The Blackhouse l-1

by Peter May

  I’m not sure when I became aware of Marsaili standing in the doorway. But when I did, I looked up sharply. Her face was chalk-white.

  ‘What is it?’ Anita said, and then she saw her, too.

  ‘Why don’t you just pick up your clothes and get out,’ Marsaili told her very quietly.

  Anita looked at me, and I nodded. And with a great show of petulance, Anita climbed out of the bed, gathered up her things from the floor and stomped across the hall to her room. Marsaili closed the door behind her. She had the look in her eyes of a dog that has just been kicked by its master. Betrayal, hurt, shattered trust. I knew there wasn’t anything I could say.

  ‘You know, I never told you,’ she said. ‘The only reason I applied for a place at university was because I knew you had.’ And I realized that must have been before our encounter on the island at Great Bernera. And I thought about the letter she had sent imploring me not to take Irene Davis to the final year dance at primary school. Signed, The Girl from the Farm. And I knew then that she had never stopped loving me, for all those years. I had to look away, no longer able to meet her eye. For I understood what I had done, in the end, with my cruelty and my selfishness. I had robbed her of hope. The hope that one day she would get me back. That she would find the old Fin again. I didn’t know where that Fin was any more than she did, and I’m not sure that I had any hope of finding him myself.

  I wanted to say sorry. To hold her, to tell her that everything would be alright. Just like Mr Macinnes had told me on that ledge on the cliff. But I knew it wouldn’t be, and I wondered if he had known that, too.

  Marsaili didn’t say anything else. She took her suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and started packing her clothes into it.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home. I’ll get the train to Inverness tomorrow, and then the bus to Ullapool.’

  ‘Where’ll you stay tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not in this house, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Marsaili-’

  ‘Don’t, Fin!’ She cut me off abruptly. Then more softly, with a catch in her throat, ‘Just don’t.’

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, still naked and chittering with the cold, and watched her pack her case. When she had finished, she slipped on her coat and dragged the case out into the hall. She pulled the door shut behind her without a word, and after a moment I heard the front door open and close.

  I went to the window and watched her as she struggled off down the street towards Byres Road. The little girl who had sat beside me that first day at school and offered to translate for me. The same little girl who had stolen a kiss from me high up among the bales in the barn at Mealanais Farm, and taken the blame for me when I dropped my sweets in church. After all these years, finally, I had hurt her beyond repair and driven her from my life. Big, fat snowflakes started falling, then, obscuring her from view before she reached the traffic lights.

  I only ever returned to the island once after that, when my aunt died suddenly the following April. I say suddenly, only because the news came to me out of the blue. But, in fact, it had been a long, slow decline over several months. I’d had no idea she was ill, although it turned out that she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer the previous summer. She had refused the chemotherapy, telling doctors that she had lived a long and happy life, drinking the finest wines, and smoking the best cigarettes, sleeping with the most eligible men (and a few women), and spending their money with great abandon. Why spoil the last six months? As it turned out, it was nearer nine months, most of which had been spent in pain, alone, in the freezing cold of her final winter.

  I took the bus out to Ness, and walked up the hill through Crobost to the old whitehouse by the harbour. It was a blowy spring day, but there was a softness to the wind cutting through the dead grasses, and a warmth in the watery sunlight that broke periodically through the racing hordes overhead.

  The house still had the chill of winter about it, a smell of damp and disinfectant. All the colourful vases of dried flowers, the purple-painted walls, the pink and orange fabrics of her heyday, were sad and tawdry now. Somehow she had given them their vibrancy, and without her they just seemed cheap and nasty. She had always been a huge presence in the house, and it was hugely empty without her.

  The grate in which she had lit her final fire still contained its ash and burned-out embers, grey and impossibly cold. I sat for a long time in her seat, staring at the fire and thinking about all the years that I had lived with her. It was extraordinary how few memories of her I had collected in that time. What a strange, cold childhood I’d had.

