MY homecoming to the lodge was strange, but I find myself hard put to explain the strangeness. Suddenly everything was small: the houses like toy-town cottages, the fields like pocket handkerchiefs, the hills squat, the lochans muddy pools, the road a country track and the sheep like animals from a children’s crib. I was not large, you understand. I was just a middling man, looking through glass into a lilliputian landscape, set by some shopkeeper for the summer trade. I did not feel superior – this you must understand – only separate, different, faintly resentful, like a child who could not fly out the window with Peter Pan.
Even old Hannah was changed. There was no mystery about her any more, no gypsy wander-thing, no mist of tomorrow or of yesterday. She was just a little old lady, wrinkled like a prune, who clung to me, possessive and loquacious, because I was a man come back to a house too long without one.
‘You’re home! God be praised in all his wonders! I saw you swallowed by the black sea. But it wasn’t you, it was that poor Lachie – God save his silly soul! You’ll come in now and take a bath – I’ll draw it for you. And you’ll throw out your soiled things for the laundry and spruce yourself up for the dear young woman that wants you to call her. Ach! There’s a smell of sin on you! You’d better get rid of that before you go calling. Not that I’d ask who it was, but she might, and I hope you’ve got your lying well prepared. And what’s this with the police, running all over the island, asking questions as though we’re criminals? Don’t tell me! I don’t want to hear – not till you’re clean and rested and we can have a strupach together. And then don’t tell me what you don’t want talked about, because I’m a garrulous old woman who’d drop her false teeth in the soup if she had a good story to tell… Out of your pants now and into your bath. And if you’re worrying what I might see, I’ve seen it all and enjoyed it long before you knew what it was. Tea’ll be ready when you come down – and there’s scones ready and smiling for the oven!’
It was good to be home. Except it wasn’t home. It was a pleasant enough lodge on the Isle of Lewis, in Ross-shire, where I was resting my tired brain for a while. I lay in the hot bath, like a demigod on Olympus looking down on the provincial comedy and wondering how and why I had become involved in it all. I could be gone tomorrow and they would trot on their little rounds with never a thought of me. I could come back in ten years and it would still be the same: the heather blooming, the fish jumping, the peat smoke rising and a few more stones in the churchyard, to mark the cycles of the years….
But when I went down to the lounge and found the tea-things laid out, and Hannah sitting with her hands folded in her apron waiting for me, everything grew back to size and I grew down again.
She fixed me with her bright, black eyes and stated categorically, ‘You know about Morrison and the Matheson boy?’
‘I know, Hannah.’
‘I’ve known for thirty years and more, and never a word has crossed my lips – for which I hope God will reward me one day.’
‘I saw the Morrison on the way home. He’s very happy.’
‘I hope he stays that way.’
‘So do I, Hannah.’
‘That Ruarri! There’s trouble in every wind that blows round him. Now it’s murder they’re talking about, and guns being smuggled, instead of whisky and silks like it was in the old days.’
‘Everybody knows. Or they think they do. It’s a shame such talk should touch the Morrison.’
‘He won’t mind, Hannah. Now he has his son back.’
‘And is it his son? That’s what I keep asking myself – as I did the very day he was borned. There’s fairy children still, you know – and I know some of them! Changed in the cradle they were, by the Little People, and they’re mischiefs always till the day they die.’
‘Hannah, if that kind of talk got back to the Morrison …!’
‘And how could it, since I never say a word outside the house! So let’s talk about you instead. You should have gone away when I warned you.’
‘I didn’t. So that’s the end of it.’
‘Not the end, young laddie.’
‘So what is the end, Hannah?’
‘I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. I know the sea’s gone from it, because the sea’s satisfied for a while. I know there’s fire in it, but where, I don’t know. And I know there’s three in this house, and Matheson isn’t one of them.’
‘How do you know it, Hannah? I’d like to know. I wouldn’t tell.’
