by Laura Marney
‘She sounds like a right cow,’ I said.
There was a bit of confusion and then we were giggling for ages, I don’t remember why. I remember Dinah crying and me patting her head.
She told me about her son, Robby, or it could have been Roddy, and we bitched off about what a nightmare it was having a son. I was loving that chat. I told her how awful Steven had made me feel about that one teeny toatie nip of whisky. We really bonded over what gits sons were. Hers was older than mine by a few years. She didn’t know where he was, out of the country; he had ‘specialist tastes’ and his trust fund went a lot further in Thailand or wherever. She was worried he was lying in a drug den. She said, ‘horrid’, ‘a horrid drug den,’ which struck me as funny and we started giggling again.
When the whisky was finished, Dinah found a bottle of port. At some point after we’d finished that, I fell asleep in the chair.
It was daylight when I opened my eyes.
I got the impression that Dinah had maybe prodded me or something because she was talking again, as if she had talked all night without stopping.
‘It’s different for you, Trixie, you’re keen to go back to Glasgow.’
How did she know that? I must have told her.
‘But I’m being forced to sell. This estate was gifted to my family by the crown more than thirteen hundred years ago, and little by little, in taxes and death duties, the state is clawing it back. We’ve never really owned this land.’
I nodded, wondering what time it was. It felt early but I was so disorientated and hungover I couldn’t trust my internal clock. How the hell was I going to drive?
‘Nothing is forever, we can only hope to take care of it for the next generation and, in that regard, I’ve failed.’
Jesus, she could drone on. I needed to get back to Harrosie before Steven woke up.
‘And with all this trouble over the machair, I’m worried that Knox MacIntyre might pull out of the deal.’
I nodded again.
‘I’m sorry, Dinah, I have to go. But thank you for a lovely evening.’
Chapter 34
Luckily the car started first time. There was still half a packet of Extra Strong Mints in the glove compartment and I unrolled the wrapper and put them all in my mouth at once. It was only 6 am when I made it back and no one was out of bed yet.
Steven didn’t come down to breakfast, which was a stilted affair where I pretended to be sober and the Claymores pretended to believe it. When they had taken the tosgs out of the shed and left there was still no sign of life from Steven.
After eating a handful of parsley and brushing my teeth for twenty minutes, I made up a tray of tea and toast and took it up for him.
‘Morning, Steven,’ I called through the closed door, ‘I’ve brought you up breakfast.’
I was giving him notice, clear warning that, whatever he may or may not be doing, he might not wish to be doing it when his mother walked in.
‘I’m just going to bring it in.’
As I slowly turned the door handle there was suddenly a loud snoring. I listened for a few minutes as it settled into a regular rhythm.
Schnaaaw pheo, schnaaw pheo, schnaaw pheo.
I let out a loud exasperated sigh and then walked away, clumping my feet conspicuously down the hall. The snoring abruptly ceased. I clumped back up the hall again and as I reached his room, surprise surprise, the snoring started up again.
Schnaaaw pheo, schnaaw pheo, schnaaw pheo.
These snores were too consistent. What Steven was forgetting was that I’d been watching him and listening to him sleep since he was moments old. He’d never been that style of snorer. He’d always been more of a nose whistler and snuffly lipsmacker who broke out with the occasional explosive snort. I pictured him behind the door, his eyes open as he dragged the long breaths in, past his waggling, vibrating soft palate.
So this was how he wanted it: this ridiculous fake snoring. It was eloquent; I had to give him that.
It was the smell of moussaka that finally lured Steven down the stairs that night for dinner. When he’d been a wee boy he’d always loved the gorgeous cinnamon smell. I never really understood it – moussaka was basically Greek cottage pie – but Steven couldn’t get enough of it. Once, when he was about nine, as I laid the hot fragrant tray on the table, he leaned over it and, on opening his mouth to speak – probably to compliment me on my cooking – he accidentally salivated. Everyone gasped. A puddle of wee boy dribble pooled on the surface of our meal, making the fluffy topping, that I’d worked so hard to perfect, sag in the middle. I’d never been more proud. My moussaka was that good it literally induced dribbling. It became a well-established family legend and even now proved to be a powerful tool for enticing my son to the table.
