by Peter May
Marsaili leans towards me and says, ‘Dad, what happened to your folks? Did you have any uncles or cousins that you never told us about?’
I don’t know what she means. They’re all dead. Surely everyone knows that?
Fin! That’s it. The young man with the curls. I remember him now. Used to come round the farm winching my wee Marsaili before either of them was even old enough to count. I wonder how his folks are. I liked his old man. He was a good, solid sort.
I never knew my dad. Only heard tell of him. He was a sailor, of course. Any man worth his salt was a sailor back then. The day my mum gathered us in the front room to break the news was a pretty black one. It wasn’t that long before Christmas, and she’d put in some effort to make the house seem festive. All we cared about were the presents we would get. Not that we expected much. It was just the surprise of it.
There was snow in the street. There hadn’t been much of it, and it had turned to slush pretty quickly. But there was that grey-green gloom in the air that comes with snow, and there wasn’t much light came down between the tenements anyway.
She was a lovely woman, my mum, from what I remember of her. Which isn’t much. Just the softness of her when she held me, and the smell of her perfume, or her eau de cologne or whatever it was. And that blue print apron she always wore.
Anyway, she sat us down on the settee, side by side, and knelt on the floor in front of us. She put her hand on my shoulder. She was a terrible colour. So white her face would have been lost in the snow. And she’d been crying, I knew that much.
I could only have been four years old, then. And Peter a year younger. Must have been conceived on a home leave before my father was finally sent off to sea.
She said, ‘Your dad won’t be coming home, boys.’ And there was a catch in her voice. The rest of the day was lost to me. And Christmas was no fun that year. Everything is sepia-brown in my mind, like a light-exposed black-and-white print. Dull and depressing. It was only later, when I was a bit older, that I learned his ship had been sunk by a German U-boat. One of those convoys they were always attacking in the Atlantic between Britain and America. And I had the strangest sense of sinking with him, endlessly through the water into darkness.
‘Do you have any relatives left at all down in Harris, Mr Macdonald?’ The voice startles me. Fin is looking at me very earnestly. He has lovely green eyes, that lad. I don’t know why Marsaili never married him instead of that wastrel Artair Macinnes. Never did like that man.
Fin’s still looking at me, and I’m trying to remember what it is he asked. Something about my family.
‘I was with my mother the night she died,’ I tell him. And suddenly I can feel tears in my eyes. Why did she have to die? It was so dark in that room. It was hot, and smelled of sickness and death. There was a lamp on the bedside table. An electric lamp that shed a dreadful pale light on her face in the bed.
What age would I have been then? It’s not clear to me now. Early teens, maybe. Old enough to understand, that’s for sure. But not old enough for the responsibility. And not ready, if you ever can be, to get cast adrift alone in the world. A world I could never have dreamt of. Not then, not when the only thing I had ever known was the warmth and safety of my own home and a mother who loved me.
I don’t know where Peter was that night. Already asleep, probably. Poor Peter. Never the same after that fall from the roundabout at the fairground. Stupid! One careless moment, stepping from the damned thing before it had fully stopped. And your life is changed for ever.
My mother had the darkest eyes, and the lamp on the bedside table was reflected in them. But I could see the light fading. She turned her head towards me. There was such sadness in them, and I knew the sadness was for me, not for herself. She reached her right hand over to her left above the covers, and drew the ring off her wedding finger. I’ve never seen a wedding ring like it. Silver, with two serpents intertwined. Some uncle of my father’s had brought it back from overseas somewhere and it had been passed down through the family. My father had no money when they got married, so he gave it to my mum as her wedding ring.
She took my hand and placed it in my palm and folded my fingers over it. ‘I want you to look after Peter,’ she said to me. ‘He’ll not survive this world on his own. I want you to promise me, Johnny. That you’ll always take care of him.’
Of course, I had no idea then what a responsibility that would be. But it was the last thing she asked of me, so I nodded solemnly and said I would. And she smiled then, and gave my hand a little squeeze.
