'That's because you came back.'
She scratched at her head. 'I very nearly didn't. One more minute and I would have been gone…probably for good.'
'And left me on my own?'
'You drove me to distraction, Nat. You were being unreasonable, irrational, perverse, obtuse...'
'What you are trying to say is that I would have deserved it?'
'Yes, indeed you would, with bells on.'
He swivelled his chair from side to side. 'I've never before had anyone speak to me like you do. I've always been used to getting my own way.'
'So I noticed, but I've always been of the belief that if something needs to be said, to say it, even if it hurts.'
'I found that out the hard way, didn't I?'
'But did you take any heed of anything I said?'
He shook his head. 'No.'
'So, all in all, it was a complete waste of effort and air?'
He gave a resigned smile. 'Aye, I'm a hopeless case.'
'Well, Rebecca is nowhere near as vocal as I am and once you've settled back into your old routine, you'll be able to do exactly as you please again. You can have it all your own way without me breathing down your neck and putting my two penn'orth in.'
He touched his head to the back of the chair. 'I'm not sure there is an old routine any more.'
'It's still there, and you'll fall right back into it, and all my interference will soon be forgotten.'
'Your interference has kept me in order.'
'Rebecca will look after you, or she'll have me to answer to.'
He sat up again, his expression earnest. 'And what if she doesn't? Will you come back?' When she didn't answer him, he asked again. 'Will you come back?'
She already knew, once she left Struan there was a very good chance she would never set foot in the house again. 'No, Nat, I won't.'
He had known all along this day would come, and now it had, he couldn't think of anything useful to say to her. He didn't want her to leave, he had become fond of her, but he had already twice asked her to stay and she had twice refused. There was no point in asking again - an agreement was an agreement. She had to go and Rebecca had to come back; that had been the deal. She was loyal to her sister, and he respected her for it. All he could realistically do was thank her and let her go. Perhaps, he thought, if she left, it might be for the best for both of them. He wasn't convinced by his own thought.
Her last day in Nat's employ arrived.
She didn't get to Struan until mid morning. She had errands in town and had gone directly there. When she finally did get to the house, toting some last minute groceries and Nat's dry cleaning, he had already left for meetings at his office.
He didn't come home until gone six o'clock in the evening. He found Megan sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him.
'I didn't think I'd get to see you today,' she said. 'I've been waiting. I didn't want to go without saying goodbye.'
'I got delayed, I'm sorry.'
'Everything's done,' she said, unfolding her coat from the back of her chair. 'I don't think I've forgotten anything and if I have, it can wait until Monday and Rebecca can do it.'
'I know you won't have.' He took her coat from her and held it as she shrugged it on.
'Thank you, always the gentleman.'
She bent her head forward as she fastened the buttons, and Nat allowed his fingers to touch her hair. 'Meg?'
She looked up to him, expectantly.
'I, erm, have to say…thank you…for everything. I mean it, and I'm…I'm going to miss you.'
'It's very sweet of you to say so, Nat, and I'm going to miss you too. Working here's been…quite an experience.'
'A good one I hope.'
'For the most part.'
'Then I apologise for the parts that weren't so good.'
She put her hand against his cheek feeling the roughness of weekend stubble coming through. 'You will take proper care of yourself won't you, Nat?'
He nodded. 'I will.'
'You'll eat properly?'
'I will.'
'And make sure you get enough sleep?'
'I will.'
'And don't work too hard.'
'I won't.'
'And please, try not to do anything reckless or silly.'
'I'll…try.'
And call me if you need me, she thought, but couldn't bring herself to say.
She wanted so much to kiss him. A small farewell peck on the cheek could not do any harm, but she didn't trust herself to stop there. It took all her self control not to do it.
''Bye, Nat,' she said, holding out her hand for a parting handshake. He took it and enclosed it with both his own.
'Cheerio, Meg.'
