The Stranger Came

by Frederic Lindsay

  Maitland beckoned to Anne Macleod . 'Time to take this one back wherever he came from. Now would be best.’

  Still not having found a word to say, she came forward, a dull red patch high on each cheek. And the Lewisman went with her. Went so quietly it would have been easier to believe it was only fantasy, all his talk of guns and London.

  Chapter 23

  On the eighth day after coming home, Lucy walked down through the woods behind the house and came upon three weasels strung up on a stock fence. They looked fresh, only one had the eyes pecked out, the red fur still sleek along each slim length. With a hook of barbed wire stuck in under the chin, they hung with their backs to the open view of green gently rolling fields and the hills further off. Lucy held out a finger to touch one, and then drew it back; even dead, the narrow mouth ragged with needle teeth looked ready to scream and tear.

  A stick snapped on the slope behind her. Under the footstep of an animal, she thought, a heavy animal; Janet coming down in search of her. If she kept still – crouched down like a bird on the open moor, so still you could pass close by and not see.

  'Lucy?'

  The voice came softly, uncertainly. She recognised it at once, though it was almost the last one in the world she might have expected.

  'It is you,' Anne Macleod said, peering forward as if short-sightedly, her body braced against the run of the slope. 'I might have gone past and never known you were there.’

  'Have you heard?' Lucy asked, and saw at once that she had not.

  Anne came down the last of the slope to stand on the dry-stone dyke that acted as a retaining wall holding back the earth of the hill. She looked down at Lucy standing in the gap between the dyke and the fence.

  'I went to your house,' she said, 'and knocked but no one was in.’

  ‘No.’

  'Could we sit here?' On the wall she meant. ‘I have such a lot to tell you.’

  For answer, Lucy hooked one heel on a jutting stone and hitched herself up, then shuffled along on her bottom until she settled on one flat and wide enough to be comfortable.

  Anne swung down beside her, and then said, 'Oh, God. God, how disgusting.’

  Lucy looked at her in fright and then realised she was staring at the weasels strung on the fence.

  'The keeper on the estate does it,' she said. Moles were hung too with their soft little paws held up by their chest. And different kinds of birds. Once she had seen a gull with the hook of wire thrust in under its beak. After a time one of its wings came off and lay on the ground under the fence.

  'There's no need for it,' Anne said.

  'If you heard a rabbit scream at night?'

  ‘They don't do it for the rabbits.’

  'No.’ That was true.

  In the parkland beyond the fence a peacock came pacing between the trees. Lucy looked again and it wasn't there. Imagination. Not entirely, though, for on occasion they wandered from the drives around the estate house beyond the line of trees. Last year, sitting in almost this spot, she had watched one out there all alone, canopy of feathers glittering and vibrating in the senseless fury of its passion as it turned and turned in search of a rival.

  'I've been to London,' Anne said.

  It wasn't cold, a watered sunlight spread on the grass; but this early in the year the air was raw. Lucy shivered and clutched shut the collar of her coat. Instantly she felt Anne's arm go across her back, hold her by the shoulder and draw her dose.

  Even by Maitland she disliked being touched, not in lovemaking, but like this casually, touches and embraces. She winced from them, fur rubbed the wrong way. Like a cat, he said.

  'After your husband had taken you away – taken you home,' Lucy struggled to follow the sense of the words coming so softly they were almost whispered, 'Fraser Allander told me he had recognised one of your visitors. “That's Mr Norman,” I said. “No, no, it isn't,” Fraser said. I kept thinking about what he told me. He enjoyed telling me. I thought about nothing else and then I had three days off together and that's when I went to London.’ And at last she lifted her arm away. 'It's cold, too cold here. Aren't you cold?'

  Freed, Lucy tried to stop her teeth from chattering as she spoke, her body still clenched tight on itself. 'If you have something to tell me, come to the house.’

  'Your husband won't be there? ...Lucy?' Wind stroked the fur of the hung weasels.

  'No.’

  'If he's there, we'll have to go somewhere else. Some of it's about him, Lucy.’

