Sandy Robertson pushed open the back door of the Whig, standing aside to allow Olive to precede him. He had been courting Olive for nigh on six years, almost from the moment the first shovelful of dirt was scattered on his wife’s cheap coffin.
‘A tongue like a stinging nettle,’ he’d been heard to mutter at the graveside.
It therefore surprised the inhabitants of Drumdarg that he had sought out Olive’s companionship so soon after his wife’s demise, for Olive Tolmie was not known for the sweetness of her tone, nor the warmth of her expression.
‘A quiet life’s no’ for me’ and ‘Y’muddle on wi’ what yir used to,’ Sandy explained when pressed. In truth, he had always thought of Olive as a handsome woman, and had relished the secret smiles she had thrown his way over the years. Even more than the smiles, he had relished the shilling or two she’d knocked off his messages whenever Maisie’s back was turned.
Sandy had never allowed his less-than-dear departed wife to take charge of the housekeeping. Messages were getting far too dear to be careless with the money, and Sandy Robertson was nothing if not canny.
Olive had decided that Sandy’s ‘canniness’ was in fact an inherent meanness almost as soon as she’d agreed to step out with him. It was her sole excuse, though never openly mentioned, for not marrying him.
Still, she looked forward to finishing her week’s labour at five on a Saturday, and spending the better part of the weekend in his company.
The ritual two Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherries at the Whig on a Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon bingo at the church hall in Craigourie, had become the highlight of the week. Sandy bought the sherries. Olive bought the bingo tickets.
She had quietly kept count, and felt somewhat embittered that he was a naturally lucky individual. At the last reckoning he was eighty-four pounds ahead, and had never once offered to share his winnings.
‘Move over,’ Olive demanded, as she pulled out a chair by Barra’s side. He moved his chair a few inches to the right and Olive thumped herself down, placing her handbag on the floor and cradling it securely between swollen ankles.
‘How’s yir feet?’ Barra asked.
‘Och, it’s worse they’re getting,’ Olive replied sorrowfully. ‘It’s a relief to be off them.’
Barra smiled. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’ll bet it is.’
Olive squinted at him, trying to discern if there had been any impudence in the remark, but Barra had returned to scraping the last of his knickerbocker glory from the bottom of his glass.
Sandy placed Olive’s sherry in front of her, and excused himself to discuss the gruesome result of the previous Tuesday’s Budget with the men at the bar.
‘Four shillings on a bottle of whisky,’ he complained to Olive. ‘I’m sorry I voted them in.’ He was, of course, referring to the Labour Party, for whom he had almost certainly not voted. Sandy was a Tory to the backbone; a backbone which proved consistently too weak to supply him with the courage to lay claim to this aberration in the working-class confines of the Whig.
‘Who cares who’s in?’ Olive muttered at Sandy’s retreating back. ‘If you’ve listened to the lies o’ one politician, you’ve listened to them all.’ She peered back at Barra. ‘We’ll be needing that glass again,’ she reminded him.
Barra admitted defeat and laid the long spoon back in the glass. ‘It was good,’ he said.
‘Who’s been after you in the woods?’ Olive asked, taking a genteel sip at her sherry.
‘N … n … no-one,’ Barra stammered. ‘No-one’s been after me.’
‘Rose was saying there was,’ Olive argued. ‘She was in the shop this very afternoon. Said some boy had been after you in the woods. Some o’ that lot from the town, if you ask me. If it was jist the one, it couldn’t have been the Iacobellis. You’d have to split that pair apart wi’ a hatchet. Besides, you know them! One o’ their Mafioso, though. Cosy Nosters, or whatever they’re calling themselves …’ Olive had scarcely drawn breath.
‘No! It wasn’t. It was … just someone I met.’
‘Who did y’meet? What kind o’ boy? Was he a tink?’
‘No, he was not. It was just a boy. Well, he wasn’t an ordinary boy. He was … different.’
Olive leaned back, clasping her hands across her stomach.
