No Place Like Home

by Jane Renshaw

  So Bram followed them in the Discovery. He soon caught up with them on the single-track public road that wended its way through the trees. Max was a cautious newly qualified driver, thank God. But as Bram hung back to give him plenty space, the Polo accelerated and began to pull away.

  Bram could just imagine David in the passenger seat, telling Max to put his foot down. Max’s innate caution obviously won out, though, and when they hit the A road he slowed back down. Bram had caught up with them in the car park at the Inverluie.

  Now, walking up to the bar with the blank TV screen looming over it, trying to summon a friendly smile for Willie, who was looking at them as if to say What the hell would you want to come here for?, Bram had a horrible feeling of déjà vu, as if he was fated to repeat this moment over and over again. And yes, there was the staring family at the nearest table, still watching the dead TV.

  ‘Hello, Willie!’ Bram put a hand on Max’s shoulder. ‘You met my son, Max, at the – um – at the party, didn’t you? And you know my father-in-law, David?’

  Willie tipped his chin at them and swiped at the bar with a dirty cloth. ‘What a party that was.’

  Bram could feel himself colouring. He was sure the starers were now staring at his back. Along with everyone else in the bar. ‘Yes, sorry about the… the rather abrupt finish. I lost it, I freely admit. I owe everyone an apology.’

  Willie’s lips quirked. ‘No need, Bram. No need. It was a blast.’ A sound that might have been a chuckle left his throat. ‘So what’ll it be, gents?’

  ‘Mineral water, please,’ said Bram.

  ‘Pint of Stella for me and the same for the lad,’ said David.

  Bram frowned. ‘Maybe Max should just have a half.’

  ‘Dad!’ hissed Max.

  ‘What an embarrassment, eh?’ David laughed, but the look he flashed at Bram was contemptuous. ‘The lad can handle a pint. And are you wanting crisps? You got crisps, Willie? What flavour do you like, Max? Cheese and onion? Good old ready salted?’

  ‘If this is us living life on the edge, Grandad, we should maybe be a bit more adventurous. What more exotic flavours have you got?’

  Willie sighed and, as if with a huge effort, turned to contemplate the open boxes of crisps behind him. ‘Salt and vinegar, prawn cocktail, pickled onion–’

  ‘Pickled onion, please,’ said Max.

  Willie fished out a packet and dropped it onto the bar. ‘You folks drowning your sorrows, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Bram objected.

  As Willie got their drinks, he began to enumerate: ‘First a crow gets shot and tied to your clothesline. Then your dog. Then more crows, and Bram here has a narrow escape. Then some bastard breaks in and–’

  David held up a hand to stop him. ‘They didn’t break in. Bram left the door open.’

  ‘Not open,’ Max corrected.

  ‘Unlocked.’

  Willie flicked a look at Bram. ‘Some bastard gets in and leaves a bloody great chunk of offal in the chanterelle risotto. Writes “Your next” in blood on the worktop.’ He sucked air through his teeth. ‘Classic escalation.’

  How the hell did Willie know all this? Presumably some of the police officers who’d attended the incident were local, and it was all round Grantown and environs by now.

  ‘And the mandala was vandalised at the party,’ Max put in. ‘They wrote “Stupid hippy shit” on it. Well, we don’t know if it was the same person…’

  Willie shook his head, setting the first pint on the drip tray. ‘And the water failing – that’s surely no coincidence. Someone has got it in for you, no question. And I don’t suppose the police are doing anything about it.’

  ‘Got that right,’ said David, and turned round to lean back against the bar and contemplate the room. He raised his voice: ‘But if that toe-rag thinks the McKechnies are waiting around on their arses for the police to get their finger out, he can think again.’

  Max was looking at David with his mouth open.

  ‘Aye, that bastard needs to watch himself,’ David boomed. ‘We’ve got his number.’

  ‘David,’ Bram hissed. ‘Please! This isn’t helping. Antagonising people–’

  David turned back round and lifted the first pint, took a long gulp, and wiped his lips. ‘Oh no, Bram. No. They’re not the ones antagonised here. Not – at – all.’

  ‘Remember your suspended sentence,’ Bram said in his ear.

