‘Marcus,’ he said, with false bonhomie. ‘How nice to see you again.’
Marcus held his left arm out as if to highlight he had company. ‘My sister Rebecca.’
She was a small, thin woman with short black hair and was wearing heavy-framed dark spectacles. Her eyes met Ranald’s and as she hitched the gold link chain of her handbag over her shoulder she offered him a tight smile.
Marcus stepped inside and held his right hand out. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, and was carrying a briefcase. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a boardroom. ‘We were just passing and thought we would pop in,’ he said, marching over to the reception room.
‘How nice of you,’ said Ranald, shaking Marcus’s hand while wondering how quickly he could get rid of them. Rebecca was yet to utter a word. ‘I’m kind of in the middle of something…’ But he had no choice other than to trudge after Marcus into the reception room. He found him at the far end, already bent over, examining the drinks cabinet.
Marcus straightened up, holding out the bottle of malt whisky. ‘A wee snifter, old boy?’
‘Help yourself,’ said Ranald, certain, however, that his sarcastic tone was lost on his cousin.
Marcus poured generous measures into a couple of glasses. ‘Are you on the whisky or gin these days, sis?’
‘I’ll have what you’re having,’ she murmured and took a seat.
‘Slainte,’ Marcus said as he handed round the drinks.
The two men joined Rebecca over on the sofas.
‘You were just passing…’ Ranald began, leaving a pause for Marcus to fill.
But Marcus appeared not to notice. Instead he held the glass to his lip and took a generous mouthful. ‘Old Alexander certainly knew his way round the whisky barrels.’
Ranald sipped his, feeling the drink harsh against the back of his throat. He coughed and felt himself flush a little with embarrassment. And then felt stupid. Why was he worried that this might seem less than manly? What did he care what Marcus thought of him?
He sat back in the sofa, aiming for a relaxed pose, lifting his right foot so it rested on his left knee, stretched his left arm along the low back of the sofa and took another sip. As he did so he tried to get more of a sense of his cousins and their experience of this house. Was it just bricks and mortar to them? Did they see nothing that he did?
‘You’re looking well,’ said Marcus, looking at him as if for the first time. Then he added. ‘Apart from the bags under your eyes, of course. Not getting any sleep?’
Ranald considered what his response might be, but before he could come up with a suitable answer, Marcus laughed and said, ‘What are we Scots like? Can’t give a compliment without minimising it with a wee insult.’ He glanced at him again. ‘What have you done?’ He indicated his own head. ‘For a moment it was like a younger version…’ Then he shook himself. ‘That’s fanciful, Marcus,’ he said, dismissing whatever thought had come to him. He looked to the side at Rebecca. ‘What do you think?’
‘Hmm,’ she said as she sipped at her drink.
‘I have a mountain of things to do today, Marcus, so if you could get to the point?’
While Ranald spoke he tried to read Rebecca. She looked poised and utterly familiar with her surroundings, as if she’d never been away from the place while Alexander was alive. No that wasn’t it. He changed his mind as he watched her cross her legs and sit further back into her seat. She simply didn’t care what he thought of her. And she really couldn’t be bothered with his conversation.
What would she make of the woman in the mirror? Would she run screaming from the house if she saw her? Marcus seemed as if nothing could break through his strong sense of himself. Was Rebecca equally as robust? He felt an urge to test her, grab her by the arm and drag her down to the lift, push her inside and ask if she could sense anything. Anything at all? Someone else had to see what he did.
‘I like a man who doesn’t beat about the proverbial,’ said Marcus, plucking Ranald from his thoughts. ‘So I won’t either. Dear old Uncle Alexander very helpfully put a business plan we were developing to the sword. I would like to enlist your help to breathe some life back into it.’
‘Yes?’
‘A firm called McIntyre Developments had offered him a substantial sum for the house and gardens. Their plans were ambitious: high-end apartments, minimum asking price, one million pounds.’
