Elena met his eyes and – yes, he understood her urgency. They said no more. The three of them raced along the passage. The door was opening into a room full of chairs and sofas and Urquharts. The dogs ran to greet the children, barking with excitement, then found bowls of food and began greedily to eat.
And there stood el malo, in silhouette against a blazing fire. She had him; he could not escape. She stepped back, behind Henry. She closed the door and leaned against it. Her haste was gone, replaced by readiness.
‘Here they are. For shame, what kept ye? Can ye not keep up with an old man?’
One of the brothers, the younger one with short hair like copper wire, answered. ‘For shame yourself, Father. You know no one can beat you up or down the hill. I believe you practise at night to tease us.’
The old man laughed. ‘Aye, Gavin. Maybe I do.’
The room was hot and dry. Elena began to shed the yellow anorak and the sheepskin coat beneath. Her shirt was unbuttoned, reminding her of Peter. She looked for him, wanting to consult the mirror of his eyes.
He was close by, standing, his shoulders to the panelled wall. Briefly his eyes burned, in memory of their kisses. But then they returned to Urquhart. Peter was changed, yes, as she was. Intent, curious, focused. More handsome without his anger.
‘Come in, Elena. Sit near the fire.’ Janet Urquhart rose from beside her giant husband. ‘We’ve been anxious about you.’
‘Thank you, but I am better.’
‘You’re right, the fresh air has done you good,’ Owen declared. ‘You have some colour in your cheeks. Sit here.’ He tipped two boys off a sofa and patted the cushion. ‘Well done for tempting the old man off his mountain. Have some tea and scones.’
‘With home-made Highland blackberry jam,’ cried the brother with spikes. ‘We’re to have Angus’s war exploits for cabaret, we gather.’
‘We’re the Germans! Let us be the Germans!’ The two boys were shouting and jumping, making Hannah bark.
‘Me too!’ said Georgie.
Urquhart’s eyes fastened on Elena as she went forward. She felt the insolent weight of his old man’s lust as she took her place by the fire. She returned his gaze without fear, as cold and calm as an avenging angel.
He nodded. ‘Aye. Ye must eat, then whatever ye would know I’ll tell ye.’
A cushion was put on her lap and a tray on top of it with plate, food, knife, and a mug of tea. ‘Thank you.’
Henry sat opposite her, smiling his support. Fiona, beside him, seemed anxious, glancing at Peter, who remained alone by the door, only he and Urquhart standing.
A hush was visiting the room, as in a theatre. Angus Urquhart was swelling his chest to speak, swelling his arrogance to meet her sharp pin of truth. The words of the library book came back to her. Utter disregard for danger. Gallantry of the highest order. She sank her teeth into a scone, waiting to hear these vanities from his own mouth.
Chapter Twenty-four
Peter
Clink of crockery and crack of burning logs, yet riddle uncracked and panic unsoothed, brain racked to breaking point. Old Calum playing hard to get in rent-a-crowd of Urquharts, his ancient, blue eyes seeking Peter’s, now and now again. Hold stare unblinking wide to catch his glance. Away . . . then back, away . . . then back . . . And hold it, those eyes, hold steady. Shoot question along the beam. My poems, are they bad or good?
‘Sae tell me, Elena. Tis the tale of ma Military Cross ye’re wanting to hear?’
Watching Peter. Speaking to Señorita. About to spill French beans on derring-do. Listen up – some clue to poem to be gleaned perhaps. Keep ear ajar for cold weather and hot lips.
‘Yes, Señor. For the book I am writing about war heroes.’
Calum frowning, gaze wandering to hot-lipped Señorita’s cold-lipped smile.
‘From reading, I know what happened from the outside. But not how it feels to do these things. This is what I hope to know from you.’
Yes, too right. Ravenous to witness bard in action, to watch words fall like moonshine, history distilled to happening, heroism to heroic verse.
‘Sae lass, tell me what ye know already.’ Calum’s eyes aflicker over upturned faces.
‘You drive a jeep, Mr Urquhart.’
‘I told ye, call me Angus.’
Deep Spanish breath. ‘A jeep, Angus. Into a French village. One jeep. You were alone.’
‘Germans! There were Germans! Ack ack ack.’ Boys behind sofas, leaping and ducking, firing machineguns.
