‘I’m sorry,’ Cal said. ‘The things I was saying. They would have been hard for her to hear, and for you.’
‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything you said,’ Chloe announced with certainty. ‘It’s just Hannah, the mood she’s in.’
From elsewhere on the boat came the sound of Wheeler’s insistent voice and Hannah’s arguing back.
‘What did your sister mean,’ Cal asked after an uncomfortable pause, ‘about Joss being lost?’
‘Oh, Joss isn’t lost,’ Chloe said dismissively, as though Cal had just witnessed another of Hannah’s affectations, one with which Chloe had grown impatient. ‘Not in that way, not dead, not missing. She’s living on Eilean Dubh, in the township, in some shitty little caravan.’ Chloe rolled her eyes, as if both of her sisters had gone mad. ‘Anyway, Joss is my big sister too, so I don’t know why Hannah imagines she’s the only one who’s upset.’
‘That must be difficult for you all, Joss living in the township.’
Chloe flashed a look at Cal. ‘Living with the enemy, you mean.’
5
At half past five, thirty minutes early, Bella closed the Deep Blue for the evening. There was little point, she told Catriona, in the two of them waiting around for a customer when they had so much work to be doing. While Catriona set about cleaning the tea room, Bella propped open the kitchen door and rummaged in the cupboards for ingredients. In between lifting out packets and tins, she talked to herself. Where had she put the cocoa powder? What had she done with the sugar? Then she wondered aloud to Catriona about Max Wheeler’s memorial in the morning. How many would turn out? Had Ina said anything about needing a lift? Had Isobel mentioned being able to take time off from the heritage centre? Surely she’d be able to swap shifts since she only worked there ten hours a week? Did Catriona think Joss would attend? Whether Joss stayed away or not, someone in the township would find cause for complaint. In case she did come, Bella had taken the precaution of having words with Fergie McCann from the north of the island about his son and the boy’s good-for-nothing friends. She might as well have been speaking to a stone wall! Had Bella already told Catriona? Oh, she had, well, she wasn’t going to stand for last year’s behaviour again – the McCann boy driving along the coast road, car horn blaring, just as the memorial began, and on such a calm day too. The noise carried across the sound. Bella had been ashamed. Hadn’t Catriona? Wouldn’t it be awful if the same happened tomorrow? Bella sighed. Perhaps it would be better if Joss stayed away. She would ring the girl later. Could Catriona remind her?
Catriona’s responses were brief or exasperated but Bella carried on as if she hadn’t noticed. She laid down a smokescreen of chatter and exclamations while waiting for Catriona to lower her guard. ‘Should I make two date and banana loaves as well as two chocolate sponges? What about a fruit cake? I always think fruit cake’s better for a sad occasion, especially as everyone will have spent an hour outside and a cold wind will be blowing. Shall I use brandy? The brandy! Oh, the bottle’s empty. Well, that settles that. Whisky it’ll have to be. Where is the whisky? Catriona?’ She raised her voice. ‘Was there any whisky in yesterday’s delivery, because I’m certain I ordered a bottle but I can’t seem to find it anywhere?’
‘Look behind the rolled oats,’ Catriona replied. ‘Anyway, whisky’s better than brandy.’
‘Found it.’ Without pausing for breath, Bella said, ‘I could do cheese scones in the morning when I’m doing rolls. What do you think?’
‘OK.’
Bella waited a moment. ‘Catriona, love …’
‘What?’ She was standing at the kitchen door, watching her aunt.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry.’
‘No, go on, what?’
Bella pulled a face as if Catriona was dragging it out of her. ‘I was just wondering whether you’d been under the weather the last few days. You haven’t seemed quite yourself.’
The ruse had worked once or twice before, Bella engaging Catriona in conversation as they prepared for a busy day and luring her into revealing something about her state of mind.
‘I’m fine,’ was all Catriona said.
