And the Land Lay Still (96 page)

Mike grasps Don’s hand, Marjory’s hand. ‘Please don’t leave just yet. I’d love to talk to you some more. Give me five minutes –’

‘Make it ten,’ Duncan says.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Your glasses are empty. I’ll find some more wine and come back. Will you be here?’

‘Dinna fash, son.’ Don says. ‘We’re in nae rush. We’ll just keep looking at the pictures.’

Reluctantly he leaves them to it. As Duncan leads Mike back through the crowd, he glances around for Peter Bond, and again feels that twist of disappointment. Among all those many faces, the one he wants is absent.

§

Don pauses, inspects, leans in to read the caption and date, looks again, moves on. There are so many images. Sometimes he looks for just a few seconds, sometimes for much longer. Mick McGahey; the UCS work-in; a farmer with his prize bull, hard to tell them apart. The photographs are not chronological, at least not consistently so. He thought he was working his way forward in time but now he seems to be going back. The 1960s. Mad Mitch of the Argylls, home from Aden to a hero’s welcome; Jock Stein, barely smiling despite having just won the European Cup; a string of men in shorts and singlets with numbers on their backs, heads bent into driving wind and rain with the Wallace Monument in the distance. The caption says
STRATHALLAN GAMES, AUGUST 1966,
but apart from the running gear the white-legged, mud-streaked, wiry men could be medieval peasants running straight out of history towards the lens. Don loves it.

He thinks of Saleem’s nephew, who has the village shop now. A nice-enough fellow, but not as talkative as Saleem. The nephew has a daughter who helps out behind the counter. Almost every day this summer Don has seen her, setting off on a long run in the early evening, tall and lithe and graceful in her immaculate tracksuit, so different from the bauchlie wee men in the photograph yet somehow he can see her in it, following them, overtaking the stragglers. She runs easily, effortlessly, she’s sixteen or seventeen he thinks, he sees her from his window, loping down the street, fair weather or foul she’s almost always out there. He is familiar with her long, even
strides, the way she turns her head to check for traffic, he checks too because he wants to protect her, but she is careful, she is quick, she is safe. He wants her to be safe, he wants her to have a good life. Once in the shop he asked her what she was training for and she smiled her bonnie smile and said she was building up to do a marathon. When he sees her running he wants to be her age again, to be her friend, to run with her like a deer, he wants to have life all over. She fills him with the joy of life just as Marjory does, but in a different way. She fills him with the joy of the future that will not be his.

He tells himself to stop dreaming, shifts along. His legs are tired. The next image is of big sea, land, sky, and the unmistakable golf-ball shape of the nuclear plant at Dounreay. Don has never been there but who wouldn’t recognise it? Like you wouldn’t recognise the Forth Bridge, Edinburgh Castle, the Falkirk Wheel, Ben Nevis. You don’t have to have been there to know them, they are part of your country. The caption says
DOUNREAY, 1964
. He stares. He stares and he stares.

Marjory is a couple of photos behind him. He calls to her. ‘Marjory!’ His voice sounds hoarse and urgent, even to himself. ‘Marjory!’ He turns back to the picture, feeling the clutch of the past at his chest.

§

Peter in the Gents. Still shaky, a bit sweaty. Not surprising. Only what you’d expect after a paranormal experience. But recovering now, thank you. Nice and cool in here. Cool and empty.

Bladder empty too. Head full though. Spotted Eddelstane at a distance, kept it between them. Listened to Pendreich, saw a few other faces from the Demon Barbour days. Then everybody started singing – except Peter. Why not him? He opened his mouth but nothing came out. Strange. Flashback to that other time in the bookshop, shouting the odds during the oratory. Same thing only different. Didn’t want a repeat, but the wine gauge was flickering into the red zone and after that anything can happen. Time to go. Time to exercise some self-control. Merely thinking that, let alone acting on it, is a good sign. There have been one or two lately.

He’d have liked to talk to Pendreich, but never mind. Saw the
name, the exhibition previews, came along. Didn’t realise it was a private function till he was inside. Nobody flung him out. Another good sign. Still, let’s not tempt fate, eh?

Stops in front of the big mirror. Guy looks familiar. Hello, Jimmy. Hello, Peter. Shit. One paranormal experience after another. Can a ghost haunt itself?

Peter speaks and Jimmy’s lips don’t move. Jimmy speaks and Peter’s lips don’t move. The thing is to get them working in sync. Then you’ll be fine.

