The Closet of Savage Mementos (5 page)

I was surprised the first time I saw the paperweights. Collecting them seemed a peculiarly feminine passion, but now I see that they are pure Struan: he loves to display beautiful things for the simple sake of beauty. I watch the blue and white swirls of the reflected glass on the wall as Struan’s hands glide up my belly to cup my breasts. He kisses my neck and pulls me so that I lie under him; he flips me onto my stomach and kisses my spine from root to tip.

Chapter Five

S
am divvies up the tips; it is Struan’s night off. He has gone to Inverness to see a film with Tom the bakery man and Dulcie the chef. They were like three teenagers on a skite as they got into Struan’s car, giggling and pucking at each other. Sam plops a pile of one pound notes and a few coins into my hand.

‘Riches, huh?’ she says. ‘Do you want to go for a drink?’

I don’t really – not with her. ‘Just the one,’ I say. ‘I’m wrecked.’

Sam shrugs. ‘Don’t worry; I won’t keep you up all night.’ She lights a cigarette. ‘Want one?’

‘I don’t smoke.’

We leave the hotel by the side door and walk along Ardmair Street. The moon hangs over the hills by the loch; its milk-light glows like a headlamp onto the water.

‘Beautiful moon,’ I say, as we dip down towards Shore Street.

‘Do you like working at the inn?’

‘It’s grand.’

‘Grand, grand, grand. That’s all you ever say.’ Sam pulls a comb out of her pocket and rakes it through her hair, with vicious strokes. ‘So, you and Struan, eh? When did that happen?’

‘I don’t know; soon after I got here.’

‘He always goes for the new girl,’ she says, sucking on her cigarette.

It is a well-aimed dart and it lodges in my stomach, pricking at me. I lift my face to the sky to catch a breeze and watch the moon anchored in the black, ancient and necessary; a cloud drifts then hangs in front of the moon, like a bruise on its skin. Below us, in the harbour, the sea-rusted hulls of boats clank and groan. We trot along in silence.

‘How long have you worked in The Strathcorry, Sam?’

‘Three years.’ She flicks her cigarette butt into the path of an oncoming car. ‘I was the new girl once.’

Sam pushes open the door of The Windhorse and I follow her inside. The pub is busy; some of the herring boats are in and the bar is lined with welly-wearing fishermen, all of them in plaid shirts and jeans – the Kinlochbrack uniform. The blood and guts smell off the men makes me want to be back at the staff house, safe in my room, in my bed. Sam walks up to a group and greets each of them by name; unlike herself, she is laughing and chatty and I stand behind her. I watch a couple who sit side by side on one of the banquettes like two magnets repelling each other. The woman lifts her drink to her lips, sips, puts it down. Her husband slurps from his pint, lowers it. They look straight ahead, the distance between them on the seat stretching to miles.

Sam turns away from the fishermen and hands me a pint of lager; her smile drops.

‘Relax, Lillis,’ she says, ‘you’re always so wound up.’ She points to free seats near the happy couple and I shuffle ahead of her and sit.

‘I don’t feel wound up,’ I say, my shoulders turning to iron as I say the words.

‘I’ve seen you coming out of the church on Ardmair Street,’ Sam says. ‘Devout, are you?’

‘No, I like to go in sometimes, to think.’ I swig my pint.

Sam snorts. ‘You know you might be better off taking a wee job on the Isle of Barra. That’s where all the Catholics are.’

‘Hardly
all
of them; there’s a small congregation in Kinlochbrack. Struan is a Catholic. Of sorts.’

She looks away even as I speak and lights a cigarette. I watch the door, thinking Struan might make a late drink. I am feeling away from myself after having only half a pint and I am struggling to find even one reason to stay out with Sam. It’s clear she doesn’t like me and I certainly don’t like her. Sam tosses her head and drags on her smoke. Her hair is greasy, something I have noticed about her before, and I’m afraid to breathe too deeply in case I smell its unctuous heat.

‘Is it serious?’ Sam says, whipping around to stare at me. Her eyes are violet-blue, like Achill marble – the strangest I have ever seen.

‘With Struan?’ I say. ‘Well, I like him. It’s early yet.’

‘Huh,’ she says. ‘Watch him, that’s all I’d say. He’s one of those blokes who always has to have a woman by his side. Always. It’s not long since the last one.’ She eyeballs the couple nearby; they are still staring ahead, blank faced. ‘Look at them: Sadness and Charisma. That will be you and Struan in ten years’ time.’ She laughs, a dull, short noise that she coughs out of her throat.

I get up and go to the bar; the fishermen clear a space and stay silent while I order another pint for Sam. When I turn away, one of them says something; I miss it but the others snicker.

