After she’d gone, I took the tape-player back through to the study and continued typing.
XXXVIII
On the Saturday I had more visitors. The first, at nine o’ clock, was John Moffat. He, too, had been trying to get me on the phone. Had I been ill? Did I need anything? No, I said, I was fine. He brought a sheaf of newspaper cuttings which he thought would amuse me. John was doing his duty, making sure I was alive. Having done it, he was off like a shot. I am being unfair, of course. He had, after all, visited me in hospital, and fetched me home.
I skimmed through the cuttings. The stories about my death were all based on the same statements from 121 George Street, the local police and John Gless, who had spoken on behalf of the Session with commendable restraint. One or two of my parishioners described me as a good man who would be sorely missed. Most of the papers gave a brief summary of my career: some had photographs of me completing one marathon or another; there was one of me handing my collar over to Iain MacInnes of NessTrek. The stories about my survival invariably included the word ‘miracle’. I became bored reading about myself. Only I knew the true story, the real miracle.
A couple of hours later the bell went again. This time it was Amelia Wishaw, my GP, making house-calls after her morning surgery. She had been in touch with the consultant in Dundee and wanted to check me over. I showed her my leg, which still looked like the floor of a Venetian palace, and she asked if I needed painkillers. No, I told her. She took my pulse and shone a light in my eyes. I have no idea what she was looking for. She asked if I was sleeping well. If not, she could prescribe me something that would knock me out every night. I declined the offer. I was already, I said, sleeping the sleep of the just about eight hours. She looked quizzically at me. An old joke, I said.
‘Take it easy, Gideon,’ Amelia said. ‘I have no idea why you’re even still alive. The fact that you’re up and about at home, pretty much unscathed, and not plugged into a life-support system in Dundee, beats me. Don’t be surprised if you start to feel lousy in the next day or so. Delayed reaction. Any problems at all, pick up the phone. Call me at home. Don’t try and tough it out.’
‘Thanks, Amelia,’ I said. ‘Is that you finished for the day?’
‘One more call,’ she said. ‘Your friend Miss Craigie.’
I had a sudden rush of guilt. I had completely forgotten about Catherine. Through her various sources she would surely know about my fatal accident and resurrection. I would have to go and see her. This in turn reminded me that I should also go and see my mother, who was presumably blissfully unaware that her only son had died and come back to life in the space of a week.
‘Anything serious?’ I asked.
‘No. I like to go in once or twice a month and check she’s okay,’ Amelia said. ‘As far as anyone in Miss Craigie’s condition can be described as okay, that is.’
‘I didn’t know you did that,’ I said. ‘I knew you were her doctor, but she’s never mentioned you visiting.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she?’ Amelia said. ‘That’s not her way. She expects the doctor to call, even if there’s no particular reason.’
‘That’s a bit unfair,’ I said. ‘Her health’s terrible.’
‘There are plenty a lot worse off, or much the same, believe me,’ Amelia said. ‘She’s still living in the 1950s, Gideon. I don’t blame her actually, I’d be the same if I could, but the world’s moved on. There aren’t many Doctor Finlays left these days.’
‘Looks like you’re doing a pretty good impression,’ I said.
‘I do feel that I’m stepping back in time when I go into her house,’ Amelia said. ‘I quite like it, though. It smells the way I imagine the houses in Tannochbrae smelt. Everything’s a bit musty, including Miss Craigie. Not that I would dare say so. She can be quite scary. Gregor was terrified of her when she was his boss.’
‘You could tell her I’m all right,’ I said, ‘if she doesn’t know already. Tell her I’ll come and see her soon. Tomorrow, probably.’
Amelia said she would do that and left. I went to my study and spent another two hours completing the transcript of the recording. By then I was exhausted. Perhaps Amelia was right, and I was premature in thinking I was fully fit. I went upstairs and lay down for a nap.
When I woke up it was four o’clock. I’d been dreaming of the cave. The Devil was moving about in front of the fire. Occasionally he would glance over at me lying on the settee and give me a smile. I shook myself and went and splashed water on my face. Then I put on a coat and hat and lurched off to the Monimaskit Care Home, to see my mother.