It was a response that frustrated Bella, since a blind man could see the girl wasn’t fine. At nineteen, Catriona’s age, Bella had been out and enjoying her life, meeting boys, going to dances. Catriona, on the other hand, always appeared to be at odds with the world and unhappy. That afternoon Bella had tried to remember when she and Catriona had last laughed together, even shared a smile. How many weeks must it have been? How many months? Bella wasn’t sure, nor could she remember when Catriona had last spoken to her in anything other than monosyllables or answered a question without a preceding sigh of exasperation.
She decided to persevere. ‘Ewan will be coming round later,’ she said brightly.
Catriona didn’t answer.
Bella tried again when Catriona fetched some clean tablecloths from the kitchen table. ‘Did I mention Ewan said he might drop round?’
‘You just have, haven’t you?’
‘You’ll talk to him?’
‘Aye, if I want to.’
‘Catriona, I don’t just mean hello.’
‘Yes, Auntie Bella, I know fine well what you mean.’
Bella put her hands on her hips and watched Catriona go back to the tea room. At least she didn’t stomp, the usual warning for Bella to back off. Bella rubbed the back of her gloved hand against her hairnet, where it itched at the rim. She was a worry, that girl, always had been, ever since Bella had taken charge of the Deep Blue, and taken charge of Catriona too. Some three-year-olds were captivating, but Catriona hadn’t been one of them. Even then she’d been a wraith of a child with her white skin and watchful eyes. Bella found her silent and withdrawn, untrusting. ‘Who wouldn’t have been after the shock of both her parents dying like that?’ she used to tell herself. But, still, it hadn’t been easy bringing up a child who was always just out of reach. People were forever telling Bella how good a mother she’d been to Catriona but they didn’t know the truth. Nor had Bella told them; nor would she. Secrets weren’t safe in a small community, and anyway, what good could it do?
Bella had been aware of her deficiency from the very beginning. At first she’d put her trust in the healing powers of time but now, after so many years, she knew things wouldn’t change. She was a mother to Catriona in every way except one: she had no instinct of love for the girl. The lack kept her awake at night as she fretted about the accumulation of damage that was being done. Whenever Bella sought reassurance, listening to radio programmes on adoption or childcare, all she found was further cause for worry. How often had she heard some expert or other say ‘A child who isn’t loved won’t be able to love’? That idea had long since invaded her like a parasite. In Catriona’s on-off relationship with Ewan Chisholm, Bella thought she was witnessing the effect of her inability to love her niece as a mother would. What other explanation could there be, since Catriona and Ewan were made for each other? Bella blamed herself for their fractures and tried to help however she could. It was one instinct Bella did have, to want to compensate for her failing. Given the chance she would do anything to fix Catriona’s life, if only Catriona would let her.
Bella started again on her checklist. Should they order more coffee for later in the week since tomorrow would be busy? Had Catriona remembered to take milk out of the freezer? Was there enough ham for the rolls and sandwiches, tomatoes too, come to think of it, and cheese? Oh, and while Catriona was checking the storeroom could she fetch some coffee and another jar of pickle?
It made no difference to Bella whether Catriona replied to every question as she was thinking aloud, putting up another smokescreen, waiting until she thought she could broach the issue again. ‘You know,’ Bella said as Catriona was wrapping napkins around knives and forks, ‘Ewan always comes as close as he can. Boys are shy creatures. All you have to do is speak to him. It doesn’t really matter what you say.’
Catriona sna
pped back, ‘Leave it, Auntie Bella. Please.’
Bella replied with an ‘I’d help you if you let me’ expression but Catriona insisted, ‘No, Auntie Bella.’ She left the kitchen, stomping flat-footed away. ‘Don’t speak about Ewan,’ she shouted. ‘Nothing. Not a word. Ever again. All right?’
