by RL McKinney
Finn was nineteen and had been climbing for just over a year. Calum had suggested it, as a way of levering him out of the house during one of his depressions. To say he took to it naturally was something of an understatement; he moved up the rock like Spiderman. He was a perfect climber: long and lean, with oversized hands and a pathological lack of fear.
Looking back now, it was easy enough to see it for what it was, but back then it was thrilling and more than a little contagious. Finn made them all better climbers, pushed them up harder routes, challenged them to stretch beyond what they thought themselves capable of. And when he climbed, all you could really do was tilt your head back and watch. Almost immediately after taking up climbing, Finn emerged from the blackness of his depression and into a jubilant, if surreal, celebration of life.
Late into a wild night in the Clachaig, long after last orders had been called, he told them about his guardian angel. ‘She’s in the stone,’ he said. ‘Actually in it. She moves through the stone beside me.’
‘What, like a ghost or something?’ Andy asked. His voice was like tyres on gravel. He’d smoked a joint earlier and was prone to any kind of freaky rock jock bullshit.
‘Nah.’ Finn closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the bench, and his hands rose into the air in front of him, fingers illustrating the way they gripped the tiniest of holds. ‘I mean … the rock is alive, my friend. She is the rock … they’re one and the same. That’s how I know I’m safe. I won’t die.’ He laughed. ‘Not climbing.’
‘Dude, that’s holy,’ said another nameless guy with Jesus hair and a goatee, and the noises around the table indicated appreciation and belief.
‘You don’t half spew some rubbish, Finn,’ Calum said for the benefit of the others, annoyed that strangers took Finn’s weirdness for spirituality. ‘You’re safe because I’m belaying you. If you fall, I’m the only guardian angel you’ve got.’
‘No offence, brother, but you’re irrelevant. I don’t need you, I don’t need gear. I’m protected. Know what I mean?’
‘Mate, he is,’ said Andy. ‘How else do you explain it? He shouldn’t be able to pull off the moves he does. It’s like he stretches … like elastic. He can hold on to bloody nothing. Thin air. He could free climb a glass skyscraper.’
‘Don’t give him ideas.’
‘You’re just jealous, dude. You could climb your whole life and never be able to do what he’s learned in a year.’
‘Andy, you don’t know anything about it, all right? I mean it, don’t encourage him.’
‘Aye, don’t encourage me, Andy,’ Finn chipped in, grinning. ‘I’m no right in the heid. I’m mad, so I am. Loopy. Ha haha.’ His laugh was forced at first, then became real. A silent rib-splitter that drew tears from his eyes. ‘Calum can’t see them. He can’t see what’s all around us, man.’
‘See what?’
‘The angels.’
‘Finn … ’ Calum cleared his throat. It was getting embarrassing now. ‘You’re fleein’. Let’s go crash, eh?’
‘Open your mind, bro, it’s a beautiful thing.’
Andy guffawed and slapped Calum on the back. ‘He’s an engineer, Finn; if he can’t put it into a formula, it doesn’t exist.’
Calum drained his pint and stood up. ‘So are you, and you should know better. Come on, Saint Columba, let’s get some kip.’
Calum lay beside Finn in their tiny two-man tent, watching his brother sleep. It was a relief when he finally slept; for a few hours, at least, he was quiet and in a safe place. Sleep evaded him most of the night as he thought about the unexpected switchbacks on his brother’s road and wondered where the next one would take him. Possibilities materialised like yellow eyes glowing in the darkness, each more frightening than the last. He dozed and dreamed of Finn peeling off a slick rock face and falling backwards in slow motion, arms outstretched, waiting for the angel to extend her hand.
The mist gathered in the tops of the trees and magnified the sounds of early morning on the bay: oystercatchers, water sloshing against the boats, Hugh MacNeill coughing like a bull seal as he rowed out to his lobster boat. Calum paddled gently for a few minutes, gliding through the translucent water, eyes scanning for life beneath him. Sometimes on these placid mornings a seal or an otter would come to investigate him, bobbing up alongside him with no suggestion of fear. Last week he’d crossed paths with a basking shark: a prehistoric phantom slithering through the water, the size of a bus, passing so close to his kayak he could have reached out and stroked its speckled back. These meetings with wildness touched the same thing in him that climbing had when he was younger and braver. Like a drug, they lifted him and steeled him against his more pessimistic days.