‘That’s Struan Torrance’s bird,’ a voice says.

‘Oh, aye? Is she working at the inn? She’s bonny.’

I go to the toilet and come back to the bar for Sam’s drink; the fishermen are discussing the trial of some locals who were jailed for cocaine smuggling in the harbour. They laugh about the long sentences the men face, but their relief that it is not them is clear.

‘Twenty-five years Murdo got.’

‘Fuck me.’

‘He was always a stupid bastard.’

‘He better keep his arse to the wall inside.’

They all laugh. Sam is missing when I get back to our table, so I put down the pint I have bought for her beside her half-full glass and leave.

I am surprised to find a cloak of mizzle over the village when I step outside the pub; the evening had been so clear. This is the Scottish weather I have been waiting for; I am tired of the uncharacteristic sunshine that has lit up the days since I arrived. The moon is a cotton-edged blur above the loch now and the boats bounce in the harbour, knocking against each other like drunken dancers. Tail-lights and headlights retreat and advance through the rain on the streets in blurs of red and white. I hurry back to my room, glad to be away from The Windhorse and Sam.

A high wind beats around the staff house the whole night like huge, whomping wings, making me jerk in and out of sleep. I neither dream nor don’t dream – I feel trapped in a waking-sleeping limbo and the wind whirrs in my ears all night, it seems. In the morning I drag myself into the shower and then into my uniform; I let myself out of the staff house. The day is grey; I watch a pink contrail sail across the clouds like a comet as I walk up towards the hotel to start the breakfast shift. I meet Sam, weaving her way down Ardmair Street, towards me; she sits on the low perimeter wall of the staff house and tries to put a match to a cigarette.

‘Will I light it for you?’

She looks up at me and hands me the matches. ‘You missed the party,’ she slurs, barely able to lift her head.

Her collapsed state reminds me of Verity and I want to get away. ‘Oh?’ I say, setting the match to her cigarette; only one side lights and it takes her a while to drag on it.

‘At Struan’s. We had the best of laughs.’ Sam lurches off the wall and heads towards the staff house; she stops, turns and stabs the air with her finger. ‘Your so-called boyfriend’s house. Get me?’

Struan doesn’t appear in the bistro all morning; we have few guests and I wait the tables on my own, relieved not to be dealing with Sam and her hangover. In the afternoon I go to the pier and take a pleasure boat to the Summer Isles. It is the wrong day to go on a boat trip – the hills around the loch are skeined in mist and we can barely see ten feet in front of us – but it feels good to be out on the water. I rub my hand along the boat rail and my skin comes away dappled with salt. I lick my hand and catch a German tourist examining me; he smiles and turns away. Buoys like outsized tangerines bounce on the water as Kenny, the skipper, brings the boat near rocks to show us fat piebald seals, content as kings, lolling in groups. They remind me of enormous slugs ; they lift their heads then drop them when we idle past, barely interested in us. A few of the smaller seals let contented yelps as if saying hello to us.

‘Thousands of seals a year are being shot by salmon farmers,’ Kenny announces, over the microphone, and I look at the seals on the rocks, their trust in us and our noisy boat so misplaced. Kenny keeps up a commentary about seabirds, and the minke whales and porpoises that sometimes appear in Annat Bay.

I think over what Sam was saying about Struan; I can brood on it or I can leave it go, I know. It doesn’t surprise me that he always has a woman; I didn’t imagine he was a bachelor before I turned up. But, at 51, how many women? And what happens to them all? I wonder mostly why Sam wants to tell me this stuff; why she feels the need to dig at me. I watch the spray from small waves lift up in our wake until I am mesmerised, by the churning foam and by my drifting thoughts. I shake myself up and push Sam and her remarks away. It is hard to know what lies further beyond the boat. When we come against a cliff face to look at sea caves, the black rock looms so suddenly out of the mist that some of the passengers gasp, as if a monster has risen from the sea to tower over us.

On the way back to shore, Kenny switches off the Tannoy, and the sun, miraculously, pushes through the mist, lifting it quickly up and over the sea. The flank of Ben Mor Coigach is combed in sunlight and the lighthouse looks as small as a gull beneath it. We shunter past a salmon farm and see the fish leaping in their pens while men in high-vis vests smoke cigarettes and toss feed from buckets. It seems the loneliest of jobs, stuck out on the sea with only the salmon and their stink for company.

