Sarah Gordon was waiting at the bus stop. She was holding Barbara high on her chest, hoisting her up as passengers got off so that she could see their faces. It was obvious from Sarah’s expression that something was wrong.
‘Mr Lennie,’ she said as he reached them. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. Have you seen my husband?’
‘Jack? No. He wasna on the bus this morning. Did he get a different one?’
‘I don’t think he went to work,’ she said. ‘He left the house before I was awake, but I know he wasn’t wearing his work clothes. They’re hanging in the cupboard. I remembered you’d be on this bus. I thought I’d come down and check, in case.’
He looked blankly at her.
‘In case you’d seen him,’ she said imploringly. He realised that she was not just worried, she was frightened.
‘No, I’m sorry. If he didna go tae his work, dae ye ken where he might have gone insteid?’
She shook her head. Then she said, ‘I wondered if you’d see if he was in the pub.’
Don glanced at his watch. ‘What for would he be in the pub at this hour?’
‘He might have gone for a drink,’ she said. It was such an obvious response he nearly laughed, but the fear in her face stopped the laugh coming. Barbara was frowning at him too, as if she dimly remembered him from somewhere.
‘Ye’ve no had a keek in yersel?’ he said.
‘I don’t like to,’ she said.
‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and hae a look.’ He reached out for Barbara. ‘Come on, darling, let’s gie your mother a rest.’ But she squirmed back from him, gripping Sarah’s arm and shoulder with sudden ferocity.
‘She won’t go with anybody else,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Never mind,’ Don said. ‘It’s just ye look a wee bit wabbit. Tired,’ he added, seeing she didn’t understand. ‘Exhausted.’
‘I suppose I am a little,’ she said.
They walked up the brae together. He thought, we might almost be a family. As if she’d read his mind, she said, ‘How’s Mrs Lennie?’
‘Liz,’ he said. ‘And please call me Don, no Mr Lennie. Naebody calls me that, no even at my work. She’s fine, but she’s due ony time noo. Overdue in fact.’
‘Then you need to go home,’ she said.
But he felt an overwhelming pity for her, a need to help. Liz would be all right about it, he thought. She would understand.
‘The bairn’ll be born when it’s born,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we canna find Jack first, eh?’
He wasn’t in the Blackthorn, nor had he been. Don asked, while Sarah and Barbara waited outside the door. They continued on, past the end of his own street, back to the Gordons’ bungalow. She had to put Barbara down while she found her key and unlocked the door. Don glanced away, slightly embarrassed. There was a key for their own house, in a bowl on a table in the lobby, but he couldn’t remember the last time they’d used it. He wondered if Jack carried a key too, if he and Sarah came and went, locking their house against the world and each other. What if he’d gone out keyless that morning and come back in the last half-hour to find the door shut against him? The idea of that happening to Don himself was inconceivable.
They went in and through to the kitchen. She filled the kettle and put it on the electric ring. Barbara, back in familiar surroundings, let go of her mother at last, although she still steered a wide path around Don. She left the kitchen but returned a minute later carrying a teddy bear. Sarah helped her up on to a stool and she sat there rocking the bear and watching the two adults talking.
‘What now, then?’ Don asked. When Sarah turned to face him she looked disappointed, and he realised she’d been hoping he would have a plan.
‘Think now,’ he said. ‘Where else might he be? Has he gone off afore?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘But not like this.’
He screwed his face up, puzzled but relieved. ‘Well, then. Surely he’s just gone a bit further than usual? Maybe he’s decided tae go climbing hills, like he did afore the war, and he left early and didna want tae wake ye.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand. He doesn’t go anywhere. He’s just not here. Like that time you all came round. Didn’t you find it hard to speak to him out in the garden?’
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘but …’ He stopped, not sure of his ground. ‘But does he never go away? I mean, physically go away, for a lang walk or something. He can be quite solitary, I would think.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. The kettle was coming to the boil. ‘Do you want some tea?’
He nodded. ‘Just milk, thanks,’ he said.
She said, ‘Sometimes he doesn’t speak for days. But he’s never disappeared like this.’
