Naming the Bones

by Louise Welsh

  Murray stood up and stretched. Day had slipped into night now and he would have to walk back in the dark. He held the mobile to his ear, hearing the faraway rattle of Professor James’s domestic life, distant as the sound of the sea heard through a shell. He was about to hang up when a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello? This is Helen Trend. With whom am I speaking?’

  He hunkered down behind the shelter again, cupping his hand round the phone to protect his words from the wind.

  ‘Dr Murray Watson. I think Professor James may have forgotten he was talking to me.’

  Professor James’s daughter was briskly cheerful.

  ‘In that case he’s been struck with sudden senility since yesterday. I’m afraid my father has just stepped out of the room. Nature calls rather frequently these days. You might be advised to ring back later, unless it’s anything I can help you with?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘So certain.’

  Helen Trend’s voice assumed an unexpected flirtiness.

  Murray pictured a well-preserved fifty-year-old with buttery yellow hair. It amazed him that even here, on this inhospitable hillside, his mind could conjure an image worth fucking.

  ‘We were discussing his poetry circle, more specifically Professor Fergus Baine.’

  The voice on the other end lowered an octave.

  ‘That’s a name I haven’t heard in an age. Why on earth were you discussing that rogue?’

  ‘I’m writing a biography of the poet Archie Lunan.

  According to your father, he and Professor Baine were associates.’

  The woman laughed.

  ‘I wouldn’t pay too much attention to anything my father has to say about Fergus Baine, I’m afraid his name is mud in this house.’

  ‘Do you mind my asking why?’

  There was a pause on the line. The sheep had stopped calling to each other, but the hillside was alive with noise. A shrill cry sounded from somewhere in the settling dusk and Murray pulled up the collar of his jacket. He remembered reading of some plan to reintroduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands, wondered if it had ever gone ahead. No, surely the sheep farmers would never allow it.

  Helen Trend asked, ‘What institution did you say you were associated with?’

  They both knew he hadn’t associated himself with any institution, but Murray didn’t bother to argue the point.

  ‘The University of Glasgow.’

  ‘I see.’ Once again there was the slow pause as if she were considering what to say. ‘I’d heard Fergus was back teaching there.’

  ‘He’s currently head of department.’

  ‘Yes, so my sources tell me. And you and my father were discussing him in relation to a book you’re writing about Archie Lunan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did my father tell you?’

  He had never been much of a card sharp, but instinct told Murray to conceal the fact James had told him nothing.

  ‘I’m not sure that I’m at liberty to discuss that.’

  ‘No?’ The flirtiness was gone now. ‘Then let me phrase my question in another way. Was it anything that might be construed as libellous?’

  Despite the cold and the dread of the downward journey, he was suddenly enjoying himself.

  ‘I’d have to consult a lawyer before I could answer that question.’

  ‘I could recommend the services of my husband or two of my sons, but there might be a clash of interests.’

  In Murray’s mind the soft, buttery hair shifted into Margaret Thatcher’s lacquered helmet. The conversation seemed to be escalating beyond his control.

  ‘Mrs Trend, I get the feeling I’ve inadvertently offended you. I can only apologise, though I’m not quite sure what I’ve done.’

  ‘No?’ The laugh returned, sharp against the wailing wind. ‘Let me make it clear then. If you were to print anything my father told you about Fergus Baine that could even be considered libellous, and therefore detrimental by proxy to my father’s reputation, I would have no hesitation in instructing my lawyers to begin a case against you, and remember Dr Watson, I get my legal counsel for free.’

  ‘I’ve got the deepest respect for your father …’

  His words were cut short by James’s voice on another extension.

  ‘This is a private telephone call, Helen, hang up, please.

  I’d prefer to talk with Dr Watson alone.’

  ‘I was just telling him that …’

  ‘Hang up, Helen. I’ll be through shortly.’

