Rise (19 page)

‘The bastards!' she yells, a sudden rush of energy sending her running, faster and faster round the stony silence, arms thrust out like wings.

‘Feel better?' A sarky voice from behind.

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘You decided to hang about then? No Ross with you the day?' Mhairi is flapping out a tablecloth at the door of the café.

‘Up at the hospital.'

‘Where you off to?'

Justine thrusts her hands in the pockets of her borrowed coat. ‘Just a walk. I'm putting up some posters for Hannah. How?'

‘Is that no Michael's jacket you've got on?'

‘Aye. I'm wearing Hannah's knickers too.'

‘Funny wumman.'

‘Amn't I just?'

‘Gies a poster for the café, then. In fact; wait there. You can do me a favour.' Mhairi nips inside, emerges with a clutch of folded papers. ‘Gonny put these out too?'

It's a leaflet. ‘Crannogs and Kings' is printed on the front, in shades of green and blue.

‘Good, eh?'

Justine is speechless.

‘Hannah's idea. Rattled them out last night. I did the photies and sketches; Hannah wrote up the words. Just like that, off the cuff.'

She is aware of pulsing in her inner ear. Nipping the bridge of her nose with finger and thumb.

‘Right wee cottage industry, aren't we? I don't know why we didny do something like this ages ago.'

The back of her eyeballs prickle. Justine flips the leaflet over. Reads the last paragraph out loud: ‘“Soon, all this wonder may be despoiled by the coming of a massive windfarm. Please add your voice at www.noturbinesintheglen.” For
fucksake
.'

‘I know! You can just buy websites off the internet. It's mental. I'm gonny do one for the café too.'

‘Mhairi, this was my idea.'

‘Eh, I don't think so.'

‘It fucking was—'

‘Ho! Language! You talk like that in your nursery?'

She feels her cheeks go hot. Squeezing off the throbbing. Moving her feet, but they are going all wrong, squinty.

‘Right, Miss Potty Mouth. You can put these in the shop and the hotel. I've left some in the café, and I'll take a load to Lochallach. I have business there,' Mhairi mutters darkly. She divides the pile she's holding, thrusts one half on to Justine. ‘I'm shutting up early. Oh, for God's sake. What's the matter? You look like someone's stole your scone.'

Justine shakes her head. This jacket is far too big for her; it must look stupid. Her spike-heeled boots are sinking into damp grass. She stabs them deeper. A pop of mud.

‘Why you even bothering about this shite?'

‘It's not shite.'

‘I mean, who cares? It's not even your hills, nobody fucking owns them; they don't do anything. So what if there's some stupid windmills on them?'

‘I care.' Mhairi buttons her coat across her massive bosom. ‘You're right: nobody owns them, so how come a bunch of outsiders can come and change the place we live in, and make money off of us. Us, no them. It's our community – and naebody asked us.'

‘Nobody ever asks you anything. Christ, what planet d'you live on?'

‘Same one as you, you cheeky – oh, hello Miss Campbell.'

‘Oh, hello there. It's yourself.' A spindly old dear waves her walking stick at them. She totters, returns the stick to the ground. Rests her hands on the top. A sweet, pink face, lemon-coloured raincoat. ‘That you shutting up?'

‘Aye. I'm away to catch the ten to.'

‘Off shopping, is it?'

‘Aye. No Effie the day?'

‘Ach, it's her veins again.' The old lady beams at them, her wee nose snuffling. ‘Thought I heard shouting ben the café?'

‘No, no, we're all closed up.'

‘Oh.' She sucks her teeth. She is the perfect pocket-granny. Give her a shawl and a Werther's Original and you're away. ‘Who's this then? You the lassie fae the manse? Lovely to meet you. I'm Margaret.' Behind her specs, milky eyes blink. ‘Was your hair not more . . . funny, before?'

Justine is being assessed through net curtains.
Would you look at the state o' that
.

‘Suits you better, mind. No so harsh, eh?'

