‘Two. All right, I dinna mind it exactly, but everybody’s always going on aboot it. And everybody’ll go on aboot this as well. It does make a difference. The day the Stone of Destiny was taken back frae the English. It’ll go down in history.’
Jack began solemnly to intone:
Forward! my heroes, bold and true!
And break the archers’ ranks through and through!
And charge them boldly with your swords in hand,
And chase these vultures from off our land.
‘What’s that?’ Bulldog asked suspiciously.
‘An old poem,’ Jack said. ‘Bruce’s address to the troops at Bannockburn.’
‘Burns?’
‘Much older. Very ancient, in fact. Anonymous.’
‘Great stuff,’ Bulldog said. ‘Ken any more?’
‘No,’ Jack said, ‘that’s it. Just that fragment.’
‘Shame,’ Bulldog said. He drained his glass. ‘Same again, Don?’
‘Aye, thanks,’ Don said.
Jack was maintaining his independence, as usual. ‘I’ll get mine when I’m ready, Bill,’ he said, and Bulldog winked at Don and went up to the bar.
‘What on earth was that?’ Don said.
‘William Topaz McGonagall,’ Jack said. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It could be Shakespeare for all Bill kens.’
‘Precisely my point,’ Jack said.
‘I wonder how lang it’ll be afore the thing turns up.’
‘Do you care?’ Jack said. He looked very hard at Don. ‘It’s all a distraction,’ he said. ‘It’s all irrelevant.’
The odd thing was, in spite of himself Don did care. It was like the English nurse. He wasn’t bothered about it. But he was bothered by it.
§
Liz was in a mood again, and Charlie, as usual, was fractious. It was a Sunday afternoon in March, cold but sunny. Don and Billy escaped up the hill to the woods, where they found clumps of snowdrops past their best and daffodils just ready to open out. As they went higher the ground hardened and a few thin patches of snow showed. Billy was intrigued by the streams of white breath he could send out into the air, so they practised that for a while, and stood watching the chaffinches flitting about and puffing their chests out in song. When they moved on a robin led them along the path, striking poses on tree stumps and rocks and chivvying them in his nippy way before flying off. Billy was full of questions, full of energy. He was so easy. Don wished they could just keep walking, for miles, for days. The more they walked, the more spring asserted itself, the further he felt from the weight of responsibility, the oppression of the house.
At the green bench they stopped and looked for their roof down in the village, and Don pointed out factory lums and kirk spires in distant Drumkirk, gleaming and clean-looking in the sunshine. ‘D’ye want tae go on a wee bit?’ he asked, and Billy did, so they followed the path deeper into the woods. It was chillier at first out of the sun, then warmer and brighter again as the trees thinned and the incline rose towards the great moor that stretched north to Glenallan. Don was amazed that his four-year-old son could go so far and at such a pace, and wondered when he would tire and if he would have to carry him all the way back, and didn’t care if he did.
As they reached the last of the trees two figures appeared in front of them, a man and a boy. It was for a moment as if they had somehow come upon themselves, only the boy was older, twice Billy’s age at least, and the man, taller and more gaunt than Don, was Jack Gordon.
‘Hello again, Jack,’ Don said as they approached. They’d met in the pub the previous evening, the usual routine. They’d talked a bit of politics, had some longish silences, walked up the road together. Now Don said, ‘Fine day for it, eh?’
‘Aye,’ Jack said. He stared at Billy staring curiously back at him. ‘This your boy?’
‘Aye, this is Billy.’ He remembered that Jack hadn’t met Billy the day they’d called round. ‘This is Mr Gordon, son. And this …’
‘… is my sister’s son, Jimmy,’ Jack said.
Don held out his hand. ‘I’m Don,’ he said. ‘Pleased tae meet ye.’
The boy, who had been standing slightly behind and apart from Jack, came forward to shake hands. He didn’t say a word. There was a physical resemblance, Don thought, but the greater likeness to Jack lay in his watchfulness, his taciturnity. It was Jack in miniature.
‘We just came oot tae stretch our legs a bit, did we no, son?’ Don said. ‘Gets us oot the hoose, oot frae under Liz’s feet. How’s Sarah and Barbara?’
