by Louise Welsh
‘No, thanks, just checking for future reference.’
The shop man slid Murray’s map and cards into a paper bag.
‘Over for the walking?’
‘Yes.’ He wasn’t sure why he was lying, except perhaps to make life easier. ‘I’m staying with Mrs Dunn.’
‘Ah, well, you’ll be comfortable enough there.’
The man’s smile faltered and Murray sensed another shopper behind him.
‘Aye, she’s taking good care of me.’
He shoved his purchases into his rucksack and made way for a man dressed in blue overalls with an Oban Times in his hand. It seemed that Murray had chosen the time of day when the island folk congregated. He had to press sideways to negotiate his way to the door. It swung wide just as he reached it and Christie Graves lurched awkwardly over the step. Murray stepped back to let her pass, saw her eyes glance over him, and realised he had been half-expecting her all morning.
Murray sat outside in the car with the Ordnance Survey map draped across the steering wheel. Christie nodded to a few of the people outside as she left the shop, a canvas bag in one hand, her stick in the other, but didn’t stop to pass the time of day. He raised his eyes from the scant roads and many tracks of Lismore, watching as she got into her red Cherokee, and pulled away. Then he counted to ten, and steered his dad’s car out from its space.
Christie drove faster than he dared, but Murray caught THE ISLAND OF LISMORE 227 flashes of her on the turns and hilly rises of the road ahead. He hit the CD player and Johnny Cash gravelled into life, singing about lonesome prisons and trains that whistled as they went by. It was a song from their childhood. Murray wondered if Jack listened to the CD sometimes, or if it had nested in its tray since before their dad had stopped being able to drive.
The world beyond the car window had a bright, dewy aspect, as if the previous night’s storm had refreshed the countryside. The fields had lost their shit-stained look and taken on the cheerful air of a children’s storybook. Behind the drystane dykes and high wire fences sheep and cows cropped at grass green and even enough to be plastic. The few cottages he passed seemed shrewdly placed, their stone fronts and sloping roofs the perfect complement to neat gardens cordoned off from nature’s wilder reaches by the same artfully built walls that kept the livestock within their bounds. Some small birds swooped in front of his windscreen, their long, black tails wagging. Murray almost hit the brakes, but sped on wondering if the red car had slipped away from him down one of the unmarked lanes that branched off from the road.
The island was small. There would be other opportunities, other ways of discovering where Christie lived, but now that he had begun the pursuit it seemed imperative to press on.
He pushed down on the accelerator, feeling the countryside around him blur and flash, the tarmac whizz into grey, dropping through the gears and speeding into the turn as he rounded yet another rising bend in the road, hoping for the glimpse of red that would tell him Christie was still ahead.
Then suddenly it was all red, the red 4x4 motionless in a passing place, the oncoming post office van in the middle of the road. He cursed and hit the brakes, turning the steering wheel towards the skid that threatened to overwhelm his own small vehicle. There was speed and slowness and an instant when he thought the car would win and pitch him from it, then the wheels obeyed and he drew to a halt a credit-card width from Christie’s bumper.
Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck, shit.
Christie’s eyes met his in her rear-view mirror.
He held up a hand in apology, then pulled down the sun visor, though the morning’s hopeful rays had already been overtaken by cloud.
He had no idea of what he was doing.
Cash sung on about moving the railway station somewhere ‘further down the line’ and the postie drove by, raising a finger from the wheel in laconic salute.
The red car pulled out.
Murray gripped the wheel tight, trying to banish the trembling that threatened to overtake him and followed on, concentrating on keeping a decent distance from the vehicle in front.
He remembered the sullen ferryman’s stare, and Mrs Dunn’s joke that he would imprison Murray if he neglected to pay for his board. An island could easily become a jail. He had no doubt that the islanders already knew of his presence and would hear of his foolish near-crash. He wondered if Archie had ever felt claustrophobic, bounded by the sea and the stares of the locals. Perhaps that was why he had taken to sailing, mastering the ability to leave whenever he wished.