Ranald held Marcus’s gaze and sent a silent thank-you to Dan and Stan for telling him about this. ‘And how can I help?’
‘I understand you are now a trustee of the family trust, yes? And, of course, you inherited the house, library and gardens. What if there could be a better split of Uncle Alexander’s assets?’
‘For example?’
‘Here you are, Ranald, asset rich and cash poor. In your position of trustee you would be well within your rights, with the other trustees backing you, of course, to apply for a change in the will. Then we could sell off the house. You take a handsome share and set yourself up nicely for the rest of your natural.’
Ranald heard a noise. A bang from somewhere in the house behind him. Was that her letting him know he shouldn’t listen to these two? Letting him know to get rid of them.
He turned away from Marcus, then back to him, running over his last statement in his mind.
‘I …eh, I am set up rather nicely.’
‘But asset rich, with nothing in your pockets?’
How the hell did Marcus know what his cash situation was?
‘I do fine, thank you.’
Marcus snorted. ‘Fine? Yes, you can go into the local supermarket and buy a tasty ready meal. Is that the limit to your ambition? Have you never thought of owning a nice wee cottage in the south of France, as well as a city centre flat in Glasgow? Wouldn’t that be an attractive way of life? Say goodbye to all those boring writing commissions and write what you really want to.’
Rebecca interrupted. ‘That’s the kind of freedom that this money could buy you, cousin.’ So she was paying attention.
‘Can we rewind a little?’ Ranald uncrossed his legs and clasped his hands together on his lap. He gripped tight as if that might lend him some strength to defy his cousins. ‘You said that I’d take a handsome share. The house is mine. Why would I share any of the proceeds with anyone else?’
Marcus was nonplussed. ‘We assumed you knew: if you were to sell up, under the conditions of the trust, the liquid asset that produces would then have to be shared among the other parties to the will.’
‘The other parties being you…’
‘…and me,’ Rebecca said with a tone that was just on the right side of boredom.
Ranald chewed on this. Quinn had neglected to mention any of this during either of his visits. And it did seem rather too much of a coincidence that Marcus just happened to be passing the very afternoon Ranald had been to see the lawyer.
‘I understand you and Rebecca have already benefitted…’ He coughed to hide his discomfort at challenging him. ‘…from the will?’
‘Yes. And?’ Marcus bristled.
‘If my assets were all to go back into the pot to be shared…’ He fought for an even tone, a voice that wouldn’t betray his nervousness. ‘…shouldn’t yours, too?’
‘That’s simply not plausible,’ Marcus answered. What little smile there had been on his face had now slipped. ‘That money is accounted for.’
Ah. So, Marcus was in difficulty, despite all of his background, experience and undoubted assets.
‘So’s mine,’ said Ranald, sitting back, telling himself he would not, should not give in to this man. ‘It’s very firmly in bricks and mortar, and books.’
‘Bloody books,’ said Marcus. ‘The old bastard cared more for his bloody books than he did for his bloody family.’
‘That’s as maybe, Marcus. I’m happy with the current arrangement.’ He braced himself for his cousin’s response.
‘C’mon, Ranald. This would be a much better w
ay of doing things. We’ll all make a hell of a lot of money.’
Ranald stood up. What would Alexander say? How would he respond? ‘You have my answer, Marcus. And it’s no. I have everything I need. I see no reason to entertain your proposal.’
Then, legs shaking, without waiting to see if his cousins were following him, he walked out of the room, across the hall to the front door. He pulled it open and stood, waiting.
Without meeting his eyes, Marcus appeared from the reception room, Rebecca just behind him, and traversed the hall, his shoes clicking on the stone tiles.
‘I’ll give you time to think this over properly, cousin.’ Marcus made his tone softer, but in a studied way. In his hand he held a file, which Ran assumed he’d just take from his case. He brandished it in the air a little and dropped it on the table in the middle of the hall. ‘Have a read of that. I think you’ll be impressed.’
