Chapter 9
a naoi / nine
For the next few days anything of importance was passed through Ella and anything that was not important went unsaid.
Cal ate his meals alone on the back step, watching the sheep follow Ishbel, the bellwether ewe, up and down the hill.
He went to the loom in the evening and ran his fingers across the beam of woven cloth.
He counted its thickness like the rings on a tree, converting its worth to money he needed: it was three nights in the roughest part of Glasgow; or a bottle of cheap wine and night on a settee in Edinburgh.
He took the Sunbeam without Ella’s permission.
He rolled down any window that still worked and let the wind blow about him.
When he passed the Macdonalds’ croft, Doll was outside on the land beside their house.
The bonnet was up on his green Ford Capri and he was bent over fixing the left headlight.
The Macdonalds lived on the far side of the sea loch, in a two-storey house that was built adjoining their grandfather’s original two-storey house.
The grandfather’s home had caught fire when Cal was a boy, and, being attached, they flooded the newer house and sacrificed the older one to the flames.
All that remained of the original house were the four stone walls with windows that looked like ocular sockets without eyeballs.
The interior was a bombsite of charred timbers and blackened furniture, a strange textured place that was both crisped with flame and sodden with years of rain.
It hung off the side of the Macdonald house like a ghost in a photograph.
Every spring Mr Macdonald promised to tear it down but he never did.
As he drew nearer, the growl of the engine made the Macdonald girls turn as one.
Isla cupped her hand over her eyes and with her face in shadow, he couldn’t read her expression.
The four younger girls were holding Bibles and as Cal got closer, he saw how they were gripping the books, twisting and wrestling with them like they were in the throes of religious fever.
One of the youngest alerted Doll to the car but Doll toed her away.
The girls waved at him, then they went back to squeezing their books.
A few miles on, he realised it was not Bibles they held but Gameboys, and he laughed.
He drove to the top of the ribbon road and because the uninsured car could go no farther, he executed a clumsy turn and drove straight back. Isla cupped her hand over her eyes again and watched him as he drove past. He slid down the beaded cover, sinking lower in the seat.
The slipway was quiet when he pulled in. The Oban boat lilted in the bay, but the men were gone, leaving a ring of spent douts on the waterfront. Cal went round the back of the inn.
Flash was standing in the kitchen, thawing portions of beef curry that he had frozen into blocks. When he saw Cal he closed his eyes, then he let out a long sigh.
Flash’s wife, Jeanie, took one look at his bleached hair and his torn face and then turned back to the sink without acknowledging the new member of staff.
“That’s it settled,” said Flash. “You’ll need to stay back in the kitchen.
You can give this place a good scrub and clean the toilets.
Jeanie’ll do the serving and I’ll mind that bar.
” He thrust a hairnet towards Cal. “As if the face wasn’t bad enough, now you have hair like one of those old prostitutes you used to get along the waterfront in Largs. ”
“Much did they make an hour?”
Flash shook the hairnet at him.
Cal got ready in the toilet. He listened to Jeanie and Flash argue. She seemed annoyed to have to brush and set her own hair, having been looking forward to a night spent in the kitchen with the television turned low. Cal waited for the fighting to end before he emerged in his hairnet.
He began by rolling silverware into paper napkins, stopping every so often to wipe water stains onto his trousers. “So, what happened to those fishermen?”
“They didn’t think much of your plan,” said Flash. “Two of them went out to the trawler. They were on the radio all night and by the time I got up the next morning, they were all gone. Not one head on one pillow.”
“Did they leave any drugs?”
Cal spent the afternoon cleaning the bar.
The inn was laughably sticky. The lager-soaked carpet had been known to rise in places and only the locals knew how to navigate its treacherous swirls.
It tried to suck the shoes off your feet and it could trip unsuspecting punters on their way back from the bar.
Ella claimed it was a con to get you to buy another drink.
The small bar sold only Guinness or lager or whisky, but in high season, Flash kept a jug of cheap vodka and catering boxes of chewy red or sweet white wine for those from the mainland.
Airchie Calder, Flash’s widowed father, sat in the corner, propped up with cushions like a newborn baby.
