Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones

by Bobbie Darbyshire

  Till when, the bastards had him by the balls. He’d starve before they told him yes. Give them their way and the only venue he’d share with Calum was the Dead Poets’ Society, damn them and rot them all in hell.

  Henry

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother. It really is all right.’

  For yes, it really was. Miraculously, in the last three years of her life, she’d made the journey back to him. It was he who’d helped when Father died, that was what it boiled down to. Arranging the funeral and so on. And afterwards, sorting out, redecorating, showing her how to adjust the central heating. Just listening to her. Listening was never Peter’s forte, whereas Henry would happily have listened to her all day.

  She didn’t say much about much; her main topics were the garden and the books she was reading. He’d read them too, to keep her company, which was when he discovered he liked them. Historical novels, period romances, sagas of family life, that kind of thing. Books that Peter sneered at.

  ‘Take no notice, dear. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.’

  His mother’s ghost beamed across the empty compartment. If he wanted, he could reach and take her hand.

  He grinned at his bad habits. The brandy was coursing through his veins. There was nothing so dreadfully wrong with fantasy; it could be relied on like drink to see him through. And after all, it wasn’t only his mother he fantasised about – there were the sexy women too. Other blokes did that, didn’t they? Except that mostly he didn’t take his fantasies to bed with him. He didn’t like to sully them. He thought of them more as guardian angels, watching him muddle through the days, giving his existence some kind of point.

  That was how it started with Marjorie. It was his mother who first gave him one of Marjorie’s books, the year his father died. ‘Try this, Henry dear. It’s so sad and Scottish.’ It was in one of his mother’s tartan-upholstered wingbacks that he innocently turned the first page. It was in her spare room, in the small hours of the same night, that he reached the last page, weeping tears he hadn’t known he was still capable of: for his mother, for her namesake heroine Maggie McConn, for his lost childhood and his failed marriage, for the whole impossibility of being alive.

  He was almost weeping now, reliving how it felt to fall in love. Transcending his tears that night had come the power of the stranger whose words had unlocked them, a new ghost taking shape among the bedroom shadows. This one would be different; he knew it from the start. Her voice was real; he didn’t have to invent, only to listen.

  He wrenched the packet of crisps apart in triumph, showering the carriage with yellow-pink flakes. Apart from her voice, Marjorie Macpherson had been a fantasy, like his other fantasies, a way of stopping the empty future from crashing in. But now – he grinned about him at the foolish litter of crisps – now she was real beyond doubt. This evening at seven o’clock, she would be waiting for him. This time tomorrow, they would have met, spoken, begun the business of becoming acquainted, leaving the fantasies behind.

  And yes, of course, his mother was quite right. Peter knew nothing of Marjorie. Peter was on this train by accident, or else it was bloody well time he grew up.

  Elena

  Maldita sea! She could not sit still another moment. She sprang up and paced the carriage, as though by movement she could escape the thought of the warm, damp sheet in Brussels. She saw them as clearly as if she were standing in the room. Some French-speaking woman entwined with Mikhail on the bed, laughing and easy, then turning to mock her, dismissing her with a wave. ‘You were so angry with him, so difficult. Did you expect him to love you?’

  No, of course. How could it be different? She had learned her childhood lesson all too well: how to be locked outside, how never to find the way in. Alone in the space between the compartments, she stared through smeared glass at the shadowy English landscape flying past and let the tears gather in her eyes. Everywhere she ran, she was outside. Spain had rejected her, and she had rejected Spain, choosing self-exile as soon as she was grown, burying the hurt.

  But now, Marisa’s dying gift, the explanation was in her hands. The poison that had blighted her life. Her mother’s torment, suffered so young and felt so deeply, scratched onto tiny pages and buried for years at the back of the linen drawer.

  The evil was done, impossible to undo or mend. The time was past, and all the people. Except herself, born of a dishonoured family, robbed of light and joy, unable to love or be loved. And he, murderer, thief of honour, Oor-cooart, might he yet live and breathe!

  Chapter Four

  Henry

  It was five-fifteen. He hung back as Peter took his time slouching through Inverness Station and across the square that fronted it to ask directions of a cab driver, and at last, thank heaven, sauntered off into the dark.

