The Second Strain

by John Burke

  ‘Good God. Do you know who they were?’

  ‘Yes.’ Adam left it at that.

  Scott-Fraser got the message. His glare down the table was met by Buchanan’s even more blistering glare.

  ‘Damn it. That is no fit behaviour for an officer serving in our ranks. Am I to understand that the fellow will now be too frightened to show up?’

  ‘He may possibly not show up, no.’

  ‘Most inconsiderate. No backbone, eh, these Bohemian types? But we can rely on you to come up to scratch, eh? Doing your bit, eh? You’d better fill me in before you get on your feet, so I know how to introduce you properly.’

  Spending the hour of the meal making conversation with Scott-Fraser was almost as much an ordeal as sitting next to Buchanan would have been. It was made no easier by Scott-Fraser’s heavy-handed attempt at a sympathetic joke. ‘Don’t like the way Buchanan’s looking at you, eh? Looking you up and down — measuring you for one of his best oak and brass coffins.’ But the moment came when the rhubarb fool and the cheese were whisked away, and Adam rose apprehensively to his feet.

  He carefully did not look at Buchanan, but selected a meek-looking member halfway down the table on the left, whom he thought he recognized as a retired secretary of the bowls club. After a stumbling start, and the need to get rid of a frog in his throat, he forgot everything but the need to put across the real importance and beauty of Daniel Erskine’s music.

  ‘The major works fall into three periods. Rather as some painters have their spells known as cubist period, naturalist period, blue period and so on, Erskine’s music shows three distinct phases. In the early compositions, when he was still living in Kilstane and teaching music at the Academy —’

  ‘When he could spare the time from lechery,’ snarled Buchanan.

  Scott-Fraser reached for his gavel and thumped it against the edge of the table. ‘Bowman Buchanan, I must insist on good order in the formation. It would be regrettable if I had to enforce a period of withdrawal.’

  Buchanan growled, but subsided. As three members drank from tumblers of whisky, he ostentatiously waved for the water jug to be passed over to him.

  ‘Those earlier pieces,’ Adam continued, ‘were what one might call a declaration of kinship with those working for the rebirth of Scottish folksong.’

  ‘And the birth of several wee Scottish folk,’ muttered MacKenzie.

  ‘Then there comes that remarkable switch, after he had left Kilstane.’ He was afraid to pause, offering Buchanan an opportunity to let fly about the reasons for Erskine leaving Kilstane — or being driven out. ‘A sudden switch from, as it were, water-colours to oils.’ He went on hurriedly: ‘All at once there are violent textures, great bravura, great swings of sound. Searching rhythmic explorations that seem to stem from folk music without ever being folksy. At times there will be a Scotch snap, but almost at once it will be swallowed up in a sequence of syllabic tone-clusters which come from some other land altogether. If you come to the opening concert by the Westermarch Sinfonia on Sunday, you will hear a remarkable exploration of corrupt tonality and false relations, expressing beastliness and dissolution.’ Buchanan grunted, but before he could decide whether or not to make a sarcastic comment, Adam ploughed on, hearing every note of Erskine’s music in his head as he talked, so that he spoke faster and more ecstatically. ‘What is so compelling is the way that he then resolves the conflict with a rhythmic insistence that almost physically wrenches the discords into a shape that refuses to be denied.’

  One or two of his audience fidgeted on their chairs, and somebody knocked a coffee cup over.

  There was one way, he was sure, to grab their attention. ‘You will all be aware’ — he made it an accusation against the entire community — ‘that a brutal attack made upon Daniel Erskine by a deranged neighbour left him without the use of his hands. This was bound to affect his compositional techniques. After a few years of silence he was fortunate enough to acquire an amanuensis who worked intuitively with him, and managed to transfer his creative thoughts to the keyboard and to a written score. The limitations of such methods may in themselves have turned his mind to other concepts, though there is certainly no slackening of his intensity. At some stage during Miss Mairi McLeod’s interpretative assistance he embarked on what we might call his third adventure, a quite different approach to the challenges of his creative career. In this third phase, we have another complete change of direction. Like Webern or later minimalists, he stripped music down to its very essence, but rather than aiming for cold abstraction he came up with something more recognizably Scottish, a pibroch rather than an alien strain, as if he were yearning to come home. In The Blacksmith’s Wife of Yarrow-foot there is a sensuous yet straightforwardly harmonic rather than contrapuntal treatment of the theme of the witch who turns a young man into a stallion and rides him to a coven, but then is outwitted by him so that he rides her back as a mare. The symbolism —’

