by Adam Thorpe
Then she said, ‘More enthusiasm than expertise, heh?’
She stared at him, not a friendly stare. He blushed, the penny suddenly dropping, and turned away to watch the earth mover, struggling like something half-witted along the causeway. Her sparkler eyes must have seen him behind the marram. He was wearing the same shapeless hat, his sturdy build and scraggy beard easily recognisable from afar.
‘I’m a bird-spotter,’ he mumbled. ‘I like things that fly.’
‘Not planes, I hope.’
‘God, no!’
Her mouth stretched again, lavish and wide, disobeying her frown. ‘Don’t be so shy, Mr Webb. Come and see what we do. After all, we’re part RSPB-funded, though our remit’s general flora and fauna. I’m taking hydrological readings in the machair, which seems to be getting wetter. The locals have noticed it, so I’m establishing whether it’s true. Rising sea levels. You can’t just go by rumour, can you?’
‘Of course not.’
She produced a card from the bag on the passenger seat and handed it to him, giving him directions he wasn’t listening to: it was the second time in half an hour that he had felt her fingers touch his palm. Dr Judith Byrne, followed by a string of letters. Any time next week. Call us.
The earth mover was now close enough to make normal conversation impossible. She climbed back in.
‘We’ll be expecting you!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t be shy, Mr Webb!’
He raised his hand and felt like a schoolboy. Her mouth stretched and there wasn’t a frown.
He made straight for the MacLeans’ house. No time to lose: instinct might take over and that was fatal. He felt the grey suits were bad news.
Carol was in, Angus was under the glittering waves. She was surprised to see him. He had a question, he said. Flushed and pleased, she made for the kettle, but he declined. She adjusted her apron and then her hair. The slim but busty girl who had screamed at Blondie had filled out, but still lay somewhere under the workaday clothes of blouse and jeans and pinny. They sat at the kitchen table; she was peeling home-grown potatoes. The radio, turned down to a murmur, was playing reggae.
‘Ask away, then. You sure you’ll nae try some of my shortbread?’
‘There’s a guest at the Tinker’s Arms.’
‘We’ve two.’
‘What do they look like?’
‘Quite natty,’ she said. ‘Grey suits, ties, folders. Business types, you know. Always on their phones. One had a wee ring in his ear. Shaven heads, but all the men have that, these days. It’s to hide the baldness.’
‘English?’
‘I think so. Not Scots, at any rate. They didnae say much when I was there. Just talked about the wind. As everyone does.’
‘Do you know how long they’re staying?’
‘I think three days. I’ve to do a thorough clean on Tuesday, anyway.’
He nodded, peeling a potato with his trusty pocket-knife from Sierra Leone. She didn’t object. ‘Why do you think they’re here?’
‘Questions, questions! Some project or other. Golf course, wind farm, weather station, flashy hotel – you name it. They never seem to see the light o’ day, thank goodness. Is there something the matter?’
He looked up. ‘Have they ever asked after me?’
‘No. But then I’m just the skivvy,’ she added, laughing.
‘You’re a lot more than that,’ he said, without really meaning to.
Her eyes widened. ‘The same could be said of your guid self. Why all these queries?’
‘I’m going through a messy divorce,’ he said, improvising. ‘I think my wife might be snooping on me. Private detectives, all that.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. I did wonder. A man on his own.’
‘Whatever, I’ll be keeping a low profile. Don’t let on you know me.’ A simple precaution: they sounded harmless.
‘Well, I don’t know you, do I?’ She was looking at him with seventeen-year-old eyes out of a wind-burned face in its late forties.
He took up another potato to peel, and their hands touched over the bowl. He suddenly found himself taking hers, squeezing them. They stayed like that for a moment.
‘What’s going on?’ she said, not looking at him but at the peelings.
He closed his eyes, his breath as quick and sharp as when he was running. Her hands were warm and slightly wet. He raised them to his lips. The knuckles smelt of Pears’ soap. The soap his mother would use, long ago. He hadn’t smelt it in years. When he’d got back from boarding school, aged seven, after the term during which she’d suddenly died, there was still half an amber cake of it in her bathroom, streamlined by use, as aerodynamic as Bluebird. He’d kept it for ages.
