And the Land Lay Still (22 page)

‘Oh aye,’ she says. ‘So I am.’

§

On the way to Waverley he tries Murdo’s mobile, but there’s no answer. He leaves a message asking to be collected at Lairg at half past seven. At the station he buys a big bottle of water for the journey and a newspaper, but he can’t concentrate on the latter. By the time the train reaches Perth he’s beginning to feel unwell. He closes his eyes, trying to induce sleep. His mind travels northwards, ahead of his physical self, towards Murdo. And he remembers.

Once, early on – when they knew each other but were not yet bold enough to act on that knowledge – Murdo told a story that revealed something of his deep mystery, and made Mike want to fall headlong into that deepness. He’d not been more than a few months at Cnoc nan Gobhar, and was finding it difficult to manoeuvre around the remnants of Angus’s life. He’d thrown out some things – towels beyond redemption, mugs so discoloured he couldn’t bear to drink from them – but other stuff, like rickety old chairs and chipped vases, seemed to offer a kind of connection or continuity
between father and son. Perhaps it was just his own squeamishness that made the distinction between what should be saved and what must be discarded. Sometimes he became incapable of making decisions and had to escape the house altogether. All through that autumn and into winter he ran away with his camera for whole days, heading for remote beaches, or at least beaches where he could be remote. An empty beach in summer is a delight, but it is nothing to an empty beach in winter. The brutality with which the meeting of land and sea reminded him of his insignificance was mesmerising. He’d walk for miles, sometimes taking many photographs and sometimes none at all. When he returned, tired and hungry, he found he liked the house more, and that during his absence it had somehow become less Angus’s and more his – until the next time he needed to get away.

He’d asked Murdo if he would do some work on the kitchen. A worktop made rotten by water needed to be replaced, and some of the unit cupboards were in disrepair. Murdo had had a look: yes, he could fix everything. When Mike had tried to pin him down to a date, Murdo had been non-committal. ‘I’m not always at home, you see,’ Mike had said. Murdo had given his slow, shy smile and said, ‘Well, just leave the door unlocked if you go out. That way neither of us will be tied to any firm arrangements.’ What could Mike do but agree? And it was at the end of one of his days of escape, returning from the west, that he drove up the track and found the red van parked at the back of the house, and Murdo just packing away his tools in the kitchen.

He showed Mike what he’d done. His work was neat, careful and complete. Mike thanked him and asked how much he owed. ‘Och, call it fifty pounds.’ ‘You sure?’ ‘Aye.’ ‘Cash?’ ‘That would be preferable.’ ‘I’ll get it to you in the next day or two. Are you wanting a cup of tea before you go?’ ‘That would be grand,’ Murdo said.

They sat at the table across from each other and talked about what else Mike might do to the house, and sometimes their glances met, and when they did Murdo looked away. Needing something else to say, Mike found himself talking about how he hadn’t yet fully adjusted to Angus not being around the place.

‘Well, maybe that’s because he
is
still around,’ Murdo said.

‘Aye, quite likely,’ Mike said. ‘So, anyway, I go away. Today I drove
to Oldshoremore and walked to Sandwood Bay. Have you been there?’

‘Oh aye,’ Murdo said. ‘Not for a while, though. A few years.’

‘It’s a good long walk,’ Mike said. ‘I’m shattered, actually. But it was well worth it.’

‘It’s some place.’

‘It’s magnificent.’

‘Yes it is,’ Murdo said, and a silence lay between them, and to Mike it was as if they were both remembering it together: the empty, austere beauty of the beach and dunes, the great waves rolling in, the sheer expanse of sand and sea. And then Murdo said, ‘The last time I was there I found a dead man.’

The images in Mike’s head crashed. ‘On the beach?’ he asked.

‘Aye,’ Murdo said. ‘How far did you go? Did you go past the outflow of the loch?’

‘Just that far. It was running pretty full, and it was getting late, so I turned back.’

‘I crossed over,’ Murdo said. ‘It was about this time of year, a fine day like this but there was a strong wind blowing off the sea. If you cross the outflow the beach goes on at least as far as you went today, but it narrows. At high tide there’s not much of it. Then you come to another river running into the sea, and the bay comes to an end there. There are some small dunes, and then rocks and a cliff. It’s an unforgiving kind of place. And that’s where I found him.’

