by Louise Welsh
Murray draped the blanket round his shoulders, pulled his boots and socks off then stripped away his sodden trousers and underpants. The mud had penetrated his clothing and specks of it clung to his skin. Fergus Baine shook his head.
‘What did my wife see in you? You look like Bobby Sands towards the end.’ The kettle started to howl. The professor emptied it into a bowl, then filled a cup from the rain butt outside and cooled the boiling water with it. He put the steaming bowl and a cloth on the table in front of Murray. ‘Here.’
Murray took the bottle of malt from the table and started to fumble with its cap.
‘You don’t need that.’ Fergus plucked the whisky from Murray’s grip. He took the empty kettle, refilled it and set it back on the stove. ‘Spirits lower the body’s temperature. A hot drink’s always better.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
Murray started to sponge himself. The water turned brackish. He supposed he should freshen it if he really wanted to get clean, but carried on dipping the unfamiliar cloth into the water, wiping himself down the halfhearted way a man might clean an old but necessary piece of equipment that was going to be replaced soon.
Fergus had been rummaging around in the boxes of supplies Pete had set in the corner and found a jar of instant coffee and a tin of powdered milk. He spilled generous measures into two mugs and added water.
‘It’s none of my business, but why are you camping in this hovel in the middle of nowhere?’
‘The archaeology department requisitioned all the good rooms.’
Fergus set a mug of strong coffee on the table and stood cradling his own.
‘You do realise that archaeology has much lower RAE scores than us? They’re way behind on student numbers too.’
Murray’s laugh held an edge of hysteria.
‘These things don’t count for much out here.’ He took the blanket and started to wipe himself dry with it. ‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘I asked at the shop. Always the hub of island life.’
‘No, I meant how did you know I was on the island?’
‘Rab Purvis told me.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t look so crestfallen, it hardly makes him a quisling. I was coming over to see Christie and had an idea you might be around so I asked Purvis. He didn’t know I was going to look you up.’
‘Pastoral care?’
‘Something like that.’
The two men looked at each other. Murray was the first to break eye contact. He’d wrapped himself back in the damp blanket; now he went through to the other room, found a jumper and a cleanish pair of jeans and put them on. When he returned he said, ‘You told me you’d only met Archie once.’
Fergus gave a nod that conceded his lie.
‘I suppose I hoped the less fuel on the fire, the sooner it would burn out.’
Murray sat back at the table and cradled the coffee mug in his hand, taking comfort from its warmth. He thought about rescuing the whisky from the shelf where Fergus had placed it and found he couldn’t be bothered.
‘Why are you so against Archie getting his due?’
The older man had taken his cap off, but still wore his heavy jacket. The haggard paleness of his face gave him the air of a distinguished thespian.
‘There was something about Lunan, a core of Romanticism perhaps, that’s dangerous for your type of approach. Sailing when a storm was coming in was stupid egotism. It was typical of Archie.’ Fergus steepled his hands together and rested his forehead on them for a moment as if the strain of memories threatened to loosen his composure. He massaged his temples then looked at Murray. The bright spark of energy that had seemed his defining feature was dulled, but it was still there, a small pilot light in the gleam of his eyes. ‘Ultimately I thought you’d reduce a complex life to a simplistic narrative. Naïve but talented young man comes to the city, falls into decadent ways and is punished for his carelessness by an early death. I didn’t think it would do either of you justice.’
‘You came all this way to say my work’s crap and have the balls to tell me it’s for my own protection?’
Fergus gave the upside-down smile that meant he knew he had scored a hit.
‘I came to see Christie. Her mobility’s reduced to the point where living here’s no longer feasible. The time has come for her to make a decision about where she wants to go.’
‘And you’re here to help her decide?’
Fergus bowed his head in a slight nod.
‘Sometimes it helps to talk things over with old friends.’
‘Was Christie’s illness part of the reason you discouraged me from investigating Archie Lunan?’
‘No, I told you. I thought it a genuinely poor proposal.’
Murray sipped his coffee. It tasted harsh, but it was hot and he took a second swallow. He shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the professor was still there, staring at him, his expression as alert as an inner-city fox. Murray said, ‘I met her this morning, on the ridge above the limekilns.’
Fergus’s voice was free of concern.
‘I’m surprised she can make it that far.’
‘Her car had got stuck in the mud. I helped get it out.’
‘She was lucky you came along. Weather like this, who knows how long she might sit there? Something like that could kill her.’
‘She wants me to come and see her, to talk about Lunan.’
‘When?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not going.’
The same downturned smile twitched Fergus’s lips.
‘It’s the opportunity you were waiting for.’
It was typical of the man to want to rub his victory home.
Murray kept his voice steady and said, ‘I’ll be on tomorrow’s ferry.’
Fergus picked up his cap and set it on his head at a jaunty angle.
‘I think you’ve made the right decision. Confine yourself to the poems. I’ll make sure you get every support from the department.’ He slapped the table with his open palm. ‘Perhaps I should write an introduction for you? I could include a short reminiscence of Archie. It might help set his work in context of the time.’
The urge to punch him ran through Murray like an electric current.