  'No, he won't be there.’

  Wondering when, or if she would tell her at all that Maitland must already be dead, Lucy watched the staring peacock turn and turn in the empty field.

  BOOK SIX

  Chapter 24

  Anne Macleod's Story

  One of her patients had conceived the idea that torture, rape and unkindness (his own word, however much of an anti-climax in that list) were caused by pornography leaking from his mind and contaminating the whole world. A timorous man, in his mid-forties, his marriage childless, the worst of his sins was to work his way through the personal service numbers in Forum. 'There was this young man offering massage. A London number. It was early in the morning – my wife was still in bed, I closed the door so she wouldn't hear. When he answered, I asked him how much, things like that and then I asked, "I like to be knocked about a bit, is that all right?" And he said, yes. I was corrupting him, you see.’

  A change from the ones who heard voices, not that he was mad, of course. Nothing like it, and given permission by the situation, the hospital, the room, her job, to unload all of that sad triviality on to her. Like priests who were perhaps helped by having a tariff to charge against what they heard, celibate men listening and afterwards in the street able to match faces to whispers out of the warm dark; each one no more than a boy himself on that side of the partition for the first time with a tariff and a headful of transgressions in Latin to guide him, a driving instructor who wasn't supposed ever to get into the car. Or like ministers who divided in her memory into the ones who because they weren't compelled to listen found endless excuses not to and the ones, the one, say John Gardiner, who did.

  Who had done. Those ones, that one, without a driver's manual in Latin or a tariff to apply must find it hard. He had found it hard. Thinking about him she understood as she had not understood when she was sixteen how hard it must have been to be a minister on that island, the inheritor of Calvinist certainties, another manual. So much for stereotypes. A Free Church minister on that island who found as a law of his nature the necessity for compassion. Compassion for all the weaknesses of creaturely flesh. Yet still had his map marked sin, guilt and redemption. It was not John Gardiner's fault that compassion was not enough. She had set out to find her own map.

  'Rogerian therapy. Trained in New York,' the man astonishingly said. Earlier he had challenged her to guess what he did. 'Give you a clue,' he offered, inviting her to observe as he unscrewed the miniature of gin one-handed before emptying it into the plastic beaker. Beyond him she could look down on an enormous unmade bed of clouds rumpled white under the sun.

  'Are you a barman?' she asked. She had intended to be rude, but he nodded and smiled at her quickness. Vaguely ashamed, she let herself be harassed into admitting in her turn that she was a psychiatrist.

  A dentist had confessed to her once – at his place not hers; no couches; her lying back, mouth full of wadding and clamps of steel – that he was tired of doing his job. “A young man's game, later you felt the tension even too much the fear of the patients: It affects you; we have a high incidence of stress-related illnesses in the profession.” Too many mouths with evil breath? But he hadn't said that, had he? Going too far that would have been. Considering he was bent over with his nose almost in her mouth. Later came the sting on her lip where he had torn it with the clamp while it was anaesthetised. As if dentists were the only ones to wonder if they might have chosen the wrong profession.

  'I am,' the man said, 'but I did
the training. When I was in New York. You might sit for an hour and say nothing. Not a word – and that would be all right. At the end, pack up and go off and the psychiatrist will think, that was a good session. You have to be getting close to someone to be able to sit for an hour and say nothing. In a bar, though, people talk. Customers say things to me they wouldn't tell their wives.’

  Too much evil breath coming out of mouths at you. In the old days students at Glasgow University who had come to the city from the islands would very often become tubercular, coughing up their lungs in cold digs. They lacked the immunity of those who had grown up in the place. They had no protection against sickening.

  At Heathrow she let herself be carried along. The overnight bag was light enough to have let her stride as on previous visits feeling the brisk edge of speed until the moving track discarded her with a bump. This time she stood head bowed and let herself be carried along, to the end of the track, to the train, into a hotel. Bent over the washbasin gasping she threw up cupped handfuls of water until, lifting her head, eyes in the mirror surprised her with their blank suddenness of enquiry.

