And the Land Lay Still (31 page)

‘I saw you from the upstairs window,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d come. But it’s all right. He’s back. He’s home.’

She opened the door enough for him to step inside the lobby, and whispered an explanation of what had happened. She’d got Barbara off to sleep but couldn’t contemplate going to bed herself, and had made up her mind to contact the police first thing in the morning,
when she heard the door open and Jack’s footsteps. It was half past ten: she’d not long switched off the radio after the news. The light was on in the front room, where she was, but he did not come in. She heard him go upstairs. She called, ran to the stairs, called again. He didn’t answer. She followed him upstairs, heard him undress and get into bed. She went into the bedroom. He had folded his clothes and put them away, put on pyjamas, and was lying on his back, arms at his sides, the top of the sheet neatly crossing his chest. She said his name. No response. In the light from the open door she saw his eyes were closed, his breathing deep and regular. He was fast asleep.

‘He’s not moved for eight hours,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to disturb him so I slept in Barbara’s bed. Not that I’ve slept much. I’ve been up every hour to check on him. It’s almost like he’s in a coma. Do you think I should wake him?’

‘I dinna ken,’ Don said. ‘Maybe ye should get Dr Logan.’

She shuddered. ‘He won’t have a doctor near him.’

‘Weel, let him sleep then.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. She seemed to need permission for everything. ‘Thank you for everything. It’ll be all right now. Now that he’s back.’

‘Ye canna just leave it at that,’ Don said. ‘Ye’ll need to find oot where he’s been, what’s been going on in his heid.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation. But he’s home, that’s the main thing. You’d better go, before he wakes up.’ It was clear to Don that she was already preparing herself to ask no questions, that she would cope with this latest manifestation of Jack’s strangeness, even though it would mean her own life always being on the edge of some unknowable disaster. She had her husband back, after a fashion, and there was, at least for the moment, some kind of relief in her voice and on her face.

Don thought, I’ll have it out with him. It wasn’t right for any of them, living like that.

She saw the thought in his face. ‘Don’t say anything to him. I’m really grateful to you for everything, but please don’t say anything.’

‘Somebody needs tae,’ he said.

‘It won’t do any good,’ she said. ‘Please.’

A thin, desperate smile appeared on her lips. There was nothing
he could do. Perhaps there never had been. He opened the door and stepped back out into the rain.

‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘And thank you again.’

Don turned back. He said, ‘By the way, I’m a faither again. Liz had a boy.’ But the door was closing in his face as he said it.

§

So it went, between the Gordons and the Lennies. They were not close, they were not warm, but something linked them, a shadow of the past lengthening over their future. Jack was back at the bus stop on the Monday. He congratulated Don on the birth of his new son – which meant that Sarah must have heard him speak – and Don half-stretched out his hand for it to be shaken and then stopped, remembering that Jack didn’t do physical contact.

‘What the blazes happened on Saturday, Jack?’ he said. ‘Ye had Sarah thinking the worst. Ye had me thinking it.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I was tired,’ he said. ‘I had to escape, clear my head, that’s all. No need to be concerned.’

‘How could we no be?’

‘A man requires space,’ Jack said. ‘Space to breathe, time to think. You know that.’

‘You went
missing
,’ Don protested.

‘No, I absented myself.
I
knew where I was.’

‘Naebody else did. What was on your mind? What were ye thinking?’

‘Nothing.’ His eyes brightened, an almost evangelical smile played on his lips. ‘My mind was gloriously empty.’

Don shook his head and turned for the approaching bus. The man was deranged.

§

He never said to Liz about seeing Charlie on the night of his birth. If he had, he’d have had to mention the nurse. He couldn’t mention the nurse, he’d have coloured up. He’d never been any good at dissembling. But wasn’t that what he was doing?

What was he supposed to do, confess? Get Liz stirred up about nothing? Because that was what it was, nothing.

He looked for the nurse when he took Billy in the next day to see
his new brother, but she didn’t seem to be on duty. He thought about asking for her but didn’t want to get her into trouble. On other visits, he found himself glancing around nervously every time a nurse approached. It was never Marjory Taylor. He wanted it to be her, was fearful that it might be. What would they say to each other? He hated the furtiveness with which he negotiated these visits. Liz sensed something. ‘What’s up wi ye?’ ‘Nothing. I’m just tired.’ ‘
You’re
tired?’ she said. He put it from his mind. It was nothing.

