‘No,’ Murdo said. ‘It was neither. He had been dead so long that all the flesh was away. He was a skeleton and a few rags. You could just about tell what had been his trousers and his coat but that was it. He was more like the remains of a big bird than a man. It was not horrible or terrible at all. It didn’t look like a terrible death.’
‘Do you think he had drowned?’
Murdo shrugged. ‘And been washed up there? Who can know? Perhaps he had, but I don’t think so. If that was the case, I don’t think he would have been so high up, in among the dunes and the rocks. No, I think he came to that place the same way I did, by walking.’
‘People go that way,’ Mike said, ‘if they are walking to the lighthouse at Cape Wrath.’
‘A few do that. It’s very rough walking beyond the bay. You have to be very determined.’
‘Maybe that’s where he was going.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he just sat down to rest. Who can know?’
‘A man, not a woman?’
‘From the size of him, I’d say so.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘You know, I never even considered that it wasn’t a man. But somehow I’m sure it was.’
‘How long do you think he had been there?’
‘Years, certainly. He was almost part of the place, half-buried as he was. There were twigs and seaweed and pebbles and things in among his ribs. Gull feathers.’
‘What did you do? Did you tell anybody?’
‘I was on my own,’ Murdo said, as if it were a stupid question.
‘The police, for example,’ Mike said, as if Murdo had given a stupid answer.
‘Well, I did think about that. But it seemed a little pointless. I didn’t think he’d been murdered or anything.’
‘But presumably he was a missing person.’
‘Presumably. I decided the best thing to do was to sit down beside him and ask him what he wanted.’
Mike, seeing that Murdo was quite serious, remained silent. He was learning.
‘I did ask him, you see, if he wanted the police involved. Of course he didn’t answer, but it seemed very unlikely. It seemed more likely that he didn’t want to be disturbed. He had come there for some reason, and he’d stayed. I could do nothing for him. So we sat for a while, and looked out at the sea with the wind blowing in our faces, and then I said goodbye and came away again.’
‘You just left him there?’
‘What was I going to do, carry him all the way back to Oldshoremore? Give him a Christian burial? He wouldn’t have thanked me for either. Why, what would you have done?’
Mike shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Anyway,’ Murdo said, ‘I’ve never been back, and I expect he has long since disappeared, so it doesn’t matter now.’
They sat there, sipping their tea.
‘I suppose,’ Mike said, after a minute, ‘I’d have taken a picture of him.’
‘For the police? Or for yourself?’
‘For the picture.’
‘I suppose you would have,’ Murdo said. ‘But I don’t have a camera. I’ll tell you this, though, I have the picture of him in my head. It is stored in here and I can view it any time I choose.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Until the day I die,’ he said.
Mike, on the train passing through the wastes of Drumochter, remembers the intensity of that moment. He remembers the deep wells of Murdo’s eyes. He thinks of Murdo, and what happened at the end of their last evening together, and he wonders if it will happen again when Murdo meets him at Lairg and brings him home to the house at Cnoc nan Gobhar.
§
The glasses are empty. Mike indicates the bottle. ‘Another?’
Murdo seems to consider this, then shakes his head. ‘No thanks. I should be going.’
They both stand up together. This is how it is. There is nothing awkward about what happens next. They like each other’s company and then they want more.
They go up to the bedroom where earlier Mike turned the duvet down, folded it right back off the sheet. They stand at the foot of the bed and Mike unbuckles Murdo’s belt and pulls down his jeans and boxers and his cock springs out and waves there like a boat’s mast. Mikes drops down on his knees and takes it in his mouth and feels Murdo’s hands on his neck and in his hair as he works on him with his tongue. He brings him to a certain pitch and then pushes him away and stands up. They strip off with a silent urgency and lie down on the bed. The condom and lubricant are on the table. Mike slips the condom on and squirts lube into his left palm. Murdo turns away and lifts his knees and Mike reaches over and takes Murdo’s cock in his right hand and starts to massage between his buttocks with his left. Murdo is grunting, gasping with the pleasure of it, and slowly, slowly Mike pushes with his own hardness and Murdo gives suddenly and Mike is in, as far as he can go. And then they are into the rhythm, thrusting and jerking, and then suddenly, too quickly, crying out together as they come. Mike’s heart is pumping, it feels about to burst, then gradually it eases off. They lie in a sweat of exhaustion, a minute, maybe two minutes, they might almost be about to drift off but no, that isn’t going to happen. Murdo pulls himself away, off the bed, gathers up his clothes and goes to the bathroom to wash himself, and when Mike hears the stair creak he gets up and washes and dresses too. When he comes downstairs Murdo is standing in the kitchen, waiting to go.
They look at each other in wonder for a moment, as if perhaps it hasn’t happened but they’ve had the same dream.
‘All right?’
‘Aye.’
So it has happened. But there is a distance between them again, though it is not unfriendly. It is never unfriendly. So far it has always been like this, and this is for Murdo’s sake. Mike would prefer more intimacy. He would like it if Murdo fell asleep, stayed the night. A kiss now would not be unappreciated but it does not come. And to stay would be too difficult for Murdo so this, for now, is how it is.