‘Angus is back at six,’ Carol MacLean said, matter of fact. ‘At some point I’ll need to prepare his food.’
Bob opened his eyes and released her hands, feeling embarrassed. She stood and took the apron off, hanging it up on the hook by the door, then came back to the table and looked at him. Her white blouse had little yellow buttons.
‘It’s only three thirty,’ she said. ‘I’ll need to lock up, in case.’
‘In case?’
‘In case your detectives call round. If we’re going to smooch, we’d best lock up and retire.’
‘Somebody might have seen me,’ he said feebly. He’d not really meant this.
She locked the front door and went to the stairs, turned round to look at him. Her yellow buttons were like the flowers on the guelder rose he had allowed to flourish at the end of the orchard, to hide the new estate of crammed, executive homes.
‘Don’t leave your stuff there,’ she said.
He retrieved his little bulging rucksack and followed Carol MacLean up the squeaky stairs into the master bedroom. Its satiny striped wallpaper was unrelieved by any pictures; the bed had an extravagant cushioned end of pale violet. There was a smell of talc and aftershave. She closed the curtains and turned to him. He dropped the rucksack on the carpet and The Guns of Navarone fell out of a side pocket. He fumbled to retrieve it, hands trembling like a teenager’s, and crammed it back in.
‘When you’re finished with your reading, you can undo these,’ she smiled, indicating her blouse buttons.
He undid them one by one with thick fingers, opening the front to reveal a flimsy nylon bra packed tight with pressed-up breasts that rose and fell, stretching and contracting their pores, their peppery scatter of moles. She was touching him below through the tracksuit’s cotton looseness. She peeled the blouse off and dropped it on the carpet and pressed herself to him.
‘I love smooching,’ she whispered.
‘Carol MacLean.’
‘I’m fine. Are we going the whole hog, by the way?’
He said nothing. Her warmth and solidity were so comforting. His loneliness dissolved into her warmth.
‘I’m an orphan now,’ she hissed into his chest. ‘I can do what I like.’
She seemed untroubled, almost unexcited, as she removed her remaining clothes. Her left breast was smaller, had a sickle-shaped scar. He kissed her throat and then her salty mouth. He thought of Angus groping for scallops in his diving suit, in peril under the cold and gloomy sea. But he couldn’t stop: his desire was streamlined by abstinence. The wind whistled around the house. She listened, shifting in his arms.
‘Sometimes the sea gets up and he comes hame early.’
He listened in turn, feeling her heartbeat, her breathing; he hardly noticed wind noise, these days. ‘It sounds pretty gusty.’
‘Let’s not be dawdling, then,’ she said, pulling back the covers. Her knickers, satiny like the wallpaper, were polka-dotted, a fold of flesh hiding their elastic. He stood behind her and touched them in front: like something wrapped up, moss or paper covered in satin. Pass the parcel. She leaned back on him, her buttocks pressing his hardness, her hair against his mouth.
‘You’re so lovely, so lovely,’ he murmured. ‘Do you do this often?’
‘We’re not yet on the scr
ap heap, are we?’ She moved onto the bed and waited on her side, hand tucked under her head, the duvet drawn only to her hips. ‘It’s an ancient custom of the isle,’ she whispered. ‘You didnae know that?’
A sudden gust knocked the window so hard its glass rattled.
‘You look like a rabbit caught in headlights,’ she said, grinning. She extended an arm. He suppressed an impulse to let its smoothness enclose him.
‘Carol, I’m not sure.’
‘Not sure of what, Samson?’
‘I like Angus.’
‘We all like Angus,’ she said, with an edge of irritation.
‘Someone did this to me once. I came home early and caught them.’
‘Oh. What did you do?’
‘I nearly shot the guy. Because of that, my wife wouldn’t have me back.’
‘You had a gun, did you?’
‘I guess I did,’ he said. ‘That was the trouble.’
She snorted softly, turning onto her back. ‘Then you’re not what I thought you were.’
‘What did you think I was?’
‘Different from the others,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘Different from other men.’