I got a warm welcome from Betty and the other staff and those residents who’d registered that I’d had an accident. Everybody was so relieved, I was told. ‘Not as much I was,’ I said, trying to keep it light. I asked for Mrs Hodge, but she was off duty.
Betty said, ‘You’ll be wanting to see your mother, Mr Mack. She’s in her room, I think. Come on, I’ll take ye doon.’
‘Has she been told anything?’ I asked as we went down the corridor.
‘Aye, I think Mrs Hodge had a word with her when we heard about the accident. I’m no sure how much went in, though. And then, when Chae found you, she had to go and tell her the good news. Your guess is as good as mine, Mr Mack, whether she thinks you’re deid or alive. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you anyway. I’ll just make sure she’s decent.’
She chapped the door and went in. ‘Hello, Agnes, there’s someone here for you. In you come, Mr Mack. Do you mind who this is, Agnes? I’ll just leave you to it,’ she said, and backed out.
‘Hello, Mum,’ I said. She was sitting in an armchair crammed in between the foot of the bed and a jutting-out wardrobe. The room was fine in its way, with a view out to the gardens, but you couldn’t swing a cat in it. I kissed her cheek and sat on the bed.
‘What are you doing in here?’ I said. ‘You’re usually in the day room.’
‘Too noisy,’ she said, looking at me as if she knew me.
‘I’m sorry I’ve not been in this week,’ I said. ‘Events kind of took over. Maybe you heard?’
She stared at me, saying nothing.
‘I fell into the river, Mum, and they thought I’d been drowned, but I wasn’t. Did they tell you about it?’
‘Nonsense,’ she said.
‘No, it’s true,’ I said. ‘It really happened.’
She looked at me as if I were six and telling her something that had occurred at school. I thought of the time I’d told her about the Stone, months before. A pointless exercise, and this one was just as pointless. But the Devil had urged me to speak to her. Find out, he’d said. Your mother knows about hell. Ask her.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’m back now.’
‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know where you go,’ she said. ‘I came in earlier but you were away. I brought you a cup of tea.’
‘That was nice,’ I said.
‘It’ll be cold now,’ she said. ‘Did you go for a walk? I thought you were here but you’re always away.’
‘I’m here now,’ I said.
‘It’s cold in here,’ she said. In fact it was roasting. ‘Will you not let me light the fire, James?’
She said these things as if she’d recorded them earlier and was just replaying the tape. She accompanied them with no physical movement, no attempt to act out the things she was talking about. But at least I knew who she was talking to.
‘It’s Gideon, Mum,’ I said. ‘Not Dad. I did want to ask you about him though. About the war. You said once that he must have been different before the war. It changed him. Do you think, when he came back, when you first met him, do you think he still believed in God?’
‘She seems very nice, Gideon,’ she said. ‘Your father thinks so too. She’s bonnie. Anyway, that’s enough of that.’
She made as if to get up out of the chair, but then seemed to lose interest in the idea. She gazed into space.
She wasn’t looking at me or out of the window. She wasn’t looking at anything.
‘Mum,’ I said. I’d been frustrated at her in the past, been wearied and made impatient by her. I’d been made angry by what had happened to her. Now I just felt like crying.
I reached out and took her hand. She didn’t resist. I tried to make her look at me, see me. She didn’t say anything else.
‘Do you mind when I was a boy and I used to sleepwalk?’ I said. ‘I’d wake up and go back to my bed. And you’d be there, watching me. Do you mind that?’
She seemed to be thinking.
‘I never knew if you’d heard me get up and were making sure I was safe, or if you just happened to be there by accident. And now I’m wondering if I just imagined it. Maybe you weren’t there at all. Mum?’
Nothing.
