McAllister rose at eight o’clock and it was still dark, being October. He presumed their first encounter would be awkward so he raked the still-glowing cinders in the kitchen range, added coal, found the heavy plaid dressing gown that his mother had bought in a sale on Sauchiehall Street seven years ago and that he had never worn, left it neatly folded outside the spare bedroom door, wrote Joanne a note saying he would be back later, left it on the kitchen table, and using his key instead of banging the door to, he left as quietly as he could, then, feeling strangely cheerful, he strode off into a watery dawn, down the brae and along the High Street to the Gazette office.
For the first time ever, he was the first in the reporters’ room. Mrs. Smart from downstairs brought him tea. He paused to smell the new edition of the newspaper before reading it. Hands around the mug of thick peat-brown tea, he went through the Gazette page by page and was reasonably satisfied with what he saw.
Don arrived about an hour later, saw McAllister at a typewriter and heard Rob clattering up the stairs whilst still carrying on a conversation with Mrs. Smart downstairs. But no Joanne.
“Joanne won’t be in today.”
Don read between the lines of McAllister’s frown and didn’t say a word.
“Not too bad, this.” McAllister waved the paper, then rose and tucked it under his arm and left with a “Catch you later.”
He and Rob jiggled around each other in the doorway and Don folded onto a chair, staring at the vacuum left by the departing editor.
“What?” Rob stared at Don.
“McAllister. He said he liked the paper.”
McAllister walked down to the covered market, to the butcher with the best bacon and the baker with the best rolls. He fetched the milk in from the doorstep, glad to see it was not frozen and that the birds had not attacked the gold foil top. He opened the front door, again making as little noise as possible in case she was till asleep, and made for the kitchen. It was the smell of frying bacon that awoke Joanne. He heard the toilet flush and poured another cup of tea. She came through wrapped in the dressing gown.
“I didn’t know what to do with your things,” he started, “soaked through, so I put everything to dry on the boiler, but they’ll probably be a mess.”
He kept his back to her as he spoke, busy with the frying pan.
“That’s your tea on the table.” He shoogled the pan to coat the eggs with bacon fat. “One roll or two?”
“I couldn’t manage a thing.” Even the smell made her queasy.
“Fine, have a plain roll instead, they’re still warm.”
He kept busy. She kept still. But sooner or later they would have to look at each other. He made up his own rolls, put them aside and went over to her.
“Here, let me see.” Confront it straight on was the best way. “That’s a real keeker. Purple, shot through with delicate shades of black, red and green, as a poet would say. Just as well I gave you the day off or you’d never hear the end of it in the office.”
She tried to smile but it hurt. “McAllister …”
“Only tell me if you want to. No need for explanations.”
“Thanks.” And that was that.
McAllister left after tidying up the kitchen.
“Pull the door to. I hardly ever lock it.”
Joanne felt that she had no right to ask, but Chiara was the only one she could call. Shivering in the drafty hallway, she picked up the phone.
“I’ll be right over.”
No hesitation, no demands for an explanation; the reaction made Joanne deeply ashamed of the neglect she had shown her friend.
When they were settled together in McAllister’s kitchen and after Chiara had whistled at Joanne’s black eye, Joanne began to apologize.
“I am so sorry, I didn’t heed you when you called, when you needed a friend, I … Chiara, I feel so terrible I didn’t help you, I was so caught up in my own problems. I am so sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I was hurt. But looking at you, I understand. And I have Peter.”
This was not said to offend Joanne. Chiara was just stating a fact. Joanne hugged herself in envy, the prickly plaid of the dressing gown making her eyes water.
“I don’t think walking out to my car in your boss’s dressing gown is a good idea.” Ever-practical Chiara smiled. “Think what the neighbors will say.” She said this in a pretend-shocked broad Scottish voice. “Give me your keys and I’ll fetch something from your house. It’ll only take me half an hour.” She held out her hand. “I’m presuming Bill’s at work?” She didn’t fancy running into him. She thought she might kick him in the goolies. Not that Joanne had told her anything.