God, I was good.
We exchanged a quiet smile as I put a generous portion on his plate. Steven knew I wouldn’t tell the Claymores about his slavering – these family things were sacred – even though my moussaka prowess would have impressed the hell out of them.
Rudi wielded a bottle of beer and as it hovered in Steven’s direction they both sought my approval. I nodded. One, just one. He was only sixteen but at least he was doing it in front of me and not on a dangerous island out on the loch. Of course, everyone complimented me on the moussaka and then we played cards and blethered and laughed all evening. Steven acted as if my misdemeanour had never happened.
I had to keep my guard up. I had fallen off the wagon quite spectacularly last night, and all because of a toatie wee nip. I couldn’t do that again. It had to be zero tolerance. One drink was one too many. At least I hadn’t got drunk here, in front of the Claymores, in front of Steven.
It was a shame. I liked Dinah. Some parts of the night, the bits that I could remember, had been fun. But when I thought about it, the bits that I remembered were mostly the smoking and drinking. After how difficult it had been for me to give up cigarettes I couldn’t believe I’d smoked last night. I could still taste the tar in my saliva and feel the carcinogens coursing through my veins. Never again. Dinah and I were a bad influence on each other. I needed to stay the hell away from her.
Chapter 35
The next morning, Steven was late coming downstairs. The Claymores had already left for another day of peat cutting. If it hadn’t been legally dodgy I’d have asked Rudi if Steven could go with them. I could see he was bored. We had breakfast, just the two if us, in the kitchen. It was a lovely sunny morning, maybe the council would get the machair back today; I’d get paid, Steven would get work as an extra, and all would be well with the world.
After his toast, Steven took Bouncer for a walk out past Fenton’s dairy farm, now his daily ritual. I daren’t bring up the lovely Morag; Steven would tell me in his own sweet time – if ever. Whatever he got up to behind the milking shed with Morag was preferable to him hanging about the machair with Jackie and his rebel rousers, but I knew that if I said anything that would be exactly where he’d go.
I had a huge mound of sheets still to be washed. Just me on my own, putting on a boil wash and listening to Faughie FM. Just like the old days. Except that in the old days I’d been desperately lonely. Now that I had a house full of rufty-tufty men and a film star next door and my son living with me, I was glad of the quiet.
Whisky didn’t make you happy, it was the little things: your son actually speaking to you and the smell of clean meadow-fresh sheets ready to be hung on the line. On the fabric conditioner box it described the fragrance as Orchid and Diamond. I’d never known a meadow to smell of orchids, never mind diamonds; as far as I knew diamonds didn’t even have a fragrance. I was emptying the machine, sticking my head inside the drum to get the full effect of the decadent aroma, when I heard the kitchen window rattle.
I looked up and saw Walter.
Arms full of washing, I nodded at the back door and he walked in before I’d even got up off my knees.
‘Who else is in the house?’
He was usually so ca
lm and polite but he seemed agitated.
‘Nobody,’ I said, struggling to my feet, ‘just me.’
Walter nodded, ‘Bring it in. Now,’ he said into his phone, and then cut the call.
What was going on? Walter took the laundry basket out of my hands, to help me I assumed, but then he took out one of my good white sheets and laid it on the floor.
‘Sorry about this, Trixie, but it’ll save your floor getting dirty.’
‘Walter, is everything ok?’
‘Yes, yes, I …’
He listened hard and we both heard the sound of a diesel van drawing up at the front of the house.
Walter sprinted through the hall to the front door and opened it.
‘Back door! Back door!’ he hissed, and I heard the van reverse.
Tyres scrunching the gravel, van doors opening and banging closed, multiple hurried footsteps, and then heaving and grunting noises. Walter opened the kitchen door and ushered the Claymores in.
Ewan, Colin, Dave, Will and Danny carried it in, supervised by Rudi.