  ‘Filth!’ Buchanan could contain himself no longer. ‘Typical filth. And if I get my hands on him, he’ll soon learn what riding home has in store for him.’

  ‘Bowman Buchanan, I must ask you to —’

  ‘Och, I’ll no’ be sitting here listening to yon haivers a moment longer.’

  Buchanan scraped his chair back and lumbered to his feet. Before he could extricate himself from the table and chair and squeeze past his neighbour, the door at the end of the room was pushed open. Daniel Erskine staggered in, half supported by Duncan Maxwell.

  Adam’s heart sank. To have let Duncan take charge of the great man . . . a recipe for disaster. Though the disaster might have been worse. At least Duncan had found somewhere to keep Erskine from the mob. The back room of the Buccleuch Arms, by the look of the pair of them.

  Adam said loudly: ‘Mr Erskine, we had hoped to have the pleasure of your company a little earlier, so that you could answer a few questions about —’

  ‘What did I tell ye?’ Buchanan could not get his right leg disentangled from two closely set chairs. ‘See for yourselves what kind o’ man this self-styled genius has become — no better than ever he was. A drunkard and a lecher . . .’

  ‘Bowman Buchanan, for the last time —’

  ‘And as for questions, there’s a muckle deal o’ those he’s got to answer for.’

  Erskine, swaying, tried to draw himself up and look dignified. When he spoke, his tone was less robust than Buchanan’s, but much more savage and stabbing. The words were slurred, but came out with frightening venom.

  ‘If that’s the way you want it, then so be it. I’ve got plenty to say about this town and the people in it. Time somebody told the lot of you the truth. The truth.’ He wiped his padded glove across the moistness of his lips.

  ‘Mr Erskine.’ Scott-Fraser got up and managed to stand to attention in spite of the back of his knees being cramped by his chair. ‘Would you be fancying a dram with us?’

  ‘Everything.’ Erskine’s bleary eyes scanned the whole assembly. ‘Every damn thing. It’s high time.’ He emitted a shrill, shaky laugh. ‘How about some truths about those weeds who couldn’t father their own brats? And then had the nerve to get angry because I could do what they couldn’t? And as for the women who said they’d been seduced — liars, hypocrites, begging for it. Never any need for rape in this town.’

  Buchanan broke free. The man who pushed back his chair to block the way was Kerr. They confronted one another, chins jutting, as Erskine ranted on: ‘And the music. Whatever tales this young man has been telling you about my music, isn’t it high time to tell you the whole story of that? You’ll hear the lot before I leave this town again, I’ll make sure of that.’

  He began to lean more and more heavily on Duncan. Someone from the end of the table made a move to help him, but he was too late. Erskine lurched forward a few paces, and collapsed face down into a plate of cheese and biscuits left behind by the waitress.

  Buchanan managed at last to shoulder past Kerr. He drew himself up with the do
om-laden wrath of an Old Testament prophet. ‘All the daughters of music shall be brought low.’

  That would have looked really encouraging on the programme notes, thought Adam glumly.

  Chapter Four

  Strains of two electric guitars, shatteringly over-amplified, soared up from the haugh to the open first-floor window of Black Knowe like a vicious missile from some reiver intent on demoralizing the inmates before launching a full frontal attack on the tower.

  Nick said: ‘Remind you of the old days?’

  He thought of her as he had first known her, when he was playing keyboards with a pop group at an Irish folk festival. There had been a lot of intermingling then — of performers with their instruments in impromptu groups during the public sessions, and performers shedding their instruments and much else in private after hours. Everything then had felt original, outrageous, all-embracing. Until, as you grew older, you discovered that everything had been done before, and probably better. Some groups grew louder and more outrageous. Others dissolved, and the instrumentalists went away to learn better music. But it had been hot and exhilarating while it lasted.