  Henry’s paranoia had grown during the day as his brother failed to alight at York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth, or even – last-ditch hope – Aviemore. Edinburgh had been sheer hell. We apologise for the late arrival of this train. The connecting service to Inverness is being held for you at platform 16. Please join it immediately. He’d shadowed Peter, hoping to see him leave the station. Instead, for hair-raising minutes, typical Peter had gone and got himself lost, pussyfooting up and down the staircases of Waverley in search of platform 16. Henry’d had to bury his head in the FT as the fool doubled back past him. Time was pressing, they would miss the train. He’d had a job controlling the urge to shout, ‘It’s there, you blithering idiot, right in front of you!’

  When finally Peter found his way, there was the stress of having to hide from him in only two carriages. Henry waited until his brother was on, then scurried to safety like a mouse under a skirting-board. He was dripping with anxiety. He would have to change his shirt before he went to the library.

  Off they’d chugged, over the Forth Bridge and the Pass of Killiecrankie, up into the Highlands. All at once Edinburgh seemed southerly and civilized; there were still three-and-a-half hours of remote northern miles to cover. Henry’s heart had lifted at the vision of the clean Scottish air whipping itself into low-hanging clouds over moor and crag, like tethered duvets in the gloaming. Here in the station square, he took a deep breath of the same air, dark and cold. The sound of bagpipes nearby was making his skin tingle. He experienced a moment of naïve bliss.

  The Royal Highland Hotel spilled light from an inner corner of the square. Ten paces and his feet were sinking in deep-pile tartan carpet.

  ‘Good evening, sir.’ A neat young man was smiling warmly, handing him a key with a heavy fob and taking his order for a roast-beef sandwich in his room. He was climbing the sumptuous art nouveau staircase and strolling along a corridor hung with amateur oil paintings of stags and mountains. His problems were lessening with every step.

  Why hello, Peter. What a small world, eh? I’m up here seeing a client. How about you?

  Well, good evening, Marjorie. I’m Henry Jennings.

  He slid key into lock and opened the door on a quiet, comfortable room. Everything would go well. There was nothing to fear. Scotland was working her reliable magic.

  Elena

  The station clock showed five-twenty. With speed and courtesy, the man in the reservations office had telephoned a guesthouse and given her a map. She wheeled her suitcase fast past the taxis, for she had jumped from the train like a liberated cat and the map showed that Ness Bank was no distance.

  Turning left outside the station, she crossed over and entered a paved shopping area. Beneath a lamp a solitary piper was playing to a small crowd, and she lingered a few minutes to listen. His face was sad, he looked at no one, the wail of his instrument seemed to pain him. She started down the almost empty high street. Here was the usual European mix of old and new – the bright lights of Marks & Spencer and McDonalds side by side with antiquated shopfronts in gnarled stone. Yet the place felt singular, different from English cities. Granite grey and solid. Sincere and dependable. Was this how its citizens would seem also, she wondered. Was this how her gra
ndfather had been fooled?

  Trust me, Carlos. I will bring the guns.

  ‘Oor-coo-art.’ Elena spoke the name aloud, determined to keep the flame of her anger bright. Though it burned still, it had exhausted her. She had raged so much; she needed sleep.

  She needed warmth also; the air was sharp with cold. But no, where was her coat? Still on the train? She turned to run back, then remembered. The hotel room in London; she had hung it in the cupboard. How stupid to leave it there! Rushing to catch the train, the taxi waiting, thinking only of el malo.

  No importa. Already she had found this River Ness, where the city seemed to end. Through the darkness across the road-bridge, she saw houses, not shops; to her right, beyond the twinkling curves of a pedestrian suspension bridge, a mass of hills. How small it seemed, this ‘capital of the Scottish Highlands’, presiding over territories, glimpsed from the train, as vast and wild as her native Sierra.

  She turned left. Fatigue was hitting like a drug. Her feet moved as in a dream, carrying her along the riverbank. She liked this Ness river; it had a soothing voice. Wide and shallow, fast-flowing over pebbles, the current made a continuous chatter of water on stones. The surface glittered with little backward-pointing waves.

