by Peter May
‘Your family was living in old millworkers’ tenements in the Dean Village at that time.’
Kelly nodded. ‘We were.’ He chuckled. ‘Wouldn’t recognize the place now, though. A yuppie paradise it is these days.’ He paused. ‘Why do you think I would know some boy from The Dean?’
‘Because I believe he was involved in an incident on the Dean Bridge that affected your family.’
There was the merest flicker of something in Kelly’s eyes, the slightest heightening of the colour on his face. Fin wondered if it was pain he saw there. ‘What’s his name?’
Marsaili said, ‘Tormod Macdonald.’ And Fin flicked her a look.
He said quickly, ‘But you wouldn’t know him by that name.’
Kelly’s eyes turned towards Marsaili. ‘What’s he to you, this man?’
‘He’s my father.’
The silence that ensued hung heavy in the air, like Kelly’s cigar smoke, and lingered for longer than was comfortable. Finally, Kelly said, ‘I’m sorry. This is something I’ve spent a lifetime trying to forget. It’s not easy to lose a big brother so young. Especially when he was your hero, too.’ He shook his head. ‘Patrick meant the world to me.’
Fin nodded. He said, ‘We think the boy’s first name was John. Something. That’s what we’re trying to find out.’
Kelly took a long slow pull on his cigar and let the smoke leak from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth before blowing a grey stream of it into the pregnant atmosphere of the conservatory. ‘John McBride,’ he said at last.
Fin tried to control his breathing. ‘You knew him?’
‘Not personally. I wasn’t on the bridge that night. But three of my brothers were.’
‘When Patrick fell to his death?’ Marsaili said.
Kelly turned his focus from Fin to Marsaili. His voice was barely audible. ‘Yes.’ He sucked in some more smoke, and Fin was shocked to see what looked almost like moisture gathering in his eyes. ‘But I haven’t talked about that in more than fifty years. And I’m not sure I want to start now.’
Marsaili nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I can understand that.’
They walked in silence up Tipperlinn Road, stone villas brooding privately behind high walls and tall trees, past the old coach-house at Stable Lane to where the cobbled Albert Terrace ran off up the hill to their right in a profusion of green.
Eventually, Marsaili could no longer contain herself. ‘What do you think really happened on the Dean Bridge that night?’
Fin shook his head. ‘Impossible to know. Everyone who was there is dead. Except for your father. And maybe Ceit. Though we have no idea whether she’s still alive or not.’
‘At least we know now who my father is. Or was.’
Fin looked at her. ‘I wish you hadn’t told him your dad’s name.’
The blood drained from her face immediately. ‘Why?’
He sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know, Marsaili. I just wish you hadn’t.’
THIRTY-FOUR
Fin looked down out of the late afternoon at the ragged fingers of rock that reached out into the Minch, water breaking white all around them. Peat bog stretched away into the island’s interior, scored and scarred by centuries of cutting. Loch a Tuath reflected the darkly ominous clouds gathering overhead, ridged by the wind through which the small British Airways plane fought bravely to achieve a smooth landing on the short runway at Stornoway airport. The same wind that whipped about them now in the car park as they threw their overnight bags in the boot and sought shelter in Fin’s car from the first heavy drops of rain blowing across the moor from the west.
Fin started the engine and set the wipers going. It had taken them almost no time at the ScotlandsPeople Centre of the National Archives of Scotland to track down John William and Peter Angus McBride, born 1940 and 1941 respectively, in the Slateford district of Edinburgh to Mary Elizabeth Rafferty and John Anthony McBride. John Anthony had died in 1944 while serving in the Royal Navy. Mary Elizabeth eleven years later from heart failure, the cause of which was not specified. Marsaili had paid for extracts of birth and death certificates for the entire family, and slipped them into a buff envelope that was tucked away now in the bag she held to her chest in the passenger seat.
Fin had no real idea how it was affecting her. She had said nothing throughout the flight back to the islands. He could only guess that she was reassessing everything she had ever known or thought about herself. She had just found out that although born and brought up on the Isle of Lewis she had, after all, no island blood in her. An English mother, a mainland father from a Catholic family in Edinburgh who had fabricated his entire life. It was a revelation.
