It was like a fairytale, it had such symmetry, such justice, somehow. ‘Well,’ said a delighted Kathy, ‘if you should see him, could you please pass on to him Kathleen Kelly’s very best good wishes, and tell him that there is a God after all? He’ll know what that means.’
‘I will indeed! But isn’t life strange? Poor Mr Dewar!’
‘Mmm,’ Kathy said sadly. ‘As you say, poor Nigel!’, and she would’ve sworn that she sounded as if she meant it.
14
So, finally she was on her way home. As she sat in the train she had visions of Jessie’s house being scrubbed out by a team of white-suited individuals wearing masks and rubber gloves, cleansing the abode of all outside contamination. But was there another, more specialised team, waiting in the wings, she wondered, to scrub the pink-and-white mausoleum clean of the pollution brought in by the first one, and perhaps another after that? She had called Rory the night before to tell him what time she would be arriving at Glenfinnan, and as she was talking she suddenly realised that she was trying to keep the conversation as brief as possible, in order to restrict the contamination she would be leaving behind on Jessie’s phone. It got to you, she thought, it really got to you, and once again she thought of Harry living in Jessie’s strange little world all these years and almost forgave him for disappointing her ambitions for him.
Whenever she had been in Glasgow at the behest of Con’s various illnesses, Rory had been instructed to make sure the cottage was kept heated and Cat kept fed. She had never got round to finding a name for the kitten he had rescued from the murderous intent of whoever had drowned the rest of the litter, and Cat he had remained. He wasn’t the brightest of felines or perhaps he had suffered oxygen starvation before Rory had hauled him out and revived him. He seemed to hold Kathy personally responsible for the entire episode, and no matter how well she cared for him, whenever he got within striking distance he would lash out with his claws and screech at her. Rory, though, Cat adored, climbing on his knees when he visited the cottage, twisting himself around his legs, purring loud enough to lift the roof, and occasionally he would disappear and be found at Rory’s door, having walked the couple of miles from Drumsallie to Glenfinnan.
‘How come he hates me and loves you?’ Kathy asked, nursing yet another scratch. ‘Doesn’t the daft thing know I saved his life?’
‘No you didnae,’ Rory replied calmly. ‘I did. As I remember it, you stood there shaking, it was me warmed him up.’
‘Aye, well,’ she conceded, ‘I was there, and I gave him a home, yet he lives just to attack me. He sinks those claws in even when I’m putting out food for him, for God’s sake. Now that’s not natural behaviour for a cat, is it? How d’you explain that?’
‘Och, well,’ Rory replied, staring into the fire and petting the besotted feline, ‘it’s a well-known fact that cats are good judges of character.’
She had lost count of her visits to Glasgow and resented every one. Having graduated from running the tearoom to being a guide, she had embraced the history of the Jacobites enthusiastically, while managing to keep her personal opinion of Bonnie Prince Charlie to herself. The Tourist Centre had expanded in recent years to include another extension, this time housing a small exhibition of the charming Prince’s little adventure. It was decided that two fibreglass models would be commissioned, one of the Prince as he had arrived in Scotland, wearing a clerk’s black suit as a disguise, and the other of a Highlander of the day. When the chosen artist arrived to discuss the commission, Kathy was away affronting Con’s doctors and nurses with her refusal to give up her life and devote it to what was left of his. She was away, too, when the figures were delivered and arranged in the exhibition. When she arrived back, anxious to see the results, Mavis and the others were almost dancing with excitement, happy, she had thought, at how well it had all turned out. The first figure, of the Prince, had been placed at a table by the entrance, and then there were various information points, maps etc., and finally, turning to the right, was the figure of the 1745 Highlander, complete with kilt, philabeg and drawn broadsword. The others had gone back to work, leaving her to browse over their handiwork at her leisure, or so she thought till she examined the figure more carefully, and looked at his face. It was Rory! ‘Oh, my God!’ she shrieked, and Mavis and the others rushed in, all of them helpless with laughter.
‘How? Who?’ she stuttered, shocked to her toes.
‘We thought it would be a nice surprise!’ Mavis giggled.
‘A nice surprise?’ Kathy repeated. ‘But it’s … it’s…’
‘Aye, it’s Rory!’ Once again everyone collapsed in heaps of laughter.
