seventeen

By evening, she had twenty-five completed papers and was sitting at her desk rewriting the instructions—Do not confer during the experiment and Please do not discuss your answers with anyone—when Murray arrived, dressed in running clothes.

“How did it go?”

“Tremendously well,” said Keiko, flopping back down onto the sofa. “But I’m exhausted. Twenty-five people and it might have been more, except there was a funeral.”

“Tam Cleland, yeah,” Murray said. “So now you know all there is to know about the people of Painchton?”

“More than I expected to,” said Keiko with a laugh. “I know that Tam Cleland’s daughter-in-law is to blame for such a small funeral and she’s ‘been through the house and stripped it bare.’ Miss Morrison told me all about it.”

“Miss Morrison.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. You’re fine with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Murray said.

“Who am I not fine with?”

“Well, there’s me,” he said, grabbing hold of her hand and pulling her to her feet. “I didn’t tell you in case you tried to get out of it, but I reckoned tonight would be the perfect time to get started on you.” Keiko opened her eyes wide. “At the gym.” He looked appraisingly at her and she felt her neck lengthening, her chin lifting. “I know you never came round like I said, but have you got any workout clothes?”

_____

It was only a few yards round the corner to the workshop, but still Keiko let go a breath of relief when they arrived without being seen. She felt fluorescent in the unaccustomed pale clothes and her feet, darting in and out of view, drawing her eyes down towards the tennis shoes, were as white and bulky as puffballs. She had imagined the people in the flats above the shops leaving their armchairs and padding to their windows to see her, drawn from the television by something even brighter.

“New trainers, eh?” said Murray with a small smile as he stooped over the padlock at the workshop door. “What brought that on?”

“I’m going to be very fit and healthy despite the steak and kidney pudding and the apple pie and the cheese scones,” Keiko said, stepping neatly around the question.

“You don’t have to, you know,” said Murray, clicking switches off and on until the right selection of spotlights left the motorbikes draped in darkness and picked out the exercise machines. “Just say you’re not hungry.”

“But they’re all so kind,” said Keiko. “Mr. McLuskie brought me a pie the size of a tyre when he came today.” Murray said nothing. “And a big bowl full of extra … whatever it was that was in the pie.”

What Mr. McLuskie had told her was in the pie was squashed flies.

“A fly pie, hen,” he’d said. “Also known as a flies’ graveyard. Fine old traditional names are dying out. Like blood oranges. Ruby red oranges they call them now, and these would be Abernethy slices, I suppose, but the Japanese are not a squeamish people, I know, so fly pie it is. And I’ve put a wee bowl of extra filling in your fridge for you to make toasties. I know you’ve a toastie-maker in that kitchen of yours because I gave it myself.”

“Thank you,” said Keiko, meaning it to encompass everything.

“Och,” said Mr. McLuskie, flicking his hand that way that had seemed so rude to her at first, but which she was getting used to. “I promised Etta I’d do my bit, keeping you from fading away, wee thing that you are, so far from home and you must wonder what the he—eck you’re doing here, eh?” He sat down heavily, one hand on each knee, dropping backwards into the seat with a sigh. As he did so a gust of warm sweetness rushed towards Keiko’s nostrils and, as she bent over him to explain the questionnaire, was she only imagining that she could taste it, like a cloud of icing sugar hanging in the air around him?

“No smoke without fire,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. McLuskie?”

“Och no, I wouldn’t want to put you to it,” he said. “But if the kettle’s going on anyway, I’ll keep you company. Tea, mind, not coffee. Nice change to be asked too. Etta’s up to high doh this weather and I can raffle.”

“I’m sorry?” said Keiko.

“My wife is not herself these days,” said Mr. McLuskie. “Anybody’s guess why not. So it’ll be a wee treat to have somebody make me tea.”

“And a slice of pie?” said Keiko, holding it up to him as though she had made it and was tempting him.

“I shouldn’t really,” he said. “I brought it for you.”

