by Ann Cleeves
‘Will you be OK on your own?’ Something about the way Ronald was talking made Sandy picture him holding a shotgun under his chin and blowing his head off. It couldn’t happen that way, of course – Ronald’s shotgun was in Perez’s boot on the way to Lerwick – but in Shetland suicide wasn’t hard to arrange if you wanted it badly enough. There were cliffs to jump from, water to drown in.
‘Sure.’
‘Do you want to come back to Utra for a meal? You could ask Anna to come too. Mother would be delighted to see the bairn.’
‘And have Auntie Evelyn reliving what happened last night and enjoying every minute of it? No thanks.’
‘We could take a drive up to the golf course. Just for a laugh. Catch up on the old times.’
For a moment Sandy thought Ronald was tempted, but the man shook his head and got into his car. He was probably close to the limit for driving, but this wasn’t the time for a lecture. He followed his cousin as far as the turning to the Clouston bungalow and then continued on his way home.
In the yard outside his house he met his father on his way in for the midday meal. All the time Sandy was growing up Joseph Wilson had worked as a joiner for Duncan Hunter, a Shetland businessman. Joseph had put up with being treated like shite and ordered around as if he was an apprentice and not a craftsman, just for the sake of a pay packet at the end of the week. There’d been times when he had to stay out in Lerwick to get the work finished. The croft had been a kind of hobby, fitted in after the regular work was done. There’d been little time left over to spend with his sons.
A couple of years before, Joseph had given up working for Hunter and taken on the croft full-time. Sandy wasn’t sure now how he managed for money – Evelyn had never worked – but that wasn’t the sort of thing he could discuss with his parents. The new arrangement seemed to be working out fine. Evelyn liked the idea of having a husband who was his own boss and Joseph had always been happier as a farmer than a builder. Maybe they’d managed to save some money when Joseph was working for Hunter.
Recently Perez had taken up with Hunter’s ex-wife and Sandy didn’t know what to make of that. He teased Perez about having a woman in his life again and Fran seemed a fine woman, but in his opinion anyone who’d been involved with Hunter was trouble.
It was lambing time and Joseph had been up on the hill to check his ewes. Many of the islanders didn’t bother so much. Mostly the hill ewes could manage on their own, and now there was no subsidy for headage it didn’t even matter if they lost a few lambs. But Joseph was conscientious and this time of year he walked miles.
His father had heard the car on the track and waited for him outside the house. ‘Aye, aye.’ This was Joseph’s form of greeting to the whole world. Sandy thought if the Prime Minister arrived on his land he’d say the same thing. He stood at the kitchen door watching as Sandy crossed the yard. He was wearing a blue boiler suit splashed with creosote.
Sandy couldn’t think what to say. He wished he had Perez’s gift with words. Now phrases floated around in his head and all he could come up with was ‘We’ll miss her. I’m sorry.’ He touched his father’s shoulder, which was as close as they got to physical contact. He knew Joseph had adored Mima. Once Sandy had heard his mother say to his big brother Michael, exasperated because of something Mima had done, ‘She’s a poisonous old witch. I’m sure she’s put a spell on your father.’ And sometimes that was how it seemed. Joseph would drop everything to fix a slate on her roof or hoe her vegetable patch.
A brief moment of pain crossed his father’s face, then he made an attempt at a smile. ‘Aye well, maybe that’s the way she would have chosen to go. She never minded a bit of drama. It would have been quick. She’d never have been able to stand illness, hospital.’ He paused. ‘I thought she had a good few years yet in her though.’
That was his father’s way. Things he couldn’t change he made the best of. He said there was no point in taking on the world. He’d never win. Besides, he had Evelyn to do that for him. All Joseph needed to keep him happy was football on the television and a few beers in the evening. He’d worked all over Shetland for Duncan Hunter. Now he’d be quite content if he never left Whalsay again. Evelyn had always been ambitious on his behalf, with her plans for the house, the croft and her sons. Sometimes Sandy thought she might be happier if she moved away, to Edinburgh maybe, to be close to Michael and his family, that Whalsay was just too small for her.
