‘Will he be okay?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the librarian. ‘He needs to be by himself.’
Elena felt unreal, as though someone else were having this conversation. For days she had been silent, confiding in no one, and then she had been travelling.
Mikhail. She had wanted to speak to Mikhail. Or simply to be held by him.
‘The poor man,’ the librarian was saying. ‘But there’s nothing we can do, I think. We only make it worse by knowing.’
Her steady eyes held Elena’s. The man’s mistake was humorous, but his suffering was not. Elena decided that she liked this woman.
She remembered the paper in her hand. ‘Urquhart.’ The name was sharp as steel in her mouth. ‘The man who signs this poem.’
The librarian shook her head and looked away.
‘But please. I have to find him.’
‘He’s a very private man.’
‘You know him, then?’
The librarian met her eyes reluctantly. ‘Well yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I know him very well in fact. He’s my father.’
Peter
Plenty of Urquharts in the phonebook, but nary a one with initial A. No option left but trust in sweet FU, who wasn’t here, only the geese and two ganders, all of a flutter from the blackout. Plus their gooseboy, a limp-wristed wanker with no hair, settling the flutters and recapping on some erstwhile spout about motivation and big scenes, before launching a goosey brainstorm. ‘Choose three objects. Anything you like. But careful, these will be clues or plot connections.’ Then turning, all gay smiles, to Peter skulking by the door. ‘Do feel free to join us.’
Desperate for more male members? Whoops, no thanks mate. Must skedaddle after fair Fi and Calum.
First, yank Jiffybag from rucksack. Need her note. Want to present her note, not poem. Hold tight to poem till her game was clear. Take one last look at miraculous manuscript, touch Calum’s signature for luck.
Pages muddled.
No, where was it? Fuck! where was it?
Shit and double-shit! Searing vision of page face down on hot glass, left in the machine!
Grab everything and outta here, galloping along corridor again, bang right and –
Curses! four accusing female eyes, Fiona and the Spanish dame, and worse, the lost, last page of lost, last work of Calum, tight in Fiona’s mitt.
‘Peter Jennings?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Fiona Urquhart – ’
‘Yes, I know. Daftest thing. Been looking for you everywhere, and here you are.’
‘May I have the rest of it, please?’
‘I was just coming for that. Left it in the photocopier, don’t know how. No damage, eh?’
Her outstretched palm as flat and unforgiving as Loch Ness. ‘The rest of it. Please.’
‘And then you’ll take me to meet Calum?’
Bulls-eye. Her face amazed. ‘Calum?’
‘Yes. The man who wrote this poem. You’ll take me to him?’
Mouth open. Blinking. Speaking. ‘Yes.’
Yes! The word was yes! Calum alive! Her palm still up and empty.
‘But his name is Urquhart, no?’ Spanish dame cutting in, eyes aglow, fretful as a prima donna. ‘I also, please. I need to meet him.’
‘Why?’ He and FU the opera chorus.
‘He is a hero, no? The SAS? In France? In World War Two?’
Fiona frowning, nodding, yes. Amazing, who would credit it? Good old Calum in the SAS.
‘Permit me to explain. My name is Elena Martínez. I am researching for a book on war heroes like your father.’
Her father? Calum’s daughter? Quantum leap from flesh and blood.
‘But a different kind of book. I want to meet them, to hear their memories.’ Señorita droning on.
Take good look at Calum’s daughter. No more than thirty-five. Calum twentyish in nineteen-thirties, eighty going on ninetyish now. Long in the tooth when he sired this one.
‘. . . how heroism feel to them. Not battlefields and glory, but close up, inside the head.’
Far far colder. That is how it was. Echo of Calum’s poem. Keep shtum, keep listening, with twenty-two of twenty-three pages still in rucksack, and Fiona’s empty palm forgetful by her side.
Henry
He struggled like a leaf above a storm drain. He was lost beyond imagining, drowning in the laughter of his vanishing ghosts. His idiocy seared his mind in flashes. Marjorie a man. A man reading his love-letters. Smiling. Slipping a flier into a dark-pink envelope. The images made him yelp and hop, trying to escape, trying to make them not be true. His mother, he needed her comfort, her arms. Please, Mother. But her smile shimmered out of reach. Cool, aloof, as mocking as Marjorie Macpherson, she refused even to look at him.
His mother was dead.
