Scrap Metal (10 page)

Half an hour after the boys had gone, I leaned with Harry on the drystone wall that looked out over the south paddock. He had been silent for some time, and I wasn’t about to start the conversation. I was too lost in wonder. Cameron was riding the newly fixed quad bike back and forth across the field. That wasn’t amazing—he’d said he’d wanted to put it through its paces and to get the hang of riding one. He was also now a startling blond.

I hadn’t thought to question the chemical tang I’d noticed when I’d gone in earlier to fetch cash for the wood delivery. What with sheep dip and fertilisers, the house was often less than fragrant. Harry stood beside me, his weathered face creased in a mask of concentration. Eventually he made the smallest gesture in Cameron’s direction and said, “Have you managed to find another damn fool to work for free on this farm, then?”

“No, Granda. That’s the same one we had before. I…think he’s dyed his hair.”

Harry straightened. He gave me a very serious look, and I braced. “Nichol,” he began. “It’s the devil of a slander to speak of a Christian, but you don’t suppose yon lad’s the least bit of a
gille-toine
, do you?”

I choked. There was no word for
queer
in Gaelic, as if the concept had never occurred, or hadn’t been different enough to attract its own label. There was
co-sheòrsach
, a careful modern rendering of homosexual.
Gille-toine
was the closest the old language got, and it was pretty crude.
Arse-lad
, literally. Maybe
shirt-lifter
was nearer, or even Ali G’s
batty-boy
…

I shook myself. This wasn’t a linguistic game, though I’d forgotten how much fun those were. “Will that be a problem for you? If he is?”

He lapsed back into thoughtful silence. “No,” he said after a moment. “If he puts his hours in, what business is it of mine?”

Now, for Harry, this was a bit cosmopolitan. I watched Cameron absently. The sun was catching his new blond crop, and he was starting to make the quad bike steer like a young knight’s charger beneath him. Lovely, I thought. And I had always put my hours in around this place as well, hadn’t I? I’d never come out to the old man—it just wasn’t what you did—but perhaps this was an opportunity.
Would it be a problem if I was too?
I drew a breath. “Granda…”

“Mind, I don’t want this whole island thinking the same about you. Is it no’ time you found yourself a girlfriend?”

My heart sank. One thing for a farmhand, quite another when it came to his sole surviving heir. “Och, like you give me time.”

“Make time then, laddie! I worked twice as hard as you at your age, and still I found the time to court your granny, and just as well for you, or Caitlin and you and your brother wouldn’t be here.”

Caitlin.
A cold shock went through me. The last time I’d heard him say my mother’s name, he’d been on the phone to the embassy, arranging for the return of the bodies to the UK.
Seacliff, Caitlin Elizabeth. Alistair James.
And as for those of us who were still here… Was he forgetting? I glanced across at him. No, he remembered. His fists were locked together on the wall, his face bitter. God, if he’d been offered a choice out of the three of us, picked the one he most wanted to live…

The quad bike’s engine howled, and I looked up in time to see Cam hit a ditch and go flying. He landed on his outstretched hands, ducked his head and turned his crash into a roll. It was still pretty undignified. He measured his length on the turf, then after a moment in which I could neither breathe nor think, leapt back onto his feet and went chasing after the bike.

The power of speech returned to me. “Bloody hell.”

Harry didn’t comment. Then, soft and wicked as the February wind off the sea, I heard that dreadful barrel-organ wheeze of his begin again.

“Granda,” I said, as reprovingly as I could. The worst thing about that laugh was its power of infection. Twice in forty-eight hours I’d heard it now—both times at someone else’s misfortune, granted, but better than the desolate silence. “He might’ve broken his neck.”

“Aye.” Apparently that hazard just added zest to the fun. I rested on my elbows, lowered my head. He heard the snort I couldn’t repress and gave me a shove on the arm. “Aye, it’s
consairned
you are about him!”

“I am. I’m not laughing, just…” I was, though. My throat convulsed. “For God’s sake. Stop it.”

Neither of us could, for the best part of a minute. Afterwards I stood fighting for breath, knocking away tears with the heel of my hand. Beside me, Harry calmed down enough to pick up his train of thought. “You know, I heard in Campbeltown that Jimmy Clyde took a stroke and dropped dead.”

