And the Land Lay Still

by James Robertson

  Charlie raised his eyebrows at Billy. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘where’d ye learn tae speak like that? Up at the yooni?’

  ‘It’s not difficult,’ she said. She looked at Charlie as if he were dripping swamp all over the floor.

  ‘Wouldna suit me,’ he said. ‘I dinna want tae sound like I’ve swallowed a book every time I open my mooth.’

  ‘You have to be able to read before that happens,’ she said.

  For a second Charlie was speechless. To Billy it was as if Barbara had just poured a pint over his brother, and Charlie couldn’t believe it had happened. Then he mastered himself, tried to regain the upper hand.

  ‘Hey, Billy, ye’ve got a live one here. Did ye hear that? Course ye did, ye must get it aw the time. How d’ye stand it?’ Back to Barbara. ‘Wee bit o advice, darling. Could get ye intae trouble, that kind o lip. No wi me, I’m faimly. Just wi strangers. Folk that dinna ken how tae take a joke.’

  ‘It wasn’t a joke,’ Barbara said.

  The mask slipped again. ‘Fuck’s sake. Well, mair fucking fool me. I don’t think she likes me, Billy. Renée kens how tae take a joke, don’t ye, doll?’

  ‘Aye, Charlie,’ Renée said uncertainly.

  ‘That’s because ye are a fucking joke.’

  Triggered, Renée gave a short, mirthless giggle. Barbara stared at her, it wasn’t clear to Billy whether with disgust, pity or a mixture of both. Pity was what he felt. Because Barbara was scoring points off Charlie, Charlie was having to score some off Renée. Billy knew he’d be next.

  The drinks were set up and Charlie broke a five-pound note to pay for them.

  ‘Plenty mair where that came fae, Billy,’ he said, passing the glasses out. ‘Ye probably have tae watch the pennies, dae ye?’

  ‘We get by,’ Billy said.

  ‘Let’s grab thae seats,’ Charlie said, pointing to an empty table.

  ‘Let’s stand,’ Barbara said. ‘Otherwise we’ll be here all night.’

  ‘Suit yersel.’ Charlie produced cigarettes, offered them round. Renée took one. So did Billy. Barbara, even though she usually smoked when she was drinking, refused.

  ‘Suit yersel,’ Charlie said again, lighting up. ‘What were we saying? Oh aye, ye get by. Well, Billy, that’s no the game for me. Get by? Fuck that. You sound like the auld man. I suppose ye’ve been up there?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How’s my mither?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Good. How aboot him?’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘Shame. Ye see, Barbara, what Billy’s maybe no tellt ye is, me and my faither dinna see eye tae eye. Fact is we dinna get on at all. My faither’s disappointed wi me. But Billy here, he says he’s all right. That’s because Billy’s the golden boy. He’s the one that went tae the yooni. He’s the one that’s bettered himsel. That’s how he’s ended up wi a smart bird like you, while I’m stuck wi a thick slag like Renée. Nae offence, doll.’

  If Renée took any she didn’t show it. Billy gulped at his pint. He glanced at the bar, and caught sight of their awkward grouping in the big mirror. The grey, anxious-looking one was himself. Joy of Sex man without the beard, the joy or the sex. All he wanted to do was drink up and go.

  Barbara leaned over towards Renée. ‘You shouldn’t let him treat you like that,’ she said.

  Renée sparked up a bit, tossing her lifeless hair. ‘Like what?’ she said. ‘He treats me fine. He’s just haein a laugh, aren’t ye, Charlie?’

  ‘I treat her like a princess,’ Charlie said.

  Barbara reached out her free hand and touched Renée’s cheekbone, just below her left eye. ‘Was he just having a laugh when he did that to you?’ she said. ‘You’ve done a good job with the make-up, but not that good.’

  Billy suddenly felt very sick. Renée started back as if she’d been given an electric shock. The hand holding her cigarette flew up to her cheek then away again. ‘Dinna fucking touch me!’ she said, very loudly. Her harsh voice cut through the surrounding noise. ‘Whae the fuck dae ye think ye are, touching me? Ya fucking auld boot.’

  Barbara said, quite coolly, ‘Or maybe you walked into a door?’

