Our Fathers

by Rebecca Wait

  This was one of the few times since they were in their early teens that Malcolm had felt close to his brother. They’d laughed as they remembered their mother’s obsession with washing the backs of their necks, her collection of crocheted doilies, her gentle eye-rolls in the face of their father’s temper (she had been a brave woman, in her way). Then Malcolm had said, sentimental in his drunkenness and trying to grasp at this thread of unity between them, “She wasn’t an easy person, I know. But I think she did her best.”

  “She was an old bitch,” John replied, his words only slightly slurred. “I’m surprised Dad put up with it. All her bleating on, her stupid complaints.”

  Malcolm was so shocked he couldn’t think of an answer. He would never again forget that although he and John had grown up in the same house, they had each had a different set of parents, an entirely different childhood.

  Malcolm was already engaged to Heather when his father died. He wasn’t sure afterwards what he would have done without her steadiness and common sense, how on earth he would have managed the croft. There were times, in fact, especially in the difficult early years, when he had envied John, who had no responsibilities, nothing expected of him, and had escaped to Glasgow as soon as he could to train as an accountant. (Their father had, predictably, been scathing about this, although their mother, for once, had seemed impressed.)

  But Heather had been far cleverer than any of the stubborn Baird men, had said straight out in her blunt, practical way, “We won’t earn nearly enough to scrape by from the croft, so we need a plan, Mal.” Heather had always been one for plans, and Malcolm never got in her way. But he was grateful, too, that she had never suggested, not even once, not even indirectly, that he shouldn’t take on the croft. In all else he would have given way to her, but not in that. And since continuing the croft was what he cared about, he was more than ready to listen to her plans.

  Heather had a genius for getting by, finding new ways to supplement the meagre income they drew from sheep farming. As well as working behind the counter in the shop, she picked whelks along the shore, which were taken across on the ferry to be sold at fishmongers in Oban, and made craft items to be sold to tourists in the island’s gift shop: shell necklaces, beaded earrings, small watercolour paintings and clothes knitted from sheep’s wool. Malcolm, meanwhile, like so many other islanders, took on an assortment of extra jobs over the years, including, for a time, harbour master like his father, which he found stressful and did not enjoy, taking him, as it did, too often and for too long away from his sheep. When he was ready to give it up, after Tommy had left the island, Davey McPhee was only too happy to take it on instead. “Had my eye on that one for a while,” he told Malcolm. Malcolm in return took on Davey’s job of driving the school minibus along the narrow island road in the mornings and afternoons, picking up and dropping off the four or five children who attended the primary school at any given time. By a variety of methods, he and Heather had managed.

  After Heather had her first stroke, still so young, only fifty, Malcolm gave up the croft. He might have thought before that it would be a heart-wrenching decision—an impossible one even—but when it came to it, it was no decision at all. He never considered doing anything else. Heather was in a bad way and couldn’t manage on her own (whatever she tried to claim), and the doctors said there was a chance of a second stroke. If she had limited time left, Malcolm wanted to spend it with her. He and Heather had long ago come to terms with having no children, and he felt only a little regret now that there was no son—no daughter, even—to pass the croft on to. It had come into Malcolm’s head from time to time over the years that Tommy might return one day, might be pleased to find the croft here waiting for him. But even without sharing it with Heather he knew this was an absurd fantasy.

  Breaking up the croft hurt more than selling the tenancy itself. Nobody wanted, or nobody could afford, the whole seventeen acres, so in the end Malcolm had sold three acres of in-bye to Ross Johnston to become part of his own croft, and the rest to Robert, who had the largest farm on the island and wanted to expand his herd of Shetland cows. The land would be absorbed into their own, just as if it hadn’t been worked by Malcolm’s family for generations. Malcolm would have given it away almost for nothing, so distressed was he by the whole process, so keen was he for it to be over, but Heather would not have it. “You’ll need money to live on, Mal,” she told him. “Especially when you get older.” It broke his heart that she said “you”, and not “we”.