Señorita undeterred. ‘And Frenchmen also, I think. Men whom the Germans mean to kill in the square?’
‘Aye. Forty or more.’
‘So many?’
‘Aye.’
Good old Calum, ayes to cool diva, nose to hot disciple hooked on his heroic, hoary gaze.
‘You stop the jeep. You shoot. The Germans shoot. The Frenchmen, they escape.’
‘Aye. Not all of them, just twenty-six.’
Señorita nodding. ‘That is the number I read. You shoot and shoot. You kill, how many Germans? Ten?’
‘Aye, thereaboots.’
‘They fire at you. They hit you.’
‘Aye.’
‘So you stop firing.’
‘Nae, the gun jammed.’
‘You drive away, with small wounds only. Your general, he say – ’
‘Nae “general”, lassie. We were all one band.’
‘He say you fear nothing. You are valiant. They give you the medal.’
Children cheering. Hannah barking. Urquhart frowning, shaking head, quieting them with a hand. ‘That’s it. Ye have it all.’
‘No, I need more. Angus. Much more.’ Cop Señorita’s solemn face, drawing all eyes and holding them. ‘The book is words only. Tell me please, what you remember. The colour of the sky, the sound of gunfire and of shouting, the smell of blood, the feeling of the bullets hitting you. These I can imagine, but what is real?’
Bravo, Elena. Calum gathering breath to speak. Existence gathering to a point. ‘It was nineteen forty-four. I was twenty-eight years old.’
His poems dried in nineteen thirty-eight, but Calum carried on.
‘There were four of us. The sky was . . . black.’ Sarcastic poet’s wink at Peter. ‘No moon. No sound. They dropped us between Paris and Orléans. Five jumped, but Buster’s chute didnae open. Four was enough. We buried Buster. We built a sleeping platform in a tree. It couldnae be seen from below. We dug a pit for the equipment. Is this too much for ye?’
‘No. Please. Continue.’
‘A rifle and a pistol each, the radio, some Lewis bombs, the pigeons – we kept these things o’erhead. The tree was . . . green.’
Winking at him again. Oh praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition. More! More! His poet’s voice alive and singing, even in English each cast-iron syllable ringing true, the Gaelic Hemingway. Calum’s genius hadnae died; he’d just stopped sharing it.
Elena
She had imagined how she would feel to hear el malo tell his story, and this was not yet how. He was in no hurry, but neither was she. The moment she waited for would come, it could not fail. From this room, packed with his children and his children’s children, his words would carry him and her alone, Carlos’s killer and Carlos’s dead child’s only child, into that other village square. Let him speak first of parachutes and pits. The pit was opening for him.
‘The maquis found us easily enough. They came up the track from the next village in a cart. They were nae bad. They gave us food, wine, intelligence – aye and women too. The wine was red and smelled of wine. The women were brown. Their petticoats were silk, from parachutes. They smelled of woman.’
The little girls giggled. The old man winked again across the room. Elena had wanted his arrogance, and yes, here she saw it, small and mean, an old man’s arrogance.
‘Sae, there we were. Set to do as much mischief as we could.’
‘Don’t forget the jeep, grandfather.’ It was the eldest of the grandchildren who spoke. She had
Fiona’s serious eyes. ‘You’ve missed out how the jeep arrived.’
‘Aye, Mary, thou’rt right, I have. Tis a good tale in itself. It came from the sky, of course.’ Urquhart’s gaze passed through the panelled ceiling. A smile was spreading in his white beard.
Elena leant forward, willing his pride to grow. Yes, he began to be transported. Yes, he was twenty-eight again, standing in a wood between Paris and Orléans, staring at the sky. She watched him now, as Carlos’s ghost had watched him then.
‘It was near midnight when we heard the Halifax. We lit the bonfires. We flashed the recognition letter. The plane passed us, then turned into the wind, low o’er the fires. The noise was infernal. Then, bonny sight, there came the jeep, on four parachutes, gliding down.’
‘Like a flying saucer,’ said Mary.
