I saw the faces, angry and pitying and confused. They were listening but they weren’t hearing at all. Some people were leaving, others were laughing, jeering or shouting abuse, and the rest had turned their backs and were talking amongst themselves, and eating and drinking as if that were the best way to restore normality. Finlay Stewart, the lawyer, came up to me; I bent down from the platform, and he said, ‘I was with you outside by the grave, Mr Mack, but you’re out on a limb now,’ he was smiling but there was a mournfulness about the smile as if he were telling a client that his case was hopeless. ‘You know where I am,’ he said. Then he was gone and others were pressing in upon me. The atmosphere was heavy and dense with noise, I was suffocating with it. I looked to the other end of the hall, searching for space, for fresh air, and I saw him again, he had come in and was standing, smiling, waiting, in his black clothes and my boots, and I shouted, ‘Look, there he is. There at the back!’ But by then nobody was paying me any attention. I jumped down into them and crashed through the bodies towards him, I saw him slipping out of the door and called on him to wait, but he did not wait. Nobody stopped me. Outside I saw him again, he was striding or gliding across the grass, threading a way through the upright stones, and there was Catherine’s kite still flying, the workmen had untied it before they filled in the grave, they had used an iron staple to pin the end of the string to the ground and the kite was flying up there, communicating or not communicating with the dead, and there he went, down the red gravel path to the road, heading for the manse, and I was pitching after him, going as fast as I could but not able to catch up. He was teasing me, I knew this wasn’t the time, that I still had much to endure, but he had got me away from that crowd. I made for the manse, my place of refuge, my shelter from the storm, and I got in and I was alone. He had vanished. I closed the doors, and when the doorbell rang and the phone rang and the knocks came at the door and at the windows I did not hear them, I was safe in the heart of this house, in my study, safe from the world, I had told the truth and now all I wanted was to move on, and to see my Devil again.
XLIV
There is not much more to be said. It is January now. I have spent the days and nights of this winter writing everything down in as much detail as I can recall. It was obvious to me, as it must have been to others, that there was no going back after what I had said and done on the day of Catherine’s funeral. My mistake, if it was a mistake, was that I did not write this testament first, before I spoke. Had I done so, if people could have read this full and honest account rather than heard me announce it amid the din and confusion of that day, then perhaps they might have reacted with more open minds. As it was, it was too easy for them to dismiss me as a madman. It is for this reason that I have laboured over this manuscript. A prophet, Christ said, is not without honour save in his own country. If this story of mine reaches further afield, perhaps others will recognise the truth of it.
There were those who did try to honour me, even in Monimaskit. Having admitted to being on speaking terms with the Devil, perhaps I should not have been surprised at how many others came out of the woodwork to tell me of their own dealings with him. A number of men – they were all men – came to the door of the manse wishing to swap experiences. Some of them were dangerous-looking, wild and unkempt, some neat, clean and unsmiling, but all looked as though they were no longer, if they ever had been, at ease in the company of others. That much I was able to empathise with: nonetheless, politely but firmly, I turned them all away. They were, without exception, mentally disturbed, religiously deluded or wilfully deceitful. A few minutes’ conversation with these men was always sufficient to demonstrate to me, who really had met the Devil, that they had no real conception of who or what he was. They were merely playing a game. The saddest thing was that most of them did not know it.
I had letters too, scrawled semi-legibly on scraps of paper, daubed with the supposed symbols of Satan – geometric designs, the number 666 and so forth. These I burned without answering (often there was no return address anyway). After the initial flurry of interest had died away, I was no longer troubled by these visitors and missives.
I was besieged by others, though, representatives of that good old Scottish institution, the school of common sense. With impressive speed, Peter Macmurray had written a report of my behaviour at Catherine’s funeral and formally submitted it to Presbytery. My Kirk Session, which was party to this action, let me know that they could not allow me to conduct any more services or indeed any other business on behalf of the Church until I was ‘well again’. John Gless and a group of elders called to tell me this. My response was that I was not ill, but I agreed it would be wrong for me to continue in my duties knowing I did not have the confidence of the Session. In fact I no longer had any desire for those duties. I received notification from Presbytery before the week was out that, in my interests as well those of the Kirk, I was suspended until the substance of the allegations made against me could be properly assessed. If it was decided that I had committed censurable offences, then a trial by libel would follow.
All this wearied me. So, too, did the correspondence and phone calls that began to pour in from 121 George Street. A minister who had settled down at Carnoustie to play golf until summoned to God’s great clubhouse was brought out of retirement to conduct services in the Old Kirk, while the Session managed the dispensation of pastoral care as best it could. I was sorry for the difficulties I caused them, but it was made clear that I could not be involved with the workings of the parish. The Kirk, usually a cumbersome beast, can show remarkable agility when it is threatened, and I was perceived to be a threat.