Christie’s car had disappeared in the twists and turns ahead. He pushed down on the accelerator, dropping gear on the curves, anxious about the unseen hazards that might lurk beyond each bend, sure he had lost her. The road straightened out and just at the last moment he caught a flash of red, dropped gear again, pressed the brake pedal gently, and saw Christie’s car turn off the tarmac road into a rough track.
Murray continued on along the main road, still thinking of Christie’s red car travelling the twists of the less-finished trail, like poison passing through a vein.
Murray knew that laptops could damage your fertility, but he balanced his on a pillow anyway and set it on his lap as he half-sat, half-lay on the satin counterpane. It was cold in the room. Murray considered stripping the spare bed of its blanket and draping it around himself, but couldn’t muster the energy.
He took out his mobile and summoned Rachel’s number. He imagined her in a hotel room somewhere in Italy with Fergus, then made himself stop. The whisky was in a carrier bag in the wardrobe. Murray retrieved it, searched the room for a glass and when he didn’t find one, took the briefest of nips straight from the bottle. His reflection mimicked his moves in the girlish dressing-table mirror. Murray hadn’t bothered to shave that morning and the combination of five o’clock shadow and spirits made him look like one of Lyn’s unfortunates.
‘Slainte Mhath.’
Murray raised the bottle to his reflection and touched it to his lips.
He felt like another, but stoppered the bottle and put it back in the wardrobe. He didn’t want to end up like Alan Garrett, his brains smeared against the windscreen of his car.
*
There was a phone box by the pier. Murray parked and stationed himself inside, noting the absence of piss and graffiti. There was no phone book either, but he knew the number by heart.
Rab picked up straight away, his voice still the stern side of five p.m.
‘Purvis.’
Murray managed to inject some cheeky-chappie cheer into his words.
‘Shouldn’t that be pervert?’
‘Murray?’
Rab sounded relieved and Murray regretted hating him. He forced himself to smile, hoping to tinge his words with a brightness he didn’t feel.
‘The very same.’
‘I heard you’d gone north.’
Murray wondered who had told him.
‘You heard right.’
‘So what’s up? You missing home, or is there something I can do for you?’
Murray could picture his old friend sitting at the desk in his office, the unframed poster announcing a long-ago reading by Edwin Muir tacked to the wall behind him, the small carriage clock that had belonged to his mother marking time on the bookcase by his side. He heard the hurt sharpen Rab’s voice and softened his own tone in response.
‘Both. Listen, I’m sorry about the other night.’
Purvis’s lungs croaked across the land and water separating the two men.
‘I never thought I’d be falling out about a woman at my age.’ He sighed again. ‘Go on then, tell me what you want.’
‘How do you know I’m not just calling to say hello?’
‘Because you’re not.’
The truth of the statement hung in the silence between them, then Murray said, ‘You’ve been in the department a long time, Rab.’
‘I remember back to when the term postmodernism was a speck in the eye of the little yellow god and dinosaurs ro
amed the corridors.’
It was Murray’s cue to quip that they were still lumbering around English literature, but he ignored it.
‘Did you know Fergus in the old days, before he went to England?’
Rab’s voice hardened again.
‘Is this something to do with Rachel?’
‘No, with Archie. Apparently he and Fergus were friends.’
‘And Fergus never said?’
‘No mention, even when he was blocking my proposal.’
‘Maybe he didn’t consider it relevant.’
‘Maybe.’
‘But you don’t think so?’
‘Would you? Fergus isn’t usually shy about mentioning writers he’s associated with, especially if it makes him look like he’s got superior knowledge of someone else’s research. If anything, it might have strengthened his objections.’
‘I take your point, but so what?’
‘When I interviewed Professor James he intimated there may have been a reason other than his career that Fergus went to England.’ A warning flashed on the payphone’s display, letting him know his money was almost done. Murray fired more coins into the slot. ‘I think there’s something out of kilter. Fergus likes everyone to know how much he knows, but this time he was desperate to put me off the scent.’
