the Archaeological Society.’
Only crumbs remained and, to keep her mother from sweeping them into her hand and clearing plates, she had had to say something. Something pale, something from over there. She did not need to tell her that there had been no other candidates, that the Society numbered only twelve people, and that its only function was to organise a series of poorly attended speaker meetings in the Student Union, which she now had the honour to oversee.
‘I was thinking, once the cursing stone is back on the island, I might invite Mr Galbraith to address one of our meetings on it. Do you think he’d like that?’
Her mother’s face twitched, flickering between tears and smiles, fear and pride. Her left hand weighted down her right so that it could not scratch at the table cloth, nor at her arm. At last, the twitches smoothed into a wide beam, shorn of her usual modesty.
‘Look at you! It seems like only yesterday that Mr Galbraith was your teacher and now you’re inviting him to Glasgow, to one of your own meetings. What’s that thing they say in that film? The student becomes the master, is it?’
The laughter felt good. Years fell from her mother’s face and the miles that separated their worlds dissolved. It had only been six months or so since Mary had left for the city, for her life, but already the bonds had weakened such that she knew she had had a choice over whether she should return to her family at this hour. She had not come through duty, but love.
‘It’s working out, then? Studying? The city? It’s all you hoped?’
All she had hoped too. Her own happiness was bound closely to the success of her daughter’s adventure with the mainland: she had willed it, fought for it, encouraged and supported her in taking this path. She had sent a part of herself with Mary to Glasgow, the part that could be spared, the part that was not needed on Hinba, would not be missed by the men, by the other islanders. She hung breathless on Mary’s confirmation that all was as they had hoped, that her free spirit was at ease on those far horizons.
Only the boy. Craig. Only this troubled her. She had married young herself and knew what was lost in that. For Mary to have this chance and to surrender it all to a boy before she started would be too painful. And yet she did not want her daughter to be lonely, nor to be one of those girls, too liberal in her affections. She could say nothing of course, and could only trust in the good sense that she had fed her daughter as an infant.
‘Do you think you’ll come back, when it’s finished? When you’ve got your degree, I mean.’
She willed Mary to say no, to laugh politely and shake her head, thoughtfully, without closing any doors, without condescension.
‘I doubt it, mum. There is just so much to learn. I love it. Some of them, on my course, they spend their time carrying on. You never see them in the library. I don’t understand it. I’ve got just three years to explore five-thousand of years of history. I don’t want to waste the chance. Thank you, for… well, you know.’
She would not cry, even through happiness. If the tears started, Morag could not be sure that they would stop. She had wished him dead a thousand times, but now that the time was here, she could only think of the loss of the old fool from her life and imagine how vast was the pain that her husband laboured beneath.
‘That’s OK, sweetheart. I’m just pleased that it’s what you wanted. I only ever wanted for you to be happy, to be what you wanted to be. You and Fergus. I think you’re nearer to it than he is, if I’m honest.’
The ceiling creaked above them. Both women raised their eyes towards it, saying nothing. A door ticked its way open and footstep followed footstep before they ceased. The muffled sound of a human voice fell through wood and plaster and paper, its meaning and form lost in the dust. Mary looked towards her mother, whose own eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, intent and desperate. At last, no longer able simply to imagine her husband’s reddened eyes, she pushed back her chair and, apologising, left the kitchen for the stairs.
42
The singing lapped against the boat, fighting a butterfly battle with the sound of McCredie’s motor. The little church sat lonely in a field between the village and the jetty, and the islanders’ voices had rushed over the pasture and the brine to meet them as soon as they rounded the headland. It was as it had always been and yet seemed so di
ssonant now. The island itself no longer fitted snugly within him: on their approach, it’s long, low slab had seemed sluggish on the horizon and the summit of Carn a’ Ghaill was no longer exultant, but squat and insipid. He had expected to see Duncannon on the beach, even from so far out, but he had seen no-one.
At the first bump between boat and jetty, Fergus stepped from the deck and onto the solid concrete. While his legs settled into their new state, he paused for a moment, resting the brown holdall on the ground. McCredie and the young hand, a boy he vaguely recognised from Mallaig, began to unload boxes and drums and great spools of wire onto the harbour side. Their curses and laboured breathing provided a syncopated rhythm to the straining of Abide With Me that rose now from the church.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day. He knew the hymn well; it was a favourite of the Reverend Drummond. But he had never before felt its poignancy. Now, while his grandfather lay dying, it weighed heavily upon him. The decision made, he shouted a farewell to the labourers, grasped the handles of the holdall and set out for the village. Shona would have to wait, after all. He should probably wash and change first in any case. He had been in these same clothes for over 24 hours, had slept in them, lolling in the cab of the lorry that had brought him to Fort William. His mouth was repellent, even to him. Yet, as he passed the Harbour Bell, he prayed that she had gone to church with her parents, that she would not see him passing, forsaking her, as he hurried to his home. She would understand, of course, that he would need to see his grandfather as soon as possible, but to catch sight of him slipping passed without explanation would cause needless distress.
The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga Page 22