  ‘Aye, I’ve previous convictions for assault,’ David shouted. ‘They call me Mad McKechnie for a reason, eh, Max? Mad McKechnie and Mad Max, that’s us! Ha!’

  Max was shaking his head, but he was laughing. ‘Grandad, you’re incorrigible.’ He lifted his own pint and took a long swallow.

  ‘Pace yourself, Max.’ Bram opened the packet of crisps. ‘Can we have some more crisps, Willie?’ Hopefully they would soak up some of the alcohol.

  ‘And what about Bram?’ said David. ‘Mad McKechnie, Mad Max and Bricking-It Bram? A-hahahahahahaa!’

  ‘If you mean I’m going to let the police deal with the situation and not do anything stupid, then yes. Bricking-It Bram, if you like.’

  David had sunk half his pint already. He leant over and hissed at Bram: ‘No, Bram, in fact I don’t like. You need to step up. You need to get your head down out of the clouds, son. My daughter and grandkids are depending on you to keep them safe. Right? As the man of the family, the most important job you have is to keep them safe.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, David, thank you.’

  ‘So what are you proposing to do about this yob, eh? I’m talking reality here, not airy-fairy-skipping-through-the-daisies Bram world.’

  ‘As I said, the police–’

  ‘Christ almighty! What have the police done so far?’

  Max, who’d been pretending not to listen, ate a handful of crisps, shooting furtive sideways looks at them.

  ‘Scott’s as anxious about all this as any of us. He’s on top of it, I’m sure.’

  ‘Aye, Scott’s a good lad, but they don’t have the resources to throw at it that we need. It’s down to us to sort this.’

  ‘No it’s not. It’s–’

  ‘Heeeeey, Maximilian!’ came a shout from the door.

  Finn Taylor and his little gang. They loped over to the bar and Finn slung an arm across Max’s shoulders. He was wearing a shiny blue football shirt with ‘Taylor’ across the back. ‘Not going to have us thrown out, are you, Grandad? You can search us for marker pens if you want!’

  ‘Ah, yes, Finn, um.’ Bram needed to offer an olive branch here. ‘We’re sorry about that. We didn’t mean to accuse any of you–’

  ‘Oh, you know, I think that’s just what you did, though, isn’t it? My old man’s thinking of suing you for slander. Reputational damage, you know what I’m saying? I can’t walk down the street now without people whispering and pointing.’ He jigged backwards. ‘There’s the guy that writes on walls!’ He ran in slow-motion down the length of the bar and back.

  The other lads whooped encouragement.

  ‘Hey, Maximilian,’ said Finn, coming back and draping his arm round Max again. ‘You don’t think I’m guilty of…’ He gasped. ‘… wall mutilation, do you?’

  Bram was in a quandary. Should he intervene? Tell Finn to go and sit down and leave them to have their drinks in peace? But after what had happened at the party, that would probably do more harm than good. He looked at David.

  And found David staring back at him, a challenge in his eyes.

  Oh, bloody Nora. David was leaving this situation to Bram to deal with, as a sort of test?

  So what should he do?

  ‘Is your full name Maximilian?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Max, and shrugged him off.

  ‘Maxine?’

  ‘It’s Maxwell. It’s my grandmother’s maiden name.’

  Finn hooted. ‘Ooh, classic! A maiden name for our fair maiden!’

  ‘Okay, Max, let’s get a table,’ said Bram,
and scooped up the crisp packets. ‘How about that one by the wall over there?’ A small table with only three seats.

  ‘Mind if we join you?’ said Finn.

  ‘Oh, not at all, son,’ said David heartily. ‘It’s my idea of a grand night out, babysitting a bunch of wee pricks with delusions of fucking adequacy.’ And as he left them in his wake, David shot a look at Bram, as if to say Watch and learn, Bram, watch and learn.

  The kids gravitated to the open smokers’ door, and David started talking about his time on ‘the rigs’, when, as a young man, he’d worked on the North Sea oil rigs and made a packet of money with which to start up his building firm.

  ‘Health and safety in those days wasn’t the best, but this guy Steve, he was all about health and safety, never went anywhere without his hard hat, not even to the toilet. It was a standing joke with the lads, and he used to get ribbed about it all the time.’