‘They’re fine,’ Jack said. ‘My sister’s family are visiting from Slaemill. Jimmy’s family. So we came out for some fresh air too. Right, Jimmy?’
‘Aye.’
‘We’ve been having a talk,’ Jack said. ‘Getting to know each other.’
‘Very good,’ Don said.
‘Discussing the state of the nation.’
‘Och, that’s a hot topic wi your uncle,’ Don said to the boy. ‘Dae ye feel the same aboot it as he does?’
The boy nodded. Barely a nod. Don felt that he was being assessed, analysed. The boy’s gaze was intense yet also somehow off hand, as if he were simultaneously interested and bored.
‘He says a lot,’ Don said, attempting joviality.
‘He says all he needs to say,’ Jack said. ‘Suits me fine.’ A smile flickered. ‘As you might expect.’
They stood there, the four of them, all waiting in their own ways for something to happen, or not to happen, until Don could bear it no longer. ‘Weel,’ he said, ‘we’re aboot tae head back hame again. Are ye coming?’
‘Not just yet,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll follow you down in a minute. We’ll catch you up, perhaps.’
‘Fair enough,’ Don said. ‘See ye later.’ He nodded at the nephew, and he and Billy set off together back through the woods. At one point he turned round to see what the others were doing. They were standing watching them go, silhouetted among the trees. Don raised a hand to wave, but they didn’t respond. He thought, what are they waiting for? Then Billy called on him, and he turned and broke into a trot towards where his son was standing, holding his arms out for a carry. He didn’t look back again.
§
Where did ye go, Jack? For years afterwards, Don would silently ask that question. He’d wake in the middle of the night and the question would be there, even though he hadn’t thought about Jack Gordon for weeks. Liz was sleeping beside him, real and dependable, but his mind was away chasing shadows. Or he’d be at his work, and a man coming round the front of the lorry he was working on would be Jack for a second, and then not Jack, just his ghost. He’d see a man enter a shop, and some need to be sure would make him follow, and it wasn’t him of course, it was never him. That was what it was like: Jack haunted Don, not because he was dead – which he almost surely was – but because he might still be out there somewhere, alive.
There was no trigger, no rational explanation that Sarah or anybody else could think of – but why would there be for such a thing? A man disappears. There is only the fact that he went missing before. A precedent, but not a pattern. How do you make a pattern out of absence?
It was the Tuesday after the meeting in the woods. Jack hadn’t been at the bus stop on the Monday morning, nor had he been on the bus home in the evening. When he didn’t appear on the Tuesday morning Don began to feel anxious, but he refused to let his mind dwell on it. He wasn’t going to get worked up for nothing, not again.
When he got home that evening Liz had his tea ready for him, a shepherd’s pie heavily biased in favour of the potatoes. While he ate she stood over by the sink with her arms folded, watching him. ‘Are ye no eating?’ he asked. ‘I’m no hungry,’ she said, in a brittle tone. He knew something was coming.
‘Sarah Gordon was here this morning.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘Her man’s missing.’
He held the forkful that was on its way to his mouth in mid-air.
‘Jack’s missing?’
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‘That’s what I said. Since yesterday. He never came hame frae his work. It turns oot he never went tae his work. She didna ken what tae dae. I tellt her tae call the polis.’
‘Aye, weel,’ he said cautiously, ‘that’s probably the best thing.’
‘She was getting hersel in a right state, though she didna want tae break doon in front of me. And she had the wee lassie wi her tae. I’ll need tae go up there, see how she is.’ A pause. ‘Or maybe you should go.’
There was a sting in the way she said it. He put his fork down and looked at her.
‘Ye’ve got the experience, Don, efter all.’
‘What dae ye mean?’
‘Well, it’s no the first time, is it? Sarah was telling me aboot how ye helped her afore. Asked in the pub. Searched in the woods. Like Sir bloody Galahad ye were, apparently.’ She was eyeing him steadily. With suspicion, for God’s sake.
‘What are ye looking at me like that for?’
‘Are ye denying it?’
‘Denying what?’
‘That ye were roond at her hoose.’
