The Angel in the Stone

by RL McKinney

  Calum looked for Finn, scanning as far to each side as he could without distracting everyone from Mary’s song. He’d caught Finn slugging whisky straight from a bottle just after they came back from church and given him a half-hearted reprimand.

  ‘Don’t embarrass Mum,’ he whispered, grappling the bottle away from his brother. Finn replied with that smirking laugh, a suggestion that he knew something nobody else did, and drifted out of the room. Calum hadn’t seen him since.

  There were two or three seconds of absolute silence when Mary finished her song, broken by Auntie Helen wailing, ‘Oh my brother, my big brother,’ and others moving to comfort her. This too was for show. She didn’t have to be so melodramatic, just like Mum didn’t have to be so stony. Most of all, he would miss Dad’s realness. Dad never lost his ability to be exactly who he was in any situation, knowable and solid, even as his cancer became terminal. If he was here now, he’d cough up a sarcastic remark, put his boots on and find something useful to do. He’d chop some wood or paint the shed, and leave the mourning to the rest of them.

  Two more weeks, Calum thought. Two more weeks and he’d be away from here, maybe forever. He wished he could pack up right now and sneak away while everyone was distracted. He had offered to postpone university for a year so that Mum and Finn wouldn’t be left alone so abruptly.

  ‘Your dad would have wanted you to go,’ Mum had said, with barely a suggestion of martyrdom in her voice. So he was going, and glad. He was claustrophobic here, fettered by the judgements of people who had watched him grow up and thought they knew him. You were a fish in a net here. If you stayed, you would be ensnared forever by your family’s name, the reputations of your parents and your aunties and uncles and cousins, the whispered memories – or made-up stories posing as memories – of the people whose genes you carried.

  He opened a bottle of lager, lit a cigarette and stepped out the back door. It was a beautiful September day, the sun filtering lazily through a thin gauze of cloud. Not that summers were ever aggressive here. The heat was always fragile, blown away on the slightest whim of the Atlantic. Days like this were easy, gentle and kind.

  He was expecting it to be cold in Aberdeen when he arrived. Everyone said east coast cold was something different. They said it was a meaner thing altogether and that the North Sea wind cut you like a blade no matter how many layers you wore. Calum sucked on the cigarette and blew away a shiver of anxiety. He refused to be scared about going away, even though it felt like everyone wanted him to be.

  They warned him about the weather, they warned him about men with knives, they warned him about girls who might try to trap him, they warned him about venereal diseases, they warned him about city traffic and burglars and foreigners who came off the ships and unscrupulous landlords and Americans. Dad had warned him not to be seduced by the capitalist oil barons and their promises of fat paycheques. Mum had warned him not to be seduced by cultists and evangelicals who preyed on young students. They warned him not to drink too much, they warned him not to study too much and forget to have fun. Finn warned him not to turn into a wanker.

  ‘Have you seen your brother?’

  He turned around. Mary stepped out beside him, a mug of tea between both hands. ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She looked across the garden toward the woods. ‘Your father’s just died of cancer and you’re standing in my kitchen smoking.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He dropped the butt into the dregs of his beer.

  ‘Promise me you won’t smoke when you go to university, Calum. Just stop it now while you can.’

  ‘I will.’ He wondered how old he’d have to be before she stopped issuing directions and assuming she knew best. He wondered when they’d be able to have a conversation that meant anything.

  ‘Calum … ’

  ‘What, Mum?’

  She stared at him, mouth half open. ‘Nothing. Never mind. Would you go see if you can find Finlay? I’m worried about him.’

  ‘He’s fine. You know he doesn’t like crowds.’

  ‘Just go and find him.’

  ‘Aye, okay.’ He touched her arm. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ she snapped.

  Ask me, he thought. Ask me and pretend you really care about the answer. Just for once, pretend you worry about me the way you do about Finn.

  She didn’t. She wouldn’t. Calum sighed. ‘I’ll go look for him.’