I watched the light die in her eyes before they closed, and her hand relaxed and let go of mine. And the priest didn’t arrive for another fifteen minutes.
What’s that ringing sound? Dammit!
TEN
Marsaili fumbled in her handbag for her mobile phone. ‘Sorry,’ she said, flustered and embarrassed by the interruption. Not that her father had told them much, or was making any sense. But after revealing he had been with his mother when she died, big silent tears had run down his face, some highly charged emotional turmoil behind them. Which the ringing of her phone had interrupted.
‘What the hell’s that?’ he was saying, clearly disturbed. ‘Can a man not get any peace in his own home?’
Fin leaned forward and put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s all right, Mr Macdonald. It’s just Marsaili’s mobile.’
‘One moment, please,’ Marsaili was saying into her phone. She put her hand over it and said, ‘I’ll take this in the hall.’ And she rose and hurried away out of the big empty lounge. Most of the daycare patients had left in the minibus for a day out, so they had the place more or less to themselves.
Gunn nodded towards the door, and he and Fin stood up and moved away from Tormod, speaking in low voices. Gunn was perhaps six or seven years older than Fin, but there was not a grey hair on his head, and Fin wondered if he dyed it. He didn’t seem the sort, though. There was barely a line on his face. Except for the frown of concern that creased it now. He said, ‘It’s certain that they’ll send someone over from the mainland, Mr Macleod. They’ll not entrust a murder investigation like this to an island cop. You know how it is.’
Fin nodded.
‘And whoever they send is likely to be a lot less sensitive in the handling of it than me. The only clue we have to the identity of the young man in the bog is that he is related in some way to Tormod Macdonald.’ He paused to purse his lips in what seemed to Fin to be something like an apology. ‘Which puts Tormod himself right in the frame for the murder.’
Marsaili came back in from the hall, slipping her phone into her bag. ‘That was the social services,’ she said. ‘Apparently there’s a bed available, at least temporarily, in the Alzheimer’s unit right next door at Dun Eisdean.’
ELEVEN
This is smaller than my room at home. But it looks as if it’s been painted recently. There are no stains on the ceiling. Nice white walls. Double-glazing, too. Can’t hear the wind, or the rain battering against the window. Just watching it running down the glass. Like tears. Tears in rain. Who would know? But if you’re going to cry, do it on your own. It’s embarrassing sitting there with tears on your face and folk watching you.
No tears now, although I do feel sort of sad. I’m not sure why. I wonder when Marsaili will come and take me home. I hope it’ll be the good Mary when we get there. I like the good Mary. She looks at me and touches my face sometimes like she might once have liked me.
The door opens, and a kindly young lady looks in. She makes me think of someone, but I’m not sure who.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You’ve still got your coat and hat on, Mr Macdonald.’ She pauses. ‘Can I call you Tormod?’
‘No!’ I say. And I hear myself bark it, like a dog.
She seems startled. ‘Oh, now, Mr Macdonald. We’re all friends here together. Let me get that coat off you and we’ll hang it up in the wardrobe. And we should unpack your bag, put your things in the drawers. You can decide what goes wh
ere.’
She comes to the bed where I am sitting and tries to get me to stand. But I resist, shrugging her off. ‘My holiday’s over,’ I say. ‘Marsaili’s coming to take me home.’
‘No, Mr Macdonald, she’s not. Nobody’s coming. This is your home now.’
I sit there for a long time. What does she mean? What could she have meant?
And I do nothing to stop her now from taking off my cap, or lifting me to my feet to remove my coat. I can’t believe it. This is not my home. Marsaili will be here soon. She’d never leave me here. Would she? Not my own flesh and blood.
I sit down again. The bed feels quite hard. Still no sign of Marsaili. And I feel … how do I feel? Betrayed. Tricked. They said I was going on holiday, and they put me in this place. Just like the day they brought me to The Dean. Inmates. That’s what we called ourselves. Just like prisoners.
