by Louise Welsh
Sheep grazed stoically in the fields beyond, their fleeces grey and shit-stained, ruffled by the same wind that bent the tall grasses edging the roadside. He’d left the village behind at the pier, but now and again he would pass a cottage built out of stone as grey and uncompromising as the sky. He slowed to take a corner and saw two children staring at him, hand in hand from the edge of the road, their hair matted, faces bronzed by sun and dirt. They looked like the kind of feral kids that might commune with faeries, and he was almost surprised to notice their stout Wellington boots. Murray raised a hand in hallo and was met with incurious stares.
A few drops of rain smeared the windscreen, but there was no need for the wipers yet. The radio had died, the signal left behind on the mainland. He turned on the CD player and Johnny Cash croaked into ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’.
Murray had a sudden memory of his father singing the song in the kitchen one evening as he dried the dishes, his father’s inflections the same as Cash’s, but his words slower, his voice leaving the tune behind on his adapted chorus, I’ve been to Fraserburgh, Peterburgh, Bridge of Weir, very queer. Dunoon, whit a toon, Aberdeen where folks are mean. I’ve been everywhere, I’ve been everywhere.
Murray turned the music off and, as if on cue, saw the sign for his B&B swinging bleakly at the edge of the road.
He offered to pay in advance, but Mrs Dunn the landlady laughed.
‘It’s all right, son, I trust you. Anyway, you’d not get far if you tried to do a runner. Peter wouldn’t let you on the ferry.’
She was a pensioner of a type he thought HRT and aqua-aerobics had rendered redundant: broad-beamed, big-busted and solid-corseted, dressed in a heather-coloured two-piece too stiff to be comfortable. Her hair looked freshly set, a tinge of blue livening the pewter. He hoped it hadn’t been done for his benefit. He felt as morose as Peter, the sullen ferryman, guardian of the island.
Mrs Dunn got him to sign the visitors’ book, and then started up the small staircase.
‘Your room’s up here.’
He followed her to the tiny landing, careful not to knock his rucksack against the photographs of long-grown-up children lining the walls. The smell of damp reminded him of his father’s house towards the end, before he and Jack had agreed a care home was the only option.
‘You’re on the left. The bathroom’s in the middle and I’m on the right.’
He had a vague sense that he should say something to assure her he was no madman come from the mainland with mayhem and pensioner murder on his mind. But the old lady was ahead of him, pushing open the bedroom door as if there was nothing left to be feared in the world.
The little room was suffused with the sickly glow of a Disney sunset, its small twin beds draped in shiny satin spreads that almost, but not quite, matched the princess-pink walls, the rosebud-sprigged carpet and blushing curtains. A portable TV inscribed with a Barbie logo sat in one corner next to a towel rail decked with rosy towels.
‘Well?’
It took Murray a second to realise she was awaiting his verdict. He tried to put some warmth into his voice.
‘Very nice, thanks.’
Mrs Dunn nodded gravely, as if agreeing with him on an important point of scripture, and then asked, ‘What time do you want your dinner?’
The journey still sat uneasily in his stomach.
‘Don’t go to any trouble, I’ll get something in the town.’
The old woman snorted.
‘There’s no town, son. No café, no pub, come to that.
It’s my cooking or nothing.’
The small room seemed to do a quick pulse as the house took an inward breath, closing around him. He drew in the rose-tinted air, silently blessing the impulse that had sent him into an Oban off-licence for a bottle of whisky.
‘What about seven?’
‘Seven’s fine.’
Murray said, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
But he mustn’t have sounded convincing because Mrs Dunn added, ‘Don’t worry. It’s a while since I poisoned anyone’, and shut the door smartly behind her.
Murray sat on the bed nearest the door, wondering again at his talent for alienating every woman he met. Maybe it was losing their mother early that had done it, though Jack had always managed to use the motherless-boy stuff to good effect.