I sit on one of the benches along the side of the boat, feeling the engine’s thrum deep inside me, and enjoying the clean water smell mixed with the sharp wind. Most of the German tourists have their eyes closed now, soaking up the sun; I look at their ruined legs and swollen ankles bulging over the sides of sensible shoes. The boat moves quickly, but being on it soothes me; I like rocking with the sea’s movements, and being cut off from work and from everything else.

Struan is standing on the pier when we dock. He says hi to Kenny and helps me out of the boat. He hands me a punnet of peaches.

‘Thanks. How did you know I was on a cruise?’

‘Sam told me – she saw you get on the boat.’

‘Is that mad bitch following me?’

He puts his arm around my shoulder and we walk up Shore Street. ‘You heard about last night.’

‘I heard nothing only that you had a party.’ I rip the net covering the peaches and hand him one.

‘When we got back from Inverness I went to The Windhorse looking for you, but you were gone. I came down and knocked on your window.’

‘You could have let yourself in.’ I bite into a peach and the juice slews down my chin.

‘I didn’t want to scare you.’

‘Sam was saying things last night. About you and the way you are with women.’

‘Don’t mind Sam, she’s only trying to get your goat.’ He rubs at his head.

‘She doesn’t like me, Struan.’

‘She likes you well enough. Sam’s a bit contrary, that’s all.’

‘Well, I don’t like her much either, so we’re quits. Anyway, what did you get up to last night? And bear in mind, I’m Irish – I don’t want brutal honesty. Lie gently, please.’

‘There’s no need for any lies, Lillis. We fancied a drink after being in Inverness; Tom, Dulcie and a wee crowd from the pub came back to mine. That’s all. We had a few beers and I strummed guitar badly.’

‘I met Sam rolling home when I was going to work this morning.’

‘She fell asleep on the sofa. Sam’s a narcoleptic drunk, Lillis. She keels over after three pints.’

‘So I’ve nothing to worry about?’

He stops and flicks his peach stone into the harbour; I throw mine after his. He takes my two wrists in his hands.

‘Hey, what would you have to worry about? Come here.’

He kisses the top of my head and I put my arms around his waist and look up into his face. The waterlines of his eyes are red raw. I bury my face in his shirt and breathe on the deodorant and old beer smell. I hear a wolf whistle; I look up to see Kenny passing.

‘That one’s young enough to be your daughter, Torrance.’

‘Fuck off, man,’ Struan says, slapping Kenny’s shoulder and laughing.

We walk hand in hand to Struan’s house on Clanranald Street, me swinging my punnet of peaches like a handbag. The street is empty and hushed. In a display of people’s innate love of symmetry, the middle windows of all the houses on Struan’s terrace are open, to let the ozone smell of the sea rush through the rooms. Inside his house it feels cool and I rub down the goosebumps that pop out all over my arms.

‘I’ll light the fire,’ Struan says.

‘Do you think we need one?’

‘Och, it’ll be nice,’ he says, and disappears out the back to get firelighters and coal.

The fire is a flop: it smokes and its desultory heat seems to set up the evening badly. After a dinner of leftover soup from the Strathcorry’s kitchen, we sit on the sofa, listening to music and reading the newspapers. Verity has the same album – something plaintive by Fleetwood Mac – and I am reminded of her, dancing drunkenly to it night after night when my father left; the music niggles at me, it makes me feel maudlin and bad. Struan’s eyes are closed and his head droops forward. The paper he has been reading slides from his lap to the floor.

‘Do you want to go to bed, Struan? You’re falling asleep.’

‘I’m resting my eyes.’

I tut. ‘You need to go upstairs and lie down.’ I rattle my section of the newspaper to rouse him. ‘Tell me, what’s the story with Sam really? Why is she so crabbed all the time?’

‘Sam? I don’t know. She’s unlucky in love, I think.’ He yawns.

‘She’s bloody well unpleasant, is what she is; I never feel comfortable around her. Is she with someone?’

‘A married chap from the hippy commune. He’s a nice lad.’

‘They are a harlequin pair, then, if he’s nice. She’s a right yoke.’

‘Sam’s all right,’ Struan mutters, eyes closed again, his head drifting to my shoulder.

My low mood seeps forward into the night; it is early when we climb the stairs to Struan’s bedroom in the eaves and, once in the bed, we turn away from each other. I wake in the night and snuff my nose into the pillow; I smell my own hair mousse and the residue of old skin. For a moment I am back in my Dublin bedsit and Dónal’s bulk is radiating at me from the other side of the bed; my gut heats with pleasure at the thought of him. I toss my arm out and feel Struan’s cool shoulder. The moon throws fat cuts of light into the room. I turn and look at the salmon-silver strands on the back of Struan’s head; he is neatly tonsured, red scalped. I shiver and draw back my hand.