‘Put it there on the sheet,’ he instructed them.
Walter’s eyes were glittering.
From the bog stench of it this had to be something they’d dragged out of the peat. It overwhelmed my meadow-fresh orchid and diamond fragrance, no contest. It was about the size and depth of a blanket box, an antique one, dark wood and ornately carved. A blanket box or a coffin for a midget. I didn’t want any coffins in my kitchen.
Walter hadn’t requested my permission and I supposed I only had myself to blame. That was the way of it when you got involved with criminals. One minute you were letting them use your tosg and the next minute they were dragging midget coffins into your kitchen. As they laid it down on the sheet the box oozed mud.
My heart was beating too fast.
‘What is it, Walter?’ I asked although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
‘That’s what we’re about to find out. Have you something to open it with, Rudi?’
Rudi slid a jemmy out of his belt and set to removing the lid. It popped easily and surprised us all. I jumped behind Dave, the biggest of them, and keeked out from over his shoulder.
‘Be careful!’ Walter snapped.
From where I was hiding I couldn’t see what was inside the box but by their reactions it wasn’t what they were expecting.
‘Could you lift it out of the box and lay it on the sheet please?’ Walter asked.
There were no volunteers.
‘Och, for god’s sake, I’ll do it myself,’ he said, reaching down.
This galvanised Will and Ewan to come to his aid and between the three of them they lifted it up out of the box.
When I saw it, I nearly screamed. Will dropped his end and Walter, not strong enough to keep it up, let it flump on to the sheet. As it splattered onto the floor it left a greasy impression on my good Egyptian cotton, like the chalk mark round a body at a murder scene.
I couldn’t fathom what we were looking at. It was about three feet long and two feet wide. It was, or rather it had been, some kind of organism. It looked a bit like a seal: it had a tail flipper at one end, which might have signified a seal except for the fact that it had no head. And it wasn’t that the head had been cut off, no, the grey slimy skin was continuous, a smooth rounded area where a head should have been. Some kind of foul mutation as yet unrecorded by science. Walter kneeled down on the floor right next to it.
‘Can I borrow a knife please, Trixie?’
I shook my head. I didn’t want any incriminating bog monster DNA on my kitchen utensils.
‘It won’t bite,’ he laughed, ‘it’s a sealskin bag, that’s all it is.’
I wasn’t convinced and made no move to help him but Rudi produced a sgian dubh from his sock and handed it over.
‘Thank you, Rudi,’ said Walter, as he stabbed the knife in the swamp-thing and proceeded to gut it. Inside the sealskin there was another sealskin, and inside that it was covered in black sticky ectoplasm, the stuff of horror movies. As he split each layer and lifted out the next he left a pile of cast-off skins like a gruesome game of pass the parcel.
‘They really knew how to waterproof in the old days: pine resin, plenty of it, to be had around Inverfaughie, pitch, tar, and of course the sealskin itself is completely waterproof.’
Although we stood watching this, fascinated and horrified in equal measure, Walter was really only talking to himself. I got the impression it was to calm his excitement and steady his nerve as he hacked through layer after layer of waterproofing and into the thing.
‘This is the marvellous thing about the peat, it pickles and preserves. You know, you can preserve anything if you get the conditions right.’
By now elbow deep in what looked like an ancient mummified womb, Walter pulled out a rolled-up piece of something. He stood up, shook the slime off his arms and spread open the thing on the kitchen table. It was some kind of skin with writing on it, but it was greasy and most of the letters were too smudged for me to make out, and what language it was written in I couldn’t have said.
‘Remarkable!’
Walter held it up to his nose and inhaled deeply.
‘Quite remarkable! Lambskin coated in wax, I think I can still smell the beeswax! Here, what do you think?’
He held it out to us, inviting us to sniff. I declined, as did everyone else. If the rest of them felt like I did, and I was pretty sure they did, it was an anticlimax. We were clearly not as enthralled by this discovery as Walter, but it took a moment before he noticed.
