Lorna had called while I was out seeing my mother. She’d stuck a note through the door to say that everything was prepared for Sunday’s service and I didn’t need to worry. ‘If I don’t see you at church, I’ll call round afterwards,’ she wrote. She made no mention of anything else.
I had a solitary evening in the manse that Saturday night. I read from the Bible, the Book of Jonah, and then I read a chapter or two of Moby Dick, Captain Ahab and his obsession with the whale. I watched the news: the Swedish foreign minister had died after being stabbed while she was shopping in Stockholm; an opposition newspaper had closed in Zimbabwe. I ate some toast. I drank some whisky. I thought about the women in my life: my mother, Jenny, Elsie, Lorna, Catherine. I thought about the Devil, and how ludicrous it was that that was the only name I had for him. I couldn’t imagine calling him Satan or Lucifer or Beelzebub. The Scots have a dazzling array of names for him: he has been a familiar acquaintance of ours for centuries. Auld Nick, Sandy, Sim, Bobbie, Auld Sootie, Clootie, Ruffie, the Deil, the Foul Thief, the Earl o Hell, the Auld Smith, the Auld Ane, the Wee Man, Auld Mishanter, Auld Mahoun. Yet none of these names suited my Devil either. My Devil was suave and fit-looking, though I’d also seen, when he let down his guard, the aged world-weariness of him. I wondered how I would address him when we next met. Maybe he’d be Alan, and I’d be Davie Balfour. Comrades. I went to bed and remembered the way we’d been together. I missed him.
On Sunday morning I woke late and ate my breakfast to the sound of the church bell calling folk to worship. It was odd to be in the manse and yet separate from that ritual. I wanted nothing to do with it. It had for so long been a sham to be praising God and preaching his Word that to be signed off from it in this way was an intense relief. I could no longer maintain the pretence. No more games, the Devil had said. If I had entered the kirk that morning, either to lead the service or to participate in it, I felt that my false face would have been obvious to everyone.
Instead, once the service had begun, I left the manse and set off for Catherine Craigie’s house. I felt as I imagine Boswell did that day he skipped church and went instead to visit the great infidel David Hume, ‘just a-dying’. Who was the worse sinner, the ordained minister who had communed with the Devil but not with God, or the Edinburgh lawyer who feared God but drank like a fish and slept with whores? I decline to pass judgement. I only know that of the three of us Hume, being untroubled by guilt, was innocent. Nor, in truth, did guilt much trouble me. I was too full of the story I had to tell – though how I would even begin to tell it to Catherine I had no idea. So I did not sneak through byways and closes or slink in the shadows of walls. Not that there was anybody about to observe me, but I went with my head held upright. I could not, however, correct the lurch of my shortened right leg.
The curve of Ellangowan Place, together with its profusion of trees and bushy vegetation, effectively prevents you from seeing much of any single house until you are directly in front of it. It wasn’t until I was at Catherine’s gate, therefore, that I saw that the front door, most unusually, was wide open. Beyond it, I could see that the plant-stand had been moved from its usual place in the middle of the hall. I walked up the path, rang the bell and entered, calling hello.
Amelia Wishaw came out of the drawing room. ‘Ah, Gideon,’ she said.
‘What’s going on? Is everything all right?’ I asked. But Amelia’s presence, let alone her expression, told me at once that it wasn’t.
‘No, I’m afraid it’s not.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Bad news, Gideon. Catherine’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry, it’s the last thing you can have been expecting.’
‘How can she be dead? You were on your way to see her when you left me yesterday. She was alive then, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes, she was. She seemed fine. She was fine. Nothing the matter that I could see. She said she was getting a tingling sensation down her arm, but she had so many aches and pains it didn’t seem anything serious. I checked her over, couldn’t find anything to cause concern. We sat and chatted for a while, and then I came away.’
I heard a noise from the back of the house, the kitchen. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s Norah, the home help. She found her this morning on the couch. She’d been well schooled by Catherine, my direct line was on a board in the kitchen. I was here in ten minutes, but there was nothing to be done. Except get Norah a cup of tea. The poor woman’s upset because she was late coming in and thinks it was her fault.’
‘She just died?’
‘Looks like it. No suspicious circumstances. It must have happened last night some time. Rigor mortis is quite advanced, so I’d say before midnight. Her heart just stopped – no question at all in my mind. It’s been waiting in the wings for a while, you know. Her heart was under a lot of strain.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she told me about that not so long ago. But it just doesn’t seem possible.’
‘I know. She was a good friend to you. Do you want to see her?’
A woman emerged from the back lobby, holding a mug of tea. Her face was pale and her eyes a little red.
‘This is Norah,’ Amelia said.
‘Hello, Norah,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’ In all my years of visiting Catherine, I’d never met her home help, nor did I recognise her from the town.
‘Just a wee bit shocked,’ Norah said. ‘I’ll be okay.’