And then I knew what the Devil had meant when he’d told me to ask her about hell. She had no secrets to tell me. She had no revelations about my father. She had nothing. Now, when I finally wanted to communicate with her, I was too late. Hell was looking into my mother’s eyes and seeing what I’d seen in his eyes before he died: nothing. No, I was wrong. Hell wasn’t looking into her eyes, it was looking out of them. Being trapped inside, looking for an exit; not even doing that, just wandering empty rooms in bewilderment. That was all the Devil had wanted me to do: to look in through the windows of this woman who had brought me into the world, and see absolutely nothing there.
XXXIX
Lorna had called while I was out seeing my mother. She’d stuck a note through the door to say that everything was prepared for Sunday’s service and I didn’t need to worry. ‘If I don’t see you at church, I’ll call round afterwards,’ she wrote. She made no mention of anything else.
I had a solitary evening in the manse that Saturday night. I read from the Bible, the Book of Jonah, and then I read a chapter or two of Moby Dick, Captain Ahab and his obsession with the whale. I watched the news: the Swedish foreign minister had died after being stabbed while she was shopping in Stockholm; an opposition newspaper had closed in Zimbabwe. I ate some toast. I drank some whisky. I thought about the women in my life: my mother, Jenny, Elsie, Lorna, Catherine. I thought about the Devil, and how ludicrous it was that that was the only name I had for him. I couldn’t imagine calling him Satan or Lucifer or Beelzebub. The Scots have a dazzling array of names for him: he has been a familiar acquaintance of ours for centuries. Auld Nick, Sandy, Sim, Bobbie, Auld Sootie, Clootie, Ruffie, the Deil, the Foul Thief, the Earl o Hell, the Auld Smith, the Auld Ane, the Wee Man, Auld Mishanter, Auld Mahoun. Yet none of these names suited my Devil either. My Devil was suave and fit-looking, though I’d also seen, when he let down his guard, the aged world-weariness of him. I wondered how I would address him when we next met. Maybe he’d be Alan, and I’d be Davie Balfour. Comrades. I went to bed and remembered the way we’d been together. I missed him.
On Sunday morning I woke late and ate my breakfast to the sound of the church bell calling folk to worship. It was odd to be in the manse and yet separate from that ritual. I wanted nothing to do with it. It had for so long been a sham to be praising God and preaching his Word that to be signed off from it in this way was an intense relief. I could no longer maintain the pretence. No more games, the Devil had said. If I had entered the kirk that morning, either to lead the service or to participate in it, I felt that my false face would have been obvious to everyone.
Instead, once the service had begun, I left the manse and set off for Catherine Craigie’s house. I felt as I imagine Boswell did that day he skipped church and went instead to visit the great infidel David Hume, ‘just a-dying’. Who was the worse sinner, the ordained minister who had communed with the Devil but not with God, or the Edinburgh lawyer who feared God but drank like a fish and slept with whores? I decline to pass judgement. I only know that of the three of us Hume, being untroubled by guilt, was innocent. Nor, in truth, did guilt much trouble me. I was too full of the story I had to tell – though how I would even begin to tell it to Catherine I had no idea. So I did not sneak through byways and closes or slink in the shadows of walls. Not that there was anybody about to observe me, but I went with my head held upright. I could not, however, correct the lurch of my shortened right leg.
The curve of Ellangowan Place, together with its profusion of trees and bushy vegetation, effectively prevents you from seeing much of any single house until you are directly in front of it. It wasn’t until I was at Catherine’s gate, therefore, that I saw that the front door, most unusually, was wide open. Beyond it, I could see that the plant-stand had been moved from its usual place in the middle of the hall. I walked up the path, rang the bell and entered, calling hello.
Amelia Wishaw came out of the drawing room. ‘Ah, Gideon,’ she said.
‘What’s going on? Is everything all right?’ I asked. But Amelia’s presence, let alone her expression, told me at once that it wasn’t.
‘No, I’m afraid it’s not.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Bad news, Gideon. Catherine’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry, it’s the last thing you can have been expecting.’
