by Peter May
He pulled his oilskin on over his vest and boxers and slipped bare feet into his boots, grabbing his sou’wester before unzipping the tent to face the rain and the wind. A twenty-second dash to the car, and he would be back in under a minute shedding dripping waterproofs in the outer tent, to slide back into the warmth of his sleeping bag. A book in his hand, escape in his heart.
Still, he hesitated to take the plunge. It was wild out there. It was why generations of his ancestors had built houses with walls two and three feet thick. How foolish was he to believe he could survive weeks, even months, in a flimsy little tent like this? He breathed out through clenched teeth, screwed up his eyes for a moment, then made the dash. Out into rain that stung his face, the force of the wind almost taking the legs away from him.
He reached his car, fumbling for keys with wet fingers, and a light came on in his peripheral vision. He paused, peering down the hill through the rain, to see that it was the light above Marsaili’s kitchen door. It threw a feeble yellow glow up the path towards where Fionnlagh’s car stood idling. He couldn’t hear the engine, but he could see exhaust fumes belching from the rear of the old Mini to be whipped away into the night.
And then a figure with a suitcase dashing from the kitchen door to the car. Just a silhouette, but recognisably Fionnlagh. Fin called out his name, but the bungalow was a couple of hundred yards away, and his voice was lost in the storm.
Fin stood, hammered by rain that ran in sheets off his oilskin, blowing into his face, running down his neck, and watched as Fionnlagh opened the boot and jammed his case inside. He ran back to the house to turn off the light, and was the merest shadow as he dashed up the path again to the car. Fin saw his face caught for a moment in the courtesy light as the door opened and then closed again. The car pulled away from the side of the road and started off down the hill.
Fin turned to his own car, unlocked the door, and slid into the driver’s seat. He started it up, slipped into first gear and released the handbrake. As long as he kept Fionnlagh’s lights in sight, he could keep his own turned off. He rolled down the hill after the Mini.
Fin kept a good two hundred yards between the cars, and slowed to a stop as the Mini pulled up outside the Crobost stores at the foot of the hill. By the light of Fionnlagh’s headlamps, he saw the tiny figure of Donna Murray dart out from the shelter of the shop doorway, hefting a carrycot in both hands. Fionnlagh jumped out to tip the driver’s seat forward and she slid it inside before running back to fetch a small suitcase.
Which was when the headlamps of a third car flooded the scene with light. Fin could see the rain driving through them, and the figure of a man stepping out to interrupt their beam. He lifted his foot from the clutch and accelerated down the road towards them, turning on his headlights to throw this midnight drama into sharp relief. Three startled faces turned towards his car as he braked, skidding to a stop on the gravel. He let the door swing open and stepped out into the rain.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Donald Murray had to bellow to be heard over the roar of the storm. His face was liverish pale in the light of the cars, his eyes sunken in shadow.
‘Maybe I should be asking you that,’ Fin shouted back.
Donald punched an angry fist through the air towards his daughter and her lover, a solitary finger pointed in accusation. ‘They’re trying to run off with the baby.’
‘It’s their baby.’
A sneer curled Donald’s mouth. ‘Are you in on this?’
‘Hey!’ Fionnlagh bellowed red-faced at the night. ‘It’s none of your business! Either of you. She’s our baby and it’s our decision. So you can all go to hell.’
‘That’s for God to decide,’ Donald Murray shouted back at him. ‘But you are going nowhere, son. Not with my grandchild, you’re not.’
‘Try and fucking stop me!’ Fionnlagh took Donna’s bag and threw it into the car. ‘Come on,’ he said to her, and dropped into the driver’s seat.
Donald was there in two strides to reach in and pull out the ignition key, turning to throw it into the teeth of the gale. He moved swiftly around the car to reach in and grab the carrycot.
Fionnlagh leapt out to stop him, but Fin got there first. His sou’wester blew off and vanished in the dark as he grabbed the Reverend Murray by the shoulders and pulled him away from the car. Donald was still a powerfully built man, and he pushed back hard to try to break free of Fin’s grip. Both men stumbled backwards and tumbled to the ground, rolling over on the gravel.