“I heard that too. I’m not sorry, not for Shona’s sake anyway.”

“No, she’s a bonny lass. And she’s free now, Nichol. You could do worse.”

I suppressed a groan. I couldn’t believe I was getting this from the old man too. And, come to think of it, whether I announced my sexuality to him or not, how the hell had he managed to miss me and Archie chasing each other round his barns and paddocks all these years? Wilful blindness, I supposed, although while Al had been alive he hadn’t had to worry about the Seacliff succession. Probably there were a couple of little grey-eyed beauties flourishing in the villages already.

Then, did I care what he thought? I was doing my best for him now. I didn’t have to swear away my future for him too. The sun was blazing down. Off in the field, Cameron looked up and flashed me a smile whose brilliance could warm me across any distance.

“I tell you what, Granda,” I said. “You’re still a fine figure of a man. Why don’t you set your own cap at Shona? You’d probably have better luck than me.”

I intercepted Cam on his way back into the yard. He had parked the bike and was making his way on foot, his movements stiff. That had been a spectacular dive.

“Hi there, Billy Idol.”

“Oh, God.” He came to a halt in front of me. “It hasn’t worked, has it?”

I stepped close to take a better look. There were still streaks of black amongst the pale chemical gold, I could see now. Daringly, I reached to take a lock between my fingers and thumb. “Well, you’re very dark. My ma used to put some kind of bleach on hers before she tried to go blond. Why’d you do it?”

“I wasn’t sure I was going to. I bought it when I went to get my farm gear—the last thing I got with my own money. When all those delivery lads turned up from Brodick, I thought maybe one of them might know Bren McGarva, might recognise me, so…”

“Oh, it’s a disguise, is it?”

“Protective coloration, maybe.”

I chuckled. “Jesus. It’s anything but that.” The breeze stirred the sable and gold. He looked like an ermine caught short on a bright summer’s day. “It’s…kind of conspicuous, Cam. Actually it looks bloody gorgeous.”

Our eyes met. And there we were on that brink again—the same place we’d found ourselves the night before. My mouth went dry. “Sorry. I don’t mean to… Er, Bren McGarva—is he your guy in Glasgow, your loan shark?”

“Yeah. Don’t ask me about him, Nichol. Please.”

“All right. But—it might not be as bad as you think. I mean you might not have to be this scared. If this bastard’s after you… One of my mates is a policeman. Maybe he could help.”

“No. No police.”

“He’s not a scary one. Just an island bobby.”

“No.” Cameron swallowed. I heard the painful little sound. Then, as if realising how his refusal might come across, he put out a hand to catch mine, lightly entangling our fingers. “Look, I haven’t done… I’d never do anything to hurt you or your grandfather, okay? But the police would make it worse.”

I shrugged. I didn’t want him to see how deeply his most casual touch could move me. “Fair enough. We’ll just have to rely on your brilliant camouflage, then.”

“Oh, God. Maybe I should try and dye it back.”

“I wouldn’t—not yet anyway. It might just fall out.” I should let go of his hand. His fingers were so warm in mine, though—a clever, tensile waiting strength, as if there were all kinds of things his hands might be capable of. “Try not to worry, eh? We really are on the far shore of creation here. And I can lend you a woolly hat, like the Edge off U2. You’ll be okay.”

“Okay. Jesus, what did you do to your knuckle?”

“Caught it on the gate. It’s nothing.”

“I think I can see bone.” His grip tightened. I couldn’t resist him. When he set off for the house I followed him. “Come on, big tough farmer boy. My turn to patch you up.”

Chapter Six

The weather held, not just over the next few days but into the following fortnight. No one came to track down and wreak vengeance on Cameron, and I did not blunder again through his barricades. Brightening mornings came and went, each sunrise a little sooner than the last. Cam launched himself out of bed at the same time as Harry and me, and although at the breakfast table he sometimes looked like a half-fledged bleached sparrow chucked out of its nest too soon, a cup of instant and a fry-up sent him staunchly to work by my side.

Winter gave way to a rare island spring. We got them like this once every decade or so—primroses on the turf outside the back door, ravens pairing off to take a punt on an early breeding season, rolling and tumbling on the air above the roadside trees. I’d been starting to think my memory of the last fine transition from February to March had been a childhood dream, but here it was, swelling the ash buds, painting the birch twigs purple.

