The envelope contained his will, a generic one bought from the stationer’s but properly witnessed and sealed. It was dated from February of the year before. He must have acted fast after Caitlin and Alistair had died. I wondered how long he’d known about his bad heart. He’d been paying into an insurance plan for long before that, and all I had to do was pick up the phone and tell the funeral home it was time. They already knew, of course. The secretary told me how sorry she was and burst into brief tears before recovering her professionalism. I found it hard to believe that anyone beyond his immediate family would weep over Harry’s loss, but maybe I was wrong. And maybe it was just as well, because I was damned if I could cry for him myself.
I went back to work on the farm which was now mine. On the afternoon of the second day after the storm, I looked up from cleaning out one barn and saw Cam busy in the other. He was spectrally pale but back on his feet. I’d asked him to hold off on handing himself over to the authorities until I’d got Harry’s funeral out of the way. I wouldn’t keep him against his will, I’d told him, but I could only deal with one slice of hell at a time.
He’d agreed, and having settled that, had taken a place in the background, unobtrusively helping me out. He’d plugged in my laptop and recovered my last assignment, a pride-and-joy work I’d have let fall back into binary dust if left to myself, and emailed my tutor in Edinburgh for me when I couldn’t think what to say. He’d opened bills and made sure they were paid. He’d taken up all the tasks around the fields and barns that had over the months become his. We ate together, sharing the information we needed to about livestock and business. We slept, when either of us could sleep at all, on opposite sides of the corridor in the great empty house.
There was the most amazing turnout for Harry’s service. Cam had put a notice into the
Arran Herald
, but still I hadn’t expected a quarter of the number of cars and bikes to be drawn up outside Lamlash Free Church on the wet Tuesday morning exactly a week after his death. There was even a pony and cart.
The tiny car park was overflowing, the minister out in the road, frowning and trying to direct the traffic as it came in. He was a true grim-souled hellfire preacher, but I supposed Harry had trusted him to do things right, and he didn’t scruple to complain to me that the biggest funeral his church had seen for years should be for the man who’d never darkened its doorway since he’d come to have his grandsons cursorily sluiced down in its font, and my heathen mother had argued even that much of a bestowal of grace, hadn’t she? I was grateful for his grumbling. His hand on my elbow was much kinder than his voice as he steered me to my proper place in the front pew. I didn’t need to move again, or look at the cortege when it arrived.
I had the pew to myself. I hadn’t even seen Cam that morning. He couldn’t come here, of course, not with the eyes of half the Brodick, Whiting Bay and Lamlash communities to stare at him. Nevertheless my heart lurched when another backside thumped down next to mine on the polished Victorian oak.
“I know I’m not family, but can I sit by you?”
God, it was Archie. His nose was as red as his hair, and he was clutching a vast white handkerchief, which had already seen some use. I was touched that he was wearing full dress uniform. For the first time that morning I thought about my own clothes and glanced down at myself, relieved to see that the shirt and trousers I’d grabbed out of the wardrobe were respectable, my jacket a dark enough grey to be called black.
“Course you can,” I said, but I might as well have told him to fuck off, and I altered my tone and tried again. “I’d be grateful. Thanks.”
“Oh, Nicky. What a shock it was. What an awful loss. Have you been all right?”
“Aye.” I had to divert his sympathy. He was ready to sweep me up into his arms. Behind us the little church had gradually packed till it was heaving at its seams. I didn’t know what had become of his fears for his reputation, but I was sure it would never recover from the imminent display. “It was nice of you to put on your best gear. Harry would’ve liked that.”
“Well, I’m allowed, for funerals and…” His voice broke, and he leaned forward, burying his face in the handkerchief. “How can he be gone? He was—part of this place, part of the island. Look how all these people have come to say goodbye to him.”
Absently I patted his serge-clad shoulder, and he blew his nose. That got us through to the beginning of the service, and all I had to do was listen politely to that. The minister and I had widely differing views about the afterlife, or at least he
had
a view—a bleak one—whilst I felt I might have to wait and see. I wasn’t too bothered how soon I found out. I was hungry, bone-cold, tired.
