‘I wish we hadn’t come,’ Liz said. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘What’s the matter?’ he said. He tried not to sound impatient. ‘What are you frightened of?’
‘Nothing.’
He thought she was avoiding the question, but then she said it again. ‘Nothing. That’s exactly what.’
His ancestors had once been big shots in the area. Landed gentry. They had been rich at a time when almost nobody else was. Each generation had followed the pattern of the previous one. The eldest son inherited the big house and the younger ones went off to die in far-flung bits of the Empire, while the daughters were married to the sons of other rich families. The wives – all the wives – produced eight, or ten, or twelve children, or died in the attempt. Even the good breeders expired long before their husbands. Their annual pregnancies and early deaths were what perpetuated the system. Nothing lasts, though. One laird died unexpectedly young. There were debts and death duties. Limbs started to break off the family tree: the stout trunk began to crack and crumble. The big house was now long gone, and Alec’s parents lived miles away in a new housing development. Alec felt, when he was being cynical, that he was a twig at the end of a fallen branch rotting on the ground.
The ancestral plot was a patch enclosed by a foot-high cast-iron fretted fender. Various centuries-old tablets lay half-submerged in the soft turf. The main feature was an upright sandstone slab, eight feet high and ten feet wide, at the base of which, presumably, the family lay packed one on top of another. The sandstone had weathered so much that only a few words were still legible: BELOVED … DIED … TAKETH … TRUST. Alec ran his fingers over the face of the stone, but the names that had once been there could no longer be felt any more than they could be read. He knew it was the right spot because his grandfather had brought him to it twenty-five years before. ‘Pay attention,’ his grandfather had said. ‘This will be standing long after you and I are both gone. This is where we come from.’
He could read a few of the names back then. There had been an ALEXANDER, which had made him feel sure that his grandfather must be right. This is where we come from: he’d imagined troll-like people who looked a bit like him crawling from a hole under the slab. Twenty-five years and nothing much had changed. And yet everything had changed: his grandfather was dead – cremated – Alec was grown up, and the names on the stone were all gone. And he didn’t feel the connection anymore.
Something else was different. Beyond the kirkyard, beyond the sheep, beyond the splash of the shoreline, a group of oil rigs rested in the water like great metallic birds. They brought them in from the North Sea fields for refitting or when demand for oil fell and some distant accounting procedure drove them into the firth like birds sheltering from a storm. Alec thought them majestic. The vast structures, all intestinal pipes and rust-coloured legs and craning steel beaks and claws, seemed to be in sympathy with the gravestones, as if they themselves were already becoming monuments to aching toil and hard-earned rest.
‘I love it here,’ Alec said. He moved behind her, put his arms around her waist and gently turned her to face the water. He felt the bump beneath her shirt and rubbed it with the palm of one hand. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
Liz said, ‘Yes, in a way. But ugly too. Those things out there, they’re like monsters.’ She turned again to the family monument. ‘You know what really scares me?’
‘No.’
‘The finality of it. This great blank … nothing.’
‘The End,’ he said, and gave a little laugh.
‘You don’t believe in anything, do you?’ she said. ‘Not God, not something else after this, nothing at all.’
‘Nope,’ he said.
‘I just can’t imagine it,’ she said. ‘Not feeling, not existing. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I believe in you and I believe in me,’ he said. ‘I can feel us both. That makes sense.’
‘What about love?’ she said. ‘Don’t you believe in love?’
‘Well, I suppose so, but … it’s not really something you believe in, is it? It’s just there.’
‘But it has a power. It can make things happen. We know that.’
‘Are you going to burst into song, Liz?’
‘No I fucking am not.’ She kicked him lightly on the shin with her heel. ‘I’m just … everything just feels …’
‘What?’
‘Empty,’ she said.
He let her go and she walked down towards the sea. He wondered if she was trying to tell him something about the baby. If there was something wrong. If she didn’t want to go through with it.