  “And besides,” she went on, “it would be nice to have a little something left over, at the end, for Tommy. God knows he won’t get much, but it would be nice to leave him something, wouldn’t it?”

  And as always, Malcolm gave way to her, as always knowing she was right. He got a fair price for the land (a high price, Ross was heard to say in the bar afterwards, but without any real rancour), and would have a bit of money left to fall back on in his old age, as well as a small sum to be left to Tommy, should Tommy ever return.

  6

  A shock, inevitably, being called Tommy again. And then no longer a shock, which perhaps was worse.

  He didn’t know what to do with himself, alone in the cottage all day. Malcolm had gone out early to work on somebody else’s farm (both of them skirted round the subject). In the silence after his uncle had left, Tom took some time going from room to room in the cottage, laying his hands on things only half consciously. He brushed his fingers along the backs of chairs, touched worktops absentmindedly, trailed his hand up the banister as he climbed the stairs.

  He had believed he did not remember the cottage well, but it all came back now. Of course it did. It was all still here, as solid as ever. He had thought himself prepared, but he’d been shocked to find Malcolm an old man, and Heather gone. He wasn’t so delusional to think time had stood still in his absence, but somehow this knowledge didn’t seem to have sunk in: he’d still expected to find Malcolm and Heather as they always had been, vigorous and tough, Malcolm out all hours tending to the croft, Heather working behind the counter in the shop or making deliveries or knitting in the front room. Tom hadn’t been sure he’d receive a warm welcome, given how he’d neglected them over the years, and how he’d behaved before he left. But he had still believed they would be here waiting for him. (He’d wept over Heather’s death in his old bedroom that first evening, amazed at how readily the tears came. He hadn’t really known her, after all.)

  At lunchtime, he went upstairs and retrieved his phone from the bottom of his rucksack. He stared at it reluctantly for a few seconds, then switched it on for the first time since leaving London. One bar of signal. After a moment, a message appeared from Caroline, dated two days back: Just let me know you’re safe, will you?

  Not allowing himself to think about it too much, Tom typed out a quick reply. Yes, I’m safe. I’m on the island. Hope you’re O.K. Wavering for a moment, he added, I’m sorry, then quickly pressed send, watched to make sure the message was delivered, and switched the phone off again.

  Restless now, he went back downstairs and put on his borrowed coat and boots. No rain today—not so far. He stepped outside into the cold air, not bothering to lock the door behind him as he left; nobody locked their doors here, something Tom had taken for granted as a child but which felt strange now. He could walk straight into any house on the island, take whatever he wanted, give the owners a scare. But there had never been any crime here except for his father’s, and why bother locking your door when the only danger was already inside?

  Settling on a direction at random, Tom followed the upper loop of the road, going north-east instead of south-east as he and Malcolm had gone the day before. On either side as he walked north, the hills increased in size, shaggy with bracken and moss. But it was the air, most of all, that he noticed. It had struck him first in Oban, the freshness of the breeze and the smell of salt, how different it was from the polluted air of London. He noticed it e
ven more now, as he breathed in air that was damp and cool and even on the clearest days carried the suggestion of mist.

  Tom walked for an hour without giving it much conscious thought. Although he stuck to the road, he met no one, not even a passing car. He didn’t remember experiencing this kind of isolation when he was a child, but perhaps that was because he’d always been with Nicky.

  When he reached the point where the road met the coast and ran alongside it, he stopped. Whichever way you headed, you came up against the barrier of the sea. It was surprising how little interest the islanders showed in it, though their whole lives were circumscribed by water. Perhaps that was what made them narrow. Tom turned away at last and retraced his steps back to Malcolm’s cottage, still feeling the sea lapping at his back.

  Malcolm returned as the light was starting to fade. Tom was sitting in the kitchen, not exactly waiting for him, but not doing anything else either. Malcolm said, standing in the doorway, “Your day been O.K.?”