  She passed some rapids. White water, a natural weir, a louder, more insistent sound. There was no wind. The frosty air weighed on her shoulders like a quilt. Though she was cold, she wanted to lie down, here under these leafless trees on this gentle grass slope, and let the water sing her to sleep. Pushing herself on, she heard the cry of a roosting gull, taken up by another and then another. Sleep. Sleep.

  At last, the guesthouse. She stumbled up the path and rang the bell, scarcely awake. The door opened. She nodded dumbly at the proprietor, signed her name in his book, took the key from his hand, found her room, closed the door behind her, let go the handle of the suitcase and fell onto the bed.

  Peter

  Five thirty-five.

  ‘FU? That will be Fiona, but I’m afeart she’s away just now. Could you be coming again at seven? She’ll be here for you then. The library’s late opening tonight.’

  A shrivelled, wee besom-rider dishing out her singsong Highland helpfulness, and little to suggest foul play in this Doric-outside-playschool-inside library, dumped between windblown bus-station and multi-storey carpark. And yes, why not go back at seven, for wasn’t his stomach clamouring to be plied with victuals more substantial than a KitKat?

  Cash crisis looming, HOMELESS GENIUS SEEKS BED, but food, food! stomach insisting. Recce bus-station, push open waiting-room door, where yes, a bench of sorts. Later, head down on rucksack, dry and high, it would have to do.

  Must take a leak. Ladies to the left of bus-station, Gents to the right. Ladies cleaner every time and graffiti more lyrical, though nothing here but ‘Sandy loves me’. My arse, come on, girls, try harder.

  Out again and ducking across Academy Street looking for some cheap caff. Zilch in this lane, only launderette spewing drifts of biologically-active steam. Double back and head past station, trying not to imagine nosh, while ‘feed me! feed me!’ stomach yelling and saliva spurting from tongue. Dear fuck, the need to eat! And oh boy, just in time, the Deep Pan Pizza Company rearing in horrid orange glow, reeking of hot bread.

  Inside crammed, humid with sweat, décor yellow and maroon, plastic ferns and shocking-pink helium balloons floating above gobsmacked small children, plus deafening rendition of It’s raining men.

  ‘And how are we today?’ Serving wench shrieking in his ear.

  ‘We’re starving, dearie. Make it a Margarita and a Coke, and quick!’

  Food food food, and yes it would come. But now, oh bollocks and holy shite, snow kicking in outside, vicious gusts hurling it against special offers on windowpane, while out there in the weeld Heeland neet, beyond the inestimable FU, a barbaric neet on a bus-station bench lay in his stars.

  Chapter Five

  Elena

  ‘Help! Help me, Elena!’

  She dreamed of narrow streets of white stone, fiercely lit by a high sun, yet cold like winter. Her mother’s screech came from somewhere ahead. She must find her. She must save her. She was running, side by side and hand in hand with Aunt Marisa and pulling a small suitcase.

  ‘Dear God, help me! Marisa!’

  At the sound of her name, her aunt pulled back. ‘Stop. Come away, Elena. We are too late.’

  Death was blazing down out of the harsh white sky. Elena clutched her aunt’s hand, but it melted through her fingers. Flesh transparent as a ghost’s, the incandescent dust of the street shining through her body, Marisa was dissolving, falling away. ‘I must sleep.’

  ‘Oh help me, someone, please help!’ Her mother’s anguished plea.

  ‘Don’t sleep, Aunt! Wake! Speak! You must show me the way!’

  For a moment her aunt’s eyes focused. She lifted and pointed a finger. Fragile, blue-veined, the pulse as terrible as in a fledgling fallen from the nest. ‘That way. But no, don’t go. You are much too late.’

  ‘Marisa! Papa! Don’t leave me!’

  Such desolation in that cry. Elena spun around, desperate to find her mother. When she looked again, her aunt had gone, vanished into the white stones like holy water. Elena put out a hand to touch and stalled in shock. The stones were warm and damp.

  ‘Too late,’ they said.

  ‘No! It mustn’t be!’ She was running again through the choking streets, forcing her limbs to keep moving, though death poured its weight on her shoulders and the stones clutched at her feet. She ran the way her aunt had pointed, following her mother’s voice, wordless like the sigh of a roosting gull, a mere squeeze-box lament. And still the street twisted and hurled steps and corners in her path and would not let her see.