‘And how could you since I can’t tell myself? It just comes. That’s all. Sometimes when I’m lying in bed, sometimes when I’m saying my prayers, sometimes when I’m in the garden or in the kitchen.’
‘Does it frighten you?’
‘Having the sight does, but seeing doesn’t. It’s like knowing a bit of what God knows. And He’s not frightened now, is He?’
‘He ought to be sometimes, Hannah.’
‘Well, if He is, He doesn’t tell. And that’s a lot more virtue than we’ve got.’
‘I’m not laughing at you, Hannah.’
‘I know you’re not. You’ve little to laugh about, anyway.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Laddie, whatever I’ve seen, you’re in it: in the sea and in the fire as well.’
‘Was there anyone with me at the end?’
‘I wasn’t shown that, laddie. That’s the terrible tease. The good God gives you only half a gift and holds the rest till you’ve earned it. Which I haven’t done yet…Now tell me, will you be in or out tonight?’
‘I’ll be in, Hannah. We’ll have the company of Dr McNeil.’
‘I know. I’ve ordered the meal and I’ve set her room to rights – though there’ll be little use made of it, I know.’
‘Hannah, you have an evil mind.’
‘Evil, is it? And look who’s talking! With all the seven deadly sins writ large across your visage. Go telephone your woman and tell her you love her. I hope she’s easier to convince than I am!’
I couldn’t convince her, because I couldn’t find her. Her housekeeper told me with relish that the doctor was uncommon busy, and it was hard to know when she might be home. Yes, she’d tell the doctor about the dinner, but she couldn’t give any guarantees about it. I understood that, didn’t I? I understood. God love you, madam, and send you comfort and a sweeter temper before you die! …It was still only three-thirty so I decided to cut across and see Ruarri at his croft. For all the lies he’d told, and the sweet little surprises he’d pulled out of his hat, he owed me an explanation, though I’d be a fool to believe it, if I got it.
When I reached the croft I found Ruarri and three of his boys hand-sowing the newly made land. I leaned on the stone fence and watched them at this simple, biblical task and wondered how they or I could possibly be caught up in all the other madness. Ruarri saw me and waved, but he continued his work until the bag on his shoulder was empty. Then he came over to me, walking heavily and awkwardly in the soft sand. I don’t know why, but I had expected some kind of dramatic change in his appearance or his manners. There wasn’t. He was the same old Ruarri, full of piss and vinegar, with that same old grin spread over his face and the same come-all-ye greeting.
‘Welcome home, seannachie! You look ten years younger.’
‘That’s clean living and clean girls. Also I’ve stopped worrying about you!’
‘And when did you do that?’
‘This morning in Stornoway. I had a long, long chat with Chief Inspector Rawlings.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘Nothing he didn’t know already.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like that you’re a friend of mine and so is Maeve, and I’ve heard of Bollison but never met him, and the order of watches on board, and that there was an incident between you and Lachie at “The Admiral’s Spyglass”, and that messages were sent during my watch on the Helen II.’
‘And what didn’t you tell him, seannachie?’
‘What has passed between you and me on various private occasions.’
‘What point did he hammer the hardest with you?’
‘Why I left the ship at Tórshavn. Why didn’t I stay like a friend and support you in your hour of trial?’
‘And what did you answer to that?’
‘I told him you and I were rubbing each other the wrong way.’
‘About what?’
‘About yourself being Morrison’s son and my having to tell you, and you not liking me very much for it.’
‘That was clever, seannachie. What made you think of it?’
‘Because I was determined not to tell a single lie. If he’d pressed me about our relationships and our talks, I’d have had to invent things – and you’ve been doing enough invention for both of us.’
‘Do you think he’ll question you again?’
‘Very probably. I have to sign my deposition tomorrow morning. I’m sure Rawlings will be there for another little chat.’
‘What do you think he believes, seannachie?’
‘That you killed Lachie.’