JIMMY
: What paranormal experience?

PETER
: Just seen a ghost. The ghost in the camera’s eye. Mad Uncle Jack.

JIMMY
: Uncle Jack’s here?

PETER
: Came right off the fucking wall at me. Sorry. Bad news when the effing and blinding creeps in. Indicates I’m about to peak. After that, all downhill.

JIMMY
: You don’t need to tell me.

PETER
: No, I don’t, do I? You’re James Bond, after all.

JIMMY
: The original Slaemill edition. The pre-Connery, pre-Roger Moore, pre-Timothy Dalton, pre-Daniel fucking Craig version. Sorry. That’s me at it now.

PETER
: My excuse is I’ve had a few glasses of el vino, Jimmy. What’s yours?

JIMMY
: Let’s blame it on a general aversion to pretendy spies. Real and imagined.

PETER
: See that Sean Connery, I used to like him because he seemed so much better than the ones that came after him. He could even act a bit. But age has not mellowed him, no. It has overripened him. The Nats should put as much clear blue water between themselves and him as they can. The man’s a joke, a parody of himself.

JIMMY
: Shir Sean, shulking till he got his knighthood from the very eshtablishment he shays he wants Shcotland to break away from. Fuck off, that’s what I say. What do you say?

Peter grips the edges of the basin. He steels himself not to answer. To say nothing. This is the problem. You’re doing fine and then the wine or the whisky kicks in and you get into a ranting match with yourself. So. Deep breaths. Calm yourself. Then head for the street.

And as he breathes, he sees the face in the mirror begin to fade. Slowly at first, breaking up, the nose, the mouth, the eyes becoming hollow sockets, the flesh retreating. Skeletal, then nothing.

You’re a ghost, remember? You’re on the other side. People see you, then they don’t. And this is the easiest, safest way for you to be. To be the thing that once haunted them, and no longer does.

Like Lucy Eddelstane. Gone for good. Gone for a ghost. Not like her brother, the survivor. Peter went looking for Lucy, but he had no luck. Maybe she went ahead, into the other. Maybe if he goes too, goes for good, he’ll find her again, a sulky wee spectre of love.

Like Uncle Jack. If you go back to that picture, the one of Dounreay, what’s the betting he’s not in it? What’s the betting there’s an empty space where Uncle Jack used to be?

But it’s too late. Can’t go back. You’re away as well. Pendreich saw you, but now there’s an empty space where you were. And so it will always be, until the next time.

Take a hike, Peter. Take a train. Take a bus. Take a walk up there where the wood meets the moor. Take a stroll up the hill with Uncle Jack. Take his hand, the pebble that’s in it. Take a deep breath, then go.

Next time around, you’ll live a better life.

§

Mike, being photographed – alone, with Duncan, with a dignitary or two – Mike signing books, is puzzled by the name Billy Lennie. The words
Billy Lennie’s dead
sound from long ago but don’t ring true. Because Billy Lennie isn’t dead, he’s with Catriona, he’s the father of her children. So why is that phrase in his head? It troubles him.

And then the last of the books is signed, and he puts down the pen and stands up from the table, and across the way, as the party begins to break up, he sees Ellen with Kirsty. Ellen waves at him, and he hears her voice from years back and the name isn’t Billy, it’s Charlie.
Charlie Lennie’s dead
. Kirsty’s father is dead. Charlie Lennie, from Drumkirk, a ten-minute drive from Wharryburn.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. Duncan has been buttonholed again by the counter of ministers. Mike feels diminished and isolated by the enormity of his thoughts, by the fact that he can’t quite master
them. A kind of indoor mist swirls about him. Then he hears a voice, and a woman is bearing in on him out of the mist. Marjory Forrester.

‘Mr Pendreich,’ she says, and this time it is she who seizes his hand. ‘Please would you come? Don is in a state. He is very anxious to speak to you.’

‘I am very anxious to speak to him,’ Mike says. He goes with her at once, her old, soft hand clutched in his as if she were someone he has known for years, an aunt, a family friend. ‘Please call me Mike,’ he says. ‘Is he all right?’

‘He’s quite agitated. He sent me to find you.’

‘Wait.’ He brings her to a halt. ‘I need to ask you something first. Does Don have another son?’

‘No,’ she says quickly. ‘I mean, yes, but he’s dead.’

‘And his name was Charlie?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Why? What about him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mike says. ‘I’m confused. I need to think.’