  Professor James’s voice had regained all of its old authority. Murray gave an involuntary cringe at the meekness of his daughter’s reply.

  ‘Yes, Dad. Sorry.’

  There was a click and a moment that might have been silence, were it not for the wind racing across the hill. Then James said, ‘What did she tell you?’

  This time Murray told the truth.

  ‘Nothing at all, except that she was concerned I might expose some disagreement you had with Fergus and dent your reputation. She was warning me off.’

  ‘My reputation has nothing to fear from Fergus.’ James sighed and Murray got a feeling that an opportunity had been lost. ‘How well do you know Professor Fergus Baine?’

  ‘Not well at all. He’s only been part of the department for three years. He came here from down south, met and married Rachel in what Mills and Boon would describe as a whirlwind romance.’ Murray tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Last year he was appointed head of English literature.’

  ‘Have you read any of his books?’

  ‘I glanced through his last couple.’

  ‘Of course, it’s only politic to at least take a glance at your colleagues’ work, even if you can’t stand them.’

  ‘What makes you think I can’t …’

  ‘Don’t bother to bullshit me, Murray.’ The Americanism sounded strange in the professor’s mouth. ‘You’ve got as much love for him as I have. Admit it.’

  Murray said, ‘We’ve never really seen eye to eye.’

  The older man’s laugh sounded exasperated.

  ‘I imagine that is as much of an admission as I’m ever going to get. Did you know he published a slim volume of verse years ago?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No reason why you should. It sank, pretty much without trace. It’s out of print now, but I think you’d find it well worth reading. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll send you a copy.’

  Murray felt like hurling his phone across the expanse of wind and dark. He’d lost control of the interview again, the old man turning it back to poetry, the work, not the life.

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll have the time. I need to concentrate my researches on Lunan and his circle.’

  ‘Fergus was part of his circle.’ The voice grew softer in his ear, becoming one with the wind and trembling grass.

  ‘Indulge me. Remember, I used to be a professor of English literature, I do know of what I speak.’

  ‘Once a professor, always a professor.’

  ‘They could put that on my gravestone.’ James grew serious. ‘Remember, Dr Watson. Some people never essentially change. In my opinion, Fergus Baine is one of them.

  Think of how he is now and that will tell you pretty much how he was back when Lunan and he were friends – and they were friends, whatever smoke Baine has tried to blow in your eyes.’

  ‘Will you tell me what the two of you fell out about?’

  ‘I can’t. It affects someone else, someone blameless. What I will say is that Fergus Baine was a prodigy of mine who abused his position. His move down south in 1978 wasn’t entirely voluntary. I gave him a reference for a post in England to get him out of the way, but if I had any power he wouldn’t be back in Scotland, working at my old university, and certainly not in the capacity he occupies.’

  ‘Where would he be?’

  ‘In Hell.’ The old man laughed. ‘Or still in the south of England. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll ask Iris to send you a copy of
his poetry tomorrow by first-class post. I promise you’ll find it interesting.’

  Murray gave him the address of the B&B, as far as he remembered it, then said, ‘It was Bobby Robb that I really wanted to find out about.’

  ‘Bobby Robb was an ignorant fool.’

  ‘What makes you say that? The way he looked? Talked?’

  ‘Certainly not the way he looked, though God knows he looked like an idiot, but then most of them did. Long hair and beards, dressed like Gypsy Rose Lee strung about with bells and cockle shells. No, Bobby Robb was a mess, but he wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t the way he talked either. Robb wore his working-class roots on his sleeve, but I’ve met too many intelligent working men and too many idiot toffs to judge a man on his accent. It was Bobby Robb’s preoccupations that declared him stupid. He was interested in what has been rechristened as New Age. Occultism, astrology, all that superstitious nonsense the Elizabethans were fascinated with. Excusable in the sixteen hundreds, but astoundingly brainless in the twentieth century.’

  ‘Did Archie engage with it too?’