  Max was nodding along, smiling, knowing something good was coming.

  ‘This one day, Steve’s standing right under the heavy-lift crane boom when out of nowhere, bang! It drops to the platform – ten tonnes of steel falling from a height of eighty metres. Metal fatigue. The lad never stood a chance. When we got it off him he was strawberry jam with a yellow hard hat floating on top. Hard hat was intact, like.’ David chuckled.

  Max’s smile was frozen in place. Then he gave a small chuckle just like David’s.

  ‘What a terrible thing to happen,’ Bram managed. ‘No wonder you’re so health and safety conscious on your building sites.’

  As David launched into a much more acceptable but excruciatingly dull discussion of building regs, Bram excused himself to go to the toilet. He took his time, looking at the row of old photographs in the corridor showing the Inverluie as it used to be in the early 1900s, totally charming, with some smart men in suits standing outside and a couple of beautifully dressed women in long Edwardian coats. The age of elegance. If they could only see it now.

  In the gloom of the dusty corridor, it was easy to imagine the building itself in mourning for those better times. Buildings, he was sure, absorbed happiness, were imprinted with the memories of their previous inhabitants. That was one of the reasons why he never wanted to go back and see his grandparents’ house in Amsterdam. He had a feeling that something of them would still be there, that some lingering essence left behind would be aware of Bram walking along the street towards the house, only for him to walk on past. Kirsty thought this was mad, and he knew, objectively, that he was just projecting his own feelings onto the bricks and mortar. But still. He imagined Opa and Oma, waiting behind the door to welcome him, and Bram walking on past.

  He hoped the people in these photos weren’t still lingering here. He patted the wall in sympathy and made his way back down the corridor, aware, now, of an increase in noise level.

  He opened the door to the bar.

  A cluster of young men were standing in a circle. Willie, coming out from behind the bar, shouted something at him, but the noise level was so high, with all the lads whooping and yelling, that Bram couldn’t make out the words.

  And then he saw that in the middle of the circle were Finn and Max.

  Max had his shirt pulled up almost over his head, and as he twisted and pushed Finn away, Bram saw that his face was bleeding. That the flesh around his left eye was starting to swell up.

  ‘No! No, no, no!’ Bram shouted, pushing his way through the whooping crowd.

  David was standing inside the circle, shouting instructions: ‘Are you a man or a mouse, Max? Get in after him! Right on the nose, lad, right on the nose!’

  Max, breathing hard, launched himself at Finn, fists flailing wildly. Finn’s head snapped back and he staggered, and David shouted, ‘Yesss!’

  And Bram couldn’t help himself, internally, echo the sentiment: Yesss!

  Two of the other youths caught Finn, as Bram and Willie forced their way into the circle between the two boys.

  ‘Out!’ Willie growled. ‘Anyone under the age of twenty, out now!’ He pointed at Finn, now hunched over dabbing at his nose, and shouted at his friends: ‘Get that wee animal out of here! He’s barred!’

  Bram wanted to take Max’s face in his hands and scrutinise it – he needed to know what damage that little bastard had done – but David already had an arm around his grandson and was guiding him out of the bar. Bram followed, in time to hear Max say, ‘I got him, Grandad! I think his nose is bleeding!’ He turned, trying to look back into the bar.

  ‘Aye, that was a cracker, son,’ said David, slapping Max’s back, all proud grandfather.

  And the worst of it was, Bram felt his own lips move in a smile. Proud father? Surely not? But he couldn’t pretend to himself that he wasn’t feeling a little warm glow of satisfaction at how pleased David was with Max. David wasn’t exactly big on positive grandparenting, and Max was lapping it up.

  In the car park, Bram found himself checking over his shoulder, almost expecting a baying mob to come pounding after them. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, fishing out his car key and zapping the doors open.

  ‘Did you see, Dad?’ Max’s battered face was alight.

  Bram could only nod. Once they were in the car with the doors locked, he twisted in his seat to look at Max. ‘Maybe we’d better take you to get checked out at A&E.’

  Max laughed. ‘I’m fine. Just a few bruises.’

