The Madness of July

by James Naughtie

  For a moment they were both quiet, each knowing that their intimacy was constrained. Some veils stayed in place, on both sides, and behind them lay darkness. That was business.

  ‘I took a chance when Brieve mentioned an unexpected contact,’ said Abel.

  ‘Good shot,’ said Wherry, ‘but where does it get us? Was Brieve his target, or just the way in?’

  Abel said, ‘We’ve no idea, and that’s the truth. But it gives us a start. Listen, Jackson, I want to let you know something that’s quite private. But you need to understand about my brother.’

  ‘I know it’s been a long time,’ said Wherry.

  They spoke quietly for ten minutes before the party from the basement was spilling back into the garden. The novelist was carrying a puppy, which Betsy rescued and returned, and there was chatter, with Brieve the life and soul of the party.

  Everyone left in a bunch, including Abel, taking the chance to assure Brieve that he’d be happy to try to track down Joe Manson for him. Could he give Abel his phone number? Brieve passed over a card, scribbled a home number on the back and smiled as he handed it over.

  *

  Flemyng’s flight had been a Friday night drag, and it was at just about the time that Abel and Wherry were sitting alone with whiskies after dinner that it dropped down towards Edinburgh. They banked over the firth, and he saw clusters of city lights and the black folds of the hills beyond. Five minutes later he was heading across the arrivals hall, and a familiar smile from Babble greeted him at the door.

  ‘Will! Good to see you home. You’re tired. We’ll soon put that right.’

  ‘How are you, old friend? I’m looking forward to this.’

  ‘Capital,’ said Babble. It was his favourite word. He took Flemyng’s bag from him. ‘Just capital. And the loch is fine. We had a wee shower in the afternoon and everything has freshened up. The trout will be grand in the morning, rods all sorted out.’ He shepherded him to the car.

  Flemyng put a hand to his shoulder. Babble was part of home that would never crumble. Although he was a loyal Londoner, born and raised near the Old Kent Road, Altnabuie had been his territory for nigh on forty-five years. He’d found himself looking for work as a young man, on the loose in the hills in the course of a long, wandering summer, and got an offer from Flemyng’s father to do some odd jobs around his house, under the hawk’s eye of a family cook and housekeeper whose regime had terrified him but won him round. He decided he could survive anything there, and stayed. Now it was his domain. Marriage had come and gone; he continued.

  ‘How’s Mungo?’ Flemyng asked.

  ‘A little bit distracted,’ said Babble. ‘Nothing obvious, but it’s there. He’ll be happy to see you, that’s for sure. He worries.’

  ‘And I about him.’

  Babble had dark copper hair, still lush in his seventieth year, and overhanging eyebrows he had never tamed. His face was mobile, expressive, and it had taken on a redhead’s vermilion hue from the sun. He was wiry and well-exercised, walking the dogs without fail every morning down the burn or up the hill. He was embedded in the countryside around Altnabuie and although, when he was in position at the Pole Inn, his watering hole on the high road through the hills, they sometimes called him Arthur – he’d been born Arthur Babb – the boys’ nickname had stuck. Neither too intimate nor too formal, it was a happy compromise. To all of them, his smile and his rough hand were a welcome and his voice, which had lost all but the faintest sounds of London, spoke of home.

  In the back seat, Flemyng folded his jacket, his locked briefcase stowed safely away. ‘I’m switching off, I’m afraid. I’ll dream about the fishing.’ And in a couple of minutes, long before they reached the A9 and turned to the north, he was asleep.

  Understanding Flemyng’s need for rest, and knowing that his own news could wait, Babble let him be. They’d talk at breakfast. He’d enjoy telling him that he had spoken to Abel that very evening. But not yet. When they got home, he saw Flemyng upstairs with a few words, and left everything to lie for the night.

  Taking the air with the dogs after midnight, Babble enjoyed the softness that follows the rain and the fresh scent from the trees. He heard the water on the rocks in the burn, and the distant drone of a car on the high road that soon died away. It was black, quiet, almost everything still. He spoke softly to the old Springer Spaniel at his feet. ‘You can feel it, Rousseau. Everything’s on the turn.’

