The Last Wanderer

by Meg Henderson

  ‘Ah, I see the light has punctured the halo!’ Dougie smiled down the receiver.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘Well, as I understand it, Father, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch won’t be allowed access to the freighter crew to question them—’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Father Mick shrieked down the phone.

  ‘Come now, Father, it’s all in the spirit of European co-operation. Surely you didn’t believe being part of the EC was intended to ease the red tape, did you?’ Dougie laughed at him. ‘You’ll have to lose this belief in truth and justice: it’s terribly childish, Father. No, all we can do is make sure we submit the right questions and hope they get asked and, more importantly, get answered.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘Well, then, they don’t,’ Dougie said simply.

  ‘Oh come now, you’re teuchters, you’re sneaky, you’re wily, you must have something up your sleeve!’

  ‘Father Mick,’ said Dougie, ‘that sounds very like a racial slur to me!’

  ‘Ach, racial slur be damned, stop buggering about. Can we do this?’

  ‘We’ll try, Father, that’s all we can do. We’ll try.’

  Just over three months after the crew died, Alison Kerr gave birth to a son. She named him Peter after his father and added Sorley for good measure, so at least there was a new toehold in the world of Wanderers. Rose was pleased for Alison and envious of her in equal measure. She knew everyone was picking up the pieces, that there was a feeling in the village that a new leaf had been turned with the birth of the baby, and she resented that as well. They had no right to be getting on with their lives, she thought, and she went through a time of hating them all for it. How could they behave as though it had been ‘just one of those things’ and expect her to shrug, throw it off and go on as if there was any future worth having, worth wanting? It reinforced her instinct to shut herself away from all contact with humanity, to sit in her house alone, simmering with anger.

  The terms of the insurance taken out by the skipper on behalf of the crew gave each family £50,000, but the MacEwans also had the proceeds of the sale of the boat’s fishing licence, which ran to over £5 million, so there would be no financial worries for Rose or Chrissie – not that it seemed hugely important to either of them. Rose still refused to leave her house for longer than the time it took to call briefly on Granny Ina or her mother-in-law, but the birth of Pete and Alison’s baby provided an opportunity for Gannet and Chrissie to coax her out of her exile. A new baby needed to have a present – a new baby carrying the name Sorley more than any other – and Chrissie announced that she wanted Gannet to take her to Inverness for some serious shopping.

  Rose understood what was being suggested, and at first she refused; Chrissie could get her something to give to the baby too. Chrissie would have none of it. The baby deserved a gift chosen by the giver; it wouldn’t be the same if Rose didn’t pick it herself. Besides, this baby was special. It would grow up as Rose had herself, a little orphan of the fishing; there was a bond between them, wasn’t there? And so Rose agreed reluctantly and with bad grace and only after extracting an agreement that they would go and return on the same day. She didn’t want to stay away for even one night, she wanted to come home to her own bed. However long the journey took, they must be back by that night.

  They set off on a bright, autumn morning, with Chrissie talking non-stop, telling stories about her grandbairns, passing comments on the changing colours of the trees, Gannet’s driving, the discomfort of the old Land Rover on a long journey. Then there was a long silence.

  ‘I’m fed up with this,’ Chrissie suddenly announced. ‘The two of you sit there saying nothing while I gabble on trying to make conversation. Somebody speak, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Why have we got to speak?’ Gannet demanded quietly. ‘What’s wrong with silence?’

  ‘Because it’s not natural, that’s why, not this kind of silence. Stop this bloody thing, I want out!’

  Gannet pulled off the road at the next layby and Chrissie pushed Rose out first so that she could climb out. Rose immediately got back in again.

  Chrissie watched her. ‘You see what I mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘What?’ Gannet asked, looking bemused.

  ‘She’s back in.’

  ‘So what?’

  Chrissie walked up and down the layby. ‘She’s not living, that’s so what! She’s just existing: moving when she has to and no more than that; talking when she has to and no more than that. It’s not right!’

  ‘Chrissie, it’s up to her how she deals with this,’ Gannet suggested. ‘Everyone’s different.’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ Chrissie fumed. ‘This isn’t natural; it’s not normal. Life has to go on, she can’t stay like this for the rest of her life!’

