Maybe if he had let them take him from the island. Had he let them put him in the hospital and have the doctors prod and poke him, like they’d said, let them put tubes in him and filled him with pills, maybe then he might have squeezed a few more years of life from the world. Maybe. But what would have been the point? Why risk everything, his dignity and the right to die where he had lived, on his island, when there was no reason.
Fingal had known it was hopeless, even before the full force of his cough had taken hold of his chest, had alarmed even his daughter-in-law by its persistence and force. Something inside him had told him that he would not see another summer through. So he had put his foot down. He had stayed. The doctors had had to come to him. They had brought the drugs to Hinba, pills to fight the invasion in his body, tablets to lessen the pain of the fight. He had stayed and he had waited, for Fergus to return.
And Fergus had now returned. He had won back the stone for the island. His position was secured and, with it, the Buchanan line. Fergus would marry the MacLeod girl and the island would belong wholly to the Buchanans. All would be as it should be.
As it should have been since the Buchanans had thrown out the Clanranalds. The boy would run things properly, the post office, the pub, the island. They were all one in any case, and Fergus would make a fine Laird for Hinba. And in turn his own sons and grandsons would carry on the name, the line. All would be well, and all would be as it should be.
Except Duncannon. He should have driven the little bastard off the island all those years ago, when he had the chance, when he could have made it seem like charity. What was best for the little orphan boy. But he’d not and that had been a mistake. Duncannon had kept his silence for thirty years, but was now set on causing trouble, with his games and riddles. Fingal could only admire the man that had held his will for revenge so long, to choose his moment so precisely. Duncannon had endured penury and isolation for his whole adult life, not through guilt but through guile. As unworthy of trust as his father. And yet, and yet. Fingal had to admire him: to orchestrate so stark a reminder as that crass token of betrayal, and in the blameless hands of his own grandson.
The night was turning to morning and once again he had not slept: the room was filling with the grey light of the dawn. A tearing cough ripped through his chest to split the stillness. Fingal raised his hand to wipe the spittle from around his mouth. He felt the thinning hair of his beard. It was no longer the rich lustrous beard of years gone by: time and illness had worn away some patches almost entirely. He did not need a mirror to know that it was now no longer white. It too had started to yellow, but it was still the testament of a good, long life. He did not need to live longer. It would have been grand to have seen the boy turn twenty one, and to see him wed. But these things were certain now, and witnessing their passing was simply gravy to the banquet of his reign. To know that he was back on the island, to have seen his strong youthfulness once more, was sufficient.
He loved Fergus not just for what he represented, but also for who he was. Since the boy had been a baby, Fingal had doted on him. He had lavished the devotion he had withheld from his own son onto his grandson. His final gift had been to send him out to win back the stone, to make him a king among the islanders. Whatever was to come, his life was now complete, save for the loose ends of a birthday party and a wedding breakfast. He was prepared to pass on, secure in the knowledge that Fergus would be ready to take his place. He had never had the time to feel things like this for his own son: Davey had been born at a time when there had not been enough time or money, or love. And of course his son had been too close to his wife. He even looked like her.
He tried to shift in his bed, to ease the pain in his chest. Instead, there was only another convulsion, a wet tearing of coughing, this time so fierce that he felt as if his sternum had cracked. The bed shook in echo, the vibrations remaining even after the eruption had subsided. Again he wiped the saliva from his mouth on the back of his hand and, in the dawn half-light, he caught sight of the black smudge on his knuckle. For a moment he was perplexed, before he recognised the darkness as blood. He ran his other, clean, hand over his chin and, sure enough, it too was traced with sticky blackness. His chest cracked once more, but with a violence that surprised him and, before he could make his wish, his life slipped through his skin; seventy two years turned to a vapour that could not be contained by his will, nor his body.
