‘No worse than the rest of us,’ Gannet murmured.
‘Aye, aye, that’s maybe true,’ Black Rock said slowly, looking off into the distance. ‘Except that he pulled a gun on Batty and Maddy last night and threatened to shoot their arses off.’
Gannet stared at him, thinking this was the best joke Black Rock had ever come out with. Sorley Mor would have fun with that one when he heard it … He took a deep breath and silently cursed himself for his stupidity, then he looked at Black Rock again and realised that he hadn’t been joking.
‘You’re not serious, man?’ he asked.
‘Aye, fair out of sorts he seemed. I was thinking of taking a walk down there myself, but I’m not too keen on maybe having my own arse shot off, so I thought I’d leave it till I saw you. He’s a bit upset I think, poor man.’
Gannet turned the Land Rover round and headed back towards the chapel house. As he’d passed on the way up he had noticed that the curtains were closed and had decided not to disturb Father Mick. He knew the priest had been having trouble sleeping, maybe with his normal pattern out of kilter he’d overslept, but that would be no bad thing, sleep was sleep. Racing back down again he had a horrible vision of finding Father Mick shot dead by his own hand. He didn’t know it had been that bad; they were all still struggling and Father Mick was the one pushing them all onwards; what if he was the very one who needed help most and they hadn’t noticed it?
Gannet knocked on the door but there was no reply, so he knocked again and again, his fears rising each time until he felt he might be sick right there on the doorstep. Eventually he noticed the curtain move and was relieved and enraged in equal measure, then Father Mick appeared at the door still clutching an empty bottle and looking desperately hungover.
‘Damn and blast, man!’ Gannet shouted, trying to stop his fist from swinging. ‘I thought you were dead!’
‘And I’m not?’ the priest asked. ‘Oh, bugger!’
Gannet pushed him inside and followed.
‘What’s all this about you threatening Batty and Maddy with a gun?’ he asked.
Father Mick looked blank, rubbed his head, fell over a table in the gloom and lay there swearing. Gannet pulled the curtains back to let in some light.
‘Where’s the gun?’ he demanded, desperately looking around.
‘What gun, you silly sod?’ Father Mick laughed from the floor.
‘You’re going around threatening people with a gun and all you can do is lie there holding on to an empty bottle and laughing?’ Gannet shouted. ‘You don’t have a gun licence, the new copper would be in here in an armoured car if he knew that! Where the hell is it?’
‘There isn’t one!’ Father Mick said dismissively. ‘I didn’t threaten them with a gun. I only said if they didn’t clear off I’d blast their arses with the biggest shotgun I could find.’
‘Aye, well,’ Gannet replied sarcastically, ‘I can see that makes all the difference! That’ll be your plea in court, will it? “I didn’t have a gun, but if I could’ve laid hands on one I’d have blasted their arses off.”?’
Father Mick crawled along the floor, grabbed the arm of a chair, hauled himself up into it and sat giggling for a few minutes, his arms clutched across the empty bottle.
Gannet spotted the dried blood on his hands. ‘What in hell’s name have you been doing to yourself?’ he demanded.
Father Mick looked down, turned his hands over and examined them closely from various angles. ‘That?’ he asked vacantly. ‘Ach, I was tearing up a rosary and the damned thing gave me a few wee cuts, that’s all.’
‘Oh, well,’ Gannet replied, ‘as long as you were just tearing up a rosary …’
‘As you do, Gannet,’ Father Mick smiled. ‘As you do. It was no big deal. It wasn’t blessed, so technically speaking it was only a string of beads.’ Then he started shaking with laughter. ‘Can you imagine what Sorley Mor would’ve made of this story?’ he asked. ‘I can see him now, laughing that laugh of his till he couldn’t stand! Can’t you just see him, Gannet?’
Gannet could; Gannet already had. The big man smiled. ‘So what the hell was it all about?’
As Father Mick described his encounter with the Black Rock sisters, Gannet relaxed.
‘I’ll have to apologise, of course,’ Father Mick sighed. ‘I’ll give them a bit of wood off something.’ He looked around the furniture in the room for inspiration. ‘I’ll tell them it’s a splinter from the Cross. They’ll fall for that.’ He sighed again. ‘Well, at least I got a night’s sleep out of it, so it was worth it after all.’