‘Did ye hae an argument or something?’ he said, feeling clumsy and intrusive. ‘He can be a wee bit touchy, I’ve noticed. I tried telling him he was late wi his tatties but he didna want tae hear it.’
‘The soil’s not good enough,’ Sarah said.
‘Not at all. It’s braw. I never saw soil like it.’
‘He doesn’t think so. Do you know how long he’s been preparing that patch?’
‘Since aboot April, frae the look o it,’ Don said, trying to lighten her mood.
‘Three years,’ Sarah said. ‘Ever since we moved in. He keeps digging it and weeding it and raking it, but he’s never satisfied. I don’t believe he’s ever going to grow anything in it. He says the soil’s too poor.’
Don hardly ever swore. Occasionally at work, if he hit his hand against something or a tool broke. Even in the army, when other men couldn’t utter a sentence without cursing, he’d kept his language clean. He prided himself on not using even mild swear words in front of a woman. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said now. ‘Three years? That’s crazy.’
He’d said it before he could stop himself. But she looked at him with relief, as if she no longer needed to pretend.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s crazy. That’s the word.’
Neither of them spoke for a minute. Barbara stared. Maybe the silence, the child’s eerie witness, weren’t so unusual for Sarah, but they unnerved Don, forcing him to say something.
‘Dae ye think he could hae just jumped on a bus and headed aff for the hills? He sometimes talks aboot Glen Coe and places, miles away, where he went climbing. Maybe that’s where he’s gone. Mind you, it’s no exactly the weather for tramping aboot the hills.’
‘Weather wouldn’t stop him,’ Sarah said, ‘if that’s what he decided to do. I think he gets hemmed in sometimes. It’s like he can’t breathe properly in the house, or even in the garden or the street. And he just has to go.’
‘So he does go off? Where?’
‘Up into the woods behind the village. That’s the direction he heads in anyway. Up the hill. It’s the nearest place where there’s not likely to be anybody about. It’s usually only for an hour or so, but sometimes it’s much longer. But never in the middle of the night. Oh no, that’s not true. A couple of times he’s got up and gone there at night. He says he likes to watch the owls hunting. But he doesn’t call them owls. He has another word for them.’
‘Hoolets,’ Don said.
‘Yes, that’s it. Hoolets.’
‘Well,’ Don said, ‘maybe that’s where he’s gone this time. All we can dae is wait, I suppose. I mean, ye dinna want tae tell the polis or onything, dae ye?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just want him to come back. I want him safe. I want all of us to be safe.’
‘I ken,’ he said. ‘Well, we’ll no get the polis yet.’ There would be something defeated, shameful almost, about involving them. ‘Is there onything that might have set him aff? Onything unusual that’s happened? If I had a clue where tae start, I’d go and look for him.’
She shook her head. Don caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and spotted Barbara shaking her head, and making the bear do it too. Bloody hell, he said again, into himself.
‘Do you know anybody ca
lled MacLaren?’ Sarah said suddenly.
‘In the village, ye mean?’
‘Not sure. In the pub? Somebody that might have upset him.’
She went out of the room. Barbara, twisting on the stool, followed her anxiously with her eyes but Sarah was back in a few seconds, holding a piece of paper, a lined sheet from a notebook. ‘Maybe it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t look like nothing, does it?’
Don took the sheet from her: the name MACLAREN appeared three times on each line, neatly inscribed in block capitals, the M and L slightly bigger than the other letters: a perfect line-up of – he counted the lines – a hundred and twenty MacLarens on parade. A certain extra pressure had been exerted occasionally, so that the nib had pierced the paper at the apexes of some of the As or the ends of the Cs. Don thought, once he’d written the first one he’d have to match it with another, then he’d have to balance the paper up with a third, then he’d have to balance the line with a second line, then he’d have to fill the page. He could picture Jack working away at it obsessively.
‘Has he ever talked tae ye aboot the camps?’ he said. ‘During the war?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Never.’
‘No even when ye met him, when he was recovering?’
She looked shocked. ‘Especially not then. Why?’