  12

  At Altnabuie, they woke to a trembling day. Flemyng had raised his bedroom window before turning in, and when he opened his eyes, very early, he could smell the highlands. There was an edge to the warmth and the damp, and the tang of tree and field lured him on. He looked towards the loch and saw swirls of mist rising up in thin pillars, like the guilty secrets of a multitude of hidden smokers, leaving a thin topping of cotton white on the water that crept over the surface and was beginning to disperse here and there with the coming of a soft breeze. It would be gone within the hour. The herons were on their favourite stone, prim and still like a pair of disapproving clerks. The crows cawed in the woods beyond, and behind him, on the eastern side of the house where the sun was already giving life to the place, he could hear the cockerel at work. Everything was crisp and clean, the stifling urban fug a world away.

  In that early light, with no disturbance on the landscape and the silence holding, Flemyng was able to put his two lives in balance for a moment, their complementary spheres quite separate, letting him set the frenzy of a political life against a sense of spacious peace. A home where he felt no guilt or fear and sensed the intertwining of two worlds. But he knew that secrets were everywhere; certainty had gone, except for the knowledge that he and Abel would be changed by these days. So would they all. Lucy had seen the letter and she’d follow him on his journey.

  The second chapter of the crisis was beginning. From the first, he had learned that none of the elements stood alone – the death itself, his earlier dark discovery and the decision to share it with Lucy, Paul’s hint about a secret prize, Sam’s first foray into the undergrowth, Sassi and Wherry, Berlin. Cross-currents flowed beyond his reach. But having learned of Abel’s approach to the centre of events, Flemyng felt a mood of contentment in which relief was accompanied by even greater surprise.

  He stood at the window for a while, then found his old jeans and boots, and dressed. He took the stairs carefully, walking from side to side to avoid creaks, and crossed the hall, with its stuffed wildcat in a cabinet on the wall, and pictures that took him back to childhood, to tiptoe into the dining room. The orrery was catching the first light, and he lifted the glass case before he sat down.

  It was nearly as precious to him as the house itself. His great-grandfather had bought the machine because he was excited and bewildered by the cluster of brass planets, with the sun motionless at the heart of it all, controlling an elegant world of its own. People once believed, Flemyng thought to himself, that this was all there was.

  With the mechanism well-oiled, the speed of the orrery never varied, and it made no sound. Teacher and companion. One of his first rituals each time he came home was to put a hand to the brass lever and watch for a while.

  Mars, Mercury and Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, moved round the sun, and the earth turned slowly on its own axis while it went with them, all of them spilling tiny beams as they met the light. Around the rim, an etched ivory and silver ring showed the signs of the zodiac rotating steadily as the planets rose and fell, moved through their elliptical orbits, everything built to perform the same ethereal dance for the rest of time. When he watched the light glow on Mars, followed the progress of a lunar eclipse or measured the course of a year in a few minutes, he tuned in once more to the perfect music of his youth, which was the passing of the seasons at Altnabuie and the regularity and light that they bestowed on the place.

  When he felt the sting of harsh words in politics – maybe a bitter reference to a life that was assumed by others to have been easy with too many bene
fits, or a sneer when his ambition broke through – he took refuge in the memory of evenings spent alone with the orrery, when he could feel the rhythm of a different sphere.

  The cyclical comings and goings always had a soothing effect. He was excited at the same time, and often said to Babble, ‘What more could you want?’ An ordered world, which at times of distraction Flemyng said had the thrill of orthodoxy. When Francesca had first asked Will why he loved the machine, he’d explained that he couldn’t conceive of a better encounter between mystery and precision.

  This morning his limbs were loose, the tiredness vanished from his face. Time to go walking.

