Joanne thought of people’s lives as books; books she remembered, books she was yet to read, books she had read and returned to the library to a shelf marked biography or history or fiction or even romantic fiction. Remembered characters and fragments of a novel’s plot were often more real to her than actual events in her life. But the tantalizing possibility of a new chapter in the story of her life, even of a new book, was a recent idea.
Of her own story, she would have written it thus: beginning—childhood; middle—the war; ending—marriage. I need a subcategory, she thought; romantic fiction—failed. For too long, she had been waiting for the scene, toward the end of the book, where he would turn to her and say, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’ve been to hell and back. But the war is over and now …” She almost put “and with the help of a good woman” in her imaginary manuscript but could hear Don’s chortle as he edited out the cliché.
“Journey to the West” was to be the next chapter heading. This is it, Joanne kept telling herself, a last chance. This time we have to talk. Then again—the thought would sting her like a paper cut—how many times have I said that.
Sitting beside Bill, in the noisy, shaky, damp, smelling-of-fresh-wood-and-old-socks van, not much passed between them as they drove out of town in the dark. Not that they had spoken much all week. A driving rain accompanied them along the shores of the smelled but unseen firth. Their spirits matched the gloom. Dawn broke very gradually through dank cloud. On the higher passes between glens the water vapor was so dense it was as though they were driving into perpetual dawn like an airplane flying into perpetual sunset.
The van reached the top of the pass, and Bill stopped in a passing place before the drop into the faultline that led to the west coast. A biblical shaft of sun shone down on a distant shepherd, his dogs working a flock of blackface sheep, bringing them to lower pastures.
They had left behind the sepulchral cloud and the unease that hovered over them like a golden eagle sizing up a newborn. The paper was finished and would be, by now, scattered throughout the Highlands and Islands, the girls were with their grandparents, and she was going on a holiday—three whole days. Joanne was determined. This was what they needed, this time she would make it work. And her mood lifted with the elusive sun and the sense of the distant Isles. She started the song. Bill joined in. They used to sing together a lot, in the days of the war. Everyone did. But the habit had died out. Joanne still whistled, but less and less.
By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomon’,
Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomon’.
Following the railway track, the van rattled along with the singing, westward to the sea. Giant boulders and scree scarred the hillsides. The distant navy-blue peaks, jagged as in a child’s drawing, were outlined against a sky-blue sky. Clouds scudded, their shadows racing each other, making the fern carpet flicker from dirty rust to brassy gold.
The road up to the pass could be seen in the distance, sharp zigzags cut into an almost vertical hill. Passing places, marked by signs that would show in deep snow, protruded out over sheer drops with no soft landings in the rocks and heather below. Joanne was uncertain that the van could make it. It did, in first gear and at a walking pace.
At the top, the Bealach na Ba leveled for a mile or two before a slightly less steep descent. A small slate-dark tarn seemingly with no edge hovered at the brink of the drop to their right, a perfectly formed mirror for the clouds to admire themselves. The sea that took up two-thirds of the moving picture dazzled bright one moment, dark silver the next, and the islands big and small, some only oversized boulders, disappeared to then magically pop up in a seemingly different spot. Joanne felt that she would not have blinked if a sea dragon had landed across the bay.
Below, a sheltering of buildings and small clachans followed the curve of the shore. With a shop, an inn, a post office, a school, a harbor and twenty or so houses, the habitable land was a narrow strip squeezed between mountain and sea. Whitewashed but-and-bens, some still with thatched roofs, punctuated the slopes. A patchwork of tiny fields hemmed in by stone walls alternated with strip fields following the lines of the land. Breughel painting the countryside of the Middle Ages would have recognized the scene. But this is the land of the clans, of the Clearances, the land of the ever-diminishing Gaeltacht. And God.
Bill had nursed the van up the pass with one eye on the temperature gauge. It was on the red. He decided to rest before the downhill stretch.
“Five minutes before I can fill her up again.”
“Right you are.”
