The Closet of Savage Mementos (10 page)

‘Do you think she’ll do it?’

‘Verity? Definitely. She was teasing you; I could tell she was delighted with the idea.’

‘I don’t know – she wasn’t exactly jumping up and down.’

‘Your first show to curate and it will be your mother’s work. It seems apt.’

‘I just hope she behaves herself if she comes over to Kinlochbrack.’

The ambulance wails past, making a blue mask of Struan’s face; he stops, pushes both his hands into my hair and kisses me on the forehead. ‘She will.’

Chapter Eleven

‘
O
h look, Daddy’s little helper.’

Sam stands in the doorway of the gallery, a long room off the Strathcorry’s reception area. I am flicking a feather duster along the top of the picture rail.

‘Excuse me?’ I say.

She swings her body back and forth, holding onto the doorframe. ‘You always look so taken aback when someone speaks to you, Lillis. Boo!’

‘I didn’t know you were there.’ I turn away from her.

She snaps the light switch on and off, on-off, on-off; the bulbs clink and fizzle, sounding annoyed. ‘This is cushy, eh? Fuck all to do.’

‘I have plenty to do, Sam.’

She sniggers and sits on a chair by the door. ‘The big advantage to bedding the boss is getting the nice job, the easy number.’ She takes a cigarette from its packet. ‘Did you hear I got a promotion too? I’m manager of the bistro now.’

‘Congrats. Don’t light that fag in here.’

Sam taps the cigarette off the box and swings one leg over the other; she waggles her tennis shoe on the end of her toe and watches me. I take hold of the sweeping brush and chase dust-and-hair balls from the corners, then glide it up and down the main floor; the brushing rhythm stills my annoyance a little. I love the smell in the gallery: that clean, butcher paper scent mixed with wood and the acidic smell of the lights. I flutter the brush around the legs of Sam’s chair; she sucks her shoe back onto her foot and stands up.

‘What do you see in him, a lassie like you?’

I stop and look at her. ‘It’s not really any of your business.’

‘Let me guess. You’re one of those who wants taking care of.’

‘Sam, I’m busy. Do you mind?’

‘I’d say the reasons you like Struan are the exact reasons I couldn’t stay with him. Who needs an old man who pretends to be a young man? It’s sad.’ She pushes the cigarette back into its box and goes to the door. ‘Cheerio. I’ll leave you to your
work
.’

When she is gone, I bash the sweeping brush along the skirting boards, then toss it to the floor; it clatters and I kick it across the gallery where it crashes against the far wall.

I like my room in the staff house. It is tiny – a small white berth – and feels cosy. I have a slim bed, an open wardrobe, a sink, and the wall is dappled with postcards from home and here, as well as pictures of Robin, Verity, Dónal, Anthony and the two boys, Alex and Tim. The corridor outside my room can be noisy at night – the other staff having parties or coming in late from work, or from The Windhorse – but that doesn’t bother me. Once the key is in my lock, I am safe to rest, dream, write letters home, and sleep.

I keep Dónal’s picture tacked to the wall near my pillow, so that I see him last and first each day; I tip his nose and say ‘Good morning, mister’ and ‘Good night’. It is a photograph I took of him, for my project. He was a natural study; he never got that closed-up awkwardness that so many people take on when a camera is pointed at them – a look I know I get myself. The photo is black and white; Dónal is looking sideways and down, his lips slightly parted; a shuck of hair flops over his forehead. Under the crewneck of his T-shirt, I can see the bump of the silver belcher he never took off; I used to wrap my fingers into that chain when he lay over me.

My photography tutor said once that every photograph is a lie. Not this one: this picture holds the truth of Dónal like no other I ever took of him. He was talking when I shot him – Dónal didn’t like silence – and I would give anything now to hear exactly what it was he was saying. This is something I have mulled over a lot: what did we talk about? He spent hours and days in my bedsit, in my bed; we talked and talked and talked, but what did we have to say? How did we have so
much
to say? I am fucked if I can remember and it galls me.

Today, a package arrived from Mrs Spain; it was sitting on the desk in the gallery when I went in this morning. It squatted there all day, book-shaped but spongy, and I eyed it, wondering what might be in it. I studied Mrs Spain’s square handwriting; I poked at the string she had used to keep the brown paper in place, despite the yards of Sellotape she had also used. The stamps were a line of Valentine’s Day ones, depicting the same heart-shaped hot-air balloon over and over, with the word love, love, love scrawled underneath.

Now, I sit on my bed, holding the package in my lap like a bomb, not wanting to undo its wrappings. I turn to Dónal’s picture, to his distracted, intent face.