Inside the house she seemed content enough now. Perhaps like Mima she enjoyed a bit of drama, needed it to make her feel useful. She was sitting in the old chair, feeding the lamb from a bottle. Before she realized they were there, she was talking to it in nonsense language as if it was a baby. When she saw them she put it back in the box, ran her hands under the tap and stood at the Rayburn to stir a pan of soup. ‘Reestit mutton,’ she said. ‘I had some in the freezer and I know you like it. I was thinking of Mima while I was heating it through. It was her favourite too.’ Joseph went to wash at the sink. She came up behind him, turned him to face her and pecked his cheek. Sandy was still taking his shoes off. ‘Are you ready for some lunch too, son? Has that nice inspector of yours gone?’
‘He’s away back to Lerwick to see the Fiscal. I’ll take a small bowl of soup.’
‘He thinks a lot of you, I can tell. I’m proud of both my boys.’
‘Have you told Michael about Mother?’ Joseph sat himself at the table, laid his hands flat on the oilskin cloth. The fingers were fat and red. Sandy remembered again the day they’d struggled to kill the pig, the noise that seemed to drill into his skull before the poleaxe silenced the animal, the blood.
‘I rang him at home this morning but he’d already left for work. Some early meeting. I caught Amelia as she was on her way out and left a message with her for him to call me. He was on the phone a few minutes ago. She’d only just managed to get through to him.’
Or she couldn’t be bothered trying. Sandy thought his sister-in-law was a stuck-up cow. Nice arse, but when it came to a wife he wanted more than that. He thought Michael could have done better for himself.
His mother was still talking. ‘He wanted to know when the funeral was. I said we couldn’t make plans until we know when your Inspector Perez will release the body. Michael will definitely come. He’s not sure about Amelia and Olivia.’
Sandy knew fine well Amelia and the baby would stay in Edinburgh. She had her work for one thing, and that mattered more to her than the family. She’d brought Olivia to Whalsay once when she’d been just a couple of months old and she was still on maternity leave, and then there’d been nothing but complaints and anxieties. She’d gone home earlier than expected. ‘Oh, I couldn’t dream of missing baby massage. It’s the best way there is to bond.’ Sandy couldn’t understand how his mother, usually so clever and on top of things, could be taken in by it all. But he made no comment. This wasn’t the time for a row.
He watched his mother ladle out three bowls of soup and his father stand to cut the bread. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of Setter without his grandmother. He wasn’t optimistic like his father. Despite what he’d said to Perez, he couldn’t believe it was for the best.
His mother wouldn’t stop talking. She got that way at times of stress. Now she was rattling on about Setter and pushing Joseph to make plans for the land and the house. Sandy wasn’t really listening to her and he wasn’t sure his father was either. He was eating the soup, lifting his spoon with mechanical regularity, chewing and swallowing as if his life depended on tipping the steaming liquid into his mouth.
‘I’ve told the lasses from the Bod that they can carry on with their work once the police say it’s OK. That’s all right, isn’t it, Josie?’ No answer. None needed or expected. ‘I wondered if the Amenity Trust might be interested in buying the house, in renting it at least. The boys won’t want to live there.’ Her voice continued, but Joseph’s spoon was still. ‘Michael won’t leave Edinburgh now and Sandy has his flat in Lerwick. It would make a fin
e visitor centre once the excavation’s finished.’
Now Sandy was listening too. He was about to protest when he caught his father’s eye across the table. Joseph gave a brief shake of the head unnoticed by his wife. A look that said, Don’t worry, son. It’ll never happen. Don’t argue over it now. Just leave it to me.
Chapter Twelve
After the midwife went, Anna Clouston sat in the window of the living room and looked out over the water. She carried James with her and sat with him lying lengthways along her knee. It was unusual for her to be alone with him and she felt that he was a stranger; she couldn’t believe it was the same child she’d been carrying in her body for nine months. Perhaps that was because they’d had so little time on their own since they’d come back to Whalsay from the hospital. The house had been full of well-wishers, people bringing presents and cakes and casseroles. And then, this morning, the police had come.