‘How can she be dead? You were on your way to see her when you left me yesterday. She was alive then, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes, she was. She seemed fine. She was fine. Nothing the matter that I could see. She said she was getting a tingling sensation down her arm, but she had so many aches and pains it didn’t seem anything serious. I checked her over, couldn’t find anything to cause concern. We sat and chatted for a while, and then I came away.’
I heard a noise from the back of the house, the kitchen. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s Norah, the home help. She found her this morning on the couch. She’d been well schooled by Catherine, my direct line was on a board in the kitchen. I was here in ten minutes, but there was nothing to be done. Except get Norah a cup of tea. The poor woman’s upset because she was late coming in and thinks it was her fault.’
‘She just died?’
‘Looks like it. No suspicious circumstances. It must have happened last night some time. Rigor mortis is quite advanced, so I’d say before midnight. Her heart just stopped – no question at all in my mind. It’s been waiting in the wings for a while, you know. Her heart was under a lot of strain.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she told me about that not so long ago. But it just doesn’t seem possible.’
‘I know. She was a good friend to you. Do you want to see her?’
A woman emerged from the back lobby, holding a mug of tea. Her face was pale and her eyes a little red.
‘This is Norah,’ Amelia said.
‘Hello, Norah,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’ In all my years of visiting Catherine, I’d never met her home help, nor did I recognise her from the town.
‘Just a wee bit shocked,’ Norah said. ‘I’ll be okay.’
Amelia led the way into the drawing room. Norah came behind me. Catherine was lying on the couch, a rug wrapped round her middle, her neck and shoulders propped up on several cushions. Her head was turned to one side, and her left shoulder, the one that had given her the most trouble, was twisted up like a tree-root. She was wearing a tee-shirt, and one leg sticking out from the bottom of the rug revealed a loose pair of trousers. Her eyes were closed. One arm was by her side, the other, the left one, lay across her chest. Apart from the twisted shoulder and the obvious stiffness she didn’t look too bad. Comfortable even. There was a tumbler half full of whisky on a table beside her, along with a book and the remote control for her stereo system.
‘Have you moved her?’ I asked.
‘Not much,’ Amelia said. ‘Just to check. We’ll need to contact an undertaker.’
I went over to Catherine and knelt beside her. I put my hand over the hand on her chest. It was like a cold lump of rock. The others stood back a little. It must have looked like I was saying a prayer.
I stood up again. �
��I wish I’d come round yesterday,’ I said.
‘You couldn’t have saved her,’ Amelia said. ‘You couldn’t have stopped it happening any more than Norah could have.’
‘That’s not what I mean. I just wish I’d come round. Spoken to her one last time.’
Amelia put her hand on my shoulder.
‘Listen, Gideon,’ she said. ‘She was lying on her sofa on a Saturday night, she had a whisky by her side, she was listening to music, and she was reading a book. She’d been in a good mood when I saw her, and she was really, really looking forward to seeing you today. She said so. I know these last few years have been bloody awful for her healthwise, but on a scale of ways to go this scores pretty highly.’
I seemed to have entered a phase of my life where people kept telling me sensible things. It didn’t make it any easier. Gentle counsellor was a role I too had once been good at playing.
‘She hasn’t any relatives, has she?’ Amelia said.
‘None that I know of. She has a lawyer. I have his details. I can get in touch with him.’
‘Thank you. What about an undertaker?’
‘She’d sorted that out with a firm in Dundee, I know that.’
‘I’m impressed. Well, it makes things a lot simpler. We can give them a call. I’ll make out the medical certificate tomorrow.’
‘Won’t there need to be a post-mortem?’
‘No, I don’t think so. This is entirely explicable.’
‘I just thought, with it being so sudden.’
Amelia nodded. ‘I know, but the fact is she’s been dying for years. It’s a surprise, yes, but it’s not sudden. Believe me, if I had any doubts…’
I shook my head to indicate, I suppose, that I had none either. Amelia went on: ‘If we can contact the undertakers today, the lawyer can start making the funeral and other arrangements tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Although, as a matter of fact, I’ll be handling the funeral.’
‘Will you?’ Amelia said.
The Testament of Gideon Mack Page 35