The thought concussed him. He dropped like a shot deer. Marjorie was gone. His mother was gone. Loneliness was spreading through his veins. Silence bombarded his ears and he could scarcely see. He hugged his knees and held on grimly, down the drain and into the darkness.
Time passed, and the storm. He wasn’t a leaf, or a shot deer, or a lost soul. He was a middle-aged financial adviser cowering with eyes tight shut in Palaeontology. He would have to prise his eyelids open, straighten creaking knees, brush himself down and make some kind of exit from this hellhole.
His eyes stayed shut. The flashes began to return. Marjorie a man. Oh Christ, he couldn’t bear it. He fought off the thoughts with images of the Royal Highland Hotel, the staircase, the tartan carpet, the soft, sad face of the stag in the painting –
No, even Scotland mocked him.
Guildford then? His house.
Where a romantic hero leered from the hall mirror.
His garden.
Where ‘Springwood White’ smirked in the front rockery.
The pub, of course, the pub. A double brandy, Henry? Coming right up. Cracking bit o’ stuff you’ve got –
Oh God, was there nowhere to hide?
Bump, thud. The breathy sound of a microphone. Henry opened his eyes and read the nearest book-spine. Rocks from lost civilisations. An immense, aching sadness reached from his chest, up through his throat, and insinuated its fingers into his nose and eyes.
‘May I have your attention, please.’ The librarian’s brisk voice came through the tannoy. ‘The weather’s so bad, there’s a risk we may be snowed in. I have to close the library.’
Henry looked at his watch. It said five past eight.
‘I’m so sorry to inconvenience you. I hope you get home safely.’
Bump, thud, click. The announcement was over.
Chapter Eleven
Peter
Watch geese flock around FU honking, ‘Such a pity, such a pity.’ She and camp gooseboy soothing and persuading, edging them through gate to exit. Some refusing the snow, waddling back through entrance door, beaks outstretched and feathers ruffled. ‘Fiona, Mr McCoy, the storm is done.’ ‘Mayn’t we stay?’ ‘Mayn’t we finish the workshop?’
Gooseboy smiling, nodding gamely, murmuring solutions, steering them patiently out through gate again.
Feathers ruffled here too, though not a fucking goose, an eagle. Rucksack in talons, eyes locked on paper still in FU’s hand, then meeting her disturbing gaze.
‘Tomorrow, Peter.’
‘What? Tomorrow, what?’ He must be sure.
‘I’ll bring you to my father tomorrow.’
Such eyes, what else to do but trust them? And yet, ‘Why not tonight?’
‘Snowploughs take time. Come morning, I’ll ring my brothers to check we can get through.’
‘Your brothers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your father’s sons?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Four.’ Calm answers blowing him away.
‘And where? How far?’
‘The hotel at Loch Craggan. Thirty miles west of here.’
‘Please, you permit me,’ Spanish fly-in-ointment
buzzing in, ‘you allow me to come there also.’
‘No.’ Too right. Fuck it. Three a multitude. ‘I’m sorry, but it simply isn’t – ’
‘But please, Miss Urquhart, I am begging you.’
Fiona shaking head.
‘I come here especially from Brussels.’ Spanish histrionics. Don’t weaken. Tell her no. ‘What your father does. So much courage. To save so many men.’
FU reluctant, barely smiling.
‘I need little time only. Little, little. Only what your father wish to tell. If he say no, okay, you send me away, yes?’
Fuck it, fuck it, no.
‘Oh dear. All right. Tomorrow morning then.’
‘Thank you, Miss Urquhart. You have much kindness. Where am I meeting you?’ Fucking Spanish bull-at-a-gate crasher.
Fiona vexed, voice clipped. ‘Back here, at ten. My car’s outside, but I’m walking home – the snow’s too deep to drive.’ Rounding on him. ‘So please, Peter.’ Eyes on rucksack, palm afloat. ‘Give me the poem. For safe keeping until tomorrow.’
Talons tightening in panic, almost a squawk escaping. Without poem, all might vanish – FU, Loch Craggan, brothers, Calum Calum – vanish in the snowdrifts, not a trace, no proof at all. Starting awake, icicle on nose, alone and empty-handed in a bus-shelter.