Murray could hear a tapping on the other end of the line and pictured Rab’s free hand drumming against his desk for want of a cigarette.
‘Has it occurred to you that Fergus’s reasons for blocking your proposal might have been genuine?’
‘He didn’t have any reasons, not credible ones anyway.’
Rab coughed and Murray held the phone away from his head. He could see the sea through the thick glass of the telephone box. The waves foaming and peaking, crashing into the deep then resurfacing, shoals of white horses thundering on. He put the headpiece to his ear and Rab asked, ‘How far have you got with the book?’
‘Not very, but then I’ve barely started.’
‘That’s not true, Murray. You’ve been thinking about it for years. You know as well as I do that you need concrete facts to get anywhere. Without them, all you’re doing is speculating. Have you ever considered the possibility Archie Lunan simply wrote a few nice poems, and then slid into the water without much of a splash, never to surface? End of story.’
The payphone flashed its warning again and Murray pushed his last few coins into the slot.
‘I’m going to be cut off soon.’
‘You’d better get to the point then.’
‘James wouldn’t tell me why he and Fergus fell out, but whatever it was still rankled. He intimated that he told Fergus to get out of town or he’d blow the lid on some scandal.’
‘You make him sound like Dangerous Dan McGrew, pistols at dawn.’
‘He was serious, Rab.’
‘Listen, Murray, James is an old man. He might have good reasons for wanting to keep what’s past in the past.’
‘No, he wanted me to find out. He just didn’t want to be the one to tell me.’ Murray slowed his words. ‘If you could ask around, speak to some people you knew in the old days, something might come up.’
‘James always was a contrary sod.’ The tapping ceased.
‘It’s a big ask, Murray. I’m already on Fergus’s shit list.’
‘Who isn’t?’
‘True enough, but I’m more expendable than most. Only a few years till I hit a decent pension. It’d save the department a lot of money to ditch me now.’
‘Did you know Fergus back then, Rab?’
‘You’re not going to let this drop, are you?’
He could see the ferry in the distance. The waves had grown rougher, but the boat looked solid, pressing on against the onslaught.
‘Probably not.’
‘There’s not much I can tell you. I was aware of Fergus when he was doing his PhD – he was tipped for the big time even then – but he was on the east coast and I was on the west. Anyway, you know the way he is, superior with a tinge of slime, except for when it comes to the ladies. He’s all charm then. I’ve often wondered why he didn’t go into politics.’
‘Do you remember anything about the period immediately before he went south?’
This time Rab’s sigh was long and harsh. If Murray hadn’t known the sensitivity of the university fire sprinklers, he would have assumed the other man had lit up and taken his first, hard drag. Murray smiled. It was the sound of capitulation.
‘I’ll ask around, discreetly – very discreetly. I’m not losing my pension for you, Watson.’
‘Thanks, Rab, I appreciate it.’
‘No you don’t. You still want to twist my balls off for going with Rachel.’
Murray laughed at the neatly captured truth, and some of his bile seemed to dissolve. He asked, ‘Have you seen her lately?’
The payphone’s warning message started to flash again.
Rab said, ‘I passed her in the corridor the other day. She …’
But the pips sounded, and his words were overtaken by the dial tone. Murray stood in the phone box for a while, watching the ferry get closer and hoping that Rab would call him back.
The ship docked and he stepped out into a bluster of wind and spray. A few waiting islanders had got out of their cars to greet some of the disembarking passengers. Their hellos caught in the slipstream and carried across the car park, mingling with the cries of the seagulls; the souls of dead sailors welcoming the travellers home.
Chapter Twenty
‘IS IT BECAUSE of the mud?’
‘No.’ Mrs Dunn lifted a large diary from the telephone table in the hall and held it open for him to see. ‘I’ve got a longstanding booking, a pair of archaeologists from Glasgow University. I’ve phoned around, but I’m afraid you’ve chosen the wrong time of year, Mr Watson. The Bruces are away to Canada visiting her sister, Mrs McIver stopped taking paying guests two years ago, and will not be persuaded otherwise, and the Ramseys and the Gilchrists have also promised their rooms to the dig. I would have let you know earlier, but you only booked for the two nights, so I assumed you’d be moving on.’