  Standing beside him to look down at the platform and a guitarist struggling to produce a few chords without setting the amplifier into wilder hysterics, while others were erecting a large khaki marquee nearby, Mairi McLeod said: ‘Some of them don’t seem to have got much further than when they were thumping it out at their first gig.’

  ‘Three-chord, three-string plonkers forever,’ Nick agreed. ‘Twelve bars, da capo, repeat, and go on repeating till you’ve gone through two keys, a score of roadies, three marriages, three divorces, and a lot of alimony.’

  He was aware of her studying him as they stood in the window embrasure, so high above the world. Mairi was wearing a dark green sleeveless dress which revealed all the olive smoothness of her throat and arms, bathed in the late afternoon sunshine so that they seemed to glow from within.

  She said: ‘At least you’ve managed to escape being married three times. Or even once — unless you’ve been holding out on me?’

  ‘You could say I’ve been holding out on everyone. Or they’ve been holding out on me, more likely.’

  ‘Come on now, Nick. I’d have thought a place like this would come complete with — what’s the word? — a chatelaine.’

  Visually, right here and now, thought Nick, he and Mairi must make just that conventional duo: the lord and his chatelaine, posed in the window of their great hall, serenely surveying their domains. Only Mairi did not have the makings of a lady of the manor. Even in a moment of stillness and contemplation like this, there was a tension in every sleek line of her body: she was never really at rest, a spring coiled and under tight control, but thrumming with the urge for release. She had always been a wild, fey girl, desperate for experience, greedy for life, committed enthusiastically to whatever she was absorbed in at the time.

  She had been committed to Erskine for an unusually long time.

  ‘Oughtn’t there to be one of those boards outside?’ She propped herself at an angle with her hands on the window-ledge. The sunlight was a blaze in the depths of her hair. ‘Down there, a board with a painting of the castle when it was ten times bigger, with some fancy archaic lettering outlining the history of the place, and little vignettes of gallant knights and your bearded forebears?’

  ‘It never was any larger than this. It’s just a defensive family tower. And though my grandfather did have a beard, you would never have caught him on horseback tilting or charging. He was a railway engineer.’

  The shrill noise outside became as grating as fingernails scratching in an enamel pan. As Mairi backed away, Nick closed the window and glanced at the clock.

  ‘And there’s another grandfather that doesn’t belong,’ said Mairi, settling herself on the settee. ‘Didn’t they have sundials in olden times?’

  ‘Not indoors.’

  She glanced at the door to the stairwell. ‘I wonder when that old soak will come round.’ There was none of the reverence which Nick had heard in her voice in Altnalarach.

  He could not sit down. Least of all on the settee beside her. There was no longer any fire between them, fanned by the heady winds of past music; nor was there any likelihood of it being rekindled. He didn’t want her to be under any misapprehensions — to do or say something impetuous, which he knew all too well she was capable of doing on an unexpected provocation or pang of emotional hunger.

  He said: ‘Just what did decide Erskine to come to Kilstane after all? Did you work on him on our behalf?’

  ‘No, I did not. I knew it’d be a disaster.’

  ‘Then why —’

  ‘Our bloody fool of a wandering grocer came up with his delivery van, and a couple of sheets from the Express had got shoved between Daniel’s usual case of Clynelish and our groceries. He doesn’t usually want to know what goes on in the outside world, but he was in a hurry to get at a bottle and came across the story about your corpse being a woman.’

  ‘Why should that interest him?’

  ‘I wish I knew. Why he should want to come back here . . .’ She changed the subject with unexpected ferocity. ‘Do you ever want to go back to your old ways? Playing on the road, playing in studios, sitting at the mixing deck and trying to coax sense out of other people’s musical ramblings . . . don’t you ever fancy going back?’

  ‘No. For quite a while I felt a bit uneasy at finding myself a baronet. Purely because a couple of the family had died in the wrong order. It seemed crazy. But I’m settling in.’