Murray slid his computer from his rucksack and switched it on, vaguely hoping a wireless signal would appear on the screen. It didn’t.
No café, no pub.
The pink room took another inward pulse. He’d imagined a tourist brochure cliché, a leather armchair pulled close to a crackling fire, a crystal glass of malt in easy reach as he worked on his opus.
The colour of the room was surely irrelevant. He needed to make progress, to start writing, continue with the research, sure, but move on to the text, begin ordering his thoughts before they spiralled out of reach.
He still knew next to nothing about Archie’s childhood, had got ensnared instead in the episodes leading to his death. He could begin with the end, of course; have the poet’s head dip beneath the waves, the fronds of his long hair floating free in the water, air bubbles nestling in his beard, lips parting as he welcomed oncoming peace.
Murray took off his shoes and went into the small bathroom on the landing. He had to rid himself of this Hollywood vision. Drowning would be no better than other deaths. Painful and nasty, with shit and vomit clouding the last moments, a desperate clinging to a life already lost.
The smell of damp was more intense here. The shower was hemmed in a tiny, plastic cubicle sealed with a concertina door. He wondered if it leaked, wondered if he would be able to wash in the small space without breaking anything. The thought made him realise he’d forgotten to pack any soap. Maybe there was a local shop where he could buy some (he hoped to God it was licensed), otherwise he’d be forced to lather himself from the same bar that had slid around his host’s aged body. The disgust the thought brought with it made him feel guilty and he washed his face in the sink, avoiding his reflection in the mirror.
Back in his room he unpacked the box folder that held his notes. Here were his analyses of Lunan’s poems (these, at least, he could be confident of), some notes on suicides he’d managed to glean from Dr Garrett’s research, his interviews with Audrey, Meikle and Professor James, each neatly transcribed and assigned its own plastic envelope. He laid them across the spare bed, mourning the bedroom’s lack of a desk.
So far his work had amounted to little. Maybe Fergus Baine had been right and he should limit himself to a discussion of the poetry, rather than the man. After all, that was what counted, wasn’t it?
He picked James’s folder from the pile. In retrospect, he was surprised the professor hadn’t raised the same objections as Fergus. Murray remembered James being close to fanatical on the importance of divorcing writers’ lives from their work.
Reductive, simplistic, crude and lacking in analysis!
He could still conjure the sound of ripping paper that had shocked the tutorial room as James tore a student’s essay concentrating on Milton’s blindness to the detriment of his poetry both verbally and physically to shreds. But the projected biography of Lunan had raised no barbed comments. Despite the ready excuses offered by retirement and failing health, James had welcomed Murray, granted him hours from the depleted bank of time reserved for his own researches. The professor might simply have changed his opinion on the significance artists’ lives had on their art, or been motivated by a sense of collegiate duty; but holding the folder in his hand, Murray was struck again by a suspicion that the old man hadn’t been as forthcoming as he might have.
Maybe he had simply asked the wrong questions. There was no obligation to help those too stupid or lazy to help themselves, and James had always been impatient of anyone whose standards or intelligence didn’t match his own. The snowstorm of tattered pages he’d scattered into the bin before the author of the Milton essay’s less-than-dry eyes had shown that.
Murray slid the transcript from its folder, feeling again a sense of something unspoken. He took his pencil and put a star next to something James had said: those of us who were left could have served his poetry better.
Perhaps it was guilt at an unfulfilled obligation to posterity that had made the old man reluctant to explore the intersection of his and Archie’s past – especially now he was facing his own death, the prospect of his own un-assured legacy.
Murray drew a squiggle through the star. It was important not to give too much weight to words spoken casually.
You have to remember it was a long time ago, and we were privileged to be at the birth of many remarkable pieces of work.
The professor was realistic. He knew the limitations of individuals against the weight of literature and history. He thought back to James’s overstuffed, abortively-feminine room and groaned. The old man’s health might be failing, but at least he had space to think and write. Murray lay back on the bed, put the professor’s interview over his face and closed his eyes.