They talked about it a little, the second or third time. Murdo said he’d always known what he wanted but had never thought to do anything about it. He’d never had girlfriends when he was younger. He had two sisters who were married and away, one in Canada and the other in Inverness, but he’d stayed, living with his parents in the house he was born in, until they died and the house became his alone, and no doubt he’d be there now till he died. He’d never made a pretence one way or the other, people could think what they liked and now, if they thought about it at all, they probably thought he was just a confirmed bachelor who wasn’t interested in sex, or love, or marriage. But whatever they thought they kept it to themselves, and he did the same. And until Mike had come to live there, and in the course of day-to-day life they’d met and each seen the curiosity and then the desire in the other’s eyes, the possibility that he might have sex with another person had never really entered his mind.
‘But you could have gone away. You could have gone some place where you could have been yourself.’
Murdo doesn’t often get angry but he flared up at that. ‘Be myself? Do you think I’ve not been myself all these years? Do you think I would have to go away from here to be myself? This is my home. I love it. Why would I go away from it?’
‘But –’
‘There’s no buts about it, boy. Wild bloody horses wouldn’t drag me away from here, and don’t think that you will either. Or change me, not for anything, by God.’
And so, when he comes over in the evening, as he does perhaps twice or three times a week, sometimes for a meal and sometimes for a dram, Mike opens the gate and the red van slides up behind the house, out of sight unless you’re really looking for it. And always Murdo will be back in his own house every night, the van parked outside, and in the morning go about his business just the same as ever. And after he’s away, Mike will wash the glasses and dishes and ponder the strangeness of it, the normality of it, and he’ll go up the stair to his bed and there is the damp patch on the sheet and although he feels the lack of Murdo he also likes the fact that they are indepe
ndent and alone. He understands why Murdo prefers it that way and in spite of himself he agrees that it is probably better, at least for the time being. Perhaps one day soon there will be a change. Perhaps there will be a different future. He hopes so. But for now, yes, for now this is how it is.
You kept a pocket full of stones. The stones had no purpose, they were just a story. You kept the story going. That was what you had to do. You picked the stones up where you found them and you took them on, and every so often you laid them down again. You were making a pattern but you didn’t know what the pattern was. You didn’t know where you were in the pattern or where or how or if it would end. Sometimes you took a pebble from a beach, sea-washed and smooth as a pearl, and left it under a tree miles up a glen; sometimes you took a rough, ragged stone from an inland field and weeks later you threw it into the sea. And sometimes you handed the stones on, to small, unknowing hands, and let the pattern take care of itself. It was not your concern. Your only concern was to keep the pocket filled with stones and never let them run out, to gather and to give, to take and to release. You yourself were released. You’d escaped and you weren’t going back. That was the sum total of everything you were and did.
You heard another story about stones once, or did you read it? Memory was a confusing place of mist and time. This story was much older than yours, but you liked it, you felt it. It became you. Became in the sense of suited. Or maybe in the sense of became. Maybe it was the same story but on a different scale. Long ago back in the mist there was a giant. He was building a house in the mountains. He went down to the shore with a creel and collected a number of rocks for his house, and placed them in the creel. When it was full he swung it up on to his great back, but the weight was too much and the bottom of the creel broke and the stones fell into the sea as he swung it round, and that was how the Hebrides were formed.
Things fell into place. You might not have anything to eat on you, you might be hungry or wet or cold or tired or all of these things, but they were states of being, they weren’t responsibilities. And the states of being passed, one into another, and it amazed you to find that that was what they did. You wore out your boots and a farmer gave you his old ones. You needed a new coat and somebody in a cold, grey village found you one. These were gifts, not debts. Gifts were acceptable. You were hungry and there was a field of potatoes only waiting for a fire to bake them in, or a trout lying under the bank of a burn waiting for your hand, or a squad of pheasants walking down the road, almost into your arms they would come, daft creatures too bonnie to know what the rock in your hand was for, or a hedgerow full of wild white raspberries to gorge yourself on. Redcurrants like gleaming jewels, fat blaeberries staining your fingers with their dark blood. Or you worked for a few days on a farm or some remote place where they needed some extra help, and sometimes there was money but usually there wasn’t, but always there was food and a place to wash and a place to sleep, though never a bed even if it was offered, you were far beyond beds by then. And food to take with you when you went on your way. Things fell into place.
You travelled light. Three pairs of socks, a change of underwear, a couple of shirts, a big jumper and a coat. Sometimes a bit more if you picked up some good items, sometimes less. The important thing was keeping your clothes and yourself as clean as you could. Some of the other men on the road were so dirty you got the stench of them even before you saw them. They’d lost all sense of themselves, they’d no dignity left. Washing and drying your clothes was hard in the winter. You offered to work in exchange for a washing and if the offer was rejected you went elsewhere or fell back on your own resources, making use of the shelters you found to hang things for days at a time. You used a particular territory for a few weeks, stashing things away till you needed them. There were endless possibilities of places to rest, places to wait, places to store, if you only took the trouble and time to look.
