Chapter 17 #2
Watching the men he loved conspire against him filled him with an unexpected contentment.
He had a strange, profane daydream where they were family, Innes and he, and Cal was somehow their son in union.
They would live like this every day, be useful, peaceful, happy on their land, looking forward to the day Cal married a local girl and filled their croft with grandchildren.
Innes would have made a good, lenient father.
He would have been patient with illness in the middle of the night, and always able to keep the practical things that worry adults from ever worrying his children.
Watching them together, John was sure that Cal would have loved Innes as a father, perhaps more than he loved him.
Innes noted the strange look in his eye. “Are you all right, Johnnie?”
John upended a ewe to look at her swollen vulva. “Yes. Fine.”
“He’s getting old,” said Cal with a grin. “Probably forgot who you were for a moment.”
As they worked through the afternoon, John listened in as Innes asked Cal about college and his time away from the island.
At first Cal answered with one or two words, fine, fine, never great or terrible, nothing that showed any depth of feeling.
But Innes persisted and he asked his small, curious questions until Cal was swept up in conversation.
“We had a whole fleet of Swedish executives come to the college,” said Cal.
“They had us come up with concepts for car interiors – -vehicles of the future. The lines between interiors and fashion and cars are all blurring, they said. People want to express themselves across every facet of their lives and not just take what the manufacturer is offering.”
“Aidh—imagine my mother’s old curtains hanging in the sheep van, John.”
“The executives said they would choose a few winners, and the best ideas would go into production. Like, be in actual cars . . .”
John stabbed his spade into the earth. “And who had the best idea?”
“Mise.” Cal turned to face his father. “I did.”
“You never told me that.”
“You never asked.”
He looked away for a moment and when he looked back, Cal dunted Innes in the shoulder.
It was a playful shove. The men were laughing about some private joke.
But after he did it, Cal frowned and wiped away the mark he had left on Innes’s jumper.
He gave Innes’s shoulder a squeeze to say it was all better.
But it was a touch that lingered a fraction too long and John watched as the men looked at one another, a gaze that John thought held something more.
By the late afternoon they were all covered in muck, the good dirt that smelt of shite and copper coins.
The weather was turning. The mill would start sending out more beams, and because of Innes’s barn, the sheep had kept on most of their weight.
Their conversation turned to the lambing.
It was agreed that they would rotate in shifts to watch the flocks through the night.
Innes was using a crook to separate the tups from the ewes.
“Here, Cal, what do you know about electronics? I bought myself a used transistor. One of the solenoids had come loose so I got it for a price. I thought I could weld it back, but the guts are like a map of Paris. I’m not sure where it all goes. ”
“Well, I dropped my Walkman and I managed to fix that.”
“A . . . Walkman?” he scoffed. “That’s beginner’s stuff.”
Innes had a room that was floor to ceiling with radios and transistors.
John had told Cal that it looked like a submarine control room, and complained it was a shocking waste of money.
He had line of sight radios, a Morse-code machine, ham radios, and a CB that could connect him with taxi drivers on the mainland – which for some reason filled John with an immature jealousy.
“You’re handy with electronics, John. Will you come and look at it?”
They heard it before they saw it.
The blue car came around the bend and stopped on the road above them. The driver left the engine running and it made a pep pep sound as it idled.
“Jesus save us,” said Innes. “Not this one again.”
The woman wore a nurse’s uniform. She threw a men’s balmacaan around her shoulders as though it were a cape.
Her uniform was government issue – not particularly well-made – but her body was issued by God, and her ample curves pushed up against the cloth.
John and Innes averted their eyes. Cal could not help but stare.
The nurse was having difficulty crossing the boggy ground so Cal scrambled up the verge to assist her. He offered her his hand, and then thinking it too intimate, he offered her his arm.
“Halò,” he said. “Is mise Calum.”
“Sorry? Calum, is it? I’m Anna-Marie.”
John watched her approach. She wore no make-up, but she was flawless.
Her face was pleasingly round and her jet-black hair was swept up into an ivory clasp.
Although her brown eyes had a worried look to them, she forced a smile to give Cal a sense of ease.
There was a swing to her. She had a body that would make most men chase her, and John watched as Cal flushed and then fell mute.
