Rory stood on the dunes, facing the sea. Lewis stomped away along the tide-line, kicking at the odd piece of driftwood and the occasional plastic bottle. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his camouflage jacket; his head — short-haired, these days — was down.
South Uist. Lewis seemed to be taking it as a personal insult that the family had come to the Hebrides for their summer holiday. People kept asking him what he was doing on Uist; Lewis was further north, ha ha.
"He's awful moody, isn't he, Uncle Rory?"
Rory watched Lewis walk away along the beach. "Yeah." He shrugged.
"Why do you think he doesn't want to walk with us?" Prentice's thin face looked genuinely puzzled. Rory smiled, looked once more at Lewis's retreating back, then started down the far side of the dune heading for the narrow road. Prentice followed. "I think," Rory said, "it's called being at an awkward age."
Kenneth, Mary and the boys had come holidaying to the Hebrides, as they did most years. Rory had been invited along too, as he usually was, and for a change had accepted. So far, they'd been lucky; the Atlantic weather systems had been kind, the days bright and warm, the nights calm and never completely dark. The big rollers boomed in, the wide beaches lay mostly empty, and the machair — between dunes and cultivation — was a waving ocean of bright flowers thrown across the rich green waves of grass. Rory loved it, somewhat to his surprise; a holiday from holidays. A place to stay where he didn't have to take notes about flights and ferries and hotels and restaurants and sights. No travel book to think about, no articles, no pressure. He could laze.
He volunteered to take the boys on a walk after breakfast that Sunday. James had stayed behind and Lewis had been sullen for the half-hour or so they'd been walking before suddenly announcing he wanted to be alone.
Rory and Prentice walked on together, their short shadows preceding them. The road would be turning east soon, and taking them back to the main road so that they could turn south and walk back to the house. Lewis knew his way about the area, so Rory was happy to let him wander off alone.
A car passed them on the single track road, heading north; they stood aside to let it pass, waving at the single occupant when he waved at them. The surf was a distant wash of noise, rolling over the sparkling machair in invisible waves. Larks warbled, points of sound in the sweep of blue sky and small puffy clouds.
"Is it all right to walk on a Sunday, Uncle Rory?"
"All right?" Rory said, glancing at the boy. In shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, he looked almost painfully thin. Rory wore an old cheesecloth shirt and cut-off jeans.
"Aye; dad was saying you're not even allowed to walk in some islands on a Sunday!" Prentice rolled his eyes and puffed his cheeks out.
"Well, yeah," Rory said. "I think they're like that in Lewis and Harris. But that's the hard-line prods up there. Down here they're Catholics; bit more relaxed about that sort of thing."
"But not being able to walk!" Prentice protested, shaking his head at his shadow on the grey-black tarmac.
"I think you're allowed to walk to church and back."
"Ho! Big deal!" Prentice didn't sound impressed. He was silent for a while. "Mind you," he said, sounding sly. "I suppose you could always take a very long way round."
Rory laughed, just as his attention was caught by a little white blossom lying on the road surface in front of them. Prentice looked up, at first surprised, then smiling, when Rory laughed. Prentice stood on the flower, then jumped, shrieking with pain.
"Ah; my foot! My foot! Oh! Oh!"
Rory stood, open mouthed for a second, watching Prentice hop around on the tarmac, clutching at one ankle, his face contorted. Rory thought for a second Prentice was pretending, but the boy's expression convinced him he was in real pain. Prentice hopped onto the grass and fell over, still clutching at his foot; Rory could see something white stuck to the sole of the boy's sandshoe.
"What is it?" he said, crouching down by Prentice's side. The boy was shaking, and when he looked up at Rory there were tears in his eyes.
"I don't know," he sobbed. "Stepped on something."
"Let me see." Rory sat on the grass in front of Prentice and held his foot. The little white blossom he'd seen on the road's surface was stuck to the boy's sandshoe; it wasn't a flower, it was a little paper charity flag for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the sort you secured to your lapel with a pin. The flag was still attached to its pin, which was buried in the sole of Prentice's shoe. Rory sucked his breath in when he saw it; most of the pin must be inside the boy's foot, near the middle of the broadest part of the sole.
Prentice's foot and leg shuddered as he rolled on the grass. "It's awful sore, Uncle Rory," he said, voice trembling.
"It's just a wee pin," Rory said, trying to sound encouraging. "I'll have it out in a second."
He licked his lips, rubbed his right index finger and thumb together for a couple of seconds and held Prentice's foot steady with his left hand. He used the nails of his finger and thumb to find the head of the pin, itself almost buried in the tan rubber sole of the sandshoe. He grasped it. Prentice whimpered, foot trembling in Rory's grip. Rory gritted his teeth, pulled.
The pin slid out; an inch of it, shining in the sunlight. Prentice cried out, then relaxed. Rory put the boy's foot down gently.
Prentice sat up, face quivering. "That's better," he said. He used one shirt sleeve to wipe at his face. "What was it?"
"This." Rory showed him the pin.
Prentice grimaced. "Ouch."
"You're probably going to need a tetanus injection," Rory told him.
"Aw no! More needles!"
They took his shoe and sock off. Rory sucked at the tiny wound and spat, trying to remove any dirt. Prentice, eyes still watering, laughed nervously. "Is that not a horrible smell, no, Uncle Rory?"
Rory threw the boy's white sock at him, grinning. "I've been to India, kid; that ain't nuthin."