And you had all the time in the world now you didn’t have anything else. If you had nowhere to be you could be anywhere. Soap in a tin. A razor and a whetstone. A billycan. Your needs were pared down to the minimum. You didn’t have to ask for much, and your preference was to ask for nothing.
You went out into the world to leave the world behind. You went out into the open to find the places where you could be invisible and silent.
Silence. That was the best thing of all. Words were something else you didn’t need, written or spoken or heard. You talked if talk was necessary, letting the words go with care, the way you might release a butterfly or a pebble from your hand; but mostly you listened, picking up news of things that no longer concerned you then forgetting them, offering an opinion if it was sought but more and more you had less and less to offer. You were in retreat, like a monk, not like a soldier. Like a monk. You preferred to listen. You listened to birds, to beasts, to water. You chinked the stones together, listening for their meaning. You learned the meaning of changes in the wind, the meaning of dogs when they barked or did not bark. Dogs loved you. Once, a man in Argyll near the end of a summer – the heat was still in the days but it was beginning to fade – could not believe how his collie, that would go like a mad thing for anybody that trespassed on his turf, rubbed and slumped against your legs and yearned to be clapped, and whined like a bairn when you stopped. I never saw that, the man said. Never saw the like o that wi that dug. That’s a strange power ye have on ye. And he didn’t like it, it was like a threat to him somehow, and he shook his head and said he had no work for you and so you left, and did the dog not try to follow till its master roared and it slunk back like a beaten thing, to forget your passing and to snarl and snap at the next stranger? And you turned your face to the road and went on.
Things fell into place. Down the road a mile or two you came on a gypsy camp set among trees by a burn, and the same thing happened, the dogs came out to bite you and they ended up licking your hand and competing for your attention. The men observed this and invited you in, the women made you sit and they fed you and gave you tea in a tin mug and offered you tobacco and you took the tea, and you stayed with them, listening to their stories and their songs and watching the dirty-faced barefoot bairns at play and there was no meaning in any of it. It stirred a memory in you but you did not look into that, and after a day or two you went on.
But before you left you counted the bairns, there were seven of them, and you reached into your pocket and brought out seven stones and put one into each outstretched hand. And two of them looked at what you had given and threw them away, and one put the pebble in his mouth and spat it out, and three collected more stones and began a game with them, and one, the smallest, watched you sullenly from under her black brows and clutched the stone in her fist and went away with it to some place on her own. And you were happy at what they had all done, together and separately, and most of all you were happy at the thought of the lassie who hid the stone away, though you didn’t know why. But her face came back to you for many days after that, as you walked on into the autumn of the year.
PART TWO
The Persistence of Memory
On a Saturday evening in the summer of 1950 Don Lennie walked into the Blackthorn Inn in Wharryburn at eight o’clock, as usual, and Jack Gordon was there at the bar, as usual: tanned, thin as flex, in light flannels, neatly pressed jacket and clean white shirt, with a pint of light ale in his hand. He nodded curtly and raised the pint to his mouth. Don ordered the same for himself. Their friendship – you could call it that – was based on a set of tacit understandings, one of which was that Jack’s need for independence prohibited the buying of rounds. He didn’t want to be in debt to anybody else, not ever, not even for twenty minutes. Don accepted this, as he accepted almost everything about Jack, including his dislike of being touched. They never shook hands at the start or end of an evening, for example. How Jack’s wife coped – with the touching, or the not touching – was anybody’s guess. Maybe he was different with her, but Don doubted it. Still, he’d been through a lot, Jack Gordo
n. You couldn’t blame him for having a few, what was the word, peccadilloes.
Straight up, without even a hello, Jack said, ‘Do you know one of the things that kept me going? Imagining this. I’d picture myself in a pub with a beer and I’d drink it inch by inch and lick the foam off my top lip.’ He enunciated very clearly, consonants clicking and popping with precision.
Don had heard this story before, or a version of it. He said, ‘I bet ye did, Jack.’
‘I’d imagine I’d had a weekend in the hills, Glen Coe or somewhere, just as I used to in the old days, and this was me with a pint of Scottish beer after, waiting for the bus from Fort William.’
Don lifted his own glass. ‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘The old days,’ he said, and drank to them.
‘And I usually thought of it being winter,’ Jack went on. ‘Snow on the tops, but the sky clear, the air dry and fresh. Sunny even. But cold. I tried to imagine feeling cold. Pretty difficult.’
‘Aye, it would be,’ Don said.
‘I’ve been thinking about this all week. What home meant.’
Don nodded. When Jack said he’d been thinking about something all week he probably meant it. Seven days, every waking moment. They both worked in the town of Drumkirk, three miles down the road. Jack worked in the sales and dispatch department of an engineering firm that made small parts for industrial machinery – some kind of overseeing role that involved checking other men’s work and a lot of form-filling – and Don reckoned you could probably go all day doing that and have your mind on something else. Not where he was, in Byres Brothers Haulage. He did what he’d done before the war and during it and what he’d probably do till he stopped working – servicing and repairing trucks and lorries. An office job like Jack’s was one thing, but at Byres Brothers you had to concentrate or something would jump up and bite you. Burn you, crush you, slice your fingers off.
And the Land Lay Still Page 18