  In the calm of these moments he was able to think of the two days just past, without the sense of alarm that had closed in. There was hope still. Sam was at work, and Lucy had the first glimpse of his own purpose. She was entering the locked room where he was keeping one of his secrets: by now she would have settled on a theory about the letter. He wondered whether she would make one of her intuitive leaps and turn the story on its head, which would lead her towards the truth. With Sam’s help as messenger, he had taken the next step. In three days, at most, the dam would break.

  Flemyng believed – stubbornly, with the mild streak of arrogance that ran through him like his scar – that he could control the pace of events. He couldn’t understand yet where the fire had started, but believed that it was burning deep inside his own government. The letter was wild enough to threaten anyone with knowledge of its contents – he had understood that from the moment he saw it more than a week before – but he’d convinced himself that his motives were unselfish. The flames might consume them all. So he needed time to think, alone in this place, and when he glanced through the windows to the loch, watching the brightness coming to the glen, he knew that the spell was working on him again.

  Babble was bustling in the kitchen. When Flemyng came through the front door about half an hour later, dew shining on his boots and a smile across his face, there was bacon and fresh eggs, hot coffee on the range and Babble’s own bread toasted and ready. They settled down. Babble asked about Francesca, the office, the parliamentary grind, which he followed day by day. ‘You’re rising on Thursday? Back up here?’ he asked. He hoped so, Flemyng said, but there was still the summer traffic jam, with a pile of votes to get through before they could get away. A bore.

  Then he said, ‘I’m in the middle of something I don’t really understand. I’ve had a glimpse, but that’s all.’

  ‘Nothing new there,’ said his old friend, thinking of Mungo, and taking it as a family allusion. ‘I’ve never had you here when you haven’t been chewing away at something, like Rousseau with his bone at the back door.’ The dog heard his name, and whimpered from his basket. ‘Never mind. You’ll sort it out here. Always happens.’ He attended to the table.

  Flemyng said, ‘You’re right.’ He stretched out, and Babble chose his moment.

  ‘Abel rang me last night.’

  If Flemyng was pricked, he showed nothing. ‘Ah-ha. At last.’ Babble wasn’t fooled.

  ‘Is that what’s been eating at you? You’re not yourself.’

  Flemyng waved a hand, said nothing. There was no fight in him. ‘Tell me,’ he said. He ran a finger down each of the clefts on his cheeks.

  ‘I’ve been hoping to see him.’

  Babble stood at his shoulder. ‘About time, if you ask me. The thing is, he’s in London, and he knew you were coming home. Don’t ask me how, but he did. I don’t think Mungo’s been in touch. He would have said. Anyway, Abel says he’s looking forward to seeing you. Sudden trip. The usual.’

  Babble said he looked forward to the day when Abel would come home again. ‘You too?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Flemyng. ‘It’s been far too long.’

  He’d wanted to know the weather, how the loch was, whether the river was high, what they were saying about the birds, the house, Babble himself. ‘A catch-up. The whole caboodle. About you especially.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘What d’you think?’ Babble said. ‘Everything’s grand. Mungo’s a wee bit low, but he’s always like that in the middle of a book. I told Abel you were too busy. I know fine that there’s more to it than that.’

  ‘How did he sound? Abel.’

  ‘As if he wanted to come back,’ Babble said. ‘Home.’

  With that, Mungo arrived down for breakfast. He’d been asleep when Flemyng got home, so now he rose and the brothers locked arms. ‘You look well,’ said Flemyng, and there was relief on Mungo’s face. Babble went to the pantry to leave them alone.

  Mungo Flemyng looked the part of the eldest brother, his silver locks trained back in sleek wings, his dress always distinctive whether he was wearing an open shirt with sleeves rolled back or one of his rich greenish tweeds. He had brown leather on his feet, his face shone with a ruddy countryman’s glow, and his movements were neat, although he carried weight, as if they had been considered in advance. His achievement lay in being commanding without hauteur, and his movements always seemed easy.

  ‘We’ll have some time, you and I, to talk about everything. OK?’

  Flemyng said, ‘I can start with a bit of good news. Abel’s over.’

  A shadow of anxiety passed over Mungo’s face. There had been no warning. ‘Really? Everything seems to be happening at once.’