Down below, where his forebears had been, it was empty. He felt that all right. Their minds and bones long since crumbled away. Ideas and work and knowledge and endurance, all mince for the worms. But there was a comfort in that. One day, there’d be nothing more to face, to deal with. He thought of the morning, Monday, and how tired, almost immediately, he would be.
He was about to call to Liz, ask her if she was feeling sick, if she was warm enough, if everything was going to be all right, when she gave a little yelp of surprise. She was twenty yards away, at the entrance to a stone enclosure – some other family’s plot. ‘Alec?’ she said – quite quietly, but a light breeze had got up off the firth and her voice carried to him as if she were speaking in his ear – ‘Alec, come here.’
The body of an old man was stretched on top of one of the tablets inside the enclosure. He was wearing a heavy black coat with mud splatters around the hem, and trousers with mud encrusted round the ankles. He had old working boots on his feet. On the ground beside him was a Tesco carrier bag with the wooden shaft of some implement protruding from it. His mouth was open and his right arm was flung to the side so that the hand trailed over the edge of the tablet. His skin looked blue beneath the white bristles of his beard.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Alec said.
Liz had her hand to her mouth. ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I knew someone was watching us.’
‘I don’t think so, sweetheart,’ Alec said. ‘I think he’s dead.’
He stepped forward and listened. His own heart was pounding so hard he couldn’t hear if the old man was breathing. He reached out and gingerly touched the coat at the shoulder. It felt damp and cold. He smelt something unpleasant, mouldy. He shook the shoulder.
The man jerked upright, and Alec jumped away. ‘What? What?’ the old man said, and went into a fit of coughing. Alec came back and started slapping his back. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all right. God, I’m sorry. We thought you were dead.’
‘Dead?’ the old man said. ‘I’m not dead. Stop hitting me. What makes you think I’m dead?’
‘You don’t look very well,’ Liz said.
‘I was working. I just needed a kip. Who are you?’
‘We’re visitors,’ Alec said. ‘We’re looking at the graves. Do you look after them then?’
‘Look after what?’
‘The graves.’
‘Oh.’ He paused. ‘Aye, I do. After a fashion.’ Another pause, as if he was weighing the information he had just given them. ‘Not just these ones. I look after lots of graveyards, all over the country. I do repairs.’
Alec and Liz exchanged glances. The old man appeared confused, disorientated. He swung his feet to the ground, cleared his throat and spat.
‘Sorry, lass,’ he said, less roughly. ‘Always have to do that when I’ve had a kip.’
‘I’m sorry we disturbed you,’ Liz said.
‘Well, it’s done now. Need to get on anyway. Finish up for the day.’
The three of them came out of the enclosure together. The old man looked at the sky as if assessing the chances of rain. He spat again.
‘What is it you repair?’ Alec asked. ‘The gravestones?’
‘Aye, of course,’ the old man said. ‘Do you think I’m going to manage the kirk single-handed?’ He was more impatient with Alec than he was with Liz. ‘The stones, man, the stones. Plenty o
f them. Somebody’s got to do it, get them back to how they were. See?’ He opened the Tesco bag and took out a mallet and a stone chisel. ‘Tools of the trade, man. That’s all I need. Anybody could do it, really.’
‘Oh, right,’ Alec said. He glanced at Liz again.
‘Once the names are gone, you see,’ the old man said, ‘that’s it. Oblivion.’ He looked directly at Liz, as if he suddenly recognised her. ‘What are you doing here? You’re too bonnie to hang about a place like this.’
Liz shrugged. She was about to speak when Alec butted in. The old man was beginning to irritate him.
‘My ancestors are here.’ Alec pointed to the sandstone slab. ‘I wanted to show her our stone.’
The old man peered over at the slab. ‘Oh aye,’ he said, ‘I mind that one. How do you ken it’s yours?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How do you ken it’s your stone. There’s no names on it.’