The blood flowed for a brief while, until it hardened, crusting his whiskers and drawing a line from his mouth, downwards, towards the bed that had cosseted him since he was an adolescent, down towards the floorboards that he had buffed to a dull sheen with ten thousand shambling steps; down further, into the kitchen where the boy was sitting, had been sitting since he had crept into the house in the dead of night, crept back from the darkened bar of the Harbour Bell, where he had left Shona and, despite his half-hearted protestations, his innocence too.
Fergus sat beneath his grandfather and thought about his prize. Everything that had been promised had been given. He had completed the task, and returned the cursing stone to Hinba. He was now the man of the house, of the island. He was the hero of his neighbours. He had his bride. And yet, during those silent minutes, staring out at the moon, the stars, the blackness of the edge of the world, he had been unable to staunch the flow of his satisfaction into the cold kitchen air. By the time his grandfather’s cough broke the stillness, he knew that even at the very moment that all had been given, it had already been lost.
The old man’s stiffening body lay undisturbed for two or three hours. By the time Morag brought in the tea, Fingal was stone cold, the colour of ash. She let out a small whimper but regained herself quickly. Placing the tea on the night stand, she moved cautiously to the bed. There was a smear of blood across the old man’s beard, and other red flecks covered the bedsheet that was pulled under his chin; flecks also on the crisp white of the pillow case, on the thin pale skin under his eyes. His harsh grey eyes still stared out to the ceiling, as if to sea, and Morag almost doubted that he was indeed dead. The thought flitted through her mind that he was simply pretending, just to raise her hopes, to see if he could catch her out in a moment of relief. But it was quickly gone. The lifeless stare and the smell of the chilled air proclaimed the incontrovertibility of the situation. Morag gingerly slid the eyelids down to cover that stare for once and for all.
‘Oh, you old fool! What have you done? Always wanting to be the centre of everything. You wait for Fergus to come home then you claim the limelight from him. Oh, you poor, old fool…’
She gave up her chiding and felt the tears rise. She stood by the bed, eyes closed, gently weeping, for a few minutes, her arms awkward at her sides. She wanted for someone to embrace, someone to comfort her, for someone to comfort. Opening her eyes, she stretched her face to regain her emotions. Things needed to be done. She would have to alert the house, fetch the vicar, make everything presentable for when the doctor arrived from Mallaig.
She decided that it would be best to wake her husband first, to give him the time he needed with his dead father, before Fergus woke and threatened the peace. Fergus. He would be heart-broken. At least he had made it back in time to say goodbye. Morag shook the creeping thoughts out of her head and paced, stealthy as a thief back onto the landing and into her bedroom, where Davey was already pulling himself from a light sleep in anticipation of his alarm.
45
‘He’s not here, hen.’
The redness no longer ringed her eyes, but Morag Buchanan still bore the mark of her family’s despondency. She tried her best to sympathise with the girl at the kitchen door, but Shona’s troubles would pass soon enough, while hers would last well beyond the time when Fingal’s coffin was covered over and the last of the island’s mourners had left her living room that evening. At least then, she would be able to begin the job of rebuilding her husband.
Over the past days, since the doctor had come over to pronounce what by then was already known t
o every soul on Hinba, the remaining Buchanans had clutched each other close, receiving the neighbours and their condolences one after the other. Through three afternoons Shona had hung from her distant Fergus, breaking from him only briefly to help Morag with kettles and teas and sandwiches, until the dusk came around again and she had slipped unnoticed from the house.
It was barely half past eight now. Shona had waited by the gate until she had heard the sounds of morning clatter in the house behind the post office, and then some moments more, before she had knocked at the garden door. Morag had ushered her in, and explained that Fergus had left to walk the moors sometime after dawn, before the tea was made. The weight of the old man’s body in the room above pushed down on them and Shona left as soon as was polite. She heard but did not heed Morag’s advice to leave Fergus to his thoughts until he was ready to return and she scurried from the village, up the track towards the slopes above the harbour, where Fergus went to think things that needed to be thought.