They waited to the gurgle and hissing and burping and sighing of the radiator and the smell of rusty water. A dark hairpiece of heavy cloud descended abruptly, and the light vanished; out here, weather changed by the half hour, seasons by the hour.
The sound of running water got to Joanne. Tammy and scarf pulled tight, she stepped out into the mist, scouting around for bushes. There were none, only occasional tussocks of thin grasses and bog cotton and lichen-covered rock. A few steps and the van vanished. She crouched down. A cough from a spectral blackface sheep startled her, then the sun broke through a hole in the cloud. Caught squatting in the spotlight, half a dozen curious sheep for an audience, she saw the edge a few yards off, falling away to the shore hundreds of feet below. She burst out laughing.
“Mind how you go,” Bill called out. “It drops away over there.”
“Thanks. I’ve just worked that out for myself.”
By the time the radiator was cool enough to refill they were chilled and damp, and Bill was impatient to get down the mountain. He had had enough of scenery. Joanne took a last look over to Skye, the cloud already a story tucked away for later. Or to share with Chiara.
“When we reach the village, leave me at the inn and I’ll explore. We’ll have tea when you get back.”
“Aye, it’s getting on and I’m to meet this man about the houses,” Bill replied.
They freewheeled down the last of the hill, a bump, the engine caught and they motored into the village.
She stretched and shook the cramps of the journey from her bones before going inside the hotel. A bar ran through to a small parlor where a brass ship’s bell hung above a handwritten notice, Ring for attention. She did.
“I’ll be right with you,” a voice called out, and almost immediately Mhairi was there. Both women started, then stared. What startled Joanne into recognition of a girl she had barely met was her bright rosy red apple cheeks. Joanne collected words and clichés and was always pleased to come across an exact illustration, to be mentally matched to her list of favorites. What Mhairi felt when confronted with the guest was panic.
“Don’t I know you?” asked Joanne.
“I don’t think so.” The girl went bright pink. She was a hopeless liar.
“I phoned about a room for tonight. Mr. and Mrs. Ross.”
“Aye, I’ll show you up.”
Mhairi seized the bag and hurried up the narrow steep staircase, Joanne following.
“This is the room.” A pretty bedroom, the dormer window looking directly onto the harbor. “I’ll light the fire.”
“Thanks,” said Joanne. “This is lovely. What’s your name?”
“Mhairi.”
“Mhairi, now I remember. I’m Joanne Ross—you worked for my sister Elizabeth Macdonald and Reverend Duncan Macdonald.”
Mhairi turned from pink to red.
“Och, I’m sorry. Me and my big mouth. Not another word. Promise.”
The relieved look on Mhairi’s face said it all.
“Will you be wanting supper?”
“That would be lovely.”
Joanne changed her shoes for wellies and set off in what was left of the afternoon light to explore the harbor and village.
Mhairi MacKinnon worked away in the kitchen, the door to the bar left open in the unlikely event of guests arriving. With black pudding-basin haircut, white white skin and blue blue eyes, she could have been a Celtic beauty if only she had an awareness of herself.
The owners of the inn were from Easter Ross but now lived over the mountain. The steep miles across the pass made this place another country. Mrs. Watt, her employer, knew most of Mhairi’s story but was only too glad to have someone reliable, willing to work with the “demon drink,” as the minister never failed to call it in his three-hour Sunday sermons. The water-into-wine parable had been passed over by the congregation of the Free Church of Scotland, or Wee Frees as they were commonly known.
A lass already lost was how Mhairi saw herself, so one more sin, the serving of alcohol, wouldn’t matter. But the shock of meeting Joanne Ross, the shock of meeting someone from the town where her tragedy had played out, the very thought of someone who knew the truth of her secret and that very someone lodging at the inn, was worrying.
Not that most in the parish didn’t know; it was more a matter of acquiescence to an age-old convention: Children born out of wedlock were given away, sometimes to the tinkers. Failing that, especially if the lass in question was young, the child was passed off as a sibling. Everyone knew, everyone accepted the lie; it was just the way it was done. To most, Mhairi’s family had done the decent thing. To others it was a disgrace and the whole family was made to feel the shame.