Anna had struggled to adapt to living on Whalsay. It wasn’t the isolation that was the problem; that she relished. She liked the drama of living on the island. It was the feeling that she had no privacy, that her life was no longer her own and she was crowded with people telling her how to run it. What was most difficult was finding that she’d become attached to a family so entirely different from her own.
Her parents had started a family in middle age. Anna’s father was a junior civil servant, bookish, reserved and a little distant. She had the feeling he’d been bored at work and had felt undervalued. His work had been routine and he wasn’t the sort of man to put himself forward for promotion. Her mother taught in a primary school. Anna and her sister had been brought up in a family where money was saved, thrift was encouraged and academic achievement was valued but not flaunted. Treats were only obtained after hard work. It was a suburban, respectable life of church-going, music lessons and weekly visits to the library. Nobody put their elbows on the table at mealtimes. Restraint was taken for granted.
Of course at university she’d met people from different backgrounds but she’d come out at the end with her view of the family intact – represented by the smell of the Sunday meal as her mother lifted it out of the oven, the sight of her father dead-heading roses in a late-summer garden, her sister dressing the Christmas tree with the faded baubles brought out each year. Anna had imagined that she’d replicate it in her turn, with a few minor changes: certainly she’d be more assertive than her mother – you wouldn’t catch her cooking a roast dinner every Sunday – and she’d marry someone a bit more exciting than her father. But the basic pattern would be the same. What other was there?
Then she’d met the Whalsay Cloustons and realized there was quite a different model of family life. Their house was always full of noise, the radio playing, Ronald’s mother Jackie talking and the gossip of cousins, aunts and neighbours who regularly dropped in. Restraint didn’t feature. If Jackie decided she needed a new outfit, kitchen or car, she had it. There was no question of saving up first. Once Anna had asked where the family money had come from in the first place. Cassandra was only a few years old and she had been bought from the proceeds of the old trawler. ‘But before that?’ Anna had asked. ‘How did your father get his first boat?’
‘Hard work,’ Ronald had said. ‘It was hard work and the willingness to take a chance.’
Anna could imagine Andrew would have been a risk taker when he was young. She’d seen photos of him, big and strong, his head thrown back in laughter. Then he’d become ill and Jackie had wanted her son to give up college and take his father’s share on the boat. She’d got her own way there too. Anna had thought that Ronald was different, thoughtful, less spoiled. Now it seemed he was just the same as the rest of them, determined to have his own way, whatever the consequences. Thought of his selfishness made her angry again. She could feel the tension in the back of her neck and her arms. How could they maintain their life on the island after this?
James stirred on her knee and stretched his hands towards her, fingers opening like the petals of a flower. His eyes were still shut, the skin around them wrinkled. How will you grow up here? she thought. Will you be spoiled too? And she thought that he would drain the life out of her, just as she felt Ronald was doing.
She felt very tired. They’d been invited to a meal at Jackie’s house. ‘You won’t feel like cooking,’ Jackie had said. ‘Besides, we haven’t celebrated the baby properly. You must come here.’
It hadn’t occurred to her that Anna and Ronald might like some time on their own, so soon after the birth of their child. Jackie had a knack of transferring her own desires into the wishes of other people: she loved entertaining, so they would be grateful to be entertained. Ronald hadn’t seen any problem with the plan. He found it impossible to deny his mother anything. ‘We don’t have to stay long,’ he’d said when the invitation had been made and Anna had been less than enthusiastic. ‘And it’ll be great to have a proper meal, won’t it?’
The baby whimpered and Anna undid her shirt and put him to her breast. She’d expected feeding to be difficult; she’d never been a particularly physical person. But she had lots of milk and the baby guzzled so greedily that the thin white liquid dribbled from the side of his mouth and ran down her skin. Sometimes she felt that he sucked her dry. She looked at the clock and wondered where Ronald was. He’d put on his smart clothes and gone out before lunchtime. She’d assumed he’d gone to pay his respects to Mima’s family, wondered what sort of mood he’d be in when he got home.