“But I like that,” said Keiko. “I mean, the way you appreciate your own … Mrs. Imperiolo took me out for fish and chips, and Malcolm is doing something with suet and kidney for me.”

“Fish, eh?” said Mr. McLuskie. “Well, at least she never had you at that so-called Indian or the so-called chink—uh, Chinese, I beg your pardon.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. McLuskie,” Keiko said. He had followed her through to the kitchen and was watching her setting out cups and plates, the questionnaire forgotten in the other room.

“See, me? I’m a traditionalist,” he said.

“I am very glad to hear it,” said Keiko. “You will be an important part of my study. I cannot tell you why, but I assure you.”

“I make plain and pan, morning rolls, bridge rolls, cottage, farls and batch. Mince pies, steak pies, sausage rolls, bridies. All with Malcolm’s special mixture. Honest food from right here.”

“And you make the pastry to go around?” said Keiko.

“Aye, from the finest flour, butter, lard, and salt, with these two hands,” he said. “And then there’s fruit scones, drop scones, tattie scones, soda scones; never mind the teacakes. And speaking of cakes! Vanilla slices, cream horns, French fancies, coconut rocks, your fly pie there, fruit slab, Chelsea buns, yum-yums … you name it. Of course I could fling together a hundred kinds of muffins, wee bits of dried blueberry and choc chips that might as well be rabbit pellets for all the taste of them. Of course I could be shovelling out croissants and cookies and rocky road—a child of five could. But I am a Scottish Master Baker, see? And there’s nothing can go inside a panini that can’t go in a good morning roll.”

Keiko formed her lips to attempt a reply but could not think of anything. Mr. McLuskie sailed on.

“But the thing is, Imperiolo’s café and chippy and Indian and chink—Chinese—you’ll forgive me, hen—have got folk from all over the country, down south, France even, raving on about how marvellous it is, all over that Internet, and then there’s McLuskie’s Bakery and … not a sausage! Nothing! My customers just aren’t the type to …”

“To post online reviews,” said Keiko.

“Exactly! It doesn’t mean I’m not as good a baker as Kenny is a whatever he calls himself these days. He hasn’t shaken a basket of chips for twenty years. I’m still up at four every morning with my yeast. He just sits in his office at his computer.”

“He’s probably writing reviews,” said Keiko. Mr. McLuskie crashed his cup down into its saucer. “I didn’t mean that,” she blurted. “I was only joking.”

“Ho ho!” said Mr. McLuskie. “You’ve hit the nail on the head, hen.”

“I was joking.”

“Oh no, you’ve cracked it.”

“Please!”

“I am going to make you a cake,” said Mr. McLuskie, standing up. “Royal icing and sugar roses, because you are a wee sweetheart. You’ve made my day.” And he left, the questionnaire forgotten.

_____

“Keiko?” said Murray. “You’re miles away.”

Keiko blinked and smiled at him. “Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about Mr. McLuskie.”

“I bet nobody’s gone off in a dwam about him for a while,” Murray said laughing.

“I told him something about someone and I shouldn’t have.”

“Who?” said Murray, staring hard at her.

“Kenny Imperiolo.”

Murray considered this for a moment and then shook his head. “You’re better off staying away from both of them,” he said. “Best thing.”

“I can never tell whether you’re serious or joking,” said Keiko staring at him.

“I’m never joking,” Murray said. “Remember? I only laugh so I don’t scream. Right then.” He walked towards the gym machines, but Keiko put out a hand to stop him.

“I’d like to learn another bike first, please,” she said.

“Gold Flash,” he said, once again doing the trick with the tarpaulin that made him look like a children’s conjuror and made Keiko want to giggle. “BSA Golden Flash. 1950 to 1961. So called because of the colour. Although they did do them in black and chrome too—pretty rare. I’ve had a set of black front forks and mudguards for years, probably never get a hold of the rest.”