The landlady’s lips narrowed into an expression that was final. Murray said, ‘I’ll go up and pack.’
Mrs Dunn nodded. She closed the book and stared him in the eye.
‘I’d have thought you’d be keen to get back to the city. The only people who come here are walkers and archaeologists, and you’re neither, are you, Mr Watson?’
‘No.’
It was an effort not to drop his gaze to the carpet, like a guilty schoolboy.
‘Are you a journalist?’
‘Why would you think that?’
Mrs Dunn held the desk diary to her, like a shield.
‘You were asking questions about Mrs Graves yesterday and then there were all those notes in your room, newspaper cuttings and the like.’ Her voice took on a defensive tone. ‘I couldn’t help seeing them when I was making the bed.’
‘No.’ There was no point in dissembling. Better the truth reach Christie than the island decide he was a tabloid reporter in search of old scandal. Besides, he was heading home. Murray smiled to make himself less threatening. ‘I’m not a journalist. I’m a doctor of English literature.’
The photos of children with Purdey haircuts and eighties flicks smiled down on the scene from the stairway above, like well-fed cherubim. The old woman laid the diary back beside the telephone and gave him an offended look.
‘You should have stated your title in the visitors’ book. I’d be grateful if you could amend your entry before you leave.’
Murray drove to the roughcast path that Christie had disappeared down and parked the car. Mrs Dunn had phoned ahead and booked him on the five o’clock ferry. He’d be back in Glasgow by teatime, would sleep in his own bed that night.
The road looked too jagged for his small vehicle. Murray hesitated, wanting to make progress, but unwilling to risk a burst tyre or, worse still, a broken axle.
/> He got out and slammed the door, feeling in the pocket of his jacket for his mobile phone. He would have to keep his eye on the time, make sure he left himself space to get back before the sailing.
The cold prickled his skin after the dry air of the overheated car. Murray drew his scarf over his mouth and pulled his hat down over his ears. It had been autumn when he’d started out on his quest in Edinburgh, but already there were intimations of winter. He scented the tang of salt in the wind and wondered what the dark months were like on the small island, set unprotected on the edge of the North Atlantic.
There was no real chance he’d get to speak to Christie this trip. He would have to waste time in Glasgow, then organise himself and come back, rent a cottage or something. He would avoid lodging with Mrs Dunn again. He’d mentioned his research, hoped she might be willing to talk about Lunan’s time on the island, but the old woman had grown brisk, reminding him to pack his stuff before his walk.
‘I’ll need the room clear if I’m to get it ready for Dr Edwards and Dr Grant arriving.’
A slight emphasis on the Dr, as if to let him know other academics didn’t need to be outed.
Murray silently cursed the archaeology department. He remembered them from his time with Angela; a long-haired, cagoule-clad, unwashed crew, not so different, he suspected, from the ancient tribes they studied, except the ancient ones got more than the occasional drunken shag. He stopped and unlatched the aluminium gate to the next field. There was nothing ahead but stony road, sheep and shit. Wherever Christie lived, it was almost certainly too far to walk to and return from before the ferry sailed. He hoped the archaeologists got mud and Guinness on Mrs Dunn’s pink sheets.
He was plucked from his thoughts by the rumble of a diesel engine. Murray turned and saw a small vehicle with outsize wheels, a hybrid tractor-cum-dune buggy, bouncing over the uneven track, pulling a trailer in its wake. He waved a hand, to make sure the driver had seen him, then opened the gate wide, stepping back to allow it room to pass. The vehicle barely slowed as it cleared the opening, but drew to a halt a short distance ahead, waiting while Murray latched the gate. A small Jack Russell regarded his progress from the empty trailer, its tail, nose and ears frozen into inquisitive points.