The fall expelled all the air from Fin’s lungs, and he gasped for breath as Donald got back to his feet. He managed to rise to his knees, still fighting for air, and looked up as Donald reached out a hand to help him to stand. He caught a flash of white at Donald’s neck. His dog collar. And for a moment the absurdity of their situation flashed through his head. He was fighting with the minister of Crobost Church, for God’s sake! His boyhood friend. He grasped the hand and pulled himself up. The two men stood glaring at each other, both breathing hard, both faces wet with rain and shining in the light of the headlamps.
‘Stop it!’ Donna was screaming. ‘Stop it, both of you!’
But Donald kept his eyes fixed on Fin. ‘I found the ferry tickets in her room. The first sailing tomorrow for Ullapool. I knew they’d try and get away tonight.’
‘Donald, they’re both adults. It’s their baby. They can go where they like.’
‘I might have known you would take their side.’
‘I’m not taking anyone’s side. You’re the one who’s driving them away. Refusing to let Fionnlagh come to the house to see his own daughter. You’d think we were still living in the Middle Ages!’
‘He has no means of supporting them. He’s still at school for God’s sake!’
‘Well, he’s not going to make much of himself by dropping out and running away, is he? And that’s what you’re forcing him to do. Both of them.’
Donald spat his contempt at the night. ‘This is a waste of time.’ He turned again to try and take the carrycot from the car. Fin grabbed his arm, and in that moment Donald swung around, his fist flying through the light to catch Fin a glancing blow on the cheek. The force of it knocked Fin off balance and he went sprawling backwards on the tarmac.
For several long moments, the scene was frozen, as if someone had flicked a switch and put the movie on pause. None of them could quite believe what Donald had just done. The wind howled its disapproval all around them. Then Fin struggled back to his feet and wiped a smear of blood from his lip. He glared at the minister. ‘For Christ’s sake man,’ he said. ‘Come to your senses.’ His voice was almost lost in the roar of the night.
Donald stood rubbing his knuckles, staring back at Fin, his eyes filled with disbelief, guilt, anger. As if it were somehow Fin’s fault that Donald had struck him. ‘Why the hell would you care anyway?’
Fin shut his eyes and shook his head. ‘Because Fionnlagh’s my son.’
TWENTY-TWO
Catriona Murray’s concern turned to confusion when she opened the door of the manse and found her husband and Fin Macleod standing on the top step like two drowned rats, bloodied and bruised. It wasn’t who she had been expecting.
‘Where’s Donna and the baby?’
‘Nice to see you, too, Catriona,’ Fin said.
Donald said, ‘They’re at Marsaili’s.’
Catriona’s dark eyes darted from one to the other. ‘What’s to stop them heading for Stornoway first thing and catching the ferry?’
Fin said, ‘They won’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re afraid of what me and Donald might do to one another. Any chance we could come in out of the rain?’
She shook her head in confusion and frustration, and held the door wide for the two men to come, dripping, into the hallway. ‘You’d better get those wet things off you.’
Fin smiled. ‘Better keep mine on, Catriona. I don’t want to inflame your delicate sensibilities.’ He
held open his oilskin to reveal his vest and boxer shorts. ‘I was only popping out to get a book from the car.’
‘I’ll get you a dressing gown.’ She canted her head to take a closer look at him. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘Your husband hit me.’
Her eyes shot at once towards Donald, the slightest frown drawing creases between her brows. The guilt on his face, and his lack of a denial, deepened them.
Fifteen minutes later the two men sat around a peat fire in the living room, sipping on mugs of hot chocolate by the light of a table lamp and the glow of the peats. Donald wore a black silk dressing gown embroidered with Chinese dragons. Fin wore a thick white towelling robe. Both men were barefoot and only just beginning to feel the circulation returning. On a nod from Donald, Catriona had retired to the kitchen, and the two men sat sipping in silence for some minutes.
‘A splash of whisky would be good in this,’ Fin said at last, more in hope than expectation.
