Rise (35 page)

He is going to lose his job soon. That’s what Donald John was hinting. He will have no wife, no role, no money and no sons. Michael turns on the radio. Brand new, but it’s made like a vintage wireless. The final strains of ‘Summertime’ ooze from the speakers. Those were the weeks the Ghost first visited him, in the summer; up high in the summer-red sun glaring, punching hot and
the noise of the music doesn’t drown him out; it’s as if all the noises simply converge and amplify to match the pitch he chooses, until turning a sheet of paper is like opening a bag of crisps.

—
These are private companies
.

He recognises that voice; it’s switched from the song to a discussion. It’s Mhairi Cowan.

—
They’re not doing it for the good of Scotland’s future. It’s about money. Profit and money; and none of it will come to us.

He fumbles with the dial, knocks the radio to the carpet. Justine returns. He sees her grit her teeth. Pick up the radio. Open up her face to him in a calm and efficient smile. ‘OK. He says to tell you that they’ll lobby for the windfarm, if you’ll come and speak at their meeting. And, while I’ve got you, you’ve also had a call from the Rural Workers Collective. They say if the windfarm doesn’t go ahead, they’ll come out in support of the No campaign. Seen as you’ll be reneging on a whole bunch of jobs.’

‘But what about the dig?’

‘What about it?’

The Ghost is standing behind her, rubbing his tummy like he’s famished. He is almost entirely formed, and recognisable. Michael refuses, every second he is awake, to recognise him. He gets up, moves out of the line of sight.

‘I
know
what everyone’s saying. I’ve had my ear bent about it all morning. But after Crychapel was on the telly, this windfarm is becoming really contentious. I’ve had folk from all over Scotland saying we should protect the area.’

‘But what do
you
think, Michael?’

The Ghost nods enthusiastically, sticks his thumbs up. ‘What do YOU think?’

‘I don’t know.’

They both sigh at him.

‘Well,’ says Justine. Forbye his best efforts to quench it, there’s a perkiness about her. Ponytail high on her head, cheeks pink. As if she’d been outside. ‘You’re the politician. Why don’t you put it to the vote?’

‘Eh?’

‘Do something dramatic. Let the people decide. Local folk. Put it to the vote, everyone that lives here, everyone that’s affected by the windfarm. Not the planning committee. The people. Let them decide.’

‘But you can’t . . . that’s not the way it works.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s just not.’

‘Well, that’s just stupid.’

‘Stupid,’ simpers the Ghost.

‘But then no one could blame you, could they?’ Justine persists. ‘If you tell them the facts. Let them decide, instead of forcing them into it. Takes the pressure off everyone.’

‘But I can’t . . . I don’t have the authority.’

‘How not? You
are
the authority. Literally. Are you not meant to represent the people? What the fuck’s the point of droning on about “independence” if you never give folk any power? Set up a big for-and-against discussion, let them decide, then you come out the good guy no matter what. Massive Brownie points.’

‘Hear that, Michael-doodle-do? You’ll be the
good
guy.’

‘Will you bloody shut your face!’ he yells, then claws the noise back into his mouth.

‘Well, fuck you, sunshine.’

‘Justine, I’m sorry.’ He takes her by the arm. ‘Not you. I didn’t mean to shout. I’m sorry.’

‘Right. Whatever.’ Turning to go. ‘So will I tell him you’ll be there? Tomorrow night.’

‘Where?’

‘At the frigging
Yes
meeting.’

‘No. I can’t . . .’

People are laughing at him. Escobar, God,
Escobar
even commiserated.
Is not your fault. I think women like your nanny, they are what you call a prick-tease,
si? He can’t stand on a platform, in front of folk.

‘He says the Leader told him that would be fine.’

‘Here we go follow the Leader,’ sings the Ghost.

‘Will you go to the hospital and see Euan then?’

‘Me?’

‘Tomorrow night’s my turn. I can’t ask Hannah, can I?’