Amelia led the way into the drawing room. Norah came behind me. Catherine was lying on the couch, a rug wrapped round her middle, her neck and shoulders propped up on several cushions. Her head was turned to one side, and her left shoulder, the one that had given her the most trouble, was twisted up like a tree-root. She was wearing a tee-shirt, and one leg sticking out from the bottom of the rug revealed a loose pair of trousers. Her eyes were closed. One arm was by her side, the other, the left one, lay across her chest. Apart from the twisted shoulder and the obvious stiffness she didn’t look too bad. Comfortable even. There was a tumbler half full of whisky on a table beside her, along with a book and the remote control for her stereo system.
‘Have you moved her?’ I asked.
‘Not much,’ Amelia said. ‘Just to check. We’ll need to contact an undertaker.’
I went over to Catherine and knelt beside her. I put my hand over the hand on her chest. It was like a cold lump of rock. The others stood back a little. It must have looked like I was saying a prayer.
I stood up again. ‘I wish I’d come round yesterday,’ I said.
‘You couldn’t have saved her,’ Amelia said. ‘You couldn’t have stopped it happening any more than Norah could have.’
‘That’s not what I mean. I just wish I’d come round. Spoken to her one last time.’
Amelia put her hand on my shoulder.
‘Listen, Gideon,’ she said. ‘She was lying on her sofa on a Saturday night, she had a whisky by her side, she was listening to music, and she was reading a book. She’d been in a good mood when I saw her, and she was really, really looking forward to seeing you today. She said so. I know these last few years have been bloody awful for her healthwise, but on a scale of ways to go this scores pretty highly.’
I seemed to have entered a phase of my life where people kept telling me sensible things. It didn’t make it any easier. Gentle counsellor was a role I too had once been good at playing.
‘She hasn’t any relatives, has she?’ Amelia said.
‘None that I know of. She has a lawyer. I have his details. I can get in touch with him.’
‘Thank you. What about an undertaker?’
‘She’d sorted that out with a firm in Dundee, I know that.’
‘I’m impressed. Well, it makes things a lot simpler. We can give them a call. I’ll make out the medical certificate tomorrow.’
‘Won’t there need to be a post-mortem?’
‘No, I don’t think so. This is entirely explicable.’
‘I just thought, with it being so sudden.’
Amelia nodded. ‘I know, but the fact is she’s been dying for years. It’s a surprise, yes, but it’s not sudden. Believe me, if I had any doubts…’
I shook my head to indicate, I suppose, that I had none either. Amelia went on: ‘If we can contact the undertakers today, the lawyer can start making the funeral and other arrangements tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Although, as a matter of fact, I’ll be handling the funeral.’
‘Will you?’ Amelia said.
‘Absolutely. We discussed it in depth.’
‘Well, that really does surprise me. Will you be able to cope with it?’
‘Of course I will.’
Norah, who had been hovering in the background, asked if she was needed any longer. Amelia thanked her for what she’d done and told her to go home. After she’d left we found the Yellow Pages, got the twenty-four-hour number for the funeral directors in Dundee and arranged for them to come for the body. They said they wouldn’t manage for a couple of hours. Amelia gave them her mobile number and asked them to call when they were on their way.
She said, ‘I’m going home now. Gregor’s playing golf all day, and I’ve got the house to myself. I’m going to have a big glass of gin. Care to join me?’
‘I don’t really want to leave her,’ I said.
Amelia looked at her watch. Clearly her ideal way of spending Sunday afternoon was not in the company of a corpse. I said, ‘She’ll have gin here. I could do with one too. Would you mind? If you don’t want to stay I’m happy to wait for the undertakers myself.’
‘Okay,’ Amelia said. ‘Fix us a couple of large ones. I don’t suppose she’d mind us helping ourselves.’
‘She’d mind if we didn’t,’ I said.
‘Maybe we can sit somewhere else,’ Amelia said. ‘It’s a little stuffy in here.’
I found gin, tonic water and glasses, even a lemon, and poured us two enormous drinks. We sat in the kitchen on a bench-seat below the big window overlooking the back garden. Half a dozen blackbirds, male and female, were flitting about on the grass with their characteristic busyness. We toasted Catherine. I said, ‘I can’t believe she’s just taken off like this without saying goodbye.’
‘You nearly did the same yourself,’ Amelia said.
We sat watching the blackbirds. ‘She always enjoyed garden birds,’ I said. ‘She said there was something optimistic about them. So long as they were singing life couldn’t be so dreadful.’
‘It’s funny, isn’t it,’ Amelia said. ‘You and I, different jobs, but we deal with a lot of the same stuff. And right at the core of what we do sits this nasty old bugger called death. I do my best to send him packing, or at least keep him at bay, and you spend your time preparing people for him, telling them there’s nothing to be frightened of, they can walk through death’s dark vale and there’ll be something good on the other side. Don’t you?’
‘Depends who I’m talking to,’ I said. ‘Catherine, for example, wouldn’t tolerate any of that. Happy hopeful birds was fine, but she’d have slung me out if I’d started any of the kingdom come routine.’