‘Yeah. Change of scene, change of colour. I'm Justine.'

‘Justine. And who are your people, dear?'

‘Oh, I'm not from round here—'

Mhairi is quick as quick. ‘I thought your dad was, though? That's what Hannah telt me. Somebody Arrow?'

‘Arrow? That's a gie funny name. Don't think I know any Arrows round here.'

‘Miss Campbell's lived here all her life, haven't you?'

‘I'm no deaf, dear. You don't need to bawl. Aye,' she says proudly. ‘Eighty-seven glorious years—'

‘Afternoon, ladies.' A guy in a yellow jacket passes them up on the road.

‘Traitor!' shouts Mhairi.

He stops. Opens the jacket in an apologetic flash. His fluorescent bib says Sentinel. ‘It's only temporary. I have to go where the money is, Miss Cowan.'

‘You selling Cardrummond off to them an all?'

‘I'd never sell it. You know that, Miss Cowan. Why I need to go where the money is.'

‘Oh, so man mind thyself, is it? You'll just exploit the res—'

He puts his hand up to shade his eyes. Wiry trunk, pale forearm where the yellow slips back. His muscles move in complicated ripples, elbow rough. Freckled. ‘Miss Campbell, you're looking lovely so you are. New coat, is it?'

‘Och, Duncan. I've had this old thing for years. Ma spring coat, so it is.'

‘Well, it's very nice. Hello again.' He addresses this to Justine.

‘Hello.' Has no clue who he is.

‘Enjoying the Killie nightlife?'

‘What?'

He grins, continues up the road.

‘Daft big sod,' says Mhairi, smiling.

‘Och, thon Duncan's a lovely lad.' There's a wistful hunger pressed on Miss Campbell's face. She keeps looking, even after he's gone. ‘It's a sin, up there on that farm on his own.'

Justine begins to ease herself from the huddle, a careful unhurried motion that is barely walking is infinitesimal is almost—

In a neat pincer movement, Miss Campbell seizes her arm. ‘Arrow, did you say?' Some grip on her. ‘What was your daddy's first name?'

‘Och, it's fine. I'm not sure that he was from here exactly . . . it was maybe further north.' Justine shuffles the leaflets Mhairi's given her. ‘I should—'

‘But what was his name, dear?'

‘Frank.'

‘Frank Arrow, eh? No . . . never heard o' thon. There was a Frank Simons over at Polnoon. But Arrow? Tell you what, dear. When I get home I'll check through all my daddy's records—'

‘There's really no need—'

‘Miss Campbell's dad was the Session Clerk here.'

‘Aye. 1895 to 1950. It's no bother. No bother at all. Kept records of everything; his own records mind, over and above thon churchy ones: births, deaths, censures—'

‘Censures?'

‘Oh aye. Goes way back, beyond his time. All the juicy details too. Fornications, adultery,' she hides her mouth behind a dainty, liver-spotted hand, ‘there's even one for
bestiality
.'

‘Oh my God!'

‘I know! Can you imagine? Thon big, smelly cows . . .'

Gently, Mhairi touches her arm. ‘Margaret hen, I need to away and get my bus.'

‘Oh, what am I like? Well, I'll have a wee look for you anyroad, dear. See if there's any Arrows listed. You'll pop in and see me maybe? I'm the wee cottage at the end of the row, the pink one.'

‘That's very kind. But please don't go to any bother.'

‘Och, it keeps me off the telly, dear.'

‘Aye, and the bestiality!' calls Mhairi as she heads up the road for her bus.

Chapter Twelve

From where, Hannah? She rests her pen on her lip and wonders why – really why – she’s picked these people, this place to write about. What makes the grit settle? And why is it working now? Because she likes the view? Because it’s new; it’s handy? Because some trace memory leeches up and calls her; starts the story spinning?