‘There was a man called MacLaren he tellt me aboot.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died. He was killed by the Japs.’
‘Oh God,’ she said. She took the paper back, stared at it as if it might speak. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I dinna ken. Maybe it disna mean onything. Look,’ he said, ‘I better get hame. I’ll come back efter I’ve seen Liz and maybe take a walk up intae the woods. He’ll probably be here by the time I get back, but that’s what I’ll dae. Will ye be all right?’
She nodded. ‘Thank you very much. Don.’
‘Aye, right,’ he said. ‘Try no tae worry.’ But he felt like a deserter, even though it was nothing to do with him. And something else: being in the house with her on his own – it made him feel treacherous, as if he were there behind Jack’s back, when he was only trying to help.
As he hurried home he thought about what she’d said about Jack and the owls. It didn’t surprise him. Jack had a way with animals. Once, coming back from the Blackthorn, they’d come across a hedgehog in the road. Jack had hunkered down and put a hand out to its snout. Don expected it to curl up in a ball, but it didn’t, it came towards the outstretched hand, and Jack carefully led it off the tarmac and into the long grass, as if he had it on an invisible leash. And sometimes, at the bus stop, a blackbird would land on the wall a few inches away from his head, just stand and wait with its own head cocked as if it too were waiting for the bus. When Don or anybody else went close, it flew off, but it had no fear of Jack. The same bird. You could tell by a white patch on its wing. Jack didn’t speak to it or feed it, he just stood beside it. As if the two of them knew something that nobody else did. And maybe they did.
§
It was after two o’clock when he got in. Billy came running to the door when he heard it open. Don picked him up, roughed his hair, tickled him. ‘All right, wee man?’ He went into the living room. Liz was sitting, splayed out and hot despite the cool day, in her armchair. She said, ‘Where have ye been? There’s some soup in the pan on the stove, but it’ll need heating up.’
He explained about Sarah waiting for Jack at the bus stop. ‘I couldna just leave her there,’ he said. ‘I looked in the pub for Jack and walked her hame. She’s feart for him.’
‘Or frae him,’ Liz said.
‘How are ye?’ he asked, putting Billy down.
‘Sair,’ she said. ‘It’s started at last.’
He clapped his palm to his head. ‘Liz, I’m sorry. Dae ye want the doctor?’
‘God no,’ she said. ‘It’s far too soon for that, he’d come and just have to go away again.’
‘How often are ye getting the pains?’
‘No often enough,’ she said. ‘Aboot one every hauf-oor. Away and get your soup.’
‘Are ye wanting some?’
‘Christ, Don, dae I look like I’m wanting soup?’
He went through to the kitchen. He’d not dared to say anything about going back to Sarah Gordon’s afterwards. How could he, with Liz maybe about to give birth any minute? He ladled the soup straight from the pan into a bowl, found half a loaf in the bread bin and sliced off a hunk, then sat at the table, gulping and cramming and chewing, trying to think what to do.
‘Have ye heated it up?’ Liz called.
‘Aye!’ he shouted between lukewarm mouthfuls. Slow down, he thought, you’ll make yourself sick. But he kept going at the same pace, glancing at the paper as he ate.
For once, Korea was relegated from prime position in the news. The front page was taken up with the drama unfolding at Borlanslogie. Forty hours after the original collapse some ninety men were still underground, unable to progress in any direction and with a diminishing supply of air to sustain them. Rescue teams were trying to dig through to them from adjacent old workings, but it was slow going. Firedamp was everywhere: it had to be driven out with fans, and only hand tools could be used to tunnel through the thick wall of coal and rock to where the men were. Machinery couldn’t be brought in for fear of igniting the gas: even a spark from a chisel could be enough to blow the tunnel and the rescuers to pieces.
He washed and dried the bowl and put it away, then went back through to the other room and stood, hesitant, at the door.
‘Well, what dae ye think?’ he said after a minute.
‘Aboot what?’
‘How long dae ye think ye’ll be?’ It came out wrong, as if he was asking her to hurry up, and he saw anger flaring in her eyes. Quickly he added, ‘The rain’s stopped. I could take Billy oot for a walk, get him aff your hands and let ye hae a sleep, if ye think it’ll be a while yet?’