“He’s gone to the west coast for a few weeks.” I hope.
“Good. When you’re ready, come back to our house. Papa always says ice cream is the best remedy for falling off your bike.”
That did it. Joanne started to cry. She put her arms on the table, leaned over and sobbed and sobbed. Chiara stood by, patting her on her shoulders crooning, “I know, I know,” almost in tears herself.
“I’ll make you tea before I go.” Chiara waved the kettle at her. “I don’t suppose there’s coffee in this heathen household.” She was banging the cupboards open and shut. “Tea it is then.”
In the warm solitude of the kitchen as she waited for Chiara to return, she understood what her friend had meant. It doesn’t really matter what story is told, it’s a matter of saving face. Everyone knows but no one wants to confront a battered wife; look the other way, pretend it isn’t happening, sweep it under the carpet, and worse, worst of all because this came from women, and usually from the woman herself, “She must have done something to deserve it.” But her complicity in her own fate was shifting.
She looked around, aware of the silence and the warmth and the clean sparse kitchen. She got up and wandered into the sitting room. Again, there was little furniture besides a deep comfortable armchair and a reading lamp, but hundreds and hundreds of books. No bookcases, but books stacked all along the walls at a height just below toppling point, leather bound, cardboard bound, Penguins, manuscripts, notebooks, an atlas open on the floor at the map of countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, the Oxford English Dictionary—the complete set making its own stack—bird books, nature books, paleontology, history, philosophy (at least that was what she thought, because she only recognized a few of the names), journals, magazines, old newspapers. She examined the titles, picked up a volume here and there; she had never heard of most of them and many were in French, some in Spanish.
John McAllister, I hardly know him. She was grateful to and fascinated by the man. He was an enigma. And she wished that long ago, in another lifetime, she had had the chance to meet a man like him—a man who could be a friend, whom she could respect.
When Chiara returned it took almost an hour for them to sort everything out, to make their confessions, to make amends, to forgive and then recover from the rift in their friendship. Chiara was never one to hold on to a grudge. Not like us Scots, Joanne thought, we hold on to grudges as though it was character forming never to forget a grievance.
“The worst thing for me,” Chiara told her, “is watching Peter. He is so confused. He can’t bring himself to believe his fellow countryman, Karl, could do something so awful as to kill a child. Even accidentally.”
“The worst thing for me will be facing McAllister in the office,” Joanne confessed.
“Tell him you were drunk and fell off your bike, that’s what everyone else does.” They giggled.
“Don’t make me laugh, Chiara, it hurts.”
“Stop fussing,” Chiara commanded as her father rushed hither and yon, getting in everyone’s way and exasperating his sister, who was trying to serve brimming bowls of soup to the gathering around the table.
“But I like fussing over two such bonnie lassies,” Gino protested. The Scottish phrase sounded so funny in Gino Corelli’s Italian accent that Joanne didn’t mind. Normally she hated it when non-Scots put on a cod Scottish accent. It made her cringe.
“Peter, you help. Gino, you sit,” Aunty Lita commanded.
Although not yet married to Chiara, Peter was a full-fledged member of the household, so Aunty Lita could boss him around as much as she did the others. For which Peter was grateful.
“Maybe I fetch your wee girls from school, no?”
“Thank you, Mr. Corelli, but they can walk home by themselves again. It’s quite safe now that this maniac is locked up.” Joanne caught the wince on Peter Kowalski’s face. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I’ve put my foot in it, haven’t I?”
They all turned to their soup and for a good few minutes the only sound was of spoons chiming on china bowls and slurping.
Peter thought about Joanne’s assumptions as he walked back across the river to his office. He had spent some considerable hours at Porterfield Prison with Karl. They had conceived of the simple strategy of Karl’s pretending his English was almost nonexistent and for some reason, Inspector Tompson had allowed Peter to act as interpreter. Now that Detective Chief Inspector Westland had joined the inquiry team, the inspector had become almost amenable. The senior detective was watchful but quiet. The new turn in the questioning had Peter extremely perplexed; questions about Karl’s past—his marital status, his sexual habits, did he like boys, distasteful questions, nasty, murky, insinuations that worried Peter, as he had no inkling what the policemen were referring to. This particular piece of information had somehow managed to remain secret.