He left the mouth of the bay and pushed out into open water, pulling harder now. The wind drew tears from his eyes and he paddled until his shoulders ached and his lungs felt ready to burst. He kept going against the current as long and fast as he could, then stopped and slouched forward, chest heaving and sweat trickling down his back. He drifted for a minute until he heard a distinctive peep above him and looked up. A massive shape rose from a rocky outcrop on the headland to his left, drifted like an immense shadow down towards the water no more than twenty metres from him, then rose again and circled above him. The eagle’s pale tail flashed like a salute as it extended its fingered wings into a span more than half the length of his boat. There was a pair nesting in a tree just over the headland, and by the size, he guessed this to be the female. Calum held the boat as still as he could and watched her, and she appeared to be drifting for the pure joy of looking down at a flightless human. She surveyed him from her lofty position. She surely knew him by now and understood his habits as well as he understood her own. He watched her sail away to the north and disappear into the mist, then he dipped his paddle into the water, turned and skimmed with the current back towards the beach.
He grounded the kayak and extricated himself, pulled the boat back over the sand, hoisted it onto its trailer and wheeled it over the road. Leaving the kayak upside down at the side of the house, he went inside, peeled off his damp clothes and left them on the tiled lobby floor, then went for a shower.
Dried and dressed, he made coffee and sat with it at the kitchen table, sipping slowly. He picked up a pencil and drew a sketchy eagle on the back of a torn envelope, a few lines to indicate the water and the island. He liked his drawing and smiled at it. The telephone rang and his smile soured.
He answered it and a woman with a Glasgow accent asked for Mister Finlay Macdonald.
‘Pardon? Did you say Finlay?’
‘Yes, Finlay Macdonald. Are you Mr Macdonald? The son of Mrs Mary Macdonald?’
‘Eh … no, I’m Calum, Finlay’s brother. He’s … not around. Who is this?’
‘Mr Macdonald, my name is Angela Moore and I’m phoning from Belford Hospital. I’m afraid your mum’s had a bit of an accident early this morning and has been brought in to us.’
Calum’s first response was to silently curse the addled old bitch, but he was immediately ashamed by the callousness of his instincts. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Is she all right? What happened?’
‘She appears to have started a fire in her kitchen. She’s not injured, but she’s confused and a bit shocked. She doesn’t seem to know why she’s here.’
‘That would be because she has Alzheimer’s,’ Calum muttered, pressing his fingertips into his eyes. ‘You don’t have any record of that?’
‘I see. Given the hour, we haven’t accessed her medical records yet.’
‘Right. Was anyone else hurt?’
‘The whole block had to be evacuated, but thankfully there were no other casualties. I don’t know what damage there was to the flat itself.’
‘Okay … ehm … ’ He struggled to think clearly. ‘Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m about an hour away.’
‘I’m sorry, but she has asked for your brother. Will you let him know, or can you tell us how to rea
ch him?’
‘No, I’m afraid I can’t,’ he snapped. There was no point being angry at Angela Moore, whoever she was, but he needed someone to be angry at. ‘He’s beyond reach.’
‘Oh … I am sorry, I didn’t … ’
‘No, you didn’t. Just tell my mother I’m on my way.’
A FACE IN THE CROWD
Eilidh and Kate had been working all year and had money to blow. Catriona trailed around the Union Square shops after them, sweaty and flushed in the changing rooms as they tried on tops and jeans from the full price racks. They traded gossip about friends from their high school class, tallying the successes and failures of their first proper adult year: Amy Gillis and Daniel Begg had got engaged, Charlotte Jacobs had written off the Golf her parents had bought her for her eighteenth, Ryan Gilchrest was working offshore and getting drunk, Leah Malley was pregnant.