Tales of girls told never to darken the door again, cast out into the proverbial storm, were many and ancient. Songs of betrayed lassies, kidnapped babies, babies being stolen by the faeries or lifted up by golden eagles, all those tunes, words, poems, were part of Scottish folklore. Mhairi was just another story, and a not uncommon one at that.
Bill shifted uncomfortably in the driver’s seat, engine running, heater blasting hot to the body, freezing to the feet, waiting for the foreman to turn up. He stared at the unfinished buildings, his forced optimism seeping away. His picture of himself was that of a survivor, and by sheer belief he had often been able to turn disasters around. This time, he thought, we’re cutting it very close. The contract, with a clause that he had skipped over, so desperate to sign, stipulated the end of December for completion of the job. Still possible, but where were the men that he needed in order to finish the job?
Unexplained delays, materials not delivered, delivered but to the wrong port, bad weather, bad luck, a badgering bank manager; all this had plagued the project from the start. Then workers left; lack of lodgings, frozen out by the locals, the weather, the isolation and the west-coast Sabbath, so they said. “Acts of God,” the previous site foreman had said. Bill recalled the man as a strict Sabbatharian, dour but honest.
“The site is jinxed,” another had complained to Bill as he collected his cards.
The almost completed, desperately needed council houses, sitting forlornly waiting to be fitted out, were to have been Bill’s financial salvation. He was now certain sabotage was the root of his trouble.
He’d seen enough. He wanted away from the site. A van drew up.
“Mr. McFarlane.” Bill got out to greet the new foreman. “Let’s get to the hotel.”
“They’ll no be serving,” McFarlane pointed out.
“No. No for a drink.” Bill laughed, but he was offended by the assumption. He knew Andrew was a teetotaler. “Tea and a fire is what’s needed. It’s dreich and there’s that much rain over here, I’m thinking Noah would have had his ark built before I get these houses done. Well, no use girning, let’s get by the fire and see if we can figure a way out.”
Back at the inn, Bill Ross and Andrew McFarlane were the only ones around, apart from Mhairi. Joanne was in their room curled up on the bed with a book, fire blazing. Sheer bliss, she thought, reading in the afternoon. The bar was dim although all the lights were on, the peat fire smoldered, with an occasional blowback smoking the room. Bill had the list of what needed doing to finish the job. The more he and the foreman looked, the more impossible seemed the task of unraveling this fankle.
“I need to hire four men for a few weeks, but there’s no one to be had.” Bill pointed to the schedule. “But I’m now certain there’s something going on. Shenanigans with deliveries, men walking off the site, it stinks to high heaven. And the name Findlay Grieg keeps coming up.”
At that, Andrew McFarlane’s eyes went greener. “What have you heard?”
“You yourself said the men left the site because there’s no materials. The supplier swore the shipment was sent three weeks since, but it’s stuck in Kyle, nothing to do with him.” And he wants paying, Bill didn’t say. “I’m away over to see for myself. And thon local firm that didn’t get the contract are passing the word to others, so I hear, to not cooperate with us.”
“So, if the job’s no on time, the second bidders’ll hope to pick up the contract.”
“Aye, I’ve seen it all before. No doubt I’ll see it again.” And I’ve done it maself, Bill did not say. “But Grieg? What’s thon sleikit manny going to get out of it?”
“I did hear he’s building what he calls a lodge, for visitors, with fancy rooms and shooting and fishing and all laid on,” Mr. McFarlane contributed, “for the Yanks and suchlike that want to return to the home of their ancestors.”
“Done wi’ favors for favors, I’ll bet.” Bill looked dour. “The lady owner of this place is a right gossip, and she has no time for Mr. Grieg, so I hear. Maybe I can charm some information out of her.”
McFarlane laughed, partly in admiration and partly in disapproval.