‘If you can call an Islay Mist-induced coma a night’s sleep!’ Gannet laughed grimly.
‘I can,’ Father Mick replied loftily, ‘and I do.’ He smacked his lips a few times and pulled a face. ‘Mouth like a Turkish wrestler’s jockstrap,’ he muttered. ‘Did I ever tell you that I once met a Turkish wrestler, Gannet? He was their Olympic coach, in fact. Huge great chap, built along the lines of our Eric.’ He stopped and looked down. ‘Only not so light on his feet, of course!’ he said with forced brightness. ‘Funny how it creeps up and hits you out of the blue, isn’t it?’ he asked sadly. ‘You don’t know you’re saying it till you’ve said it.’
Gannet nodded. ‘I suppose it’s part of the process,’ he said quietly.
Father Mick clapped his hands together. ‘Right!’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here! Fancy risking some of Dan’s cooking?’ He was already moving towards the door.
‘Are you not going to shave, man?’ Gannet asked.
‘I most certainly am not!’ Father Mick shouted, already climbing into the passenger seat of the Land Rover.
The Inn was full of regulars, but somehow it still wasn’t busy, and the atmosphere, as Dan had remarked, wasn’t so much quiet as moody.
‘I don’t know,’ said Father Mick, ‘I’ve never known so many short-tempered people in all my life, myself included. Gavin was just saying the other day that he’s got a constant stream of people coming through the surgery door with nothing wrong but insomnia and bad temper – though, mind you, the two tend to go together.’
‘It’s the same on the boat,’ said Duncan, ‘and at home come to that. My wife snaps at the slightest thing. I’m beginning to wonder if she’ll be there when I come home the next time.’
‘There have been fights in here,’ Dan said. ‘I’m not kidding you, men who’ve known each other all their lives almost throwing punches over nothing. Not that I’m feeling too bright myself.’
‘I’m not talking to Chrissie,’ Gannet reported flatly, ‘and Rose isn’t talking to her either.’
‘What happened?’ Father Mick asked.
‘Ach,’ Gannet said, waving his hand in dismissal, ‘she said something daft to Rose about there being somebody else out there for her and her being lucky not having any bairns so she could make a fresh start. You know Chrissie, she talks.’
Dougie, who had been silent, drew a sharp intake of breath and raised his eyebrows.
‘She didn’t mean it, Dougie,’ Gannet said kindly. ‘Chrissie’s had so many years needing to beat me and Sorley Mor up to get through to us that she’s likely forgotten how to be sensitive when she needs to. She’s worried about Rose, she was just frustrated at not helping the lassie more and it just kind of slipped out.’
‘She had a real argument in Hamish Dubh’s yesterday, did you hear about that?’ Dan asked quietly. Everyone looked at him. ‘Annie came back, really upset. She still can’t make up her mind if she owes Chrissie an apology or the other way round. She mentioned that you were still up at MacEwan’s Row, Gannet, and was going to ask how you were doing, and Chrissie blew up in front of all the other women in the store. Tore them all off a strip, said they were a lot of gossiping sweetie wives and stormed out, saying you’d be staying at MacEwan’s Row regardless of what they all thought.’
‘Bugger!’ Gannet said, wincing.
‘What?’ Father Mick asked.
‘When I bumped into Black Rock this m
orning I was on my way home to Keppaig. I was so annoyed at Chrissie over Rose that I more or less said I’d had enough of her and needed a break.’
‘Bugger indeed,’ said Father Mick sympathetically.
‘She didn’t say a word about what had happened in the store, though,’ Gannet protested.
‘I think it’s still bugger, old son,’ Duncan said with feeling.
‘And I said I’d shoot Batty and Maddy!’ Father Mick said sadly. ‘What the hell is wrong with everyone? We should all be pulling together: isn’t that what small, close-knit communities are meant to do? Instead we’re all carping at each other—’
‘—and threatening people with non-existent guns,’ Gannet grinned.
‘Exactly,’ Father Mick said. ‘We’re falling apart.’
‘It’s Sorley Mor,’ Gannet said after a while.
‘You mean he’s haunting us?’ Father Mick chuckled affectionately.