Liz and Charlie came home, and Charlie filled the house with the din of his hunger and general dissatisfaction with his new surroundings. Billy stared at the roaring, red-mouthed addition with curiosity and bewilderment. Don made a fuss of Billy, but the toddler could clearly see that the balance in the household had shifted, that he would never again have the undivided attention of his mother and father.

Ten days after the great rescue at Borlanslogie, news came in of a calamity in Korea. There wasn’t much in the papers but what there was stirred evil, sickening memories in Don:
Mistaking the position of British troops,
US
planes yesterday swooped down on them with firebombs and machine guns. About 150 men all believed to be Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were killed or wounded.

The Argylls were almost the only British troops then in Korea. They were on a hill above the Naktong river and the enemy were on another hill near by: the Americans bombed the wrong hill. ‘Firebombs’, Don knew, meant napalm. He thought, I’d rather be killed outright than hit with that stuff.

He went to the Blackthorn the following Saturday. It might have been an assertion of independence except that Liz told him to go. Charlie’s constant crying was getting him down. It was getting them all down, but Liz had an idea that the baby was disturbed by Don’s presence. She sent him to the pub for a couple of hours: if she could get Charlie to settle, establish some kind of routine, maybe they’d all have a better night’s sleep. ‘Are ye sure?’ Don said. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘On ye go.’ There was a slight distance between them. It had been there since she got home. Nothing serious, nothing identifiable. He put it down to the stress of the birth, the added burden of a second bairn to look after. He thought of Marjory Taylor, the English nurse. He
kept pushing her from his mind but she kept popping back in, brisk and bonnie and nothing to do with the life he was trying to lead.

He and Jack talked about the hill in Korea. Jack had that old, familiar air of superior knowledge: nothing surprised him about the Yanks, the way they went in like idiot cowboys, guns blazing. On this occasion, Don agreed with him. He remembered Italy: the longest half-hour of his life. There was only one thing worse than being under German fire and that was getting support from the Americans. At least you knew the Germans were deliberately trying to kill you. With the Yanks, you were never quite sure.

When he got home the house was quiet. Liz was in bed, dozing over a library book. She loved mysteries, devoured Agatha Christie and Rex Stout and John Dickson Carr. She woke up when he came in, enough to mouth at him, ‘It worked,’ and point to the peacefully sleeping Charlie in the crib. Don undressed and got into bed as quietly as he could. ‘That’s it then,’ he said. ‘I’ll need tae go oot for a walk when he’s girning. We canna afford for me tae go tae the pub every nicht.’ She smiled at him, a warmer look than she’d given him for days. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Why?’ ‘Ye look a bit pale,’ she said. ‘Clammy. Ye look wiped oot, Don.’ She sat up. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Had a bad pint, I think. Felt a bit sick coming up the road. I’m fine noo.’

A minute later Charlie began to whimper, prelude to a full-blooded howl, and Liz’s attention was diverted. Don closed his eyes. He
was
exhausted. In seconds, in spite of Charlie, he was asleep.

So his Saturday nights at the Blackthorn were re-established, and nothing more was said about the cost. Business at Byres Brothers was increasing, and he was earning overtime some evenings and some Saturday afternoons. They were even saving a few shillings every week. They were both practical when it came to finances: neither of them resented the extra hours Don worked if it meant more money coming in; but there were days when he thought she wasn’t that pleased to see him home on time, and days when he was surprised at how happy he was to be away from the house – from the demands of the boys, the chores Liz was always asking him to do, the order she imposed, of necessity, on all their lives. The workshops at Byres Brothers offered a kind of Vulcanic refuge from domesticity: the noise of motors being tested; the rattle and clang of tools
striking metal or being dropped on concrete; the hot, oily atmosphere – it was all oddly soothing. So too were the passages between work and home, the waiting at bus stops and the bus journeys themselves. Sometimes he’d walk for a mile or two out of town before catching the next bus, for the pleasure of being alone and in silence. He remembered Jack’s words –
I absented myself. My mind was gloriously empty
– and thought he could see what he’d been after.

§

Don said, ‘Congratulations, Bulldog,’ and lifted his pint glass in salute. Jack Gordon did the same, and Bill Drummond, looking as if he’d won on the pools, raised his own glass and took a long drink. His wife, Joan, had delivered him a daughter, precisely on time and with no complications, on Christmas morning, and now, five days later, he’d come down to the Blackthorn to celebrate. There had been no alarms, no mad dash to hospital in the Austin: the bairn had been born at home, hardly even needing the assistance of Dr Logan, and was as healthy as you could wish for. Bulldog had a grin on him he couldn’t suppress. Pride shone from his eyes at what he and Joan between them had made. Wait till she starts screaming and won’t stop, Don thought, that’ll wipe the smile off your face.