They held hands for just a second longer than was necessary, before she let go and walked away.
For a long time, Nat stood looking at the door she had closed on him, still feeling her hand on his face. Without her presence, the house fell into the deep cheerless quiet he had come to hate.
Chapter 20
Megan spread the travel brochures out on the table in front of her, and sipped at her coffee as she perused them.
Somewhere sunny, not too hot and where they speak English…
Since leaving her employment at Struan, she had had to endure Rebecca's constant complaints about how standards had slipped and that jobs had been skimped on or missed altogether. Her enquiries about Nat had been met with a casual, 'He's fine,' or 'The usual,' and she was seriously considering taking a holiday as a distraction. She could just about afford something not too extravagant.
Rebecca had gone out for the day with Paul and they weren't expected back until late evening, but the peace and quiet of a Saturday afternoon alone was broken with the ringing of the telephone. She answered it with a bright, 'Hello, Rose Cottage,' only to be met with silence. She hung up.
Wrong number?
Less than a minute later, it rang again and once more she received no reply. She hung up.
Dial properly, moron.
It happened three more times. On the fourth occasion of being interrupted, her displeasure was patent.
'I've just about had enough of this,' she shouted into the phone. 'Ring me again and I'll give your number to the police. Now fuck off and leave me alone.' She slammed the receiver into its cradle. 'Pervert!'
She waited for the phone to ring again, fully prepared now to give the caller a piece of her mind. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and finally half an hour had gone by without another call. Her annoyance abated, to be replaced with curiosity.
Finding a pencil in the drawer, she picked up the receiver and dialled 1471. The synthesised female voice read out the last number to have called her, and she scribbled it on a piece of paper tacked to the notice board. As she wrote, she found she was copying a number already there, and immediately a deep, disturbing apprehension filled her.
She pressed '3' to connect to the number, only to hear the line engaged tone. She replaced the receiver, gathered her bag and car keys, and on her way out, grabbed Rebecca's keys to Struan Lodge from the hook by the door.
She drew up the driveway and parked in the shadow of Nat's massive vehicle.
Letting herself into the Lodge she went directly through into the hallway. She stood and listened. Hearing not a sound from anywhere in the house, she called out.
'Nat!'
There was no answer. She called up the stairs.
'Nat, are you here?'
No reply.
The study door stood ajar. Tentatively pushing it further open, she peeped through. When she spotted a pair of dirty, bare feet protruding from beyond the old leather chair, she felt her throat tighten and her heart began to pound as a primitive terror grew in her. She pushed the door fully open and went further into the room. The sight that met her brought her to a dead stop.
He was sitting on the bare floorboards in front of the window seat, his legs straight out in front of him, his arms hanging limp at his sides, hands
resting on the floor. His head lolled back on the seat. From her angle of view, she couldn't see his face. She edged closer; she had to see.
Oh God, please be alright…please be alright…please be alright…
His eyes were half open, but seeing nothing, and his mouth hung slackly agape, a trickle of saliva sliding out from the corner.
Is he dead? Oh, please, dear Lord, don't let him be dead…
She laid her hand on his chest and held it there. When she felt it move, she breathed a sigh of relief and her panic diminished. Up close, the smell of alcohol was overpowering. Nat was alive, but completely smashed. She shook him gently by the shoulder.
'Nat?'
No reaction. She raised her voice a little and shook him harder.
'Nat?'
He made a sound deep in his throat.
'Nathaniel! Wake UP!' She slapped his face, harder than she intended, but it had the desired effect. Very slowly, the half open eyes blinked and his throat moved in a convulsive swallow.
'Ow!' he groaned and lifted his hand to his slapped cheek.
He blinked hard several times, rubbed his eyes and made a futile attempt to lift his head off the seat. He might as well have tried to move a sack of flour. His head wobbled unsteadily and he rolled his eyes in Megan's general direction.
'Meg? Wha'…is that you, Meg?'
