Rose had been surprised but not shocked at her husband’s decision. She had known he would talk about what was on his mind when he was ready. They were sitting close together, contented, something on TV slipping effortlessly past their eyes.
‘I was thinking,’ he said quietly, ‘that it was maybe time to give up the fishing.’
For a moment Rose didn’t reply; she knew that the partings were getting harder rather than easier as time went on. ‘You don’t have to do it for me,’ she had told him.
‘So you don’t want me at home, then?’
‘You know I do,’ she laughed, ‘but I married a fisherman, Sorley, that’s what I’m saying. I knew what I was taking on.’
‘Well, you knew more than me,’ he laughed. ‘I never gave the future a second thought till you trapped me into marriage.’ He grinned at her. ‘So, when Sorley Mor’s looking for someone to blame, I’ll point my finger at you, Rose Nicolson!’
‘MacEwan,’ Rose corrected quietly. ‘Rose MacEwan.’
He put his arms around her. ‘When I was a wee boy I was scared all the time,’ he said.
‘About what?’
‘About whether or not I’d see my father again,’ he replied.
‘Really?’ she asked, pulling back from him to look up into his eyes. ‘I didn’t know that.’
Sorley Og laughed gently. ‘Every day of my life I was prepared for the worst. I’d watch the boat coming into harbour and I’d relax, but as soon as she left I was scared again.’
‘You never showed it.’
‘Well, you learn not to, don’t you? It’s part of life.’ He was silent a long time. ‘I always wanted to be close to him,’ he said.
‘But you are, Sorley!’
He laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that to sound as pathetic as it did,’ he said. ‘I meant I’d grown up knowing him through other people’s stories,’ he said quietly. ‘Everyone has a Sorley Mor tale, you know what he’s like, and they always assumed that I must have as many that they hadn’t heard, but I hadn’t. He was never at home long enough. He would come off the boat with the others, dog-tired after working twenty-two hours a day for five days, with little to eat while they were fishing because there wasn’t time. He’d wave to us from the wheelhouse, come ashore, and even then it was difficult to get him alone because everyone wanted to talk to him. Then they’d all head for the Inn and get drunk – not that it took much when they were so tired and had nothing in their stomachs. Gannet would drag him home, Chrissie would shout at Sorley Mor and slap Gannet, they’d sleep it off, and, before you knew it, they were back at sea.’
‘I used to talk to him down at the harbour as he was mending nets,’ Rose smiled.
‘Did you?’
She nodded. ‘He used to bring me pieces of treasure,’ she laughed.
‘Treasure?’
‘Bits of pots and things that he’d brought up in the nets. I used to think I was so special to him!’
‘Well, isn’t that something? He never mentioned that. Good for the old man,’ Sorley Og smiled. ‘Doesn’t that say a lot for him? You learn something new about the man every day.’
‘It was because of my father, I think,’ Rose said.
‘I’m sure it was,’ Sorley Og said, ‘but what a good man he was to take the trouble, do you not think so?’
‘Of course. I adored him then and I do now. But I know what you mean, Sorley. I only know my father through the eyes of other people. I used to take his photos out of the bureau when my mother wasn’t around and look at them, and I’d have given anything to hear his voice, to hear him saying my name, I suppose. When your father’s dead, no one can tell you what his voice sounded like.’
‘I never thought of that,’ he said, pulling her closer. ‘It must’ve been hard growing up in a place where everybody kept talking about him, yet you’d never seen him and knew you never would. I remember hearing about him all the years I was growing up, too.’
‘Everybody spoke about him except my mother,’ Rose grinned wryly.
‘Really?’
Rose shook her head. ‘Not a word. Never.’
‘Did you ever ask?’
‘No! We knew not to. Don’t know how we knew, but we did. We talked to each other, but I don’t think the others really remembered him: they were too young when he died. Granny Ina used to tell us a bit about him, and Sorley Mor used to tell me stories too.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘You know those stories about my mother and your father?’ she said. ‘Do you think there was anything in them?’
Sorley Og laughed. ‘Hard to imagine, isn’t it? I find it difficult enough to think of him and my mother being young lovers, but him and Margo?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, I find that damned near impossible!’