‘Aye. No, I’m no denying it. There’s nothing tae deny. I was trying tae help her.’
‘Withoot saying a word tae me? What am I supposed tae make o that?’
‘I tellt ye, Liz. She met me aff the bus. I tellt ye that. Ye were aboot tae gie birth tae Charlie. It was that same weekend. I went roond tae help her while ye were haein a nap and when I came back ye were away intae the hospital.’
‘Ye never said that. Ye said ye were taking Billy for a walk.’
‘I was, but –’
‘And ye never said a word aboot it efter. Never a word in seven months.’
‘It went oot my heid.’
‘Aye, and mine buttons up the back. Why would ye keep it a secret? Were ye up tae something wi her?’
‘No, for God’s sake! It wasna a secret. I forgot, then later it didna seem worth fashin ye wi.’
‘So what were ye daein?’
‘I was trying tae find oot what had happened tae Jack. But I didna find oot, and then he came hame the next day.’
‘Aye, weel, he’s away again noo. Maybe he’ll no be back this time. Maybe that would be better for everybody. That’s what I think onywey.’
‘Oh, Liz!’ he said, appalled.
‘I dae. I said it afore, I feel sorry for her being saddled wi him. Did you feel sorry for her?’ That nippy note again, making him feel guilty about nothing. But if it was nothing why did he feel guilty?
‘No the way you’re implying. I was trying tae help, that’s all. I’ve never looked at another woman, Liz, and ye ken that’s the truth.’
‘Ye’d better bloody no,’ Liz said.
He held her stare, fighting back images of the English nurse that night in the hospital. They had come to a crisis but neither of them wanted to face the real root of it: the fact that since Charlie’s birth they’d had little to say to each other that wasn’t about the mundane details of daily life; that one child had been a blessing, two felt more like a penance; that they lived like drones, sacrificing their own aspirations in order to feed and nurture the boys. But what were their aspirations? It was easier – had less awful implications perhaps – for Liz to imagine that Don might have strayed, and for Don angrily to deny that possibility, than to answer that question.
Then it passed. Neither of them apologised. Liz said, ‘You make up a bottle for Charlie, and get Billy tae his bed. I’ll go roond and see her.’ And Don said, ‘Aye, all right.’ ‘Leave the dishes, I’ll dae them later,’ she said, but as soon as she was out of the door he did them anyway, then went to see Billy, who’d been playing quietly in the front room all this time. Charlie was asleep in his crib, but on cue woke up and began to cry, so he had to deal with him first. ‘Ye’ve the patience o a saint,’ Don said to Billy, who answered with one of his wee, slightly uncertain, totally disarming smiles. ‘No like your brother, eh?’
By the time Liz came back he’d fed Charlie and quietened him, and Billy was asleep. The police had been and gone, Liz said. They’d asked questions, made notes, and taken away a wedding photo as Sarah didn’t have anything of Jack more recent. By then he’d been gone maybe forty hours. ‘He’s got a head start,’ she said, as if he was a fugitive from justice, a character out of one of her mysteries. Liz had quizzed Sarah much as Don had on the previous occasion. Had Jack said anything, done anything, that might offer a clue as to why or where he’d gone? He hadn’t. Had he taken money from the house? Not that she could see. Sarah found the bank book and there were no recent withdrawals. But then Jack was secretive, she said, he could have had money hidden away somewhere. It looked like he’d taken a change of clothes, his good boots, a heavy coat, a haversack.
‘He’ll no go far withoot money,’ Liz said. ‘I said tae her, he’ll be back soon enough when he runs oot o money.’
Don didn’t think so. It sounded planned to him. He reckoned Jack could survive on almost nothing – he’d had plenty of experience. He’d be back only if he wanted to be. But what did he want? Was he trying to get away from Sarah and Barbara in their spotless house with its barren vegetable plot and immaculate flower beds, or was it more that he was trying to reach something? But what? Don thought of the sheet of paper covered in MacLarens. Maybe he was still trying to succeed where MacLaren had failed, still trying to get back to some distant, dreamed-of Scotland.