Amelia said, ‘I bet she would have. That’s why I’m surprised at you presiding over her funeral. I know you were friends, but it doesn’t quite fit with what I imagine her views were. What are you going to say?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ I said.
‘I reckon even the most convinced atheist must get a bit nervous when the moment comes,’ she said. ‘More perhaps than those of us who just don’t think about it very much. I mean, if you’re an atheist you’ve really nailed your colours to the mast, haven’t you?’
I thought of Pascal’s bet, and I thought of David Hume, dying and completely unfazed by the prospect of death. ‘Catherine wasn’t an atheist,’ I said. ‘She was very explicit about that. She was an agnostic. She said denying the existence of God was as arrogant and stupid as asserting it. The only sensible way to behave is to believe in what we know to be real.’
‘Yes, but that’s not how people’s minds work. People can’t help speculating. That’s why your crowd will never go out of business.’
‘Who? The Kirk?’
‘All churches. People whose job it is to articulate spirituality for other people. You’re willing to talk about it. And you’re willing to talk about death. Everybody else in the West is running around forming boy bands or girl bands, doing reality TV or being famous for being famous, everybody’s in denial about this one inescapable fact, and you guys are the only ones talking about it. Well, apart from us in the medical profession.’
‘You can’t expect boys in boy bands to spend a lot of time contemplating death. You can’t blame anybody for not thinking much about it. Why dwell on something you can’t do anything about?’
‘I get the sense that we’re both playing devil’s advocate here,’ Amelia said. ‘Surely the way you think about death totally determines the way you live your life? If you don’t ever think about it can you really be alive in any meaningful way?’
‘The unexamined life is not worth living, you mean?’
‘The unexamined patient may be harbouring a life-threatening disease,’ Amelia said. ‘If you find out in time, you can do something about it.’
‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes all you can do is tell them.’
‘Or not tell them,’ Amelia said. ‘Like you said, it depends who you’re talking to. Anyway, what about you? What do you think of death after your recent escape from his clutches?’
I thought about the clear white light in the tunnel, I thought about coming back and I thought about my Devil. ‘The honest truth?’ I said. ‘I did come pretty close, Amelia. I know I did, I remember it. The honest truth is, I’m not frightened by death. I don’t really want to elaborate on that, but I think there really is something good on the other side. I don’t know what, but it’s not the end.’
‘For Catherine too? Or only if you believe in it?’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That’s an impossible question to answer.’
‘It’s where it all falls apart, as far as I’m concerned,’ Amelia said.
She finished her gin and said she’d phone when she heard from the undertakers. I reassured her that I would switch off everything and lock up when Catherine had been taken away, and she headed off, closing the front door behind her.
It was coming up to one o’clock. The service would be long over, but Lorna had said she would call in if I wasn’t at it. I knew she wouldn’t give the manse doorbell one ring and leave it at that. She’d hang around. She’d try to get me in later. I didn’t want to deal with Lorna. In spite of the circumstances, I was glad to be where I was. Catherine was giving me a kind of sanctuary.
I went back to the kitchen. It was a very quiet street. The only sounds I could hear were the whirr of the fridge and birdsong in the garden. How strange it was that at that moment nobody in Monimaskit except Amelia and myself knew that Catherine Craigie was dead. She was gone but everybody assumed she was still here. Which, of course, she was. Then I remembered Norah. Word would get around pretty quickly.
I drank up, washed the glasses and went back into the drawing room. She reclined like a statue of herself, or like one of those people overwhelmed by the volcanic fumes and ash at Pompeii. There was a faint, sweet odour in the room, something like warm earth. I went and stood over Catherine and her distinctive old cupboard smell rose around me. The table beside her had a single drawer in it, where she kept her stash of alternative medicine. I opened it and found three unsmoked joints and a wee plug of cannabis, all of which I carefully pocketed. I picked up the whisky glass, swilled it, sniffed it. Strong, pungent: an Islay malt. I put the glass back down and lifted the book, a large paperback: The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament.* Like the malt, typical Craigie taste. I hoped she’d been at a gripping part when it happened. But maybe she hadn’t been reading at all. Maybe she’d been sleeping, or thinking, or lying, a little stoned, listening to music.
I went over to the stereo, which was still on, opened the CD slide and checked what she’d been playing. Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain. That was Catherine too: classical but a little out of the mainstream. Romantic as well. I could hear her vehemently denying that she was a romantic.
I pushed the slide home again and pressed play. The strings of the orchestra began to seep into the atmosphere, slow and dark at first, then gathering pace, and the piano trickling in above them. I sat down in the chair I usually occupied. After a minute I stretched my legs out, leaning back as the music filled the room. I could almost see it. I imagined the notes entering the empty shell lying on the couch, swirling around in her skull, leaving again. She was here but she was away. Like my mother but different. I missed her already. Who would I talk to now?
I closed my eyes and let the music pour over me. Until Amelia phoned to say that the undertakers were on their way, I would be quite safe from disturbance. I liked that. There was a great contentment in it.