‘Me too. They’re so different,’ Rose said thoughtfully. ‘I hate to say it about my own mother, but she’s so cold. They say she was full of life as a girl, but that’s just as hard to imagine. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any warmth in her voice, never mind in her expression. I think back and all I hear is that bitter tone. Maybe that’s why I’ve always wanted to hear his voice, in the hope that it would be warmer than my mother’s, the missing link that could never be filled, I suppose.’
‘Well, that’s one thing we’ll never have to wonder about Sorley Mor!’ his son laughed. ‘He never stops talking. He’s like one of those people who can sing and draw breath at the same time: he’s unstoppable. The times when we’ve been at sea together have been the best, getting to know him as a man, but I’d have liked to have known him when I was young, without the anxiety that he might not come back. I don’t want my bairns saying that about me.’
‘Our bairns,’ Rose said quietly.
When Sorley Og and Rose went next door, Sorley Mor was snoozing upright on the couch by the fire. There was a huge stone fireplace reaching to the ceiling, with the hearth sitting on a raised platform of marble, where Sorley Mor’s feet rested. It was an enormous sitting room; Chrissie had been right, Rose thought, smiling. The furniture looked as though it had started out desperately trying to cover gaps, then, having given up the ghost, had simply settled for arranging itself in individual little groups here and there. It looked like doll’s house furniture. Ideally, oversized tables and chairs would have been needed to suit the grand scale of the rooms. Though he would never admit it, Sorley Mor had acknowledged the fact that the house was too big by creating his own space by the fire. It was a bit like having a study, only without walls or a door.
‘He’s too nosey for walls,’ Chrissie would scowl, ‘and he wouldn’t be able to rest not knowing what was going on outside a door.’
When anyone came into the house looking for Sorley Mor they would turn automatically to where he was to be found when ashore and not in the Inn, sitting in ‘his’ space on the couch in the corner of the room nearest to the fire, with his back to the window so that he only had to turn his head to keep an eye on what was happening in the harbour and the rest of the village. Beside this sat a small table where ‘his’ books and magazines lay, and on the edge ‘his’ coffee cup sat; no matter how untidy it might be, nothing on the table was ever disturbed or, as Chrissie said, ‘World War Three would break out.’ On the wall in ‘his’ space was another copy of the framed quote, ‘The Sea’, that he had picked up many years before and that he had in the Wanderer’s wheelhouse as well; Chrissie called it ‘sentimental crap’, but Sorley Mor loved it.
Looking round Sorley Mor and Chrissie’s house, Rose was always struck by the similarities to the one their son had built. Though MacEwan’s Castle was new and had every modern innovation and design feature, basically it was big, just as Chrissie had said, like this one. It was as if Sorley Mor had looked at the plans for an ordinary bungalow, then ordered it to be built three or four times normal scale; in his way, Sorley Og had done the same. She recognised, too, Sorley Mor’s table; in their house was another that was never tidied up, with the unfinished model of Ocean Wanderer sitting on top, all its bits and piec
es, paints and glues in disarray around it.
Chrissie had a tea towel in her hands, drying dishes; she had never come to terms with the dishwasher in the corner of her kitchen. What was the point in it, she would ask, when it took so much longer to do what she did in minutes?
‘If you’re looking for sense,’ she told Sorley Og and Rose, ‘you won’t get it.’ She glanced towards her husband. ‘That one’s just back from the Inn. I thought I’d see more of him these days, but he’s always holding court at that bloody Inn.’
‘That is a lie, woman,’ said the snoozing figure by the fire. ‘I’m perfectly sober. I was playing dominoes with Father Mick, if you must know. Dominoes is a skill requiring complete concentration. One does not get blootered when one is at the dominoes, woman, especially not when Father Mick is involved. He cheats.’
‘I hope you didn’t bring him home with you?’ Chrissie demanded.
Sorley Mor threw his arms wide, his eyes still tightly shut. ‘Do you see him here, woman? How could I bring him home when you’ve banned him?’
‘So where is he? You were in no fit state to drive him back up the Brae, that’s for sure.’
‘He’s asleep in the back of the Land Rover.’