He was woken by the landlady’s sharpening voice at the door.
‘Mr Watson, your dinner’s waiting.’
Murray sat up, like Dracula risen from the dead.
He would phone James and ask if he knew Bobby Robb, and perhaps while he was answering that question, the questions unasked would also slip into place.
There was no phone signal to be had in his room, or at the melamine dining table where his dinner waited, a slight skin forming over the brown stuff he supposed was gravy. It was a temptation to take his mobile straight out into the evening, but manners prevailed and he managed to work his way through a once-frozen chicken pie, tinned carrots and potatoes followed by half a tin of peaches topped with cream from a can. It was the best meal he’d had in a while, and he said so to Mrs Dunn, before pulling on his new waterproof jacket and stepping out into the bluster of the fading day.
Murray turned his back on the cottage and continued along the road that had brought him there. The bars on his phone remained stubbornly absent. He saw a sign marked Broch, and took the right turn its arrow instructed, into a stony road less finished than the last. It felt good to have a destination, even though he wasn’t sure what a broch was.
Professor James had known Lunan the man and the poet. He had been there at the birth of his sole collection, and though he’d not been present when the poet died, he had been close enough to go to the wake. If Christie insisted on keeping her silence, James might turn out to be the closest approximation of an eye witness available.
A small house appeared on his right, a square of scrubby grass in front of it, fenced off against the sheep. A toy tractor lay abandoned on its side beside the gate. Murray supposed that if you could stand the weather, this might not be such a bad place to raise a family. He’d assumed Archie and Christie were after a new centre for poetry and debauch, but perhaps they’d been hoping to put all that behind them, chasing ‘the good life’ on some hippy self-sufficiency kick. After all, for Lunan it had been some kind of a coming home.
The light was beginning to fade. He glanced at his phone. If he didn’t get a signal soon he would walk back to the car, drive down to the pier and try there.
Years ago, when he was working on his PhD, he’d gone out with a girl who studied archaeology. Angela. He’d fallen for her pale skin and red hair, would have been happy to spend all their free time together in bed, but their main recreation had been hill-walking to ancient sites. Angela had wanted to get engaged. He’d considered it, spent hours working out the pros and cons, and then, when the cons had won, broken up with her. He’d not seen Angela for years, hadn’t thought about her in a while. She was one of the crossroads in his life, a path he might have taken.
There was some sort of structure up on the rise beyond, or was it an outcrop of rocks? It was hard to be sure. He left the road and began to climb. The wind was mounting now, the ground soft beneath his feet.
As he got closer he could see that the structure was the remnants of a circular drystane dyke. Some sheep sheltering in its lea startled at his approach and rushed away with unwise haste, fat ladies running downhill in high heels. He halted and let them pass, the wind tearing at his face, feared that if he moved on he’d inadvertently round them over some unseen cliff.
Angela had probably told him what a broch was at some point. A fort, he supposed, or maybe a large tomb. He walked to where the wall had collapsed and peered into its centre, half-expecting to see the usual detritus that clogged lonely shelters: drained half-bottles of spirits, used condoms and dented beer cans. The interior dropped gently down into a slow dip, like a giant cauldron. Nothing except sheep shit sullied it.
Murray could feel the sense of being observed that had always infected him on his walks with Angela. ‘Citydwellers’ paranoia,’ she’d called it. But at least in the city someone would hear you scream. The sight of a few discarded johnnies would have been reassuring, a sign of life.
He looked back the way he had come. Now that he was at the top of the hill, he could see the day had reached the far side of dusk. The light was still with him, but he wasn’t sure how long it would last. It might be wiser to turn back while visibility was good, rather than risk a twisted ankle on the way down. Murray took his mobile from his pocket and was rewarded by three bars. He hunkered down in the shelter left by the sheep and found Professor James’s number.
He’d expected the phone to ring for a long time, but James answered on the second peal.