  ‘The lad’s a natural,’ enthused David, reaching back between the front seats to slap Max’s arm. ‘That wee toe-rag can dish it out but he can’t take it, eh? I’ve a feeling we’ve seen the last of your boogie man, folks.’

  ‘I’ve never hit anyone before.’ Max grinned, as if wondering what he’d been doing with his life.

  ‘And you never will again,’ Bram said, trying to make his voice stern as he started the engine. ‘Violence is never the answer. Is it? Max?’

  ‘I guess not,’ came the cheerful response.

  The ‘executive bungalow’ that David and Linda called home was on a leafy street on the edge of Grantown, with views to the hills across the Millers’ garden opposite. Grantown-on-Spey was an early example of a planned town, dating from the mid-1700s, as Bram had discovered when he’d first come here with Kirsty all those years ago, although in the south of England it would have been considered a village. It definitely had the feel of a town, though, with a spacious square and lots of shops and big churches, and some very grand houses. A town in miniature. Its setting was glorious, on the edge of the Cairngorm Mountains, and the stone houses with their walled gardens and orchards in the older parts of town were perfect.

  David had lived all his life surrounded by this beauty, by wonderful, gracious Victorian architecture, and decided that his dream house was an ugly bungalow faced with orange and yellow stone cladding. There was no front garden, just a huge expanse of tarmac sweeping to the door.

  Horrendous. But each to his own.

  As they pulled in through gateposts topped by concrete horse’s heads, David said, ‘The women don’t need to know about this.’

  ‘Ah, now, David – I’m not comfortable keeping secrets from Kirsty.’

  ‘Just think for a minute, Bram, about how she’s going to react.’

  Bram thought for all of five seconds. ‘All right.’

  ‘Okay, so we need to get our story straight. Max got tipsy and fell over. Whacked his face on the back of a chair.’

  ‘Nice one,’ from Max.

  ‘We’ll get grief for that in itself, but it’s a whole lot better than the alternative.’ David slapped Bram’s shoulder. ‘Great night, lads, great night. Thanks for the lift.’

  Max moved into the passenger seat for the journey home, eager to give Bram an account of how the fight started. ‘Finn was hell-bent on getting a rise out of me.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you had to oblige him. Probably best to give him a wide berth in future. Just because we live next door to the Taylors doesn’t mean we have to socialise with them.’

&nbs
p; ‘Fine by me.’

  As they pulled off the public road onto the track, Max took out his phone and used the camera function to check his face. ‘Oh good grief, look at my eye! Is it possible to get a black eye from falling onto the back of a chair?’

  ‘Well, I’m guessing your grandad should know.’

  ‘I guess he should!’

  Bram negotiated the bend in the track and then eased over the little bridge.

  The track seemed to leap up under the front wheels, as if they’d hit a speed bump, and then there was an almighty crash and he felt himself jolted forward, the seat belt tightening across his chest, and then flung back, his head bouncing off the headrest.

  What the…?

  And then his whole body was tipping back.

  He yelled something, and with his left hand grabbed for Max instinctively.

  What the hell was happening?

  The car crashed backwards and kept on going, as if the road under them had disappeared, as if they were falling back into nothing. He slammed his right foot on the brake pedal, repeatedly, uselessly, as if that could stop this happening. As if that could stop them falling.

  ‘Daaad!’ Max shouted.

  15

  ‘It was like some mad fairground ride!’ Max enthused, sitting at the table grinning up at Bram as Amy dabbed antiseptic onto the cut on his face. ‘One minute we’re tootling along and the next – bam! We’re up in the air!’

  ‘You’re certainly having a real run of bad luck,’ said Amy, getting up from the table to wash her hands in the water Kirsty had boiled. She was glamorous as ever in a navy silk shirt and white Capris. ‘Although I guess you could say it was good luck that neither of you was badly hurt. You’re going to have quite a black eye, though, Max.’

  Bram and Max had decided to pass off Max’s injuries as having occurred during the accident. Their story was that he’d hit his face on the dashboard.

  ‘We can check the scene of the accident tomorrow in daylight,’ said Scott, handing his wife a towel. ‘But I doubt there’s foul play involved.’

  ‘I suppose that bridge must be at least a hundred years old,’ said Bram. ‘And the Discovery is a big heavy vehicle.’