He had the musty smell of a damp cloth that had not been wrung out properly.
His mind had started to go and the few who loved him had reverted to talking to him as though he was a cheeky wee boy.
He gave a mischievous grin from time to time, rotted teeth in a puckered mouth, but it was a shame to see a once proud man turned into an old dotard.
He had been a merchant sailor in his own time, but Cal had never known him anywhere but here, watching the water, day in, day out.
They said he had worked on the boats taking steel trusses to the oilfields, and then, when he grew too old to handle the long stretches away, he did shorter runs taking tankerloads of whiting and Barra cod to New York and bringing back tobacco, cheap electronics and, if the stories were true, syphilis.
Cal left the wiping of Airchie’s table to the very last. The old man’s eyes had the filminess of a rock pool left to scum, but like a blind dog, he sniffed the air and tilted his head in Cal’s direction wherever he went.
“Can I bring you a cup of tea, Mr Calder?”
Airchie’s jaw was moving long before the words came out. “Ah. The selfish Macleod. Here, why were you late for worship on the Sabbath?”
As a mark of disrespect, Cal switched to English. “It was an accident. I overslept.”
“Overslept?” he huffed. “What’s that womanly thing on your head? Take it off!”
“It’s a net. It keeps my hair out of the food.”
The old seaman grabbed for it and almost toppled from the bench. He shook his head ruefully. “No wonder your mother ran away. What a disappointment you are.”
“That’s not very kind, Mr Calder.” Cal stared at the rag in his hand. “See if you ever lift my mother’s name again, it better be in a song of praise, you old, chewed-up, sheep tit—”
“Everything all right, boys?” They were interrupted by Jeanie. She wore a freshly ironed blouse. Her hair was washed and set.
“Dandy,” Cal said brightly. “Airchie here would like a cup of tea.”
“Well, Airchie there needs a maid.” She tutted as she picked at a chipped glass.
“It’s clean enough, Cal. You’ll not want the regulars thinking they’ve come to the wrong place.
And you . . .” She addressed her father-in-law with a click of her fingers.
“Behave yourself. Or I’ll turn you to face that wall, see if I don’t. ”
For his break, he went to sit behind the inn just as the sun sank behind the hills.
Flash had defrosted too much korma, so he gave Cal a bowl and Cal drowned it in mayonnaise.
The korma was good and salty. It reminded him of Union nights, stumbling home half-cut to eat veggie pakora in his boxer shorts.
He was thinking of college when he finally spied her, leaning against the gable corner, taking in the ruin of his face.
“What a pity.” Isla sighed in genuine disappointment. “I wanted to be the one to punch you in the face.”
“Oh yeah? Take a number.” He put his bowl to the side. He stood up and, not knowing if he should kiss her after all this time, he settled on an awkward, bumping hug.
As they parted, she said, “I see you finally got what you deserved.”
“Some would say I got off lightly,” he said. “I fell. It was the wind.”
“Well, you’re due another black eye. My mam was just on the phone to Ella. You’ve been home for ages and you haven’t stopped in to tell her your news. You’re not in the least bit interested in her sore leg.”
“True.”
“Why couldn’t you just stop and take a cup of tea?”
“Because I didn’t want to stop. All I wanted to do was drive with the windows down and listen to some tunes. It’s not my fault if I can’t leave my house without passing yours.”
They stared at each other a moment, each in disbelief that the other could be so unreasonable. “I’ve had to listen to my sisters harping when is Cal coming to see you? for weeks now—”
“And what? Would your hooped skirts not let you hobble to me?”
Isla tapped the toe of her boot on a milk crate. The bottles made a pretty tinkling. “My mother would have killed me, and you know it. I was mortified! Everyone saying you were back and asking if I’d seen you. Asking what your news was. As if I should be the one to know.”
The day was fading. Midges were beginning to gather in clouds.
“If it makes your mother feel better, tell her I haven’t seen my own mother yet.”
Isla’s face crumpled. “Why are you being so weird?”
His hand went to his sore face. He sat down and patted the step beside him. “I don’t want to fight.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.