  The last remnant of a smile vanished from Charlie’s face. He stepped away to clunk his glass down on the nearest table and came back and immediately seemed bigger and stronger and more dangerous. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his heel. Renée was still smouldering like a dud firework. And it was as if everybody in the pub had been listening in but pretending not to, and now they could no longer pretend and were shrinking back from the space the four of them occupied, the space where whatever happened next was going to happen.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Charlie said. He was leaning, towering in over Barbara. Tall as she was, she was still six inches shorter than him. ‘Are you saying I hit my girl? Are you saying I hit Renée? Is that what ye’re fucking saying?’

  ‘It’s what it looks like,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Barbara, come on, ye canna say that,’ Billy said.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I can’t say,’ she said. She didn’t take her eyes off Charlie.

  Billy tried to get between them, but Charlie pushed him back.

  ‘She fucking said it, Billy. She fucking said it and she crossed a fucking line when she did. Ya fucking bitch.’

  Billy said, ‘That’s enough, Charlie,’ but Charlie ignored him. If Barbara was frightened she wasn’t showing it.

  She said, ‘What are you going to do about it? Are you going to hit me too?’

  Maybe there was a moment when that was possible, even likely, but it was only a moment. Charlie was surrounded by witnesses, not all of them his friends. One of the barmen, a big solid man, had come round the end of the bar but he wasn’t interfering, not yet anyway. Charlie turned away from Barbara, shaking his head, shrugging a victim shrug to the spectators. Then he spoke to Billy, loud and clear so everybody could hear how reasonable he was being.

  ‘Ye’re lucky ye’re my brither, Billy. By rights you and me should be ootside settling this. I wouldna hit a woman – I dinna hit women – but I have tae defend my reputation. Everybody heard what she said. I could have her in court for it but like I said, ye’re my brother. So let’s say I made a mistake inviting ye in here. I buy ye a drink, I try tae be nice tae you and your girlfriend, and then she comes oot wi something like that. Naebody speaks tae me like that. Get her oot o here, and fuck off back tae Glesca, all right?’

  ‘Come on, Barbara,’ Billy said. He tried to take Barbara’s arm. She flung his hand away. ‘I’m coming, Billy. You don’t need to drag me out.’

  Charlie dropped his voice again. A private word with his older brother. ‘Ye fucking should,’ he said. ‘Ye should take her ootside and show her whae the fucking boss is. But ye’ll no, Billy, will ye? Because ye’re feart. Ken whit I think? I think she’s cut your fucking baws aff.’

  ‘We’re going,’ Billy said. He started for the door. A path cleared before him.

  ‘You,’ Barbara said, ‘are a psychopath.’

  ‘You,’ Charlie said, ‘are a pair of ower-educated cunts.’

  ‘Goodbye, Renée,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Renée said.

  From the door, Billy said, ‘Barbara, come on.’

  She walked down the cleared path. Folk averted their eyes, from her, from Charlie, as if it were a close call as to whom they found more disturbing. But no one followed Barbara on to the street.

  Outside a wind had got up. Heads down, they hurried through blasts of rain to the bus station. After the pub the rain might have felt refreshing, but it was Drumkirk rain, greasy and grey.

  On the bus they sat dripping, wiping their faces. For a long time they said nothing.

  He said, ‘You didna hold back, did ye?’

  She said, ‘Is that a criticism?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘I clocked the bruise on her face right away,’ she said. ‘I coul
d have pretended I hadn’t but you know me better than that.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’m no criticising you. You were right.’

  ‘That’s not what you said back there. You tried to stop me saying anything.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You did, Billy. And you tried to get me out before I was ready to go.’

  ‘I was trying tae protect ye.’

  ‘Don’t ever do that again, Billy.’

  ‘I’ll no.’

  They fell back into silence. Billy heard Charlie’s words in his head. Ken whit I think? I think she’s cut your fucking baws aff. He hated Charlie for saying that. He hated the fact that it looked that way.

  ‘Don’t think he’s like he is because he had a tough childhood or something,’ he said. ‘We had the same childhood, and it wasna that tough. I made choices, and so did he. He’s chosen tae be the way he is.’

  A challenge to the way they thought about everything was in his words.

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Nothing else explains it.’