‘Nae, Mary, like a jeep. We cheered. The plane was gone. The fires were out. The steering wheel was under the seat, the machinegun in the back, a Vickers, mounted, ready. And in a line, more parachutes, six of them, silk for petticoats. Containers crashing through the trees. Cylinders with codes painted on them. Codes that told us petrol, spare wheels and tools. Guns, mountings, ammunition. Rations, rum and cigarettes. Medical kit. Baskets bursting, spilling tents and sleeping bags and clothes. The maquisards helped us hide the jeep with branches. We had the wood tidy in twenty minutes.’
His eyes shone with memory. She took care not to break the magic. She spoke no more loudly than a whisper. ‘So. Angus.’
He looked at her and smiled, still faraway.
‘So, now, in France. You have all you need?’
‘Aye, lass. Twas time to kill some Germans.’
Henry
The little boys yelled and fell dead across the sofa-back, then resurrected themselves and charged around doing their machinegun impressions. Everyone seemed engrossed, and Henry supposed he should be as well. This was Elena’s big moment after all. But he was hot, and bored actually, and sleepy. Urquhart’s doings might be real, but they had nothing to do with Elena’s grandfather so far as he could see. It was only a story, and it didn’t have him gripped.
He’d never seen the point of war yarns, shoot-outs and escapes and whatnot. They offered romance of a kind, he understood that, but not the kind that appealed to him. For where was the point of romance without women? The sex in Urquhart’s tale was too basic and offhand – little Jeannie and Debs were still smirking about it. Wine and women, indeed. Just bodies served up; real women didn’t get a look-in.
‘Ack ack ack. You’re dead!’
That was the other thing. All this shouting and leaping from behind chairs reminded him of childhood. The wrong bits of childhood. The boarding school ambushes, the horrid little brother back home.
But he had to listen, for Elena’s sake. She looked marvellous. So intent.
‘We knew the score from the maquis,’ Urquhart was saying. ‘Things were plenty bad in the villages around. The Germans were swarming like cockroaches.’
Maquis. Orléans. The old man pronounced these words in an easy French accent. His Scottishness was thinning as he spoke. He was forgetting it, Henry realised. The ascetic Highlander was role-play; for this story it no longer suited the sly old bugger to be a Gaelic hermit.
‘They had a policy. For each bombed tank, for each dead German, they took Frenchmen in reprisal. Straight from their homes, the first they found, they marched them out and shot them in front of their women and children. Sometimes a whole village paid the price.’
‘Yes,’ Elena said.
Of course. The air seemed to chill as she spoke the word. The hiss of it lingered. The point of Urquhart’s tale was suddenly as sharp to Henry as an unsheathed rapier.
‘The maquis didnae lose heart. The people neither. They wouldnae give up killing Germans. They would fight till they were free!’
Henry’s eyes were fixed on Elena. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘So, take me with you. Angus. Into the village that day.’
‘It wasnae planned,’ he said. ‘I was bringing the jeep from the railway line, before dawn. The line was ready to blow. Hiding the jeep there wasnae safe. I saw the light of flames in the village. I met a French lass on a bicycle, weeping and afeared. Germans were in the village, the SS, killing the men. I drove straight in, as fast as the jeep would go.’
‘You are wearing your kilt on this day?’
Strange question.
‘Aye lass. I wore it every day.’
‘So the book tell me. But this is dangerous, yes? In disguise you would be safer?’
If she was prompting the old man to boast, she certainly succeeded. ‘I didnae care a hoot for ma safety!’
But was this boasting? To Henry’s ears, the old man seemed more angry than proud. He seemed to mean the words he spoke, without bravado. In the thick of action, at the age of twenty-eight, not caring if he lived or died.
‘The Germans were expecting nae trouble. It was dark. The dawn hadnae begun to break. Their backs were to me as I drove in. Their guns were idle or towards the Frenchies. They turned as I braked, like men in a dream. I was out of ma seat and had the Vickers raking them before the dust cleared.’
Elena leant forward. ‘Darkness. Dust. Germans. Men waiting to die. Tell me, in the square is there a well?’
Her lovely Spanish voice was low and concentrated. The hairs prickled on Henry’s neck. Even the little boys were silent, held by the story.
Urquhart laughed. ‘I didnae see, lass. Next time I’m there, I’ll remember to look for ye. All I saw were two staff cars with their headlights on and a gang of Jerry. That was what I was noticing. I was firing the Vickers. The cars went up, whoompf, one after the other, their fuel tanks ruptured and catching fire. Then I was dodging bullets and taking care to miss the French. Ye ken?’