  In my bedroom I found all my old toys that she had stuffed in boxes and piled up in the wardrobe, a sad reminder of a past I was only too anxious to leave behind. I thought about Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. All those Sabbath hours spent in the Crobost Free Church had left their traces. I took the boxes of toys downstairs and piled them up at the bin.

  I had no idea what to do with my aunt’s things. I went into her bedroom and opened the wardrobe. Her clothes hung in silent rows, colours obscured by the shadow of her death. She had kept trousers and skirts and blouses years beyond her ability to wear them. It was as if she had harboured somewhere the hope that one day she might find again the person she had been in the sixties. Young, slim, attractive, her whole life ahead of her.

  I did not want to spend a single night in this house. But I had nowhere else to stay, and so as night fell I lit a fire, wrapped myself in a blanket and slept on the settee in front of it, flitting in and out of strange dreams in which my aunt and Mr Macinnes were dancing together across an empty dancefloor.

  I wakened to the sound of banging. It was broad daylight. I looked at my watch and saw that I had slept for nearly ten hours. There was someone knocking at the door. I answered it, still wrapped in my blanket, screwing my eyes up against the glare of sunshine to find myself squinting at a woman called Morag. She was a second cousin, I think, but much older than me. I’m not sure that I had seen her since my parents’ funeral.

  ‘Fin. I thought it must be you. I could smell the peat smoke, so I knew there was someone at home. I’ve got a key, but I didn’t like to use it if there was somebody in. You know the funeral’s today?’

  I nodded blearily, and remembered that my aunt had never had a good word to say for Morag. But as it turned out it was Morag, in the absence of anyone else, who had organized everything to do with the funeral. ‘You’d better come in.’

  And it was Morag who solved the problem of my aunt’s things. There was stuff, she said, that her family could use, and what they couldn’t, she would take to the charity shop in Stornoway. ‘You know, someone’s thrown out all your old toys.’ She was indignant. ‘I found them at the bin. I’ve put them in the boot so they don’t go to waste.’ And some other kid, I thought, would build a new set of memories around them. I just hoped they would be happier ones than mine.

  There weren’t many people at the church. A few distant relatives, a few diehard villagers who went to every funeral, a handful of nosy neighbours, curious perhaps to learn a little more about the weird old woman who had lived in splendid isolation in the whitehouse by the harbour. It wasn’t until the end of the service when I rose and turned towards the door, the Gaelic psalms still ringing in my ears, that I saw Artair and Marsaili slipping out together from a pew at the back. They must have known I was up there at the front, and yet they turned away quickly through the door, almost as if they were trying to avoid me.

  But then they were there among the group of mourners outside the house fifteen minutes later when a dozen of us gathered on the cliff to take the frail remains of my aunt on her final journey. Artair acknowledged me with a nod and a shake of the hand, and we found ourselves shoulder to shoulder when we lifted the coffin off the backs of the chairs placed out on the tarmac. I’m
sure the coffin was heavier than my aunt was. I saw Marsaili standing in black among the group of women who watched as the men began the long walk to the cemetery. This time I caught her eye, but only for a moment. She glanced quickly down towards the ground, as if overcome by grief. She had known my aunt only a little, and liked her even less. So it couldn’t have been my aunt she mourned.

  It wasn’t until we had put my aunt in the ground, and left the gravediggers to cover her over, that Artair spoke to me for the first time. A small group of us straggled back through the headstones towards the gate of the cemetery, battered by the wind shearing in off the Atlantic. He said, ‘How’s university?’

  ‘Not what it’s cracked up to be, Artair.’

  He nodded as if he understood. ‘You like it down there, in Glasgow?’

  ‘It’s alright. Better than here.’

  We were at the gate before anything more was said. We let the others through, and I hung back with him as he closed it. He turned to look at me, and it felt like a very long time before he spoke. ‘Something you should know, Fin.’ He took a deep breath and I heard the rattle of phlegm in his tubes. ‘Marsaili and I got married.’