Catriona let the information wash past her, indifferent, feeling detached as a soul shaken loose from its body by some brutal force. She liked the look of her red hair in the mirror, but it hadn’t made her feel any more substantial. Now, on top of everything else, she felt guilty about breaking her promise to Robbie. She hadn’t been back to see him and didn’t want to become the depressive friend who wept into her glass at the end of the bar. She tried on a single T-shirt from a sale rack. The twelve was too tight across her chest and she was embarrassed to pick up the fourteen.
‘Don’t like it,’ she told the girls, leaving it on the hook in the changing room, pulling her hoodie back over her head. It was an oversized boy’s one from a charity shop, which was as far as her student loan and her small allowance would stretch. ‘I’m skint anyway.’
A year ago her life had felt like a flower unfolding. She could remember what the happiness felt like but couldn’t imagine ever feeling it again. Everything was heavy now, even the stale air of the shopping mall as it dragged against her limbs. A flutter of nausea hung around the top of her stomach, sometimes moving up towards her throat. They sat in a coffee shop and she nibbled a bit of cake as her eyes drifted over the faces of the passing people. They were strange and familiar at the same time, like she’d forgotten how to distinguish features.
Then she froze. Kyle had materialised from between the ranks of shoppers, drifting casually towards her with his usual languid gait. He was alone and walking towards her. Catriona wanted to bolt away but she couldn’t move. Her legs were disconnected from her brain. Blood thundered between her ears and her vision curved in at the edges, threatening to black out completely. Kate and Eilidh continued to chat, oblivious. He was ten feet away now, staring right at her, smiling. There was nothing she could do now except tell Kate and Eilidh. If he spoke to them, they’d never believe her. His chat was sleek and quick as mercury, his face so perfect that they’d fall at his feet. Any girl would.
She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Bile spilled onto her tongue.
Kyle walked straight past without even pausing. She was wet with sweat and her whole body felt limp.
It couldn’t have been him.
What if it was?
If he was following her, he surely wouldn’t have let her see him. Unless he was trying to scare her.
Kyle wouldn’t do that. Most likely he’d forgotten her already. She was seeing things. It was a panic hallucination. ‘Can we go?’ she blurted.
Eilidh tipped her cup back, shook the last of the foam into her mouth. ‘You’ve gone all peely-wally.’
‘I don’t feel very well.’
‘You fancy this film, then?’
‘What film? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.’
Kate laughed. ‘Oh my God, Catriona, you’ve missed the whole conversation.’
‘I’m not up for the cinema. I think I’ll head home.’ She retrieved her bag from the floor under her chair, slipped her phone and keys into the front pocket of her hoodie, wanting to move in the opposite direction from the Kyle lookalike.
Eilidh stood up. ‘Are you all right? You want us to chum you home?’
‘No … no, I’m fine, I just feel a bit sick. You can stay.’
‘I feel bad.’
‘Don’t. I’ll text you later.’ She turned her back on the girls and hurried away. They would speculate behind her back but all she cared about was getting as far away from here as possible. She found the quickest route out of the shopping centre, paused at the door and glanced behind her. Strangers moved past, laden with shopping bags. Opposing campaigners stood on either side of the door, one saying Yes and the other saying No Thanks. There was no sign of Kyle so she pulled up her hood and ran for the bus.
At home she bolted the door and drew the blinds. She sat down in the living room but was afraid to take her shoes off. The dogs wriggled around her calves, bumping against her and whining for attention. They needed a walk but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t open the door or be seen in the street. The silence of the house pressed down on her. To dispel it, she put on The Hunger Games DVD and tried to imagine herself being as hard and brave and resourceful as Katniss Everdeen. Katniss wouldn’t curl up and spend the rest of her life on the sofa.
Katniss would kill the bastard.
Catriona lay on the sofa and imagined dropping a nest of wasps on Kyle while he slept.
MARY MACDONALD’S FAREWELL
As Calum drove, his mind was a confusion of memories and emotions, all punctuated by the same sense of falling through open space that came to him in dreams. Sometimes when he took a corner too fast, he felt the wheels lift off the road and the vehicle turn in slow motion onto its side, roll and sail out into nothingness. The loss of control frightened him, forced him to lift his foot from the accelerator and wipe his sweaty palms on his jeans.