Wham! The answer. Keep the poem, lose the Spanish fly. ‘Of course, you’re right. But first, I wonder.’ Flash blue eyes at fine Fiona, dish up abject grin. ‘Nowhere to stay. Completely skint. Mortgaged my soul to get here. Is there a hostel, do you know?’
Bingo! Straight in! FINE SCOTS LASSIE SAVES THE DAY. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise. And all my doing, how remiss of me. Please, you must be my guest.’
Henry
Hat pulled hard over eyes, collar up round ears, Henry was heading for the door. He wanted no more than to be out of this nightmare, barricaded safely in his hotel room with a bottle of brandy, a large tumbler and only four walls to witness his tortured descent into oblivion. He hovered by the last shelf – Sport and Travel – seeking an opportune moment to dash for the exit.
The crowd of elderly ladies was thinning and with it his cover. The little librarian would surely be last out, but Peter and the foreign woman were circling her like predatory birds, showing no sign of leaving.
Peter’s presence was unfathomable. Bizarre coincidence, nothing to do with Marjorie it seemed. Some business with that piece of paper. The librarian still had it. Peter’s eyes were fixed on it.
The minutes were ticking by. Peter’s fixation was the only cover Henry was going to get. Head down, he scuttled across and made it through the gate.
The librarian saw him. He glanced sideways as he went and met her eyes. She didn’t betray him by a flicker. He was out.
But still not free. Against a startling backdrop of moonlit snow, the elderly ladies were thronging round the bald man with the large nose. Henry ducked behind a pillar.
‘Mr McCoy. Mr McCoy.’
Michael McCoy. The name the librarian had spoken. Henry closed his eyes as the awfulness seized him like the whirling pits of drunkenness. On the other side of this sham-Doric column was the person whose prose had captivated him; who had read his bared soul, seen his foolish grin through the lens of Trevor’s Pentax, then summoned him here to receive an answer that needed no words. A bald man with a large nose whose name was Michael McCoy.
Were you wanting to join us? He shuddered, remembering the words. Cruelty he might have expected. Scorn, or anger even. But no. As Marjorie would have done, this man had lifted his head and smiled. Were you wanting to join us?
Damn it, this man was Marjorie. Marjorie didn’t exist. Another tidal wave of loss threatened to break over his head.
He must hold on. He mustn’t go under until he was back at base. Reality check. His forehead was numb from the frosted stone. The women’s voices were receding, sounding happier. He stepped clear of the pillar and saw them moving away, clustered around Michael McCoy, trampling a path with the soles of their stout boots.
The snow had stopped falling. It lay in deep drifts, reflecting the streetlights and a high, racing moon. Henry set out after the group, glancing back in fear of seeing Peter. The mocking ladders of yellow light all at once went out. There was no time to lose and nowhere to hide. Nothing to do but press on, staring in anguish at the unprotected pate of the stranger who had enticed him here and now was leading him away.
Elena
‘Fine. All gone. I can lock up.’
The librarian pulled keys from a drawer. Her manner was cool, her eyes refused to meet Elena’s. She did not wish her to accompany them tomorrow.
Urquhart’s daughter. Elena must give meaning to her stares. She pointed towards the lending shelves. ‘Should we check? The man who – ’
‘It’s all right, he’s gone. I saw him leave. But what about you, Señorita Martínez? Do you have far to go?’
The librarian was buttoning a sheepskin coat and stepping into fur boots. The young man had a ribbed sweater under his denim jacket. Elena glanced down at her black suit. ‘Not far. Ness Bank.’
‘But you’ll be frozen. I’ve a blanket in the car. Please, you must borrow it.’
Falsely generous like her father, her courtesy abhorrent, yet a blanket was impossible to resist. ‘Thank you, Miss Urquhart.’
The librarian offered her hand. ‘Now that you’re coming, do please call me Fiona.’
Elena accepted the hand. She must control her feelings, must give the appearance of trust. ‘Thank you, Fiona,’ she repeated. ‘So, also, you will call me Elena?’
Trust. Trust me, Carlos. Remembered in blood on the stones of the village square. Again it was happening, Carlos’s granddaughter and Urquhart’s daughter, stepping out into another bright, white square. But this time, she the traitor.
‘I was going to doss in the bus station.’
She had almost forgotten the young man; his words made her jump. He seemed as mesmerised as she was by the librarian. His eyes, ever a mirror for Elena’s moods, were fixed on Fiona Urquhart’s small, gloved hands, which were scraping snow from the roof and door of a Deux Chevaux. The roof was yellow for cowardice, the door red for blood. Fiona had it open and was reaching inside.