  ‘Archie could be foolish, but he wasn’t dense. I remember him making fun of Robb, calling him the sorcerer’s apprentice, but I never paid much attention. Back then a lot of people were fascinated by these things, encouraged by drugs, I suppose. They had amazing sensory and quasireligious experiences that made them begin to think there were existences apart from this one.’

  ‘You were never tempted to try it for yourself?’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘LSD, acid. A lot of educationalists got into it – turn on, tune in and drop out.’

  ‘I couldn’t drop out. I told you, my father was an engineer at Barr & Strouds, I had a good Presbyterian up-bringing and a family to support. No, I was never tempted.

  I’m what they used to call a square – like you, Dr Watson.

  Anyway, I find the world we inhabit rather impressive. I also believe it’s the only one open to us. Why be in a rush to leave?’

  Murray fell twice on the way down the hill, but the going wasn’t so bad once he reached the road. The moon was a wisp of itself, veiled by the same clouds that hid the stars. He used the light on his phone as a torch for a while, but then the notion that his progress might be monitored for miles around began to bother him, and so he pocketed it and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The little house he had noticed on his journey out was in darkness now, the toy tractor still upturned in its garden. The rain came on as Murray had known it would. He kept his head down against the spray and upped his pace, not wanting one of the inhabitants to look out and be frightened by the sight of a stranger walking by so late, on such an inhospitable night.

  Helen Trend had been palpably anxious about what her father might say. Her hate for Fergus Baine seemed to outstrip even the professor’s. Murray couldn’t imagine James taking departmental disputes home to share with his children over the dinner table. He weighed up a list of his academic contacts, hoping to identify someone who might know the manner of Fergus’s disgrace, thought about asking Rachel, and rejected the idea almost as it occurred.

  The wind seemed to attack him from all sides, the rain swirling around him, blowing into his face, clouding his vision. Murray took his glasses off and wiped them, though he knew it was a useless gesture. He remembered Cressida smiling as she asked if he minded, her orange dress flaring as she’d cleaned his lenses, all the better to view Jack’s exhibition.

  He thought about the Pictish men, or whoever they were, who had built the broch, imagined them tucked safe within its bounds, huddled together with their dogs and their livestock. They would have had more sense than to trudge through the dark and the wet. He wondered if Lunan had ever walked these paths at night, muddy and drenched to the skin, asking himself what the hell was going on.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MURRAY TOOK CHRISTIE’S first novel, Sacrifice, down to the dining room with him. He saw the landlady’s eyes on it as she placed his cooked breakfast on the table. Murray set the book aside, making a conscious effort not to rub his hands together with the joy of fried bacon, eggs and sausage materialising before him with no effort from himself.

  ‘That looks great.’

  Mrs Dunn acknowledged his thanks with a nod. She went back into the kitchen, stepping neatly round a cat that had stationed itself in front of the electric heater glowing from the centre of the room, and returned with a pot of coffee and a round of toast.

  ‘There’s strawberry jam too. I made it myself, with strawberries from the garden.’

  Murray was vaguely nervous of homemade produce, but he smiled and said, ‘That’ll be a treat.’ He shifted the book a little to make more space and nodded at the photo on the back cover. ‘I understand she’s a local.’

  ‘She lives here, yes.’

  The woman put the jar of jam on the table and he started to slather his toast with it, hoping she’d kept the cat from the kitchen when she was making it.

  ‘What’s she like?’

  Mrs Dunn was wearing a serviceable skirt topped by a blue jersey that might have been homemade a long time ago, or recently culled from a jumble sale. Protecting the ensemble was a pinny decorated with a map of the cathedrals of Scotland; Aberdeen and Fort William sanctifying her breasts, Glasgow her crotch. The old lady looked like the BBC drama department’s concept of an ideal Scottish housekeeper; Janet to his Dr Finlay. She stared at the book as if she’d never seen it before, her face unreadable.