If she understood, it would not work. And if it were voices outside her own, it would be deafening. How would she filter the cacophony she’d be hearing now, because she’d know how the Duke of Cumberland’s men chased a straggle of Jacobites all the way to Furrow. Burned them alive. She’d know how wee Johnny’s mum lives on Diet Coke and anti-depressants, how the miles of sky here frighten her indoors; she’d know that Edward Keppie at number seven’s great-great-granny was a speywife, and that Duncan at Cardrummond can trace his ancestors back to the Covenanters, to a seventeen-year-old girl they drowned in the loch; how Iron Age settlers dropped mirrors there – in that same loch – as votives. How Margaret Campbell’s daddy was terrified they’d steal the parish records, how he hid his paranoia far better than the tremors left by nerve gas and the rats; how the imprinted blood from her son still lingers on the roadway; how Effie’s brother and Margaret’s lover lives on in the lintel of the churchyard; how the sheep droppings covered every inch of the cleared-out croft; how Auld Angus sees Mhairi as a fine bit of flesh, and would roger her senseless if his prostate wasna killing him. How her husband grieves.

How her husband grieves.

Hannah studies her notebook.

The ceremony was that night. When the sun slipped and the animals stirred, men lit fires and brands. Maraq’s wrists were seized and she was dragged, roughly, through a ring of stone. Threading in and out of the pillars, damp stumps of miserable proportions. Had these people never seen the greatness they could build? The women spun her round and round, in the centre beside the fires, light sweeping pink-gold circles, she was the fire, she was burning, giddy, round and round, flung into a solid chest.

Him.

Her wrists released. Bound onto his. Led to a shelter of long rocks and branches. The moon was the colour of fish here. They went inside.

A flood of words, all come from nowhere, everywhere, and she has pinned them down. It’s the dig, the cist, the excitement, making everything come alive. And Michael seems like Michael again. Taking charge after Hannah had her wee flip with the police. He was right about the writing too, calming her. Thank God for this unbuttoning of him. Maybe, finally, they are moving forwards.

‘Ross and I will visit Euan,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll get some burgers. Have a boys’ lunch.’

‘Euan can’t eat.’

‘Well, we’ll have milkshakes. With straws.’

Her fretting didn’t faze him. And this is the glorious novelty that stops her fretting. It feels like they are running in tandem again. They’d even managed to laugh at the picture in the paper:

Kilmacarra Bun Fight

The photo from the windfarm meeting. Mhairi’s face was a scarlet howl, surrounded by fizzy hair. Michael’s mouth, open to speak, looked like a seal about to catch the airborne scone. Bound to win awards.

‘Go on. You take the morning to write, yes?’ Michael insisted. ‘Euan is absolutely fine, they’ve reset the leg, his tongue’s healing. He’ll be coming home soon. I’ll take Ross, Justine’s got the housework under control. You go, walk, think about your book. Please. You need some fresh air.’

She forgot he did that; he made these little pockets of kindness for her.

Fresh. Why does that feel so dangerous? That’s what the police said: they were looking at fresh lines of enquiry in relation to the vehicle that crushed her son. Which really means they haven’t a clue. Now that Euan is stable, her panic has turned to anger. Christ, she lives in a one-horse town, there were loads of people in the village on Sunday – all the folk at the meeting for a start. Surely someone saw something. But that is the problem, apparently. Everyone was at the meeting. Except, that is, the person who phoned.

‘So was it a man or a woman?’ she’d asked. ‘Local?’

‘Hard to say. Fast, low-pitched. Probably a woman. Probably. Or a kiddie. A woman or a boy. That’s what the operator thought at first. But not a man.’

‘A kid? So, not the driver?’

‘Aye. No. Well, we can’t say. One of Euan’s pals maybe?’ The policeman had looked hopefully at his colleague. Justine, who was ironing, had stopped, the steam phhting damply up.

‘Did you get the number, though? From the call?’

‘Oh aye. It’s a mobile, mind.’

‘That’s brilliant!’

‘Pay-as-you-go. No registered, I’m afraid.’