‘He’ll be hard put to prove that…He hasn’t got enough even to file a charge, let alone make it stick in court.’
‘But I have, Ruarri.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Walk me down to the house, pour me a drink and I’ll tell you.’
We walked in silence down to the house and sat at the bar. While Ruarri was pouring the drinks I lit a cigarette and pulled a clean ashtray towards me, a large shallow bowl of African ceramic. When I dropped the dead match in it, I saw, lying in the bottom of the bowl, the locket and chain which I had bought for Kathleen. Ruarri had his back to me, replacing the bottle on the shelf. I picked up the locket and shoved it into the pocket of my coat.
Ruarri turned round, perched himself on the stool and toasted me. ‘Slainte!’
‘And to you.’
‘Now what’s on your mind, seannachie?’
‘There’s quite a lot, so let’s take it slowly. On board the Helen you told me you weren’t sure whether you had killed Lachie or not. You couldn’t remember. Do you remember now?’
‘Yes. I didn’t kill him.’
‘What convinced you?’
‘Lack of evidence. I’m in the same position as Rawlings, you see.’
‘Also on the Helen I told you I believed you were innocent.’
‘Now?’
‘I still do. For a negative reason like yours. The moment I cease to believe it, the game is over. I can’t compound murder. I have to tell everything I know.’
‘Which is…?’
‘That you uttered in my presence a threat to Lachie’s life; that when I protested, you struck me and threatened me, too, with violence; that you told me a lie about a confrontation with Lachie which did not take place…And how do I know that? Because I sat in on a friendly poker party, and because you never had any intention of going to Ireland. Bollison was already on his way there and you were fishing innocently between the Faeroes and the Flannans. You see the way it shapes, don’t you? As of now, Rawlings can’t touch you because all he’s got is motive and opportunity. The moment I speak, he has motive, expressed intention, a display of violence, the beginning of a plot to murder. I think he’d take you in on that. Even if he didn’t win his case, he could hold you on remand for quite a while and leave you discredited for ever afterwards….’
‘I’m trembling, seannachie.’
‘I haven’t finished yet. Maeve gave me the letter you wrote to her.’
I didn’t tell him she had burned it. I wanted to see how much he could take without flinching. To this point he was doing very well. He was cool, half smiling, weighing every word said, estimating the consequences, patient as a cat with a bird hopping in front of him. But the letter got him. The letter was a document. If I had it, the noose was really round his neck. But he still tried to bluff. He said lightly:
‘I don’t believe a word of it, seannachie.’
‘I quote, then: “See if you can talk, or sleep, some sense into him. You’re good at both.” She loved that. So did I. Big motion of confidence from Ruarri the Mactire to his friends.’
‘Where’s the letter now?’
‘Safe in Copenhagen.’
‘So it’s blackmail, is it? How much, seannachie? And how often?’
‘One instalment, Ruarri. Don’t hurt the Morrison.’
Now he truly didn’t believe me. He stared at me as if I were something odd, kicked up from under a stone. He shook his head. He blinked, and then he started to laugh, in a queer, stuttering chuckle. ‘You can’t mean it…You just can’t…! How could you police a bargain like that?’
‘You miss the point. I don’t have to police it. Because I’m one man in the world who can prove you’re shit – A to Z, right down the line. And you’re going to break your back just to prove I’m wrong. That’s the way you are, brother.’
‘I could also be tempted to kill you one dark night.’
‘You won’t do that either. There’s no need. Maeve burnt the letter after I read it.’
‘And you’re fool enough to tell me?’
‘I’m fool enough to believe your neck’s worth saving and that you and Morrison might have some joy together.’
‘Then why the hell did you go all that way round to tell me?’
‘You want respect. You cry to get it. You have to give some too. As of now the only one you respect is the man with the big stick. I just wanted you to know I’m holding it and that I could have used it this morning and didn’t. So how does that grab you, Brother Wolf?’