Prentice put his shoe and sock back on and got to his feet, obviously in some pain when he stood. "Here; I'll give you a carry-coal-bag," Rory said, turning his back to the boy and putting his arms out from his sides as he crouched.
"Really, Uncle Rory? You sure? Will I not be awful heavy?"
"Hop on; you're a bean-pole, laddie. I'll probably go faster with you on my back; you walk too slow. Come on."
Prentice put his arms round Rory's neck and got up onto his back; Rory set off at a run. Prentice whooped.
"See?" Rory said, slowing to a fast walk.
"I'm not too heavy, honest, Uncle Rory?"
"What? A skelf like you? Never."
"Do you think this is a punishment from God for talking about walking on a Sunday, Uncle Rory?"
Rory laughed. "Certainly not."
"Do you not believe in God either, Uncle Rory?"
"No. Well; not in the Christian God. Maybe something else." He shrugged his shoulders and shifted Prentice into a more comfortable position on his back. "When I was in India, I thought then I knew what it was I might believe in. But when I came back it all seemed to go away again. I think it was something to do with the place." He looked to one side, at the dazzling expanse of machair; endless emerald green scattered thick with flowers so bright they seemed lit from inside. "Places have an effect on people. They alter your thoughts. India does, anyway."
"What about when you went to America? Did that effect what you thought?"
Rory laughed gently. "Yeah; it did that all right. Kind of in the opposite way, though."
"Are you going to go away again?"
"I expect so."
Prentice elapsed his hands in front of Rory's chin. Rory glanced at his wrists; thin and fragile looking. Prentice was still holding the little Lifeboat flag, twirling the pin between his fingers.
"When did you stop believing in God?" Prentice asked.
Rory shrugged. "Hard to say; I think I started to think for myself when I was about your age, maybe a bit younger."
"Oh."
"I tried to imagine how the world had been created, and I imagined Sooty — you know; the glove puppet —»
"I know; they still have him. Sooty and Sweep." Prentice giggled.
"Well, I imagined him standing on a wee planet about the size of a football —»
"But he hasn't got any legs!"
Ah, but he did in the annuals I got for Christmas. Anyway, I imagined him waving a wand, and the world came into existence. Like, I'd been to church, been to Sunday School, so I knew all the stuff in the Bible, but I guess I needed to envisage it… see it, in my own terms."
"Uh-huh."
"But then I thought; wait a minute; where does the planet Sooty's standing on come from? I thought Sooty could have waved his wand and made that appear too, but where would he stand while he was doing it? I mean, I didn't think, Well, he could float in space, and it never occurred to me to ask where Sooty himself had come from, or the wand, but I was already heading towards not believing, I suppose. It was like the dragons."
"Dragons?" Prentice said, sounding excited and wary at once. Rory felt the boy tremble.
"Yeah," Rory said. "I used to hide under the covers of my bed at night, imagining there were dragons out there; in the room when the light was out, when there was nobody else there. I'd hunch down under the covers with just an air-hole to breath through, and shelter there. The dragons couldn't get you through the air-hole; they could only get you if you put out a foot or a hand, or worst of all your head; that was when they struck; bit it off, or pulled you right out and ate all of you."
"Waa! Alien!" Prentice said. His arms squeezed Rory's neck.
"Yeah," Rory said. 'Well, I guess a lot of horror films come from that sort of background. Anyway; I used to be petrified of these dragons, even though I knew they probably didn't exist; I mean I knew there was no Santa Claus, and no fairies and elves, but still thought ghosts and dragons were a possibility, and it only took one to kill you… I mean how did I really know I could trust adults? Even mum and dad? There were so many things I didn't really understand about people, about life. Most of the time you could just ignore a lot of the stuff you didn't know; it'd come in time, you'd be told when you needed to know… But how did you know that there wasn't some big secret, some big, evil deal going down that involves you but had been kept secret from you?
"Like, maybe your parents were just fattening you up until you would make a decent meal for these dragons, or it was an intelligence test; the kids smart enough to have sussed out the fact there were dragons around were the ones that would survive, and the ones that just lay there, trusting, each night, deserved to die, and their parents couldn't tell them or the dragons would eat them, and stories about dragons were the only clues you were ever given; that was all the adults could do to warn you… I was pretty paranoid about it. I used to be frightened to fall asleep at night sometimes, afraid I'd stick my head out from under the clothes while I was asleep and wake up to find my head in a dragon's mouth, before I died."
"Wow!"
Rory grunted, shifting Prentice's weight again. Kid wasn't so feather-light after all. "But then one night, under the covers — I was just getting older, I guess, but anyway — I was sort of reviewing the day, and I was thinking about school, and what we'd learned, and we'd been doing the Second World War, and I hadn't liked the sound of this Hitler guy at all; and I'd asked dad, just to double-check, and —»
"So he was still alive? When you were ten?"
"Oh yeah; didn't die until I was twelve. Anyway; he brought down this book; history of the War in pictures, and it had like all these photos of the death camps, where the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, and communists, and homosexuals, and gypsies and anybody else they didn't like… but mostly Jews, and there were like just piles of bodies; incredibly thin bodies, like bones; skeletons wrapped with tissue paper, and piled higher than a house… and pits; long pits full of bodies, and the metal stretchers they were put onto to be shoved into the ovens, and the piles of wedding rings and spectacles; glasses, and even artificial legs and weird stuff like that…
Anyway, that night they put a night-light in my room, in case I had nightmares, but the shadows were even worse than the darkness, and so I just lay there, under the covers, quivering with fear thanks to these damn dragons, and I wished Ken was back from University because sometimes I was allowed to sleep in his room, and I wished I was allowed a torch in my room, but 1 wasn't, and I was wondering about crying really loudly, because that would bring mum and dad in to see me, but then what did I say was wrong? And then I suddenly thought…
The dragons might be there; they might be real and they might be every bit as vicious as I'd imagined, but I'm a human being; so was Adolf Hitler and he killed millions of people!
