Road Ends (12 page)

None of that surprised me. What did surprise me—what rendered me speechless with astonishment and still does whenever I think of it—was that, a few days after our interview, who should come into the bank requesting a few minutes of my time but the Reverend James Thomas. We had not spoken since the day of Henry’s death but of course I offered him a chair and asked what I could do for him.

He began by saying he had not come on his own behalf but on the behalf of a “deeply troubled man.”

“A few days ago,” he said, “a member of my congregation applied to you for a loan to help him start up in the hotel business.”

I held up my hand. He stopped, but I was so incredulous that for a moment I couldn’t think what to say. Finally I said, “Mr. Thomas—”

“Reverend Thomas, please.” (Said with that smile of his.)

“Reverend Thomas. The bank does not discuss the affairs of its customers with other people under any circumstances.”

“It isn’t the bank I’ve come to talk to, Mr. Cartwright. It is you.”

“In my capacity as manager of the bank.”

“No, in your capacity as a human being.”

“As a human being I have no authority to grant loans.”

He smiled, as if at a particularly stubborn and foolish child. “All right,” he said. “I concede the point, as it troubles you so much. Let me just put a hypothetical case to you.”

He put the tips of his fingers together so that they formed a little steeple and touched them to his lips. I wondered if in the
course of his day he ever made a single gesture that was not contrived.

“Let us imagine a man who has made some serious mistakes in his life,” he said. “Some bad decisions, which have affected not only him but also his wife and his five young children. Let us suppose that by God’s grace and through the unceasing prayers and support of those in the church community who have refused to give up on him, he has put all that behind him. He has changed. I truly believe that. I deal with human weakness every day, Mr. Cartwright” (a sorrowful smile this time—oh, the pain of dealing with human weakness every day!) “and I believe this man sincerely wants to make a fresh start.

“He has always wanted to set up in the hotel business. He tells me it has been his dream ever since he was a boy. Although I am no expert in such matters, it seems to me that it is a good dream, not just from his own perspective but because it would also benefit the whole community, bringing more tourists into the area.

“However—and here’s where you, in your capacity as a bank manager, come in—he needs some financial help to get started.

“Now then.” (The steeple of his fingers touched his lips, once, twice, a third time. If that’s what a university education does for you, I don’t regret not having one.) “A hypothetical question to go with a hypothetical case: if you were in a position to help such a man, knowing that you would also be helping his family and the wider community, wouldn’t you want to do so?”

I pushed back my chair and stood up. I said, “Excuse me, Reverend Thomas, but this conversation is ridiculous and I have a lot to do today.”

He stayed seated. He said, “Mr. Cartwright, this is a good man we’re speaking of. He has weaknesses, as do we all—only God is perfect—but he is at heart a good man, and I believe he deserves a second chance. Don’t forget he won’t be on his own
this time—he will have the grace of God and the support of the church community behind him. And I, personally, will vouch for him.”

By this stage I was having great difficulty controlling myself. “Will you, personally, guarantee the loan?” I said tightly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Will you, personally, guarantee the loan?”

To my pleasure he flushed. “If I had the resources I certainly would, but I’m afraid I don’t.” He paused, then tipped his head to one side. “Mr. Cartwright, I’m beginning to wonder if you have a personal grudge against this man. You are in a position to help him and yet you won’t even consider it. Why is that? I find it very strange.”

“I am not in a position to help him,” I said. “The money in this bank is not mine. It is money entrusted to the bank by its customers and I have an absolute duty to safeguard it and not expose it to undue risk. On the other hand, if you would guarantee the loan by, say, taking out a second mortgage on your home, the risk to the bank would be greatly reduced and I’d be happy to arrange it. As you have such faith in him, presumably you’ll be happy to do that.”

His face went a pleasing ripe-tomato red, apart from his lips and the end of his nose, both of which were pinched white. He stood up.

He said, “I came here this morning because I thought, despite our differences, that you were a reasonable man, Mr. Cartwright. All I was asking was that you reconsider your decision in this case. I don’t think that’s too much to ask when a man’s future is at stake. But apparently you do.”

I walked over to the door and opened it and he walked out. As he passed me he said, “I am disappointed in you, Edward Cartwright. Profoundly disappointed. I expected better, even from you.”

I still can’t help wishing I had knocked him down.

That was not the end of the affair, not by a long way. The following Sunday Reverend Thomas stood in his pulpit and preached a sermon on the evils of those who set themselves up in judgment over others. I wasn’t there, of course, but I heard about it afterwards. It was a very powerful sermon, apparently, and somehow he managed to make it clear whom he was talking about. It was all around Struan within a matter of hours. As a result a number of our customers—not many but even one would be too many—withdrew their money and took it to other banks in other towns.

Until that day I believe the people of this town, virtually without exception, trusted and respected me. That meant a great deal to me. I’d go as far as to say I valued it above almost anything else.

Now there are exceptions. I cannot begin to say how painful that is and how bitterly I still resent it.