They all know, of course. Even at the hospital, after Hannah came in, and they started yelling at each other. The humiliation of being asked to leave, of the doctor saying they could only visit one at a time from now on. A rota being devised.
For the sake of the patient
.

‘Michael, I can’t go.
Man.
He doesny even know me.’

‘Well, what will I do then?’

‘Oh, for fucksake. Grow a—’ Justine glowers at him. ‘Just grow up, will you? Talk to Hannah, see a fucking shrink, I don’t know. You need to be a man.’

‘I
was
being a man when I wouldn’t let her back in – and
that
was wrong too.’ The wall is looming at him, towering over the stupid golden lectern, bashing into his forehead. ‘Christ Almighty! What do you all want me to do?’

‘Michael! Fucksake. Here.’ He feels Justine, squeezing at his nose, the bridge of it.

‘Eh, stop headbutting the wall would be a start. Anyway,’ she checks the calendar on the wall. ‘According to this, tonight’s your turn. You’re there tonight, not tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’

‘Right. Away and stick two hankies up your nose. You’ll live.’

He touches his nose. Feels swollen, but there’s no blood. ‘I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not, Michael. You’re absolutely not. I’m going to find someone who can help you.’

‘An exorcist?’

‘Nope. A doctor.’

‘But I don’t want people to know.’

‘I know.’ She gathers up his empty mugs. ‘It’ll be fine, Michael. Trust me.’

It’s an hour and a half till he needs to leave for visiting. Good. Breathe. Euan is definitely getting better: he sighs and rolls his eyes a lot whenever Michael speaks. He is developing very eloquent eyebrows. Good. Breathe. Breathe this fetid air that is all the flakes of skin and specks of spittle ever exhaled here. Breathe the press and the ectoplasm of the Ghost who walks, freely now, in your study. The place where you walk through your brain. He needs fresh air. Yes, he’s the talk of the steamie; dour locals might frown or nod, and maybe he needs that solidarity. That’s why he became a minister – it was the delight he found in people as much as God, that multiplied sparkling net he fell into. He will concentrate on this goodness. Trust the ordinary goodness of folk.

The field behind the manse has been filled with sheep. The dumpy ruminants watch and chew as a middle-aged man pistons past them, feet stamping on the dark berries of their droppings. Mindless exertion feels nice. He ignores the pain in his knee. A distant, grinding clanging is coming from the head of the glen, up on the slope where they’re building the test turbine. He came past the site entrance on his way home. A mess of mud and fencing, and several burly men. Michael’s jealous of men who can make things.

Sweat down his back, his lungs pumping with good air. Thirty minutes and he’s reached the top of Mary’s Brae. It’s not a huge hill, and it’s becoming lush with leafed trees and undergrowth. For most of the climb, the view’s hidden. There’s a trench a few hundred yards from the summit, with markers in the ground, like the white plastic kind you plant beside fruit and veg. It’s deep, the hole; five, six feet at least, and twice as long across. Much deeper than at Crychapel Wood. A pile of rubble, of stones and thick mud, lie on a tarpaulin to the left of the trench. Several more white labels are stuck at intervals down one side of the earth wall. A vitrified hillfort. That’s what they think was up here. Rock melted and fused by intense, sustained burning.

At the top, the trees thin out. The summit opens before him until he can see as far as the loch. It is beautiful. Little choppy waves break, nodding like rocking horses. Glass-bright greens and blues paint the landscape, lit by a generous sun as it strolls over Scotland. Through a rock behind him, more water bubbles. Mary’s Well, where they roll away the stone.
Tobar Mhoire
. In front of him, the hillside shelves steeply to the valley. No traffic, no people. Just the end of the sky, arcing to touch the end of the world. One big gird, hooping through space. He lets his toes tip over the side, feeling them curl in his boots. Right at the edge now, holding tight to the mossy crag. Miles of horizon rushing in his ears, swooping years past land and rock, rippling water, polishing stones.