Charlie was difficult, a bairn that didn’t seem to know how to sleep for more than an hour at a stretch. The strain was showing in Liz, who had to deal with him day and night, as well as manage Billy, increasingly resentful of his wee brother although only rarely did he misbehave as a consequence. Sometimes when Don came in from his work it was obvious Liz had been crying. But she still reckoned Charlie was better when Don wasn’t around. ‘Does he no like me or something?’ Don said. ‘How can he no like me when he disna even ken me?’ ‘I dinna ken,’ Liz said. ‘But he’s easiest when it’s just him and me. It’s a phase. He’ll grow oot o it.’ She seemed to like Charlie’s cussedness more than Billy’s acquiescence. So Don took Billy off her hands whenever he could, put him to bed and read to him, or trailed for hours with him up in the woods behind the village at weekends, and wondered how long Charlie’s phase – or was it Liz’s? – would last.

‘Well, Jack,’ Drummond said, ‘I’m glad tae see ye’ve no done a vanishing trick.’

Don looked at him sharply. How did Bulldog know about that,
and what was he thinking of by mentioning it? It was months ago, and Jack had been behaving normally – whatever that meant in his case – ever since. He’d even become more sociable – as demonstrated by the fact that he was prepared to have a drink with Bulldog. But Jack’s disappearance back in September wasn’t what Bulldog was referring to.

‘If ye hadna been here, ye’d have been my prime suspect. I’d have assumed ye’d gone intae hiding. Mind you, ye could be playing a cunning game, have it hidden in your garden shed or something.’

‘What are ye on aboot?’ Don asked.

‘The Stone of Destiny, of course,’ Bulldog said. ‘I’m thinking Jack might have had a hand in stealing it.’

‘It’s not been stolen,’ Jack said. ‘It’s been recovered from the thieves that took it in the first place.’

Bulldog thumped the table. ‘Ye see,’ he said. ‘Ye sound just like a member of the gang, justifying your ill deeds. A sympathiser at the very least. No that I’m no sympathetic masel. Nothing better than giving the English a bloody nose.’

The newspapers were in a frenzy: it was the kind of story they loved – mystery and intrigue wrapped up in ancient tribal rivalries and with hints of sacrilege and disloyalty thrown in.
A coarse and vulgar crime
, declared
The Times
;
Is nothing sacred to these criminals?
raged the
Daily Mail
. The Scottish press seemed on the whole to think it was a great adventure – while the
Daily Worker
almost managed to be delighted:
The grim humourless English ruling classes cling more and more to their obsolete ceremonies and symbols because they are fearful the whole monstrous system is going to crash about their ears.
Police were hunting for a young man and woman with Scottish accents seen in the vicinity of Westminster Abbey in the small hours of Christmas morning.

‘You’re the one wi the car,’ Don said. ‘Where were you when Joan was in labour? Maybe ye nipped doon the road tae London, stuck it in the boot and stashed it in
your
gairden shed.’

‘Aye, that’ll be right,’ Bulldog said. ‘The polis are looking for a Ford Anglia, no an Austin 10. And who was my lovely accomplice, eh? Apparently a polis doon there caught them in a clinch in a wee lane at the back o the abbey. No, it’ll be students. Only students would be daft enough. What dae ye reckon, Jack?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jack said. ‘It’s an irrelevance.’

Bulldog was astonished. ‘How can you say that? You, a diehard Nationalist? This is the best thing that’s happened for Scotland for decades. I just hope it turns up here and I get the scoop.’

‘It’s an irrelevance because it’s not the real stone,’ Jack said. ‘Do you think Scottish kings sat on a building block to get crowned? The original Stone of Destiny was shaped like a chair. It was made of basalt or maybe marble, not sandstone. When Edward I was approaching Scone Abbey the monks dug a big slab of red sandstone out of a local quarry and left it in a prominent place, while the real stone was hidden away somewhere. Edward fell for the ploy like the arrogant bully he was, or maybe he knew he was being palmed off with a fake but couldn’t afford to lose face. He had to take
a
stone of destiny home with him, so he had the sandstone slab carted off to London. But he also killed all the monks at Scone and the secret of where they’d hidden the original died with them.’