‘There was word – years ago, mind – that there was a ghost wandering up there. Some poor soul that’d lost her bairns in a fire.’ She reached for her sherry again, and slanted it towards Barra in a warning gesture. ‘Maybe it was one o’ her bairns. There’s a lot o’ that in the Highlands, y’know.’
Barra looked at the sherry glass. There wasn’t enough out of it for Olive to be drunk. Besides, she had never been known to get drunk, not Olive.
‘A lot o’ what?’ he asked.
‘Ghosts. Fairies. Things …’
Barra shook his head. ‘What things?’
‘Were you no’ listening to a word I said?’ Olive asked, remembering her sherry and taking another sip.
Barra scraped his chair closer to Olive again. ‘D’you believe in angels?’
As soon as he’d said it, he bit his lip. Of all the people in the world to tell, he’d just shared his secret with Olive Tolmie!
‘Certainly,’ Olive replied, not even questioning the possibility.
Barra blew out his cheeks, his eyebrows almost disappearing into his auburn curls. ‘Wow!’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Olive asked, the familiar belligerent tone back in her voice.
‘I just … I just didn’t think …’
‘Who is he, this angel? And what’s he here for?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Barra confided. ‘I just met him the once. But he said we had things to take care of, me and him.’
He let this sink in for a moment. ‘Mam doesn’t believe he’s an angel. She wouldn’t let me back in the woods all day.’
Olive gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Well, you canna’ blame her. You’ve aye been a fey kind o’ lad yirself, Barra. I wouldna’ want to be yir mother.’
Barra looked hurt for a moment, before realising that he would absolutely hate it if Olive Tolmie had been his mother. Her own boys, all three of them, had got out of Drumdarg at the first opportunity.
Still, he thought, at least she’s listening to what I’m telling her. At least she’s believing me! A new respect for Olive began to form in his mind.
‘So, you think he is an angel then?’
Olive snorted. ‘How would I know?’ She seemed to be losing interest, and was looking across to where Sandy was surreptitiously ordering another lager for himself.
She sighed. ‘Yir poor mam, she’s aye got something new to worry about.’
Barra looked disconsolate. ‘She doesn’t have to worry about it. How can I find out any more if she won’t even let me talk about it?’ Barra gnawed on his lip.
‘Like I said, y’canna’ blame her, Barra. There’s them that’d be wanting to put you away, if they heard you.’
‘Who?’
‘Them. Y’know, folks who don’t go in for that sort of thing.’
Barra nodded. The world was full of ‘them’.
‘Da would never believe it,’ he added after a pause. ‘You can be sure of that.’
‘Aye, well, men are different.’
‘How?’
‘Ach, it’s no use trying to explain it. You’ll be a man yirself one day – just like the rest o’ them.’
Barra was not so easily dismissed.
‘If I thought Da would believe it, I’d tell him. Maybe then he could talk to Mam, stop her worrying about everything.’
‘Well, he’s no’ going to believe anything he can’t see wi’ his own two eyes. Not Chalmers. And him ’n’ yir mam don’t seem to be talking too much at all these days.’
‘Aye they are,’ Barra answered, flying to his parents’ defence. ‘Course they are.’
Olive cast a sceptical glance at him. ‘Glad to hear it.’
Barra looked more disconsolate than ever, and Olive took momentary pity on him.
‘Who knows, son, maybe you’ll meet up wi’ yir pal on the way home. Then y’can tell yir da all about him.’
Barra grinned. ‘Wouldn’t that be grand?’
Olive nodded. ‘And there’s a way you can get him to prove he’s an angel.’
Barra forgot he was kneeling on his chair and almost tipped himself into Olive’s lap, so quickly did he dive towards her.
‘How?’ he asked, breathless with excitement.
‘Get him to mend my bloody feet!’
‘Dad …’ Barra shook his father’s elbow but Chalmers was leaning comfortably across the bar, discussing the shortcomings of the wiring at the big house with Murdo and ignoring his son’s urgent appeal.
