Chapter 15
còig-deug / fifteen
“When I regard the heavens you made, your fingers’ work I trace, I see the moon and shining stars which you have set in place.” John was singing to himself as they left Falabay behind.
“Rick Astley?” he asked.
John ignored the blasphemer. They pulled onto the spinal road in high spirits, and drove around the mountain of Harris with all the windows down.
The melting snows of An Cliseam gave the air a cold crispness that made everything feel brand new.
“We are so lucky,” said John. “Look at this. Only a Hearach could be homesick in heaven.”
“Now don’t let the Leòdhasaich hear you say that.”
John laughed. Lewis had its beauty: it had an unrivalled tranquillity and a horizon that let you see for miles.
But the serenity of the rolling uplands did nothing to move him, not compared to this primordial cruelty.
He thought of his father and of all the good neighbours he had grown up amongst. Such was the blind arrogance of those flat-faced Leòdhasaich, to think that it was their boggy bath sponge of an island that should be thought of as God’s chosen place.
John flipped the cassette. The tape played Mendelssohn’s Reformation.
“Now, are you ready?”
“Dad. Don’t!”
John was forced to yell above the swelling music. “I said: Are. You. Ready!”
Cal protested again, but he was squealing as he gripped the overhead handle.
John gunned the engine and threw the old 110 into top gear.
It was not built for speed but the engine roared as he took it past the limit.
Never for a single second were they out of control.
Cal called the commands as he remembered them: the direction, then the sharpness, followed by the speed of the upcoming turns, and they careered around the winding road and skirted the banks of Loch a’ Mhorghain.
Even when Cal called it wrong, John knew exactly where to drop a gear and brake so they took each corner at top speed, at the exact point where the Landy remained on the road and did not tip and fly into the hillsides.
John was grinning with a boyish, devilish concentration upon his face.
There was another version of him that would have been an amateur rally driver.
A young man that would have stayed friends with the petrolheads he had met in his twenties, when he had taken the Sunbeam over to the Barvas machair and raced along the coast road.
He had rarely been happier than the Friday nights spent behind RAF Stornoway, rallying as part of a fleet of Capris, Avengers, and souped-up Sierras that tore through the junctions and left their skid marks all over the sleepy streets.
As the engine roared, he looked over at his son. Cal was laughing his head off, his hair whipping about his face. “Scream if you wanna go faster!”
Cal tilted his head back. He screamed at the top of his lungs.
John packed his Bible and wore his best suit for the town.
The Tolsta crofter was also the precentor at his local church.
John liked to swap insights into the Psalms, glean anything that might invigorate the faithful of Falabay.
The Tolsta man had crossbreeds that were squatter and gave more meat on less feed, and he agreed to let John see them, with the hopes that they could introduce some to their own flock and squeeze out a little profit.
As they pulled into Stornoway town, Cal, who had been unusually quiet, said, “Dad, why did Innes never marry?”
“Maybe he never wanted to.”
“Was there never a woman in his life? Like, when you were younger.”
“Not that I can recall.”
“So he’s a virgin?”
“Why? Are you not?”
“No, of course I am,” he said. “Of course.” He wanted to ask if his father thought it possible that Innes was gay, but it was a self--incriminating question.
It was the most awful thing he could ever suggest about another man.
Besides, his father didn’t believe gay people existed.
“What a shame,” he said, with a yawn. “Imagine seeing all your pals get married and start families. And what’s he done?
Built an ugly antenna and had his hand up a thousand sheep. ”
“A few of those men might consider Innes the lucky one.” They joined the lunchtime traffic. They watched the townies go about their business, popping in and out of shops. “Why the sudden interest?”
“Dunno, maybe it scared me a bit. Spending your life stuck at home with a difficult father . . .” He flashed a mischievous grin. John knuckled him in the chest. “Come on, it was you who told me to try harder, to show an interest in our neighbours.”
“There’s a line between interest and nosiness.”
John pulled over and dropped Cal near the Criterion pub. Cal fetched his bag from the back and while he did so, John got out and stretched his legs. He slipped Cal a twenty-pound note. “Don’t have too much to drink. Mind and eat something hot.”
John looked sharp, nothing like the country maw the townies thought them to be.
The underside of his beard was clipped, bringing the cliff of his jaw into sharp relief.
He had trimmed the unruly hairs of his brow and his hair was slicked back and shiny with pomade.
Cal could see it reflected in the faces of others, how the women darted their eyes to him, telling more in this flicker than if they had openly stared.
A few men looked at him as they passed by.
They turned the corners of their mouths down in grudging admiration.
Cal rested his body against the car and stared at his father. What a waste it was to have spent all these years alone.
“Oh, what now?” said John.
“Nothing. Thanks for the money.”
“If you see anybody from the church then find a different place to drink. You hear me?”
They arranged a time to meet later and John got back into the Land Rover.
Cal walked towards the pub. He turned at the corner to see his father combing his hair.
Something about how he checked his appearance in the mirror made Cal wonder if he kept a woman in Tolsta.
It was unlike his father to consider his own reflection.
The Tolsta crofter spent the afternoon touring John through his herd of Texel crosses.
Since the last time John had visited, Anndra had taken out a loan and built a small barn, but his rams were content, butting one another as they gobbled silage out of new troughs.
As they crossed the fields, John was slightly distant, trying to quiet his guilt by pretending to be curious about things he already knew all about.
Anndra lifted hooves, picked straw from nostrils, and parted the fleece near the arsehole, all to demonstrate how robust and healthy these new crossbreeds were.
He was showing John his new snacker and cake, when he could no longer ignore the distracted look on his guest’s face.
He closed the feeder lid and suggested they go inside for some coffee.
They went up to the house. John asked to use the toilet.
He could not stop thinking of Innes, and felt a bitter, indirect anger towards Cal for mentioning his name as they were pulling into Stornoway.
All of Anndra’s windows were polyvinyl, double insulated, and John cranked the bathroom window as far as it would go.
He stared out at the far field. If he left now there would be no harm done, no sin committed, no betrayal.
Anndra had put on some weight since the first afternoon they had spent together, and although it suited him, John felt his attraction towards him diminished.
But he thought of those firm hands, how Anndra would place them on either side of his rib cage and squeeze, and how in that pressure, that holding in place, everything else could fall away.
He washed his face and went through to the empty living room.
He considered the mantelpiece, which was crowded with photographs of Anndra’s wife and their three sons, all handsome young men, the eldest already in his doctoral robes from Strathclyde University.
When Anndra came into the room holding mugs of coffee, John turned from the sons to the father and it was as though they were all the same man shown through the progression of time.
“I’m to be a grandfather,” he said. “Twins, no less. Although it all comes a little close to the wedding. I hope the minister doesn’t count backwards.” He shook his head. “My wife says I’m to mind my own business and so minding my own business is what I’m doing.”
“Solid advice,” said John. “But twins? What a blessing. And will he return to us?”
“I doubt it.” Anndra blew the steam from his coffee.
“His wife’s from St Albans and is very close to her mother.
The mother has been quick out of the gates.
She has offered free babysitting and so plans are being laid to move south.
I feel sorriest for my Susan. She’d deny it but I think she was always closest to our Andrew.
There’s just something about your eldest.”
They sat across from each other in different armchairs.
As they drank the coffee the talk moved on to the football but John wasn’t listening.
He was caught between two opposing desires: that they end the small talk and move upstairs, or that they end the small talk so he could apologise and leave.
The line between what he wanted to do and what he should do was so fragile that any small thing could tip the scale and decide it for him.