  I don’t know why — I mean, I had no right — but I felt a hot flush of anger and jealousy. ‘Oh? Congratulations.’

  Of course, he knew I didn’t mean it. But what else could I have said? He nodded acknowledgement. ‘Thanks.’ And we set off across the machair to catch up with the others.

  NINETEEN

  I

  Marsaili was out at the peat stack filling a bucket. She wore jeans, and wellingtons and a thick woollen jumper. For once her hair was unclasped and was blowing all around her face. With the wind driving down from the north she did not hear Fin’s car pulling in at the top of the drive. A tiny Daewoo, the colour of vomit, which he had rented in town on a cheap oneday hire. All along the line of the coast below her, the sea broke in angry white wreaths, winding itself up for the storm gathering in the north-west like an invading army.

  ‘Marsaili.’

  She stood up, startled by his voice at her shoulder, and she wheeled around, surprised to see him, and then alarmed by what she saw in his face. ‘Fin, what is it?’

  ‘You must have known that he was beating the boy.’ And she closed her eyes and let the bucket drop to the ground, spilling its peats all over the turf.

  ‘I tried to stop it, Fin. I did.’

  ‘Not hard enough.’ His tone was harsh, accusing.

  She opened her eyes and he saw the tears collecting there, preparing themselves to spill. ‘You can’t imagine what he’s like. At first, when Fionnlagh was wee, and I saw the bruising, I couldn’t believe it. I thought it must have been an accident. But there’s a limit to the number of accidents you can have.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take him and leave?’

  ‘I tried, believe me, I did. I wanted to. But he told me if I ever left, he would come after us. Wherever we went he would find us, he said. And he would kill Fionnlagh.’ Her eyes desperately sought Fin’s understanding. But he was like stone.

  ‘You could have done something!’

  ‘I did. I stayed. And I did everything I could to stop the beatings. He would never do it if I was around. So I tried always to be there. To protect him, to keep him safe. But it wasn’t always possible. Poor Fionnlagh. He was wonderful.’ The tears ran freely down her face now. ‘He took it all like it was something to be expected. He never cried. He never complained. He just took it.’

  Fin found himself shaking. With rage and pain. ‘Jesus, Marsaili, why?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ She almost shouted it at him. ‘It’s like he was doing it to get at me for some reason. Whatever it is that happened out on that bloody rock, whatever it is you’re not telling me, either of you, it changed him beyond recognition.’

  ‘You know what happened, Marsaili!’ Fin lifted his arms in a hopeless gesture, and then let them fall again in frustration.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’ And she looked at him long and hard, baffled by his obduracy. ‘It changed all of us, you know that, Fin. But Artair was the worst. I wasn’t aware of it at first. I think he was hiding it from me. But then, after Fionnlagh was born, it just started coming out of him, like poison.’

  Fin’s mobile started ringing in his pocket. Scotland the Brave. Cheerful and jaunty. Ludicrously inappropriate in the circumstance. They stood staring at each other, the ridiculous ringtone fibrillating in the wind. ‘Well, aren’t you going to answer the stupid thing?’

  No one on the island knew his number. So it had to be someone from the mainland. ‘No.’ He waited for the answering service to pick it up, and was relieved when the ringing stopped.

  ‘So what now?’ She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, and left a dirty, peaty smudge across her cheek.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He saw the weariness in her eyes, the life ground out of her by all the years with Artair, and the guilt for all the beatings her son had been forced to endure, beatings that she had been unable to prevent. His phone started ringing again. ‘Jesus!’ He snatched it from his pocket, punched the phone symbol and slapped it to his ear. It was his answering service calling him back to let him know that he had one new message. He listened impatiently and heard a familiar voice, but so out of context that it took him several moments to identify it.