Why do I keep thinking about things like this? It’s almost as if my brain actively seeks them out. It’s absurd. I will stop.

One more thing, though. One final thing I want to say before closing the book on the subject once and for all: in the years since that incident Joel Pickett has gone from bad to worse and taken his family with him. He has never held a job for more than a couple of weeks, he has spent many nights in the jail cell after drunken and aggressive behaviour, his boys have been constantly in trouble practically from the moment they could walk, and now, it would appear, they have become arsonists.

Reverend Thomas no doubt maintains that this is my doing—that by not giving Joel Pickett a loan at a critical point in his life I condemned his family to a downward slide into poverty and disgrace. The truth is, if I had approved that loan, when his absurd hotel scheme failed, and it would have failed, Joel would have owed so much money that he would have lost his home along with everything else and his family would now be on the street.
They would be destitute. That is the truth of the matter. I am not the cause of Joel Pickett’s ruin; Joel Pickett is.

There. I am not going to think about it ever again.

Saturday. I shouted at the boys again. They broke the lamp in the living room. They were fighting. It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning and they were fighting. I cannot understand why they don’t just keep out of each other’s way if they hate each other so much. It seems such a simple, obvious solution. Instead it’s as if they are glued together; you never see one without the other.

I heard the crash and opened the door of my study to see what the commotion was, and there was the lamp in pieces on the floor, the boys staring down at it in wonderment as if it had fallen from the sky. I was … incandescent. The room echoed afterwards.

But the worst thing was that as I turned to go back into my study, I saw Adam, crouching down beside the old armchair Tom has adopted as his own. (Tom was out on his snowplough.) I hadn’t realized he was there. He had curled himself into a ball with his arms covering his head as if to protect himself.

I knew I must speak to him, reassure him somehow, but before I could say anything Emily appeared at the top of the stairs, clutching the baby. She stared at me with those huge eyes of hers and said in a whisper, “Edward? What is happening? Are you all right?”

I crossed to the entrance hall and hauled on my coat and boots and left the house. It was murderously cold. I pulled my scarf up over my nose and mouth but still the air seared my lungs. When I reached the road I stopped; I didn’t know what to do, where to go. It was too cold to stay outside for any length of time but I didn’t want to see anyone. Not even Betty. Particularly not
Betty. In any case the library doesn’t open until nine. Nowhere does except Harper’s, so in the end that was where I went. Thankfully the cold had kept everyone else at home.

The frightening thing is that it felt as if I had no control over it—over the shouting. As if it wasn’t me.

That is a ridiculous statement. If Joel Pickett is responsible for his own actions, then I am responsible for mine. If you don’t accept that, then your life is not your own. You are nothing more than a puppet, with your ancestors pulling your strings.

CHAPTER SIX

Struan, January 1969

His goal was to construct each day like the hull of a ship, every action a plank fitting exactly up to the next, no gaps or holes where thoughts might seep in, no changes to throw him off course, no surprises. Work, eat, read the paper, go to bed; stick to the routine and you’ll make it through the day.

At 5:15 a.m. the alarm went off and he hit the stop button and swung his legs out of bed. Off with pyjamas, on with long johns, jeans, two pairs of thick woollen socks, down the hall to the bathroom for a wash (at least at this hour he didn’t have to stand in line with sundry sleep-sodden, bad-tempered brothers), back to his bedroom, on with undershirt, flannel shirt, sweater, grab a Hershey bar from the secret stash behind the bookcase by his bed, downstairs for cornflakes and toast, eaten standing up at the kitchen sink, fill the Thermos with coffee, out to the entrance hall to search, cursing, through the jumble of outdoor gear for his own boots, scarf, hat, parka, gloves, grab the Thermos, tuck it under his arm, pull open the inner door, push open the outer door, slam both behind him and off into the frozen dark.

Sometime during the night the snow had stopped and the
clouds had cleared and now the piercing, brittle stars moved with him as he walked. At the end of the road he had to climb over the bank of snow thrown up by the snowplough over the previous days, hard and steep and pitted with footprints, each footprint a dark soft shadow in the starlight.

There was only an inch or so of new snow on the main roads, so today, finally, he would be able to make a start on the smaller side roads, which had been clogged up like frozen rivers for days. Then the citizens of Struan would be able to shovel out their driveways and get their cars back on the road and the town would be back in business.

The snowplough lived around the back of the gas station, crouched amidst the snowdrifts like the prehistoric heap of junk that it was, a Sicard, 1940s model, headache yellow, a basic truck with a plough on its nose. Tom climbed up on the step, slammed his shoulder hard against the door of the cab three times while simultaneously heaving violently on the handle—the door was always frozen shut and it took brute force to break it free—climbed into the cab and stuck the key in the ignition. After a couple of goes the engine caught and roared into life and he raised and lowered the shovel to get everything moving, then ploughed his way around to the front of the gas station. In exchange for parking, the deal was that he and Marcel Bruchon, on the late shift, would keep the garage forecourt free of snow, so he did that first and then set off down the road.