I was not, however, forced to leave the manse, and this meant that they knew where to find me. By ‘they’ I mean the would-be good Samaritans who imagined I had fallen among thieves and lay half dead by the roadside. Among those who tried to assist me was a woman who came from Edinburgh offering ‘manse support’. There was also an attempt to subject me to counselling. I refused these approaches, just as I refused the attentions of Amelia Wishaw, who tried to persuade me to defer to her medical wisdom. I was neither physically nor mentally ill. It would have made life a lot easier for everybody if I had been.
So I stayed in Monimaskit and learned to live the life of an outcast. I had little or no communication with erstwhile friends. It would be wrong to say that this was because my friends cut me off: I was guilty of far more cutting than they. To begin with, indeed, they would not leave me alone. Apart from Amelia, who repeatedly asserted that I had suffered a nervous breakdown. I was also bothered by Lorna Sprott, who came offering spiritual balm. Considering the terms on which we had last parted, it was generous of her to come at all. I let her in out of pity. She had heard about Catherine’s funeral, of course. She lamented what I had done. If, she said, it was true that she had used me in her address in church – ‘I’m willing to concede that, Gideon. I shouldn’t have said those things without checking with you first’ – then I had used those children at the funeral; exploited them with toys and sweets; made them a shield with which to protect myself as I played out my irresponsible bit of theatre. But in spite of all that, Lorna said, in spite of the crisis I had brought upon myself, she would stand by me if I would only acknowledge my mistakes, my failings, my betrayal of Christ. I heard her out, but I said I had betrayed nobody, and Christ least of all, since he was never involved. She looked horrified, yet again. She wanted us to pray together. I was beyond prayer, I said. She began to pray on her own, as if to drive demons from me, and at that point I made her leave. I have not seen her since. For all I know, she is praying for me still.
I received a letter from Finlay Stewart a week after the funeral. He trusted – interesting lawyerish word, clearly he did no such thing – that I was recovered from the fascinating events he had witnessed. He had arranged with a stonemason to have Catherine’s name and dates added to the family stone. It might interest me to know, he wrote, that she had left about half of her estate, which was
substantial, to several different charities, and the rest to establish a trust bearing her name that would provide funds for the protection and upkeep of ancient monuments and historic buildings in the parish of Monimaskit. He concluded by stating that he was at my service if there was anything he could do for me. Unlike most of the correspondence I was receiving, I kept this letter.
I made the occasional visit to my mother, but now I was tolerated rather than welcomed at the care home. Mrs Hodge never seemed to be around when I went. Betty no longer offered me tea. Only my mother’s attitude to me was completely unaltered. For this I was grateful, but it underlined the uselessness of continuing to see her. It was one more charade scarcely worth keeping up. I have not gone there for weeks.
I went out less and less often. I drove to Dundee one day to buy a pair of boots to replace the ones the Devil had taken from me, and that was my longest excursion in three months. In Monimaskit I would go down to the High Street to buy a few things for the house, but even to eat seemed a tedious inconvenience. I have found that I can exist well enough on three bowls of porridge every day, supplemented with the odd piece of fruit, an egg, and a few whiskies at night. When I was out I could feel people looking at me, I knew they were shaking their heads in the way they would shake them at sight of somebody with a terrible disability. Sometimes children shouted at me before capering away up the street, squawking and gibbering as they imagined a lunatic would. I took to going for walks at night, but even then I would come across groups of teenagers drinking and smoking in the street, sometimes in the graveyard. The girls shrank back from me, or ran giggling and shrieking: ‘Look out, it’s Mystic Mack!’ The boys watched me with surly cold eyes, or abused me with foul language. These night-time encounters only added to my already ragged reputation.
I tried to maintain my appearance, washing and ironing my own clothes as I have done since Jenny died, but the more I remained in the house the less reason there was for doing this. One afternoon, not long before Christmas, I ventured out to get my hair cut. The barber’s shop was empty when I went in. Henry, the barber, directed me straight to the chair before he realised who I was. He was normally a talkative soul, but during the next ten minutes he spoke not a word, except to check with me if the cut was good enough and, when he’d finished, to ask me for five pounds. The silence lay between us like a sheet of glass. I handed over the money and went for my coat.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’
But as I went to the door suddenly words burst from him: ‘I’m sorry about your troubles, Mr Mack. It’s a terrible place, a wee toun like this, when folk think ye hae ideas above your station.’
‘Is that what they think of me, Henry?’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘The ones that ken ye are right eager to knock ye doon, and the rest have forgotten ye exist.’