‘Right where it hurts, seannachie. But not for the reason you think. You’re such a patronizing bastard, you’re so chockful of wisdom and righteousness that there’s no room for sap and blood. You wouldn’t give me the smack in the teeth you owe me. No, brother! You come sliding in with a stiletto and shove it between my ribs. You won’t give me one single credit, will you? Not for the boys working out there that wouldn’t be working without me. Not for the land that’s going to be a model for other lands like it all over the Islands. Not for the promise I made to see Morrison and kept, and the bending I did to make him feel I needed him and that he could really offer me something. No…! To you I’m all shit – A to Z. Amen! Amen! Amen! I think I’d like you better if you turned me in to Rawlings. Then at least I wouldn’t owe you anything.’
‘That’s just the point, Ruarri lad. You do owe me something. I want you to know it, remember it and pay it – not to me, but to Morrison.’
‘Oh, seannachie, seannachie! You’ll have to do better than that!’
‘Any suggestions?’
‘Yes… Ask Kathleen about the locket you just stuck in your pocket.’
This time he did get the liquor full in his face. The wonder of it was he didn’t make a move. He stood there, a long moment, solid as a rock with the liquid running down his cheeks and into his beard, blinking against the sting of the raw spirit. He picked up a paper napkin and dabbed at his eyes. Then, unsmiling, he said:
‘I think we’re even now, seannachie. And I hope you’ll apologize to the girl when you get home. She came here for dinner because I asked her, and she went home at midnight without my asking or getting anything else but her company. Now have another drink and let’s have a little brotherhood between us, eh?’
To save the shreds of my dignity I had to stay. I had to apologize and take one drink with him and give him the last word in his own house. He took time to say it, and I had to give him the time as well, though every minute there was a purgatory.
‘Seannachie, we’re very close, but it doesn’t work. Why?’
‘God knows.’
‘Don’t put it on Him, seannachie. He’s not around that much. I lie to you and you snarl at me. Why?’
‘You tell me for a change.’
‘So I will and all. Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth – or the other end of him, if you like. You want to make a statement about yourself – an act of faith, a saying of love or hate, or a shout against injustice – you do it. You write it in nice clerkly periods. You print it, black and clear, and it’s on the record. They can love you or hate you or daub you over with paint, but you’re there! Me…? I can’t do that. I’ve got two languages, seannachie, and I’m schooled in neither. I’ve got a bad name and a chequered history, so any man who wants to discredit me can do it with a wink or a nod before I’m heard. That’s a bitter thing, seannachie, a cruel thing. There’s no absolute judgment – though there ought to be. It’s all relative to unrelated things. Result? I can’t speak and be heard. I’m clamped down like a pressure cooker. So I spout steam from the cracks. I bubble and spit and sometimes blow my lid off. If I can get a lie believed easier than the truth, why not tell it? They’re as like to hang me either way. And you, brother, you’ve been lynching me in your own mind these last few days, haven’t you?’
‘It’s only half true, Ruarri. Because you never give yourself more than half a chance with an honest word. You have to wait a space until your credit’s past impeachment. You won’t wait. You want laurels hung round your neck every time you recite, “It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht…”’
‘You’re not overly patient yourself, brother – as we proved a minute ago.’
‘Agreed.’
‘So if, just for once, I asked you to sit something out with me, wait on me, not judge me till the end, would you do it?’
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘Come to my ceilidh, two nights from now. Bring Kathleen.’
‘For God’s sake, man! You can’t give a ceilidh now. It’s an indecency.’
‘You’ve judged me already – wrongly!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘In the Isles, seannachie, we mourn the dying, but we drink for the burying. Lachie’ll never be buried, but there’s honour to be done to him, and something needed to be arranged for his family. So everyone who comes will bring a gift of money – you too. And for every coin that’s brought I’ll put in two. So there’ll be a fund for Lachie’s mother and her young ones. I’m inviting all my boys and their girls. Maeve’s coming and Duggie Donald will be there, and even Inspector Rawlings, if he wants to come.’