“I’ve no doubt you’ll work your usual spell. Anyhow, you’ll no be needing me the now. I’ll leave you to sort it out. One way or another.”
As soon as he said it, he regretted his choice of words. One way or another was exactly what Bill would do. Unlike himself, he knew Bill had few problems with the niceties.
Come to think of it, he told himself on his way home, Bill Ross and Findlay Grieg deserve each other.
The herring were lightly fried in oatmeal, plump and juicy. Golden Wonder potatoes, yellow, fluffy, had a nutlike flavor; the swedes were fragrant, the moist orange flesh mashed with hand-churned butter; a simple, delicious, traditional west-coast meal. Bill ate in silence. He had always liked his food and nothing beat herring. Joanne waited for Bill to tell her of his meeting. He didn’t.
“That was lovely, thank you.” Joanne smiled at Mhairi as she cleared the table.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“A pot of tea would be nice.”
Mhairi was delighted. Someone had noticed her cooking. This was a singular occurrence in her two years at the hotel. She brought them a tea tray, banked up the fire and prepared for closing. The few earlier customers were long gone. Joanne wished her good night and took the tray upstairs, leaving Bill alone at the bar.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he promised. He ordered a half gill, then another. A third glass was served before Bill felt comfortable.
“What is it about this place? Why does everyone shut you out? What’s wrong with the people over here?”
Polishing the glasses while she waited for him to finish up, Mhairi did the barmaid’s listen, one ear on the customer, the other on the ticking clock. Bill was becoming maudlin and she wanted to go home.
“I’m being frozen out. They didn’t want an outsider on this job. No supplies. Men quit. Foreman quit. A plot, that’s what it is. Thon Grieg has got me, no two ways about that.”
This disjointed dialogue was between himself and his whisky, that Mhairi knew, but the name made her all ears. “Mr. Findlay Grieg?”
“The one and only.”
The third dram and the long day finally won. He bade Mhairi good night and stumbled up the stairs.
Two thoughts stayed with Mhairi from that night and the thoughts burrowed like wee black moles into her nights: Mr. Findlay Grieg, she knew more than enough about him; and Joanne Ross, a nice woman, kind, she’d like to ask her for help, but could she be trusted?
The lintel of the door frame was especially low. Bill hit his head as he came into the room. Cursing, he dropped onto the bed and scrabbled around trying to pull off his boots and clothes. Joanne had turned out the bedside light and lay beneath the eiderdown, pretending to sleep. He pushed his cold body up against her, icy hands running over her, whispered loudly.
“What you need is another bairn. A wee boy. That’s what you want.”
A mist of secondhand whisky breath enveloped her, killing desire stone dead.
They left the inn early, the dawn pewter-flat from an absence of light. Bill whistled as he drove, Joanne silent, desperately trying to recall dates. A pregnancy would close the trap.
Up and over the bealach, back down the hairpin bends, a right turn to the sea, and the van reached the fishing port and the ferry crossing to Skye. Sea, sky and land faded in and out on a melting horizon. An occasional distant darker gray suggested an island. Buildings huddled along on the foreshore, shape-shifting in the rain.
Whitewashed terraced houses peered out at the harbor, small windows grudgingly allowing some light in. Seagulls kept up a perpetual screech that periodically rose to hysteria pitch when buckets of guts were tipped into the waters of the harbor. Picturesque in summer, it was bleak the other ten and a half months of the year.
“Mrs. Watt? I’m Joanne Ross, and this is my husband, Bill. We stayed at your lovely hotel last night.”
“Come in, come in, the both of you. Mhairi told me to expect you.”
They were shown into the front parlor, where they stood around awkwardly until she returned with the tea. She bustled about, a mother hen of a woman. Mrs. Ina Watt saw herself a true Highlander, a hospitable woman, originally came from Dingwall in Easter Ross.
“Bill, you explain.” Joanne prayed that Bill wouldn’t offend the woman by relating any of his inexhaustible fund of Dingwall small-town jokes. He could safely joke about their football team. Everyone knew they were a disgrace.