  §

  Roderick Braco, QC, now David’s father-in-law, got him alone not long after he and Melissa returned from their honeymoon (two weeks in Spain, tail-end of summer, autumn of the Franco regime). They were at the Braco country retreat in Glenallan for a family weekend get-together before the happy couple settled down to life in London, which was where, for the time being at least, they intended to live. Roderick and Julia had already given them a silver service, a double bed and a promise of help with school fees, as and when required. Now Roderick wanted to offer David something else, something which – as he diplomatically put it – was not in his gift but which he could probably help to push in David’s direction.

  ‘Namely, David,’ Roderick said, ‘this parliamentary seat. If you want it, that is?’

  They were sitting in the library, a cosy, leathery room with a log fire, each of them with a malt whisky in a cut-glass tumbler close at hand. The women were in the kitchen, stacking things in the dishwasher, a labour-saving appliance that had yet to make an appearance at Ochiltree House because, as Lady Patricia pointed out, she still had a human one in the form of Mrs Thomson. Although his parents were only a few miles away, they had not been invited to join the party, and David and Melissa would be heading south by train the next morning without calling on them.

  ‘Not, I should say,’ Roderick went on, ‘that I am planning to relinquish my position just yet. But in a few years – not at the next election but perhaps at the following one – I shall stand down. There’s a strong possibility of your being nominated to succeed me. As Conservative candidate, I mean – obviously one can’t guarantee election. Nevertheless, this is still a reasonably safe seat. Well, what do you think?’

  ‘It sounds appealing,’ David said, ‘except that all of my business interests are in London.’

  ‘Well, yes, but if you’re an MP you’ll be there most of the time anyway. No bad thing, David, to keep a foot in two camps. Here and there, I mean. You never know when you may tire of London. Goodness knows I get pretty fed up with it from time to time.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about making some inroads into the Edinburgh property market.’

  ‘Excellent. Well, there you are. I can help you with that too. You need to know the right people. Otherwise you’ll get nowhere. It’s that kind of place.’

  They talked it through. David, Roderick informed him, was seen as solid, dependable backbench material, and someone with ministerial potential too. The party was changing, and he could be part of that. Roderick approved of what was coming, but he was getting on, he’d have had enough in five or six years.

  ‘What you’ll have to do,’ Roderick said, ‘is cultivate like mad. Cultivate Scotland. Cultivate the party up here. You need to get your face better known in these parts. Obviously you are not unknown, as your father’s son. But your father isn’t, if you don’t mind me saying so, your greatest asset. He’s rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way over the years. Of course now he’s no longer constituency chairman he has no influence over the actual procedure. Whereas I …’

  ‘Do,’ David finished helpfully.

  ‘Quite. Now we need to identify a rock-solid Labour seat. That’s where you have to make your mark. It’s a bit of a baptism of fire but we’ve all had to do it. If you can show you’ve got the guts to fight the blue corner in one of those places where they weigh the Labour vote rather than count it, you’ll earn respect. Meanwhile, you and Melissa should come up as often as you can. The Argyll and Sutherland Ball. Fund-raisers, dinner dances and so forth. You know the kind of thing. Then we can arrange a smooth succession.’

  ‘But there’s a process, surely?’ David said. ‘I can’t walk in just like that.’

  ‘Certainly not. You have to be a suitable candidate, the right candidate. But you are – or you will be with a bit of campaigning experience under your belt. I had to run the gauntlet three times, you know, before I was selected for Glenallan. Once in Airdrie and twice in Ayrshire. Have you ever been to Airdrie, David?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Awful. Have you ever been to Ayrshire? Not Ayr, Ayrshire?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ayrshire – the bit I was standing in, anyway, the eastern half – makes Airdrie look positively idyllic. Miles and miles of bog interspersed with miserable cottages and even more miserable towns. I was there for three weeks each time and I don’t think it ever stopped raining. There was one particular night at a hustings when I thought I was going to be lynched, just because of how I spoke. The irony was, the natives were completely unintelligible. You’ll get your reward in heaven, my agent used to tell me. Actually, I got it in Glenallan. Top us up, will you? Where was I?’

  ‘Selection process,’ David said, as he lifted the decanter. Roderick seemed to like having a subservient son-in-law to talk to. At least in this household there was no shouting.