‘My mind is fixed on this, Marcus.’ He heard himself and thought, of Alexander. The strategy of imagining he was the old man had helped him avoid being brow-beaten by his cousins. He saw shadows shift at the darkest end of the corridor, felt a breeze on his cheek and sent a silent thank-you.
Without another word, Marcus brushed past him and walked out of the door.
‘Nice to finally meet you, Rebecca,’ Ranald offered as she joined her brother out on the drive, but without acknowledging him, she walked over to the car and climbed inside.
Ranald was sitting cross-legged in a front corner of the garden, under a tree. Cupped in his hand was an amber leaf, surely one of the first to fall, and he was following the vein and thread of the lines that fed the burnt outer fringes before it had uncoupled from a branch and floated to the ground in a lazy spin.
How he got there he had no idea. And as he saw a taxi drive up, with Donna in it, he realised he was going to have difficulty explaining to her why he was there.
‘Seem like a good idea at the time?’ she asked with a smile, seeming to read his mind.
He struggled back through his thoughts. He’d been standing at the front door when Marcus and Rebecca left, and instead of going back inside he’d found himself aiming his body at the large green bulk of leaf off to his right.
‘Mindfulness, you know?’ It made some sort of sense. He looked at her. ‘Not that it’s not great to see you, what are you doing here?’
‘Unfinished business,’ Donna said as she huffed her large handbag into place in front of her, as if it might ward off the evil eye. ‘Can we go inside?’ She looked up into the sky, and then at him as if he was slightly nuts. ‘It is raining.’
‘So it is,’ Ranald said coming into full awareness. He held his arms out to assess the amount of raindrops on his sleeves. They weren’t so wet, but he was suddenly aware his hair, neck and shoulders were very damp.
Once inside Donna asked, ‘Mind if we go up to your grandmother’s suite?’
Surprised, Ranald said, ‘Sure.’ And wondering why, he began to walk in that direction. As they went, Donna kept up a stream of chatter. How lucky he was. What an amazing house. She and Martie had talked about nothing more all the way home after their last visit.
When they climbed up onto the landing, Donna said, ‘We saw a sitting room up here. It was really cosy. Should we go in there?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Ranald mystified.
They went in, and they both sat on the same sofa, at either end, facing each other.
‘I’m guessing there’s a purpose to this visit?’ Ranald asked. As he spoke he threw a look over at the desk in the corner and wondered again about the young woman who wrote those letters.
‘You overheard me and Martie talking, didn’t you?’ Donna asked as she kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet under her.
He knew instantly what she was referring to. He nodded. She clasped her hands in front of her, closed her eyes and took a deep breath as if something else had just occurred to her. ‘Camphor,’ she said. ‘You can smell it too, eh?’
He took a breath. Caught the camphor … and something else. ‘Yeah…’
‘Martie had no sense of it at all.’
‘Right?’
‘This is the only place in the whole house you can smell it.’
‘And?’
‘First of all. Martie: you realise why she held all that stuff back from you, don’t you?’ Her eyes roamed over his face. ‘You don’t resent her for it, do you?’
‘I get it, Donna. Or part of me does. The sensible, mature part. The eighteen-year-old resents the hell out of it. I’ve spent the last … nearly dozen years hating my father for abandoning me. Except he didn’t…’ His throat and chest tightened. The room gave a lurch. He coughed. He would not cry. ‘Anyway, what are we really doing up here?’ He fought to regain his equilibrium and tried to change the subject. ‘Why aren’t we in the kitchen like normal people?’
‘You sense it, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Sense what?’ He played for time knowing exactly where she was going.
‘I looked it up. Camphor.’ She paused. ‘There’s none among your cleaning materials in the kitchen, by the way. I checked that time we were here – when you went to the loo.’
‘Donna, why the cryptic…’ He couldn’t remember going to the loo while they were in the house.
‘It’s incredibly potent stuff. The Egyptians used to use it in their mummification process … There’s good reason why moths hate it.’ She laughed but threaded through her short burst of laughter Ranald heard her disquiet.