  From the passenger seat came a low, lifeless voice. ‘Who says life has to go on?’

  ‘Ach, Rose, of course it has to,’ Chrissie replied, going up to the Land Rover. ‘It would break his heart to see you like this.’

  ‘But he’s not here to see me,’ Rose replied flatly, ‘so what does it matter?’

  ‘You’re young, lassie, in time you’ll meet somebody else,’ Chrissie said pleadingly. ‘You’re luckier than Alison; you don’t have any bairns. You can make a fresh start!’ As the words were leaving her lips, Chrissie knew she shouldn’t have said them; if she could have clawed them back from the air and reclaimed them she would have done so.

  Rose looked at her, brown eyes blazing. ‘His own mother!’ she whispered fiercely. ‘That his own mother should say that to me!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I really am, Rose, I shouldn’t have—’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t have! Luckier than Alison? Is that what you think? She has her man’s baby; she has something of Pete. What do I have left of Sorley Og? Nothing! I’d change places with her and be grateful to do it. And just for the record, there wasn’t anyone before Sorley Og and there won’t be anyone after him. Is that clear?’ She looked at Gannet. ‘I want to go home,’ she told him, and wordlessly he climbed into the driving seat, started up the engine, and waited till Chrissie joined them. They drove back in a silence more complete than the one Chrissie had tried to break on the way out, and when they reached MacEwan’s Row they parted without a word being spoken. Rose went to her house and shut the door and Chrissie, seeming smaller and sadder than at any time since the tragedy, turned towards her own house. Gannet walked off in the opposite direction.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Chrissie asked.

  ‘I’m going down to the Inn to get drunk,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Roaring, falling down, stinking, rotten drunk – if you don’t mind me deciding how I want to behave, that is.’ He turned towards her. ‘Seeing as you think you have the right to dictate to others,’ he said savagely, ‘I suppose I should ask for permission!’ He turned again and disappeared towards the village.

  When he arrived back he had had just enough of the Inn’s current atmosphere and the falling-down stuff to be in fighting trim.

  ‘Well, I have to say, Chrissie MacEwan,’ he told her, ‘that you handled that very well.’

  ‘Ach, away with you,’ Chrissie said dismissively. ‘You talk as if I don’t know that myself already.’

  ‘There we were, trying to bring the lassie out of herself, and with one wee remark you’ve managed to send her scurrying deeper inside herself than she was.’

  ‘I know, I know. What do you want? Blood?’

  ‘I want you to think a bit, Chrissie, that’s what I want. You’ve ruled the rest of us for years and that’s fine, because we all know each other, but Rose is different. You don’t know her as well as you think you do.’

  Chrissie busied herself with unnecessary tasks about the kitchen without replying.

  ‘What a thing to say to her, too! That’s the kind of thing most people think but know better than to say aloud, and to Rose herself least of all. What in hell possessed you?’
/>
  ‘Gannet, you’re drunk,’ Chrissie said in a businesslike tone. ‘I won’t talk to a drunk man. Goodnight.’

  With that she left him, but when she closed the door of the bedroom she had shared with Sorley Mor she put her head against the wooden panel and wept quietly. She had been trying to be supportive, that was all she had meant to do; she had been trying to show Rose that she, Sorley Og’s mother, was quite prepared to see his young widow build a new life. It would hurt like hell to see her with another man and with another man’s bairns, but it had to happen, it would happen one day, and she had wanted Rose to know that she mustn’t feel guilty on her behalf. Somehow it hadn’t come out like that. In her desperation it had sounded as if she didn’t give a damn about her own boy and, worse, as if she didn’t have much respect for the love between Rose and Sorley Og, as if it was of so little consequence that it could be easily and quickly replaced if only Rose would buck up. Maybe Gannet was right. She had spent many years cheerfully insulting everyone around her, and because they understood her they could judge the abuse correctly. But Rose was indeed different, and Chrissie knew she had hurt her.