Kathy was furious that they should all find it so funny. ‘Why is it Rory?’ she demanded.
‘The artist guy wanted a typical West Coast male,’ Mavis replied, dabbing at her eyes, ‘and he saw Rory putting his boat out on the loch. He went after him before we could stop him!’
‘And you’re telling me that you tried to stop him, are you?’ Kathy asked, and once again the assembled company collapsed in a communal howl.
‘Not really,’ Mavis admitted eventually. ‘I mean, who were we to argue with an artist?’
‘You should’ve dragged him away, shown him Donnie, or Lachie even, shown him the nearest German tourist!’ She looked around her colleagues, her friends, as they held on to each other for support in their mirth. ‘And why is it that you all find everything I say so bloody hilarious?’
‘Shown him Donnie?’ Mavis screeched. ‘You mean you’d rather I had to live with a thing that looked like him even when I’m working?’
‘And you think this thing is going to be any easier to have around?’
‘Well, it’s a damned sight easier than Donnie anyway, at least I can trust it not to burst into one of his songs!’
‘I’d prefer it to be Donnie, songs and all! Rory Macdonald is rarely a bundle of laughs, but this is like having him staring at you in his worst mood!’
‘Aye, I know!’ Mavis chuckled. ‘He wasnae too happy about posing, but he did it under protest. We made him promise not to tell you, so that it wouldnae spoil the surprise!’
‘This object is here under my protest,’ Kathy replied sourly. ‘Look at the eyes, they follow you around!’
‘I know! The cleaner refuses to be in here on her own because it’s so lifelike!’
‘So why are you laughing? Can we not get it changed?’
‘Course we canny!’ Mavis replied. ‘The money’s been spent. What d’you expect us to say to Head Office? That the cleaner’s scared of it and Kathy Kelly says it’s too like the man the artist chose to model it on?’
‘But it’s … it’s horrible!’
The others danced around with renewed glee. ‘I know! I know!’ Mavis giggled. ‘And you havnae seen the best of it yet, wait till the next tourist bus comes in!’
So they all waited excitedly until a busload of German tourists arrived and were encouraged in to the exhibition. The leading group reached the figure of the Prince and, thinking he was real, tried to pay him an entrance fee. The dedicated staff tried to stifle guffaws. ‘They all do that!’ Mavis whispered to Kathy. Then they found their way to Rory Mark II, and one by one they looked around to see if they were being observed. Staff eyes were averted and hands busied themselves with nothing, and thus reassured each tourist carefully picked up Rory’s kilt and looked underneath.
Kathy gasped and the others danced around holding each other and giggling. ‘They all do that as well!’ Mavis shrieked. As she clapped her hands the ever-present cigarette fell from between her fingers and burned her thumb. ‘Ouch!’ she shouted.
‘Serves you right!’ Kathy said happily.
‘Know what I think we should do?’ Mavis asked, struggling to regain control of her cigarette.
‘I’m scared to ask!’ Kathy replied.
‘Well, we could get a fan put in under him there, and we could put in a coin-operated machine to work it—’
‘Don’
t!’ Kathy screeched, covering her ears.
‘And every time the tourists wanted to check him out underneath, they would have to put fifty pence in the machine, and up would go the kilt! It’d be like that Marilyn photo, you know the one? With the white dress up round about her ears!’
‘Mavis, you’re bloody warped!’
‘Well, it’s just an idea,’ she giggled. ‘Could be a great wee private money-spinner for us, a perk of the job if you like!’
Kathy looked at the statue again. The artist chap had captured Rory to the life, he’d even given him that scowl he had when he was too displeased to bother telling you so. And somehow he’d managed to reproduce the authentic wry expression in Rory’s deep-set blue eyes that made you want to slap him. No wonder, she thought, the cleaner was too spooked to work alone in the extension, she’d be none too happy about it herself.
‘We could try putting a bag over its head,’ she offered.
‘What’s the point of that?’ Mavis asked. ‘We’d know it was still Rory, wouldn’t we?’
‘So tell me,’ Kathy asked her. ‘Is he a real Scotsman then?’
‘Well, we had a talk about that,’ Mavis said, rubbing her burnt thumb, ‘and we’ve decided not to tell you. If you want to find that out, Kathy, you’ll have to do what everybody else does – lift up his kilt and look!’