"And I threw back the bedclothes before I had any more time to think about it and burst out of the bed; threw myself into the middle of the bedroom, screaming and roaring and thrashing about."
"Ha!" Prentice said, squirming.
"That brought mum and dad through; thought I was having a fit or something. But I just looked up from the carpet with this great big reassuring smile and said there was nothing to worry about." Rory smiled at the memory, bringing his head up to look around. A break in the dunes let the sound of surf grow louder. There was a car in the distance coming towards them.
"Brilliant!" Prentice said.
Rory grunted, shifting Prentice's weight once more. "Never had any trouble with dragons after that."
"I'll bet you didn't!"
The car hummed nearer as the view to one side slowly opened up through the dunes to reveal the shining beach and blue-green ocean.
"Let's see if we can get a lift off this car, eh?" Rory said. "You okay to get down?
"Yeah!" Prentice slid off onto the grass and stood there, favouring his good leg, while Rory stretched and rubbed at his lower back. He stuck one thumb out when the car was still a few hundred yards away. Prentice reached up and put something on the thin collar of Rory's shirt. It was the little paper Lifeboat flag. Rory held his collar out so that he could look at it. He looked down at the boy's grinning face. "Thanks," he said.
"That's your medal, Uncle Rory," Prentice told him. "For being a brilliant uncle."
Rory ruffled the boy's hair. Thanks, Prentice." He looked back at the car. Was it slowing?
"I used to worry about Darth Vader," Prentice confessed, putting his arm round Rory's waist and lifting his foot to massage it with one hand. "I'd lie under the covers and make the noise he makes when he's breathing, and then I'd stop, but sometimes it would go on after I'd stopped!" Prentice shook his head, and slapped one hand off his forehead. "Crazy, eh?"
Rory laughed, as the approaching car started to slow down. "Yeah, well, that's what stories do to you, sometimes. Your dad's always tried never to tell you lies, or stories that would scare you or make you superstitious, but —»
"Ha!" Prentice said, as the battered Cortina II drew to a stop just past them. "I remember he tried to tell us clouds came from the Steam Packet Hotel, in the town. That's what they were: packets of steam from the Steam Packet Hotel. Ha!"
Rory smiled as they walked towards the car, him supporting the limping boy. Rory looked away for a second, towards the beach, where the long Atlantic rollers crashed against the broad expanse of gold.
He sniffed the glass; the whisky was amber, and there wasn't much of it. The smell stung. He put it to his lips, hesitated, then knocked it back in one go. The drink made his lips and tongue tingle; his throat felt sore and the fumes went up his nose and down into his lungs. He tried very hard not to cough like he'd seen people cough in westerns when they tried whisky for the first time, and got away with just clearing his throat rather loudly (he looked round at the curtains, afraid somebody might have heard). His eyes and nose were watering, so he pulled his hanky from his trousers, blew his nose.
The whisky tasted horrible. And people drank this stuff for pleasure? He had hoped that by trying some whisky he'd understand adults a bit better; instead they made even less sense.
He was standing between the curtains and the windows of the ballroom of the Steam Packet Hotel, on the railway pier at Gallanach. Outside, the afternoon was wet and miserable-looking, and what little light there had been — watery and grey — was going now. Sheets of rain hauled in off the bay, blew around the steamers and ferries moored round the windswept quay, then collapsed upon the dark grey buildings of the town. The street lamps were already lit, and a few cars crawled through the rough-mirror streets with their lights on and their wipers flapping to and fro.
Music played behind Rory. He balanced the empty whisky glass on the window-sill and gave his nose a last wipe, pocketing his hanky. He supposed he'd better go back into the ballroom. Ballroom; he hated the word. He hated the music they were playing — Highland stuff, mostly — he hated being here in this dull, wet town, with these dull people listening to their dull music at their dull wedding. They should be playing the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, and they shouldn't be getting married in the first place — modern people didn't.
"Heeee-yooch!" a voice shouted, startlingly nearby, making Rory jump. The curtains bowed in a few yards away, almost touching the window-sill, the movement like a wave. Rory could hear the stamping, slapping feet move in time to the fiddles and accordions as they played a jig. People were clapping, shouting out. God, it was all so provincial.
Rory straightened his tie, and with his whisky still burning in his throat, and now his stomach too, he moved along to the gap in the curtains and slid through, back into the ballroom, where people sat drinking at long wooden tables and groups of dancers went whirling round in complicated, ever-changing patterns, all flowing dresses and clasping hands and big red sweaty faces and white shirts and ties and narrow trousers or — even worse — kilts.
Rory moved near the stage, behind the tables where Kenneth and Mary sat, talking to mum. Boring Hamish and the horse-resembling Antonia were on the floor, him in a kilt, her still in her white bridal gown, both dancing badly and out of time, but seemingly thoroughly enjoying themselves.