  Next morning Chrissie walked down to the village and into Hamish Dubh’s store. Not that she needed much, if anything; it was a case of flying the flag, showing that after everything that had happened she was still part of village life. The shop was busy, all locals at that time of year, and they greeted her and each other. Annie Stewart, Dan’s wife and Stamp’s sister-in-law, asked how she was, and the other women listened in, all of them part of her concern.

  ‘Ach, you know, Annie,’ Chrissie replied brightly, ‘up one day, down the next. It can only get better.’

  ‘And the girls?’

  ‘Getting by, Annie,’ said Chrissie. ‘How’s Molly holding up?’

  ‘About the same. We keep an eye on her,’ Annie smiled. ‘I see you still have Gannet with you?’

  Chrissie hesitated. ‘Aye, I do. And is there anything you’d like to say about that?’ she demanded suspiciously.

  ‘No, no, I was just saying,’ Annie smiled a slightly puzzled smile.

  Chrissie looked around the women in the shop.

  ‘You’re a miserable bunch of old sweetie wives!’ she said viciously. ‘Is that all you can think to talk about, what me and Gannet might be getting up to now that Sorley Mor’s cold in his grave up the hill there?’

  The women exchanged glances and Hamish Dubh looked uncomfortable behind the counter.

  ‘Let me make it clear,’ Chrissie addressed them. ‘Gannet has always been part of our family, and if anything the passing of my man and my boy have made that stronger. Gannet will stay at my house because that’s where he’s always been, as fine you all know!’

  ‘Chrissie,’ Hamish Dubh said, trying to calm the situation, ‘I don’t think anyone meant—’

  ‘I know bloody fine well what they meant!’ Chrissie shouted, her face red with anger. ‘Everyone of them in this village has been wondering if Gannet has been sharing my bed all these years—’

  Annie Stewart opened her mouth to protest, but Chrissie ignored her.

  ‘Well, I won’t spoil your fun as you have nothing else but gossip to occupy your minds,’ said Chrissie. ‘I won’t confirm or deny it, you can just keep guessing, but Gannet will be staying where he is. Now, has anyone got anything else to say?’

  Without waiting for a reply she turned and stormed out of the store and home to MacEwan’s Row.

  Up the Brae, Father Mick had been thinking about the whole situation. He hadn’t been able to switch his head off it since that first awful phone call, and though his mind was hurting with constantly running and re-running everything that had happened, for some reason he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t sleeping well, and Father Mick needed his sleep. A couple of hours at a time, that was all he could manage, long enough to have horrific dreams of himself doing terrible things to complete strangers, running down roads in cities he hadn’t seen in decades, stabbing people in the streets, tearing them limb from limb. It was reaction to what had happened, he knew that, and he kept telling himself that it would get better, but he was beginning to wonder when; he was feeling so tired that it was like a physical illness, as if he had permanent ‘flu.

  There was a knock at the door and, when he answered it, to his utter horror he found Batty and Maddy from Black Rock standing on his doorstep, one looking prim and proper, the other like some mad ex-hooker who didn’t realise that her days on the street corner were over. Since their mother’s death he no longer visited Black Rock, so they waited in various parts of the village to ambush him these days, or they turned up at his door. He looked at them standing there, his heart sinking as Batty proffered yet another rosary for his blessing, and suddenly he had had it. He grabbed the rosary from her hands and savagely ripped it apart, breaking the links with his bare hands and not stopping when the metal cut his skin and blood flowed. Then he threw the bits on the floor and jumped up and down on them.

  ‘Will you bugger off with your gee-gaws and leave me alone!’ he yelled, while in his head another voice was asking him what in hell he was doing, as Batty and Maddy stared at him in shocked confusion. ‘I’ve blessed enough bits of crap for you. You could fill a dozen shops with the rubbish you keep buying. Go away!’ he shouted, shoving the bemused sisters out of his doorway. ‘Get out! Leave me alone! If I ever see either one of you again I’ll blast your arses off with the biggest shotgun I can lay hands on!’ Then he locked the door behind them, retired to his sitting room, switched off the light, drew the curtains, got out a bottle of Scotch and sat by the fire taking slugs of it till he was unconscious.