‘Dad!’
‘What, son?’ Chalmers asked, frowning at the interruption.
‘It’ll be dark if we don’t go now.’
Chalmers looked out of the narrow-paned windows at the encroaching twilight. It was nine-thirty, and there was a fair bit of drinking time left.
‘What of it?’
‘We’ll need to go now, if we’re going back by the woods.’
‘We can find our way home in the dark,’ Chalmers replied, puzzled. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘No, Dad,’ Barra insisted. ‘It’d be better if we had some light. In case … there’s anything to see.’
‘God,’ Chalmers said, looking to Murdo for sympathy. ‘Would that no’ get on yir nerves?’
Murdo pointed his pipe at Chalmers. ‘Yir lucky to have a lad o’ yir own to walk you home on a Saturday night, Chalmers Maclean.’
Chalmers downed the last of his beer, and sighed. ‘He can walk you home, then. I’m no’ ready.’ But he placed his glass carefully down on the counter, smiling as he said it. ‘It’s a helluva thing to have yir conscience at yir side.’
Murdo said nothing. Helen had reported that Chalmers’ conscience seemed to have taken leave of absence lately. But then, women were aye looking to point a finger at a man – any man. Chalmers was a good sort, after all was said and done, and Murdo had no doubt he’d come to his senses in the fullness of time.
‘You’ll be in tomorrow?’ Maisie enquired of Barra, clearing some glasses on the bar to make room for her arms as she leaned towards him. ‘Isla’ll be here in the afternoon.’
‘Och, he’ll be in all right.’ Chalmers grinned, aware of the red flush creeping across his son’s face. ‘Try keeping him away.’
‘Who would want to keep him away?’ Doug smiled, his voice slow and gentled with the drink.
‘See yis then.’ Chalmers sighed again, holding on to Barra’s shoulders. ‘He’ll no’ sleep if he doesna’ get a whiff o’ the woods before his bed. It’s worse than the opium.’
They left, Chalmers scuffing his way across the tarmac and holding on to the dilapidated fencepost as he crossed into the woods. Barra was already ahead, turning to make sure his father was following.
‘Come on! It’s getting dark.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ Chalmers called back, acknowledging to himself that he didn’t relish returning to the stony rebuke in Rose’s eyes. It didn’t seem possible that only two weeks ago they had celebrated her fortieth birthday at the Whig. The night had been filled with laughter and music, and Rose had been all over him – at least until Sheena arrived.
Chalmers shook his head. How had it happened? He had never as much as thought about straying. Not once. But that night, under cover of the general celebrations, Sheena had pulled him up to dance, pushing herself against him at every turn, winding her body around him until his head was spinning. Dance followed dance, until he wanted nothing more than to pull that apology for a frock from her body and lose himself in the taste of her.
Then, and only then, had Chalmers pushed her from him. He walked her back to the table, depositing her firmly by her husband’s side, and still she had looked up at him, her eyes promising, promising …
Staggering with drink and lust, he’d returned to Rose, avoiding the shocked hurt of her expression. Damn it all, she was no more shocked than he was himself, knowing that he’d let himself be drawn to that … that hoor!
Yet in the throes of his Sunday morning hangover it was Sheena’s touch he remembered, Sheena’s pulse that pounded in his temples and sent him shaking to drape his empty arms around the cold and righteous comfort of the toilet-bowl.
And his groin ached with the knowledge that what Sheena had promised, she was more than ready to deliver.
‘Da-ad!’
‘I’m coming, for Chris’sakes,’ Chalmers bawled, tripping on a small pothole in the trail and running forward to avoid falling. The trip surprised him. He didn’t think he’d had that much to drink.
Barra had raced back towards him. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Don’t be swearing then.’
‘Who’s to hear me?’ Chalmers was thoroughly disgruntled.
‘Just come on!’ Barra entreated.