He found his mother on a bed in A&E, turning the pages of a gossip magazine. She was dressed in a hospital gown and sitting on top of the sheet, knotted white legs sticking out in front of her. Her toenails were long and neglected and he wondered for the first time whether she was even managing the basics of personal hygiene. The acrid stench of burnt plastic radiated from her hair.
‘Hi Mum.’
She looked up at him and seemed surprised. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. How did you get here so quickly?’
‘I drove.’
‘From America?’
He sighed. ‘From Glendarach. What did you do?’
Her eyebrows drew together. ‘What do you mean?’
He pulled up a chair beside her bed and sat down. ‘You started a fire. Jesus … I knew this would happen. You promised me you wouldn’t.’
‘Ocht, don’t be daft. I’ve done no such thing. I’m here for tests.’
‘Tests … ’
‘Yes, tests.’
‘Right.’ Calum sighed and glanced around for a nurse.
‘Well if you visited more, you’d know.’
He looked at her again. ‘I saw you last Sunday. I spent most of the day with my head under your sink.’
‘Well I don’t remember. I must have blocked it out because you were unpleasant, as usual.’
‘Aye, no bloody wonder.’
‘Language!’ she said in an exaggerated stage whisper. Nothing wrong with her hearing, anyway.
‘What’s happening then? Are they keeping you in?’
She made an exasperated sound. ‘They don’t tell you anything in these places. I expect they’re waiting for Finn to arrive to take me home.’
Calum rose from his seat. ‘Jesus Christ, what’s the matter with you?’
People in surrounding beds stared. Calum drew the curtain beside his mother, sat down again and took a deep breath. ‘Finn’s gone,’ he said, very softly. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘What do you mean he’s gone?’
‘Mum … he’s dead. You know that.’ It was not news he’d expected to have to deliver a second time.
Mary’s hands shook as she fingered the sheet. ‘He’s … no … that’s not right, Calum. Why would you say that?’ Her voice crumbled and she moved her head
back and forth. ‘Why would you do that to me?’
He lifted his hand and held it above hers, afraid to touch her. ‘It’s been twenty-one years.’
She continued to shake her head, but her eyes had filled with tears and her lips trembled. ‘I … of course … I do remember now. I don’t know what I was … oh dear … I don’t know what came over me. I think I must have dreamed about him last night.’
Calum allowed his fingers to settle over hers, tried to expel his temper with a long, slow breath. ‘It’s all right.’
Her eyes narrowed as the recollection seemed to solidify in her mind, and he turned away from her so he didn’t have to see the accusation that would inevitably accompany it. Perhaps this creeping amnesia would cure her of the need to blame him for something that had never been his fault, but right now he could feel her gathering her energy for an attack.
The arrival of a young doctor diverted her attention. By the state of his stubble and crushed shirt, he looked to be nearing the end of a very long shift.
‘Now then, Mrs Macdonald, I see your son has arrived. I’m Dr Robertson. You must be Finlay.’
‘No, I’m Calum,’ he replied tartly. He wanted to walk away and leave Mary to the mercies of the NHS and Highland Council’s Social Work Department. He wanted to claim no further knowledge of his mother or the dilemma she now posed for ever-dwindling public budgets. He gripped the sides of his chair and held himself down. ‘My brother Finlay passed away in 1993.’
‘Oh … ah … ’ the doctor glanced down at his clipboard and quickly composed himself. ‘I’m sorry, she … asked for him.’
‘Mrs Macdonald is having some problems with her memory,’ Calum said, and glared at his mother.
He arrived home after nine, poured himself a large whisky and subsided onto the sofa. One massive clusterfuck of a day; there was no other way to describe it. His utility room was now filled with bags of clothing, towels, blankets and linens, a fraction of what would have to be washed, everything infused with charred plastic and electrical fumes. Dad’s pipes were still missing, too. He was sure they were still in the flat somewhere, but even after several searches of the loft, they hadn’t turned up. He swallowed his whisky in two gulps, leaned his head back, closed his eyes and thought about the latest succession of disasters.