‘I don’t know that I’ll still be a member of the department.’ Fergus had half risen, now he sat back down and gave Murray his kingly look, a wise old lion giving counsel to a talking ape.
‘There will be no awkwardness between us. Rachel and I are going to Italy at the end of next week, but she’ll telephone when we’re back and you’ll come round for dinner. This will be in the past.’ He got to his feet. ‘If you can get your luggage up to the crossroads, I’ll give you a lift to the pier tomorrow afternoon.’
He might have been a father offering to do a favour for a teenage son.
‘There’s a long way round, slightly more civilised than the route Christie takes in that souped-up jeep of hers, and I brought the Saab over. Its suspension is famous.’
Murray had never been that interested in cars. It had been Jack who’d sat in deep communion with packs of Top Trumps cards, memorising makes and models, comparing maximum speeds and fantasising about what he would drive when he grew up. But Murray should have recognised the black Saab parked outside Christie’s cottage. The car was stamped on his memory. The smooth swiftness as it overtook Rachel’s BMW by the reservoir on the way home from their country park tryst. He remembered Rachel clambering onto his knee, unbuttoning her blouse, his shock as she flicked on the car’s interior light, the brilliant shine of white lace before he clicked it off, the dark shadow of the other car.
He said, ‘Don’t you mind? Sharing her with strangers?’
The professor’s voice was compassionate.
‘With strangers, no. It’s part of what binds us together.’
Murray nodded, as if he understood.
‘Did you email me the photographs?’
Fergus’s smile wa
s saintly, a gentle shepherd caring for one of his flock.
‘I thought they might help you get over her, and I knew I could rely on your discretion.’
Murray raised his eyes towards the sloped roof. He saw a trickle of water trailing down the stone wall, following the uneven surface of the rock, forging its path along the lines of least resistance. He said, ‘I’ll get Pete Preston to give me a lift in his tractor.’
‘As you wish. Make sure you get back to Glasgow, where you can be safe and dry. The islands can be unhealthy for us city-dwellers.’
‘Was Lismore unhealthy for Archie?’
‘He died here. I thought you knew that.’
It was a bad joke, all of it. He’d thought all his curiosity was gone, but Murray found himself asking, ‘Fergus, what was Archie like when you knew him?’
The older man paused by the door and looked at the room as if wanting to commit its details to memory. He hesitated. For a moment Murray thought he was going to refuse to answer, but then he started to speak and his voice was low and measured.
‘Archie was scruffy, with a poor sense of hygiene and a tendency to drunkenness. He was slow to anger when he was sober and fast with his fists when he was in his cups, which, as I said, was much of the time. He liked women, but even after he met Christie he was convinced they didn’t like him.’ Fergus paused as if considering what he was going to say next, then went on, ‘But there was no real edge to Archie Lunan, never any sense of suspicion. If he liked you, he liked you, no judgement attached. He’s the only person I ever met to whom I’d apply the phrase, “too good for this world”. He would have made a wonderful father, if he’d managed to turn his back on alcohol.’ Fergus levelled his gaze to Murray’s. ‘Do you know what the main problem with Archie was?’
‘No, tell me.’
‘He thought everyone was as good and as loyal as he was, and of course they weren’t.’
He gave his inverted smile again, but this time his face looked old and worn and inclined to tears.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
MRS DUNN’S PRIVATE sitting room was warm. Murray leaned back in the tasselled easy chair he suspected had once been the preserve of long-dead Mr Dunn and bit into a fruit scone spread with the homemade jam. Archie the cat was basking in front of the electric fire. He peered at Murray through glazed eyes, then lowered his head back onto the carpet and slid into sleep.
‘Not impressed?’ Murray leaned down and ruffled the creature’s furry chest. ‘I’ll add you to the list.’ He sat back, marvelling at the cat’s talent for relaxing. Was Archie neutered? Maybe that was the way to be content, sever all desires.
He had meant it when he told Fergus that he was through with the book. Even now, settled in the warmth of Mrs Dunn’s front room, waiting to hear her story, he was sure he would never write it. But he had left it too late to cancel his visit and the tea and home-baked spread conferred an obligation. Murray glanced at his mobile resting on the occasional table beside him. Mrs Dunn had allowed him to charge it and the small bars on the display pulsed as the battery filled with energy.
He’d had no idea how hungry he’d been, but the landlady’s baking had awakened an appetite in Murray as fathomless as a small boy’s at a Sunday School picnic. He realised he was eyeing a plate of pancakes, even as he chewed on what remained of his scone.
Mrs Dunn settled her broad backside into the armchair opposite and freshened their cups with tea from the large pot on the table between them.
‘Help yourself, Dr Watson. They’ll go to waste otherwise.’ Murray doubted the archaeologists who had taken his berth would let cake go stale, but he filled his plate and asked, ‘How did you know I wasn’t a walker?’
Mrs Dunn took a bite from a slab of iced gingerbread and brushed the crumbs delicately from the solid shelf of her bosom.