  ‘Too busy to answer your bloody phone, eh? Out catching our killer, I hope.’ It was the pathologist. Professor Angus Wilson. ‘If not, I’ve got a little something for you that might help. It’ll be in my report, but I thought I might give you a little advance notice. That wee ghost pill that we found in the killer’s vomitus? It contains an oral form of the steroid cortisone, known as prednisone. Commonly used to treat painful skin allergies. But also very effective in reducing inflammation in the airways, so it’s frequently prescribed for asthma sufferers. I suggest, therefore, that you keep your eyes peeled either for someone with a nasty rash, or an habitual asthmatic. Happy hunting, amigo.’ The answering service told him there were no more messages.

  Fin wondered why the ground had not swallowed him up. Everything else about his world had just fallen apart. So why should the earth still support him? He disengaged the phone and slipped it back in his pocket.

  ‘Fin?’ Marsaili was scared. He could hear it in her voice. ‘Fin, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  He looked at her without seeing her. He was in the boatshed at Port of Ness. It was Saturday night, and it was dark. There were two men there. One of them was Angel Macritchie. The other one moved into the moonlight. It was Artair. Fin had no idea why they were there, but when Macritchie turned away, he saw something like a metal tube or a wooden pole flash through the light of the small open window and crash down on Angel’s head. The big man dropped to his knees before falling forward on to his face. Artair was excited, breathing rapidly. He got down on his knees to pull the big man over on to his back. The dead weight was heavier to move than he had expected. He heard something, sounds from the village. Was it voices? Maybe it was just the wind. He began to panic, and with the panic he felt his airways start to close. His stomach reacted by heaving its contents out through his mouth. A reflex response. All over the unconscious Macritchie. Artair fumbled in his pocket for his pills and swallowed one and sucked on his puffer while he waited for it to work, still on his knees, breath rasping in the dark. Slowly his breathing became easier again, and he listened for the sound which had sparked his attack. But he heard nothing, and returned then to his task, slipping thick fingers around the big man’s throat. And pressing. An urgency now about everything he would do.

  Fin closed his eyes tight to try to squeeze the images out of them, and then opened them again to see Marsaili’s consternation. ‘Fin, for God’s sake talk to me!’

  His voice, when he found it, sounded small and caught phlegm in his throat. ‘Tell me about Artair’s asthma.’

  She frowned. ‘What do you mean, tell you about hi
s asthma?’

  ‘Just tell me.’ He was finding strength in his voice. ‘Is it worse than it used to be?’

  She shook her head in frustration, wondering why he was asking her such stupid questions. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was becoming a nightmare. The attacks were getting worse and worse, until they put him on new medication.’

  ‘Prednisone?’

  Her head tilted in surprise, and something darkened the blue of her eyes. Premonition, perhaps. ‘How did you know that?’

  He took her arm and started pulling her towards the house. ‘Show me.’

  ‘Fin, what’s this all about?’

  ‘Just show me, Marsaili.’

  They went into the bathroom, and she opened a mirrored cabinet on the wall above the washbasin. The bottle was on the top shelf. Fin lifted it down and opened it. It was nearly full.

  ‘Why doesn’t he have these with him?’

  Marsaili was at a loss. ‘I’ve no idea. Maybe there’s another bottle.’

  Fin did not even want to think about it. ‘Is there somewhere he keeps his private papers? Stuff he never lets you see?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She thought about it, distracted, finding concentration difficult. ‘There’s a drawer in his father’s old desk that he always keeps locked.’

  ‘Show me.’

  The desk was pushed up under the window in Mr Macinnes’s former study, buried beneath an avalanche of papers and magazines, and wire trays overflowing with paid and unpaid bills. Fin had slept in here the other night, but not even noticed it. The captain’s chair that originally went with the desk was nowhere in evidence. An old dining chair was tucked between the pedestals. Fin pulled it out and sat down. He tried the lefthand drawer. It slid open to reveal a concertina folder full of household papers. Fin flicked quickly through it, but there was nothing to interest him. He tried the right-hand drawer and it was locked.

  ‘Do you have a key?’