  “Yes,” Tom said. Then, remembering his manners, “And yours?”

  “It was fine.” Malcolm went to hang his jacket up in the hall. “Do you still like cauliflower cheese?” he called after a moment.

  This threw Tom. “I think so.” He hadn’t eaten it since he was a child. “My mother used to make it.”

  “Is that so? I thought we’d have it for tea,” Malcolm said, coming back into the kitchen. “All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to change,” Malcolm said, and went upstairs.

  Later that evening, Tom sat at the kitchen table and watched Malcolm cook. He had offered to help, but Malcolm said it was a one-man job.

  “You can lay the table in a bit,” he added, as he stirred flour into the pan of milk on the stove.

  “Sure.”

  “Took me ages to master white sauce,” Malcolm remarked. “Hard to get the consistency right.”

  “Yeah. Tricky getting rid of the lumps.”

  “You have to keep stirring the whole time.”

  “That’s true.”

  Tom couldn’t think of anything further to add, and apparently Malcolm couldn’t either. They fell silent.

  Tom studied his uncle discreetly. Malcolm was wearing an old green apron, which had presumably belonged to Heather, and was stirring the sauce with frowning concentration. There was something incongruous about seeing his uncle dressed like this, brandishing a wooden spoon and making a dish which Tom associated with his mother. It seemed unmanly, though Tom realised what an absurd idea this was.

  A feeling of shame came over him suddenly, a plunge of his stomach. And there was something behind it: a memory, he thought. Tom used to try to close down his thoughts in these moments, to prevent them bringing back anything he didn’t want to see, but often that made it more painful in the long run. It was better, he had learned, to be brave and to face up to the memory at once. So, deliberately, masochistically, he followed the threads of the feeling until he found the memory attached to it. The laundry one, as he thought of it. Back again. It was a straightforward event in itself: his mother had asked him to help put away the laundry and he had refused. Then, later, this had led to a row between his parents. It was the timing of the incident that gave it an unsettling significance, and Tom knew this was why it came back to him so regularly: it had taken place just a couple of days before the murders. And although as an adult Tom could see that the two probably weren’t connected, still a sense of horror infused the memory that was far disproportionate to its content.

  He turned his eyes away from Malcolm and lived it again. He saw his mother standing by the sink, her hair loose. He was supposed to be going out to meet Angus to play. Tom had never been sure if the scene took place in the morning or afternoon, but he could feel the urgency of the meeting in his body, that tightness of anxiety—not that he was keeping Angus waiting, but something else, something vaguer, perhaps caught up with one of the deeper fears of his childhood—of missing out, of being left behind.

  And his mother had said something like, “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve helped me put these clothes away.”

  Tommy had believed he was going to do what she told him as he always did. He was surprised when he opened his mouth and said, “No.” Then he felt the frisson in his whole body at having defied her.

  He wasn’t sure exactly how his mother had responded, but he knew she had stood firm and, amazingly, he had too. He had hated her in that moment, and he remembered the shock of this feeling. “I have to go and meet Angus,” he had told her, over and over, feeling himself a hero in his defiance. “He’s waiting for me.” And then the bit he remembered most clearly, knowing as he said it that he was going too far, but saying it anyway: “Laundry is women’s work.”

  He didn’t recall what his mother had said to that either. She had been furious, he was certain, but her words were lost. He was not sure why he had silenced her in so many of his memories.

  Into this stand-off between them his father had entered. Tommy had felt a lurch of fear that was like falling, the certainty now that he had overplayed his hand. His father had looked to them both to explain the noise. He must have been in his study working.

  They had told him, or perhaps Tommy’s mother had told him, reluctantly, maybe, in her quiet voice. Perhaps Tommy had chimed in shrilly in his own defence, saying that he didn’t have time, that Angus was waiting for him, or perhaps he had remained silent, fearful.