Two more days passed. Liz walked up to Sarah’s in the afternoons with the boys, sat with her for a while, came away with no news. She seemed to have got over the notion that there was or had been anything between Don and Sarah, or at least she never raised it again. The weekend came and Don went to the Blackthorn at eight o’clock, just in case. Jack failed to show. Bill Drummond was there. Because the police were involved, everybody knew. Most people thought Jack was cracked. They didn’t hold out much hope for him. The Japs had a lot to answer for.
Don spent an hour with Bill, then headed off. He thought about calling in on Sarah but decided it wasn’t worth risking Liz’s wrath. He walked round the village, wondering what the English nurse was doing, if she were on a shift or out on the town, smoking and drinking. Somehow he felt justified thinking about her because Liz had been so wrong about him and Sarah. Then he went home, made himself a cup of tea, checked on the boys, took The House with the Blue Door by Hulbert Footner from Liz’s sleeping fingers and creaked in beside her.
After a week they feared he was dead. After two they wanted his body to be found, at least. After three they thought it unlikely it would be. He’d gone to the coast and drowned himself and his body was at the bottom of the sea; or maybe he’d not actually killed himself but had killed the person he’d been and was starting afresh, in England or Ireland or wherever, a man trying to leave Jack Gordon behind for ever. Could he have got right away, to Canada, say, or Australia? There was no trace of him, no sign, no sighting. The police said this wasn’t that unusual. Even in normal times, they said, you’d be amazed how many people just vanish. But these weren’t yet quite normal times: the war was still only six years over, there were people on the move all over the British Isles, all over Europe, leaving their old losses and injuries behind. Don understood this. When you saw newsreel of London or Coventry or Berlin at the pictures, what you were watching was destruction already being built over. When you saw films like Hue and Cry and Passport to Pimlico the high jinks of Alastair Sim and the like might make you laugh but also you saw a ruined landscape through which people were moving in an endless stream. Why would Jack not be part of that? Why not, unless he was dead?
It was still early April when the Stone of Destiny was deposited among the ruins of Arbroath Abbey, then bundled back south under a police escort. For a day or so Don thought it possible that there was some connection, that with the stone’s reappearance Jack might also emerge from wherever he’d been hiding. But he didn’t, and Don heard Jack’s clipped tones dismissing the idea. Come on, Don, what are you thinking of? The stone was
a sideshow after all, a distraction, and in any case the one taken back to London was a fake, the genuine article was lying in a peatbog or some forgotten vault in a castle or wherever it was supposed to have ended up. Like that original stone he believed in, Jack was gone for good.
Three months, six months, a year passed. Sarah waited. There were financial difficulties. Jack’s employers were sympathetic, but they couldn’t go on paying for him not being at his work. There were some savings in the bank: Sarah lived on them for a while. As soon as Barbara was old enough for school Sarah got a job in the post office as a counter clerk. Most days Liz collected Barbara from school along with Billy, and Sarah picked her up on her way home. Barbara was clever, industrious, isolated. She and Billy developed a kind of silent mutual affection and tolerance that the adults – and Charlie – were excluded from. Sarah was grateful that her friendless daughter had at least one friend. Liz and Don were less sure it was good for Billy, but what could they do?
Usually by the time Don came home the Gordons would be away, but sometimes Liz, in spite of her determination not to get closer than she had to, would have them stay for their tea. Over the years she became not exactly Sarah’s best friend, but her most reliable support. Yet when Liz spoke about her to Don when they were on their own, it was to wonder why she didn’t pack up and go back to Dorset where she belonged.
‘Maybe she feels she belongs here,’ Don said. ‘And what if Jack turns up and she’s away doon sooth?’
‘Jack’s never coming back,’ Liz said. And though Don knew she was probably right, he himself kept a small hope burning. Even if Sarah goes, he thought, I’ll be here if he ever comes home.
He still went to the Blackthorn once a week. It was like keeping a pledge. Eight o’ clock every Saturday. A couple of pints, standing at the bar, talking to whoever was there, or not talking. And most Sunday mornings he took Billy for a walk up in the woods. When Charlie was big enough he took him too. A long lie for Liz and time with the boys for him. It wasn’t that Liz and he didn’t get on, it was that they knew each other too well, had nothing much left to say. It was what happened.
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