She had never told anyone why or where she was going when she went to Glasgow, only that she would be away on business, and her recent visit, the longest and, as it turned out, final one, happened during winter when the Centre was closed. Rory had insisted on driving her to Glasgow; he was, he said, going on his annual shopping expedition anyway.
‘So,’ he said, ‘why are you actually going to Glasgow?’
She was surprised, because he had never questioned her previous absences. ‘My father’s dying,’ she replied.
‘I didn’t know you had one,’ he said.
She looked wryly at him. ‘Well, Rory,’ she said, ‘there’s a lot of people have said the same thing about you over the years, even the ones who knew your father!’
He grinned, stopping the van where she asked, at Glasgow Cross. ‘Why am I dropping you here?’ he asked. ‘It would be easier to take you right to where he lives.’
‘Not for me,’ she replied curtly.
‘Don’t you want me to know where you come from?’ he asked, smiling. ‘Is it that bad?’
‘I didnae say that, did I?’ she demanded. ‘It’s a while since I was last here, I fancy a walk through the old neighbourhood, I’m a nostalgic kind of creature. OK?’
‘In a pig’s ear you are!’ he scoffed, driving off and leaving her.
She waited till he was out of sight before walking along London Road. He was right, of course, she didn’t want him to take her right to Con’s door. If he did there would be a connection in her mind between the West Coast and the East End of Glasgow, and she didn’t want that; the two places were completely separate, both geographically and emotionally, even if they did have a connecting door. And now that door was closed for ever, never the twain ever would meet. Sitting on the train, watching familiar station names flash past, Crianlarich, Tyndrum, Rannoch, Corrour, there was quiet satisfaction about finally being finished with the life she had been born into. She went over in her mind everything that had happened, from Con’s interminable, lingering death, the funeral, meeting poor, repressed Angela Crawford, forcing Frank McCabe to cough up the loot and to face up to his worst nightmare, that the knowledge of his little transgression hadn’t died with Aggie after all, and the news about her brother Peter, or Brother Peter as he apparently preferred to be known these days. That had been a high point, she had to admit, the thought of Peter, who spent his entire life criticising other people and instructing them in how to live their lives, was now being told how to live his life. That, she knew, was what cults did, they laid down their own rules, those of a highly individualistic mind set couldn’t be prime material. So what could’ve happened to him to make him surrender his opinions, she wondered. All Peter had ever wanted was to get the best of everything, and he had never cared how he did so or who he stood on, put down or abandoned in the process either. If she had ever been asked to venture a guess on who in her family would have reached the top and be living the good life, she would instinctively have chosen her brother, even before Harry, or at least, the Harry she thought she knew. Harry, she always thought, would be successful and happy, but still there; Peter would’ve gone elsewhere, indeed Peter had, but this wasn’t how she could ever have imagined him spending his life. And Harry had mentioned his client, Peter’s mother-in-law of all things, and her concern over her daughter’s wellbeing. There had been no communication, she said, all letters were ignored and attempts to contact her by phone were blocked. Well, cults did that too, everyone knew that. The way to control every thought and action of the adherents was to be the only influence in their lives, and that was done by slowly but surely cutting them off from past ties. She had read newspaper reports of desperate families trying to convince relatives, usually sons or daughters caught in cult webs, that they were being controlled, and those operating the cult turned this against them. Your family are the ones trying to control you, they’d say, if they really loved you they would understand and accept that you’re happy, that you belong here, therefore if they are trying to take you away, they don’t love you and are trying to harm you. It was standard brainwashing procedure, well documented and often described. Kathy had never understood how anyone could be taken in by it, but she had always assumed that the ones who were must be young, weak and vulnerable. Her brother was in his fifties now, and by all accounts he had been involved with the Higher Seekers for years. It made no sense. Not that she was concerned about Peter; why should she be? He had never been concerned about her, about any of the family for that matter. He hadn’t even attended his mother’s funeral, citing ‘important business’ as his excuse. She remembered her grandmother, Old Aggie, opining that Peter had avoided Lily’s funeral because he was ‘too sensitive’ to face his grief, and how she had attacked Aggie for it. Presumably ‘important business’ was, then, basic cult code for refusing to relax the ban on family contact. It made sense that a family crisis, like the death of a close relative, would’ve been a danger point for the cult’s control, presumably, given that at such times entire families would meet, thereby intensifying the strength of feelings, however latent, feelings the cult had worked hard to eradicate. So she didn’t care one way or another about Peter, he had made his choice and it was no business of hers, it was just that she was curious about how someone as self-centred as him could’ve become entangled in a cult. It couldn’t have happened to a better person, she decided, poetic justice, hoist by his own petard, whatever a petard was, and she laughed every time she thought of it. She was curious, that was all, she’d just like to know.