‘Were you on your own?’

‘Aye. He had been there a long time. He was half-buried in the sand and in fact I think it was the wind that had uncovered him. Perhaps he had been buried and uncovered several times over, for there wasn’t much left of him. But there he was.’

Stuck once more for something to say, Mike said something trite. ‘That’s terrible. Horrible.’

‘No,’ Murdo said. ‘It was neither. He had been dead so long that all the flesh was away. He was a skeleton and a few rags. You could just about tell what had been his trousers and his coat but that was it. He was more like the remains of a big bird than a man. It was not horrible or terrible at all. It didn’t look like a terrible death.’

‘Do you think he had drowned?’

Murdo shrugged. ‘And been washed up there? Who can know?
Perhaps he had, but I don’t think so. If that was the case, I don’t think he would have been so high up, in among the dunes and the rocks. No, I think he came to that place the same way I did, by walking.’

‘People go that way,’ Mike said, ‘if they are walking to the lighthouse at Cape Wrath.’

‘A few do that. It’s very rough walking beyond the bay. You have to be very determined.’

‘Maybe that’s where he was going.’

‘Maybe. Or maybe he just sat down to rest. Who can know?’

‘A man, not a woman?’

‘From the size of him, I’d say so.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘You know, I never even considered that it wasn’t a man. But somehow I’m sure it was.’

‘How long do you think he had been there?’

‘Years, certainly. He was almost part of the place, half-buried as he was. There were twigs and seaweed and pebbles and things in among his ribs. Gull feathers.’

‘What did you do? Did you tell anybody?’

‘I was on my own,’ Murdo said, as if it were a stupid question.

‘The police, for example,’ Mike said, as if Murdo had given a stupid answer.

‘Well, I did think about that. But it seemed a little pointless. I didn’t think he’d been murdered or anything.’

‘But presumably he was a missing person.’

‘Presumably. I decided the best thing to do was to sit down beside him and ask him what he wanted.’

Mike, seeing that Murdo was quite serious, remained silent. He was learning.

‘I did ask him, you see, if he wanted the police involved. Of course he didn’t answer, but it seemed very unlikely. It seemed more likely that he didn’t want to be disturbed. He had come there for some reason, and he’d stayed. I could do nothing for him. So we sat for a while, and looked out at the sea with the wind blowing in our faces, and then I said goodbye and came away again.’

‘You just left him there?’

‘What was I going to do, carry him all the way back to Oldshoremore? Give him a Christian burial? He wouldn’t have thanked me for either. Why, what would you have done?’

Mike shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Anyway,’ Murdo said, ‘I’ve never been back, and I expect he has long since disappeared, so it doesn’t matter now.’

They sat there, sipping their tea.

‘I suppose,’ Mike said, after a minute, ‘I’d have taken a picture of him.’

‘For the police? Or for yourself?’

‘For the picture.’

‘I suppose you would have,’ Murdo said. ‘But I don’t have a camera. I’ll tell you this, though, I have the picture of him in my head. It is stored in here and I can view it any time I choose.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Until the day
I
die,’ he said.

Mike, on the train passing through the wastes of Drumochter, remembers the intensity of that moment. He remembers the deep wells of Murdo’s eyes. He thinks of Murdo, and what happened at the end of their last evening together, and he wonders if it will happen again when Murdo meets him at Lairg and brings him home to the house at Cnoc nan Gobhar.

§

The glasses are empty. Mike indicates the bottle. ‘Another?’

Murdo seems to consider this, then shakes his head. ‘No thanks. I should be going.’

They both stand up together. This is how it is. There is nothing awkward about what happens next. They like each other’s company and then they want more.