Keiko listened and nodded but could not see in this machine anything like the glamour of the Harley or the spidery elegance of the Vincent. This one seemed to be nothing but trouble. Murray told her about the innovative plunger suspension, which wore out too quickly, and the brakes not strong enough to allow a sidecar. She could feel a frown form on her brow, too tired to take a scholarly interest in such a catalogue of failures. She was glad when he stopped talking and threw the cover back over the bike again.

“Right. No more skiving,” he said. “What do you weigh?”

“Ah, fifty kilos,” said Keiko. “I don’t know in stones.”

“That’s okay. Metric’s best,” Murray said. “Do you mind?” He walked towards her and put a hand around her upper arm, warm thin fingers reaching right around it. “Flex,” he said. Keiko tensed the muscle with all her strength, one foot lifting slightly off the floor in its weightless trainer.

“Go on, flex your bicep,” he said sternly.

“I am flex—” she started.

Murray smiled. He squatted down in front of her, cupped one hand around her right calf, lifted the leg from the floor and laid the other hand flat against the front of her thigh.

“Point your toe,” he said, curving his palm around her thigh as it stiffened. Keiko wobbled and put one hand on his shoulder to steady herself. She stared down at the top of his head, at the glint of his eyes through his lashes.

“Flex your foot up?” he asked quietly, and she did, feeling his hand squeezing the small ball of her calf. She relaxed and Murray set her foot gently back down. She took her hand away from his shoulder and crossed her arms as he stood upright and looked down at her.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. “You have absolutely no muscles. How do you walk around?”

Keiko started laughing. “You’re very rude to me,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go home and eat my pie.”

“Multi-gym, leg press, incline bench, treadmill, cross-trainer,” said Murray—cursory, so different from his caressing descriptions of the motorcycles—then started to work at the fastenings on one of them. The contraption, which looked to Keiko like the mechanism of an elevator, had no obvious place in it for a human body to be added.

“Weight-lifting?” she asked. He smiled at her over his shoulder but said nothing, spun the loosened weights free, and stacked them in their place in the pile. Then he straightened and held up his hands to Keiko, showing her two absurdly tiny weights like doughnuts in his palms.

“No,” she shouted. “I am not as feeble as that.”

“Nothing feeble about it,” said Murray. “You have to start from where you are. This is where you are.”

He settled Keiko into the contours of the machine, nudging her feet into place and pushing her head gently back into the rest, then swung the bar over her, talking her through the exercise in minute detail. When she tried it, just as he said, shoulders down, stomach tight, her eyes opened wide with surprise at the resistance of the silly little weights. She felt the tendons on her neck and heard her ears crackle.

“Won’t this make me look like those orange ladies?” she asked, releasing the hold. “They’re very ugly.”

“How can you ask questions when you’re breathing in?” said Murray watching her arms.

She stopped and replaced the weight. “But will it?”

“No,” said Murray. “They increase the weight. You’re going to up the repetitions. You’ll look more like me than them. As long as you do what you’re told. Do you trust me?” She nodded. “Will you do what you’re told?” She nodded again.

“And if I eat the pies? Will it cancel out?”

“You can’t eat the pies,” said Murray. “You don’t want to, do you?”

“Malcolm wants so much to show me the pudding.”

“You don’t need to worry about Malcolm,” said Murray. “I’ll tell him to leave you alone.”

Keiko lay down and moved the weights again. “Have you always done this?” she asked him. “Have you always been …” She couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t make his eyebrow lift that way it did. “Only Malcolm and your father are so different.”

“Dad?” He was surprised, she could tell, but not shocked, not horrified. Perhaps Malcolm was right and it wasn’t Mr. Poole who had made Murray so sad after all.

“I saw his photograph,” Keiko reminded him. “And I just wondered if his health, you know, was what made you decide to be the way you are and why Malcolm didn’t … join you.”

“His health?” said Murray.

“I assumed it was a heart attack,” Keiko said.

“I think most people did,” said Murray, nodding.

