The Testament of Gideon Mack

by James Robertson

  ‘Aye, you look efter your affairs and I’ll mind mine,’ the barman said. ‘By all accounts mine are in a lot better shape. It’s because of you Chae’s in the state he’s in. Now I’ll thank you to leave the premises, it’s well past closing.’

  I went back out on to the street. There was no sign of Chae, nor of my friend. I didn’t understand why he would go to the Luggie and speak with Chae, but not come to the manse and speak with me. I began to be suspicious of him. Why was he hanging around, yet why was he staying away? He was toying with me. I didn’t like that. Was it not he himself who had said ‘no more games’?

  His presence, or his absence, haunted me day and night. Even if I hadn’t seen him in these fleeting glimpses, he was constantly in my thoughts as I wrote these pages, and as I write them now. Furthermore, I could not take a step without being conscious of him. Every lurch that I took reminded me of the ‘operation’ he had performed on my leg. I began to dwell on that too. What if he had done more than he said? What if in some fateful way he had taken something of me and kept it for himself? Would that explain the bond that I felt with him, the desire to be with him again? This has troubled me greatly in the last weeks.

  There is one other thing, which might or might not be connected. Since my plunge from the cliff, I have hardly been affected by any tremors or twitches in my left arm. That niggling physical rumour of devastation, that thing that I long thought of as God’s ticking time-bomb, is – almost – completely gone.

  In December I had notice from Presbytery and from 121 George Street that the allegations against me had been assessed and found to be of substance, and that a trial by libel would therefore follow. I wrote back, saying that I would not contest any such trial, but that I could not retract the things I had said nor in any way recant, since I had told nothing but the truth. If I was tried I would say the same again. I was willing to demit my status as a minister if that would help, but I would neither change my story nor keep silent about it. The response from Presbytery was swift: it was not acceptable for me simply to demit and walk away from the situation I had created. The integrity of the Kirk itself was undermined by such serious errors as I had admitted. Awkward and embarrassing though it was for all concerned, the trial would have to proceed. A date would be set as soon as was feasible in the New Year.

  Christmas Eve came. I heard the ringing of the kirk bell and opened the study window. Soon the carols from the watchnight service drifted through the dark to me. I closed the window and shut them out. I spent Christmas Day writing, sleeping, writing. Nobody came near me, and I did not venture forth. I waited in a kind of vague anticipation for the doorbell to ring. I was hoping for him, of course. But he did not come.

  The old year rolled over and died and became the new one. No tall dark stranger first-footed me. Nobody came at all. I remembered that first run through Keldo Woods, seeing the Stone, the start of everything. A whole year gone by. It was months since I had been out there, since before my fall into the Black Jaws. On the fourth day of January, a Sunday, I resolved to go again.

  I went to the garage and got into the car, which I’d not used for weeks. The tyres looked half-deflated, and when I turned the key in the ignition nothing happened for a second. Then something caught, and the engine coughed into a kind of life. The battery was clearly run down. When I took my foot off the accelerator the engine threatened to die. I set off cautiously, playing the accelerator against the clutch until the car sounded a little healthier, and headed down the coast road. It was a grey, miserable afternoon. A smirr of rain hung like a veil: a two o’clock gloom that would soon slide into darkness. The road was empty of traffic.

  The Moffats’ house was on the road a short distance before the Keldo Woods car park, and when I reached that point something made me turn in. I felt bad about John and Elsie. I felt bad about the girls. I couldn’t make amends but maybe I could say I was sorry and wish them well.

  It was John who came to the back door. He had a bottle of beer in his hand. The smile on his face froze when he saw me, then vanished. I thought he might take a swing at me. He stood with his free fist clenching and unclenching.

  ‘You’ve got a fucking nerve,’ he said.

  ‘I came to apologise,’ I said. ‘And to wish you a happy New Year.’

  ‘You can fuck off is what you can do,’ he said. He slammed the door shut. I heard the key turn in the lock.

  I stood there in the drizzle, which was coming on heavier by the minute. I could neither stay nor go away. What had I expected? Then I heard raised voices inside: John and Elsie arguing. She would have asked him who was at the door. He would have told her.

  I went back to the car, got in, sat for a minute. Nobody came out. I started the engine, swung the car round ready to leave. Then the back door of the house opened and John was standing roaring at me. ‘FUCK OFF! OR I’LL GET THE FUCKING POLICE!’

  I drove on the few hundred yards to the entrance to the woods, parked and started to walk.

  It was darker among the trees, and the ground was soggy. I had put on my new boots, and they were stiff and unyielding, and my limp slowed me down still further. Getting to where the Stone was seemed to take far longer than I remembered. But it was still there. I saw it in the half-light, with its rounded top like a shoulder hunched against the rain. I was about to step off the path and make my way across the grassy tummocks when I saw a movement, a figure beside the Stone.