‘Yes. And then?’
‘And then the Vickers jammed. I grabbed a carbine from the jeep, emptied a magazine of fifteen rounds and tried to change it. A bullet slammed into ma right hand, and it went numb. I used ma fingertips to take another magazine from ma pouch and reload. Ma hands were slippery with blood. I took aim. Nothing happened. Two rounds were jammed in the breach. Another bullet hit ma shoulder. Twas time to go, or try to. I didnae expect to live. I was in ma seat, the engine running still. I aimed the jeep at the road out. I put ma foot down. I put ma head down. I didnae raise it till I reached the corner.’
‘The corner of the square?’
‘Aye, lass. And out between the houses, to rolling hills, and Frenchmen diving into fields of cabbages.’
‘Great,’ cried Peter. Some Urquharts clapped their hands. The little boys dropped their machineguns to cheer, then wriggled on their stomachs under a coffee table, where Hannah showered them with slobber.
Henry sat still and tight, watching Elena’s face. Now surely she would tell the story of her square, her men, the scenes her mother saw.
A movement caught his eye. The rotund waiter who’d been serving drinks to the Americans out front hovered in the doorway, coughing deferentially behind his hand. He seemed to fancy himself as Jeeves. His pomposity made Henry want to smile.
‘Yes, Gordon?’ said Janet Urquhart.
‘A new guest has arrived, madam. A gentleman. A single for one night.’
‘I’ll come and see to him. What’s his name?’
‘McCoy, madam. Mr Michael McCoy.’
The name sliced through the air. This was how bullets felt. Too fast to dodge or comprehend. Too late to remedy.
Chapter Twenty-five
Henry
He couldn’t move. His thoughts would not join up.
What was McCoy doing here? What did he want?
Around him people were reacting. Fiona turned to him as if to speak. Peter punched the air and shouted, ‘Wonderful!’
‘Isn’t that amazing?’ The girlfriend with the mass of auburn hair seemed thrilled. ‘The man we were on about at lunch.’
‘The man who broke my brother’s heart.’
Oh God. There wa
s no time to lose. He must leave. He lurched up from the sofa, but his knees buckled. ‘A taxi,’ he croaked. He made it to his feet again.
This time Fiona pulled him back. ‘I’m so sorry. How terrible. I keep doing this to you.’ She had tight hold of his arm. ‘Last night – before the meeting – he asked me, could I suggest a country hotel? Loch Craggan, I said.’
He struggled to escape her grip.
‘I’ll help you to avoid him. It’s the least I can do. You can stay in one of the back rooms. I’ll fetch your bag.’
He ceased struggling. He slumped, speechless.
‘Though actually, it wouldn’t matter if you did meet him, would it? Because he doesn’t know,’ she faltered, ‘you know, about you.’
Dear God, she didn’t know the half of it. She didn’t know about the letters. And the photograph.
She read his face. ‘Oh dear. But please, don’t worry. And if Peter starts stirring things, I’ll stop him before he – ’
‘It’s all right,’ Henry managed to say.
For yes, thinking sensibly, what harm could McCoy do? He took a new hold on reality, remembering the resolution he’d reached with the fellow’s ghost last night. He must refuse to be embarrassed. He ran soothing lines through his head. Great books, M M. And sorry about the mix up, but let’s say no more, eh? Let’s leave it there.
Beyond Fiona’s anxious face the room was chaos. Even the old man seemed upset. Elena leapt across Henry’s vision, brandishing a cushion.
Of course! Elena! How could he even think of abandoning her when Angus Urquhart was slipping from her grasp?
Elena
‘No! Stay! Please, I am not finished!’
‘No more am I.’ Urquhart’s voice had shrunk to a whisper.
Elena stared at him; had he realised who she was? But his eyes were on Peter, who was shouting, ‘Michael McCoy! Fucking wonderful!’
‘No! Peter! Please!’ She implored him with her eyes, to let her finish what was begun.
He stared at her. He did not understand. He did not know. He knew only his contempt for his brother.
The room was emptying fast. Janet Urquhart was gone, followed by the chef, two children and a dog.
Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones Page 15