He glanced at her. Complexion pasty-white, eyes shadowed, windblown hair lacklustre and limp. She looked crushed and small, and although all his instincts led him to want to put his arms around her, he felt a barrier between them. Something had happened to them in Edinburgh. In one moment, it seemed, they had rediscovered everything they had once been. In the next it was all gone, like smoke in the wind.
The process of discovering who her father really was had changed her. And the Marsaili he had known was lost now somewhere in a confusion of history and identity. Fin feared there was a chance that neither of them would find her again. Or that if they did, the change would be irrevocable.
He also knew that discovering the identity of her father, and his brother, had still failed to establish the events which had led to the murder of Peter McBride on Eriskay all those years before.
After a very long time of simply sitting there with the engine running, battered by the wind, lashed by the rain, wipers juddering across the windscreen, Marsaili finally turned to him. ‘Take me home, Fin.’
But Fin made no move to shift into gear and reverse out of their space. Both hands gripped the wheel in front of him. Something had come into his head, out of nowhere it seemed. Something shockingly simple and blindingly obvious. He said, ‘I want to go to your mum’s.’
She sighed. ‘Why?’
‘I want to look through your dad’s stuff.’
‘For what?’
‘I won’t know for sure until I find it.’
‘What’s the point, Fin?’
‘The point is, Marsaili, that someone murdered Peter McBride. There is going to be an investigation. A senior officer will be arriving next week. And unless we have evidence to the contrary, your dad is still going to be the number one suspect.’
She shrugged wearily. ‘Should I care?’
‘Yes, you should. He’s still your dad. Nothing we’ve learned about him changes that. He’s still the same gentle giant who carried you on his shoulders out to the peat-cutting. The same man who kissed your forehead at night when he tucked you into bed. The same man who was there for you all of your life, from your first day at school to the day you got married. Now it’s you who needs to be there for him.’
She turned confusion-filled eyes towards him. ‘I don’t know what to feel about him any more, Fin.’
Fin nodded his understanding. ‘I’ll bet though, that if he could, he would want to tell you everything, Marsaili. All the things he’s kept inside all these years, all the things he’s shared with no one. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.’ He ran a hand back through tight blond curls in frustrated empathy. Who could ever have guessed the truth behind the facade? ‘We walk into that nursing home, and all we see are a lot of old people sitting around. Vacant eyes, sad smiles. And we just dismiss them as … well, old. Spent, hardly worth bothering about. And yet behind those eyes every one of them has had a life, a story they could tell you. Of pain, love, hope, despair. All the things we feel, too. Getting old doesn’t make them any less valid, or any less real. And it’ll be us one day. Sitting there watching the young ones dismiss us as … well, old. And what’s that going to feel like?’
Guilt burned hot in her eyes. ‘I’ve never stopped loving him.’
‘Then believe in him, too. And believe that whatever happened, what
ever he did, he did it for a reason.’
Visibility over the north-west corner of Lewis was almost zero. The rain blew off the ocean in obscuring sheets so fine it was like a fog. Only the vaguest hint of white breakers smashing over black gneiss could be seen beyond the machair. Even the powerful beam of light sent out into the dark by the lighthouse at the Butt was barely discernible.
Marsaili’s mother was startled by their arrival, huddled together, sheltering under Fin’s coat, already soaked through on the short dash from the car to the kitchen door.
‘Where have you been?’ she said. ‘Fionnlagh said you’d gone to Edinburgh.’
‘Then why are you asking?’
Mrs Macdonald tutted her irritation. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘It was personal business, Mum.’ Marsaili and Fin had agreed on the drive up to Ness that they would say nothing to her mother of what they had learned about her father. It would all, no doubt, come out one day. But for the moment they had decided it would serve no useful purpose.
Fin said, ‘We’d like to look through Tormod’s things if that’s possible, Mrs Macdonald.’
Colour rose on her cheeks. ‘Why?’