  And then she was out, where she could not bear to be. Out into the village square, where there was something she could not bear to see. The glare hurt her eyes. An acre of white stone under the harsh white sky. A child, ragged and barefoot, weeping by the well.

  There was blood on the stones of the square.

  She tried to close her eyes, to turn away, but she could not. The child at the well lifted her head, uttered a dreadful wail and held up her arms to be comforted.

  She did not want to, but she went. Across the bloody stones. Towards the child who was her mother. Towards the well.

  Too late. No! She started upright on the guesthouse bed, staring in terror from carpet to washbasin to flowered wallpaper.

  Nothing here. All done and lost. She moaned aloud.

  Her watch showed six-thirty! What was she doing, wasting time in sleep? The library was marked on this map the man at the station had given her. She must go straight there, where her enemy would come tonight, if he still lived. He was old, close to death. She kept his heart beating by the strength of her will. She must find him before death did.

  Henry

  The spray of heather, ‘Springwood White’, picked fresh from the front rockery that morning, looked pleased to be in the Highlands. He slid the stem into his buttonhole and grinned into the mirror, determined to see a romantic hero. He saw a middle-aged man rigid with adolescent nerves.

  Through the window he noticed it had begun to snow, but with his Barbour jacket and padded cap he was equal to all weathers. ‘Proper little boy scout,’ Peter always mocked, though Henry couldn’t for the life of him see why. Where was the virtue in being ill-prepared?

  Damn it, he must stop brooding about Peter. His brother’s jibes weren’t worth being hurt by. He wouldn’t have him on his mind if it weren’t for all this ducking and diving. It was Marjorie he should think of – he was on his way to meet Marjorie.

  The library was nearby, the map on the flier showed how close, round the block from the station. It was six forty-five.

  ‘Time to go, dear,’ said his mother.

  He took one last look in the mirror, swallowed the tremor of fear and made himself set off.

  In the corridor, Scotland did her best to bolster hi
s confidence. The soft eyes of a stag in the painting opposite his door confirmed the worth of humility in an arrogant world. The subdued light revealed the familiar green and gold covers of Marjorie’s novels in a glass-fronted bookcase. And then he was descending the delightful staircase, gliding over the brass stair-rods as smoothly as the leading man in a Busby Berkeley musical.

  Yes, he was almost dancing as he crossed the well-upholstered lobby and pushed out through the heavy doors. ‘Enjoy your evening, sir.’ The young man in reception knew how to make a chap feel good.

  He stepped into a blizzard. The snow was settling thickly on roofs and ledges, and on the headdress and shoulders of the kilted stone soldier who guarded the front of the station square. Battling the wind and his nerves, Henry turned right, crossed the first junction, and pressed on past a looming mass of church.

  The street was silent, preternaturally white, and deserted except for a hurrying figure ahead. A youngish woman in a smart black suit, without coat or hat or umbrella, almost running through the torrent of flakes, her sharp footprints fading to pearl, to white, to nothing. She turned right and disappeared.

  Henry’s pace slowed as he approached the corner. Margaret Street. His mother’s name. This street contained the library, Marjorie Macpherson, his future. In two more paces, there he would be, a man at the crossroads.

  ‘You’ll be fine, dear,’ said his mother.

  He was there. He turned and looked. There was nothing to see but whirling white, and the hunkered shape of the woman, scurrying ahead. Henry’s face was cold; the flakes were beginning to stick, establishing colonies on his brows and lashes. He pulled his cap down hard and started along Margaret Street.

  The wind doubled its force. It snatched his breath, tugged at his ears and bombarded his eyes with stinging missiles. He could scarcely see beyond his feet. He had a sense of narrowness opening out among what might be bus shelters. Then a glimpse of phone-boxes and a parked coach, before, through a gap in the storm like the lifting of a proscenium curtain, a row of bright, tall windows, ladders of yellow light, a startling array of Doric columns, a frieze of stone wreaths and two wonderful, terrifying words. PUBLIC LIBRARY.