They were almost at the top of the incline, and through the branches of the trees above them the dusk stencilled awkward patterns at their feet. Barra had stayed by his father, forcing him forward with an urgency which seemed out of place in the susurrating hush of the gloaming.
As they reached the clearing at the crest of the trail, Chalmers moved forward to grab a moment’s respite on the smoothened surface of the old log.
‘God,’ he gasped. ‘I’m no’ as fit as I once was.’ He watched as Barra stepped to the edge of the clearing, looking this way and that, seemingly unconscious of the dying sun whose lingering farewell trailed crimson fingers across the horizon, setting the big loch afire and highlighting the ancient gunmetal graph of the hills.
‘He’s no’ here,’ Barra said at last.
The sun’s last flame burned in Chalmer’s eyes. He closed them briefly, rubbing the blindness from them.
‘Who’s no’ here?’
Barra came to sit by Chalmers, his head low. Not a word to yir father, Rose had warned. ‘Nobody,’ Barra whispered.
‘Sactly,’ Chalmers agreed. ‘Nobody.’
Barra stood. ‘C’mon home, Dad.’
Chalmers brandished an imaginary claymore. ‘Home it is. Lead on, Macduff!’
Barra grinned. Dad was always saying things like that. Dad could be good fun when he tried – or when he’d had a drink or two.
Tomorrow. He’d find Jamie tomorrow! And he’d tell Dad.
Sometimes Mam got carried away with all her worrying.
Sunday brought total silence to the Maclean household, a silence which had infected the atmosphere from the night before, when Barra and Chalmers arrived home. If Rose had practised for a year – which she hadn’t – her disapproval at her husband’s tipsy state, and his proud confession that they’d returned via the woods, could not have been more obvious.
Barra wiped the last of his sausage and beans from the plate. ‘Can I go out now?’
Silence.
Rose looked at Chalmers. Chalmers looked at Rose.
‘If anyone’s going to harm yir precious boy, it won’t be at half past eight on a Sunday morning.’
Barra bit his lip. He hated when Dad said ‘your precious boy’ like that. As though he wasn’t Dad’s boy too. In a rare moment of silent defiance, he felt like telling them both he wasn’t anyone’s boy. He was grown up, nearly a man himself.
Barra never had learned how to keep silent, however.
‘I’m not anyone’s precious boy,’ he stated.
‘Yes you are!’ Rose said, almost before he’d finished the sentence.
She hadn’t understood!
Barra wondered, not for the first time, what was making his mam so … wrong-footed with everything lately. Pushing him downstairs when he wasn’t looking, and being horrible to Dad. Of course Dad was being horrible to everyone.
Barra never understood how people could be nice and happy with the drink in them, and then be so horrible when it was coming out of them. He would never take to the drink himself. Not after last Hogmanay, when the beer Dad had given him made him so sick he thought he might die.
It had ruined the whole New Year, and Mam and Dad hadn’t been right with each other for weeks. A bit like they were now. Except now was different. Now was worse.
And Barra felt that, in some way he couldn’t understand, he was to blame for it all. Dad could just look at you sometimes and you knew, you knew it was your fault.
‘Off you go,’ Rose sighed, breaking his train of thought.
Barra left them then. As he reached the end of the path, he knew without looking that Rose’s eyes were following him.
‘Leave me alone, Mam,’ he whispered.
Maisie looked up from the back door of the café, on her way out to the bins with the last of the Saturday night refuse.
Barra was almost at the bottom of the trail. He was calling somebody, but there was no-one else in sight.
‘Jamie? Jamie!’ She could hear him now.
Maisie set down the rubbish, waiting for Barra’s companion to appear.
‘Aw, God!’ Barra swore. Almost immediately he cowered slightly, as though expecting to be split asunder by a bolt of lightning. Then he straightened, kicking a small rock ahead of him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I wish you wouldn’t do that.’ He cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that,’ he shouted.
Amused, and sure that Barra had not yet seen her, Maisie shouted back. ‘I didn’t realise it worried you! It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.’