And that was just the beginning. I had to stand around and say goodbye to all the good souls discreetly thinning themselves out before the interment. I really hadn’t thought this through at all—about who should be asked to the graveside, or maybe invited for tea and corned-beef sandwiches back at the house. Minister MhicRuari was having to beckon to Harry’s closer friends, Shona and the postman and the cronies from the pub. Archie was still glued to my side. Before I knew what was going on, a group of a dozen of us was gathering under the birches by a fresh-dug hole in the earth.
I let Archie prop me. I didn’t have much choice, and he was doing a subtle job of it, disgracing neither of us. No, I hadn’t thought about the details. I’d kept my eyes on the embroidered kneeler at my feet in the church, considering the lilies of the field depicted there, and never once looked at the coffin now planted squarely before me in the rain. What I couldn’t get away from was the fact of its being a box containing my grandfather’s body. Nausea swept me. Archie’s arm was round my waist beneath my jacket, holding tight. The minister began the burial rite, and I closed my eyes.
There wouldn’t be a funeral gathering at Seacliff Farm today. I wished I’d anticipated the need for one. I would have liked to be a good grandson and do honour to Harry’s name, but it hadn’t occurred, and serve me right for not consulting Shona like she’d told me to. I had no doubt that Cam would have made and set out the sandwiches if he’d known such a thing was required. But when the final amens had been said—when the people I supposed these days were called graveyard technicians were moving in, their mechanical digger inadequately concealed behind a cypress—I just turned and walked away. It was all I could do. Shona’s warm fingertips brushed my wrist as I went past her, but she didn’t try to follow.
Archie wasn’t so discreet. His big policeman’s feet crunched after me on the gravel, and before I could reach the Toyota he dodged in front of me, forcing me to a halt.
“Let me go home, Archie.”
“Why? What’s there? Your fine lad Cameron?”
I couldn’t believe this. For a moment I was just outraged. Then a thin blade of fear went through me. There was a challenge in Archie’s eyes I’d never seen before. “Among other things. What business is it of yours?”
“He should have been here with you today.”
“He’s not well yet. You know what happened.”
“Bollocks, Nicky. I saw him lifting a five-stone tup into a trailer yesterday afternoon. He should have been here. What’s he worth, if he won’t stand by your side on days like today?”
I tried to step round him. “That’s my problem, not yours. Let me go.”
“No. Not until you tell me what’s going on with you right now. You look sick with the whole bloody world.”
“My grandfather died.”
“I know. And my heart’s aching for you, love. But it’s more than that. Why did you not shed a tear for him all the way through that service?”
Sharp replies rose in my throat.
I’m no’ so big a sap as yourself
, perhaps, or
tears are for girls and spilled milk
. But the angrier I got, the tighter I would lock myself into this confrontation, which had to end before the crackling black misery inside me found its way to the surface.
I shrugged, took a pacifying backward step. “Pink eyes don’t suit my complexion and hair as well as they do yours, Constable.”
It almost worked. He flashed me a glance of horror that I’d throw out such a gag at such a time. Then he helplessly smiled. “Oh, you’re an evil sod, aren’t you? God, I’ve missed that stupid sense of humour. Come home with me.”
“Archie…”
“Come on.” He reached out and captured my hand. To my astonishment—the car park was scattered with people emerging from the churchyard, Minister MhicRuari amongst them—he tried to lift it to his mouth. “I love you. I’ll take care of you.”
“Archie, do
not
hit on me at my grandfather’s funeral.”
He dropped my hand. No one could go white quite the way he did. The furies snarling round in me enjoyed their moment. Then the bastards died, leaving me alone with my words—unable to stand Archie, myself, or any aspect of this bloody incomprehensible morning any longer. I shouldered past him. The Toyota’s rusty lock didn’t turn, and I thumped my fist into her, leaving a dent. Pain shot up my arm. I took the key out, tried again. This time it worked, and I hauled myself into the cab. Gear, ignition, handbrake off. One good check for hapless pedestrians in front of me, and another up the lane for oncoming traffic, unlike that long-lost Spanish coach driver who’d gone down with his vessel. I batted my rearview aside so I wouldn’t have to see in it the crash site I’d left behind, and I tore out onto the road.
The kitchen was quiet, full of rain shadows. It took me a moment to discern Cameron among them. His colours had altered over the last week, his brightness dimmed. Another of my mother’s stories drifted through my head.
There was a man who found on the beach a scale from a mermaid’s tail and thought his fortunes secured, for it was made of sapphires, amethysts and gold. And so it stayed until he took it to the fair and tried to sell it, when all he had in his pouch was a quaint-looking scallop shell. It was like the seal bride, you see, Nichol—we can’t hang on to them, not even one little part, unless they want to stay.