"Well," he heard his mum saying, "you two had better get a move on, or Hamish and Antonia will beat you to it." She laughed and drank from her glass. She wore a hat. Rory hated his mother in a hat. He thought she sounded drunk. Kenneth and Mary smiled uncertainly at each other.
"Well, mum," Kenneth said, sitting back, filling his pipe. "We have been practising."
"Kenneth!" his wife said quietly.
Mum shook her head. "Ah, don't mind me; plenty of time yet, I dare say." She looked into her empty glass. "I wouldn't be missing grandchildren so much, but… " She shrugged. There was an awkward silence between the three people then, while the music played and the dancers whooped and shouted and clapped and stamped. Rory saw his mother's shoulders move once, and she put her head down for a second, sniffed. She reached down for her handbag on the floor. Kenneth handed her his hanky. He put his arm round his mum's shoulders. Mary moved her seat closer, reached out and took one of the older woman's hands in hers.
"God, I miss that old devil," mum said, and blew her nose. Eyes bright with tears, she looked at Mary, and then saw Rory standing behind and to one side of them. "Rory," she said, trying to sound all right. We wondered where you were. Are you enjoying yourself, darling?"
Yes," he lied. He hated her calling him "darling'. He stayed where he was because he didn't want to get close enough for them to smell his breath. His mother smiled.
"Good lad. See if you can find your cousin Sheila; you said you'd ask her to dance, remember?"
"Yeah, all right," he said, turning away.
He didn't like boring cousin Sheila, either. She was about the only girl here who was his own age. It was horrible being this age when nobody else was; they were all either adults or children. He blamed his parents. Mostly he blamed his dad. If he'd looked after himself, not had a heart attack, he'd still be around. That was how thoughtless he'd been. Rory supposed it was the same thoughtlessness that had made dad and mum have him so much later than the rest of their children. People just didn't think, that was the trouble.
He didn't go looking for Sheila. He decided to go wandering. He would slip away. He had always liked slipping away from things. At parties he would just quietly leave when nobody was watching him, so that only much later would anybody wonder where he was. When he was out with a group of other kids, playing kick-the-can or soldiers, he would often sneak away, so that they would never find him, or think he had fallen down a hole or into a burn or a loch. It was a wonderful feeling, to disappear like that; it made him feel different and special. He gloried in the cunningness of it, the feeling of having outwitted the others, of knowing what they did not; that he was out and away and they were back there where he'd left them, ignorantly worrying where he was, searching; wondering.
He slunk out through the doors while they were clapping the band after finishing one of their noisy, interminable Highland dances.
It was cooler in the lobby. He drew himself upright and walked confidently through the bit of the lobby that gave onto the Cocktail Lounge, where ruddy-faced men stood panting and laughing, sleeves rolled up, ties loose, queuing for drinks or holding trays of them, laughing loudly in deep voices.
He went through another set of doors, down some steps, round a corner, and found the hotel's single small lift. He pulled both sets of gates open with an effort, entered, then closed them again. The lift was a little bigger than a phone box. He pressed the brass button for the top floor. The lift jerked into motion and set off, humming. The white-washed walls of the lift shaft moved smoothly downwards as the lift ascended. Stencilled letters painted inside the shaft said 1st Floor… 2nd Floor… God, he thought, Americans must think they're in the Stone Age when they come to stay in a place like this.
He felt ashamed.
The top floor was boring. He went from one end to the other of the U-shaped hotel, up and down steps that marked the boundaries of the three separate buildings that made up the Steam Packet Hotel. There were no windows; only skylights, each spattered with rain drops and lined with little rivulets of running water. He'd been hoping for windows, and a view over the bay or the town.
He trod the corridors again, looking for an unlocked door. Maybe the maids would have left some of the rooms open, if there was nobody staying in them just now. He tried a few handles. The only open door led to a broom cupboard.
Then at the next door he heard giggling. He looked at the number. It was room 48. 48 was a good number; not as good as 32 or 64, but better than, say, 49, and much better than 47 (though that was interesting too because it was a prime). The very best numbers were numbers like 20, 23, 30, 40, 57, 75, 105 and 155. Calibre numbers; gun numbers. Those were luckiest. But 48 was all right.
More giggling. He looked back down the corridor, then crouched and looked through the key-hole. It was a bit cliched, but what did people expect in a boring hotel like this in a boring town like this in a boring country like this? It was all you could do.
There was no key in the lock, so he could see in through the big old-fashioned key-hole. He saw a large dressing table sitting in a broad bay window. The dressing-table held a big, tippable mirror, and most of the rest of the room was visible in it. In the mirror Rory saw his sister Fiona, and then Fergus Urvill. They were making the big double bed.
Fiona still wore her peach-coloured bridesmaid's dress, very long and smooth-looking. There were flowers in her hair, which made her look quite good. Rory suspected she looked so good because she didn't live here any more; she lived in London, and Aunt Ilsa had got her a job working for a television company. Fiona sold time to people. That was how she put it. She sold advertising space. She sold time. Rory thought that sounded pretty interesting.
Fergus Urvill was on the other side of the bed, dressed in a kilt, shirt and waistcoat. Rory knew Fergus was aged with Kenneth, but somehow he always seemed older. Maybe it was because he had gone to a private high school. Rory didn't really know Fergus Urvill very well; although he did sometimes visit Lochgair, he spoke differently — posher — and seemed to spend a lot of his time shooting at birds and animals with other rich people.