‘Good idea.’ And to Fin’s surprise Donald got up to retrieve a bottle of Balvenie Doublewood from the dresser. More than two-thirds of it had already gone. He uncorked it and poured generous measures into each of their mugs, and sat down again.
They sipped some more, and Fin nodded. ‘Better.’ He heard Donald sigh deeply.
‘It sticks in my craw, Fin, but I owe you an apology.’
Fin nodded. ‘Damn right you do.’
‘Whatever the provocation, I’d no right to hit you. It was wrong.’
Fin turned to look at his one-time friend and saw genuine regret in his face. ‘Why? Why was it wrong?’
‘Because Jesus taught us that violence is wrong. Whoever shall strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other.’
‘Actually, I think it was me who turned the other cheek.’
Donald threw him a dark look.
‘Anyway, whatever happened to an eye for an eye?’
Donald took a mouthful of chocolate and whisky. ‘As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye and we’d all be blind.’
‘You really believe all this stuff, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. And the least you could do is respect that.’
‘I’ll never respect what you believe, Donald. Only your right to believe it. Just as you should respect mine not to.’
Donald turned a long, penetrating look upon him, the glow of the peats colouring one half of his pale face, the other in shadow. ‘You choose not to believe, Fin. Because of what happened to your parents. That’s different from not actually believing.’
‘I’ll tell you what I believe, Donald. I believe that the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New. How can you reconcile the cruelty and violence practised by one with the peace and love preached by the other? You pick and choose the bits you like, and ignore the bits you don’t. That’s how. It’s why there are so many Christian factions. There are, what, five different Protestant sects on this island alone?’
Donald shook his head vigorously. ‘It is the weakness of men that they will always disagree, and fight over their differences, Fin. Faith is the key.’
‘Faith is the crutch of the weak. You use it to paper over all the contradictions. And you fall back on it to provide easy answers to impossible questions.’ Fin leaned forward. ‘When you hit me tonight, that came from the heart, not from your faith. It was the real you, Donald. You were following your instinct. However misguided, it came from a genuine desire to protect your daughter. And your granddaughter.’
Donald’s laugh was heavily ironic. ‘A real role-reversal. The believer doing the striking, the non-believer turning the other cheek. You must love that.’ There was no disguising the bitterness in his voice. ‘It was wrong, Fin, and I shouldn’t have done it. It won’t happen again.’
‘Damn right it won’t. Because next time I’ll hit you back. And let me tell you, I play dirty.’
Donald couldn’t resist a smile. He drained his mug and stared into it for several long moments as if the answers to all the questions of the universe might somehow be found at the bottom of it. ‘You want some more?’
‘Chocolate or whisky?’
‘Whisky, of course. I have another bottle.’
Fin held out his mug. ‘You can put as much as you like in there.’
Donald divided the rest of the bottle between them, and Fin felt the smooth malt, coloured and softened by the sherry in whose casks it had aged, slip easily down to warm his insides. ‘Whatever happened to us, Donald? We used to be friends. Everyone looked up to you when we were kids. You were almost heroic, a role model for the rest of us.’
‘A pretty bloody awful role model, then.’
Fin shook his head. ‘No. You made mistakes, sure. Everyone does. But there was something different about you. You were a free spirit, Donald, raising two fingers to the world. God changed you. And not for the better.’
‘Don’t start!’
‘I keep hoping one day you’ll turn around with that big infectious grin of yours and shout, Only joking!’
Donald laughed. ‘God did change me, Fin. But it was for the better. He taught me to control my baser instincts, to be a better person than I was. To do unto others only that which I would have them do unto me.’
‘Then why are you treating Fin and Donna so badly? It’s wrong to keep them apart. I know you think you are protecting your daughter, but that baby is Fionnlagh’s daughter, too. How would you feel if you were Fionnlagh?’
‘I wouldn’t have got her pregnant in the first place.’
‘Oh, come on! I bet you can’t even remember how many girls you slept with at that age. You were just lucky that none of them got pregnant.’ He paused. ‘Until Catriona.’