  He found Finn where he expected to find him, on the beach below Iain’s house. Only three months ago, Jack had been standing right here with his pipes under his arm. It was the last time he ever played them. From his lungs, the cancer invaded his bones. The pain was excruciating in his last few weeks. He drifted in and out of morphine dreams until Mary finally cut him loose with a gentle shove: Let go, my love. It’s all right to let go now.

  Finn was sitting on the sand, smoking a joint. Calum sat beside him and for a few minutes they ignored each other. From here you looked straight out towards Skye’s toothy profile. From this distance, the Cuillins looked small enough: piranha teeth rising out of the sea. Calum had walked the ridge for the first time only about a month ago, balanced on a blade of stone, quietly terrified as the wind buffeted his shoulders and tried to shove him over the edge. At one stage, he’d found himself unable to step forward or back, so weak with panic that all he could do was sit down and renew contact with something solid. His friend Gary ripped the piss out of him badly, but Gary’s dad sat beside him, poured him some tea from a flask and told him never to be ashamed of a healthy fear of heights. He’d never been so genuinely afraid of dying, but then he’d never had to watch someone he loved dying before either.

  He watched his brother suck on the joint and wondered what he was supposed to do about it. ‘If you share that, I won’t tell Mum you’ve got it.’

  Finn handed it over, got up and strolled to the tide line, gathered a handful of flat pebbles. Then, without bothering to roll up his trousers, he waded into the water up to his knees and began skimming stones over the gentle waves. He threw stone after stone, and as the hash took hold, Calum saw him throwing away tiny pieces of himself, one after the other.

  UNFINISHED BUSINESS

  Catriona filled the bath until water dripped into the overflow, slid down until her chin was submerged and closed her eyes. Heat surrounded her and the steam was so thick that it stole oxygen from the air. With the light off and the blind drawn, the bathroom was pitch dark, and the darkness was protective, like a womb. She tilted her head back so that her ears were underwater and all she could hear was water sloshing against the sides of the bath and her own breath inside her head. If she wanted to, she could let herself sink. She forced herself down so that the water covered her nose and mouth, and stayed down as long as she could. After less than a minute she pushed her feet against the end of the tub and sat up. It wasn’t as easy as it ought to have been. Sometimes such bleakness came over her that she couldn’t imagine living another day. But then she thought about all the unfinished business there was. If she topped herself now, she wouldn’t wake up to an independent Scotland on the 19th of September. She would never get Kyle back for what he did. She squeezed water out of her eyes and pulled the plug.

  It was after ten already, but she dressed again in a pair of black jeans and a hoodie, stumped downstairs and poked her head into the living room. ‘I’m going to meet Robbie.’

  Jenny drew her eyes away from the television. ‘Robbie? What’s he doing now?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Jenny waited for more. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Just … in a bar.’ Catriona hoped Jenny wouldn’t ask for details. She’d given her virginity to sweet Robbie Brown in fifth year, mostly because they were both seventeen and felt like they were missing out on something everyone else had been doing since third year. He had embarrassed himself trying to put the condom on, and the deed itself was tentative: it didn’t hurt but Cat had gone home wondering what the fuss was all about.
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  ‘We’re just going to have a drink and maybe go for a coffee when he gets off.’

  ‘Oh … well … ’ Jenny glanced at the clock. ‘Be safe, then.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She ducked out of the room and left, striding as forcefully as she could. The sun was a pinkish glow behind heavy mist but she was grateful for the light it provided; it was a half-hour walk into town and the streets were quiet. Her senses were on high alert, catching shadows and footsteps, snippets of conversation, the passing whiff of a stranger’s perfume, and as she told her legs to move forward, some deeper force made them want to skip sideways into a doorway or break into a run. She was in the grip of something that wasn’t normal or rational; she’d never been anxious like this in her life. She’d walked this road hundreds of times, even late at night, and she’d never been scared before. Maybe she’d just been too stupid to know that she should have been.