One morning Shona Clyde appeared, looking like Persephone and clearly thriving in her widowhood. Too much of a lady to notice Harry’s dreadful winks and efforts to leave us alone together, she offered us the use of her three strapping farmhands to get us through the lambing. She was refitting her house and all her outbuildings, she told us, and the lads were just under her feet. At her expense, of course, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’d tried to say no anyway—stupid West Isles pride—but at that moment she’d spotted Clover in a patch of sunlight by the barn door, nursing three fat kittens. One of those wee rat-catchers would do as payment, Shona said, when it was weaned.

The luck of the farm returned in triplicate. Now when I tried to sleep I had four contestants for the quilt, the offspring mewling and farting and wrestling while their mother looked on in serene and perfect pride. I didn’t care. My days were suddenly so much easier I felt lightheaded, almost sick with relief. We still had vicious frosts and sudden stillbirths, but with Cameron and Shona’s boys to help, my shifts came down from eighteen hours to a perfectly reasonable twelve, and I began to look about me.

The house was a mess. Some of it was inevitable, but there was no need for the rest of it—no need for us to live like we were camping out, shivering through the March nights. One morning I thought I heard my mother singing in the kitchen. This seemed so ordinary that I went down unquestioning, to find Cam there with the radio on, crouched thoughtfully by the stove. And after all it was an easy enough job to fix. We didn’t talk much. I hadn’t told him the roots of my reluctance to tackle it, and I wondered if he guessed, kneeling beside me on the sooty hearth. The flue was blocked, and a couple of plates were off their hinges.

I was pricklingly aware of him, the way he smelled when the metal fought him back and he joined grim battle with it, reaching up to the armpits in the Aga’s guts, his T-shirt sticking to him. He was starting to fill out a bit, packing his weight on in compact muscle. I could see tough cords appearing in his forearms from all the work. In a way I hardly understood why we were fixing the damn stove, not stretched out in front of it in each other’s arms. A fine spring morning, the house to ourselves, both of us young and conveniently gay, and I was powerfully attracted to him even if…

That was the problem. I had no idea how he felt about me at all. In that regard, anyway—his daily companionship was sweet to me, and he sought me out even when our labours didn’t demand we work together. I hadn’t known him long enough to call him a friend, but it was getting on that way. He was funny, smart, an attentive listener. And I caught him looking at me, but those indigo eyes hid as many truths as they revealed—the glow I took for yearning could simply be concern, the unobtrusive care he seemed to have decided to take of me. A touch to my shoulder and a gesture upstairs when midnight had passed and I was yawning over paperwork, my frequent cuts and scrapes attended. He’d never followed me beyond my bedroom door, though once or twice I knew I’d made it pretty clear he’d have met a warm reception.

That night when Harry got home the house was singing. The thrumming chant was so well known to both of us that at first he didn’t notice, just as I hadn’t really taken it in late that afternoon when the fire I’d set got big and hot enough to send the water around. Victorian radiators creaked, their connecting pipework shuddering to life. Until the system settled, the whole house would rattle and vibrate like a trawler revving up for open seas.

Harry stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the bright Aga frontage. I went to take my place beside him. There was every chance that he’d object. I hadn’t asked him. Fuel was scarce, and he’d never shared my views on hot baths and bedrooms where you couldn’t see your breath on the air. Cam was getting the pans out, ready to put on some dinner. He had a gift for fading into the background when family business arose, though by now I reckoned the old man would have included him. His affectation of forgetting Cam’s name was just that—a trick to annoy me, and I’d heard him bellowing the full-length version loud and clear enough across the yards when he wanted help with something. In unguarded moments I’d heard him call him
son.

“We can’t afford to run this, Nichol.”

Thanks for fixing it. Well done.
My usual reflex of hurt and irritation didn’t fire. I’d met Cam’s eyes when we’d finally managed to wrestle the plates back onto their hinge, and the satisfaction I’d seen there would do for me.

“Well, when you turned Kenzie off, you said it was him or the coal bill. I reckoned we should use the coal.” There. Highland logic to match his own. Waste not, want not, use everything and squeeze the last penny. “I know we can’t keep it going all the time. But it won’t hurt the house to heat it through from time to time, keep off the damp.”