It was late October when we arrived at The Dean, me and Peter. You couldn’t believe they would build a place like that for kids like us. It sat up on the hill, a long stone building on two levels with wings at either end, and two four-cornered bell towers at each side of the central elevation. Except that there were no bells in them. Just stone urns. There was a portico at the main entrance, with a triangular roof above it supported on four giant columns. Above that, an enormous clock. A clock whose golden hands seemed to tick away our time there as if they were going backwards. Or maybe it was just our age. When you are young a year is a big part of your life and seems to last for ever. When you are old, there have been too many of them gone before and they pass all too fast. We move so slowly away from birth, and rush so quickly to death.
We arrived in a big black car that day. I’ve no idea whose it was. It was cold and the sky was spitting sleet. Looking back, from the top of the steps, I could see the millworkers’ tenements in the valley below, cold grey slate roofs and cobbled streets. And beyond that, the city skyline. We were surrounded by green here, trees, a huge kitchen garden, an orchard, and yet we were just a gob away from the centre of the city. In time I would learn that on a still night you could hear the traffic, and sometimes see red tail-lights distantly in the dark.
It was our last view of what I came to think of as the free world, because when we crossed that threshold we left all comfort and humanity behind, and entered a dismal place where the darkest side of human nature cast its shadow on us.
That dark side was made flesh by the governor. Mr Anderson he was called, and a more brutal and cruel man you would be hard pushed to find. I have often asked myself what kind of man is it that would find fulfilment in abusing helpless children. Punishment, as he saw it. I often wished I could have met that man on equal terms, then we’d have seen how brave he was.
He kept a leather tawse in a drawer in his room. It measured about eighteen inches in length, had two tails, and was a good half-inch thick. And when he belted you with it, he would march you along the bottom corridor to the foot of the stairs leading to the boys’ dorm and make you bend over. Your feet were on the first step, to elevate you a little, your hands supporting you on the third. And he would leather your arse till your legs buckled beneath you.
He was not a big man. Although he was to us. In fact, a giant in my memory. But actually he wasn’t much taller than Matron. His hair was thin, the colour of ash, and oiled back across his narrow skull for all the world as if it had been painted on. A close-cropped black and silver moustache prickled his upper lip. He wore dark-grey suits that concertinaed around thick black shoes which squeaked on the tiles so that you always knew when he was coming, like the tick-tock of the crocodile in Peter Pan. There was a sour smell of stale tobacco that hung about him from the pipe he smoked, and spittle used to gather in the corners of his mouth, transferring from lower to upper lip and back again as he spoke, becoming thicker and creamier with every word.
He never referred to any of us by name. You were ‘boy’, or ‘you, girl’, and he was always using words we didn’t understand. Like ‘comestibles’ when he meant ‘sweeties’.
I met him for the first time that day when the people who had brought us there took us into his office. He was all sweetness and light and full of assurances about how well we would be looked after here. Well, these people were barely out the door when we discovered what being well looked after actually meant. But first he delivered a short lecture.
We stood trembling on the linoleum in front of his big, polished desk, and he positioned himself, arms folded, on the other side of it, tall square windows rising to the ceiling behind him.
‘First things first. You will refer to me at all times as sir. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and when Peter said nothing I dunted him with my elbow.
He glared at me. ‘What?’
I nodded towards Mr Anderson. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
It took him a moment or two to understand. Then he smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’
Mr Anderson gave him a long, cold look. ‘We have no time for Catholics here. The Church of Rome is not welcome. You will not be invited to join us in hymn singing or bible reading, and will stay in the dorm until morning prayers are over. Don’t bother settling yourselves in, because with luck you won’t be staying.’ He leaned forward, then, knuckles on the desk in front of him, glowing white in the gloom. ‘But for as long as you are here, be aware that there is only one rule.’ He paused for emphasis and enunciated each word. ‘Do. What. You. Are. Told.’ He stood up again. ‘If you break that rule you will suffer the consequences. Do you understand?’