‘And what do you think yourself?’ I said. ‘Have I got ideas above my station?’
‘I dinna ken,’ he said. ‘Ye aye seemed a decent man to me. They say ye claim to hae seen the Devil and so forth, and I’m no a religious man so I couldna comment, but it seems to me if onybody can see the Devil then it’s a minister.’
‘Thank you, Henry,’ I said. ‘That’s a very sensible view.’
‘Aye, maybe,’ he said, but I could see him beginning to worry about it already, on account of my having approved it. So I went out of the door, and that was the last time I had my hair cut.
My friend was certainly present in the town during this period, but for how long at any one time I do not know. I assume that he came and went in that nervous, restless way of his, but what he was doing remains a mystery to me, for he never approached me, nor did he allow me to get close to him. I saw him almost every time I was out. He was always at a distance. After I left Henry’s that day, I spotted him entering Boots. I hobbled in to catch him, but he must have slipped away down one aisle while I was going up another. I saw him standing outside Jim Currie’s one morning, reading a newspaper, but by the time I had crossed the road and reached the shop he had vanished. Once I thought I saw his face peering from the window of a bus as it drove out of town. And once, from an upstairs window of the manse, I saw him in the kirkyard, admiring the newly carved lettering on the Craigie stone. I rushed down the stairs to join him, but when I got there he was gone.
Another day I felt the need for some fresh air and went for a walk by the harbour, and I fancied I saw him going into the Luggie. There is only one door to this pub, not counting the fire escape at the back, so I followed him in. It was approaching three in the afternoon, and the bar was closed. I had never been in it before, but experienced a sense of déjà-vu when I entered, and then realised that I was remembering the installation from Bill Winnyford’s exhibition. The barman was there, wiping down surfaces, and one customer was finishing off his drink, but it wasn’t my friend, it was Chae Middleton.
‘Sorry, we’re closed,’ the barman said.
‘Did somebody just come in here?’ I said.
Chae looked up at me, half-cut. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘You did.’
‘Before me,’ I said.
‘Naebody afore and naebody since,’ said the barman. ‘Come on, Chae, time to go.’
‘I’m going, I’m going,’ Chae said. ‘It’s no enough that ye pull ministers frae the drink, but they have to come and dae the same to you.’
The barman frowned at me. ‘Is that who you are?’ he said. I acknowledged that it was. ‘But I didn’t come to get Chae,’ I said. ‘I thought I saw someone come in. A friend.’
The barman made a dumb-show of looking round the place. ‘There’s just the three of us here,’ he said.
He was right, of course, but I had to go and check in the men’s toilet before I was convinced.
‘This friend,’ the barman said when I returned, ‘what does he look like?’
‘Tall,’ I said. ‘Thin. Black hair. Black clothes.’
‘Aye, he’s been here,’ the man said. ‘No the day, like. When was he in, Chae?’
‘Last week,’ Chae said. ‘Or the week afore. The young fellow.’
‘He wasna young,’ the barman said. ‘Sixty if he was a day.’
‘Och, away,’ Chae said. ‘Nae mair than thirty.’
‘Ye should get glesses,’ the barman said. ‘He was fit-looking, but when ye seen him close up, definitely older.’
A thrill went through me. ‘Did you speak to him?’ I asked.
‘Aye, that’s how I ken it’s the same guy. He was asking efter ye.’
‘After me?’
‘Aye. “How’s your minister?” he says. I says you were nae minister of mine. Never came in here and nothing to do wi me. He wanted to ken if you were recovered and all that. I put him on to Chae. It was Chae he wanted.’
‘He bought me a drink,’ Chae said. ‘He wanted to see the man that saved the minister and he bought me a drink.’
‘What did you talk about?’ I asked.
‘Oh, he didna stay. He just bought me the drink and then he left. I didna like him.’
‘He was polite enough,’ the barman said. ‘But there was something no canny aboot him.’
‘In what way?’
‘Here, what’s wi aw these questions?’ Chae said. ‘I’m awa hame.’ He stood up. ‘I’m no fond of ministers in pubs. They’re like ministers in boats. Unlucky.’ He started towards the door.
‘Chae,’ I asked. ‘Did you ever see him before? Up the river, for example.’
‘Up the river?’ he said angrily. ‘Up the river? That’s where I found you. I never see nothing when I go up the river.’
He staggered out. I was going to follow, but the barman called me back.
‘I’d leave it alane if I were you,’ he said. ‘He’s well fou. He was aye a good drinker but he taks a lot mair since that business wi you. He’s in here all the time these days. Going to ruin fast. What can ye do, eh?’
‘You could try not serving him,’ I said.
The Testament of Gideon Mack Page 39