She knew that Bill didn’t want her here when he talked to Mrs. Watt. It would cramp his style. He would have to tone down the color, stick to the truth, go easy on the waffle. He was not an analytical man, emotions were foreign territory, talking was for passing on information, charming people, telling a story, having a joke. Meaningful conversations were for women. Margaret McLean had once remarked to Joanne that had Scottish men been gifted with the graces of Rudolph Valentino, they might be forgiven, but with a culture of claymores instead of scimitars, what could you expect?
He told Mrs. Watt most of the story but left out the bank, the final, final letters, the missed appointments with the manager. The story was new to Joanne too. This was the first time she had heard Bill put all the pieces in joined up talking. After seeing the ghost of a building site, she had worked most of it out for herself. That the situation was close to desperate was now clear.
Mrs. Watt waited until Bill had finished, then asked, “Do you fancy a wee dram in yer tea? I know it’s a bit early but it’ll warm you up.”
Joanne covered her cup in refusal; Bill held his out. A hefty slug did indeed warm him up and he fancied that Mrs. Watt, as she turned to put the bottle back, did likewise to her own cup.
“What a day.” She began, using the convention of a conversation on the weather before deciding how much to tell. “I don’t mind the cold. I like the snow. But this dreich mist, it gets in everywhere. If it keeps up, I’ll be back to the east coast before long. Drier, you know. There’s not much to keep us here this time of year. We do a good trade in bed-and-breakfast but only in the summer. Course we’ll no take single men nor seamen, respectable folk only.”
She blethered on while Bill sipped his fortified tea and Joanne warmed herself by the fire. The pain from her thawing hands and feet, almost frostbitten on the drive over, was now a warm tingle.
“Willie, my man, he’ll be sorry to have missed you, Mr. Ross. He’s away over to Skye to look at some cobals. We’re thinking of setting up a business hiring them out to visitors as sea loch fishing is getting popular in these parts.”
“We just dropped by to bring you the list of the messages Mhairi needs. We must be setting off back home soon, before it gets dark.” Joanne was desperate to get the woman to return to the point of their visit.
“How’s Mhairi managing? I hope she looked after you? More tea?” Mrs. Watt tucked the list into her apron. She continued to blether, a burn on its way to the sea; restless, relentless, determinedly tumbling over any object in its way.
“Thon man from over your way, Mr. Grieg, Mr. High and Mighty I call him, he’s going into the fishing business too. It’s a whatjemaca’it, a lodge. Rowan Lodge. I ask you. Like in Canada, he says.”
Bill had been sitting there, a glaikit look on his face. It took him a moment to realize what Mrs. Watt was on about as he had shut off many sentences earlier.
“And the midges over there, they’re that bad, thon peat bog’s no place for visitors. Well, I says to him, with all the money you’ve put into the place, I hope you get something back. It’ll be fine, he says, as bold as brass. Got my contacts, he says. I know all about his contacts. Disgraceful. And my Mhairi says he’s no playing fair wi’ you neither. The man’s got no shame. More tea?”
There had been no need for Joanne’s intervention; wait long enough and Mrs. Watt would tell you the antecedents of every family in both the shires.
“I’m in trouble, Mrs. Watt.” Bill needed to keep the conversation on his concerns. He switched the charm back on. “I need someone who knows about these things to put me straight. I might end up losing everything.”
“You poor soul. It’s no about thon council houses is it?”
Bill nodded.
“Aye, I thought as much.” And she was off again. “Now I’m no a gossip, but I can’t stand that manny. An’ the builder, a local man as you know, nice enough fellow but no much of a thinker, Grieg has him in his pocket. All the work done on thon lodge thingy is at cost price or nearly, so I hear, in the hope of council work to come. County council work, but Mr. Grieg is only town council. Queer that! And it all must be costing a pretty penny. All swanky inside, so I hear, tartan carpets and the like. Rowan Lodge, I ask you!”