The dry days had not yet sucked the winter’s damp from the turf. The soft give of the ground slowed her progress as much as the toil of the hill; grass snared her ankles, tangling around her steps. But soon, Shona reached the broad crag under Cnoc Brostan. She paused to catch her breath among the loops of stone, the remnants of ancient houses, where Fergus had often come in the past, but there was no sign of him. A gust of wind shook through a clump of gorse and sent tiny birds scrambling into the sky; the wind chilled Shona and she pulled her cardigan to her throat.
Her shoes were sodden from the dew damp grass and the coldness in her feet rose up, until it crashed into a shiver between her shoulder blades. She wished she had brought a jacket; she wished that Fergus had been here. Perhaps she knew him less well than she had believed. Perhaps now that she had given herself to him, his passion had cooled. Perhaps guilt, of being with her while Fingal died, had pushed him away from her, onto the hills, out of sight, out of reach. Despondent, she began to descend from the other side of the crag, her long strides tearing through the still tenacious sedge.
Under Compass Hill, she reached the cliffs at the eastern end of the island. Across the sea, the sun sparkled from snow-flecked peaks on the blue horizon, but Shona turned south oblivious. She found the track that led down to the village, lost in her thoughts and looking only at her feet; she did not see Fergus until he was only a few strides distant. Seated at the brink, he was lost somewhere among the distant mountains, and she had to call his name to rouse him.
His face turned up towards her, the bright sunlight burnishing his hair. Fergus released a smile so sweetly wrapped in sadness that Shona had to gulp back her pity. She dropped to the ground beside him and embraced him, forehead pressed to temple, while the wet earth soaked into her knees.
‘It’s alright. I’m alright. Just watching the birds. The terns are busying themselves for nesting. New life returning.’
There was nothing for Shona to do but to hold on, keep her mouth close to his ear and murmur whatever reassurances she could. Later, in a few hours, Fergus would bury his grandfather under the grass beside the church where they would marry in a few months. By then summer would dress the moors in pinks and yellows and the evening’s light would stretch far into the night; the breezes would be warm, like the breath of a loved one on your neck. Would the sadness that encased him be gone by then, she wondered?
‘I don’t dream anymore. That all stopped about a week ago. Since then, my sleep has been as black as pitch. At first I thought, great, I’m free of them. But now, especially now, I just feel, well, the best I can call it is, I feel their shadow.’
Shona pulled away slightly to study his face for a moment before returning to her rest, head on head. She ran her hand down the length of his arm and the fabric of his coat rustled, the sound merging with that of the wind in the gorse. He had dreamt as long as she could remember. She had never found his dreaming strange, had never asked to read his notebooks; she had listened to him dutifully when he recounted those parts of his dreams he had wanted to share, but had not pried further. That they were now gone saddened her more than she could have anticipated.
Neither spoke again for some time, until the distant stutter of a marine engine reached them, carried on the wind. Fergus shielded his eyes to make out its origin, out there in the rich ocean-blue, and Shona followed his gaze, grateful for the relief of mundane curiosity. It could not be McCredie; his boat had arrived early as always that morning, and he was on the island still, dressed in stiff black.
‘Who do you think it is? Maybe someone coming for the funeral?’
‘It’s headed from Mallaig – there’s no-one on the mainland who would come. Not that I know of, anyway. Granddad didn’t have a lot of friends over there, and no family.’
Fergus squinted, as if to make out the faces of those on board the distant boat. The thin line of its wake left only a fleeting mark upon the sea before blurring into the blue and vanishing forever. Fergus slipped loose of Shona’s embrace with a kiss and got to his feet. He pulled her up after him.
‘We’ll find out, I suppose. Anyhow, we should be getting back. It’s almost time.’
Ahead of them, a tern rose from below the lip of the cliff and into the wind, hanging motionless for a moment before soaring into the sky. Its cry pierced the air and it wheeled off over the headland. They watched its progress until it disappeared beyond the slope that tumbled down from Compass Hill. Wordless, they headed down towards the village, its church and its people, both the living and the dead.