‘I could have looked all of this up on Wikipedia if I was interested, Donna.’ He softened his expression to show he was not irritated, just confused.
‘They also used to use it, a long time ago, to treat mania.’
His mind delivered up an image of the woman in the mirror. This time her body was twisted at a tortured angle, but she was facing him and her eyes were shining a light that could only come from a place of madness.
‘Right.’ He blinked the image away.
‘A long time ago.’
‘Donna?’ Please stop. You need to stop.
‘I’ve never been more certain of something, son.’ She clutched her hands in front of her and leaned towards him. ‘This house has a troubled past, Ranald, and I would be so much more comfortable if you would sell the thing off and buy yourself that house in the south of France you’ve always dreamed about.’
‘What? You’re taking camphor, some mummies, adding a dash of mania and coming up with a haunted house?’
‘Don’t mock me, Ranald McGhie. I’m not saying the house is haunted. I’m saying there’s an energy here. A very old one, and it has caused your family a lot of pain over the years.’
‘Donna, I hear you and I understand your concern…’ He shivered, hearing the truth in her words. He understood more than he was prepared to admit and hoped his jocular tone would divert away from the truth.
‘And now you’re patronising me, Ran.’ He could hear an edge of fear in her voice, and not a little panic. A chill ran through his heart, his lungs and down to his gut.
‘I’m pretty certain that every generation of your family has had its victims, Ran. You need to break that cycle and get the hell out of here. Before it’s too late.’
24
In the library, Ranald opened his laptop. The file he had been working on was on his taskbar, so he clicked on it intending to do some more work. But instead he found himself staring, unfocused, at the screen.
Trying to ignore what Donna had said was proving difficult. Was she right? Aside from the woman who visited his dreams, there was something strange about the house. Perhaps it was the amount of room here. It felt like every step came with an echo and every breath fell into space. Perhaps if weasel Marcus flogged it off he could buy himself something nice, with a pool and enough capacity to hold all of Alexander’s books?
But then Marcus would win.
Ranald couldn’t allow that to happen. Nor could he betray Alexander in that way.
He closed the laptop, stood up from his chair and wandered over to a bookshelf. He had no other aim in mind than to pick up a book he’d never read before. His fingers dallied over a Muriel Spark novel. He’d never read her. Time to remedy that. He hooked a finger over the top of the book and pulled it from its space. It was a hardback edition of four of her novels, led off by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
He held it on one palm and held the other hand over it, palm down, as if the words might lift from the paper, transmit through into his skin and from there into his soul.
He took comfort from the notion, then carried the book out of the library, down the corridor and into the lift. He pulled the doors open, sat inside and began reading. Next morning he woke up lying on the floor of the lift. He hadn’t gone up to bed; instead, he’d read through much of the night and then slumped onto the floor, curling up there, waiting for her to enter his mind.
He didn’t care that the last image of her was terrifying: a mask of fear, teeth and blood. There was more to her than that. Much more. There was love – enough for them both – and he would come here every day and night and show her how much he cared.
He stretched out on the floor, telling himself what he knew already: he was crazy. He stood up, placed his hands on his hips and bent backwards, trying to ease the ache in his back. He contemplated going upstairs and crawling into his bed, getting another few hours in.
Instead, he found himself plodding towards the pool where he took off his clothes and dived in. Sixty lengths later and he felt a little better.
A few minutes later, upstairs in his bathroom, he leaned over the sink and peered at his face in the mirror. His eyes looked as if they’d shrunk. The skin below them was puffy and shaded. He also needed a shave, but his hair was tidier than it had been for a long time. He turned to the side and counted the ribs he could see.
He shaved and had a shower to wash the chlorine off his skin. Then he went through to his walk-in wardrobe. All these clothes and he had barely touched them. He might look tired and in need of a good feed, but he could at least look like the young gentleman Uncle Alex hoped he might be.
House of Spines Page 17