'You bastard!' she said, prodding him hard in the chest with her index finger. 'You scared me half to death - I thought you were dead.'
He ran his hands over himself. 'Nae, 'm still 'ere.'
'No, not dead, just dead drunk more like. Look at the state of you!'
His eyes focused on her with some difficulty. 'What're you doing here, J'st Meg'n?' His words were slurred and barely comprehensible.
'You called me,' she said. 'On the 'phone.'
'Eh? Why?'
'I don't know. You tell me.'
She took in the scene around her. The telephone lay upside down on the floor beside Nat, the receiver some distance away at the far end of its cord. It looked as if he had thrown it. She could hear the 'off hook' alarm beeping. She gathered the pieces of the telephone together and put it back in its customary place on his desk.
Close by Nat, on the floor, an empty whisky bottle lay on its side. 'You've been gone a long time, Meg,' he said in a small, plaintive voice.
She picked up the bottle and examined it. Not a drop remained within it. 'Only two weeks,' she said.
'I missed you.'
'Yes, I'm sure you did.' She held the empty bottle up in front of his face. 'How much have you had?'
His eyes almost crossed as he tried to focus on it. He shrugged. 'I dunno.'
'More than this?'
He snatched the bottle from her and turned it upside down. 'It's all gone.'
She took it back. 'What sort of platinum plated idiot are you, Nat? Are you trying to drink yourself to death?'
'Drink. That's what I need...a drink.'
'You've already had more than enough.' She squatted down and put her arms under his and attempted to lift him. 'Let's get you up off this floor and cleaned up.' He didn't co-operate, stubbornly refusing to move.' Come on…help me,' she urged.
'No…leave me!' He flapped his hands uselessly at her. 'You don't wanna see me.'
'I'm here, aren't I?' she said. 'Now help me.'
'No.'
'Get up, Nat, or I swear I'll smack you again.'
'I don't wanna get up.'
'You have to get UP!' She used all her strength to try to lift him, feeling her back strain.
'No!' he yelled and pushed her away. She lost her balance and fell backwards, banging her head on the desk leg with an audible thud. Instantly, bright star flashes of all colours darted before her eyes.
'You said fuck off an' leave me alone,' he said, not realising what he had done.
She touched her fingers to her scalp and checked for blood. There was none, but her head had begun to throb. Slowly, the stars cleared.
'I didn't know it was you, you berk.' She leaned against the desk leg and regarded the awful spectacle in front of her. 'Oh Christ Almighty, Nat. What have you gone and done to yourself?'
He had stopped fighting her and slumped back against the window seat. He reached out for the empty bottle, managing to get his fingertips to it. It toppled over and spun out of his reach, and he watched with vacant eyes as it turned in slow, lazy arcs, coming to rest with the empty neck pointing at him like an accusing finger. He swivelled his head to look at her.
'You left me on my own. Why'd you leave me, Meg?'
'I didn't leave you, Nat. It was time to go. I thought you understood.'
'I needed you,' he moaned pitifully. 'I needed you and you weren't here. I was on my own.' He held out tremulous hands to her. 'I wanted you to hold me, Meg, like you did before, when it was warm and safe and you made all the bad things go away and I...I need someone to hold me now.'
Stirred by the vision of utter dejection, she crawled over and put her arms around him as she had before. He rested limply against her.
'It's alright, Nat,' she assured him, pressing her lips to his hair. 'I'll take care of you.' A bad odour surrounded him and she wrinkled her nose against the sour mixture of stale sweat and alcohol, some of which he had spilled on his shirt.
'I don't wanna be on my own,' he mumbled miserably into her sweater.
'You're not on your own. I'm here now…you'll be okay. I'll look after you.'
After a few moments encased in her embrace he appeared calmer. 'Are you ready to get up now?' she asked.
He nodded. She prepared to haul him to his feet, and then stopped. The colour had drained from his face; he had started to sweat and was swallowing rapidly. The symptoms were instantly recognisable.