  ‘You too,’ Flemyng said, and smiled.

  ‘Where? I didn’t know.’ A sign of disturbance underneath.

  Babble had kept the news to himself. Flemyng considered his brother’s surprise, although Mungo followed up his questions with a slap of his hand on one thigh, to pull himself round. ‘Good. We must get him up here.’

  Flemyng said he had been thinking the same, and would try to make contact.

  Babble came in and announced a plan for the morning: two hours on the loch and a drive up to the Pole for a lunchtime drink. The afternoon would look after itself.

  The weather was going to be fine, but he hoped for cloud to persuade the fish to rise. Too much sun and they’d stay in the depths. ‘Whatever you’re worried about, forget it. You’ll have sorted it out in your head by the time we come out of the Pole. Alasdair and company will be there. Old friends. The whole catastrophe, as you might say.’

  Flemyng laughed with him, remembering past times. Mungo was beaming now. He gave his brother a playful punch and ruffled the dogs’ coats as they gathered round, sensing an outing. Sitting across from one another at the pitted wooden table, speaking softly, they talked of the trees planted on the hill, the burn, the state of Altnabuie in its fine old age.

  Flemyng asked what Mungo was up to in his library, in the contented hours he spent at the desk above the iron spiral staircase in the gallery where he could absorb the silence and the view down the glen.

  ‘You know it all started as a book that would explain our territory here – the topography, Gaelic turning to English in a few miles, the highland line the Romans couldn’t cross, or didn’t want to. All that. But a later family story’s taking over, and I think of it now as private research. The eighteenth-century stuff is my bag, Jacobites and all their gang, but it’s Mother now. We can’t avoid her. What a story.’ Flemyng watched Babble, who seemed untroubled by the course of their conversation.

  ‘I want to show you the papers before you go to St Andrews, the ones I’ve mentioned to you. I’ve got plenty more, and the story is filling out. Quite a saga.’ Awkwardness tinged the silence that followed, and Mungo’s smile was forced, for the first time. They were quiet for a minute or two, enjoying the warmth and the smells of the kitchen, the light playing on the trees outside the window, the snuffling of the dogs at their feet, and the prospect of a morning on the loch. ‘I’m so very grateful to you, Will. I wanted you here.’

  His eyes were full as he looked at his brother across the table. ‘Of course,’ Flemyng said. Then, ‘I miss Abel so much.’ The words came from nowhere and surprised them both.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Mun
go. ‘We need him here for this. He can’t stay away. It’s family.’

  For the first time he could remember, Flemyng felt panic in these surroundings, his attempt to conceal the turmoil wearing thin after only one night. He tried to keep it down. ‘We haven’t been alone together for a long while.’

  Babble, standing by the sink, heard Flemyng’s language change. He phrased things differently at home, dropped in old words. They both enjoyed that, and after a week at Altnabuie it was as if he had never left.

  Mungo said, ‘I suppose it’s difficult for you to talk easily. And for Abel. Both of you. We’ve all had to be so careful over the years. The three of us’ – a gesture towards the listening Babble – ‘know how awkward it has been. I suppose, probably, how dangerous for you, and for Abel? D’you think we’ve been too protective?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Flemyng said. ‘There’s a reason why I must see Abel,’ he added, and caught Mungo’s eye. ‘More than one.’

  His brother sighed. ‘I worry about you.’

  Flemyng started to speak. ‘You’re the one who…’

  ‘No,’ said his brother with emphasis. ‘You forget, I’m used to being here on my own. I can handle things. This place, and so forth.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Will, it may be that things are disturbing you more than you realize,’ Mungo said. ‘I know I’ve opened up this secret chamber in the family, or whatever we’re going to call it, and it’s disconcerting. Maybe frightening. Don’t pretend. You may be the one who finds it hardest to deal with.’

  ‘I can take whatever you have to tell us. I care, of course. But I’m not… unbalanced by it.’

  His brother said, ‘Neither am I. But maybe there’s more going on underneath than you think. Inside.’