‘And where’s the Land Rover?’
‘Outside the Inn.’
‘And you’ve just left him there?’ Chrissie demanded. ‘Lying in the back, drunk?’
‘We covered him with a tarpaulin,’ Sorley Mor replied wearily. ‘And anyway, what grounds do you have for saying he’s drunk?’
‘Don’t talk daft!’ Chrissie said, flicking him with the tea towel she had in her hands. ‘Of course he is!’
‘Why is he banned?’ Sorley Og asked.
‘He’s not banned,’ Chrissie said. ‘Not exactly. I just think he should do the decent thing and receive the ear-bashing he deserves over—’ she leaned close to her husband and said into his ear ‘—shall we say, several unfortunate escapades.’
Sorley Mor moved not a muscle.
Chrissie straightened up. ‘Naturally, being a man, he’s too much of a coward to show his face. When he sees me in the distance down in the village he takes off up the Brae to claim sanctuary in his chapel house. You should see him take off, his wee legs going like pistons!’ Chrissie laughed.
‘Your mother is a sadistic trollop,’ Sorley Mor told his son solemnly. ‘She has this peculiar idea that Father Mick leads me astray, so she’s torturing the poor man.’
‘That’s not true either!’ Chrissie said.
‘Which bit?’ Sorley Mor asked innocently, a sly smile playing over his lips.
Chrissie reached over, lifted his Dylan cap and slapped his head.
‘I think that proves my point,’ said Sorley Mor, eyes still firmly shut.
‘They’re as bad as each other, that’s the problem,’ said Chrissie. ‘The minute the three of them get together, all common sense goes out the window. Like that damned helicopter nonsense.’
‘It was a perfectly feasible proposition,’ Sorley Mor interrupted, in a superior tone.
‘Only for an idiot,’ Chrissie replied, ‘or in this case, three idiots.’
‘What happened?’ Sorley Og asked.
‘Didn’t you hear about that?’ Chrissie asked. ‘Must’ve happened while you were at sea, but didn’t I tell you, Rose?’
Rose shook her head.
‘Well, Laurel and Hardy went down to the Inn—’
‘Gannet and I went for a stroll about the village,’ Sorley Mor corrected her.
‘As I was saying, Laurel and Hardy went to the Inn, and they collected Hooligan on the way, Father Mick being crucial to their ability to stroll about the village, as we all know.’
‘Your mother’s also unduly sarcastic. Did I mention that?’ said Sorley Mor.
‘The first thing I know is a phone call from a firm in Inverness that hires helicopters. Could I confirm that Sorley Mor MacEwan lived here and was he all right?’ I asked what they meant. ‘Was he suffering from any mental problems?’ You knew they had to be strangers when they would ask a thing like that. Seems this one here, egged on by Father Mick, had hatched this plan to hire a helicopter to take them to some wee lochan up the hill where he and Gannet used to catch trout when they were lads. The helicopter people thought he sounded odd on the phone, so they’d asked for a back-up number and got this one. Apparently there are deranged souls who hire helicopters then jump out and commit suicide, and the people in Inverness were worried their caller fitted the bill. I told them he sounded odd because he was drunk and trying to sound sober, as were the other two, just stupid men, that was all. That was the end of the plan, of course.’
‘As I said,’ said Sorley Mor, ‘a perfectly feasible proposition. Father Mick had never seen the lochan and wouldn’t believe how big the trout were until he saw them with his own eyes. I reasoned that he wasn’t fit enough to get up the hill, so we decided to hire a ‘copter. I can’t see what all the fuss was about.’
‘You see?’ said Chrissie. ‘They’re impossible to control when they get together. One sparks off the other, and there’s no sensible woman waiting at home to slap Father Mick.’
Sorley Mor sighed as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
‘Look at him,’ Chrissie said. ‘Great gormless lump. And he’s been eating Dan’s food again. Doubled up with indigestion when I opened the door. We should buy shares in Milk of Magnesia.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Sorley Mor in a dignified voice. ‘Besides, Gannet’s in a far worse state than me.’
‘You mean that long waste of space who carried you home? That reprobate who’s snoring in the porch?’