‘Kind of,’ Gannet smiled. ‘I read about it in a book.’
Everyone exchanged smiling glances; it was an expression they hadn’t heard in a while.
‘We’re over the initial shock of the thing,’ Gannet explained, ‘and we’ve come out of the denial part, so now we’re in the angry zone. We’re all just angry about what happened and we’re taking it out on whoever happens to be around. Think about it; if you were asked to picture the village in your head, the first image you’d come up with would be Sorley Mor. He’s always been the centre of the place. Is that not true?’
They all nodded thoughtfully.
‘Well, maybe he was the glue that held us all together, as they say, maybe that’s why we’re falling apart now. We were all trying to go on as normal, only we can’t do that, it isn’t normal without him, is it?’ He looked at Dan. ‘I’m not forgetting Stamp and the others, Dan, I mean the boat and all the lads, too. When we think of them we see him; when we think of him we see them. They were all part of each other, part of what’s missing now, and we’re all angry about it.’
‘I think you might have something there,’ Father Mick said quietly.
‘We don’t talk about him at all,’ Gannet continued, warming to his theme, ‘do we? All those mad capers, the laughs, the stories of how different he was on board the Wanderer.’
‘It’s hard,’ Duncan stated simply. ‘Talking about him in the past seems, I don’t know …’
‘Like we’ve accepted it, like betrayal,’ Dougie remarked.
‘Aye, I suppose so,’ Duncan smiled sadly.
‘Maybe the real betrayal is not talking about him at all,’ Gannet said quietly. ‘It’s like he never existed. What if the only way we have to keep him and the lads alive is to talk about them?’
26
Up at MacEwan’s Row, other disagreements were forming. After her fall-out with Chrissie, Rose had stayed in her own house, spending the night sitting on the couch, dozing fitfully. She was still drawn to the big window; it was like an instinct she couldn’t resist, though she was no longer waiting for her first sight of Ocean Wanderer. She had tried to stop, or at least cut down her pointless vigils, because Sally’s husband, Alan, still went to sea and came home again, and more than once she and Alan had made eye contact; she didn’t know which of them had found it most painful.
She had been thinking of Chrissie’s remark about her being ‘luckier’ than Alison because being childless would give her a more completely fresh start with someone else. She was stoking her own anger, increasing the insult every time she repeated it in her head, when something struck her. She hadn’t had a period since – when? She got up and went to her diary, desperately flicking though the pages. They had been trying for a baby for months before that last trip, so she had been meticulous about keeping tabs on her cycle. May, that’s when it was, the middle of May, a whole month before Sorley Og’s death, and that was, when? Three and a half months ago! Add May and it was four and a half months since her last period! What a fool she had been. So lost in her grief that she had forgotten about their baby plans, too busy being sorry for herself to realise that she was pregnant, that she had something left of Sorley Og, that she was carrying his bairn inside her! Rose dashed over to the phone and called Gavin.
‘I need to see you,’ she said.
‘Do you want me to come up now?’ Gavin asked, afraid that Rose had reached a crisis.
‘No, no, it’s nothing like that,’ she laughed, reading his mind. ‘How about tomorrow morning?’
Gavin was bemused, he hadn’t heard Rose laugh like that in months. He had seen her only a day or so ago and had made a mental note that she wasn’t picking up at all, that perhaps he should suggest that she needed some help. He couldn’t think of anything that could have legitimately lifted her spirits since then, and that thought increased his concern.
‘Rose, you would tell me if there was anything wrong, wouldn’t you?’ he asked.
‘Of course I would!’ she laughed, and when he didn’t reply she said, ‘Oh, well, I’ll tell you then, but you mustn’t tell a soul. I think I’m pregnant!’
‘Pregnant?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, pregnant! With child, idiot,’ she laughed. ‘What kind of doctor are you when you don’t understand that word?’
‘Well, OK then, come down first thing, and bring a sample with you,’ Gavin replied in what he hoped was a relaxed tone, but deep inside his own spirits had plummeted. Maybe Rose was pregnant, but if she wasn’t he could see a situation developing where she would fall into a deeper abyss than the one she now seemed to have bounced out of.