‘Ah, yes, I meant to ask if you would remember to pick up a packet of those fig biscuits, please, Helen. Iris likes them with her tea and I suspect the ones in the cupboard might be a little soft.’
Murray coughed, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Professor James …’
‘Who is this?’
‘Murray. Dr Watson.’
He felt like an unsuspecting caller stumbling on a conversation on the party line, but the professor seemed unfazed.
‘I wondered when you would phone. Are you on your way round?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘I thought you were my daughter Helen.’
The old man sounder frailer than he had appeared the week before and a vague note that might have been confusion had entered his voice.
‘Would you like me to ring back later?’
‘No, best to get me while I’m still here.’
Murray knew better than to ask where the professor was going.
‘A name has come up. I wondered if it meant anything to you. Bobby Robb. He had a distinctive scar …’
‘Yes, I knew him.’ James’s tone became firmer, as if he were on safe ground now the conversation had shifted to the past. ‘He wasn’t a regular, and when he did attend his work was derivative and confused.’
The professor’s manner was dismissive, as if Robb wasn’t worth discussing.
‘One of Archie Lunan’s friends said he blamed Robb for Archie’s premature death.’
‘I’m afraid that would be beyond my realm of knowledge.’ The statement was like a full-stop at the end of a sentence.
‘Was he close to Archie?’
‘His work wasn’t even in the same stratosphere.’
‘I meant emotionally.’
‘Dr Watson, are you in the habit of monitoring your students’ emotional entanglements?’
‘No.’
‘Then why might you think I would be?’
‘Professor James, I got the impression that you expected me to call at some point. Who did you think I was going to ask you about?’
The line went dead and for a moment Murray thought the professor was going to tell him to get back to him when he had completed his research. But then the old man sighed and said, ‘Your nemesis, of course. Professor Fergus Baine.’
‘My nemesis?’
‘I had a feeling you two were at odds.’
The wind blasted at Murray’s mobile phone. He wondered if Professor James could hear the sheep calling to ea
ch other in the background. They might be stupid, but at least they managed to live together in harmony.
‘Not as far as I’m aware.’
‘I must have misunderstood. Where are you? It sounds like you’re calling from inside the drum of a washing machine.’
‘I’m in Lismore. It’s a bit blowy, there’s not much cover.’
‘Have you seen Christie Graves?’
‘Not yet.’ The wind forced Murray to raise his voice.
He already regretted walking up the hill instead of searching for a nice warm telephone box. ‘Why did you think I’d want to talk about Fergus?’
‘I thought your generation eschewed researchers, Dr Watson? Surely you don’t want me to do your job for you?’
Murray wondered if the old man was trying to provoke him away from the subject.
‘I’ve already spoken to Fergus about Lunan. He gave the impression they weren’t acquainted, though he did mention they’d met once, at a poetry reading. He said Archie was drunk.’
‘I’m afraid Professor Baine may have been rather economical with the truth. He and Lunan were well acquainted. They were both key parts of my little group.’
An ache nagged at his left leg. Murray shifted against the wall, unable to make sense of what James was telling him.
‘He never mentioned it.’
‘I’m surprised.’ James sounded anything but. ‘Maybe he chose to forget. Clever men are sometimes reluctant to remember fields in which they didn’t shine.’
‘Is there something you’re not telling me, professor?’
He could hear the old man’s smile gleaming across the miles that separated them.
‘Many things, Murray.’
It was the first time the professor had used his given name. Was it an invitation to press further, or simply a tease?
‘Something to do with Lunan?’
‘Why don’t you ask Baine? After all, you’re colleagues.
It was a long time ago and what I heard may have been gossip.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘The front door, I think it must be Helen.’ There was a clunk as the receiver was dropped. Somewhere in the distance James said, ‘Did you get any of those biscuits that Iris is fond of?’ And more remote still came the indistinct tones of a female voice answering him.