The next day was Sunday. Everything shut down, including the pubs. The hilltop kirk in Bargrennan would receive its line of worshippers dressed as if for a funeral. He almost felt like joining them today: he needed a stern ticking-off. He didn’t think much about God, whether God was real or not, but Bob would always send up a little prayer as the aircraft began its roll-out.
He’d been on the brink. Instead of jumping, he had walked away. ‘Trust your feelings,’ Doug Rydale would be fond of saying, ‘and you’ll be chasing your goddamn tail all day.’ But when Bob was returning home to the croft-house, feeling confused, Angus’s van had passed him, heading for home early and at the islanders’ usual boy-racer speed: a friendly wave from behind the smeared windscreen. He’d waved back too hastily, his heartbeat pounding in his ears over the wind that had mistaken them for conch shells.
That was yesterday. Today, in honour of the two harmless grey suits up the road, he was keeping his head low in the croft-house, his hidey-hole prepared and his pistol always to hand. He’d lost his bookmark and read the same few pages of The Guns of Navarone. When dusk fell he walked to the phone box and called his children. Sophie’s mobile was on message; David was in the library – for real.
‘That’s a very quiet pub,’ Bob joked.
Once David was outside, he broke the news immediately. Sharansky had been deliberately killed. There were tyre-marks on his chest, where the vehicle had backed over him just in case. The police reckoned he had been facing the vehicle, which was stationary, when it had suddenly accelerated towards him, leaving burn-marks. The general theory was that he’d made an early-morning appointment – with the killer.
‘Yup, you never know who’s on your side in this game,’ Bob said. ‘David, please take care. Don’t do anything silly.’
‘You’ve done silly things all your life, Dad.’
‘And look where it’s got me.’
* * *
He woke up Monday morning having slept badly. He felt rough. He missed flying. He fished out Judith Byrne’s card and considered paying a visit. As a mouse might visit a trap.
He wondered if he should take a jaunt to the mainland instead: drive down to Edinburgh, stay somewhere like the Balmoral for a few days, stuff himself with world cuisine, keep warm even in the corridors; but this would be a mistake. They’d spot something awry with his fake passport, or get on the phone to certain suite-booking clients – hotels, like airports, being shady toytowns. He should stay put, for once in his life. Let the flies settle. Six months max. Avoid porridge for twenty-four hours. Read books. Listen to the radio. Write his memoirs. The thought of the latter appalled him.
He’d had a dream that a flotilla of inflatables filled with black-clad frogmen toting automatics had invaded the island, running silently up to the croft. He’d gone downstairs in a sweat and opened the front door; the night was starry, air sweeping off the sea and rattling his windows. He put on his boots and coat and made for the loch. The water was shiny, like glazed tiles: it was the light falling from thousands of stars – the Milky Way was a visible smear. In the north-west there was something larky going on, a party, disco lights throwing up a pale reflection, but with no bass beats audible over the wind. After a moment he realised it was the aurora borealis. His bare calves were frozen.
After breakfast he checked the weather: the grass was agitated, as were the clouds, but nothing else moved. There was nothing else. Dr Byrne’s broad smile was out of optical range.
He headed off for a run. A van was parked the other side of the gate. It was Angus’s, and he was inside, shrouded in the smoke of a roll-up. The driver’s door opened as Bob approached with a carefree grin.
‘Fancy meeting you here,’ Angus said, without getting out.
‘Angus, good to see you. Not out at sea?’
‘My mate’s down with the flu. The captain cannae dive on his own.’ He gave Bob a sharp, meaningful look. ‘D’you fancy a wee boat trip, Mr Webb? Spot a few porpoises? Seals? Sharks?’
‘That’s kind. Can I let you know?’
Angus looked at him stonily. He had flyaway eyebrows that made his clear blue eyes look fiercer, and a muscle spasm in his right cheek. ‘The water’s calm. Tomorrow she won’t be. Maybe rough for weeks. My wife says you mentioned a boat trip, one time.’
‘Did she? Oh, that’s right. So I did.’
Bob had never been a great fan of boats. He waited for Angus by the lonely concrete slipway in Ardcorry, beyond the Tinker’s Arms, scanning the landward side for strange men. It had turned grey, with small low black clouds like flocks of sheep, and he didn’t think the sea was quite calm enough, chopping and slobbering against the rocks and timber piles.