  I called out, ‘Hello!’ The figure stepped away, retreating into the trees beyond. It was him, I knew it was him. I shouted on him to wait. My feet slipped on the grass and sank into water-logged divots as I went after him. I reached the Stone. Nobody. I screamed at him, ‘Why won’t you wait? Speak to me. What is it you want from me?’ I pushed on a few more yards, but I would never catch him, and in his black clothes he was almost invisible. I turned back to the Stone, thought I caught a flash of something or somebody back on the path, then nothing. He was teasing me again. I clung to the Stone and suddenly all my unspoken pain and anger and misery came pouring out of me. I went down on my knees. I didn’t care about the soaking ground. I howled and howled and howled. I beat my fists against the Stone until they were raw. There was no sympathy out there in the woods, no give, no mercy, no redemption. That was all I wanted, but there was none. Everything I had ever done had failed, had been a total waste. I’d had enough.

  I don’t know how long I was there, but it was quite dark when I got to my feet and found my way back to the path. I was drenched, and very cold. I tripped and stumbled back to the car park, falling several times. When I finally reached the car I was shivering so much I could hardly get the key in the ignition. Thankfully the battery had been charged enough earlier, and the engine started. I drove home and changed out of my wet things. I lit the fire in the study and stretched out on the carpet in front of it. I fell asleep.

  I woke to the sound of something tapping on glass. I thought it was the rain getting heavier, or a branch knocking against the window. But it persisted with a regularity that made me sit up and come fully awake. I went to the window. His face was pressed against the glass.

  I unlocked the window and pushed it up, but it would not open enough to admit him. ‘Go round to the back door,’ I said, and closed the window again. I feared that this was more of his teasing, that he wouldn’t be there. But he was, soaked to the skin, as wet and shivery as I had been earlier. I brought him into the kitchen, hugged him. I made him strip off his clothes and fetched him a towel so he could dry himself. His skin was white, and apart from his legs he was almost hairless. His feet were ordinary human feet. His body looked thin and weak as he towelled it but I knew it was immensely strong. I stuffed his wet boots – my old boots – with newspaper and placed them in front of the boiler next to mine, and I hung his clothes on the pulley. I found him a set of my own clothes – black, because I thought he would prefer them black – and he put them on. I made him a mug of tea, and he sat at the table and drank it. I was anxious for hi
m, but also I was happy that at last he had come, and that I could do these things for him.

  I said, ‘Why did you run from me in the woods? Why didn’t you wait at the Stone for me?’

  ‘Someone was coming,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t safe.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve stayed away?’ I said. ‘Because of other people?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’ve been watching you. But we’re safe now.’

  I didn’t say anything else. There was no need, there was nothing to say.

  Later, we drank whisky in front of the fire in the study. He looked over my books, plucking one from the shelves now and then, replacing it. He took down The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk.

  ‘I remember this,’ he said. ‘I sent it to your father during the war.’

  ‘You sent it to him?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We used to run into each other on walking trips in the thirties.’

  ‘In the Trossachs,’ I said. ‘Around Aberfoyle.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘You know he did,’ I said. ‘But he didn’t tell me he’d met the Devil.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘He said you were foolish,’ I said. ‘Or at least, he said it was a foolish man who sent him the book.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, he thought the world was full of fools.’

  He opened the front cover. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I wrote something. Here are my initials.’

  I took the book from him. To remind you of better days and other worlds, I read. ‘Your initials are my initials.’

  ‘Yes. A coincidence, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  He smiled and said nothing.

  ‘What do they stand for in your case?’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I have many names,’ he said. ‘But in this instance the letters stand for Gil Martin. The “G”,’ he added, ‘as in Gideon, or God.’

  ‘Gil Martin,’ I said.*

  ‘In Gaelic it means a fox,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you give the book to my father?’ I asked.

  ‘For the reason I wrote down. To remind him of better days and other worlds. He was in the middle of a terrible war. We’d had good times in the Trossachs.’

  ‘What about us?’ I said. ‘When will we go away?’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘In a few weeks. I have things to attend to.’

  I picked up the whisky bottle and made to refill his glass, but he put his hand over it.

  ‘Not for me,’ he said, ‘I must be going.’

  I was shocked. ‘You’re not staying?’

  ‘I can’t. Too much to do.’ It sounded horribly familiar, the same excuse, the same phrases, that I used when I wanted to be on my own. He saw my disappointment. ‘But I did want to see you. I’ve looked in before, from the garden, I’ve watched Menteith and Cathcart and the others, but I wanted to come in and spend some time with you. You’ve looked pretty lonely, of late, sitting in here on your own.’

  ‘I like this room,’ I said. ‘I’ll be sorry to leave it.’

  ‘It’s just a room,’ he said. ‘One minister’s study’s much like another, if you ask me. I didn’t mean just this room, though. You’ve been lonely a long time.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘You always had choices,’ he said.

  I asked him to stay, but he refused. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but you must. You have to finish your masterpiece.’ He smiled, disarming that last word of the slightly sarcastic tone in which he’d said it. ‘When you’re done, then we’ll meet again. But in the meantime, remember this evening. I am with you in spirit, if not in person. I’ll always be with you, Gideon.’

  We went back to the kitchen. He took the balls of newspaper from his boots, which were, however, still wet. I would have given him my new ones, but they were just as bad. I told him to keep the clothes he had on. He saw his old trainers by the door and he pointed at them and laughed.