  And after all, when she ventured out it was already getting dark and it might have been better to wait until the next day. A to Z of London in one hand, finger keeping the page, she climbed the stairs from the Tube and went back along Chalk Farm Road in the direction of Camden until she recognised the name of a street.

  The first marker she came to was the church he had told her about, set back from the road, with a flattened spire, crouching behind a moat of scant grass. And the pub was where he had said it would be and she turned left and found the shop. The glass was dirty and the window empty apart from a Coke can, squeezed and lying on its side. She couldn't see into the shop for a curtain pulled all the way along the back. Light leaked around the ragged edge of it. The door had boards nailed over, but when she gave a push it opened. The light went out.

  'You on your own?' A-ow-wn, drawn out in a Bow Bells tune.

  'Yes.’ She stared into the dark. Listening she heard breath snort and whistle; adenoids, she decided automatically.

  'What d'you want?' The voice sounded young.

  'I'm a friend of Fraser Allander's.’

  'Who?' But before she could answer, 'You mean Jock the Hat?'

  It seemed likely. 'I expect so.’

  Light dazzled her. Like a stretched string whoever was behind it walked the line to her. 'Come inside if you're coming.’ She moved forward and the door was shut behind her. A key turned in the lock. The torch went out and there was darkness again and a spinning catherine wheel of colours, and then the overhead light was switched on.

  To her surprise she had to look up at him. He was young but tall and thin. The most striking thing about his pale narrow face was the boil that inflamed the wing of one nostril, an aching red with a vesuvius of yellow pus in the centre. Visibly it seemed to throb. 'You talk funny the way he did. Sure you're his friend? Sure you're not his missus, something like that?' the boy said all on one breath. Boy? He might easily be in his middle twenties, perhaps even older, but he looked seventeen.

  'Nothing like that,' she said. The shop was stripped, nothing on the counter, nothing on the shelves, nothing to steal. 'I thought this was where you held your meetings.’

  'Who?'

  'The Party.’

  'Who?'

  'Pax Britannica.’ Absurd name. 'Fraser told me it met here.’

  'And if it did?'

  'I was interested in what he told me. I wanted to find out more.’

  'Not because you heard Kite speaking?'

  'No.’

  'You surprise me. Got a treat in store, you have.’

  He jerked his chin and she obeyed the invitation, following him across to the bead curtain that shut off the back shop. It clattered apart and together for him and then she was through. A little square room with a table and eight or nine chairs scattered about.

  'It's not a Party,' the boy said, standing by the light switch. There was a sink and a kettle with the flex wound round it, some cups, and a jar of instant coffee.

  'More like a Movement. That's what Kite says.’

  'Does he?' she speculated; but he seemed vigorously serious, the livid nostril going up and down like a signal lamp with the nodding of his head.

  'You won't find anybody here tonight though. Lucky to find me. I'm just checking up on the premises.’

  'I thought this was the night you met. That's what Fraser told me.’

  The boy's head changed direction, shaking now from side to side. With a nose like that, the thought occurred to her, you'd think he'd find it painful.

  'Not tonight. There's something on.’ He furrowed his brow. 'You could come. Don't see why not.’

  'You're meeting somewhere else?'

  'Something like that.’ He reached back through the curtain and the light in the shop went out. Before she realised what he was about to do, he struck down the switch beside him as well. Next moment the torch went on again.

  'Right. Follow me. We have to go out the back way.’

  'What?'

  She stumbled and felt him touch her arm.

  'Steady the buffs.’ The light shone on a lock and then he had opened the door and they were outside. They began to pick their way along a lane, walls close on either side. Fear stirred, not for anything this ungainly boy might do but that he would be no protection against the dangers of the dark.

  It was a relief to emerge into a lit street.

  'Steady the buffs?' she asked abruptly. 'Wherever did you get that from? Your father?'

  'Leave it out.’ He walked away from her, and when she caught him up repeated, 'You can leave that right out.’