Chrissie looked up as a figure passed the kitchen window.
‘I thought it was the Land Rover that was coming back in due course,’ she remarked, drying her hands, ‘not you?’
‘It’s down at the Inn,’ Gannet announced slightly unsteadily. ‘That big ugly policeman from Inverness was sitting outside waiting for some innocent man who’d had a few to drive off, so I left it there to spite him.’
‘So what is this, then? A visit?’
‘Ach, don’t be daft, woman,’ Gannet said, reaching down to ruffle her hair.
‘Do you want that arm back in a sling?’ Chrissie asked.
Gannet laughed. ‘As McArthur said, “I shall return.” Well, I have.’
‘Aye, and he was a bit of a chancer as well,’ Chrissie replied. ‘The pair of you are well met!’ She looked around.
‘What are you looking for?’ he asked. ‘I told you, the Land Rover’s in the village.’
‘If you were in the Inn, so was Father Hooligan,’ she said tartly. ‘What’s happened to him?’
‘Ach, he’s not fit to walk up here, totally out of condition – if he was ever in it, that is. I left him in the back of the Land—’
‘—Rover, covered with a tarpaulin,’ Chrissie finished. ‘Aye, I know. Old habits die hard, right enough.’
When he arrived at his surgery next morning, Gavin found Rose already waiting. She had walked down from MacEwan’s Row, further than she had walked since the day of Sorley Og’s funeral. She was bright-eyed, almost euphoric, and he was aware that he was going to some lengths to avoid making eye contact with her. He unlocked the door, showed her into the consulting room and sat down uneasily across the desk from her. He didn’t know what to do first. Did he explain things and then test the sample she was holding so restlessly in her hand, or did he do the test first then explain? Unable to make up his mind he opted to open his mouth and go with whatever came out first.
‘Rose, I know how much this means to you,’ he started.
‘Oh,’ she laughed back, ‘the serious doctor voice!’ She looked excited enough to explode before his eyes.
Gavin smiled back through tight lips. He had been going over variations of this speech in his mind ever since she had called the day before, but it still wasn’t coming any easier. He reached for a glass of water. ‘The thing is, Rose, that I suppose you’ve noticed an absence of periods and that’s made you wonder if you might be pregnant?’
‘Haven’t had one since May,’ Rose smiled back. ‘I hadn’t given it a thought till last night, isn’t that incredible?’
‘Well, no, it’s not, that’s what I was about to explain.’
‘I was thinking about Alison and the baby,’ Rose said seriously. ‘Chrissie thinks I’m luckier than Alison, and I was thinking that Chrissie doesn’t know what she’s talking about, it’s Alison who’s the lucky one if anyone is – and it just hit me!’ She leaned across the desk and planted the pill bottle containing her urine sample right in front of him.
Gavin looked at it as though it might be a bomb, then moved it to one side.
‘Aren’t you going to test it?’ Rose demanded brightly.
‘In a minute, Rose, in a minute,’ he replied, trying to pick up the traces of his badly prepared speech. ‘The thing is—’
‘That thing again!’
‘Yes, um … Rose?’
‘Yes?’
‘Be quiet and let me talk.’
‘Right, OK, sorry,’ she smiled.
‘Rose, please listen to me. It’s important. Look, there are other reasons for amenorrhoea in young, healthy women of child-bearing age.’ Inside his head he cringed, realising he was falling back on textbook language. ‘What I’m saying is that bereavement and shock often cause periods to stop for a time, sometimes for a considerable spell, so the fact that you’ve had no periods for a few months doesn’t in itself mean that you’re pregnant. Do you understand?’
Rose sat across the desk still smiling at him; she hadn’t taken a word of it in.
‘Have you had any other symptoms?’ he asked. ‘Frequency in passing urine, breast tenderness, nausea?’
‘I’ve been feeling sick nearly all the time, I just didn’t put two and two together, that’s all. Silly, isn’t it?’ she replied, and he sensed by the way she had avoided the first two symptoms that deep down she knew. The only thing to do was to test the sample.
He took the bottle over to a metal table by the window as Rose carefully watched his movements from behind, then he turned to her and said, ‘I’m sorry, Rose, it’s negative.’
The Last Wanderer Page 39