When they arrived at the fank, the nurse seemed disappointed to see Innes. “Oh, my eyes,” she said. “From the road I thought you were Sorley. I’ve been looking everywhere for him.”
“I’ve told you before, Ms Di Rollo. I’m not my brother’s keeper.”
Innes answered her so coldly that even John was taken aback.
The nurse’s skirt came to below her knees, but there was still something about her shapely legs that made the older men uncomfortable.
Innes had brought tongue sandwiches for his lunch.
Now that they were finished, the newspaper they had been wrapped in was secured under a stone.
John took the discarded newsprint, unfolded it carefully, and holding it out to Anna-Marie he motioned that she should take it.
Anna-Marie snatched the newspaper. She held it in front of her legs and tucked it inside her coat so that her hemline came to her ankles.
John noted that Innes was checking sheep that he had already inspected. “Sorley’s gone to Eriskay for a few days,” he said. “He’s taken my father to see my Auntie Mags. You know, to say goodbye and that.”
“Goodbye?” she said. “But your father will last a long time yet. I told Sorley that.”
“You learn to tackle a job while the weather holds.”
The newspaper caught the wind and they all watched it blow away. There were her shin bones again, shiny and sharp-looking under black nylon. When she turned back to the men her eyes were damp with frustration. “Stupid, sulky, man-child.”
“Well, our Sorle—”
“No. You!” she said. “All of you!”
John turned to Cal. He flicked his eyes at Anna-Marie in a command that said Cal was to get rid of her. Cal stepped towards her, but Anna-Marie raised a finger and stopped him. “Innes, if you have something to tell me, won’t you please just say it?”
Innes looked to John, and then to John’s surprise, he looked to Cal. “It’s not my place. I haven’t spoken to my brother in many years.”
“Then write him a letter and pin it to the fridge. But you tell that spineless coward I’m not going anywhere till he tells me to my face!” The nurse turned around and struggled up the verge and back to the car. Cal stepped forwards to assist her but she shrugged him off.
Feeling impotent, the men averted their gaze as she squelched and stumbled across the bog and rocks.
Releasing the handbrake, she struggled to find the correct gear and the car juddered and stalled.
She was forced to drive one way in order to turn around and go back the way she came.
They watched her execute twenty-three, gear-grinding manoeuvres to make the turn. John counted.
When she was finally gone, the easy banter was finished and for a long time each man busied himself in embarrassed silence, pretending that all work needed to be close, detailed work.
After a time, Innes threw his shovel to the ground and wandered off.
John instructed Cal to finish up and then he followed Innes down to the shore.
They kept their backs to Cal so he couldn’t read their lips. At first Innes didn’t mention the woman. He complained about the changeable sea, a thing that always was and always did what it had always done. John knew to wait, to let Innes get there in his own time.
“My whole entire life, that man has done whatever he pleases. And what now? Well now, he’s brought this bitch home with him. And how long till she’s under our roof?”
“He has no interest in her, Innes. I’ve seen how he skitters away.”
“Oh, he’s interested. That’s for sure. The problem is he’ll be forty-four in the summer and as far as I can tell he’s only ever kissed the back of his own hand. But this nurse won’t be deterred. One day she’ll put her lips on his and that’ll be that. Then how long till they start a family?”
“There’s no breeding in her. She’s not as young as she looks.”
“Aidh—exactly. She has no time to waste. It’ll go from kissing to courting to marriage right quick.
Then there’ll be children and I’ll become Old Uncle Innes.
And what can I do? I’ll move to the small bedroom, and then as they fill the house with their brood, me and my radios will be put in the pantry until one day I go out to the byre and stay there. ”
“Come on, now.”
“Legally the croft will be mine, but morally? What am I to do when he fills the house with his wife and their family? How can I sit at the head of a table and feel all right about it? How can I watch another family have their Christmases and birthdays, their kisses and their fights?”
“You’re getting carried away.”
“Am I?” He turned to John. “Am I to live my life watching everyone else do the living?”
“I’m sorry,” John said. “I don’t have it to give to you.”
“You do, John.” Innes pressed two fingers into his chest. “You just won’t give it.”