“But what’s Grieg up to exactly?” Bill was dying of curiosity.
“Exactly?” That stopped her. “How should I know?” She realized her tongue had got the better of her. “I’m no a gossip.”
Joanne turned to Bill. “I could look up the planning notice in the Gazette archives.”
“The Highland Gazette?”
“Aye, I work there.”
“You have a job?” Mrs. Watt looked at Joanne again. “Now I know why you’re so anxious about this contract. It’s aye hard to make ends meet when you have bairns. My man has always been able to look after me but I won’t pretend that he could run our wee B and B business without me.”
All this did not go down well with Bill.
“But tell me,” she started up again, “tell me about the wee boy that drowned and thon Polish sailor, you being in the know and all. How could he do that? Kill a bairn? Mind you, them foreigners—”
Bill raised his arm in an exaggerated arc and looked at his watch. “We haven’t time to sit around and gossip.”
“Gossip? Me gossip? I don’t know anything about anything. I’m no one to gossip.”
“But I thought you said Grieg—”
“Thought’s a fine thing. I’ve said nothing. Nothing at all. Look now, there’s a wee gap in the weather. See? Best take advantage of it. It’s a long drive back and it’ll be dark by four thirty. Nice to meet you. Cheery-bye.”
Before they could get a word in, they were out the door, out on the pavement, in the fine misty rain. Joanne looked at Bill and rolled her eyes before making her way back to the van.
The fine mist and rain made visibility poor. As they slowly followed the road south along the sea loch, the peaks of the Five Sisters were only a memory, a mark on the map. After about fifteen miles a painted sign appeared at the bottom of a rough track. Lurid pink and silver salmon were leaping over the lettering that proclaimed Rowan Lodge. And in the space of a few minutes the mist evaporated, the sun shot through the breaks between clouds, the mountains appeared again to take up their usual positions as a backdrop and there on a small rise perched a building. It looked painted onto the landscape. With 360-degree views to the sea, the islands, the mountains behind and beyond, the size of the construction made Bill whistle.
“Some lodge!” Joanne too, was awed.
They drove up and parked. The long two-story building, with a grand entrance and reception rooms plumb in the middle, was in local stone with a slate roof. A grand stone terrace big enough to turf over for a bowling green was almost finished. Sounds of hammering on stone and wood echoed around the grandiose foyer and up the elaborate wooden staircase.
A painter, previously contracted to Bill’s project, was varnishing the wood paneling that covered the lower part of the walls. No doubt his colleagues were around. At least the workman had the decency to look shamefaced.
Bill walked around the building site, taking his time, estimating the square feet of it, checking everything. And running his hand over the oak banisters, admiring the hand-forged railings, estimating the amount of slate and of stone, noting the expanse of glass and stained glass windows fit for a cathedral, and gilt-framed paintings of stags at bay or highland cattle, Bill was all the while making a mental calculation on the cost of the project. And when he reached the conservative side of a breathtaking total he knew he had been outfoxed. Yet in some part of him, he was full of admiration for the gall of the man. And jealous.
Their journey home was quiet. Through the light of an almost full moon, the final stretch, before the road descended to the east coast, had the added danger of wandering sheep suddenly appearing in the middle of the road. Broken walls of deserted crofts showed up as dark shadows on the hillsides. During the Clearances, this drovers’ route from the west came to be known as Desolation Road, the evicted and often starving clansmen herded to the emigrant ships or to the poorhouse. The very rocks of the drove roads had witnessed and retained the sorrow of the desperate human exodus, sending the Highlanders to form diasporas in Canada and America and New Zealand and Glasgow, Joanne remembered, and the stories, the history and the mountain ridges seemed to press in on the passing van. Bill too felt the weight of the day, but he put it down to the weather.
On the final miles along the shore back into town, Joanne insisted on calling in to Bill’s parents to kiss the girls good night. But they were asleep.
“How was the trip?” Grandad Ross asked as she came into the sitting room.
“Grand, but the weather was winter one minute and summer the next.”