‘What’s in the parcel, Dó?’ I say. ‘Will I open it?’

It is hard to look regal stepping off a diesel-belching bus, but Verity manages it; she holds herself erect, like someone who is aware they are important. Her legs are encased in long, red boots and she is done up in the make-up of her youth, as always: thick eyeliner, crumbling mascara and that odd shade of brown she wears on her lips. Verity hates villages and, she says, the sea gives her hives, but still she has come. Struan couldn’t get away from the inn to go down to Inverness and pick her up, so she took a coach and now here she is, entering Kinlochbrack like a returning queen. I am among a huddle waiting on the pier for the bus; I stand on tiptoe and wave over the others’ heads so she will see me. Verity walks forward with her arms held out, parting the crowd, and hugs me – her usual brittle, reluctant embrace. She stands back and holds me by the arms.

‘You look well,’ she says, then grabs me to her again.

I realise I have been pinching my mouth and nose shut, afraid to breathe her in, in case I smell drink. But I bury my face into her hair and smell nothing but the proper Verity smell: patchouli oil and, faintly, sweat.

‘It’s brilliant you’re here, Mam,’ I say, dragging her bag from the depths of the bus and steering her towards Shore Street. She stops to look around: at the sea loch, the boats, the hills, and the shops and pubs that overlook the water.

‘It’s a little idyll,’ she says. ‘Well done you.’

‘We have a room ready for you at the inn. It’s the best one – you can see Loch Brack from the window.’

‘Let’s look at this gallery of yours first,’ she says, linking me as we walk. ‘I have presents. Robin made me bring a six-pack of Tayto for you and your Dad sent a few bob; imaginative as ever. Is Struan still busy?’

‘The hotel is manic just now. More staff have left; a couple of the Aussies took off to see Europe, so he’s up to his eyeballs. He’s reserved a table in the bistro and he’ll join us for dinner later.’

Verity flips her head from left to right; she watches the traffic, the ambling tourists, the whole life of Kinlochbrack moving past us. She sucks in the sea-and-fish scent of the village.

‘It makes me happy to shake the dust of Dublin off my feet,’ she says. ‘I’m all excited. I can’t remember the last time I stayed in a hotel.’

‘Wait until you see it – you’ll love it.’

I feel a pang; it is great that she is giddy as a girl, but it makes me realise that she hardly leaves her home. Tom whizzes past in his vanette as we stand, waiting to cross the road; he beeps the horn and waves. I wave back; I can see him breaking his neck to get a look at Verity.

‘Who was that?’

‘Tom – the guy who delivers the bread. He’s a friend of Struan’s.’

Someone shouts, ‘Hey, Lillis.’ I see Kenny heading towards the pier and his boat, one hand raised in salute.

‘How’s it going, Kenny?’

‘You’ve built a whole community here,’ Verity says. ‘What happened to my shy-as-a-badger Lillis?’

‘I’m still me, Mam.’

We walk past the staff house and I point out the window to my room. The low clutter of buildings that make-up the Strathcorry Inn lies ahead and Verity surveys it all in silence, taking in the rose bushes and shrubs around the doorway and the dormer windows above it.

‘Pretty,’ she says.

Her good humour seems to be building, but I have long learnt to be frightened by Verity’s happy moods because they are so likely to be temporary – an untrustworthy blip in her customary chaos. We slip through the reception at the inn, into the gallery.

‘Here we are,’ I say, standing back to let her walk the room.

She runs her hands along the white walls.

‘Have you got all the plinths?’ she asks, as she checks the lights.

‘We have these three but I ordered more; they’ll be here in the morning.’ I point at the bulbs. ‘Low-watt halogens; I bought them myself.’

She nods and proclaims the space big and bright enough, and I am relieved to have her blessing. I haul her suitcase up the stairs and deposit her in the low-ceilinged room that Struan has allotted her. It has a seaman’s chest as a window seat, kilims on the floor and a dumpy four-poster bed. The room is quiet; it seems to hover above the concerns of the inn and the village; even the sea doesn’t encroach. Verity pokes at the curtains and inspects the bathroom; she keeps her face neutral and there are no criticisms, so I know she is pleased. She wheels her case into one corner and says she will unpack later; we lie down on the bed, side by side.

‘I love an adventure,’ she says, and I take her hand in mine and squeeze it.

‘Everyone loves Lillis,’ Struan says.

‘Not everyone,’ I say, cutting into my steak to watch its pink ooze. ‘There’s Sam.’

Verity stops eating and waves her knife. ‘Beauty bestows a fake consequence, you see, Struan. Good-looking women are always liked. By men, at least.’ She lifts her hair from her neck with one hand. ‘Is Sam that charming waitress?’