Bella bit her lip. It was a shame watching two young people making a mess of things, especially when they were so well suited. That wasn’t just Bella’s view: the township shared her opinion. Perhaps that was a pressure for them both, in such a small community, every glance or look causing comment, everyone knowing everyone else’s business. What age was Catriona when she and Ewan became friends – eleven or twelve? Not boyfriend and girlfriend at that stage but boy and girl who explored together and found support in each other’s misfortune. Ewan’s parents had still been alive, unlike Catriona’s, though they might as well have been dead for all the good they did him. The boy spent all of his holidays with his Uncle Donald at Grant’s Croft to escape the violence and drunkenness at home in Fort William. What age was Catriona when she became Ewan’s girlfriend? Thirteen, Bella thought, but because they were always breaking up and getting back together it was hard to keep track. The year of Max Wheeler’s disappearance was when the relationship became serious. Donald and Ewan had been taken in for questioning, three times in all, and uncle and nephew had frequented the tea room with the rest of the township, working out what to do. Catriona had listened in from the counter. Injustice had acted as matchmaker. When Donald drank himself into an early grave Catriona was sixteen and Bella thought she wouldn’t be long in marrying. Ewan had inherited the croft and, though Bella hadn’t told her, Catriona would become owner of the Deep Blue when she was twenty-one. Not only were Catriona and Ewan well matched, they would be as well set as anyone in the township.
In hindsight, Bella was sorry she had allowed herself to run ahead of the relationship. She’d been imagining a wedding at the Deep Blue, but then Catriona made an announcement she hadn’t expected. Ewan and she were taking a break. They were young, she said. It was no big deal. She didn’t love Ewan anyway. With each succeeding split – there were two more, as far as Bella knew – Catriona affected similar indifference and for weeks afterwards her white skin became pasty and lifeless. A tea room, Bella realized as Catriona put on weight, was hardly the place to nurse the end of a relationship. At every break-up Bella felt a skewer twisting in her heart. So, when Ewan started hanging around the tea room again, she offered him a part-time job as handyman. Maybe working together would make the difference, she thought. That it hadn’t, yet, Bella blamed on Catriona and her ignorance of boys. ‘Speak to him,’ Bella had often hissed into Catriona’s ear. ‘Encourage him.’ It was obvious to Bella what Catriona should do. It would have been obvious to a stone statue.
As Bella was sieving icing sugar, Catriona reappeared and stood in the door, her white skin blotched by tears.
Bella removed her gloves and apron and went over to her. She wrapped her in her arms. ‘Oh, Catriona, love,’ she said, ‘don’t listen to me.’ She pushed Catriona’s hair away from her face and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I’m sorry.’ She kissed her again. ‘It’s just that I’d like to see you happy.’
‘It’s not me Ewan comes to see.’
Bella leaned back and took a good look at the girl. ‘Now you’re being silly,’ she said. ‘It’s always been you. This is Ewan you’re talking about? Of course it’s you.’ She laughed at how ridiculous Catriona was being and immediately wished she hadn’t.
‘Why won’t you listen?’ Catriona struggled free. ‘It’s not me. I know it’s not me. It hasn’t been me since he started hanging round again.’
Later, Bella sat alone in the kitchen, the evening’s work done, the cakes cooling and the dough ready for the morning. She sipped black tea. ‘Please make her happy.’ She looked at the ceiling, vaguely in the direction of God. ‘Please, do that for me.’ Outside an engine started and Bella went to the window to catch a glimpse of Dr McGill. ‘What’s he like?’ Bella had asked when Catriona told her he was on Priest’s Island with David Wheeler and that the Toyota pickup parked outside was his.
Catriona had been non-committal: ‘All right, I suppose.’
‘Not if he’s taking David Wheeler’s money, he’s not,’ she’d answered back. Afterwards, she’d apologized for sounding cross with Catriona when she was angry with Wheeler for turning their lives upside down every year, Ewan’s in particular. ‘That young man can never escape the suspicion of murder. What does that do to him?’
Catriona said nothing.
Now Bella wondered if that might be part of the problem, Ewan being uncertain about his future and as a result not being able to offer Catriona one.