They go up to the bedroom where earlier Mike turned the duvet down, folded it right back off the sheet. They stand at the foot of the bed and Mike unbuckles Murdo’s belt and pulls down his jeans and boxers and his cock springs out and waves there like a boat’s mast. Mikes drops down on his knees and takes it in his mouth and feels Murdo’s hands on his neck and in his hair as he works on him with his tongue. He brings him to a certain pitch and then pushes him away and stands up. They strip off with a silent urgency and lie down on the bed. The condom and lubricant are on the table. Mike slips the condom on and squirts lube into his left palm. Murdo turns away and lifts his knees and Mike reaches over and takes Murdo’s cock in his right hand and starts to massage between his buttocks
with his left. Murdo is grunting, gasping with the pleasure of it, and slowly, slowly Mike pushes with his own hardness and Murdo gives suddenly and Mike is in, as far as he can go. And then they are into the rhythm, thrusting and jerking, and then suddenly, too quickly, crying out together as they come. Mike’s heart is pumping, it feels about to burst, then gradually it eases off. They lie in a sweat of exhaustion, a minute, maybe two minutes, they might almost be about to drift off but no, that isn’t going to happen. Murdo pulls himself away, off the bed, gathers up his clothes and goes to the bathroom to wash himself, and when Mike hears the stair creak he gets up and washes and dresses too. When he comes downstairs Murdo is standing in the kitchen, waiting to go.

They look at each other in wonder for a moment, as if perhaps it hasn’t happened but they’ve had the same dream.

‘All right?’

‘Aye.’

So it has happened. But there is a distance between them again, though it is not unfriendly. It is never unfriendly. So far it has always been like this, and this is for Murdo’s sake. Mike would prefer more intimacy. He would like it if Murdo fell asleep, stayed the night. A kiss now would not be unappreciated but it does not come. And to stay would be too difficult for Murdo so this, for now, is how it is.

They talked about it a little, the second or third time. Murdo said he’d always known what he wanted but had never thought to do anything about it. He’d never had girlfriends when he was younger. He had two sisters who were married and away, one in Canada and the other in Inverness, but he’d stayed, living with his parents in the house he was born in, until they died and the house became his alone, and no doubt he’d be there now till
he
died. He’d never made a pretence one way or the other, people could think what they liked and now, if they thought about it at all, they probably thought he was just a confirmed bachelor who wasn’t interested in sex, or love, or marriage. But whatever they thought they kept it to themselves, and he did the same. And until Mike had come to live there, and in the course of day-to-day life they’d met and each seen the curiosity and then the desire in the other’s eyes, the possibility that he might have sex with another person had never really entered his mind.

‘But you could have gone away. You could have gone some place where you could have been yourself.’

Murdo doesn’t often get angry but he flared up at that. ‘Be myself? Do you think I’ve not been myself all these years? Do you think I would have to go away from here to be myself? This is my home. I love it. Why would I go away from it?’

‘But –’

‘There’s no buts about it, boy. Wild bloody horses wouldn’t drag me away from here, and don’t think that you will either. Or change me, not for anything, by God.’

And so, when he comes over in the evening, as he does perhaps twice or three times a week, sometimes for a meal and sometimes for a dram, Mike opens the gate and the red van slides up behind the house, out of sight unless you’re really looking for it. And always Murdo will be back in his own house every night, the van parked outside, and in the morning go about his business just the same as ever. And after he’s away, Mike will wash the glasses and dishes and ponder the strangeness of it, the normality of it, and he’ll go up the stair to his bed and there is the damp patch on the sheet and although he feels the lack of Murdo he also likes the fact that they are independent and alone. He understands why Murdo prefers it that way and in spite of himself he agrees that it is probably better, at least for the time being. Perhaps one day soon there will be a change. Perhaps there will be a different future. He hopes so. But for now, yes, for now this is how it is.

You kept a pocket full of stones. The stones had no purpose, they were just a story. You kept the story going. That was what you had to do. You picked the stones up where you found them and you took them on, and every so often you laid them down again. You were making a pattern but you didn’t know what the pattern was. You didn’t know where you were in the pattern or where or how or if it would end. Sometimes you took a pebble from a beach, sea-washed and smooth as a pearl, and left it under a tree miles up a glen; sometimes you took a rough, ragged stone from an inland field and weeks later you threw it into the sea. And sometimes you handed the stones on, to small, unknowing hands, and let the pattern take care of itself. It was not your concern. Your only concern was to keep the pocket filled with stones and never let them run out, to gather and to give, to take and to release. You yourself were released. You’d escaped and you weren’t going back. That was the sum total of everything you were and did.