‘Well?’ he said, still laughing, ‘what did you expect: a treasure chest full of gold doubloons?’
‘Kind of, yeah,’ Danny admitted shyly, and the rest of them agreed.
Walter laughed some more. ‘Thanks for bringing it down for me, you’ve done a great job boys, I owe you all a pint.’
‘But Walter,’ said Rudi, ‘all these layers of sealskin and wax and tar, why would they have gone to all that bother? It’s got to be something valuable.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Walter, ‘it must be.’
‘Come on, put us out of our misery, what’s the manuscript all about? What does it say?’
‘You know,’ Walter chuckled, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you all, but I really don’t have a clue.’
Chapter 36
The monster/manuscript fiasco had made me and the Claymores partners in crime. Worried that Steven might sense this, I overcompensated in trying to make him one of the gang.
As we sat down to dinner, I remarked that with seven men and one gorgeous lady, anyone looking in the window would take us for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
That started a competition to find dwarfish nicknames for everyone. Steven instantly became ‘Droopy’, as in droopy drawers, because of his jeans always hanging off him and of course Rudi, as he was the oldest and had his trademark big red nose, would have to be Doc. They were all arguing and Dave suggested that I be the one to allocate the names.
‘Why don’t you make up some for us, Trixie? Excuse me, I mean Miss Snow White,’ he said, bowing his head with a chivalrous sweep of his eyelashes.
When they’d first moved in I’d thought of them purely as the Claymores: a homogeneous horde of musclebound manhood, but that changed as I got to know them. They revealed themselves, through their wee habits, as individuals. I thought back to what I’d first noticed about each of them. Danny always went out running. Colin was mad for soup, he was always asking for it, and Ewan had requested after-dinner mints. Will stood out as the best fighter amongst them, but Dave was the tallest and broadest.
‘Right, ready for the naming ceremony?’ I asked.
Everyone put down their cutlery and leaned in. As I pointed at each one I called out their nickname.
‘Droopy, Soupy, Sprinty, Minty, Mighty, Fighty, and Conk.
They laughed. Conk was a surprise, even to me. I hadn’t said it to offend Rudi, he was such a sweet man, it had just fitted the rhythm and leapt
out of my mouth before I had a chance to filter. Steven laughed along but I could tell he was annoyed.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Steven, clearing the table after dinner and carrying the dishes through to the kitchen, where I followed him.
‘Hi hooooo!’ I sang, hoping he’d take it up and give me a responding call.
He rolled his eyes, ‘Leave it out, Snow White.’
‘Such cynicism in one so young,’ I sighed. ‘Cheers, Droopy.’
Not so long ago he would have happily danced around the kitchen with me and we would have screamed with laughter. Steven had been such a lovely wee boy. What happened? When did the lovely wee boy become such an uncomfortable inbetweener?
As he bent down to fill the dishwasher I got an eyeful of my son’s bum cleavage and had to look away. When he’d first started wearing these droopy trousers I’d taken loads of photos: something to tease him with when, years from now, he’d have a more mature perspective on this ridiculous fashion. The gusset sagged at knee height, the waistband was lower than his hips. He had to walk with both hands in his pockets just to hold them up.
‘You know they were talking about your droopy jeans on a radio show the other day.’
‘Yeah? And were they saying how sweet my peachy arse looked in them?’
Steven did a seductive little wiggle, forcing me to look away again.
‘Eh, no. Not really. They were saying that the trend began in prisons in America. Aye, apparently it was a way of men signalling to each other, without the wardens knowing, that they were available for sex.’
‘That’s not the way I heard it,’ he replied calmly. ‘I heard it began in America; with kids who were so poor they had to wear their big brothers’ hand-me-down trousers.’
‘I don’t get it. What’s cool about being poor?’
‘I didn’t say being poor is cool, that’s not what I’m saying.’
Oh dear, it wasn’t going well.
‘Wearing baggy trousers is a way of signalling that you have a big brother. The signal being: don’t mess with me or my big brother will f–’