‘Now you’re right off the rails.’
‘No, I’m not. Because this is my statement, seannachie. Just as it would be if he were buried like a Christian in a churchyard. I’d be there, large as life and twice as ugly, to say I was clean and I had nothing to fear from God or man. Whatever anyone thinks after that I won’t care. Now do you see what I’m at?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you come? Both of you?’
‘We’ll be there.’
And because he could never resist the last turn of the thumbscrew, he added, ‘You’ll be like God, seannachie, with a secret in your bosom that no one else in the world knows. A man can get drunk on a thing like that….’
It was still early when I left him, and the rain had cleared and I could not bear to go back to the lodge and Hannah’s scolding affection; so I drove to the place of the Standing Stones and sat, facing the east, with the Great Stone at my back and the empty burying place under the soles of my feet. I saw no sacred wrens; I heard no cuckoo. I wish I could tell you that I saw the Shining One, but I didn’t. I did have other visions, though: of Kathleen sitting in candlelight at dinner with Ruarri, of myself with Maeve in Nyhavn and her telling me, ‘He’s treacherous always, seannachie, playing good doggie with his feet up in the air until you reach out to scratch him – then he’s bitten your hand off!’ None of us was a match for him in the devious arts of betrayal, because all of us loved him – yes, even Kathleen – and each of us was victim to one or other of his dazzling potencies. We had only one defence against him: pack and go; step outside the magic circle he had conjured around us; meet him, if we must, like a vagabond friend, on far and neutral ground, among a press of people. I wondered what spell he had laid upon Kathleen and how she would act and what she would say when I handed her back the locket. I was resolved on one thing: I would make no jealous scene. She had asked to be free. She had left me free. I had exercised my freedom. So had she; in what fashion I had no right to ask. But now, for me, the waiting time was over. It was forward for us, caps over the rainbow. If she wanted to come with me, fine! We would lock the gate on the past and throw away the key. If she wanted to stay, then I wouldn’t be here – the Isles were too small to hold me and the Mactire together.
When I got back to the lodge Kathleen was waiting for me, and she was in my arms before I kicked the door shut behind me. Don’t ask me what we said in those first ten minutes, because it was all in the babble of the love country, and it would make no sense at all in cold linear print. Later, when we were calmer, sitting by the fire, I told her everything that had happened on board the Helen and part of what had happened in Copenhagen and of my talk with Rawlings and my afternoon meeting with Ruarri. Then I put the locket round her neck again and sat on the rug at her feet while she told me the other side of the story:
‘…The news of Lachie’s death was all over the island in a day. Even in Harris, where they don’t worry much about the doings of Lewis folk, it was gossiped in every household. There was talk of a fight over a girl, a drunken brawl on board, a fight with the Russians or the Norwegians over fishing rights…There were hard words about Ruarri and his violent ways and even about you, darling, because they said you’d run away to avoid answering to the police. When I heard that one for the first time, I lost my temper – and a couple of patients at the same time. So, when I heard Ruarri was back, I called him. He was very guarded on the phone – they’re not very private here, as you know – and asked me to have dinner with him, so that he could tell me the whole story. He asked would I mind going to his house, because he didn’t want to raise talk by a public appearance with me…I won’t lie to you, mo gradh. There’d be no point. I was glad he made the suggestion. I wanted to be alone with him. I wanted to experience what he was like and I resented your being off in Copenhagen, and knowing that Maeve O’Donnell was there at the same time… Oh yes, he told me that, very brotherly and man of the world. So by the time I got there I was just light-headed and reckless enough to enjoy myself. And I did. He made cocktails and we cooked dinner together and flirted while we were doing it – and I enjoyed every minute, because I knew I was a big girl who could handle any situation…Over dinner he told me everything, much as you’ve told