“Papa! Delivering Halloween lanterns in an ice-cream van. Honestly!”
“Grandad and the girls loved it,” Joanne told her. “Mind you, Granny Ross looked as though she’d swallowed a soor ploom when she looked out the window.”
“Then the chimes going off! And all those wee ones coming with their pennies, and no ice cream.” Chiara rolled her eyes.
Oh my papa, to me he is so wonderful
Oh my papa, to me he is so wise.
They sang in unison the van jingle that Chiara had insisted her father install. When Gino played the chimes, children came running as though summoned by the Pied Piper of Hamelin himself.
“It is good to see you laugh again, my beautiful Scotch friend.” Gino beamed.
“Scots,” Joanne said automatically.
“Scots, Scotch, sí, sí. Beautiful all the same. But we got all the lanterns delivered—twenty-eight of them.”
Joanne stopped laughing.
“I’m sorry I won’t be there—no party this year for me, not with this great keeker.”
Chiara looked straight into her one open eye and the other, half-open.
“You’ll have to be more careful and not go falling off your bike in future.”
Aunt Lita broke the awkward pause. “Do you dress up for Halloween, like the little children?”
“Every year, except this year …”
“I have an idea.” Lita always wanted everything to be perfect. “We make you a … I don’t know the word, a man in a boat, from old times, with one eye and a big sword and a hat and feather.”
“A pirate.”
“Sí, sí. Wonderful. We make a frilly for a shirt and I find a hat and—a one-eye mask?”
“An eyepatch. The sword?” queried Joanne.
“I’ve my Highland dancing sword,” Chiara offered.
“Perfect. Now all we is need a big feather,” ordered Lita.
“Margaret has feathers,” cried Joanne, “but I’ll have to hurry, there’s only a few hours to the party.”
Leaving the chatter and laughter of the Corelli household, Joanne realized what a good idea it had been to invite them to the Halloween party. Gino so wanted to be back as a member of his adopted community. As she neared the double-story council semi, to see the girls before dashing off to borrow feathers from Margaret McLean, Joanne remembered again the look on her mother-in-law’s face when the ice-cream van had arrived. Hilarious. And at the sight of her son’s handiwork—Joanne’s eye was still purple in parts, shaded with a bilious yellow green—at least she had the decency to look embarrassed.
Joanne had not been back to the office. Yesterday, a quiet day at home, no work, no husband, children at school, had given her thinking space to wrestle with two puzzles in urgent need of resolution; a Fair Isle pattern in twelve colors for a jumper for Annie, and the perennial dilemma of her marriage. The knitting had resolved itself. The soft bright shades of Highland Glen wools, now unfankled, were framed in their traditional rows, formed a clear pattern. The puzzle of her marriage was harder to sort out. Leave? If I could, I would. Of this she was now sure. But where to? There was no solution to that.
Grandad Ross was taking Annie and Wee Jean to the party. He loved all the Halloween rigmarole. Granny Ross was delivering baskets of tablet and toffee apples, as well as lending a tin bath for dooking apples. She was waiting for her church friends to pick her up in their car. She greeted Joanne’s news with a face like a disapproving duchess. But the girls had cheered.
“You can’t come. Have you no shame, showing your face in public?” Granny Ross glared at her. “What will people think?”
Joanne bit back the retort, “If your son had any shame, I wouldn’t need to hide my face,” and said nothing. As usual.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be in disguise.”
The girls cheered again and Grandad joined in.
The feather stuck out from the pirate hat at a rakish angle and with one shapely leg extended, Joanne thanked her hostess with a principal-boy bow.
“Thanks, Margaret. These feathers are the very dab. This sword, though, it’s impossible to sit down. I’ll have to be careful I don’t poke anyone anywhere sensitive.”