‘They were estranged,’ Marjory says. ‘It was all very bad.’

‘Yes.’ Mike says. ‘I can see that it would be.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘No, but I knew about him. Don’t say anything to Don. Not yet.’

‘About what?’

‘I don’t know. Let’s see what it is he wants to tell me first.’

They set off again. Don is still in front of the Dounreay image. He seems mesmerised by it. But when Marjory says, ‘Don, here’s Mike,’ he turns at once and his eyes are piercing with intent. ‘Tell me aboot this picture,’ he demands.

‘Well,’ Mike says, ‘as you can see, it’s Dounreay, not long after it was built. We were on a family holiday and my father took us there.’

‘Aye, aye, but this man, what aboot him?’ Don stabs so fiercely at the gaunt figure on the road that he almost hits the glass and it’s as if his finger is responsible for the explosion of cloud and light in the background. Mike and Marjory both move to stop him pitching forward but he stops himself. He seems angry, he seems exultant, he seems on the brink of something.

‘He happened to be there,’ Mike says. ‘He was walking along the road and my father got him to take a photo of the three of us, my
mother, my father and myself, and then Dad took this picture as he was going on his way.’

‘But ye dinna ken who he is!’ Don says. It’s a statement, not a question, and Mike looks again. Did he miss something, then or now?
Should
he know who the man is?

‘No. We kind of thought maybe he was a tramp. Or a local man passing by. He hardly said a word. He did make quite an impression on me, though. He gave me something. He was … intense.’

‘Aye,’ Don says. ‘He was.’

The way he says it. Mike feels everything suspended. He knows he will remember this moment for ever.

‘Don’t tell me you know him?’

They are both staring at the man in the picture and the man is staring back at them. He is staring from the past, from the future in the past. Don says, ‘Aye, I kent him. What was it he gied ye?’

‘Nothing special,’ Mike says. ‘A stone. It was just a stone out of his pocket.’

‘A stone.’ Don is silent. Then he does something so unplanned, so unexpected, that it makes Mike catch his breath. He reaches out his hand, the index finger no longer pointing but cupped with the others, and he touches the glass where the man’s head is. The hand cradles the head for a moment. ‘Jack,’ Don says. There is a weight of tenderness that the short, soft syllable seems hardly capable of bearing. Mike glances at Marjory and sees the emotion she feels, and he feels it himself, the knowledge that Don has lost someone, found him and lost him again in the instant, someone behind the glass but he is trapped, he is trapped and also he is gone, and this is the truth of the image, the truth all three of them face about themselves, their brief lives, the constancy of their impermanence.

‘Do you know what it meant?’ Mike asks. ‘The stone?’

Don shakes his head.

‘Who was he?’

Don lowers his hand. ‘He was a friend,’ he says. ‘Oh God,’ he says. ‘He had a wife and a bairn, a lassie. Oh God.’

‘It’s all right, Don,’ Marjory says.

‘This isna the time,’ Don says. ‘I would like tae tell ye aboot him, but this isna the time.’

‘Maybe it is,’ Mike says. ‘We’ll go somewhere after this, and we’ll talk.’

There are things he needs to say too, to Don, to Ellen, to Kirsty. To Isobel. To Murdo. There are so many things to say, so many people to say them to.

He turns from the image of Dounreay, of the strange, intense man – Jack, Don called him – that he met on the road all those years ago, and looks back across the room, emptying now, to a cluster of people preparing to go to Jean’s: Walter and Gavin, Ellen and Kirsty, some others. He thinks, where do you begin? How do you tell a man that he has a granddaughter he never knew existed? How do you introduce someone who never knew her father to her grandfather? How do you make the connections between Don and Marjory and Ellen and Kirsty that must be made, that will be made? He doesn’t yet know. But the connections, more of them even than he can know or imagine at this moment – with Catriona and Billy and beyond, with the wife and daughter Jack had – the connections will be made, and he understands that it has fallen to him to make them.

‘The Summons’ by Edwin Morgan is reproduced as the epigraph to this book from his
Collected Poems
(1990 edition), by kind permission of the poet and the publisher, Carcanet Press Limited.

My sincerest thanks for their support and encouragement go to my agent, Natasha Fairweather at A. P. Watt Ltd, to Simon Prosser, Juliette Mitchell, Anna Ridley and all at Hamish Hamilton, and to Sarah Coward.