Vee: Lost and Found

by David Roberts

  “Has he ever actually tried to set up on his own? It can be a hard thing to do, you know.”

  “Yes, quite recently, in fact. He had the finance arranged and the business plans drawn up. All the groundwork was in place but the seller moved the goalposts at the last minute so it fell through.”

  “Do you think he’ll try again?”

  “I think he should. Maybe after all this is over he’ll be able to. It could change everything, so I’m going to keep pushing. I’ve offered to do the paperwork for free if he tries again.”

  “Good for you. That’s what friends are for.”

  Ellie reached into a cupboard and brought out a large tray for the cups and plates. After a moment or two organising she spoke again.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said, Tom, about them having something in common. A lot depends on whether those two bodies are who we think they are, of course, and nowadays they have tests which will prove one way or the other, don’t they?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Assuming that’s the case, you and I are after the same thing. We want to solve both problems; Jamie’s and Alastair’s”

  “That’s right too.”

  “Well I’m thinking that the best way to do that is to make sure that they are both involved, right to the end. Each one of them will see he is helping the other… I haven’t put that very clearly.” She tried again.

  “Next door there are these two men. Right now, Jamie is sitting in there talking about his parents, trying hard to remember them. Alastair is talking so he’ll be able to forget about them.”

  “Yeah, I’m with you. There’s a good west of Scotland expression covering that: they’re the same, only different.”

  “That’s it. That’s it exactly.”

  Tom paused for a moment before speaking. “I think you are right. We have to keep them both involved, so no-one is left hanging. I’ll work on Al on the way home. He’s bound to tell me what might be happening next. Jamie will be the same, I imagine.”

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  They heard some laughter from next door.

  “That’s good to hear,” said Ellie. “We want to encourage that sort of thing. Do me a favour, Tom and stick your head in the door. Tell them we’re making sandwiches and they’ll be ready in about twenty minutes. You can’t be expected to drive all that way back home without lunch.”

  Ellie took some cheese and some ham from the fridge and began to spread the sandwiches, after declining his offer of help. He looked around.

  “You have a lovely view here Ellie, right up the hill.”

  “Yes. The deer come down sometimes. It changes all the time. That’s what I love most about the place. That and the peace, of course.”

  On the wall, framed photographs were displayed.

  “That’s near Torridon, isn’t it? That looks like Laxford Bridge. We were there only yesterday. I’m not sure about this one though.”

  It was a long straight road with a mountain offset to the right.

  “It’s somewhere near Scourie,” Ellie said, “but I’ve never known exactly where. It’s one of Adrian’s, as are the others. I brought them with me from Annat.”

  “Oh, you’ve got a dishwasher Ellie- very impressive.”

  “It would be if I knew how to work it. It was a sort of wedding present.” She gave a thin smile and lifted her eyebrows for a moment.

  “This is a good one, Ellie- a Bosch. The person who picked this knew what he was doing.”

  “Maybe. The girl in the shop certainly did. She tried to sell us an extended warranty.” She stopped what she was doing and looked at Tom. “I’m eighty-six and she tried to sell me a five year extended warranty. We can’t really blame her, I suppose. She just assumed it was for grandchildren who were getting married.”

  She got back to the sandwiches. “Not that we’ve got any. Or nieces, or nephews, in fact. Adie never married, you see. Vee never had children of her own- some sort of medical issue, Jamie thinks. It was never talked about. These things happen.” She smiled again, resigned to it all.

  “About the dishwasher Ellie- do you seriously not know how to work it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can I take a look?”

  “That would be really good- I’m a bit frightened of it. It’s plumbed in and everything. The delivery men did that.”

  He had a quick look at the instruction book, which was still wrapped in cellophane inside the machine, along with a small packet of dishwasher tablets.

  “Would you like me to load it up?”

  She nodded.

  “You simply stick them in here like this. You put the tablet in the trapdoor and close up. Than all you do is push the button. I’ve set it to economy.”

  She came over and he showed her.

  “They come out dry. It really is that easy.”

  “Thank you, Tom,” she said. “I’ll just start it now, while you are here.”

  It beeped and a moment later the swishing sound began. It was all very reassuring.

  “Tom, can I ask you- are you married? Jamie and I were wondering.”

  “I was, but it didn’t work out.”

  “You’re a lawyer somewhere in central Scotland?”

  “Yes. A solicitor, actually, in Hamilton, near Glasgow.”

  “Do you like living there? Have you ever thought about moving up to an area like this? I think you’d like it here.”

  “I have been considering it, but it would mean selling up and finding a property here. Then there’s the problem of finding a job.”

  “The job wouldn’t be a problem,” said Ellie. “They’re always struggling to find professional people up here. Everyone seems to want to go down south: that’s where the money is. You should have a serious think about it. Why don’t you come up for a few days to give you the chance to scout around in the Ullapool area for a place to live. We’d love to have you stay, with all these extra bedrooms. It would be good to be able to do something for you, after all you’ve done for us. Please come and stay over sometime soon- with or without Alastair. If nothing else, it will help you decide what you are going to do. Decisions like this are very important.”