‘We just would, Mum.’ Marsaili headed off through the house to her father’s old study, her mother trailing in her wake.
‘There’s no purpose to be served in that, Marsaili. That stuff’s no more use to you or me than it is to him any more.’
Marsaili stopped in the doorway and looked around the empty room. Pictures had been taken off the walls, the desktop cleared. She went to open its drawers. Empty. The filing cabinet. Empty. Old boxes filled with his bric-a-brac were gone. The place was sterile, disinfected, as if her father had been a disease. All trace of him removed. She turned to face her mother in disbelief. ‘What have you done?’
‘He’s not here any more.’ Guilt fed her defensiveness. ‘I’ll not have my house cluttered with his old rubbish.’
But the accusation in Marsaili’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Mum, you were married to him for nearly fifty years, for God’s sake! You loved him. Didn’t you?’
‘He’s not the man I married.’
‘Which isn’t his fault. He has dementia, Mum. It’s an illness.’
Fin said, ‘You’ve thrown everything out?’
‘I wasn’t going to put it out till bin day. It’s all in boxes in the front hall.’
Marsaili was pink-faced with indignation. She raised a solitary finger in her mother’s face. ‘Don’t you dare throw that stuff out! Do you hear? These are my dad’s things. If you don’t want them in the house, I’ll take them.’
‘Take them then!’ Guilt fuelled anger now. ‘Take the damned stuff. I don’t want it! You can burn it for all I care!’ And, close to breaking, she pushed past Fin, hurrying away down the hall.
Marsaili stood breathing hard, staring at Fin with fire still in her eyes. And he thought that at least she had rediscovered her feeling for her father. He said, ‘I’ll put the back seat down and we’ll load up the car.’
Condensation steamed up the kitchen windows in Marsaili’s bungalow. The cardboard boxes had got wet in the transfer from the house to the car and then the car to the bungalow. But their contents had been protected by the bin bags that Fin had taped over the top of them. There had been nothing to save Fin and Marsaili from a soaking, though. Fin had stripped off his wet jacket immediately, and Marsaili was still rubbing her hair vigorously with a large towel.
Fionnlagh stood watching as Fin opened up the boxes one by one. Some contained photograph albums, others old accounts. There were boxes of junk, tools and tins of nails, a magnifying glass, boxes of unused pens whose ink had all dried up, a broken stapler, cartons of paperclips.
Fionnlagh said, ‘I’ve sort of made my peace with the Reverend Murray.’
Fin looked up. ‘He said you’d been to see him.’
‘Several times.’
Fin and Marsaili exchanged glances. ‘And?’
‘You know he’s agreed to let Donna and Eilidh stay here.’
Fin nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, I told him I was going to quit school and try to get a job at Arnish. To make sure I could feed and clothe us all.’
Marsaili was surprised. ‘What did he say?’
‘He just about took my head off.’ Fionnlagh smiled wryly. ‘Told me if I didn’t finish my studies and get a place at university he would personally beat the crap out of me.’
Fin raised an eyebrow. ‘In those words?’
Fionnlagh grinned. ‘Pretty much. I thought ministers weren’t supposed to use language like that.’
Fin laughed. ‘Ministers have a special dispensation from God to swear their fucking heads off if they like. As long as it’s in a good cause.’ He paused. ‘So you’re going to go to university, then?’
‘If I can get in.’
Donna appeared at the door with the baby propped over her shoulder and supported on one arm. ‘Are you going to feed her or am I?’
Fionnlagh grinned at his daughter and brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. ‘I’ll do it. Bottle in the warmer?’
‘It is.’ Donna handed the baby over to him.
He turned in the doorway before he followed her out. ‘By the way, you were right, Fin. About Donna’s dad. He’s not so bad.’
A moment passed between father and son, then Fin grinned. ‘Aye, there’s hope for him yet.’
When Fionnlagh had gone he turned to the next box and tore it open to reveal that it was full of books and jotters. He lifted out the top book, a green hardback. An anthology of twentieth-century poetry. ‘I didn’t know your dad liked poetry.’