  The streets were busier as she neared the city centre: buses and taxis hissing over damp tarmac, groups spilling out of pubs, Wednesday night revellers. Waiting to cross Union Street, she thought she heard a man’s voice calling her name. A flood of adrenaline drove her from the corner and she darted between stationary traffic. On the other side, she paused, searched and listened. A drunk man was calling to his mate, shouting something that sounded like Cat, but he was older and fat and it clearly wasn’t meant for her. He wasn’t Kyle.

  She wondered why she’d thought it was Kyle. Then she wondered why that should frighten her so much. Kyle was in Edinburgh. He was no threat to her. Surely he wouldn’t …

  He wouldn’t what?

  She remembered him carrying her in arms like pythons. She couldn’t have broken away from him even if she’d tried.

  She swiped her fingers under her eyes and hurried the rest of the way to Robbie’s bar. It was a small place tucked away down a side street: a shabby chic combination of rickety wooden tables, metal chairs and velvet sofas. The clientele and staff were obviously gay, confirming what she’d always secretly known about Robbie. She saw him behind the bar in his tight black T-shirt and jeans, hair in a perfectly sculpted quiff. It was a relief as the door shut out the street behind her. At least the men in here wouldn’t grab her bum or slaver in her face.

  Robbie came around the end of the bar and hugged her. ‘Here’s my girl.’

  ‘Hey Rob. You look amazing.’

  ‘You like?’

  ‘The women of Scotland are in mourning.’

  He grinned. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’m happy for you. I knew anyway.’

  He rubbed her arms and inspected her. ‘You look rough, by the way.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  Robbie patted a bar stool. ‘Sit. Drink. Tell. What you having?’

  ‘Make me something sweet.’

  Robbie mixed up a concoction involving gin and frozen raspberries, and topped it with fresh mint leaves. It tasted dangerously non-alcoholic. He left her to serve other customers and by the time he came back it was nearly gone.

  ‘What’s up with you, then?’

  ‘I fell in love with the wrong person and he hurt me.’

  ‘I hate him. What did he do?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I just need to forget about him, but for some reason it’s like … he’s following me around. In my head.’

  ‘So you need to tell him to get to fuck. For real. Phone him and tell him you’re never going to think about him again. Make the break on your terms.’

  ‘I wish I could.’ She closed her eyes and imagined facing up to Kyle. She’d bugger it up, like she always did. She’d open her mouth and no sound would come out, and he’d laugh at her. That’s what would happen. Kyle would laugh at her and she would hear him laughing at her forever.

  ‘I wish I could be someone else, Robbie.’

  ‘Who do you want to be?’

  ‘Someone who takes no shit.’

  He laughed. ‘I have an idea. Wait till I get off.’

  It was light again by the time she finally took the towel off her head and stepped in front of the mirror. Robbie stood behind her, echoing her expression. Shock, excitement and horror jolted her in equal measures. They’d bought supplies at an all-night supermarket on the way back to his parents’ house: gin, bleach and dye. She drank while he massaged her head, fingertips hot and strong beneath her hair.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

  She said, ‘Yes.’ So she sat there and allowed him to snip her hair short, imagining each cut lock releasing an evil spirit from her brain. Then she bent over the bath while he bleached out her own mousy colour and replaced it with an electric cherry red.

  ‘Oh my God,’ they said in tandem. Her fingers went to her forehead and lifted a lock. ‘Oh my God!’

  Robbie slid his fingers into her hair and pulled it out into spikes. ‘It’s fucking amazing.’

  ‘My mother is going to go off her nut.’

  He pressed his cheek against hers. ‘And?’

  ‘And I don’t give a shit.’

  ‘Correct.’ He giggled. ‘Repeat after me, Catriona. I take no shit.’

  ‘I take no shit.’

  ‘I take no shit from anyone.’

  ‘I take no shit from anyone,’ she echoed, but her voice was meek and thin.

  ‘You have to mean it.’

  ‘I do.’