Peter glanced at me for confirmation, and I gave him an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Yes, sir,’ we said in unison. We were nearly telepathic sometimes, Peter and me. As long as I did the thinking for both of us.
We were marched, then, along to Matron’s room. She was an unmarried woman I think, in her middle years. I always remember her downturned mouth, and those shadowed eyes that seemed opaque somehow. You never knew what she was thinking, and her mood was always characterized by that sullen mouth. Even when she smiled, which was hardly ever.
We had to stand for ages in front of her desk while she opened a file on each of us and then told us to undress. It didn’t seem to bother Peter. But I was embarrassed, and afraid I would get a hard-on. Not that there was anything remotely sexual about Matron. But you never knew when that damn thing would pop up on you.
She examined us both, I suppose for identifying marks, then went carefully through our hair searching for nits. Apparently she didn’t find any, but told us that our hair was too long and that it would have to be shorn.
And then it was our teeth. Jaws prised apart, and stubby fingers that tasted bitter, like antiseptic, thrust in our mouths to poke around. As if we were animals being sized up for market.
I remember clearly the walk along to the bathroom. Stark naked, holding our folded clothes in front of us, prodded from the rear to hurry us along. I don’t know where the other children were that day. At school probably. But I am glad there was no one there to see us. It was humiliating.
About six inches of lukewarm water were poured into a large zinc tub, and we sat in it together to work up a lather with rough lumps of carbolic soap and wash ourselves thoroughly under Matron’s watchful eye. It was the last time at The Dean that I shared a bath with just one other person. Weekly bath night, it turned out, consisted of four to a bath, always in the same six inches of scummy water. So this was luxury.
The boys’ dormitory occupied the first floor of the east wing. Rows of beds along facing walls of a long room. Tall arched windows stood at each end, and shorter rectangular windows lined the outside wall. In later days it was filled with spring sunshine, warm and bright, but today it breathed gloom and depression. Peter and I were given beds side by side at the far end of the dorm. I had noticed, as we passed among them, that all the neatly made-up beds had small canvas sacks placed at the end of them, and when we reached ours I saw two empty sacks draped over our solitary case. There were no bedside cabi
nets, drawers or cupboards. We were, I soon found out, discouraged from accumulating personal belongings. And connections to the past were frowned upon.
Mr Anderson came in behind us. ‘You can empty your case and place your belongings in the sacks provided,’ he said. ‘They will remain at all times at the foot of your beds. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Everything in the case had been systematically folded by somebody. I carefully separated my clothes from Peter’s, and filled both our sacks. He sat for a while on the edge of his bed flicking through the only thing that remained of our father. A collection he had begun before the war of cigarette packets. Like a stamp album. Except that in place of the stamps, he had cut out the fronts of dozens of different cigarette packets and pasted them into the pages. Some of them had exotic names like Joystick or Passing Cloud or Juleps. All with colourful graphic illustrations, heads of young men and women seen puffing ecstatically at the tobacco-filled tubes that would later kill them.
Peter never tired of looking at them. I suppose the album was mine, really. But I was happy to let him have it. I never asked him, but it was as if those cigarette packets gave him a direct connection in some way to our father.
I felt a much stronger connection with our mother. And the ring she had given me was the symbolic memento of her that I guarded with my life. Not even Peter knew I had it. He couldn’t be trusted with a secret. He was just as likely to open his mouth and blab to anyone. So I kept it hidden in a rolled-up pair of socks. It was just the sort of thing, I suspected, that would be confiscated or stolen.
The dining hall was on the ground floor, and that’s when we met most of the other kids for the first time, after they got back from school. There were probably fifty or more of us at that time. Boys in the east wing, girls in the west. Of course we were a curiosity. Naïve newcomers. The others were blasé, experienced Dean kids. We were wet behind the ears, and worst of all, Catholics. I don’t know how, but they all seemed to know that, and it separated us from the crowd. Nobody wanted to talk to us. Except for Catherine.