  ‘She’s a little different from her photograph.’

  Murray looked at the familiar airbrushed image. A soft, doe-eyed face framed by curtains of long hair, Christie in her twenties. The picture bore no relation to the ravaged woman he’d seen at Robb’s funeral.

  ‘I guess it was taken a while ago.’

  The landlady laughed.

  ‘Before the flood.’

  Murray poured himself a mug of coffee, relieved to see her smiling again ‘Are you not having one yourself?’

  ‘No, I’ll get mine after, once I’ve done the dishes.’ She must have realised he disliked the idea of her cleaning up after him because she added, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a machine.’

  Murray took a bite of toast and jam. It was good and he said so. The cat blinked at him from its spot in front of the fire, as if letting him know it was onto his game.

  ‘What’s the cat called?’

  ‘Archie.’ Murray almost choked at the sound of the familiar name, but the landlady didn’t notice. She bent over and rubbed behind the beast’s ears. It narrowed its eyes and took the salute as its due. ‘He’s an old soldier, aren’t you, love?’ She straightened up. ‘Do you like cats?’

  He had never had much to do with them.

  ‘Very intelligent creatures.’

  ‘They are that.’

  The topic of their conversation stretched his hind legs and started to clean his tummy, working meticulously down towards his tail.

  Murray stifled the urge to laugh.

  ‘So do you see her around the island much?’

  ‘Mrs Graves?’

  He wondered if the title was a courtesy or a slight – a married woman ‘promoting’ another, all the better to underline her spinsterhood – but Mrs Dunn’s features had regained their impassiveness.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw Christie Graves.’

  ‘But she still lives here?’

  Their moment of communion was gone. Mrs Dunn lifted his empty plate, not bothering to ask if he’d enjoyed his meal.

  ‘I expect so.’

  She went back through to the kitchen, leaving him to his book and his coffee. He drank it quickly, aware of the old woman through the wall, waiting on him to leave. She must have heard his chair scrape against the lino as he got up to go to his room, because she returned, tray in hand, ready to clear the table.

  ‘Just one thing, Mr Watson.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He gave her the smile he normally bestowed on the departmental s
ecretaries when he had made some administrative screw-up.

  ‘If you’re going out walking, would you mind taking off your boots at the front door, please? You trailed mud all through the house when you got back last night.’

  He apologised, remembering too late that his smile had never had much effect on the women who ran the English department either.

  Murray had intended to spend the morning in his room writing up the previous night’s telephone conversation with Professor James, but he had just got started when Mrs Dunn knocked on his door and asked if she could get in to clean. He glanced guiltily at the mud stains on the carpet and told her he would go and explore the island.

  This time he took the car and drove to the village shop. Half a dozen vehicles were parked outside, a few men in overalls stationed next to them passing the time of day. They glanced at Murray with enough lack of interest to suggest tourists weren’t unusual, or perhaps that they had heard of his presence and already got his measure.

  Inside the shop smelt pleasantly of soap flakes. Murray was cheered to see ranks of wine bottles marshalled together on the shelves, next to whisky, vodka and a surprising variety of rum. Three young girls clustered around a computer set in a corner niche, adding something to a Facebook page. Their stares were more assessing, though no less dismissive, than the loitering men’s.

  Murray browsed the postcard rack looking for one of the broch where he had sheltered the night before, but it was missing from the display. Instead he selected a couple of sea views, unsure who he could send them to. He put the cards on the counter and placed an Ordnance Survey map beside them.

  ‘Can anyone use the Internet?’

  The shopkeeper had the kind of doughy look that men with indoor jobs who are confronted by manual workers every day seem to take on. He gave Murray a tense smile wrought from shyness.

  ‘A pound an hour, longest session thirty minutes if there’s a queue.’ He nodded at the huddle of teenagers. ‘They’ve been on at least an hour and a half. I can ask them to take a break if you’d like to use it now?’