  “Thank you, Ellie. I’ll give it serious thought.”

  “Make sure you do. These warranties don’t last for ever, and I’m not just talking about the machine.”

  When they went back into the living room with the sandwiches, Jamie and Alastair were talking about the Home Nations rugby championships. Clearly, everything had been sorted out between them. This was no time to ask directly. After all, Tom and Ellie both knew they’d be finding out later, probably as soon as lunch was over and ‘the boys’ had headed south. Instead, they talked about previous walking holidays; house prices; craft ales; wind farms; the Second World War and the crisis of capitalism- light conversation then, in view of what they were really thinking about.

  They said their goodbyes at the door. Tom looked out the Road Atlas and checked the ‘Secret Places…’ was in the glove-box as Alastair turned the starter. They had already begun to pick away when Tom saw Ellie walk across the driveway towards them. He rolled down the window and smiled.

  “I was thinking I might just give them a rinse under the tap, so the machine doesn’t get clogged up. Would that be alright?”

  “That will be fine Ellie,” he said. “That would be a good idea. “

  Relieved, she gave him a smile and patted the car as they headed off.

  She watched them heading out towards the main road, where they turned right to head in the direction of Kinlochewe, and Hamilton. And Birmingham for that matter, not that she’d be going there again.

  40 Three Kind Men

  Oban 2014

  Alastair stretched, yawned and glanced at the dashboard clock. Eleven forty-five. The train was due at five-past twelve.

  He got out of the car, pulled on his coat and headed for the railway station. Every time he’d been in Oban it had rained. Ye
ars before, he’d spent a week in the west coast, touring Skye and Applecross and Ullapool and it had stayed dry. Then he went to Oban for an afternoon and got soaked.

  He passed a newsagent and stopped, then retraced his steps and went inside. Sweets for the journey would be a good idea, he thought, and a local paper just in case they were late.

  The platform clock said five-past twelve, then ten past. Then he saw the blunt shape of the diesel approaching. The brakes screeched it to a standstill and the engine blipped for a second to clean out the cylinders.

  They were there. Jamie, his frame slightly stooped, helped Ellie alight and they proceeded along the platform and through the barriers.

  “Lovely to see you,” Alastair said, giving Ellie a (loose) hug and shaking hands with Jamie. “We’re only two minutes round the corner. If you like I could drive up to the entrance.”

  “Not at all,” said Jamie. “We’ve been sitting for hours. Anyway I’ve always liked Oban.”

  Alastair took Ellie’s bag and they made their way to the station entrance.

  “It’ll be raining I expect,” Jamie told her, “but it feels quite mild.”

  It had been a full three weeks, and five phone calls, since their meeting in Gairloch. Most of the calls had been updates on what the Campbeltown police had told Jamie. Naturally, that work had fallen to him, as a relative (or ‘potential relative’ at the outset) but that suited him perfectly. He was used to liaising with the police. More than that, he wanted to play an active role himself, to feel that a part of the resolution would be his. After all, working things out properly could draw a line, finally, under a problem that had bedevilled him for almost all of his eighty years.

  And Alastair? He felt he was really just there to help: to take them to Campbeltown and, if needs be, take them to that place near the rock. There was something else too, which had clinched it for him. Tom had said he was worried, not about Jamie, but about Ellie and how she might be affected. Tom had sensed this when he and Ellie had been talking in the kitchen. It was something she had revealed quite inadvertently. He would have liked to come to Oban himself, but this was impossible. Wellie and Jockstrap were working flat out, apparently.

  “She’s eighty-six and you have to remember that.” That’s what Tom had said. That’s why Alastair was there, for her, just in case.

  He looked in the interior mirror as they drove through Kilninver, on the Lochgoilhead road. She was sitting in the back seat, calmly looking out of the window as she sucked a big Mint Imperial. Then she was chatting and joking with Jamie. Whatever it was that Tom had spotted, she was hiding it well, but who can say what might be covered over. It felt right that he was here for her. Things which are buried like that- well, they can resurface at any time.

  Further on, in the area of Kilmartin, they passed signs for a whole gathering of significant historical sites, many of them Prehistoric: the Temple Wood Stone Circle, the cairns at Nether Logie; the castle at Carnassarie. What were the stories they could tell, if only they could speak? What murders, what betrayals, what trysts pledged or broken? Perhaps they might have said, here is where two people got off the bus from Oban and one almost forgot her purse. They might have said, a little further on, at this point a car stopped and offered them a lift and they looked at the dark grey sky overhead and the blue sky to the south and clambered in. There would have been many stories: some simple like this one, or difficult; some with endings, some without.

  On they drove, working their way through the Mint Imperials and the jelly babies, all the way to Lochgilphead. They stopped for coffee and cake at a corner café on one of the main streets coming off the lochside road. They stretched their legs for a few minutes, looking at a hardware shop window and a display of local paintings. Then, looking at their watches again, for they were conscious of time, they headed south once more.