  Robbie looked at her and she knew he didn’t believe her. The air felt too thin to power her vocal chords. Her lungs dragged in meagre sustenance and her body wilted. She leaned into his chest. ‘I promise you, I mean it.’

  MATCH

  Mary knew anything could incriminate her. Those years she’d spent going around the folk clubs, singing the songs her mother and aunties had taught her, sharing tables with poets and communists. The teaching. There were books she’d taught, books they wouldn’t like her to have taught, words they wouldn’t have wanted her to keep alive. Jack’s trade union associations. Those campaigns he’d involved himself in, the strikes, the rallies, the marches, the times he’d got himself arrested. There were letters, old posters, photographs, ticket stubs, programmes. She had been too sentimental about it all, and it would be her downfall. They were trying to get inside her walls.

  She carried four shoeboxes into the kitchen, opened the first and lifted out a photo of herself on a stage, singing. Her eyes closed, her hands open, palms up. Hair like the fine waving tail of a bay horse, parted in the middle. She remembered the time she’d been called the Highland Joan Baez by an Edinburgh promoter, and Jack had shouted out from the front table that Joan Baez was the American Mary Macdonald. A fond ripple of laughter went around the room like an embrace, a rise of song, a purpose shared. Back then, starting a revolution felt innocent and hopeful.

  Those days had occupied her mind lately, memories coming to the surface like messages in one of those Magic 8 balls the boys used to have. Some days, the past was more vivid than the present. Some days she felt wrapped in cotton wool, fuzzy in her mind, like you always felt on New Year’s morning. She went into rooms and forgot why. She went for shopping and came back with an empty trolley. It would be those tablets they made her swallow from the wee plastic boxes, three for every day of the week, all different colours. They were all in on it, maybe even Calum. Maybe he was letting them in. They were trying to get inside the walls. They were watching everything she did.

  What had she been thinking, keeping hold of all this evidence?

  Mary struck a match and held it to the bottom corner of the photograph.

  THE ANGEL

  Against his better judgement, Calum finished off the bottle of wine he’d opened for Julie and chased it with a couple of whiskies. In the morning, things were blurry, clouded by fumes, partially rubbed out. A squally little front had blown over during the night, hammering at the windows, manufacturing noisy dreams before waking him with the early dawn. But it had gone on to the east now, leaving mist hanging low over glassy, silicon water. He dragged the kayak over the beach and pushed it into the wa
ter, climbed in and paddled out into the bay, watching the ripples roll out across the surface. He dipped his fingers into the water and splashed his face, closing his eyes as the cold droplets ran down his neck and into the collar of his cagoule.

  Maybe all memory is fabrication, he thought as he tried to paddle back to sobriety. Maybe we go through our lives forgetting the most significant details, and imagination steps in to fill the gaps. Maybe the events in our lives never really happened the way we remember them months and years later. He’d read somewhere that human senses only perceived the world partially and that the brain made assumptions about the rest, and he wondered if maybe nothing really happened the way you thought it did. If that was the case, you could make up any old story and it would be as true as anything else.

  Maybe Finn’s madness wasn’t really madness, delusion wasn’t really delusion and an angel did come for him after all.

  Glencoe, 1991

  ‘She climbs with me,’ Finn said. They were in the Clachaig Inn and more than a bit drunk after a day on the Buachaille Etive Mòr. The noise around them had risen on a tide of beer and whisky: the singer was belting out Corries songs, people were laughing and shouting at each other to be heard over him, and the heat was like an enormous, muffling duvet around them.

  Calum hadn’t really been sure he’d heard Finn right. An angel made of stone. He had to be taking the piss. Finn was at the peak of one of his up phases, buzzing with manic energy and speaking in a single unpunctuated stream that shifted subject without reason or warning. His craic was magnanimous and people who didn’t know where it came from were drawn to him like midges to an over-bright lamp. Calum’s university mate Andy was sitting on Finn’s other side, and other climbers and mountaineers had gravitated around their table as the night progressed. His reputation was already preceding him.