'Oh no, no…don't…hold on...'
She scrambled over to the desk and grabbed the metal wastebasket, wheeled around with it in her hand and thrust it in front of him. Immediately he bent over it and vomited noisily, soaking the discarded paper in there with a malodorous combination of alcohol and bile. Three times he threw up, with hardly time to draw breath between each episode. Even with his cramped stomach emptied, he continued to clutch the bin, to retch and spit and groan.
'Better out than in, I suppose,' she said and rubbed his back gently with a smooth circular motion, patiently waiting for him to finish.
Finally, he appeared to be done and sat up. She extracted the bin from his grasp and put it safely aside.
'Now, can we get off this floor?' she said as she wiped his mouth and chin with a tissue from her pocket.
In a tangle of disobliging limbs, she got him to his feet and over to his chair. He collapsed into it with all the strength of a man made of straw.
'You'll look after me, won't you, Meg?' he murmured, hardly able to form the words, his head flopping against the back of the chair.
'Yes, I'll look after you, Nat, I said I would.' She lifted his feet onto the footstool.
'You'll stay with me won't you, Meg?'
'Yes, Nat, I'll stay with you.'
She arranged the cushion under his head and within minutes he had reached the depths of sleep only an intoxicated man could.
From the floor, she picked up the empty bottle. There was no drinking glass to be seen and she could only assume he had been swigging directly from the bottle. She took the wastebasket into the kitchen to deal with later. When she returned to the study, she brought with her a tartan picnic blanket from the hall closet and draped it over his snoring, comatose form.
She pulled out the office chair from behind the desk and positioned it beside the armchair. She wasn't going to leave Nat alone in this condition, and made herself as comfortable as she could in it while she waited for him to come round.
Turning on the TV, she flicked through the muted channels, not really looking at them. Her mind buzzed with finding a possible reason for Nat's miserable situation. Something dramatic must have happened to get him into this state, something had obviously d
istressed him deeply, but he was in no position yet to tell her what it was.
While she pondered his condition, she swivelled in the chair. On her final sweep, her eyes were drawn to the gun cabinet in the corner of the room. Unbidden, a conversation began in her head.
'He's not going to do anything, he can't even stand up.'
'How do you know? You're going to have to go home and leave him here on his own. Are you willing to take that chance? Look at him.'
'He wouldn't.'
'He might. You need to make sure that he can't.'
'How?'
Nat slept for more than three hours and for every minute of it, Megan fretted about what to do, but finally, she came to her decision.
With him still safely asleep, she removed her shoes and padded around to the working side of his desk. There were three drawers, each one bigger than the one above. What she wanted, she knew, was kept in the smallest, topmost drawer on the right. She tugged gently on the handle. It was locked. Nat hadn't been out that day, or the previous day probably, and she knew where his keys ought to be.
From the fruit bowl in the kitchen, she took the keyring and identified the key for the desk drawer. Taking care not to make a sound, she opened it, took out the metal box containing the gun cabinet keys, closed and relocked it. She took the box and dropped it into her handbag on the kitchen table, replacing the keyring in the fruit bowl. After a period sat at the table, quietly contemplating her action, she was satisfied she had done the right thing and switched on the kettle to make herself a coffee.
At that moment, Nat's voice drifted across the hallway. 'Meg! Meg, where are you?'
'In here!' she called back.
Does he know? Did he see?
She glanced at her bag to ensure the key box couldn't be seen just as Nat reeled into the kitchen, his legs barely operable.
'I'm just making myself a coffee,' she said. 'Do you want one?'
He nodded, pulled out a chair and sat down, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. 'I thought you'd gone,' he said.
'I said I'd stay and I always keep my word.'
She made his coffee extra strong, found him some aspirins, and sat with him at the table. 'How are you feeling?'
Saving Nathaniel Page 16
