Furnace (24 page)

Leyden stared at her, dismayed. I’d rather head back. Once everything’s in.

He’ll think you’re rude if you don’t. She opened her door and swung out before he could answer.

The radio was playing but had lost its signal somewhere along the coast. He hadn’t noticed while they were talking, what with the noise of the engine and the rain. Now, alone and with the
engine dead he listened to it crackling softly, unearthly in the gloom. He switched it off and lowered himself stiff-limbed from the cabin. He unlocked and dragged back with a long, low rumble the
heavy side-door of the van. For a moment he paused, leaning against the cold wet panel, then started hauling her belongings out onto a narrow, sheltered porch. Finally Emma appeared, propping the
door open with a box before stepping out to help.

He was sleeping, she said. He does want to meet you, though. You’re to come up for some tea before you drive back.

Leyden puffed his cheeks. I don’t know. It’s getting late.

I’ve already wet the tea, she said. She crouched to lift a couple of boxes then started for the concrete stairs.

He grunted as he took the weight of a pair of suitcases, then followed her in.

The flat was on the second floor. The hall was badly lit and smelled strongly of pipe smoke. The aroma was pleasant but somehow saddening and a sudden qualm of regret and loss swept through
Leyden. Almost overwhelmed, he paused for a moment, as if to catch his breath, waiting for the strange, powerful feeling to pass. There was no sign of the father. She signalled to him to take the
luggage into an empty bedroom to his left. He carried the cases in, wondering if the room had been hers before she’d left home. There were no pictures on the plain-papered walls or books on
the shelves and the mattress on the narrow bed was covered by just a taut white cotton sheet. He slid the cases against a wall and was glad to get back out of the flat and into the cold bright
space of the concrete stairwell.

By the time they’d finished Leyden was clammy with sweat and impatient to be gone, though with a sense of guilty responsibility he allowed the girl to lead him along the hall into a
narrow, low-ceilinged living room. Like the hall, the atmosphere was loaded with pungent, sweetish pipe smoke, obscurely familiar.

An old man began pushing himself out of his deep armchair as they entered the room. Here you are then, he said. Though heavily built, and obviously old enough to be the girl’s grandfather,
he moved easily to where the two of them stood. He held out a broad, doughy hand for Leyden to shake. Sit yourself down, he wheezed. He rattled out a quick, loose cough, his jowls quivering.

Leyden moved in the big man’s wake to a low couch. Sinking into it he felt its broken softness draw him down and back. The father peered at him with a mild, sleepily satisfied expression,
then followed Emma through a door into what seemed to be the kitchen. A big, boxy old TV in the corner was showing a football match, the volume turned down to a murmur. Directly in front of him an
old-fashioned gas fire was burning fitfully, sputtering and hissing almost as loudly as the ghostly cheering and chanting from the game. The waves of heat from it were pleasant on his feet and
legs. He yawned and sank back deeper into the spongy cushions, allowing his eyes to close. Jesus, he thought, I could black out forever. With an effort he opened his eyes and forced himself to
concentrate on the football. Soon the father was back again, handing Leyden a mug of strong sweet tea. Well now, he said thickly, and lowered himself, grunting, onto the couch. There was no sign of
the girl.

To begin with Leyden felt revived by the hot tea, but after the first few mouthfuls its heat and sweetness seemed to bloom inside him with the same narcotic force as the fire. He listened as if
through a thick curtain of sleep, as the low, moist, unhurried voice of the girl’s father asked him simple questions about the drive up, the weather, life in the city. With difficulty, Leyden
answered him, hardly conscious of some of his replies. He was aware of the scrape of a match and the sharp brief stink of its sulphur, then the cloying fragrance of the old man’s tobacco
rolled across him like incense. Again he felt the pang of some hidden, childhood loss. Some long dead, forgotten figure, at the farthest edge of memory – not his father, surely, who had never
smoked, or taken pleasure in any such thing, as far as Leyden could remember – but who, then?

See this, now, the old man said quietly, nodding towards the TV.

With an effort, Leyden lifted his slumped head and watched as the old man cycled through channels with a remote control. Satellite, ken? he confided. He stopped at a channel and gestured for
Leyden to pay attention to it. It was pornography, but just a series of teasers for films showing later that night. The clips were so brief and close-up that Leyden found himself struggling to make
sense of the glimpsed flesh and hard, concentrated faces.

Satellite, he heard the father intone again, soft and sly. Special viewing card. Fae Europe, so it’s double-dutch, ken? The old man chuckled, coughed wetly, then raced back through the
channels to the football.

Letting his head drop back down, Leyden closed his eyes. He had to leave soon, he knew. If he let himself get any drowsier he’d have to find somewhere to spend the night. With each
mouthful of tea prickles of sweat were rising across his forehead. Hazily, he wondered if he was not just tired but sick; fevered, maybe.

So then, ye’ve kent ma quine a whiley now? The question was friendly but there was something measured, a hint of cunning in the tone that made Leyden straighten himself and concentrate on
his answer.