Her irritation seemed to pass. She even managed a smile. ‘That’s no a bad idea. He needs some fresh air. I canna see me being ready for a few oors yet. But I might get intae bed. It’s better lying doon.’
‘I thought it was supposed tae be better standing up, walking aboot.’
‘Well, I’m telling ye, at the moment it’s better lying doon.’
‘Right,’ he said, suddenly certain again. ‘That’s what we’ll dae. Come on, wee man, let’s get your shoes on and we’ll go for a dauner.’
‘Dinna gang far,’ Liz said. Her eyes were closing already.
‘We’ll no,’ he said.
§
‘I’ll hae tae be quick,’ he said. ‘I’ll need tae get back tae Liz.’
Jack had failed to return. Don had jogged round, with Billy on his shoulders. Billy had enjoyed the ride at first but then, finding it too hard, or discerning that his father’s urgency was not about entertaining him, had begun to whine. By the time they got to Sarah’s a full-scale tantrum was threatening, and Don’s plan, which had been to leave him with Sarah and Barbara while he had half an hour up in the woods searching for Jack, was clearly not going to work.
‘I really appreciate this,’ Sarah said.
‘Thing is,’ Don said, ‘if I canna find him, I’m no sure what else tae dae. I mean, he hasna been away for a day yet. The polis’ll no dae onything aboot it till at least the morn’s morn.’
‘There’s something wrong,’ she said. ‘I know it.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘nae point in me standing here. Come on, Billy, let’s go up in the woods.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to leave him with me?’
‘He’ll no settle,’ Don said. ‘I can see the signs.’ Somehow he’d got himself into a position of being dishonest to both women, and duplicity was not one of his strong points. He was regretting not having told Liz they were coming here, but he’d also decided he didn’t want to leave Billy in that house. He felt sorry for Sarah, but he wasn’t confident she was capable of looking after two
bairns at once. And every time he looked at the silent, watchful Barbara, he felt uneasy.
He let Billy walk and run for a while as they headed past the last of the houses and through a kissing gate, which led into the woods. It took longer with Billy walking but Don couldn’t carry him any more. He wondered if Billy’s memory was stirred. They’d pushed him up there in his pram once or twice, lifting him over the gate and bumping him along over tree roots and loose stones, but that was half his lifetime ago. The path led to an old wooden bench, camouflaged in bird droppings and flaky green paint, with a view back over the village and all the way down to Drumkirk. As far as he knew, Liz had never been back since. He hadn’t himself.
On a good day the view was great, you could see right over towards Fife. Borlanslogie lay in that direction, though it was hidden by hills, and in this kind of weather you couldn’t even see the hills. In the other direction, if you kept on through to the other side of the woods, you ended up on the moor. At this time of year there were often parties of shooters out after grouse. They came from the far side of the moor, from the north, Glenallan, a different breed with their tweed breeks, fore-and-afts and whiskery cheeks, rough-hewn ruddy-faced men with thick accents – not the plummy voices of the gentry, but the peatbog tones of their henchmen and farming neighbours. Fierce, some of them could be. And indeed when they reached the bench he heard the faint pop-pop of shotguns, toylike in the distance, and he wondered, not really believing it a possibility, whether Jack might have strayed up on to the moor and got himself mistaken for a grouse and shot.
Billy was happy again, picking up damp twigs and pine cones and collecting them together in a pile beside the bench while Don peered, as if with some definite purpose, into the trees. He called out – ‘Jack! Jack Gordon!’ – and his voice came back from the hill and Billy heard it and they had to spend a few minutes making their voices echo. Nobody shouted back. Then they went deeper in, along sodden, slippery paths, Don in the vague, hopeless hope of spotting something related to Jack. But what? A dropped handkerchief? Jack hanging from a branch? He put the thought from his mind. He was wasting his time. There was no possibility of him searching properly – not with Billy in tow. They should just go home. He had another bairn on the way, a wife needing attention. What the hell was he thinking of?
And the Land Lay Still Page 22