‘Neither did I.’ Marsaili crossed the kitchen to take a look.
Fin opened the book, and on the inside cover, written in an elegant hand, were the words, Tormod Uilleam Macdonald. A happy birthday. Mum. August 12th 1976. Fin frowned. ‘Mum?’
He heard the tremor in her voice as she said, ‘They always referred to one another as Mum and Dad.’
As he flipped through the pages a folded sheet of lined paper fell out. He picked it up. It was covered in shaky handwriting, and titled, Solas.
‘That’s the daycare centre we took him to that day next to the care home,’ Marsaili said. ‘It’s his handwriting. What does it say?’ She took the sheet from Fin and he stood up to look at it with her. Every third or fourth word was scored out, sometimes several times, as he had tried to correct his misspellings. Her hand flew to her mouth to try to contain her distress. ‘He always prided himself on his spelling.’ Then she read, ‘There were about anything up to twenty people while I was there. Most of them are very old.’ There were three attempts to write ‘old’. ‘Some are very weak and seem unable to speak. Others are unable to walk, but try to put their feet down on about one inch at a time. But there were a few who could step to a reasonable distance.’ Her voice choked off her words and she could read no further.
Fin took it from her and read aloud. ‘When I am writing letters I cannot avoid making feeble mistakes in my words. My loss, of course, didn’t come suddenly. It began about the end of the eleventh year, but it was hardly noticed at all at first. However, as time went on, and on, and on, I began to realize that I was more and more losing my ability to remember things. It is a dreadful thing, and I am very near the moment when I realise I am helpless.’
Fin laid the sheet of paper on the table. Outside, the wind still howled around the door, rain pounding against the window. He ran his finger along the ragged edge, where the sheet had been torn from some jotter. Almost worse than the disease itself, he thought, must be the knowledge that it was taking you. That inch by inch you were losing your reason and your mind, your memories, everything that makes you who you are.
He glanced at Marsaili, who was breathing deeply, drying her cheeks with her palms. There was only so much crying you could do. She said, ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’
As she busied herself with the kettle and the mugs and
teabags, Fin crouched down again to open more boxes. The next was full of ledgers, incomings and outgoings at the farm over all the years he had worked it. He lifted them out one by one, until at the bottom he found a large, soft-covered cuttings album bulging with articles taken from newspapers and magazines over many years. Fin placed it on top of the box next to him and opened it. At first the cuttings had been neatly stuck to the early pages, then later simply shoved, loose-leaf, between them. There were so many.
He heard the kettle coming to the boil, the weather at the door, music vibrating distantly through the floor from the kids’ room, and Marsaili’s voice. ‘What is it, Fin? What are all these cuttings?’
But at Fin’s very centre all was still. His own voice came to him from a long way away. ‘I think we should take your dad back to Eriskay, Marsaili. That’s the only place we’re going to find the truth.’
THIRTY-FIVE
Marsaili’s here! I knew she’d come for me some day. And the young chap. I’m not sure who he is, but he is kind enough to help me pack some of my things into a bag. Socks and underpants. A couple of shirts. A pair of trousers. They are leaving a lot of stuff in the wardrobe and the drawers. But I suppose they’ll come back for it later. It doesn’t matter. I feel like singing! Good old Marsaili. I can’t wait to get home, although I’m not quite sure now that I remember where exactly that is. But they’ll know.
Everyone’s sitting smiling at me as I leave, and I wave happily at them. The lady who is always trying to make me undress and get into that damned bath doesn’t look too pleased. Like she squatted down on the moor for a pee and sat on a thistle. Ha! I want to say. Serves you right. But I’m not sure what came out in the end. Sounded like Donald Duck. Who said that?
It’s cold outside, and that rain takes me back. All those solitary days out on the land with the beasts. I used to love that. The freedom of it. No more pretending. Just me and the rain in my face. The young man tells me to be sure and say if I need a pee. He’ll stop anywhere, any time, he says. Well, of course, I say. I’m not likely to pee my pants, am I?