Rory had always found Fergus Urvill to be a little frightening. Kenneth had told him the story, years ago, about when Fergus put Lachy Watt's eye out; he'd stuck a fossil bone in it, or something. Rory thought now that his brother must have exaggerated the story, made it more horrific than it really had been, and he certainly didn't believe that Lachy had run away to sea just so that he could wear an eye-patch and pretend he was a pirate. He had joined the merchant navy — Rory had asked dad about that — but he had an artificial eye, not a patch. Rory knew because he'd been with mum once when they'd met Lachy and a woman in the street in Lochgilphead. Rory had looked very hard but hadn't been able to decide which was the false eye.
His own eye smarted, exposed to the draft coming through the key-hole. He blinked, then used his other eye.
Fiona and Fergus were making the bed, but doing it in a funny sort of way; the bottom sheet had been doubled up half-way down the bed. They were both chuckling to themselves, and talking in quiet, urgent whispers. Fiona glanced off to one side a couple of times. Rory worked out she was looking at the door he was crouched behind.
They made the bed up, so that it looked ordinary. Rory got ready to run away down the corridor. But they didn't leave the room; instead, Fiona and Fergus, still breathless with giggles, still chattering excitedly away, started to turn the furniture in the room upside down. They left the bed, of course, but they turned a table, a chest of drawers, two bedside cabinets, two chairs and an easy chair upside down. They carefully replaced lights and vases and other bits and pieces as they went along. They stood before the dressing table for a while, looking at it and discussing it, apparently, but eventually just turned it round so that it faced the wrong way, rather than turn it upside down.
Fiona leant back against the rear of the dressing table, breathing hard, and waved one hand, wafting air over her face. Her cheeks were pink, and a couple of coils of copper hair had fallen from her hairdo, one on each side of her head. She pulled at her bodice, blew down, went "Whoo!" Rory couldn't see Fergus Urvill. Then he reappeared, stood by Fiona. He was holding a key and a couple of toilet rolls; he said something Rory didn't catch. "Oh no," Fiona said, touching Fergus's arm. Her face looked amused but concerned. "No, that's naughty…»
Fergus stood there for a moment. Rory couldn't see his face, but Fiona's looked glowing and bright. "I like being naughty," he heard Fergus say, and then he stepped forward and took Fiona in his arms, still holding the key and the toilet rolls.
What? thought Rory. This really was something. Sister Fiona and big Fergus Urvill? Stupid girl; probably only after her body.
Ferg!" Fiona said, breaking away. Her face looked surprised, cheeks even redder. She smiled broadly, held Fergus's elbows. "Well, this is… unexpected."
"I've always… " Fergus lowered his voice as he bent to kiss her again, face in her hair and then his mouth on hers. Rory missed the exact words.
Go on, thought Rory. Go on. Do it. Let me see!
Fergus's hands dropped the key and the toilet rolls, grabbed Fiona's bum. She pushed away from him. «Ferg…» she said, breathless, lip-stick smeared.
"Fiona," Fergus moaned, clutching her. "I want you! I need you!"
"Well," Fiona said, gulping. "That's very, ah… but not here, eh?"
Fergus pulled her close again. "Let me drive you home tonight."
"Umm, well, I think we were getting a taxi."
"Please; let me. Please. Fiona. You don't know… " Fergus stuck his nose into her hair again, made a sort of moaning noise. "Feel me." And he guided one of Fiona's hands to the front of his kilt.
Good God, thought Rory. He took another quick glance down the hall, then looked back through the key-hole.
Fiona took her hand away. "Hmm. Yes; actually I already could, Fergus."
"I need you!" He pulled her close again.
"Not here, Fergus."
"Fiona; please…»
"All right; all right, Fergus. I'll try. We'll see, okay?"
"Yes; yes, thank you!" Fergus gathered Fiona's hands in his.
"Right," she laughed. "Well, come on; let's get out of here before the happy couple arrive. Put those back in the loo." She pointed at the toilet rolls. Fergus retrieved them. She busied herself with her hair, restoring it. Fergus turned and disappeared from Rory's view. "And put some cold water on that," Fiona said, grinning. "Looks like your sporran's trying to levitate."
She came towards the door. Rory leapt back, staggered on legs that had gone half to sleep, and only just scrambled into the broom cupboard and got the door shut before the bedroom door opened. The broom cupboard key-hole didn't let him see anything. He heard muffled conversation but no footsteps.
He waited, breathless, heart hammering in the darkness, one hand in his trouser pocket, stroking himself.
"Do you know where the twins were conceived?"
"No idea," he said, and belched.
"Fucking McCaig's Folly, that's where."
"What, Oban?"
"The very place."
"Good grief."
"You don't mind me saying this, I mean talking about Fiona like this, do you?"
"No, no." He waved one hand. "Your wife; you talk about her. No, no, that's bad, that sounds bad. I'm all for women's lib."
"Might have bloody known. Might have bloody known you would be. Bloody typical, if you ask me. You're a Bolshie bastard, McHoan."
"And you are the unacceptable face of Capitalism, Ferg."
"Don't quote that fairy at me, you Bolshie bastard. And don't call me Ferg."
"Beg your pardon. Some more whisky?"
"Don't mind if I do."
Rory got up out of the creaking wooden seat and walked unsteadily over to where Fergus lay on the bare wooden floorboards, head against the ancient, burst couch. The fire crackled in the grate, its light competing with that of the little gas lamp. Rory unscrewed the top from the bottle of Bells carefully and topped up Fergus's little silver cup. Fergus had brought a leather case with him; it held three of the silver cups and a big hip flask. Rory had brought the bottle in his rucksack.