‘My grandfather told me,’ Alec said. ‘He brought me here years ago. I remember.’
‘You remember, do you?’ Something like a sneer slid into the old man’s voice. ‘Your grandfather? Ach well. If you remember.’
‘Yes, he does,’ Liz said. She moved closer to Alec. ‘He does.’
‘Ach well,’ the old man said again. ‘That’s all right then.’
‘There were names on it then,’ Alec said. ‘But they’re all gone now.’
‘That’s right,’ the old man said. ‘All gone. Nothing more I can do about them.’
Liz shivered against Alec. He could tell she was still frightened. There was something about the old man that even he found unsettling.
‘Well, I’d better get on.’ The man put his tools back in the plastic bag and set off towards the shore, where the newer graves were. They saw him spit on the grass again. After a minute his head bobbed down behind a shiny black stone and they heard the chink, chink of his chisel.
Alec screwed up his face at Liz. ‘What was that all about?’
‘I don’t know,’ Liz said. ‘He seems …’
‘He’s nuts,’ Alec said. ‘Probably harmless, but nuts. Nobody goes around repairing gravestones. Not like that. With their tools in a carrier bag? And where’s his car? He can’t have walked here.’
‘Maybe he lives nearby,’ Liz said. She pointed at the former manse in the trees. ‘Like there.’
‘I don’t think so. Did you get a whiff of him? He’s a tramp. A tramp who’s lost the place, thinks he’s a stonemason.’
‘That’s sad,’ she said. ‘Maybe we ought to tell someone.’
‘What would we say? That we met an old tramp in a graveyard and we think he’s a bit sad? Forget it. Who’d give a fuck about that?’
They stood together, holding hands, looking out at the rigs. Alec tried to count them, but some were hidden behind others, and he kept having to start again. A dozen at least. Liz was doing the same, or maybe just staring, he couldn’t tell. Why was that, if he loved her? And if she was going to have his baby? How could he be so close to her and yet not tell?
The breeze blowing off the water was cool now. The day was starting to fade, and out on the rigs amber and yellow lights were coming on.
‘Time to go,’ Alec said.
‘Do you think we should offer him a lift?’ Liz asked, as they started back to the car.
‘Who? The old fellow? No chance,’ Alec said.
Liz said, ‘Wait a minute. Listen.’
They heard a sheep bleating, and gulls crying, but the chink, chink noise had stopped.
‘Go and see if he’s all right,’ she said. ‘He might have keeled over again.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Alec said.
‘No, go and check,’ she insisted. ‘I couldn’t bear it if we left him here and he’d collapsed. We’ll both go.’
But there was no sign of him. They separated, searching through the newer gravestones, calling out, ‘Hello, hello,’ but he had gone. They came together again by the stone he had been working on.
‘He must have had a bike,’ Alec said. ‘He said he was finishing up for the day. He’ll stay up the road somewhere.’
‘He didn’t have a bike,’ Liz said. Then she said, ‘Oh, look!’
All the lettering on the shiny black stone had been chiselled away. They could tell where it had been because there were six deep gouges across the face of the stone. On the ground was a heap of chips. The breeze was already dispersing dust across the grass.
‘Bloody hell!’ Alec said.
Liz stood shaking her head. ‘Do you think he did that? He can’t have, can he?’
‘He must have. There’s been nobody else here.’
‘But that’s terrible. That’s sacrilege.’
‘Vandalism. The old bastard.’
‘Maybe it’s some family thing,’ Liz said. ‘That must be what it is. An old feud. Maybe somebody did something awful to him, something he could never forgive, and this is his way of repaying them.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Alec said. ‘It still doesn’t give him the right. And anyway, this isn’t the only one. Look, here. And here.’
They separated and moved among the stones again, finding more and more of them defaced, the names and dates of people obliterated. Every time they found one they shouted out in amazement. They only stopped, and came back together, when it grew so gloomy that it was easier to hear than to see each other.