“But it wasn’t?”

“Not so far as I know.”

She sat up and hooked her arms over the bar, slouching. “Is that the puzzle you talked about?” she asked him.

“Not exactly,” Murray said. She started to speak again, but he talked over her. “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand. And even if you did, you wouldn’t believe me. And even if you bel— Keiko, have you ever heard the expression ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you’?”

She blinked. That was more or less what she had decided. For almost a week she had refused to think of them. She had not said their names even to herself and had not used the phrase that scared her even when it was only inside her own head. But all the words came back to her now, as clear as ever. Dina, Tash, Nicole. The missing girls.

“I’ve heard that forewarned is forearmed too,” she said to Murray.

“You don’t need to be either. I won’t let anything happen to you. And to get back to your question—yes, I’ve always been ‘the way I am.’ I’ve never been ‘like Malcolm.’”

He watched over her through one complete set of exercises, moving her between machines, hardly looking at her, speaking a word or two at first and then less and then nothing, moving her feet and hands instead, pressing her into place.

And as she went through the movements in the lengthening silences, the clack of voices from the long day gradually left. She came back from the nest of words and paper around her head, back down into her body, the sound of her breaths, and the feel of her hot hair.

She blew upwards at a stray wisp, and Murray’s hand came into view. He swept the strand off her face with his fingertips and tucked it behind her ear. Then with one finger he continued to trace around her jaw, wiping the trails of sweat gathered under her chin. She stopped moving.

“You’re finished,” he said. “Well done.” He straddled her legs facing away from her and unbuckled her ankle straps. Keiko lay still, letting her blood stop pumping, looking up at the dark web of metal rafters above the lights and the odd shapes suspended there.

“What are those?” she said.

“What?” said Murray. She pointed, wincing a little as she stretched her arm. “Man, I forgot they were still up there,” he said. “Nobody much ever comes in here but me.”

Keiko screwed up her eyes, trying not to let the low-hanging lights dazzle her, and peered harder at the pale, delicate, structures, perfectly still, throwing a tracery of shadows onto the ceiling.

“But what are they?” she said. “Airplanes? Toys?”

“Birds,” said Murray. “Models.”

“Why put them up in the roof space?” Keiko said. “You can hardly see them.”

“I used to be quite into them for a bit,” said Murray. “I shoved them up there because they were taking up too much space. Couldn’t store them any other way. They’re kind of fragile.” He held out his hands to her. “Come on, keep moving or you’ll feel rough.”

Keiko took his hands and sat up slowly, feeling the blood surge into her head, then swung her feet to the floor. He handed her sweat suit top to her, and she took it and held it under her chin, hoping that the pale colour would take some of the flood of heat out of her face.

“Put it on,” said Murray. “Don’t get cold.”

“What now?” she asked.

“I’m going to start my workout,” said Murray.

“What will I do?”

“You need to get home, straight into a warm bath.” He turned away from her and starting to swing his arms around.

Keiko stood up quickly and pulled her top on. “Of course,” she said. “I’ve been taking up all your time.”

“I enjoyed it,” he said. “But you mustn’t get cold. You have to go.”

_____

She lay in the bath for a long time, gazing up through the steam at the patterns in the rough-textured paint on the ceiling, the getting-familiar faces and animals. The silence was heavier than ever after the flat being full of voices all day, and the smell of the new paint and new grout on the tiles was strong enough in the steamy air to drug her. She felt herself begin to drift.

So many things he had almost told her, so many things she didn’t quite know. He had said she wouldn’t believe him. Why do you think you’re here? he had asked her. Who are these people? her mother had said. How long will this one last? said Mr. Glendinning. Tash piled on the pounds, said Mrs. McLuskie. Dina couldn’t manage a grape, said Mrs. Watson. I’ve never been like Malcolm, Murray said. Stick with me.

She sat up with a jerk, making the water suck and slosh against the enamel sides of the bath, making it even harder to hear anything through the empty silence all around.