The boat was a peeling dinghy with an outboard motor, not the solid scallop-fishing vessel. They chugged out between grass-tufted islets and fearsome-looking rocks (Bob thought Angus steered too close to them), and he suddenly felt the ocean swell beneath the hull, like an adult taking charge. But this was not a responsible adult. It had no compassion, for a start, and it was (according to Bob’s fingers) incredibly cold.
Angus was silent, seated in the stern with a hand on the tiller, the motor leaving a trail of dark smoke. In fact, the outboard was loud enough to make ordinary chat difficult. Bob had to twist in his seat to look out front. For some reason, he preferred facing aft, keeping an eye on the pilot. Seals slithered off rocks or stared at them with remarkably human expressions – disdain, mostly. Suddenly, Angus pointed ahead. Three sleek stone-grey backs breaking water over and over.
‘Porpoise?’ yelled Bob.
Angus nodded. He seemed dejected. The swell was smooth and low, lifting and dropping the boat as they hit the truly open sea in a way that surprised Bob – it seemed exaggerated. The prow pushed a V of ripples out onto the sleek flanks of water, foam-flecked from some souvenir of the crashing, catastrophic breakers glimmering much further out. The vessel had shrunk, the sea had grown, peppered as far as the horizon with the explosions of gannets. It was strange, not being able to see below the grey surface. It might have been a shifting roof of slate.
Bob looked back the way they’d come, surveying the island and its attendant islets, its peaks and troughs. He reckoned the high bulk beyond Angus’s shoulder was the headland, the pale thread all that remained of his broad beach. The wind was now remarkably boisterous, the salty air devoid of anything to do with land – but it wasn’t clear and empty, like the air of the stratosphere; it made Bob think of death, or at least of non-life. It was punching at his raised hood as if to remind him, and made his eyes water. This was not his element.
Angus knew what he was doing, of course. Bob began to relax. He was losing his embarrassment in front of the man. He was glad he had walked away from the deal, this time. He felt almost good about it, and smiled at his pilot. The pilot di
d not smile back.
Then the engine cut out.
They bobbed about, turning as the swells took them. Bob looked at Angus, faintly alarmed. Were there oars in the boat? What the hell did you do if the motor died, or you ran out of fuel?
Angus was holding out a bit of paper. A small card.
‘Have a squint at this,’ he said. His Ss whistled, almost shrieked, through his gap tooth.
Bob looked, without taking it. It was his bookmark, the stub of his Emirates Airlines boarding card. He returned Angus’s stare with a quizzical glance, the voltage in his heart taking on a surge. The water chopped against the hull: the sea was bottomless, to all intents and purposes. A few thin planks between, bilge slapping at his boots.
‘Found it,’ said Angus, ‘in my wife’s bedroom.’
Bob’s face was a beacon, a distress flare: he raised his eyebrows free of the glow. ‘Oh?’
‘Man to man, Mr Webb. When I return to the hoose on Saturday, earlier than usual, I find Mrs MacLean in the shower. She never takes showers in the afternoon. She was in a queer mood.’
Bob wondered if he could swim it. He held the boat’s sides – strakes, he seemed to think they were called – and mentally calculated the distance. He couldn’t. It might have been a few hundred metres, or a thousand, or two miles. The land was a faint blue heap, very far away over the grey wastes of water. He didn’t have the right instruments.
‘Are you listening, Mr Webb?’
‘Go on, Angus. Do call me Kit, by the way,’ he added, conscious of sounding like his father: clipped, ex-military, fighter-pilot moustache kept till long after its sell-by date. ‘Aren’t we drifting a bit?’
‘We’re fine. I didnae breathe a word of my thoughts. She was even chattier than usual. Thank God it’s the Gaelic, which is easier on the ears than the English tongue. Am I not correct?’
‘Totally agree. It’s a lovely tongue.’
Angus frowned. ‘You look scared, Mr Webb.’ He patted the outboard. ‘We cannae hear ourselves think when this is working. I go upstairs to the master bedroom, and I look about, having my suspicions. And what do I find?’