‘I’m not sure I would know now. You’ve turned into a bit of a mountain man. But when you arrived your clothes were too new and you didn’t ask any questions about the walking. Even the ones that have been here before want to know what the ground’s like or if there are any bulls in the fields.’ She looked down at her bulk and picked another fragment of icing from her blouse. ‘I don’t know why they ask me. It’s plain I’m not much of a walker these days.’
‘But you used to be?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs Dunn nodded towards the wedding photograph on the sideboard. ‘When I first came here, I could trek with the best of them.’
Murray followed her gaze and saw a thin man in naval uniform arm-in-arm with a slim, young bride.
‘You made a lovely couple.’
‘I’m not being conceited when I agree with you.’ She smiled. Murray searched her face for the girl in the picture, and failed to find her. Maybe Mrs Dunn guessed what he was thinking because she added, ‘I sometimes find it hard to believe it was us.’
‘Were you married on the island?’
‘Along the road at St Mungo’s.’
‘But you weren’t born here?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious from my accent.
I’m a Glasgow girl, didn’t settle here until after we were married in 1970.’
‘So you were here when Christie and Archie arrived.’
Mrs Dunn took a sip of her tea.
‘Yes.’
He waited for her to go on, but she rested her cup on its saucer and began to tell him about a granddaughter studying archaeology in Dundee. Murray worked through the contents of his plate and tried to nod in the right places.
Murray had told the landlady about his biography of Lunan while they drank their first pot, now they were on their second and he was still no wiser. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He sipped his tea, hoping the caffeine would do its job and keep him awake.
‘There’s a few of the young ones gone in for it.’ Mrs Dunn was well under way. ‘They get school visits from the archaeologists when they’re here and then there’s always a need for free labour on the digs, so they get involved and some of them get hooked, like Kirsty. Of course, there’s no guarantee she’ll stick with it, but a degree’s a degree. She can always do something else.’ The old lady beamed. ‘We never used to bother about the old monuments much when we were young. It’s terrible to think on it now, but there were still crofters who took the boulders from the walls of the broch or the old castle to shore up their own dykes, and more than one who knocked down standing stones to make the ploughing faster. No one thought anything of it.’
Murray thought he could detect a faint, bitter scent of singeing fur, but the cat remained motionless on the rug. He said, ‘Things must have changed a lot over the years.’
She turned down the corners of her mouth in a yes-and-no expression.
‘The island looks pretty much the way it always did. But in other ways, yes, a lot has gone. We didn’t get television on the island until 1979. Before then there was a ceilidh somewhere just about every night of the week.’
The landlady’s cheeks were lightly rouged, her lipstick carefully applied. Murray’s bristles itched. He wondered at the effort of making up when there was no one to see you. He sat straighter in his chair and asked, ‘So you didn’t miss the Barralands Ballroom?’
Mrs Dunn laughed, brightening at the slight flirt in his voice.
‘The village hall wasn’t blessed with a sprung dance floor. But back then a ceilidh wasn’t necessarily a dance.
More often it was talking and singing, sometimes a wee dram, but not always. Just good company.’
‘And were you made to feel at home?’
‘People tried. I think they were glad of new blood. But, of course, it was hard at first. I didn’t have any Gaelic and there were still some old ones that spoke it. They switched to English out of politeness when I was there, but I knew they’d rather be talking in their own tongue.’ Mrs Dunn looked at her wedding photograph again, almost as if she were turning towards her dead husband for support. ‘There weren’t so many people my age on the island and so
a lot of the talk was about the past. Brothers and sisters who had emigrated, old ones who had died.’
Murray could imagine the smoke-laden rooms, the young woman passing round refreshments as the elderly company droned on, correcting each other on the minutiae of events of no importance to anyone outside their circle.
‘You wouldn’t know who they were talking about.’
‘I didn’t have a clue half the time, and it took me a while to realise how ancient some of the old ones they spoke of were.’
The nape of his neck tingled.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Their ancestors were real to them, and they kept their memories alive with words and music. Times were changing, they knew that, but most of them still didn’t feel the need to write their stories and songs down. Maybe they thought the power would go out of them if they were put onto a page.’
The cat rolled over, letting his other side get the benefit of the fire. Murray asked, ‘And now?’
‘Now we have television.’ She nodded towards the set in the corner. ‘I’m as bad as anyone. When it’s dark and cold outside, I turn up the fire and switch on the box. The only chance we have of preserving the past now is by recording it. Kirsty and the archaeologists have helped me realise that. I’m not a gossip, Dr Watson.’ The academic title was like savour in her mouth. ‘I’ve kept my counsel for forty years, but you’re a scholar. If you think anything I remember will help your book, then I’ll tell you what I can, though it isn’t much.’
Mrs Dunn eyed his tape recorder with approval. Murray leaned forward and pressed Record.
‘I know you didn’t come to the island until much later, but I wondered if anyone ever mentioned what Archie Lunan was like as a boy, before he left the island.’
‘My husband was ages with Lunan, but he didn’t remember much of him as a youngster, except that he was clever and the other boys teased him for it.’
‘So he was bullied?’
‘I suppose he was, but John said Archie gave as good as he got. In fact, that’s about as much as John would ever say about him, “He was a bonnie fighter when he was a boy.”’