“I’ll put the kettle on.” Granny Ross put her knitting aside and rose.
“I’d love to but Bill’s waiting.”
“He’s outside?” Grandad Ross was not happy. “Well, if he can’t be bothered coming in to see his own mother and father, he’ll just have to wait.”
“He’s tired after the long drive.” She was too tired to come up with the usual elaborate excuses for her husband.
“He needs a good talking-to, that son of mine.”
“How were the girls? Did they behave?”
“Wee angels they were.”
Granny Ross rolled her eyes at this.
“Saturday matinee, Wee Jean wanted to go home early,” Grandad told her, “frightened by the big boys shouting.” The sound of her shrieks still echoed around in his head. “Mind you, the film was a bit scary and she has such an imagination.”
“That’s more Annie’s trouble than Jean’s.” Joanne laughed.
She managed to extricate herself after five minutes, knowing that Bill would be furious at being kept waiting but even more furious at his own cowardice, his own shame whenever he had to face his father. His mother might forgive him anything, but his father saw everything.
“See you in the morning at church. Night.” She shivered, pulled her coat tight against the cold and walked down the path to her husband and a decision. Standing at the front door, the sight of his son’s van annoyed Grandad Ross yet again. We’ve all been through some things that don’t bear thinking about, he thought, we all have had to put behind us the death of friends, the horror of the past; there are two generations of us with memories we have to live with, it’s no excuse, he thought, fuming.
“George, shut the door, there’s a terrible draft,” Granny Ross called out from the sitting room.
That son of mine, I despair of him, he thought as he took a last look at the Milky Way. He admired Joanne, a grand lass, he told everyone. But something was not right in their household, he knew that. He also knew to hold his tongue. Look out for the girls, he told himself, that’s all I can do. Then, for the thousandth time, the memory of the morning’s outing to the cinema came back to plague him.
Grandad Ross was a practical man. He worked at the iron foundry, a good steady job. After surviving the First World War all he had wanted he now had—a quiet life, a shed and a bicycle. His escapes were the weekly trips to the library to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for cowboy books—Westerns was the only section he ever visited—and a regular outing to a film at any of the three cinemas in town that were showing Westerns, especially John Wayne films. His idea of America was in shades of red and yellow. Not like the Highlands, where he pictured everything in shades of gray and brown and green with occasional flashes of brightness breaking through.
The Saturday-morning children’s matinee at the Palace he enjoyed as much as his granddaughters did. Probably more than Wee Jean, he acknowledged; she found it intimidating but loved going anywhere with her grandad. The Lone Ranger was his favorite, followed by Zorro, the Masked Avenger. He liked Charlie Chaplin but loved Buster Keaton. The adventure serial made especially for children he didn’t mind but he couldn’t abide Lassie. Not that he would ever say so—it was Wee Jean’s favorite.
This Saturday morning it was the usual bedlam. The front rows below the screen was a no-go area; a seething tangle of wrestling boys lit by the ghostly flickering of the black-and-white film on a worthy topic, or a topic of interest to adults and girls, they ignored, waiting for the action to resume. At a distance they seemed indistinguishable from a freshly landed catch of giant squid.
The noise, like the keening of a storm at sea, made it difficult to hear the dialogue. The entrance of a well-known character, particularly a baddie, made the noise swell to hurricane force. Banging the seats up and down in time to the cowboys chasing the Indians, screaming out to a character to “mind yer back” or “kill him dead” or yelling “eeugh” when the hero smiled at the heroine, all swelled the racket loud enough to be heard across the river.