Six months, he agreed. Since November. He cleared his throat a little nervously. Was this the beginning of the rebuke, father to father? he wondered. He had already decided not to defend
himself, or his son. He would listen passively, accept every judgement. Maybe he would stay completely silent through it all, rise calmly at the end and go. He didn’t know. It was complicated
somehow by her father being so much older than he’d expected. Battling against the warm fog in his mind he opened his mouth to speak, then halted, saying nothing.

Another match flared up to his right as the old man re-lit his pipe. And fit is it ye dae then?

I teach, he said.

Oho, a teacher, he said, and half chuckled, half coughed, rattling a thick chain of phlegm deep in his chest. So is that how ye met then, aye?

Leyden stared at the fire, his understanding slowed by its lapping heat and the billows of thick sweet tobacco smoke. He shook his head at last. No, no. It’s not like that, he mumbled.
We’re not…

The father held up his broad, white hand and shook his head benevolently.

In Leyden’s mind an image of his son formed, but it was featureless, like an effigy worn smooth. He had to speak about the boy, of course. But why did his own son’s name catch in his
throat now? And where was the girl for Christ’s sake, to set the old man right? He felt his eyelids closing and forced them back open. Dimly, he was aware of the father saying something about
tiredness, about staying the night. Leyden shook his head, but the old man was already up from the couch, was moving away towards the kitchen.

What was happening to him? He was caught here, absurdly, like some accidental prodigal. With a new sense of urgency he struggled from the clasp of the soft cushions to stand upright, queasy and
unsteady. Behind a pair of heavy drape curtains near the TV he found a tall sash window and battled to open it, finally forcing it up a few inches. Outside, the rain was falling straight, washing
onto the van below, onto the street and onto the grey blocks of flats all around like the beginning of an endless, final flood. It was impossible to imagine the road home – when he tried, all
he saw in his mind’s eye was the rain, falling in swathes as if the journey lay not over roads and mapped land but a wilderness of water.

Sensing movement at his back, Leyden turned to find the father at his elbow. He was staring impassively past him, out into the rainswept dark. The old man nodded. There now, mannie, see that, he
said, his voice a low, complacent drone. There’s nae call to journey in that.

The kitchen door opened and Emma stepped through, pausing there to watch the two men. She had changed into a plain white cotton shift that fell almost to her bare feet and her hair was bound up
in a white towel. Like a kelpie, eh? Leyden heard the old man mumble admiringly. Like a kelpie fae the sea. She smiled distractedly and turned back into the kitchen again. As if obeying some hidden
signal, the old man left Leyden and followed her out of sight. An image of the empty bedroom he’d carried her luggage into flashed through Leyden’s mind and he shivered as if chilled.
He saw the bare narrow bed again; the empty walls. He moved back to the couch and sat forward on it, hungry for the heat of the fire. Finally he sank back and allowed sleep to overtake him.

He woke suddenly, heart racing, from a dream of speaking with the ghost of his wife. He knew it had grown late. A solid darkness filled the gap in the drape curtains where
earlier he’d stood. Aware of a presence behind him he arched his neck and saw the girl’s face looking down at him. She smiled faintly as their eyes met and he slumped back into the
cushions.

You were whimpering, she said, and he understood that she had woken him.

Leyden bowed his head. In the wake of his dream he felt a sense of renunciation and calm, though he had no clear understanding of what it was he might have renounced. The gas fire was still
hissing at his feet. He tried to speak, but his dry tongue felt heavy and dead as sun-warmed wood or stone. Looking up again, he saw the silent bulk of the girl’s father framed by the light
in the kitchen doorway. Was he watching them? His expression was empty as a carved Buddha’s. The eyes were open but it seemed the face of a sleeping man, face of all sleeping fathers. Leyden
closed his own eyes, wearily, and knew he would not be leaving.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the suggestions of several careful readers of some or all of these stories, including Ali Lumsden, Brian McCabe, Alan Spence, Adrian Searle and Alan Warner. I
would also like to thank the editors of the following publications where the stories first appeared, sometimes in different versions:
The Aberdeen Review, Causeway/Cabhsair, Carve Magazine,
Edinburgh Review, The Fish Anthology
(2007),
Gutter, New Writing Scotland
(10 & 18), Route Publishings
Book at Bedtime
and
Bonne Route
anthologies, and
Shorts: The
Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Collection
(1999 & 2000).

‘Everywhere Was Water Once’ was a prize-winner in the Fish International Short Story Competition in 2007; ‘Underworld’ was shortlisted in the Bridport
International Short Story Competition in 2007; ‘Rain’ and ‘There Is a Saviour’ were shortlisted for the Raymond Carver Short Story Prize in 2006; ‘A Piece of the
Moon’ and ‘Dead of Winter’ were runners-up in The Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competitions of 1999 and 2000 respectively.

My grateful thanks are also due to the Scottish Book Trust for providing me with a New Writer Award in 2010/11.