The blanket was tartan. Green and buff with stripes of darker brown and large squares of thin red. Fiona shook it, folded it corner to corner, then reached to drape it around Elena’s shoulders and put the fringed edge into her fingers. ‘I hope this will be enough to keep you warm.’
Elena could not speak. Urquhart’s tartan, light on her shoulders, pressed dark and heavy on her soul. She clasped it to her breast and nodded dumbly.
Fiona pointed. ‘The book group have beaten us a path.’
The young man snorted. ‘Not completely useless then.’
They set off along the trail of compacted snow, Elena following behind, clutching the blanket round her, blinking at the cold. At the end of the street, the beaten path veered left towards the station.
‘We go ahead here, Elena. Your way looks clear.’ Fiona lifted her feet and ploughed into a virgin drift. ‘And ours is no distance, Peter. Down this lane and over the footbridge.’
‘Please. Call me Mr Jennings. Only jesting, Fi, I’m with you all the way.’
‘So,’ Fiona turned and smiled, ‘buenas noches, Elena. Hasta mañana.’
‘Si. Buenas noches.’
She watched them go, small and tall against the snow. Urquhart’s daughter and the young man with blue eyes like mirrors. Cheerful, impregnable, a pair of lovers in the making, while she remained alone. The empty street was as desolate as the one in her dream.
She found her mobile and pressed redial.
‘Thank you for calling. Mikhail Kilvanev is not – ’
She cut off his voice, blinked back the tears. She concentrated with all her strength on Angus Urquhart. Hasta mañana. Face to face with him, everything would change. Poet, hero, and evil traitor! She, ushered in by his daughter, introduced as admi
ring biographer. And then . . .
Elena shivered. Her teeth chattered and her feet shrank from the snow. Was this only cold that she was feeling? Too terrible suddenly it seemed, to denounce a frail, old man. The smooth surface of another’s life impossible to challenge. The habit bred in her that she was the outcast.
Not so! An end to self-pity and disgrace! To the stain that stunted her life! It was Urquhart, not she, who was the sham. Urquhart who hoodwinked the angels to be given sons and a daughter, adulation as a hero and a peaceful old age. While Carlos, his betrayed friend, was flung into hell. Honour lost, life cut short, daughters and granddaughter left fatherless, cursed and shunned.
‘Maldita sea! I will shame you!’ cried Elena at the moon.
She pulled the hateful blanket tight, wriggled her frozen toes and picked up speed towards the station.
Chapter Twelve
Henry
‘Hell and damnation!’
He paced the outer lobby of the Royal Highland Hotel and cursed aloud. He wasn’t sure he could take much more of this. Beyond the etched glass, the tartan-carpeted, wrought-iron-and-gold-fronded staircase swept gracefully aloft. The glowing tulip-shades of the chandeliers beckoned. The receptionist came and went, smiling and nodding, bearing his clinking tray of wine and whisky. But Henry could not bring himself to step inside.
For Michael McCoy was there.
Complete with his gang of hangers on, dangling his piece of string and shuffling his pack of cards, throwing back the booze and soaking up the fickle receptionist’s soothing courtesies. Michael blasted McCoy.
Henry retreated impotent and seething into the station square. Anger helped, but it wouldn’t last. Only alcohol was going to douse this surreal pain. A pub, damn and blast it. He would have to find a bally pub.
Best keep a weather eye open for Peter. He shot a glance back towards the library. No sign of the pest, but here came the foreign woman, teetering in her silly shoes, shrunk inside a blanket like a gypsy.
He retreated into the shadows, bracing himself for a new seizure of mortification. With relief, he found it didn’t come. To see this stranger bedraggled in the snow was oddly consoling. Not an hour ago he’d invested her with infinite capacity to cure his ills. Her failure to do so had been a cruel blow. But her power to injure him was gone, and his torment eased. She wasn’t Marjorie Macpherson, but that was scarcely her fault. And she’d laughed. Okay, she’d laughed. Henry shrank several sizes in his skin to avoid a replay of the awful moment. But she wasn’t laughing now; she looked damned sorry for herself. Come to think of it, she looked as much in need of a drink as he was.
Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones Page 7