Chapter 2 #2
“Look, come wait at ours. Aidh—you’ll not have had your dinner. My father will be glad to see you.”
John shook his head. “I’m in no mood for talk, Innes. Especially not your strange double talk.”
Innes was about to ask was he ever in the mood for talk? Instead, he rapped his knuckles on the bonnet to let John know he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Come on. The boy won’t be along for hours yet. You can’t sit here like a kicked dog.”
John followed Innes’s van. They drove in convoy for fifteen minutes until they came to the MacInnes house.
It was clear from the outside that there were no women in the croft.
It was built as a proud, well-sited house, raised high on a hillside above the black road and tilted to expect the sunrise as it came over the Minch.
Yet even though the building was well-maintained and proudly weathertight it was scarred by several unconnected, if well-intentioned improvements.
The harling was painted an almost painful white, but the north facade was prone to mould and painted an ugly, practical maroon.
There was a tall radio antenna that spoiled the look of the garden, and on the side was a rough workshop, a rickle of salvaged bricks, and a lean-to that had been affixed over the door.
The land was littered with broken-down cars and the house itself was dwarfed by a corrugated sheep barn that loomed over it from further up the hill.
As much as John disliked his mother-in-law, he could appreciate the softer touch Ella brought to their home.
The MacInnes kitchen was a large pine-panelled room.
In the centre sat a table that was never clear of a work project.
The counters were covered in tins and cartons of oats as though it was a waste of time to tidy them away.
A peat stove dominated the far wall, flanked by two tatty armchairs, and in the one that faced the sea sat Innes Crùbaidh, Innes’s father.
The damp sheepdogs had the run of the place.
Sorley was feeding his father a bowl of soup, stopping now and then to scrape his chin with the spoon.
Innes Crùbaidh wore his black suit even though his wife had been dead a good many decades.
It hung slack about him, the years having skived him to the bone.
His sons no longer went to the trouble of ironing him a shirt, so he wore a thin semmit beneath the tweed, and it showed the collapse of his once proud chest. He had endured three heart attacks in the past five years, and to be around him gave John a fear that he might have one again.
John said hello to the MacInnes men while Innes put the kettle on the stove.
Innes asked if he would take something to eat, and when he said he would not, Innes negotiated with him until he agreed to have a cup of tea, and then if he was having tea, why not at least have some cheese on toast?
Innes was never pushy, but he had the quiet determination of water – he could flow around a thing, coming at it gently, insistently, until he got his way.
Sorley tidied the components of a broken ham radio to one side so that the men could sit around the table.
Innes watched his project move as if by magic.
Two tiny lightbulbs were rolling around and looked to fall and smash.
Innes seemed like he wanted to warn his brother to be careful but couldn’t bring himself to do so and so John was forced to do it for him.
Sorley followed John’s finger and caught the bulbs just in time.
Innes set the plates on the table, his serene face tight as a drum.
The men bowed their heads and prayed before they ate. Sorley pulled up a chair and joined them at the table even though Innes hadn’t bothered to make him a sandwich.
“So how is the roof?” John asked Sorley.
“Bad. It’s leaking still and the wallpaper’s come away from the wall. I saw a sheet of corrugated iron by Ella’s blackhouse. Do you think she would mind if I took it?”
John slurped his tea. He thought that would be fine.
He could picture the sheet of corrugated iron that had been lying discarded on the rocks for the past year or so.
It must be rusted through but perhaps Sorley had studied it closer than he had.
The roasted cheese was good. It was well-salted and tingled his lips.
It wasn’t that Innes made a noise or contradicted his brother but John knew how it went in the MacInnes household. He turned dutifully to Innes. “So how is the roof?”
“Aidh—it’s leaking still.” Innes wiped his mouth. “I’ve asked the builders’ yard to order some flashing and new slate. Temporary patching won’t do it.” He made an apex angle with his hands. “It needs ripping back and replacing to the dormer line.”
Living under the one low roof, the MacInnes brothers had not spoken a direct word to each other in over sixteen years: kind, cutting, or otherwise.
When you visited their house, they would both sit down to tea, but should you ask one brother a question, you then had to turn and repeat it word for word to the other brother.
It wasn’t possible to take the momentum of a conversation with one and roll it into a conversation with the other.
It made every bit of talk feel like a maddening echo.
“How is your father, Innes?” “How is your father, Sorley?” The MacInnes brothers coped by pretending the other was simply not there.
Any conversation had to be carried out in duplicate or else they felt slighted.
It had delighted Cal when he was a boy – especially when one brother said something funny and the other strained to stifle a laugh.
Ella called it nothing but a house of stupid sulky boys.
“The sheep are that wet they might never dry out!” Old MacInnes wasn’t addressing anyone in particular and John wondered if that was how he coped with stubborn sons, if everything he said now was a declaration.
“Young Macleod is back.” Innes raised his voice to be heard by his father. “Johnny there was up at the end of the road but the boy must have missed the bus. Or he’s lost.”
John could tell that Sorley wanted to ask him about Cal but could not because it would acknowledge that his brother existed. He sat running his thumbnail along the edge of the table.
“There’s but one road. How in God’s name can he get lost?” asked the old man.
“He’s not lost, although I don’t know where he is.” John shook his head. “His soul is another matter.”
“Does he have a bit of fanny in Tarbert? Some blone?”
“Dad!” said Innes.
John stiffened. “I shouldn’t think so.”
Sorley scooped up a large sheepdog. He pulled the damp beast onto his lap and sat back on the kitchen chair, both of them spilling over the edge of it. The working dog blinked in embarrassment while he fussed and petted it. “Did I hear your Cal was coming home today?”
John finished his tea. It would be hours till the next bus. “That’s exactly what you heard.”
Innes walked John to the back door. He handed him his waxed coat.
John was grateful for the warm food, but they had long ago stopped thanking each other for little kindnesses.
Innes leant against the door frame. There was fog sticking to the hillside. “Come for a walk later. We can look to see if there’s better weather on the way.”
John shook his head. He couldn’t think about later. He wanted his boy home. He wanted to sit and stare at him for a long time.
Innes laid his hand on John’s forearm like he wanted to say something more.
John paused and waited for him to say it.
Instead, he picked a piece of stray lint from his sleeve, a gorse-coloured thread from the cloth he had been weaving.
John moved his arm away and then, worried that he had been rude, he pretended like he had been reaching into his pocket for his car keys. “Do you think he will stay this time?”
Innes shrugged. “It must be something to see a little bit of the world. Imagine having to quiet yourself after that.”
There was a toast crumb near the corner of John’s frowning mouth. Innes raised his hand and brushed it away.
John jerked away and left Innes’s hand hovering in the air. He met Innes’s eye and there flashed, in quick succession, a warning, a plea, and then, a little too late, an apology.
“Aidh—it’s just . . . I haven’t seen you in months.”
“You see me every other day.”
They were behind the house and well-hidden from the road but John checked their surroundings anyway. He turned to the broken hills, the shadows of the tin shed. He looked through the window into the boot room. Then he peered around Innes into the tiled hallway.
Innes grinned as he stepped aside for John to get a better look. “I haven’t had any time alone with you since . . . I can’t remember when.”
“Cal will be home soon. You have to be patient, please.”
“Am I not the very model of self-control?”
John exhaled as though blowing on a cup of hot tea.
Then he nodded slowly. “You are,” he said, “you are.” He peered around Innes into the darkness of the house again, and, seeing they were truly alone, he took a step closer.
He took Innes’s hand in his, and he stroked the back of it with the side of his thumb.