"There you go."
"Ta much. You're a decent fellow for a Bolshie bastard."
"One tries, old bean," Rory said. He walked carefully to his seat, picked his little cup up from the floor and went to the room's single window. It was black outside. There had been a moon when they'd first arrived, but the clouds had come while they were chopping wood, and the rain while they'd cooked dinner on the two little primus stoves.
He turned from the darkness. Fergus looked like he was almost asleep. He was dressed in plus fours, tweed waistcoat (the jacket, and his waxed Barbour were hanging behind the door of the bothy), thick socks, brogues, and a fawn country shirt with a button-down collar. God, he even had his tie on still. Rory wore cords, mountain-hiking boots and a plain M&S shirt. His nylon waterproofs were draped over a chair.
What an odd pair we make, he thought.
He had been back from his travels for a while, staying first in London then at Lochgair, while he tried to work out what to do with his life. He had the impression things were sliding past him somehow. He'd made a good start but now he was faltering, and the focus of attention was drifting slowly away from him.
He had returned to discover that — like his brother before him — Ken had given up being a teacher. Hamish had taken up the managerial place at the factory that everyone had expected would be Kenneth's, when Kenneth had decided to teach. Now Ken too was quitting the profession to try something else: writing children's stories. Rory had always thought of Hamish as a sort of ponderously eccentric fool, and Ken a kind of failure because he had so much wanted to travel, and instead had settled down with Mary, stayed in the same wee corner of the world as he'd been born and raised in, and not only raised his own children, but chosen to teach others', too. Rory had felt slightly sorry for his elder brother, then. Now he felt envious. Ken seemed happy; happy with his wife, with his children, and now with his work; not rich, but doing what he wanted to do.
And why hadn't Ken told him he was writing too? He might have been able to help him, but even if Ken had wanted to do it all without any assistance from his younger brother, he might at least have told him what he was doing. Instead Rory had found out only when Ken had had his first story published, and now it was as though they were passing each other travelling in opposite directions; Ken slowly but surely building up a reputation as a children's story-teller while his own supposed career as a professional recounter of traveller's tales sank gradually in the west. Books people forgot about and articles in Sunday supplements that were only one notch above the sort of shit tourist boards put out.
And so he'd left London, to come here, hoping to lick the closing wise wound of whatever talent it was he had.
He'd spent a lot of time just wandering in the hills. Sometimes Ken came too, or one of the boys if they were in the mood, but mostly he went by himself, trying to sort himself out. What it boiled down to was: there was here, where he had friends and family, or there was London where he had a few friends and a lot of contacts, and it felt like things were happening, and where you could fill time with something no matter how mixed up and fraudulent you felt… or there was abroad, of course; the rest of the world; India (to take the most extreme example he'd found so far), where you felt like an alien, lumbering and self-conscious, materially far more rich and spiritually far more poor than the people who thronged the place, where just by that intensity of touching, that very sweating crowdedness, you felt more apart, more consigned to a different, echoing place inside yourself.
One day, on a long walk, he'd almost literally bumped into Fergus Urvill, crouching in a hide up amongst the folds in the hills, waiting with telescope and.303 for a wounded Sika deer. Fergus had motioned him to sit down with him behind the hide, and to keep quiet. Rory had waited with the older man — silent for quarter of an hour apart from a whispered hello and a quick explanation of what was going on — until the herd of deer appeared, brown shapes on the brown hill. One animal was holding the rest back; limping heavily. Fergus waited until the herd was as close as it looked like it was going to come, then sighted on the limping beast, still two hundred yards away.
The sound of the shot left Rory's ears ringing. The Sika's head jerked; it dropped to its knees and keeled over. The rest raced off, bouncing across the heather.
He helped Fergus drag the small corpse down the slope to the track, where the Land Rover was parked, and accepted a lift back to the road.
"Hardly recognised you, Roderick," Fergus said, as he drove. "Not seen you since Fi and I got shackled. Must be at least that long."
"I've been away."
"Of course; your travels. I've got that India book of yours, you know."
"Ah." Rory watched the trees slide past the Land Rover's windows.
"Done any others?"
"There was one about the States and Mexico. Last year."
"Really?" Fergus looked over at him briefly. "I didn't hear about that,"
Rory smiled thinly. "No," he said.
Fergus made a grunting noise, changed gear as they bumped down the track towards the main road. "Ken said something about you living in a squat in London… or something ridiculous like that. That right?"
"Housing cooperative."
"Ah-ha." Fergus drove on for a while. "Always wanted to take a look at India myself, you know," he said suddenly. "Keep meaning to go; never quite get around to it, know what I mean?"
"Well, it isn't the sort of place you can just take a look at."
"No?"
"Not really."
The Land Rover came down to the main road between Lochgilphead and Lochgair. "Look, we've got a do on this evening, in the town — " Fergus glanced at his watch. " — bit late already, to tell the truth. But how about coming round tomorrow for… In fact, d'you fish?"
"Fish? Yeah, I used to."
"Not against your vegetarian principles, is it?"
"No. India didn't change me that much."
"Well, then; come fishing with me tomorrow. Pool on the Add with a monster trout in it; been after the swine for months. Plenty of smaller stuff too, though. Fancy it? Course, I'll never talk to you again if you catch the big feller, but might make a fun afternoon. What do you say?"