  ‘Yes, well, procedures are more rigorous than they used to be, and there are always plenty of applications for the nomination, but most of the applicants are quite unsuitable. Anyway, strings can be pulled. Like it or not it’s the only way to get the correct outcome. Don’t you worry about that side of things.’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought that far ahead,’ David said.

  ‘You don’t have to. I’m not budging for at least five years, remember? All you have to think about is the next election. There has to be one in the next two years, and my bet is Ted will go sooner rather than later. So get your skates on and find a rotten constituency to stand in. I can point you to a couple where they’re desperate for a good young candidate such as yourself. One thing, though. I shouldn’t say anything to your father about all this, not until we’ve got things settled. Wouldn’t want him to think we were doing things behind his back, eh?’

  David nodded his agreement. He knew he was thus signalling his engagement in some kind of plot, a form of betrayal, but this did not stop him nodding. He felt that his father was deserving of the betrayal.

  §

  Melissa was pregnant. Off-limits. They were fine, the two of them, of course they were. But he looked at her swelling belly and the slow, graceful way she adapted to her condition and something went out of him, the passion that had never really been there, and something else came back in. He wanted to explode.

  Maybe he was queer. There was no logic to this thought, but it occurred to him nevertheless. Lying beside her as she slept, patient and cowlike, growing the child inside her, he felt slightly revolted by her. At the same time he remembered his schooldays, those brutal manipulations practised on and by other boys, and was excited by the memory. Had he been missing something about himself all along? Had that other thing, the deviation Melissa had killed off with her innocence, been a diversion from something else? He felt an urgent need to find out.

  Almost immediately he had the opportunity. They spent August in Glenallan and he left Melissa there for a couple of
days and went with Freddy to Edinburgh, where they took in Fringe shows and drank and ate too much, and David wandered around eyeing up shabby buildings in desirable locations. They met one of Freddy’s old schoolmates and suddenly David had an opportunity to put his new theory to the test. Michael Pendreich, nice-enough guy and very handsome, but one frolic in the undergrowth was enough to convince David that, whatever else he was, he wasn’t that. Schoolboy nonsense. An embarrassment. He came back to Melissa determined to love and appreciate her properly. If she noticed a change, if she suspected anything, she said nothing. He was grateful, but he knew he was in trouble. While she prepared to give birth to their first child, the thing that had lain dormant in him twisted and stirred anew. And now he knew he could not deny it.

  §

  He went to see his parents. The homestead was crumbling about them. Lady Patricia’s face seemed to be caving in at about the same rate. Her lipstick was too red, making her look like a clown or a corpse. One of her eyes was cloudy. Almost the only times she stopped smoking was when she put a glass to her mouth.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘this is probably a silly question, but did Margaret Thatcher –?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know, Margaret Thatcher, the Education Secretary. Did she ever visit us years ago? When I was quite small?’

  Lady Patricia stared at him. ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just have a vague memory …’

  ‘But what on earth would she have been doing in Scotland? And why would she have come here?’

  ‘Some party connection? I’m not sure, but perhaps …’

  ‘But she’s a grocer’s daughter or something, isn’t she? From Gloucester.’

  ‘Grantham,’ he said.

  ‘Well, precisely. Your father rather admires her, but as for coming to visit us, well really …’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see. My mistake. Don’t know what I was thinking of.’

  §

  He’d noticed her, of course – she was a senior member of the government after all – but to begin with she didn’t stand out. She’d gone the same sort of route to Westminster as David was about to follow, standing twice in a solidly Labour seat in the early 1950s, hunting around for a safe Tory one and finally getting Finchley in 1959. In opposition during the Wilson years she’d spoken in turn on fuel, transport and education. She was in favour of capital punishment and birching, against easier divorce, but voted to legalise abortion and also for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. As Education Secretary she’d had to take responsibility for ending free milk in primary schools, and she’d shown a certain sympathy for comprehensive secondary-school education at the expense of grammar schools. She made robust speeches at conference attacking Communism and its fellow travellers, and the rank and file responded with enthusiasm. But she wasn’t hugely loved, it seemed to David. She also appeared to be somewhat isolated in the Cabinet, as if Heath and his closest male ministers didn’t take her altogether seriously. He felt – almost – sorry for her.