I snort. ‘She’s far from charming. Snotty bitch, more like.’

‘Sam manages the bistro for me,’ Struan says.

I am not failing to pick up on Verity’s insinuation that all I have going for me are my looks, but she is in show-off mode and enjoying herself, so I let it go. Struan is bewitched by her and he laps up her words; he has the look of someone who has bought something expensive and finds himself extraordinarily pleased with the transaction. Struan and Verity are the same age, more or less, and I can see their generational ease with each other; that unspoken, added understanding shared by people who are born into the same time.

Verity grabs my hand across the table, but addresses herself to Struan. ‘I do wish Lillis would lose that worried look she always has.’

‘It’s an Irish thing, isn’t it? A kind of bashfulness.’ He grins at me.

Verity smiles at no one in particular and runs her fish knife along the top of her sole, from head to tail.

‘So, Struan, you’re a Glaswegian. Why the wilds of Kinlochbrack?’

‘My mother’s mother was from The Braes, just above Kinlochbrack – Hannah Munro was her name. I toddled up here to the Highlands to see where she came from and stayed. This place pulls on people like that.’

‘Ah, so you’re a Highlander at heart.’

‘He has the Highland work ethic, anyway – double- and triple-jobbing,’ I say.

‘Talk about hard workers, my Granny Hannah was some woman – a crofter’s daughter turned glamour puss; she ran her own hair salon in Glasgow. I was crazy about her. My grandad was a bad egg, though, he gave her hell.’

Verity nods sympathetically. ‘You have to go into the earth, explore and come out again to understand your parents, your whole family, your home. It’s like
Alice in Wonderland
, isn’t it?’

‘Absolutely. And we can’t call many places home – two maybe: where we spring from and where we eventually land. I call Kinlochbrack home; I’m happy here.’

Verity grins in my direction, as if this is somehow relevant to me. I am still pondering the
Alice in Wonderland
reference. I had asked her for that book as a child, only to be told I couldn’t have it because it was ‘a load of bloody nonsense written by a pervert’. I kept the word pervert rattling around in my head for years, mulling it over, until I finally found out what it meant. It left me with an unfounded distaste for Alice and her underground activities.

‘The inn is lovely, Struan,’ Verity says. ‘Full of gorgeous things. Us Yourells are a family of object lovers, we love
things
.’ She sips from her glass. ‘Maybe more than we love people.’ She hoots a laugh and grabs at my arm to let me know that this is meant as a joke. I want to say, ‘But you don’t love so much as plunder’ but, of course, I don’t.

Sam has been loitering near our table, waiting for a break in the conversation so she can step forward; Struan nods at her now.

‘How are we all?’ she says. ‘Is everything OK?’ She smiles, looking genuinely pleasant.

‘Grand, everything is grand,’ I say, and I see her wince.

‘Mrs Yourell? Are you enjoying your sole?’

‘It’s absolutely perfect, sweetheart. You tell the chef he is a genius.’

‘She – the Strathcorry’s chef is a woman,’ Struan says.

‘All the better,’ Verity replies, and holds her glass aloft. ‘To Madame Chef.’

We clink glasses and Sam retreats. I am worried that Verity is going to be footless; her eyes are starting to wander in their sockets and she is repeating herself and doing the small sighs that mean her brain is getting fuddled. This is the point where things could go either way: she will stay nice, and chat sweetly, or she will soon get ratty about something innocuous or innocent that somebody says. Probably me.

‘Are you tired, Mam? You’ve had such a long day. Would you like to go to bed?’

She swings in her chair to look at me, as if she has only just noticed I am there. I can see her making choices: will she accuse me of trying to get rid of her? Will she let it go?

‘I’m fine, Lillis,’ she says eventually, then turns back to Struan and smiles. ‘Where were we?’

‘Let’s order dessert,’ he says, jumping from his seat to get the menus.

Verity carefully scrapes lavender ice-cream from the bottom of a glass goblet; her concentration is immense and she doesn’t speak; her eyes follow the last bits of ice-cream from the bowl to her mouth. She lays down her spoon and looks at Struan.

‘Scotland is perfect. I have decided,’ she says.

Struan laughs. ‘We like to think so.’

‘There’s too much Ireland in Ireland, you know? It’s all soggy and gummed up, with rain and the church and subterfuge.’ Verity sighs and closes her eyes. ‘Ireland is not emerald-shaped or harp-shaped or shamrock-shaped. It’s de Valera-shaped. Fucked up and rotten. But still, I love it. I fucking hate the place, but I love it.’ She sways in her seat. ‘How can that be?’