  ‘Being the laird — Nick, knowing you, it must give you the giggles. Be honest.’

  ‘For quite a while,’ he repeated, ‘I did feel as if . . . well, I was wearing somebody else’s fancy dress. Somebody else’s skin. Sooner or later they’d find me out.’

  ‘But now?’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel responsible for the people of Kilstane, and what goes on in the town.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Her brief savagery had turned to cynicism. ‘Now you’re wallowing in it. All set to become a real clan chief. But won’t that take you back to London in the end? I mean, haven’t they all made a habit of selling off their land, along with a few mountains, so they can acquire a plushy mansion in London and pick up a few non-executive directorships?’

  There was a thud against the door. When it opened, Erskine held on to it until he was sure he could make it to the settee. Mairi made room for him, glaring.

  ‘I think I could be fancying a wee dram.’ He tried to chuckle, but the back of his throat must have been harsh, and the request came out as no more than a croak.

  Nick expected Mairi to make some withering remark. But she shrugged, and indicated that Nick might as well open the drinks cabinet in the stone alcove beside the fireplace.

  Erskine’s half-closed eyes blinked towards the facing wall in bleary recognition as he downed the whisky. ‘Like a bloody prison, isn’t it? Stone walls and that sort of thing, they do a prison make, whatever the old versifier said. And I bet there used to be iron bars over that window.’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ said Nick.

  ‘Never invited to set foot in it when I was a lad.’ He squinted, trying to get things in focus. ‘Quite a little tour I had, during my spell of freedom. How did I get back here, though?’

  ‘Adam Lowther rescued you from some other drunk.’

  ‘Ah. That nice fellow. Nice and sociable. Duncan something, or something Duncan. That back bar . . . we had some good crack in there.’

  ‘A dose of nostalgia?’ Nick prompted.

  ‘Nostalgia? Ha! The pub was the only place worth visiting. The rest of the town’s just what it always was. Window curtains twitching. Snivelling about their wonderful Burns suppers. Pathetic. And their Schiltron odds and sods. None of it changed, none of it. Peely-wally old crocks on the street corners whispering over every step you take. And I bet that bloody chemist still has a harridan who makes it clear the shop is run for her benefit, not yours. Or
maybe by now it’s her daughter.’ He burped.

  Mairi grabbed his arm and wrenched him round to face her. ‘Lowther said that when you made that scene at the lunch club, you were threatening all and sundry to tell the truth about them. Or about something or other. And you kept going on and on about it while he was steering you back here. Just what were you on about?’

  Erskine peered into his empty glass. Mairi did not rise to the hint. She took the glass from him and set it firmly down on the small table beside the settee. Erskine let his head sag against the arm of the settee, and his eyelids drooped.

  Trying to jolt him back to reality, Nick said: ‘You will be at the opening concert on Sunday?’

  ‘Oh, aye, I’ll be there. You can count on that. Mm. Oh, yes. Maybe even give a speech, eh?’

  Then he fell asleep.

  Nick stared at the huddled shape. The air was still thick with beery breath. He said in an undertone: ‘I still can’t really understand why you of all people —’

  ‘You wouldn’t think he could be that good in bed, would you?’ said Mairi out of the blue.

  ‘At his age? You’re not serious?’

  ‘As good as you ever were. Truly.’

  ‘But . . .’ His imagination couldn’t cope with the vision that was struggling to assemble itself. ‘I mean, with no hands . . .’

  It was an absurd thing to say, and Mairi made the most of it. ‘Never mind the hands. He managed very happily with other parts of his anatomy.’

  Erskine stirred. It was impossible to tell whether the sound he emitted was a faint snore or a knowing chuckle.

  Mrs Robson tapped on the door and came in. She looked disdainfully at the man slumped against the arm of the settee. ‘There’s that Gunn lassie downstairs wanting to see . . . Mr Erskine.’

  ‘You mean Detective Inspector Gunn?’ said Nick sharply.

  ‘Well, aye, sir. It’s just that, remembering her, I find it hard to think of her as-’

  ‘Send the detective inspector up.’

  Mairi shook Erskine awake.