"Okay," he said.
So they became friends, after a fashion. Most of Rory's pals in London were in the International Marxist Group, but here he was wandering the hills with an upper class dingbat who just happened to be married to his sister and who lived for huntin', shootin" and fishin" (and seemed to spend the absolute minimum amount of time in his castle with his wife), and who had just last year rationalised half the work force in the glass factory out of a job. Still, they got on together, somehow, and Fergus was an undemanding companion; company of a sort, but not taxing; none of Ken's garrulousness, Lewis's moodiness or Prentice or James's ceaseless questioning. It was almost like walking the hills on your own.
And a couple of days ago Fergus had suggested they go for a longer hike, up into the trackless hills where the Landy couldn't reach. They would take collapsible rods, a couple of guns, and have to fish and shoot to eat. They could stay in the old lodge; it would save taking a tent.
So here they were, on the first floor of the old lodge, which was now used just as a bothy. The room they were in contained a single big dormer window, a fireplace, a couch, a table and two seats, and two bunkbeds. There were other rooms with more beds, but keeping to one room meant only lighting one fire; the autumn weather had turned chilly early.
No," Fergus said, looking up from where he lay, slumped against the couch. "But you don't mind me talking about Fiona like this, do you? I mean, your sister. My wife. You sure you don't mind, do you?"
"Positive."
"Good man."
"McCaig's Folly, eh?"
"Hmm? Oh; well yes… at least I think so. Got the idea from Charlotte, actually."
"What, your sister?"
"Mmm. The one that married that chap Walker, from Edinburgh."
"Oh yeah; I remember." Rory went over to the seat that held his jacket.
"Funny girl, Charlie; had this thing about… antiquity. Got Walker to deflower her under this ancient fucking yew tree in Perthshire. So she told me, anyway."
"Uh-huh." Rory rummaged in his jacket pockets.
"Fiona and I thought we'd try something like that, one time we were in Oban, for some do. You know; put a bit of sparkle back in… You sure you don't mind me talking about your sister like this?"
"Yeah." Rory took his tobacco tin from the jacket. He held the tin up. "As long as you don't mind me having a little smoke?"
"Not at all, not at all. Bloody cold it was, in that damn folly. Had to sit on a — Oh,'Fergus said, suddenly realising. "You mean the old wacky baccy."
Rory smiled, sat down. "That's the stuff."
"Not at all," Fergus said, waving one hand. "Go ahead." He watched carefully as Rory set out the papers. "Mmm, go ahead."
Rory looked up, saw Fergus's fascinated expression. "Do you want any of this, Fergus?"
"Umm," Fergus said, sitting back, blinking. "Could do, I suppose. Never really tried it, to be honest. Couple of chaps at the school got booted out for that stuff and I never did get round to it."
"Well, I'm not forcing you."
"Not at all. Not at all."
They smoked the joint. Fergus, used to the occasional cigar with his brandy now that he'd given up his pipe, pronounced the smoke quite cool, and objected more to the sweet taste of the Old Holborn than to the scent of resin.
"This any good for hanky-panky?" he said, passing the roach back to Rory, who took a last hot toke then flicked the remains into the heart of the fire.
"Can be," he said.
"Might try it some time. God knows we could do with something to — Look, you absolutely sure you don't mind me talking about your sister this way?"
"Positive."
"Good man — hey! Did you hear that?"
Rory looked up at the ceiling. Fergus was staring at the plasterboard expanse above them. Rory listened. Then, above the crackling of the fire, he did hear something; a quiet, scrabbling noise in the roof-space above them.
"Rats, I'll bet!" Fergus said, and rolled over to his pack.
Rory thought about it. They were here in a deserted old house in the middle of nowhere on a black and starless night in one of the more mysterious bits of Scotland, and there was a scrabbling, clawy sort of noise coming from the ceiling above him and this other drunk, stoned man. He shrugged. Yeah; probably rats. Or mice. Or birds.
Fergus pulled his pack gently to him, scraping over the floorboards. He lifted the rucksack up. The.303 and the shotgun were in a waterproof bag strapped to the side of the pack. Fergus undid the straps. "Ssh," he said to Rory. Rory had started building another joint. He waved. He drank some more whisky.
He was just inserting the roach when Fergus rolled over to him and held the shotgun out to him. "Here!" he whispered urgently.
"Hmm," Rory said, nodding thanks. He heard some clicks.
Fergus held the ancient Lee Enfield at his side. He knelt close by Rory. "Think the little bastard's over there." He pointed. He reached up, touched the gun Rory held. It was hard doing the roach one handed. "Put that down, man!" Fergus hissed. He took the tin from Rory's lap and put all the makings down on the floor. Rory felt peeved.
"There," Fergus said. "Safety's off. When I fire, aim where I do, all right?"
"Yup," Rory said, forgetting about the J. He took the shotgun. Fergus walked on his heels, still hunkered down, across the room, eyes and gun pointed towards the plasterboard ceiling. He stopped. There was a noise like a spider running across a very sensitive microphone.
Bang! went the rifle. Rory almost dropped the shotgun. "There!" yelled Fergus. Plaster was falling from a small hole in the ceiling; there was smoke in the air. Rory aimed at the small hole, pulled the trigger. The gun struck back against his shoulder, sending him falling back off his seat. He clattered to the floor.