Had she been trying all my life to prepare me to face loss? I went in quietly, closing the door behind me. Cam had lit the Aga, and the room was warm, a contrast to the chilly graveyard damp that seemed to have entered my bones.
He had a book open in front of him. When I came closer, I saw it was the volume of mac Mhaighstir poetry. He closed it carefully and looked up at me. “I’m trying to think of a way of asking you how it went.”
I nodded, acknowledging the difficulty. “Not bad. I forgot I was meant to ask everyone back here for tea, and I had a row with my ex in front of the minister, but otherwise it passed off with dignity. Are you trying to learn a bit of Gaelic?”
“Just a couple of lines so I could remember them. The ones about the birch tree over the cairn. But I still can’t pronounce them.”
“
Bidh am beithe deagh-bholtrach, urail, dosrach nan càrn.
”
He listened attentively then said the lines back to me, his accent more west Glasgow than West Isles, but accurate and good. I could have taught him, given time. There were so many things we could have shown one another. I went to lean on the rail of the Aga with my back to him so I wouldn’t have to look at what was coming next.
“I’m going to catch the two o’clock bus. There’s a ferry around three, isn’t there?”
“Quarter past. That’s right.”
“I’ll hand myself to the police at Ardrossan. I can’t do it here, not with Archie.” His voice scraped. “I’m so sorry, Nic. I have to go.”
I knew. He’d told me. I’d asked him to wait until after the funeral, and he’d done that. He was doing the right thing, the only thing he could. In a way it was a pity, because his arrest would have been a spectacular bust for Archie—an unsolved murder, worth a lifetime of stolen golf carts and giving directions to tourists on Brodick high street.
I crouched in front of the Aga. I opened its main oven door and looked inside, where the coals were heaped nicely, emitting a strong steady glow. Only a fool would interfere with a settled fire like that, and I closed the door again. I couldn’t seem to get up, though. My lungs had emptied and didn’t want to refill. I remembered the trackway at Skull Rock, the spasm of delayed grieving that had caught up with me there. Was I in for it again? I didn’t think I could cope. Worse than gastroenteritis, those dry hard cramps. Mortifying, too.
I clutched the Aga rail. I swallowed, tried to choke down whatever the obstruction was in my throat. I couldn’t see properly. Oh, great—a stroke, just at this moment in my life when you’d think nothing could get worse. The muscles of my face were contorting. I swiped a hand across my eyes, and it came away soaked. I had to breathe. My throat opened suddenly, and I sucked air in a huge racking sob.
“Oh, my God. Nic!”
I was as startled as he was. I dropped to my knees, attempted to twist away and hide. But the spasm and the sound came again. It was louder this time, painful as rusted metal grinding inside a failing machine. I didn’t know what to do with myself, how to recoil from something inside me, and my effort threw me clumsily against the stove door.
Strong arms hauled me back. The only touch I wanted in the world, the only embrace I could bear, locked round me tight. “Are you all right? Are you burned?”
No. Drowning. That was what it felt like. I couldn’t tell him. He was pulling my jacket off my shoulder, unfastening my shirt. I buried my face in his sweater. The dreadful sobbing—a year’s worth, three deaths’ worth, and worse than any of that the certainty that I was losing him—didn’t sound so bad from there, didn’t hurt me so much. He sat beside me on the rug and wrapped his arms around me tight. His kisses descended on my skull. His voice, shocked and loving, brushed my ear, a formless litany of comfort, sweet names and promises I’d have given my life to believe. Grief wiped me out like a wave over footprints in sand.
It was late. Too late for buses or ferries—a rainy dusk was falling, embers whispering in the stove. Cam and I sat in the nimbus of its warmth, our limbs entangled, our clothes in a heap around us. I didn’t know which one of us had started that. I’d cried myself hollow and raw, and the exhausted peace ensuing had felt wrong wrapped up in fabric. I’d have peeled away a layer of skin if I could. Cam had helped me strip—hadn’t resisted while I returned the favour. I’d wanted to see him, needed to. Every inch. And here he was before me, beautiful in the twilight. Yet again I tried to match his form, his delicate power, with my preconception of a killer, and I couldn’t make it fit.