Rob sauntered into the sitting room just as his mother and Joanne burst out laughing.
“What’s the joke?” He stopped, stared, transfixed, then he wolf-whistled.
“Less of that,” the pirate retorted.
“You look smashing.”
“Joanne is as lovely as always,” Margaret scolded, “but you don’t usually notice.”
“She’s married.”
Raising her sword above her head Joanne turned on him in mock anger.
“So, married women are not allowed to be attractive, eh?”
“Sorry, I surrender, Captain Blackheart. Or is it Long John Silver? No, no parrot.”
Joking he may have been, but he sneaked another look. In a man’s white shirt, cinched tightly at the waist with Chiara’s best, bought in Edinburgh, wide patent leather belt, with handmade Madeira lace cascading at collar and cuffs, tight black trousers, and black riding boots that made her legs look even longer, she was indeed smashing. Lita had taken in the trousers so much, Joanne had had to lie down to pull them on.
“The eyepatch looks great.” Rob chattered away in blissful ignorance of its real purpose. Joanne had had two days off with a cold, or so McAllister had informed him. “I almost wish I was coming to the hall.”
He didn’t mean it. He was off to a much more sophisticated evening at the Pavilion in Strathpeffer. The new band had all the latest from America, and he had a date. With a policewoman.
“Not so fast.” His mother handed him baskets of apples and sweeties.
“I have to go soon, Mum. It’s a cold long drive on a motorbike.”
“If you take us to the church hall, your father will give you the car for tonight.”
“I will?” Angus looked up from The Scotsman.
“Unless you want to come to the Halloween concert instead?”
At the very idea of sitting through endless turns by other people’s children, Angus readily agreed.
“Avast, me hearties!” Rob picked up the baskets and led them in procession out to the car before his father changed his mind.
In Scotland, Halloween was a Celtic festival with the night promising a delicious frisson of fear. The evening star hovered above the horizon, the starting signal for the annual visitation from the undead. Ring the doorbell, pretend to frighten the occupants, sing a song or recite a poem, then hold out the bag for the Halloween treats, that was the ritual. The guisers were well prepared for their task of fending off the lost spirits out and about on their annual night of home leave. Ghoulish lanterns, fiendish disguises and fire were tricks from time immemorial to confuse the undead and discourage them from overstaying their welcome.
This year, Margaret and Angus McLean noted, but didn’t mention, that there were fewer guisers calling at their door. Jamie’s disappearance, on this very stretch of street, the children didn’t yet talk about; it was too fresh. But instinctively, when the small gangs of witches or elves or ghosts or Vikings came to the beginning of what they judged to be the stretch where the boy had vanished, they ran, ran as if the devil or a hoodie crow was after them, about to swoop, to pick one of them out, to gather the victim up and take them to join wee Jamie. They ran and ran until they had turned the corner, then gathered to get their breath back, the girls laughing, clutching each other, the boys jumping around, kicking a fence or a tree, yelling out to the stars and the unknown, in a defiant display of bravado.
Outside the church hall, a newly built rectangular construction of no architectural merit whatsoever, men and boys, like a stream of worker ants, were adding branches, off-cuts of wood, anything that could burn, to a dark tepee shape. This bonfire would blaze well into the night. At a clearing well away from the building, a trio of former soldiers was readying fireworks on frames and posts and mounds of earth. A bottle of fortified lemonade did the rounds of the men. The colored lights and bunting that transformed the hall on every festival throughout the year were supplemented by dozens of expertly carved ghastly grinning lanterns that sent dancing shadows across the walls.
Fierce competition between the ladies of the Women’s Guild meant cakes galore, decorated in a Halloween theme, usually in green icing. Pyramids of sandwiches, crusts cut off, were served on large aluminum trays. Bowls of nuts were closely guarded, to stop boys sneaking handfuls of walnuts and hazelnuts for ammunition. Industrial-size teapots with industrial-strength tea and sticky, artificially bright Kia-Ora orange squash were served in the plastic cups that made all drinks smell and taste of plastic.