Donald glowered up at him from beneath a gathering of brows. ‘Fuck you, Fin!’
And Fin burst out laughing. ‘Now, that’s the old Donald.’
Donald shook his head, trying to hold back a smile. ‘You always were a bad influence on me.’ He got up and crossed to the dresser, finding and opening the fresh bottle. He returned to top up both their mugs and slumped again into his chair. ‘So after everything, we share a grandchild you and me, Fin Macleod. Grandparents!’ He blew his disbelief through pursed lips. ‘When did you find out that Fionnlagh was your boy?’
‘Last year. During the investigation into the Angel Macritchie murder.’
Donald raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not generally known, is it?’
‘No.’
Donald fixed him with curious eyes. ‘What happened out on An Sgeir last August, Fin?’
But Fin just shook his head. ‘That’s between me and my maker.’
Donald nodded slowly. ‘And the reason for your visit to the church the other day … is that a secret, too?’
Fin thought about it, staring deep into the embers of the peats, and decided that there would be no harm in telling Donald the truth. ‘You probably heard about the body they found in the bog at Siader a couple of weeks ago.’
Donald inclined his head in acknowledgement.
‘It was the body of a young man of seventeen or eighteen, murdered some time in the late 1950s.’
‘Murdered?’ The Reverend Murray was clearly shocked.
‘Yes. And it turns out he’s related in some way to Tormod Macdonald. Who turns out not to be Tormod Macdonald.’
Donald’s mug paused halfway to his mouth. ‘What?’
And Fin told him the story of his trip to Harris with DS Gunn, and what they had found there. Donald sipped thoughtfully on his whisky as he listened.
‘The problem is,’ Fin said, ‘we’ll probably never find out the truth. Tormod’s dementia is well advanced and getting worse. It’s hard to get any kind of sense out of him. Marsaili was there today and he was talking about using seaweed to fertilize crows.’
Donald shrugged. ‘Well, that’s not so daft.’
Fin blinked in surprise. ‘It’s not?’
‘Sure, feannagan means crows here on Lewis, or Harris. But in the
southern isles it’s what they called the lazy beds.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Donald.’
Donald laughed. ‘You’ve probably never been to the Catholic south, Fin, have you? And I probably wouldn’t either if it hadn’t been for some ecumenical visits.’ He flashed him a look. ‘Maybe I’m not quite as narrow-minded as you would like to think?’
‘What are lazy beds?’
‘It’s what the islanders developed to grow vegetables, mainly potatoes, when the soil was thin or poor in quality. Like you’ll find in South Uist, or Eriskay. They use seaweed cut from the shore as fertilizer. They lay it in strips, about a foot wide, with another foot between them where they dig up the earth and turn it over on top of the seaweed. That creates drainage channels between the lines of soil and seaweed where they plant the tatties. Lazy beds, they call them. Or feannagan.’
Fin took a mouthful of whisky. ‘So it’s really not that daft to talk about fertilising the crows.’
‘Not at all.’ Donald leaned forward on his knees, cradling his mug between his hands and gazing into the dying fire. ‘Maybe Marsaili’s dad didn’t come from Harris at all, Fin. Maybe he came from the south. South Uist, Eriskay, Barra. Who knows?’ He paused to take another sip. ‘But here’s a thought …’ And he turned to look at Fin. ‘He’d never have got the marriage schedule from the registrar allowing my father to marry him if he hadn’t been able to produce a birth certificate. So how would he have got that?’
‘Not from the registrar on Harris,’ Fin said. ‘Because the dead boy was known there.’
‘Exactly. So he knew, or was related to, the family. Or someone close to him was. And he either stole the birth certificate, or was given it. All you need to do is find that connection.’
A reluctant smile crept up on Fin, and he cocked one eyebrow towards the minister. ‘You know, Donald, you always were smarter than the rest of us. But a connection like that? It would be like searching for a speck of dust in the cosmos.’
TWENTY-THREE
Catriona had given him a pair of Donald’s trousers and a woollen jersey which he wore now under his oilskins as he braved the winds that swept unimpeded across the machair.