Running, scampering, scuttling like rats in a pack, up and down the aisles, dodging the outstretched arms of the usherettes, the boys would make a break for the toilets in small groups, off to sneak a fag bought in packets of five or to open the safety doors to let in their chums who didn’t have the sixpence to get in. But first they had to evade the clutches of the manager as he patrolled the aisles. An ex–military policeman, he was nicknamed Ping after the Elastic Man, but he was Elastic Man with a moustache and a terrifying sergeant-major bellow, which he used at close range to yell right into the eardrum of any boy whom he managed to snare. His ability to reach out and trap a boy by an arm, an ear or the elastic of their shorts was legendary. In the town, he was known as a nice man. He gave a generous discount to members of the British Legion, showed popular, not-quite-first-release films, with good old-fashioned British war films a specialty. Parents liked him too. The sixpence it cost to be rid of their children, particularly on dreich winter Saturdays, was money well spent.
The girls, they were altogether another story. The older ones, around twelve or thirteen, Annie watched with envy. She memorized the moves; the flick of the hair, the smoothing down of the starched-petticoat-full skirts, the sashay up or down the aisles guessing, no, knowing, that when she reached that age, she would never quite make it into a clique. At nine she just knew she had that hidden mark, that unquantifiable air about her that made her not quite right to join in, to belong. Arm in arm, two by two, went the girls sneaking a look to make sure of an audience, floating down the aisles, off to the toilets, never alone, as being best friends meant coordinating your bladder clock, and there they would meet up with other best-friend couples, to then stand in front of the big smoked brown mirrors, to practice blowing bubblegum. They had not yet reached an age where they were clever enough to talk about other girls. But their silence toward someone outside their group was just as eloquent.
This Saturday morning seemed more subdued than usual. Grandad left Wee Jean in her sister’s care, told them he was going out to the foyer to rest his ears, promised to bring back some sweeties, and while he had the chance, he had a sly cigarette. Two puffs later, the heavy swing doors flew open, letting out a blast of noise and an anxious usherette. The doors opened out a second time. Annie emerged dragging a shaking Wee Jean, who was mewling like a sackful of kittens sensing the river.
“The hoodie crow! It’ll get us. The hoodie crow. I saw it!”
Annie was shaking her sister, hissing in her ear, “Don’t tell! Don’t say anything! Don’t!”
Seeing her grandad, the little girl ran to him, clutched him around the legs, taking great big gulps of air between sobs and heartbreaking, keening wails.
“There, there.” Grandad did his best. “There, there, ma wee pet.” Wee Jean was exhausted with fear. Her cries were now hiccoughing sobs. “Grandad, Grandad.”
The usherette hovered helplessly flapping her hands. “It’s all right, dear, it’s just a fillum.”
“Sorry ’bout that,” Grandad apologized.
“Not at all. She’s a bit too young, that’s all.”
Annie said nothing. But she was as white as Zorro was dark. That was the villain of the piece, that was who had set her sister off, Zorro.
They walked out to a darkening sky and a darkening river.
“We’ll get an ice cream. But don’t tell your granny. Ice cream is a Sunday treat.”
“But can we still have ice cream tomorrow?” Jean managed to get out.
“Of course. But mind … sssh!” He held a finger to his lips. “Our secret.”
Grandad Ross, a grandchild’s hand in each of his, crossed the main road to the café.
“What was that all about?” he muttered, furious at himself for leaving the child. His wife was right, his stories of hoodie crows and trows and witches and faeries were too frightening for wee ones. His favorite rhyme, “At the Back o’ Bennachie,” sung with great gusto, was about a mother who had lost her two sons.
Oh, one was killed at Huntly Fair,
And the ither was drowned in the Dee, oh.
What was he thinking of, he asked himself. He knew Jean had not been herself, nor Annie, both of them had been subdued, nervy as spooked horses when they sensed the Indians surrounding the corral. They had been like this ever since their wee friend, the wee boy, Jamie wasn’t it, since he had drowned. And again, Jean was harping on about a blasted hoodie crow. All his fault.
“Grandad, it was nothing.” Annie looked up at him. “Really. It was just Zorro, in his mask and all. It scared her.” She didn’t mention that it had scared the life out of her too. She too saw what her sister saw—the hoodie crow.
And when they reached the other side of the road they saw that the café was closed, firmly shuttered; the usually bright happy corner of light and cheer and ice cream was as dark as the rest of the day.