46
Alasdair McLeish straightened his tunic as he stepped off the boat. The harsh concrete of the quayside swayed momentarily beneath him until the fluids behind his ears reached their equilibrium. Despite a lifetime of living on the edge of the swelling sea, he was still not accustomed to its unreliability even on a fine day like today.
A fine day marred by his duties. He never enjoyed official visits to the homes of his distant neighbours out on the islands. They were good people, by and large, and the intrusion of the law into their isolation was usually the result of ignorance or foolishness, rather than malice. He was all the more resistant to making such visits on behalf of the Strathclyde Constabulary. That this particular instruction had originated not from Glasgow, but from New Scotland Yard, saddened him almost as much as the instruction itself. To question, and probably arrest, a school friend was not why he joined the force. Alasdair had been two years above Fergus Buchanan at the High School but, as a boy, Fergus had lodged at his mother’s house during the school week and they had had formed a respectful acquaintanceship, which was almost a friendship in the isolation of the Small Isles.
Alasdair had heard, of course, about Fergus’s journey south. Quite why the Reverend hadn’t called him or one of the other officers at the Mallaig station, he did not know. They could have investigated the theft and, were there sufficient grounds, retrieved the stolen artefact without fuss. There had been no need to send Fergus off on this misconceived quest – the law would be enforced. You had only to trust in the system, to co-operate, to be vigilant. Not a vigilante. There was no place for that and there was no excuse. Alasdair could not believe it, would not believe it, despite the evidence he had seen, emailed from London to Glasgow to Mallaig.
Closing the harbour gate behind him, he set off along the road towards the village. As he strode on along the thin tarmac, his eye was caught by the large group of people standing by the church. It was not a Sunday, and all appeared to be dressed in black clothes: a funeral then. By the iron gate, where the road passed closest to the church, he paused and removed his cap. His head lowered, he watched his fingers clench on the glossy brim for a moment and mumbled what he could remember of his prayers. He would find out who had passed when he reached the village, and pay his respects more formally later, when he made his way back to the harbour. Replacing his cap, he turned slowly on his heel, the leather crunching and squealing on its pivot, and he took one, two steps onwards. He paused. He looke
d again at the gathering in the grave yard and concluded that it must comprise the entire population of Hinba, and several more besides. There would be no-one in the village of whom to make enquiries. Better to wait until after the interment was complete and conduct his investigation then.
Alasdair leant against the cold grey stone of the gatepost and looked out across the harbour, his arms folded at his chest. White walled houses dotted the green slopes and, out on the bay, kittiwakes patrolled the wind-ruffled water. The tide was receding and the marshy banks that lurked beneath the surface had begun to reveal themselves; sheep that had missed the last low tide, forgetful in their grazing, would soon be able to leave the islets in the bay to find their way back to the shore. Alasdair wondered if the sheep experienced their isolation as concern or were simply content with the abundant grass at their feet.
Despite the beauty of the place, he had never envied the islanders, on Rum and Eigg as much as here. Alasdair considered the line of cliffs that stretched off in ragged procession for five miles along the southern limits of Hinba before they simply stopped: there was nothing but blue beyond them. On other days, they would become quickly lost in greyness, if you could see them at all, and Alasdair was too familiar with days such as those.
Behind him, the sound of feet champing on gravel washed past him on the wind and Alasdair twisted back towards the grave yard. The first of the mourners were making their way back, the rites completed. He straightened his tie and removed his cap once more, taking two steps into the road to face the gateway.
‘Young Alasdair McLeish. Well, it’s good of you to come over to pay your respects. A pity you missed the service, but you’ll come to the Bell for the wake?’
The gate squealed on its rusted hinges before Mr MacLeod could prevent it from swinging a little towards his wife, who caught it in time and held it while the steady stream of islanders passed through. Alasdair nodded acknowledgement to each while he spoke.
The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga Page 24