  When Chrissie arrived back from her encounter in the village she found Gannet packing the old kitbag he usually took on fishing trips.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Packing,’ he replied tersely.

  ‘I can see that,’ she said, ‘but why are you packing?’

  ‘I thought I’d go back to my own house in Keppaig,’ the big man said.

  ‘Do you remember where it is?’ she asked, laughing.

  Gannet kept stuffing clothes into his bag but made no reply.

  ‘OK, I’ll fall for it,’ Chrissie said. ‘Why are you going back to your own house?’

  ‘I just thought I would,’ Gannet said loftily.

  ‘Dear God,’ Chrissie sighed. ‘Look, can we maybe have the short version? What are you doing?’

  ‘I was only ever here because of Sorley Mor,’ he said quietly, ‘and now that he’s not here there seems no reason for me to be either.’

  ‘Now that’s just crap!’ Chrissie said angrily.

  ‘And,’ he said, looking up, ‘I was also thinking that maybe we needed a break from each other. Is it all right if I take the Land Rover?’ he asked with exaggerated politeness. ‘I’ll make sure it’s returned to you in due course.’

  ‘Sure, what good is it to me?’ Chrissie asked briskly. ‘I can’t drive the damned thing.’

  Gannet finished his packing and looked her in the eye. ‘I’ll be going now then,’ he said.

  Chrissie returned his gaze. ‘Right,’ she said after a while. ‘Fine. Go then. That’s fine by me.’

  Then she did what she always did, she put on her pinny and started to work about the house. The front door opened, then closed. She was washing a few dishes at the sink by the window as the tall, thin figure passed, but she didn’t look up. As she heard the familiar ‘clunk’ of the Land Rover door she forced her hands down into the soapy water, shut her eyes and swallowed hard; once that noise meant Sorley Mor was about to bound through the door. The engine started up, then faded as the Land Rover moved off towards the village. Chrissie kept washing her dishes.

  As Gannet was passing Black Rock, the man himself stepped onto the road and put a hand up to stop him.

  ‘I thought it must be you, Gannet,’ he said in his slow way, his hands fiddling with a metal file covered with sawdust. ‘I’d know the racket of that Land Rov
er anywhere. So how are things with you, then?’

  ‘Fine, fine, Black Rock,’ Gannet replied quietly. He knew that these opening pleasantries always had to be gone through with Black Rock, but there were times when you wanted to grab him by the throat and yell, ‘What do you actually want?’

  ‘I was just saying to Haffa there, it’s not bad weather for autumn.’ He blew some sawdust off the file.

  ‘Aye, it is that.’

  ‘No frost to speak of yet, makes his digging easier.’ He brushed the sawdust off his dungarees with his other hand.

  ‘Mm,’ muttered Gannet, looking at the file and the sawdust. ‘Has somebody … ?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Black Rock slowly, ‘nothing like that. Just another job for Sandy Bay, though I always say I’ll never take on another.’

  ‘I meant to ask you about that, Black Rock,’ Gannet said, ‘about the lads. Did you never have an idea?’

  Black Rock shook his head. ‘Never know if it’s family,’ he intoned, ‘but I was a bit restless for a couple of days before, couldn’t explain why. Must’ve been on account of the other lads who weren’t actually family, and the distance. It’s a terrible thing, the second sight, Gannet. A curse, to be truthful.’

  ‘Aye, but it has its advantages,’ Gannet suggested. ‘It gives you a head start on the coffins when it’s not family.’

  ‘Aye, aye, there is that,’ Black Rock intoned solemnly, ‘but it’s a terrible burden to bear through life. Aye, aye. And is Chrissie getting by?’ he asked kindly.

  ‘Ach, you know Chrissie,’ Gannet said diplomatically, ‘she’s just Chrissie.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Black Rock, as though he had heard a great universal truth, which he probably had. ‘And Rose?’

  ‘Not so good,’ Gannet admitted.

  ‘Terrible, terrible,’ said Black Rock. ‘It’s a sad, sad time we’re all having, Gannet, but the lassie most of all.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Gannet again.

  ‘I was thinking that Father Mick isn’t doing too well either,’ Black Rock remarked, getting to the point of the conversation at last.