At the far end of the hall below the stage, children jiggled and shrieked, impatient for their turn, mocking their friends as they had a go at dooking for apples. Scones dangled on strings from a clothesline, treacle dripping in dark gelatinous globs onto the painters’ drop cloths and the unwary, and hands behind backs, mouths open like baby cuckoos, the children would try to bite through a scone as it swayed in front of them. Invariably a passing prankster would jerk the rope, sending the treacle-soaked scones slap into someone’s face or hair or down the back of a neck, to shrieks and taunts of “I got you, I got you!”
A small crowd surrounded their minister, Rev’rnt Mac as they called him, as he knelt down, hands behind his back, to dook for an apple. A passing wee lad jerked the clothesline and treacle droplets rained down on the minister’s dog collar.
His mortified mother grabbed the boy by his ear and was about to skelp him on the backs of his knees, but the minister’s roar of laughter stopped her still. “That’s a good trick, Neil, and no mistake.”
“He’s a good man, our minister,” she told her friends later, “not stuck-up like some. Did you see him laugh? All covered in treacle an’ all?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.”
The microphone let out a banshee wail. Duncan caught the look of panic from the Boy Scout in charge of the electrics, switched the microphone off and continued in his Sunday sermon voice.
“Ladies, gentlemen, children, we will now have the judging for the best costumes.”
Boys on one side, girls on the other, the children lined up. One faerie, only three years old, wouldn’t join in without her mother. Duncan, his wife, Elizabeth, and Margaret McLean, with the surprise addition of John McAllister, began the judging. Children, wriggling around as though itching powder had been poured down their backs, watched the judges going up and down the rows inspecting the costumes, sometimes asking what the guiser was meant to be, occasionally conferring with each other.
Annie was as excited as the others but refused to show it. She had a sneaking suspicion that she had no chance of winning because two of the judges were her uncle and aunty and they would never show favoritism. Just the opposite. A short whispered conference and the judging was finished. Duncan climbed back onto the stage, and not risking the microphone again, he announced the judges’ decisions.
“Best turnip lantern, Jock Maxwell.” Everyone cheered. The best boys’ costume prize went to a boy in a box addressed to Australia, second prize to a Viking. Everyone cheered and stamped their feet.
“Best costume, girls. First prize, Amy Wilson.”
The young Mary Queen of Scots was the obvious winner. With her natural flaming red hair and a costume her mother had worked on for weeks, she deserved her prize, a beautiful illustrated book of Bible stories.
“Second prize, Annie Ross.”
At first it didn’t register. Next thing she knew, Granny Ross was poking her. “Go on.” She rushed up to collect her book. John McAllister gave her a big wink as he handed over the prize. “The bow and arrows look as though they’re for real.”
Annie tore off the paper there and then—her very own copy of Kidnapped. She’d heard it serialized on Children’s Hour, she’d read it from the library, but her very own copy! She was so glad she hadn’t won first prize. A whistle, applause and laughter made her look round. There was her mum, standing onstage, looking embarrassed. And there was Mr. McAllister with the microphone.
“Of course, this prize must be fixed seeing as how I’m Mrs. Ross’s boss. Still, won fair and square, first prize, ladies’ best dressed, dinner for two at the Station Hotel.”
He handed her an envelope to oohs and aahs and cheers and applause. All Joanne could think was, What on earth will I do with this?
“I’d also like to add that Mrs. Ross is welcome to come to work dressed as a pirate anytime. Maybe she can frighten the accounts department into a pay rise.”
More laughter and applause. Annie watched, so proud of her mum and glad her dad wasn’t there. The child knew this small scene would not have gone down well.
The stage and games were cleared, supper was served, then cleared, tables were folded and chairs stacked, all tasks done with military precision.
Margaret decided to stay on for the dancing. McAllister had offered her a dance and a lift home.
“How can I refuse?” she replied.