‘Conservatory,’ Sorley Mor corrected her primly, and tutted. ‘I took the woman out of a wooden hut all those years ago and gave her a decent way of life, gave her some culture, but she still can’t drag her mind with her. Conservatory, woman.’
‘Ach, shut up, you great idiot!’ Chrissie retorted, heading back towards the kitchen.
Rose went over to the porch and looked through the closed glass door.
‘For God’s sake don’t open it, Rose,’ Chrissie said. ‘Listen to him! The noise he makes snoring would destroy your eardrums.’ She crossed the room to where Rose was standing and the two of them looked through together. Inside the porch was a long table, and on top lay Gannet, fast asleep, his hands clasped across his stomach. ‘Sleeps there whenever he has a few,’ Chrissie said. ‘Falls off a couple of times, remembers nothing about it afterwards. I often think if we could get MacEwan Black Rock and Haffa on the job quick we could have the bugger boxed and buried before he had a chance to wake up,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know why he keeps that house in Keppaig. He’s never bloody there, he’s always here!’
‘Tut tut,’ muttered Sorley Mor, ‘language, woman,’
‘If you want language,’ said Chrissie, advancing on him, ‘I’ll give you bloody language!’
The skipper didn’t move, but he raised one eyelid just to be sure. ‘Gannet is my faithful retainer,’ Sorley Mor protested with dignity. ‘Where else would he be but asleep on my table in my conservatory? He is my bodyguard,’ he said grandly, then closed his eye again.
‘He’s your fellow drunk,’ Chrissie replied. She looked around, then her eyes fell on the local newspaper. Quickly she rolled it up and slapped him over the head with it. ‘And he always will be!’ she said.
Sorley Mor, eyes still shut, didn’t flinch. ‘You just can’t get the staff these days,’ he said resignedly. ‘You have to put up with violence from foul-mouthed harridans like this one.’ Then he reached out just as quickly and, catching Chrissie off-guard, he grabbed her round the waist and pulled her down across his knee where the two of them wrestled and shrieked. There were loud, smacking kissing noises from Sorley Mor and giggles of protest from Chrissie.
Sorley Og looked at Rose and laughed, shaking his head at his parents. ‘Is this not embarrassing? Can you imagine what it’s been like growing up
and having to see this kind of thing every time your father’s in port?’ he asked, smiling all the same.
Rose thought it would have been wonderful to have both a mother and a father, especially like these two, but she said nothing. Not only hadn’t Quintin been there, but there had never been the slightest feeling of him around her house, the grieving widow not wishing, it seemed, to keep any aspect of him alive. His name was mentioned frequently and with affection in the village, but never at home, except when Margo wasn’t around and the bairns felt safe in asking Granny Ina about him. The old woman would repeat to them the tales she had been telling them for years, tales they had heard so often that they could have repeated them word for word, hoping that perhaps some little extra nugget of information might reveal itself this time. The photos of him in the old bureau were only taken out by the bairns, who would gaze at them quietly, secretly, whispering comments to each other, before guiltily replacing them in their dark home before Margo walked in on them.
As far as Rose was aware, Margo never visited her husband’s grave in the cemetery up on the hill at the far end of the village, or, if she did, she kept it from them. Rose had always assumed that the memories were so painful for Margo that she had decided the best way forward was not to look to the past. She had never been to her father’s grave, either. In the atmosphere Margo created at home it was a notion that had never occurred to her; nor had it, as far as she knew, occurred to her brothers and sisters either. It was Chrissie who had prompted that first visit. In the run-up to the wedding the year before, she had said, ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to put your bouquet on your daddy’s grave, Rose.’
It wasn’t a question, more an assumption, and Rose had simply nodded, trying to cover the fact that she hadn’t thought of it.
‘Aye,’ said Chrissie kindly, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, ‘seeing as he won’t be there.’
Rose hadn’t mentioned that visit to Margo, though, nor the others she had made since, and she couldn’t explain why not, not even to herself. Somehow she sensed that her mother wouldn’t approve of a gesture that seemed perfectly natural to others, and not for the first time it made her wonder what kind of person her mother was.
The Last Wanderer Page 23