  He remembered, though, how his father had responded. His father, standing in the kitchen doorway, doing that half-smile he sometimes did. He had said something like, “Katrina, the boy needs to be outside playing, not tied to his mother’s apron strings.” Then he had turned to Tommy. “Off you go. We won’t let her turn you into a lass.”

  And Tom remembered how he had slunk out, the mingled sense of satisfaction and betrayal, and how—he believed—his mother had not looked at him as he left. He felt the triumph at having defeated her and the horror of it, and caught up with it all was the warmth that flooded him when she turned her smile on him, how she would crouch down to listen to him when he was trying to tell her something, the feel of her as she hugged him and he slipped his arms around her middle and squeezed. Tommy adored no one as he adored his mother. He had confided in Nicky once, when they were very little, that he loved his mother even more than God and Jesus, and Nicky had told him, “You can’t say that,” before adding comfortingly, “I do too.”

  Tom knew that he had not enjoyed that afternoon, or that morning, whichever it was, playing with Angus. He had thought of his mother the whole time, of how angry she must be, and worse, how hurt. Getting your own way, he had discovered, did not feel the way you expected it to. It made you lonely.

  Malcolm turned and said, “Almost done now,” and Tom nodded and got up to lay the table.

  When he had returned to the house later that afternoon, his parents had been arguing. Tommy could hear them from the hallway because the kitchen door was partially open. He didn’t remember most of what was said, only his feeling of terror at the savage note in his father’s voice, which he’d known instinctively was his fault. One thing he did recall was his father saying, “It’s just moan, moan, moan with you. Always fucking complaining about something.” Tommy remembered this afterwards because he was so shaken at hearing the f-word in a house where no one was ever allowed to swear, and frightened on his mother’s behalf that she was having this violent word thrown at her. His shock was so visceral it manifested in a sickness that moved from his stomach to his throat to his mouth, where he forcefully swallowed it down again.

  Malcolm spooned the cauliflower cheese into two bowls and brought them over to the table.

  “Looks good,” Tom managed. “Thanks.”

  “Probably not as good as your mum’s,” Malcolm said. “But it’s edible, I hope.”

  Tom nodded and didn’t reply.
He hoped they could eat in silence again; the thought of more conversation was unbearable just now.

  He remembered how he had waited in the hallway that day, paralysed, unable to creep up to his room for fear of being heard, of drawing attention to himself. What he should have done was go into the kitchen and tell his father it was his fault, that his father should be shouting at him, not at his mother. But instead he stayed frozen where he was, the pressure in his bladder now reminding him painfully that he had needed to pee all the way home. Finally, he heard his father shout, “You can all just fucking forget about the cinema next week,” and then the noise of the kitchen door banging. Suddenly, Tommy found he could move again. He hurtled down the corridor into the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

  Standing in front of the toilet, he stared down into the bowl and tried to relax enough to pee. It was agony at first, being so desperate but unable to go. At last his heartbeat began to slow and the exquisite relief came, and as Tommy watched his urine hurtle downwards, he reflected on the final tragedy that had befallen them. Clearly the much-anticipated trip to the cinema in Oban would not go ahead after all. It was possible, he supposed, that by the following weekend his father would be in a better mood, would perhaps even have forgotten about the row. But Tommy was aware from experience this was unlikely to be the case. His father didn’t forget.

  (And later, of course, those words would return to him: You can all just fucking forget about the cinema next week. Was his father already planning what he would do? No way of knowing.)

  Going to the sink, Tommy thought of how upset Nicky would be about the cinema trip. He knew he had caused this disaster. But it was also true that his mother had caused it, because she didn’t give in to his father, even though it was obvious she should, but instead made him angry by arguing with him. Scrubbing at his hands furiously, Tommy thought that anyone could see how stupid she was about it sometimes. So Tommy’s rage became spread between himself and his mother, and it was this afterwards he remembered above everything else, that although he had blamed himself, most of all he had blamed her.