Chapter 13 #2
It had been in one of these pockets that Grace had finally discovered them.
The power had gone off in the house and when she went to the fuse box, there was an acrid brown smoke that scared her.
She slung John’s Crombie over her teddy bear nightdress and went out in search of him but John was nowhere to be found.
She was on the verge of calling off the search when she spied one of John’s collies.
In her frustration, she asked the old dog where her master was.
Dot was staring up at her like she was trying to tell Grace something.
She turned and looked back at Grace like she wanted her mistress to follow, and so Grace, afraid to go home and face the smoke alone, decided to follow the old dog around the hills and lochans.
They walked for almost half an hour, and just when her wellies were starting to rub, just when she lost faith in the collie and was starting to doubt her own sanity, they came to a hidden dip in the earth.
Dot yipped in excitement as she delivered Grace to her husband and his lover.
She found John in Innes’s arms, lying in a patch of harebell overlooking the calm sea. They were doing nothing more than reading from the same book, Wuthering Heights, but John’s head had been resting on Innes’s chest and Innes had been caressing the soft hair that curled behind his ear.
In the months following their discovery, John begged his wife to keep their secret, and she had agreed, on the conditions that he turn to God for help and that he stay away from his friend.
It was during this separation that Innes began corresponding with the Polish man, Sascha.
Sascha. A stupid made-up name that sounded like it belonged to a woman, a name that John muttered over and over to himself when he walked the hills in a mood.
Innes found solace in these letters and he invited the young man to Scotland.
He sent him money for the plane ticket, sent him money for the ferry, sent him money for a rain jacket, sent him money for his poorly mother.
Then he waited five days in a row, timing the arrival of every ferry, before, on the fifth day, John had come to town to talk sense to him and Innes cried, right out there in the open, big heartsore sobs before the gawping tourists and the returning islanders.
He had no choice but to tell Grace he couldn’t stay away from Innes.
And he supposed that Grace had no choice but to leave.
John scraped his fork through the crumbs.
“Good?”
“Very good. Thank you.”
Innes said there was more cake, but John patted his belly and groaned.
Innes thought to wrap the rest and send it home with him but he knew that John would not risk Ella’s curiosity.
He took the cake and dropped it into the bin so that Sorley could not enjoy it.
As he came back into the living room, he picked up the newspaper and searched the listings.
“We could watch a film. There’s an old Sophia Loren picture. Two Women. You liked that one.”
John tapped his temple. “I’m too . . . I can’t concentrate.”
Innes searched for something else, something lighter, but there was nothing worth viewing. He put the paper down.
John patted the seat next to him. “Just come here. Be near me a while.”
Innes crossed the room and sat next to him.
They sat in silence, shoulder against shoulder, and from time to time John would tilt his head and listen to the settling sounds of an old house: the clang of the hot water pipe as it cooled, the hall curtain that made a sound like fingers brushing a trouser leg whenever there was a draught.
Innes took one of John’s hands in both of his. He stroked it gently.
“I should head up the road,” said John, eventually. “Thank you for the meal.”
“Aidh—well,” said Innes, “would you look at the time.”
He massaged his lower back as he got up to collect John’s coat.
The men moved to the short hallway and Innes held the coat open for John, as John stepped into it. John found his hat where it had fallen from the hook and he picked it up and dusted it off. They were quiet a while, John picking lint from his hat and Innes watching him pick it.
“But before you go, if you have a moment, I could use your help.”
“. . . My help?”
“Yes.”
John watched as Innes went around the room and turned on the television and then the wireless on the sideboard.
He flicked on the fluorescent light in the kitchen and the big light in the living room.
He turned on every reading lamp they owned until there was not a single shadow. The electric meter would be screaming.
Innes looked back at the mess they’d made and sighed and decided he would tidy up in the morning. He scratched the back of his head as he yawned and kicked off his shoes.
He clomped up the stairs without saying anything more.
“What is it you need my help with?” John called after him.
“Aidh—it’ll not take a minute. It’s a small problem but it’s a two-man job.”
He had followed Innes up the stairs all those times before.
Years of being a good, faithful neighbour, decades of pretending to be two men looking at the same cracked slate, the same damp patch of roof, all in case someone should find out and ask what exactly John Macleod was doing upstairs in the MacInnes house at such an ungodly hour.
“Well,” called Innes from the landing above, “will you help me?”
John turned his hat in his hands. He closed his eyes.
He asked God to look away, to look away for just one more night.
And then, just when Innes was beginning to think it might not work this time, just when he was beginning to doubt, he heard the soft hush of a body leaving a coat, the slow, sure step of a tired man upon the stair.
Innes waited in the shadows.
When John reached the top landing he reached out to him.
He took him in his arms and for a long time they did nothing more than hold one another, safe in the darkness of the old house, warmed by the glow of the immersion heater ticking away in the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs.