by Bella Pollen
The Ambassador’s residence was to be found on a hill overlooking the Rhine, discreetly set back from the road behind an old ivy-smothered stone wall. It was a charming, most unthreatening sight, but when the doors opened to a grand drawing room filled with over two hundred people, Letty had been thoroughly intimidated. ‘Christ.’ She gripped Nicky’s arm with both hands. ‘Don’t leave me.’
‘Hoy!’ a deep voice boomed. A tall woman in a royal-blue shift was hastening towards them with a somewhat mannish gait. ‘You’re not allowed to stand next to your husband, you know,’ she chided and before Letty could protest or even blink the stranger bore her off to the furthest corner of the room. ‘I’m Gillian,’ she announced, ‘the Ambassador’s wife.’
25
Ballanish
The first time she saw him, a stick insect in a boiler suit, Georgie had been standing in the wind and rain, waiting for Donald John to answer his door. The figure had been crossing the bog between Donald John’s house and the graveyard and she could just make out the crucifix of oars strapped to his back and what looked like a pair of boots dangling by their laces from his hand. Sprinkled with patches of purple butter-wort and myrtle, Donald John’s bog was deceptively benign-looking, but one false step could land a person up to their waist in sucky black mud. Nevertheless, the figure hardly broke stride as he zigzagged from tussock to stepping stone. She screwed up her eyes and watched him until the bright blue door opened abruptly and Donald John appeared in front of her, stooping a little under the low frame.
‘Donald John!’ Jamie hurled himself at the islander.
‘Why, Jamie!’ Donald John caught him under the armpits and gave his head a vigorous patting. ‘And Alba and Georgie too? Well, well. How today? How today?’ He grinned and beamed and every version in between, ushering the children into the croft and shouting double commands over his shoulder. ‘Come in, come in. Sit down! Sit down.’
‘So, how are you, Donald John?’ Alba enquired.
‘Not so bad, not so bad at all.’ He dusted off a bottle of Cherry Coke from his store cupboard and produced a plate of ginger nuts.
Donald John, their nearest neighbour and Alick’s first cousin, was the youngest of a confusingly named line-up of brothers: John, John Donald, Donald and Donald John. He had lived alone in the croft his entire adult life but bachelorhood appeared to suit him. Despite his fifty-odd years, he hadn’t a wrinkle on his waxy face and while most of the islanders treated their teeth like their farm machines, neglecting them until they rusted and fell into disuse, Donald John boasted an almost god-like smile of pearly whites. His voice was shrill and he tended to deliver everything in a gleeful shout accompanied by a selection of verbal paroxysms all of which were ruthlessly mimicked by the children as soon as they left the croft.
‘So, Donald John, I could hardly believe my ears,’ Georgie teased. ‘Alick says you’ve actually been off the island this year.’
‘Aye, I went to Inverness to visit my sister-in-law, but that was a good many weeks back now, a good many weeks indeed.’
‘And did you like it?’ Alba demanded.
‘Well, the weather was just awful.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘Oh, boo boo, it was just terrible.’
‘Was it very wet?’ Georgie said sympathetically.
‘Not wet, Georgie, it was hot! Yes indeed, it was terrible hot.’
‘Oh dear, was it really, Donald John?’ Alba said. ‘Was it, perhaps, say, a whopping sixty-nine degrees?’
‘I canna’ say it was as high as that,’ Donald John tapped his head as though the edge of his brain had been so badly singed by his close encounter with the sun that it no longer functioned. ‘But sixty-five degrees anyways. Oh, tse tse, what a day that was,’ he reminisced, sucking air into his cheeks and noisily expelling it again. ‘I hate the heat. It was awful.’
‘Imagine if you had to go to a desert then. It’s a hundred and twenty degrees in the Sahara,’ Jamie said.
Donald John’s eyes opened in horror. ‘Ah, boo boo, I would be dead. Aye, dead, that’s it!’ Amongst his variety pack of exclamatory noises he pulled one out that sounded like a crow being throttled.
‘But don’t you want to see a desert, Donald John? Don’t you want to go somewhere exciting, like abroad?’
‘Abroad?’ This warranted an extra strenuous slap of the knee. ‘No, no, I’ve never been to that place,’ he admitted gaily, ‘and I’m sure I never will.’
The fact was that Donald John had been born on the island and would die on the island and he felt heartily sorry for anyone for whom this was not the case. The very concept of travel was abhorrent to his sensibilities. Should the children declare an interest in driving to a beach even a few miles to the north, he’d shake his head and try his best to dissuade them. If they mentioned a business trip their father had made, Donald John would adopt a terminally mournful expression. ‘Paris? Well, well, poor soul, poor soul.’
Jamie loved Donald John’s kitchen with its custard-coloured walls and shiny blue Raeburn. He sipped his cherry fizz and looked round at the never-changing objects on the mantelpiece – a school photo of his nieces, a postcard from Glasgow and the plastic clock whose twelve numerals were depicted by small songbirds. It was as though the clock illustrated the pattern of Donald John’s life. When the big hand reached the wren, Donald John put on his cap and went out to tend the cattle. On the hour of the starling he prepared himself a dinner of bread, butter and herring. Visitors seemed to arrive between the thrush and the finch but when not entertaining Donald John spent his evenings in silence. No television, his radio switched off, just sitting in his chair, absorbing each tick of the clock and growing one second older with it. If the world slowed around grown-ups, Jamie thought, time crawled around islanders.
‘So, Donald John,’ Alba said, ‘have you found a wife since we last saw you?’
‘No, no.’ He dutifully roared with laughter and reassured the girls he was saving himself for them.
‘So come on, what other news?’ Georgie asked. ‘Any good gossip?’
‘You’ll have heard about the beast, I suppose?’
‘Oh, yes, we love the beast!’ Alba said.
‘You’ve seen it, then?’ Donald John sounded surprised.
‘Alick took us.’
‘Is that so, Georgie. Is that so?’
‘Alba thinks it’s deranged,’ Jamie said.
‘It is deranged,’ Georgie agreed. ‘It tried to kick Alick.’
‘Ha ha, oh, I’m very sure it did.’
‘Poor Alick was only trying to milk it,’ Jamie said.
‘Was he now!’ Donald John began rocking backwards and forwards with amusement. ‘Why, you’d have a hard job milking a wild thing like that, right enough!’
‘Alba’s going to try it next,’ Jamie pressed on. ‘Alick is going to teach her.’
‘Oh, he’ll make a fine teacher to be sure!’ To the children’s growing puzzlement, Donald John was now wiping tears, apparently of laughter, from his eyes. ‘Well, you’d better not get too close, Alba, no indeed, it’ll take your fingers off. Ach, it’s to be expected. Why, it’s not right to cage a beast up like that!’
‘It’s hardly caged up,’ Georgie said. ‘It’s not like it would get much more exercise if it were loose on the machair. Besides, at least it has all the food it wants. It never stops eating, as far as I can see.’
‘Aye, fifteen pounds of meat for its dinner every night!’
‘Meat?’ Georgie stole a look at Alba, an uncomfortable suspicion forming between them. Teasing was exclusively their department. It was not meant unkindly. It had never occurred to them that Donald John might find them anything but highly amusing but the truth was there wasn’t a lot for them to talk about. Bonn, their schools, embassy life were of no more than polite interest to Donald John, who had little frame of reference for anything that happened off the island. Oh, perhaps if some seismic event occurred, say, an IRA bomb exploding or the discovery of life on Mars, there might be
some minor ‘oohing’ and
‘aahing’, but even these paled in significance compared with news of MacCuish’s lost cattle or the report of an islander having trouble with his wife. And this summer of all summers, Georgie found it a blessing. She dreaded anyone bringing up the subject of her father. What she didn’t know was that Donald John felt uncharacteristically strongly about the matter and in so far as he was able to voice disapproval about anything, he had clearly been troubled by Letty’s decision to bury Nicky in Bonn.
‘It’s where his mother and father are buried,’ she’d told him.
‘Aye, but who will visit him there?’ Donald John asked, clearly troubled, and Letty had been unable to answer. She could not tell him the circumstances around Nicky’s death. She would do everything possible to protect Nicky’s reputation here on the island and the last thing she needed was more pity from friends who could no longer meet her eye. Georgie felt the same. Resorting to tried and tested jokes about wives and weather was safer for the girls – but this was the first time they had received any of their own treatment in return and it made them profoundly uncomfortable.
‘What do you mean, “fifteen pounds of meat”?’ Georgie asked tentatively.
‘Why, he feeds it steak for dinner and bacon and eggs for breakfast. I’ve even heard it said the beast guzzles down coffee! You’d think it was a human the way it carries on.’
‘Donald John, have you gone mad?’ Alba said. ‘Cows don’t eat meat.’
‘Or drink coffee,’ Jamie added.
‘And who’s feeding it?’
‘Why, Georgie, the wrestler is feeding him.’ It was Donald John’s turn to look confused. ‘It’s his beast an’ all.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ The children stared at him in utter bewilderment.
‘Why, the bear of course.’
‘The bear?’ Jamie stopped gargling his cherry coke.
The girls looked at each other in stupefied silence. ‘We’ve been talking about a bear all this time?’ Alba said. ‘What kind of bear?’
‘Well now, I’m not sure what species exactly,’ Donald John said placidly, ‘but a big one right enough.’
‘Donald John,’ Georgie said firmly, ‘you’re having us on.’
‘Not at all. It is indeed a great big bear.’
‘But we were talking about the cow Alick put in our garden.’
‘A cow!’ Donald John cracked out a laugh. ‘Oh, boo boo, it’s a lot bigger than a cow, that’s for sure!’
‘Are you saying there’s an actual live bear on this island right now?’
‘Aye, he belongs to that wrestler, Andy Robin, and he’s quite famous. He even has his own bus.’
Suddenly, the loose wires in Jamie’s head began to spark and fizz. He jumped to his feet. ‘I’ve seen him.’
‘You have not,’ Alba said scornfully. ‘Sit down.’
‘I saw him on the way up here,’ Jamie spluttered. ‘He’s my bear. He’s a grizzly bear.’
‘Jamie, you repellent troll, you’re frothing at the mouth.’
‘But I told you, remember?’ Jamie wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘It was on the road.’
‘Why would anyone bring a bear up to the island?’ Alba elbowed Jamie down into his seat.
‘Oh, they say he’s a hard-working beast, Alba. I’ve heard tell he’s filming an advertisement – for Kleenex.’
‘Does he do tricks?’ Jamie asked. ‘Can he ride a bicycle?’
‘Oh, boo boo, I can’t say, but I’m sure you’ll be wanting to go and see him, young Jamie.’
But Jamie had already disappeared inside his head. How was it possible? The bear from the museum. The bear on his flyer. The bear waiting for him at the Zirkus-platz the day of his father’s accident. And now here he was on the island. His island. His bear.
‘Hello, bear,’ Jamie whispered.
‘Hello, Jamie,’ the bear answered.
26
‘Can we go now?’ Jamie said feverishly. ‘Can we?’
‘In a minute, darling,’ Letty whispered.
‘How many minutes?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. A few, ten, fifteen . . .’ Though increasingly aware of her son’s need for precision, Letty was often unsure how best to supply it. ‘As soon as possible,’ she amended, turning back to the islander. ‘So, how much do you want for it, Roddy?’ Dolefully she eyed the wooden sideboard through the window. It didn’t really matter how much he asked, they both knew she would end up buying it, just as she had ended up buying the unspeakably hideous wardrobe that was always going to be too big for the house; the iron bedstead that still languished in the outside room; not to mention the old peat-boiling cauldron whose handle had long since sheared off.
‘Well now, I pulled it out of old Hugh’s croft, down at Griminish. Oh, aye, terrible heavy it was.’
‘I’m sure,’ Letty murmured. Roddy bargained with a Gaelic adroitness and was not above a spot of emotional blackmail to hike up the price.
‘Mum, pleeease?’ Jamie said fretfully.
‘Jamie, be patient. I’m having a cup of tea with Roddy.’
Jamie watched the old wall-builder as he spooned a fourth sugar into his mug. He was the oddest-looking man Jamie had ever seen. A unique genetic concoction, it was as if Roddy had pulled a face one day and deliberately ignored all warnings about an impending wind change. His head resembled something carved out of rock. His wiry eyebrows grew as untrimmed as a hedge of twigs. His lips were dark purple, his ears like handles of clay and the deep depression of lines etched into his cheek ran clear down to the prominent ridge of his jaw. The most startling aspect of Roddy’s appearance, though, was not the epic cragginess of his face but the lump of bone on his back, which had bent his spine into an unyielding curve. No one knew for sure why Roddy was a hunchback. Most assumed he’d been born deformed, but the only time Letty had asked about it, Donald John had scoffed at the idea. ‘Oh, boo boo. I was going to school with him when I was a boy. Ach, he was just the same as you or I. Straight as a plank. Then he started building walls and lifting heavy stones and the whatnot and that’s when it must have started.’
To compensate for this dreadful physical burden, which would never allow him to get very far in the world, Roddy had been granted a more spiritual form of transportation. He was the seventh son of the seventh son and as such had been endowed with that most precious of island characteristics – second sight.
By rights, second sight should have opened up the universe to him, presented him with a visual history of mankind and the creation and destruction of forgotten empires. Second sight should have been his telescope to far-off lands, where mountains rose out of the sea and waves of sand burned under the desert heat. Instead of staring down at his dinner of boiled rabbit, Roddy might have peeked through the keyhole of history onto the great Viking feasts of Sigrblot, Vetrarblot and Jolablot but alas, none of this was so. Roddy’s gift dealt only with the future and appeared to have been given to him for a more pedestrian use altogether – the prediction of births, deaths and who would be bringing home the prize for best cow at the Highland Games.
‘I’ll take twenty pounds for it,’ Roddy said finally. Letty stole another glance at the sideboard. It really was an unconscionably ugly piece of carpentry. Twenty pounds! She didn’t have twenty pounds. ‘I’ll take it for ten, Roddy,’ she said firmly
‘Well, if my hard work is of no greater value to you,’ Roddy removed his cap and scratched at the sparse hairs on his head, ‘then, ten pounds it is.’
‘Good.’ Jamie pushed back his chair. ‘Can we go now, Mum, please?’
‘Where are you away to in such a hurry?’
‘Jamie wants to see the bear,’ Letty said apologetically.
‘Oh, aye?’ Roddy’s voice was so deep it sounded as though it had travelled through all the peat bogs of the island before reaching his throat. ‘Too late for that, lad.’
‘What?’
‘Aye,’ Roddy said mildly. ‘He’s g
one.’
‘Oh no.’ Jamie sank unhappily back into the chair. ‘When?’
No one knows for sure.’
‘Are you positive he’s gone?’
‘Aye, it was last night I had news of it.’
‘What kind of news?’
‘Well.’ Roddy noisily slurped at his cold tea. ‘I’ll tell you.’ He leaned forward. ‘I was asleep when I heard a terrible knocking on the door so I went to the door and there was this big horse waiting outside for me, and it could talk, this horse, you see, and it says, “Will ye come out with me, Roddy?” and I replied, “I can come with you right enough,” and I jumped in the saddle. Soon enough, the horse was galloping along the field past Morag’s house when he turns his black head and he says to me, “D’ye understand I’m the devil, Roddy?”
‘“Is that so?” I replied and indeed when I take a look over my shoulder, there was room for another behind me on the saddle. So I says to the devil horse, “I see you have got another place here. Is it for poor Morag, then?”
‘“Oh, no,” the devil answers, cheerful as anything. “We’re calling along the road to pick up old Fergus Mc-Kenzie.”’
‘Fergus with the white sheepdog?’ Fergus McKenzie sang at céilidhs and always waved his stick in greeting from the door of his croft. Quite why he’d been consigned to the devil, Jamie couldn’t imagine.
‘Aye, it was Fergus he was after, all right,’ Roddy said. ‘They found him the next morning. Quite dead he was.’
‘But how did he die?’ Jamie was utterly transfixed.
‘Well, that’s the very same question I asked the devil horse,’ Roddy declared grandly. ‘“Now, devil horse,” I says, “Fergus McKenzie’s in good health and no more than eighty-nine so what business does he have in dying?” And the devil horse turns to me, his eyes burning with red fire and he says, “He’s going to die of fright, that’s what!”’