"Well, pump it, man, pump it!" he heard Fergus shouting from somewhere.
Awful lot of smoke around. Ears seemed to be ringing. He pumped the gun. (Funny; he'd have thought Fergus would have been a side-by-side man.) There was another sharp crack of sound from the.303. He saw the hole appear in the plaster almost right above him. Great; he could get the little bastard without having to get up from the floor. The floorboards ought to provide extra firing stability, too. He pulled the trigger again. The gun went Blam! with a little less sonic enthusiasm than before, though it hurt his shoulder a little more.
A white waterfall of plaster burst down from the ceiling and slapped and pattered all over him. Rory spat bits out of his mouth, blinked the white dust out of his eyes. He heard Fergus colliding with something in the room. He pumped the gun, looked round. Fergus was lying on the couch, aiming at the centre of the ceiling. He fired the Lee Enfield again; Rory was getting the hang of this now, and aimed the shotgun at the same place and fired it, almost before the noise of Fergus's shot had stopped echoing. The room was getting a bit hazy, and there was probably blood coming from his ears, but what the fuck. Rory readied the gun again.
He tried to follow where Fergus was pointing his rifle. As he did so, still lying there with his legs up on the chair he'd fallen over, he started to over-balance to one side, towards Fergus.
"Aah!" Rory said. He tried to put one hand out to stop himself, but the gun was still in his grip. The long, blue-black barrel arced towards Fergus. Fergus looked, as Rory fell helplessly over, the gun barrel falling like some felled tree, wide muzzle pointed straight towards him.
Rory could tell exactly what was going to happen, and couldn't stop it.
Fergus's eyes widened. He jumped; fell over the back of the couch.
Rory fell onto his side; the shotgun roared and the rear of the couch blew open in a dusty horsehair explosion.
Rory let the gun down to the floor. The noise still rang in his ears. The room stank of smoke and the fire had gone strangely quiet. "Ferg?" he said, tentatively. Couldn't hear himself speak. "Ferg!" he shouted.
He sat upright, leaving the gun on the floorboards. Plaster tumbled off his body in clouds of dust.
"Hello?" Fergus said, appearing over the top of the couch, gunless.
Rory looked at him. They both blinked, eyes watering. "Did we get it?" Rory asked.
"Don't know," Fergus said. He staggered round the rear of the couch, feet crunching in plaster, and sat down. He looked at the still slightly smoking hole in the couch, just beside where he'd sat, then up at the holes in the ceiling.
He stayed looking at the holes in the ceiling for a while. Then he started crying.
Rory watched for a while, befuddled. "What's the matter, man?" he said.
Fergus took no notice; he kept on crying, still staring up at the holes in the ceiling. He took big lungfuls of air and then let them out in great racking sobs that shook his whole body. After a while he put his head in his hands and sat there, rocking back and forward, clutching his hair just above his ears. The tears flowed, trickling off his nose and spotting the white plaster dust on the floorboards at his feet.
"Ferg," Rory said, going over to him. He hesitated, then put his arm on the man's shoulders. "Fergus; for God's sake man, what's wrong?"
Fergus looked up and suddenly Rory felt older than him. Fergus's heavy, ruddy face was puffed and bloated, and tears had streaked through the dust on his cheeks, disappearing in the bristles on his jaw-line and chin. When he spoke it was in the voice of a small, hurt boy.
"Oh God, Rory, I've got to tell somebody, but you must promise; you must give me your word you won't breathe a word to anybody else. On your life."
"Hey, you haven't killed anybody or anything, have you?"
"No," Fergus shook his head, screwed his eyes up. "No! Nothing like that! It's not something I did."
"Okay; my word. All that stuff."
Fergus looked at him and Rory shivered. "You swear?" Fergus said, voice hollow.
Rory nodded. "I swear." He felt dizzy. The smoke-filled room seemed to tip and waver. He wondered if they put something trippy in shotgun or rifle cartridges. And why did I mention killing somebody? That wasn't too sensible, way out here on this moonless night, etc., with a couple of lethal fire-arms lying around.
"All right," Fergus said, sitting back, breathing deeply. He looked almost soberly at Rory. "You sure you don't mind me talking about your sister?" he said slowly, with what might have been some sort of smile on his face.
Oh god, thought Rory, and felt sick.
But it was too late to go back now.
The way he told it, it took maybe five minutes. Fergus Urvill was crying like a baby again at the end of it. Rory cuddled him. And after as many tender words as he could think of, to try and lighten the load, to try and make it seem less of a confession, even to try and compensate for the shared and shaming confidence, he told Fergus that he had been responsible for the fire that had burned down the barn near Port Ann, fifteen years earlier.
They ended up laughing about that, but it was the uneasy laughter of desperation and displacement, and all they could do after that was finish the whisky and have the joint Rory had been working on, and it was almost a relief when Fergus was sick as a dog out of the window, hanging out barfing onto the slates and into the guttering while Rory tried to clean the plaster off the top bunk and stowed the guns out of harm's way.
They woke with raging hangovers to a wrecked room and the smell of black powder and vomit. There was a dead rat, blown almost in two, resting on the hearth of the fire.
They left the place as it was, picked up their gear and walked away. Neither of them mentioned anything that had been said during the night; they just agreed to head back to civilisation and not to mix whisky and cannabis like that again.
There were no more huntin" shootin" and fishin" trips. Rory went back to live in London that winter, and ended up — funnily enough — living in a squat.
He wrote poems.