How families disintegrated was on Cal’s mind. The subject had a visceral curiosity for him. Most often it occupied his thoughts when he saw a disagreement of some kind between a father and child. It could be an argument in a street, a supermarket or on a train. Without intending to, he would find himself taking an interest, his subconscious always searching for an explanation. Why? Was that how it started? He looked for clues because the fracturing of his own family was still such a puzzle to him. David Wheeler’s argument with Hannah had made him wonder if he and his father had ever been like that. But he couldn’t recall any cross words or disagreements between them. Neither had there been underlying tension, or none of which Cal had been aware. Yet, as certain as he was of his memory, he was also aware that families didn’t break into pieces for no reason. In the case of the Wheelers, it was easy to see what was forcing them apart: the father’s obsession with his lost son had blinded him to the needs of his daughters. In David Wheeler’s single-mindedness, in his carelessness too, Cal recognized something of his own father. Though, as always happened, when he looked to other families for insight into the fate of his, the circumstances were never exactly the same. The lessons were never quite applicable. The only thing that families seemed to have in common was how different they were. The puzzle remained unsolved and Cal grew irritated at raking over the same ground to no purpose. James McGill had forgotten Cal. Why couldn’t Cal, a thirty-year-old man for heaven’s sake, forget him?
For a long time Cal had thought the disintegration of his family was a process which began with the death of his mother from cancer. Cal had been seventeen at the time. Now, when he looked back across the thirteen years that had passed since, he saw the fracture as a single drawn-out event. When he lost his mother, he began to lose his father too. Following her funeral, James McGill suffered a mental collapse. His recovery was slow and appeared to be complete only when he removed himself from the context of his former life – the city in which Cal’s mother and he had settled, the house where they’d been lovers, the son they had nurtured, the school where he worked as head of geography. He went abroad, teaching at charity-run schools for orphans (an irony, Cal thought), while assuring his only child of his firm intention to return, sometime. He never did. It was as if he was afraid of revisiting the scene of his collapse. Had he imagined proximity would trigger another breakdown?
Cal maintained fragile contact by irregular emails and, for a while, by flying once a year to visit his father in whichever country he was based. Papua New Guinea was succeeded by postings in Africa. In Mozambique, at a school in Maputo, his father met a fellow teacher by the name of Honesty Dlamini. She was a Swazi, twelve years his junior and mother of three daughters by a failed marriage. James and Honesty became man and wife at a hastily arranged (so Cal’s father said) open-air ceremony attended by a handful of close friends. Cal received the photographs by email and, a few days later, a rare letter from his father announcing the sale of the family home in Edinburgh. It had been let for the previous nine years. The buyers had been the sitting tenants. ‘Shouldn’t it provide for the future instead of preserving the past?’ his father had asked. Whose future? The answer was painfully obvious to Cal: his father’s new family.
There was, however, one m
ore rejection to come.
Now there was a son.
The child’s name was Moses Ngwane McGill. He weighed six pounds, four ounces. Mother and child were doing well. The announcement had come by email two months ago, the first contact from Cal’s father for more than a year. ‘A son!’ the email was headed. A photograph was attached. ‘Dear All,’ it began. There were nineteen addresses before Cal’s, and more after: his father’s contacts in alphabetical order. Cal didn’t reply though others had, their effusive congratulations sent round robin and dropping into his inbox during the hours that followed. ‘A boy at last!’ one cheered. ‘You must be thrilled after being surrounded by those girls.’ Cal hadn’t recognized the sender’s name. Whoever it was didn’t appear to know of a previous family’s existence, of another son.
Ngwane, Cal learned from Wikipedia, had been the name of a Swazi king. James McGill had taken eleven years to replace Cal’s mother, another two to replace Cal.
The argument between David Wheeler and Hannah had stopped with a final girlish cry of exasperation. Chloe had tensed in the silence that followed, becoming nervous and fidgety. Her unease, Cal realized, was not for Hannah but for herself, as though she feared a healing of the breach between father and sister, as if that might have implications for her. Her behaviour was more suited to a mistress agog at overhearing a disagreement between her married lover and his wife, the outcome of which would decide, one way or another, her fortune and prospects. When Chloe looked at Cal next, she did so with lingering curiosity as though she hoped to find in his expression some sympathy or reassurance, as if she now regarded him as her co-conspirator.
‘I think I should be going,’ Cal said abruptly and began to roll up the chart that was still on the table.
‘Shouldn’t you wait for Pa to come back?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
The Malice of Waves Page 5