‘He said he did repairs,’ Alec said.
‘Yes,’ Liz said. ‘But that’s not what he meant. He said …’
‘What?’ Alec said when she didn’t finish.
‘Something else,’ Liz said. ‘What was it?’
‘We should report him,’ Alec said. ‘Nobody has the right to do that.’ He heard the anger in his voice and wondered at it. He felt Liz clutch at his arm. ‘That’s what the weather does,’ he said. ‘The wind and the rain. That’s what they do. Not some old tramp with a hammer and chisel.’
‘I’d like to go now,’ Liz said. ‘Can we go?’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ She looked so pale and weary that he needed to say something, to reassure her.
‘I’ll look after you,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to be afraid.’
‘I know,’ she said. But they hurried to the car, and Alec started the engine at once, as if something were pursuing them. He switched on the headlights. The night had swallowed up the day and he felt as if it might swallow them. He wondered where the old man had gone. He thought, maybe he’s hiding in the back of the car with his chisel, just waiting till we drive off before he attacks. He ridiculed the thought as soon as it arrived, but he kept it to himself.
He took a last look at the firth before swinging the car round. The lights on the oil rigs stretched towards them across the water in wavy amber lines. The rigs could have been giant floating houses, each one with giant children running up and down stairs, and a man and a woman of ordinary size, coming home from work, exhausted, dividing the labours, one tidying rooms and drawing curtains while the other prepared dinner for their giant children. But it was an illusion, a childish fancy. They were just oil rigs, waiting for the signal from someone hundreds or maybe thousands of miles away that would send them back out to sea.
MacTaggart’s Shed
That morning, before it was fully light, before he had drunk a cup of coffee, even before the first whisky of the day, Christie saw ghosts crawling through the field opposite his house. He had come to in the armchair in the living room. He wasn’t sure what had woken him. Probably a tractor or car going by. His head ached and his mouth felt like it was stuffed with newspaper. The room was still half-dark and he stumbled over an empty bottle lying on the carpet as he went to the window and pulled back the shabby brown curtain.
Across the narrow road was the big field, and beyond it another road, and beyond that trees and more fields rising up into the hills. There were houses dotted along the distant road and also on the hillside. He could see lights in some of the windows, but it was not yet bri
ght enough to make out smoke coming from the lums. He remembered the smoke that had poured from those houses when they’d been set on fire. He remembered their neat red roofs before the fighting started and later, when the fires were out, the charred rafters through which could be seen the raging green of abandoned gardens. A few of the houses had been repaired since then, by men who had brought their families from other villages and settled into them as if they owned them. Those were the ones with lights showing. But most remained broken and empty, reminders of what had happened. It was as he was thinking this that something caught his eye in the big field and he saw the ghosts.
They were moving with painful slowness through the shaws of MacTaggart’s winter crop, from which strips of mist were hanging like tattered flags. Christie watched as the ghosts crept across his vision, from right to left, away from the end of the field where MacTaggart’s old shed had been. He should have been filled with horror but he was not, he felt only a dull stirring of the old fear that had been with him for months. It was as if he had been expecting them. He’d not known he was expecting them, but as soon as he recognised what they were it made sense that they were there, and that they were on their hands and knees trying to get away from the shed.
The crop was Brussels sprouts, a vegetable he hated, and the shaws were like miniature versions of those stark, blasted trees that appeared in photographs of the trenches in the Great War. The ghosts might have been the ghosts of soldiers crawling in No Man’s Land, but they weren’t. There seemed to be a lot of them, far more than there should have been. Christie tried to count them but they were indistinct, and low on the ground. He could hardly make them out at all. He wondered if the dog would have a ghost and tried to pick it out among the shapes, but then they all started to look like dogs. After a few minutes he could not concentrate anymore, and went to the back of the house, to the kitchen.
Republics of the Mind Page 19