  Glancing up at him, she thought, of course, stupid of me. To an experienced eye he had the gangrel look of someone lacking a father or, more likely, with one it would have been better not to have known.

  After a block walked in silence, she ventured, 'Why did we have to come out that way? Wouldn't it have been easier to leave by the front door?'

  She had almost given up, when the mutter came from above her head. 'Had to. Essohpee.’

  'I'm sorry, I don't understand.’

  'Standard Operating Procedure. Essohpee. All right? '

  And from the tone she understood that he was mollified. Hurrying after him as he veered across the road to a parked van, she wondered if he was about to steal it. He seemed the type, and too feckless not to be caught if he tried. It was good to see the battered wing and the parking with two wheels canted on to the pavement. To confirm it was his, he produced keys and slid open the driver's door. 'Could you climb in this way? The other door's jammed,' he said.

  He told her his name was Nick and asked hers. She laid her bag on the bench seat between them and then lifted it and laid it in her lap. It began to drizzle and between the lagging smear of the wipers, shop fronts slid by and light gleamed from the slick of a deserted crossroads. After that there was a long empty street and then another of low brick houses and curtained windows.

  'Is it far?' She heard her voice thin and rise; and steadying it asked, 'To the meeting?' He changed gears, turning into another dim street under the rain, no different from the one they had left. 'It is open to the public? I mean I took that for granted. In a hall or something.’

  The van, however, instead of picking up speed was slowing and now came to a stop. Nick bent across her to peer out of the side window. There was a forecourt with petrol pumps, a workshop to one side and a place to pay on the other, all of it unlit.

  'Bound to be out in a minute,' Nick said to himself. He leaned back. 'Wouldn't thank me for going in, I don't expect.’ He extended a thin wrist and angled his watch to catch the light. 'Spot-on when he told me.’

  Time passed while he sighed and fidgeted, but it was she who saw an edge of light come and go at the back of the office and then the man was weaving between the pumps towards them head down against the rain. He came lightly with small hasty steps, so that it
was a shock as he crossed in front of the headlights to realise the rolling bulk of his fat.

  'Shove your arse over!' Nick started to bump across, but the fat man caught him by the arm

  'Who's this? Stay where you are.’

  She watched him cross back in front of the van. The door beside her shook and was dragged open. 'Nice,' the fat man said, studying her. 'Better than your usual anyway.’

  As he clambered in, the van sank under his weight so that she fell against him. Sighing as he settled himself, he rolled her thigh under the meaty palm of his hand and said, 'Come to see the fun, have you?' And to the boy, 'Get on with it then. Kite don't want to be kept waiting.’

  There was no getting away from so much flesh. At the jerk of her leg he moved his hand, but his thigh stayed hard against the length of hers.

  'You know my ambition?' Nick crouched over the wheel squinting ahead. 'I want to be able to speak as good as you Georgie. I mean really take a grip. I'll do it too, I will – on a street corner or in a hall, wouldn't make no difference. Georgie give me a lot of tips,' he explained to her, 'like holding your breath between one streetlight and the next – builds your lungs, makes them strong. In this life you have to go for it, what you want, it's all down to will-power. One night, one night soon, it's going to come together and I'll have them in the palm of my hand and I'll say to myself tonight I was nearly, nearly Georgie Clarke. But I'll never be as good as Kite.’ And he turned his head and she thought he was frowning in anger, but he said, 'I know that, Georgie. Not ever.’

  ‘Boy's nervous,’ the fat man said to her. ‘Only natural.’

  ‘Who's nervous?’ Nick shrilled.

  'Better talking than shitting himself.’ And his fat heaved against her in shakes of silent laughter.

  Later in what turned out to be a brothel, he explained it to her. She had never been in a brothel before; it had not occurred to her she would ever be in one in her life. If anyone had asked her what one might look like, she would have guessed red flock wallpaper. In fact the walls in this room had been given an emulsion coat in green; under it, though, you could see the raised whorls of the original pattern - so perhaps after all there might have been red under there at one time.