Everything was as it should be at the cottage. Rory had kept it heated so that even in December there was no hint of dampness, and the frequent rain in the Western Highlands ensured dampness at the best of times. Tourists often remarked on the full burns and rivers, and they stopped to film the many waterfalls cascading off the hills when it rained, all rushing to the sea through lush greenery. As visitors were only there for a couple of weeks, it seemed churlish to point out that the high rainfall causing all those photo opportunities also made for a general dampness that could seep into your soul during winter. Cat was as cantankerous as ever with her, as affectionate towards Rory, and given Rory’s lamentably low level of interest in local gossip, she knew she would have to wait till she saw Mavis to be brought up to date. He did have one piece of news, though, Mavis and Donnie were now grandparents; Kirsty and Kenny the chef had produced their first child during her absence. ‘Boy or girl?’ she asked. ‘Aye, one or the other,’ he replied. Over the years the easy approach to relationships of the Macdonalds had taken them over. During her days at the house up the hill, she had been constantly amazed at how years could pas
s between Rory’s visits home, but he walked in the door as though he’d been in Fort William for a couple of hours, and his parents treated him the same way. They slipped into whatever groove they had been in when they had last met, there was no awkwardness, no getting to know you again strangeness, and these days Kathy and Rory were the same. He didn’t ask if her father had died; he assumed that as she had gone to Glasgow because he was dying, the fact that she had now returned meant that he had died. He asked no questions about the events, if she wanted to tell him he knew she would, and if she didn’t, well that was fine too. Once she had mistaken the Macdonald way as uncaring, which sat uneasily with her knowledge of and affection for Angus and Bunty, but she understood it now for what it was, a total acceptance that went beyond emotional ups and downs or, in the case of her own family, explosions. Having been thinking about the fate of her brother recently, she remembered how her mother had described her two children. ‘The same,’ Lily had said about Kathy and Peter, ‘but different’, and it struck her that over the years she and Rory had become like that too, but unlike the situation between her and her brother, they were comfortable with each other like that. Life, she thought contentedly, was strange.
It was the dreams that did it, that stabbed through her contentedness. That the child cried and would go on doing so from time to time, she had long ago accepted, but another twist had now been added. The child cried and, as always, she chased through the streets she had left behind long ago looking for it, but instead of being unable to find it, she now did. She would follow the sound of the plaintive screams from one long gone East End street to another, with the child always just beyond her reach, sure that around the next corner she would finally be able to hold it and console it, telling it how sorry she was that she had failed it, that she would do anything, anything for another chance. Only now she would see the child and pick it up, its cries mixing with her own sobs of relief and joy, but when she looked into its face she would find Peter staring back at her. The horror of the usual dreams was bad enough, she thought, but now it had become positively bizarre! And what was worse, there were other dreams, entirely non-threatening, where she would be happily going about her normal business and would then be arrested by the sound of someone whistling ‘Pedro the Fisherman’. It had been Peter’s tune, the one he whistled as he came up the stairs of the old Moncur Street tenement, and she couldn’t remember how many decades it had been since she had last heard it. It was a whistle, that was all, but each time she would awake as though being pursued by the hounds of Hell. She tried to rationalise it. It was only natural, she told herself, that family memories should surface in the wake of Con’s death, she had, after all, laid her background to rest when Con had been cremated, and like it or not, and she never had, Peter was part of that background. Maybe the death of your last parent was like drowning, she mused, maybe it made all your life pass before your subconscious. But it would stop soon, as long as she didn’t dwell on it and make more of it than there was. It would pass in a while. In a longer while, then.
Chasing Angels Page 29