  ‘To remind you of other worlds,’ he said. ‘And better days to come.’

  We hugged again, and before he stepped out into the rain I reminded him of his promise to meet on Ben Alder. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have an adventure, you and I. An awfully big adventure.’

  Then he was gone. I went back to the study and put more coal on the fire. There was a fire burning in me too – a dry, smokeless, crackling fire of anticipation and desire. I filled up my glass with whisky. I picked up the Robert Kirk book and sat turning its pages, not really reading them. I was cheered by his visit, saddened at his departure. But I had not much more to write, and then we would be together again.

  And now I am almost finished, and the time has come. Better days and other worlds are waiting. I long for them. The fire burns in me still, fiercer and brighter. Nec tamen consumebatur. Tomorrow I leave Monimaskit, never to return. All that remains is for me to take these pages with me, read through them and correct them one last time, then leave them for posterity. They contain nothing but the true history of my life, and I am confident that at some future time, by means unknown to me, the truth will make its way to the surface of this troubled world and be recognised for what it is by those who have eyes to see.

  There is a deep satisfaction in having reached this point. Nothing matters any more except that I have reached it. I feel young and I feel old. I feel as though I am standing on the edge of eternity.

  END OF THE TESTAMENT

  Epilogue

  What can this work be? Can it be anything other than the ramblings of a mind terminally damaged by a cheerless upbringing, an unfulfilled marriage, unrequited love, religious confusion and the stress and injury of a near-fatal accident? Who would dare, in this day and age, to suggest that Gideon Mack was, as he maintained to the end, telling the truth?

  It was in order to find answers to these questions that I, Patrick Walker, asked Harry Caithness to go to Monimaskit in January of this year, 2005. Ostensibly my decision whether or not to proceed to publication would depend on what he discovered. In fact, I was already committed to publish, and only the threat of serious legal action (which I considered remote) would have made me reconsider. But in the interim I wanted Harry to talk to those who had known Gideon Mack, and to find out their opinions of him. Having both read the manuscript, between us we made out a list of the people he should try to interview. We agreed that, although mention of the manuscript’s existence had been made in the press, and there had been some speculation as to what it might contain, it would be better not to disclose to the interviewees that we had a copy of it. However, it might be necessary for Harry to refer to things in the manuscript in the course of his investigations. If anybody asked him where he had acquired his facts, he would use the old defence of ‘protection of sources’ and, as a fallback, say that he’d had access to documents in the police files in Inverness.

  Harry spent three days in and around Monimaskit, and the following, which speaks plainly enough for itself and which I therefore reproduce verbatim, is the report, in the form of a letter, that he sent me:

  Dear Patrick,

  I’m not sure if you’re going to think the information I’ve gathered is worth the cost (an invoice for fee and expenses, with receipts, is on its way) but here it is in any case.

  You told me that you have never been to Monimaskit, and neither had I until this week. You should probably go before you publish, if you publish. You should get a sense of the place. Maybe the museum would want to host a launch! You’d be guaranteed a turn-out, though what kind of mood the assembled masses would be in I’m not sure.

  Monimaskit is a typical small east coast Scottish town: a wee bit run down, a wee bit on the up, seen better days, seen worse days. It has the usual mix of High Street shops: Woolworths, Boots, Co-op, Oxfam, Cancer Research, newsagent, florist, baker, butcher, fishmonger, hairdressers, off-licence, chip shop, shoe shop, a building society, three estate agents, a couple of banks.
There are some nice-looking red sandstone villas, a neat wee council scheme and some bland new-build on the outskirts. The river Keldo flows through the town and gives it a certain grace. I drove in past the Old Kirk, a simple but handsome establishment, and the manse, which looked as though it was unoccupied. I made a mental note to have a look round there later. Then I went and found my hotel, the Keldo Arms, which wasn’t difficult, as it’s the only one.

  The hotel was almost empty, the ambience adequate but boring. The menu wouldn’t win any awards but suited my taste (everything with chips). The town itself was very quiet and seemed a bit sorry for itself, as if a majority of its inhabitants had drunk too much at New Year and were keeping their heads down till spring. It was probably a good time for me to be there. Back in October, when Mack’s body was found, the media attention was pretty intense, but the pack has long since moved on to other stories in other places. People, in my experience, often clam up when the circus is in town, but they’ll open up again to one old freelance like me wandering around, or most of them do. Anyway, I arrived on Thursday at dinner time, checked in, and then I got out the list of names we’d come up with and started knocking on doors and asking questions. Here is a summary of who I spoke to and what they said:

  Amelia Wishaw: I was lucky to catch Dr Wishaw at the health centre. She was about to go to Newcastle for a conference and was only in to pick up some paperwork. I persuaded her to give me five minutes before she headed off, but I didn’t get much out of her. A hard-boiled professional, she gave the impression that most of the rest of us are a lowlier species than the likes of her, and that she is never wrong. She absolutely refused to divulge any information from Gideon Mack’s medical records, saying they were confidential even though he was dead. That was fair enough, I said, but as his doctor she must have an opinion about his mental and physical health before his death. Yes, she said, but she still wasn’t at liberty to share it with a third party, let alone a journalist.