The phone rang. She reached out to answer it, hoping it would be Ronald telling her he was on his way home. A quiet afternoon had relaxed her. Perhaps it might be possible to put things right between them. But it was Jackie sounding excited, eager.
‘I was checking on the time you’d be able to make it up to the house this evening.’ Jackie always called it ‘the house,’ as if it was the only dwelling in Lindby.
Anna, cradling the baby with one arm, felt an ache of disappointment. She wasn’t sure she could keep up the pretence of happy families. She’d hoped Mima’s death might mean the cancellation of the meal. The rituals and proprieties surrounding death were taken seriously on Whalsay. ‘Whenever’s best for you,’ she said. ‘We’re looking forward to it.’ And perhaps it would be better to have company tonight. Otherwise she and Ronald would spend all evening going over the incident of the night before and she might say something unwise, something she’d really regret.
She replaced the phone and heard Ronald open the door into the house.
‘We’re in here,’ she said.
Outside, the light seemed to have faded early and she only saw him as a shadow standing just inside the room.
‘Look at you two,’ he said. He was still wearing his jacket, but he’d loosened his tie at the neck. She hardly recognized him in the smart clothes. He was speaking to himself and his accent was more pronounced than when he talked to her.
How can we get on? she thought. We don’t even share the same language. We come from different worlds. I don’t know him at all.
‘Have you been to see the Wilsons?’ she asked.
‘No. I bumped into Sandy, but I wouldn’t know what to say to Joseph.’
‘You look so smart,’ she said. ‘All dressed up like that.’
He paused, then shrugged. ‘A gesture of respect, maybe. It didn’t seem right to be wearing my working clothes today.’
He came further into the room and squatted beside her chair. He stroked her hair and watched while she prised the baby’s mouth from her nipple with her little finger. She lifted James on to her shoulder and rubbed his back, then held him out to her husband.
‘He probably needs changing,’ she said.
‘We can do that, can’t we, son? We can manage that.’ He was murmuring into the baby’s hair.
‘Jackie’s just phoned to sort things out for tonight.’
‘Are you all right with that?’ He looked at her over the baby’s head. ‘We can always cancel if you can’t face it.’
&n
bsp; ‘It’ll probably do me good to get out.’ She smiled at him tentatively. ‘I’m sorry I’ve given you such a hard time. It was the shock. I haven’t been much support.’
He shook his head. ‘No. I deserved it all. I’ve been a fool.’
Oh yes, she thought, you’ve certainly been that. But she knew better than to speak out loud.
Later they wrapped the baby in a blanket and carried him up the hill to the big house in his Moses basket. It was the first time Anna had been out that day and she enjoyed the feel of the drizzle on her face. As soon as they walked through the door she realized there would be the new lamb of the season to eat. The smell of it reminded her again of her parents’ home, the calm lunches after church, her father drinking sherry and reading the Sunday papers. Then they were engulfed by Jackie’s hospitality; she hugged them both and would have had James out to play too, if they hadn’t said they hoped he would sleep.
Through an open door Anna saw that the table had been set in the dining room to show this was a special occasion; there were candles already lit and the napkins had been elaborately folded. After Mima’s accident it seemed tasteless, as if they were celebrating her demise. Usually they ate in the kitchen, even if a crowd of guests had been invited. Andrew had been dressed in a shirt and dark trousers and Jackie wore a little black frock, rather stylish and simpler than her usual taste. Anna felt lumpy and under-dressed. She hadn’t bothered changing and there was probably baby sick on the back of her top. She wondered if Jackie’s understated wardrobe was a gesture towards acknowledging Mima’s death.
Apparently not, because she seemed in determinedly party mood.
‘We’ll have champagne, shall we?’ she cried. ‘I’ve got a couple of bottles chilling.’ She led them through to the kitchen and there on the table were bottles of very expensive champagne sitting in an ice bucket. Anna wondered if she’d bought in the bucket especially for the occasion – Jackie had taken to internet shopping with gusto. But probably not. Champagne was routinely drunk in the Clouston household for every birthday and anniversary. Jackie put her arm round her son. ‘Come on now, Ronald, open a bottle for me.’