it, darling. I was surprised at how much he said, but he told me he knew you and I were lovers and we had no secrets. Or did we? He asked when we were getting married. I told him the truth. I said we hadn’t decided whether we would or wouldn’t. Then he laughed and said the seannachie was a shrewd old fox who knew how to arrange himself coming and going…He is like that, isn’t he? Lots of little pinpricks, never enough to hurt, just enough to let you know you’re alive and make you want to justify yourself to him. After dinner we danced, and I knew we were dancing on a trapdoor, but I didn’t care. He had me on fire for him… You lit me, darling, but you were away and he was there, blowing on the coals. Then he asked me to go to bed with him – and I’m ashamed to say it, but I was ready… Then he laughed and held me close and said, “What price the seannachie now, princess? Pity he’s not here to watch the fun.” I went cold all over and I wanted to run away and be sick. I pulled free from him, and when he came after me I couldn’t bear him to touch me. Then …then he walked over to the bar, poured a glass of brandy and held it up in a kind of toast, grinned at me, a cold, beastly kind of grin, and said, “Your very good health, Dr McNeil. I know you’ll be very happy. You and the seannachie are made for each other….” And that’s all. After that I went home. I had to tell you, mo gradh, because I love you and I couldn’t bear to think you would hear that story from Ruarri one day and hate me ever after…Now, if you want me to go, tell me.’
‘What will you do if you go home?’
‘Go to bed. Lie awake and stare at the ceiling – and despise myself the way I’ve been doing for a long time now. Some time or other I’ll get used to the notion and make terms with myself.’
‘Rather a waste, don’t you think?’
‘Any better suggestions?’
I stood up and pulled her to her feet and held her at arm’s length from me. ‘Just one, Kathleen oge. The first and the last. Do you see where you’re standing now?’
‘Yes…’
‘When the Morrison comes out of hospital, we’ll be standing here again, and Minister Macphail will be reading the marriage service, I’m going to take this woman for my lawful wedded wife, and she’s going to take me… On one condition: that she tells me now, because there’s banns to go up and licences to get and some unfinished business I have to tidy before the wedding day. It’s yes or no, Kathleen oge. And if it’s no, you go home to that bed and the blank ceiling and a woman you’ll never come to terms with until you die.’
‘And if it’s yes?’
‘It’s love and honour and cherish and shut the door on memories until the sunset comes for both of us.’
‘Yes …yes, please, my love.’
... And if you think it’s all too simple to be true, let me tell you that’s the way most important things happen in our lives. We go through reasonings, fantasies, fears, frustrations, vast, dreary do-nothing acres of time. Then, one fine day, the doctor comes and tells us we’re dying, or the girl comes and says she’s pregnant, or the bottom drops out of the market and we’re poorer than church mice, or a plane falls out of the sky and we’re dead and standing in judgment without our notebooks. We were engaged to be married. We had all dinner-time to talk about it, and all coffee-time, and all the time after the loving. And when all that was done most pleasantly, and Kathleen was asleep beside me, there was still time for me to think about Ruarri the Mactire.
I had to take him now. I had to rub his nose in his own dirt, lift him up again if I could; and, if I couldn’t, to hell with him. But how? Unless I knew him guilty, I could not and would not turn police informer. I could not and I would not face him in private, because I would be caught once again in that shouting apocalypse of self-justification, and afterwards no one would know anything except the lies Ruarri told with so much conviction. How then? And where? And on what issue, so that he could not leap away like an acrobat and go bouncing up to the high wire, where I couldn’t follow him?
I could see no other time or place than the ceilidh – his own house, his own occasion. Kathleen didn’t want to go. She had said as much, but I had insisted, because we must walk in there and face him down and spit in his blue, smiling eyes and let him know that he hadn’t harmed us at all. I could not plan what would happen. I knew only that he would be vain for the company and drunk and talkative – and that a moment must come when I could bore in and fight him openly.