Joanne overheard the invitation and was amazed. Margaret, she knew, loved nothing better than a swift Strip the Willow, but McAllister?
The crowd cheered through the concert, clapping everyone indiscriminately. After a sketch from the Girl Guides, Sheila Murchison, representing the Brownies, gave a recitation of one of the most maudlin of Sir Walter Scott’s heroic poems. Annie didn’t even notice her sworn enemy; she was engrossed in her book. Just when John McAllister thought he could take no more unintelligible recitations nor out-of-tune singing, Margaret motioned him to pass his cup.
“No more tea, I couldn’t stand it.”
“Wheesht.” She put a finger to her lips.
He really liked that she was one of the few women of his present acquaintance who wore deep red nail polish. He liked it even more when, out of her voluminous handbag, she produced a slim silver flask. McAllister held his cup below the table and she topped the tea up with a generous tot. Grinning like pupils up to no good behind the school bicycle sheds, they had a quick squint around, lest some harpy from the Women’s Guild, or an elder of the kirk, might be watching, then knocked their cups together.
“Slàinte mhath.”
The concert ended, the audience trooped outside for the next event. There was no wind, no moon that night, but millions of stars. The bonfire fired quickly; the gallon of paraffin helped. A circle formed, fronts toasting, backs freezing. Cheers, squeals and the howling of dogs accompanied the whiz and bang of the fireworks. The rockets were best, Joanne and her girls agreed, and she hugged them, one on each side, to keep herself warm. As the fire shifted and fell, sparks flew up to meet the constellations. The primitive enchantment of the blaze made even the most prosaic of Scottish souls lift in joy. When the flames died down to a dark red glow, the embers would be perfect for baking tatties. People had come prepared. Wrapped in silver foil, laid around the edge of the fire, the oversized potatoes would be ready for eating or as hand warmers on the walk home.
A chord from the accordion was the signal for the final episode … the dancing. Joanne left the fire reluctantly but the opening chords of a Highland reel she could not resist. She stood at the edge of the crowd, clapping and swaying to the music. She waved and laughed as John McAllister and Margaret went swinging around in a hectic Strip the Willow. The past weeks dissolved in a joy of music.
Grandad Ross joined her, Jean slumped over his shoulder.
“I’ll take the wee soul home now. She’s exhausted.”
“Are you sure, Dad? Don’t you want to hear the music?”
Joanne knew how much he enjoyed the fiddle.
“Call thon music? Seagulls following the plough’d be better than this lot.” Her father-in-law shouted to be heard above the band.
“I forgot, you’re not overfond of Kenny Macbeth.”
An unknown grievance between him and Kenny Macbeth had lasted all of thirty-odd years. She looked at him fondly and smiled.
“Thanks, Dad, that would be great. Where’s Annie? And Granny Ross?”
“Mother’s finishing up in the kitchen, Annie’s stuck in yon corner with her book, but she’ll come home wi’ us.”
Annie looked up as though she’d divined her name through all the noise and started pushing through the crowd. Granny Ross appeared, laden with empty baskets and the washing tub. A sleepy Jean raised her head briefly from Grandad’s shoulder to give her mother a kiss. Joanne turned back to the dancing. She had not gone three paces when a scream sliced through the music. The band played on. The shrieks didn’t stop. The music faltered. All eyes turned to the bewildered old man and the terrified child writhing in his arms.
“The hoodie crow!”
Struggling and shaking, Jean tried to hide in her grandfather’s coat collar, sobbing over and over, “Hoodie crow, it’s a hoodie crow.” Annie clutched Grandad’s arm, trembling, staring, defiant, transfixed. Granny Ross was lost for words. For once. The Reverend Duncan looked at his sobbing niece. He too was lost for words. At his side stood Father Morrison in a shiny midnight-black cassock and outdoor cape, the collar turned up high against the night. With a huge smile he walked toward an astonished Joanne, hand outstretched.
“It’s very good to meet you, Mrs. Ross, I’ve heard so much about you.”