  The last of the jelly babies was taken just north of Tarbert, after a fingertip search of the immediate area. From then on, it would have to be the mints: great clumpy things. Hard times indeed, but on they went, dentures clacking sporadically.

  Tarbert was beautiful, the main road descending to a very picturesque harbour, where a small road branches off to the left to follow the coast. They kept on the main road though, heading south to Campbeltown, to a police station where a box would be waiting.

  They followed the coast road, passing the small terminal for the Islay ferry and, shortly afterwards, the junction for the Carradale road off to the left. On a normal visit, Alastair would have taken this road- a twisty, nervous affair which passes Carradale with its quiet, picturesque harbour, and then goes through the climbs and turns of Saddell and finally over the hill and into Campbeltown. Returning on the main road from Campbeltown and heading north would then complete a loop of the whole peninsula. There was no thought of that today, however. It would be straight there and straight back.

  They did stop for a moment at Seal Point and careful observation revealed five of them on the rocks offshore, skins straining like tight sausages, lying in stiff curves, balancing almost. Jamie could make them out but he wasn’t convinced about Ellie. She might have been pretending, covering something.

  After some long, flat sections of road, sometimes with ramshackle shed-like houses and small patches of arable land on the left, and the sea on their right, the views became more rugged. Rocky outcrops had needed to be cut through to build the road, which had to twist around tight curves and tiny bays. It was one of these which had claimed the life of Arthur Wilson in nineteen thirty-six, when his car left the road as he drove south to inspect some new building work in Campbeltown. It was a one-day visit he never completed: an unkind judgment on a kind man who had given a lift to two walkers who had simply wanted to be a bit further south, where the weather looked better. Their thanks could not intercede on his behalf. He would not be seeing them later, on the way back to Oban.

  After thirty miles on this striking coast road they turned inland, to cross the peninsula to Campbeltown. It did not matter that it was dull by comparison because their thoughts were already far ahead, at journey’s end.

  Approached from the main A83, Campbeltown does not impress the visitor but the centre of the town is attractive and upbeat. It was at least twenty years since Jamie had been there, so the harbour development came as a pleasant surprise. And then there were the palm trees, of course. He knew about those already. It caused him to reflect on some other places he knew which had been less fortunate. Too many of them were becoming more and more run down. It wasn’t just the former industrial towns of central Scotland and the mining villages. It could happen in an attractive rural setting also. He thought of Helmsdale, with its fishing fleet decimated. He thought of the beautiful and poignant bronze statue overlooking the harbour and the legacy of mass emigration it depicted.

  “We really have to do something about that,” he thought to himself.

  The car turned right and pulled up outside the police station. It was two thirty-five. The timing was good.

  “I’m going to stay with the car,” said Alastair, “if that is all right.”

  Ellie smiled. “I understand.”

  They went up the steps and inside, Jamie holding the swing doors open for her. The officer at the desk had been expecting them and led them through to a small side room. They declined her offer of tea, but thanked her, of course.

  For a few minutes they waited. Jamie took a deep breath and breathed out slowly. Feeling the tension, Ellie reached over and took his hand.

  “Nearly there,” she said. “It will be fine.”

  A more senior officer came in, carrying a brown Archive box with the label “Strathclyde Police Lost Property Department” crossed out, replaced by one which said simply “Police Scotland”. Very gently, he put it on the table before addressing the couple. The introductions were brief but friendly.

  “I’m pleased that you were able to come down. I hope the journey was not too difficult. These are the personal effects, sent across fro
m Glasgow. As you know from our phone calls, there isn’t very much here. Over the sixty or so years a lot had disappeared. We saved everything – and some of it will be of no use to you, I’m sure. You just tell me what you want to keep and I can deal with the rest. We won’t need to keep anything, now that the Fiscal has formally identified you as the relatives of the deceased. I’m sorry there isn’t more here to give you. I’ll leave you for a few minutes, if that’s alright.”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Thank you,” said Ellie.

  Jamie took the lid from the box and looked inside. There were several clear plastic pockets. The largest had fragments of bright clothing; sections where the material had been doubled over, predominantly. There was a coat pocket and some other fragments which were harder to identify. The colour triggered a distant memory somewhere in Jamie’s mind, but it was elusive.

  “I think this was my mum’s coat… Margaret’s.”

  The green fragments he could not place at all. He opened another of the bags. The purse- he remembered that. He had a definite memory of her opening and closing the purse, a bright red one with a shiny mouth and clasp. There wasn’t much of the material left and most of the chrome plating had peeled off, but the brass fittings were intact. In his mind, despite the passage of the years, he could still hear the snap of the clasp when it closed. He must have played with it at some point.

  Jamie did not feel the need to examine the bag containing what was left of the shoes. The only items of any real value were in the last two, very small packets: in one, a selection of coins; in the other, a wedding ring. Two letters were inscribed on the inside. MM.

  “Margaret MacKinnon,” he said to Ellie.