Michael stands very still. He feels cold, despite the sun. Along the valley floor, you can chart the clusters of standing stones, random on their own, but there’s a pattern to them from up here, a definite line. His head, knee, his unused legs, ache. Perhaps this is what Hannah sees, with her artist’s eye. These ancient people had thought they were important; important enough to heave huge rocks and measure time, trace orbits and harness stars. They were probably stupid and cruel, but they thought they mattered in the scheme of things. If he reaches up, he’ll be able to feel the sky’s blueness glide over his hand. His feet stutter, tense themselves as his belly spills into that wide, horrible dream of falling. He shuffles his toes back from the rim. Closes his eyes. Kneels.

‘I am sorry.’

God only knows how much this is true. Up here, in the pitch of the wind, he can sense that sudden lust for life, the terror of it slipping. Did you feel that when you fell?

‘Please Lord. Please. I’m sorry. I will do anything if you stop this.’

He concentrates harder, reaching to find the presence of God as that deep still light inside him. How much more can he do, can he give? Because that’s how you make the light shine out of you, isn’t it? So it shines with other lights, and joins up with all the pinpoints of light which live in the stones and the stars and the sea. You can’t barter with God. Michael knows this. He feels the Ghost kneel quietly beside him. Keeps his eyes closed.

‘Will you always be here?’

‘Will you always pretend I’m not?’

Black and orange landscapes inside his eyes. Blue fizzles, a coral imprint of the final standing stone he looked at. Cold rock. A curlew, faintly calling. There is nothing there. He opens his eyes, stands up. As he does, a finch blurts from the undergrowth, shot-blue wings paddling air. It streaks past Mary’s Well. Michael’s thirsty. He crouches by the spring to jut his chin under the flow. Thin rods of sunlight glitter on the rocks above him. There’s a piece of black stone wedged, like a votive, right at the back of the gap from which the water runs. Edges are chiselled, worked. His hand passes through the cascade, touches the stone, which pivots gracefully from its place. It looks like some kind of spearhead. But small. Maybe Auld Angus shoved it there after the kids chipped the rock last year. It looks old. He pushes it back in, for the archaeologists to find, or miss. There’s a tumble of rocks behind it. They clatter down, deep inside the core of the hill, like falling down a well shaft.

Time to go. He starts to scramble back down the brae, taking the western side this time. From this angle, you can see where they’re working on the turbine. A white scar of new road slices the green land. Yellow trucks and a silvery crane churn earth, while bobbing figures dip and rise. The barrel of a cement mixer turns, its belly flashing sunlight. He stops to watch. He hadn’t thought of that. Concrete pouring down the well they’ve made. Stooped figures heave at something on the ground, the crane chunters, up and up, dragging a pale, long, massive spindle higher and straighter until it bisects the sky. A tattered cheer rises with it.

The thing is immense, even without its whirling rotors. A spew of concrete beds it steady. Fixed. There’s a sudden chill up Michael’s spine. He gets it now, gets Mhairi’s rage and Hannah’s fear. Everything is fluid, even his country is up for grabs; it’s a thing to be ‘won’, no longer a simple place of sea and sky and land on which to live. Old certainties are floating away and people are being asked to choose. Which side, which direction? Whirling in his head, contradictory notions of forbearance and fight, past and future, acceptance and rejection, and he thinks his brain will burst with them. All those questions. He is so tired. The grass is soft.

He thinks the end is nigh.

Chapter Twenty-six

‘
A parent not living with a child has a responsibility and right to maintain direct contact with the child on a regular basis,’ says the solicitor Hannah’s had to go a hundred miles to find. ‘You’re actually obliged to have contact with your kids.’

‘But I want to,’ she says. ‘It’s him that’s keeping Ross from me.’

The solicitor has John Lennon specs, marooned in the middle of a moon-face. That he’s bald as well accentuates this. But Adams, Grant and Clarence have been her family firm for years. She thinks her parents bought their first house via Mr Adams Senior (deceased). And nobody here is connected to Lochallach in any way.

Mr Richard Clarence pours himself more coffee. ‘As I understand it, your husband has no objection to you coming to the family home, at any time of your choosing, to see your son. According to his solicitor—’