Chapter 17 #3
John stared over Innes’s shoulder and watched the sea for a while. “And so what?” he said eventually. “We move in together? Do you ever stop to think about what you’re asking?”
“Aidh—I think about it all the time. I think of nothing else.” Innes let his gaze travel.
He watched Cal work the lambs. “Grace wins if you stay. She wins if you tend the land and then one day the house goes to one of your brother’s children.
You could stay in the spare room, the radio room, just until my father passes.
With you in our house Sorley would have no choice but to move on.
No bride wants to share a house with two old bastards.
I would never be so grateful for your grumpiness.
And then, well and then . . . well, then, I don’t know. ”
“I know,” said John quickly. “We’d be de-membered from the church.”
“The church won’t be here come Christmas. It’s dead! You of all people can see that.”
“And you and I living against nature would get the blame for it! I won’t be the man who kills that church, Innes. They would never forgive us!”
“Now who’s the one getting carried away?
” Innes drew several breaths. He worked to calm himself.
“In their eyes we’d only be living together, what’s the harm in it?
They would think that we’re skint – which we are.
That we’re getting older and living by yourself is hard – which it is.
That no sane woman would have us – which they wouldn’t.
And that the land is getting to be too much for one man – which is true.
Whatever else they think let them think it.
They’d never dare say it to your face.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“Do you remember Sadie and Roberta with the goats? They were friends from childhood, they lived together well into their nineties. Or Davey-Knees and old Donald Greene? They lived many happy years under the same roof. Some folk thought they were just pals and there were others, bad-hearted folk that liked the gossip, who said there was something dirty about it. But every Sabbath they were there, front and centre in that church. They seemed content and we never knew the truth. Aidh—it’s nobody’s business but our own. ”
“It’s Cal’s business.”
“Is everything OK?”
They had forgotten Cal was at the fank. John stepped away from Innes then immediately felt like he should step back in case his action was some admission of wrongdoing. Thankfully Cal was wiping his hands on his trousers and so he missed the strain in their expressions.
“So is she Sorley’s girlfriend?”
Innes shook his head. “If you ask him, then no. He says they were never such a thing.”
“Then your Sorley is dafter than he looks. She was something else.”
“Aidh—she is lovely. In her own cheap way.”
“Just so we’re clear . . .” John nodded at Cal. “A middle-aged nurse who’s been through the wringer is not the woman I had in mind for you when I said the right one would come along.”
Innes took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered them around. John had been trying to quit, limiting himself to one in the morning, but the other two started smoking so he drew one and joined them. They watched the sea as they smoked in silence for a while.
Eventually, when he was calmed a little, Innes said, “A few years back, when my father had his bypass, he had to go over to Glasgow for it. Sorley, being lazy and feckless, took it upon himself to accompany him. He stayed with a cousin of my mother’s while my father recuperated.
He pissed about like it was a holiday and left me with all the work here.
But then there’s nothing new in that.” He nodded up to the road.
“That woman, this Anna-Marie, she worked the nightshift on the ward. I suppose she gets to know Sorley’s face and she seems to genuinely like my father, which not many people do.
Some nights, she lets Sorley stay past the visiting hours and he plays cribbage with my old man.
While my father sleeps, he goes and stands at the nurses’ station.
Maybe he keeps her company, maybe he reads a psalm from the book, ‘Yea when I walk through the valley.’ Luke and the Non-Believers, that kind of thing. ”
“Women today don’t know what nice looks like,” muttered John to himself.
“Anyway, thanks be to God, my father is discharged and Sorley brings him home. He never mentions this woman other than to say how impressed he was with the hospital, how kind all the nurses were. And so we think nothing more of it. But then a letter arrives. He swears he doesn’t remember giving his address but sure, how hard is it to find a person here?
Then this past summer she shows up. He swears he never invited her, but she’s sold everything and she’s living in a rented room in the town.
She’s quit her job at the Southern General and now she’s a travelling nurse for the local GP.
Four times a week she’s up and down the islands, making house calls in her wee blue car and looking for big yellow Sorley.
” The corners of Innes’s mouth sagged in a sad smile.
“I think at one time he had small feelings for her. If she’d coaxed it, let it breathe, then maybe.
Now it’s too much for him and he spends his days hiding from her. ”
John flicked his dout onto the rocks. “Innes, if it’s all the same, I’ll not come look at that transistor tonight.
” He couldn’t see Innes’s eyes under the brim of his hat, but he could tell by the slackening of his shoulders that he was disappointed.
“And I think you’re mad to waste good money.
You’ll get many more years out of that old van yet.
” He thought it would be a kindness to let him down entirely and to do it all in one go.
Innes pushed his brim back. His face was entirely calm but he stared at John for so long that Cal began looking from his father to his friend and then back again.
Innes asked to have a quick word in private. John followed him up the verge and across the road. When they arrived at the fank, Innes said, “I have been nothing if not patient—”
“I know, but—”
“Don’t interrupt me. My life has been one long interruption.”
“I don’t—”
Innes cut him with a glance. “I have been nothing but a dog at your side for years now. It’s been all, ‘Good boy, Innes. Come here, Innes. Just wait, Innes.’ I can’t tell you how angry I am at my own hope. How ashamed I would be if anyone knew what I had settled for!”
They both turned to make sure Cal hadn’t overheard. But thankfully Cal was still down at the shore, pissing into the sea.
“It’s so boring, John. This thing between us has been nothing but a one-man wrestling match.
You with yourself. You’re a homosexual riddled with nothing but disgust for any man like you.
The only thing lower in your estimation are the men who dare to like you.
And that poor sinner is me.” He set his jaw and John knew he would grind his teeth to powder before he ever wept before him.
“At first, I thought it would happen, that you and I would be together. Then I thought, no, not together, but perhaps near each other. Then I thought, maybe not near each other all of the time, but some of it. I conned myself into thinking that somehow that could be enough. But you’ve rarely been enough. ”
“There’s been no one else. It’s always been you.”
“Now, that’s a lie.”
John flinched. He feared that Innes knew what he did in Tolsta.
But Innes nodded at Cal, who was still messing about down by the shore. “He’s the only man you want in your life. I resigned myself to that long ago.”
“He’s my son.”
“You wonder why I would take you to haggle for a van? For years it’s been nothing but a game between us. A game to see how little you could offer, and how little I would accept.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Hardly,” he said. “There’s an urgency to drama.”
“You know I don’t like it when you get all bothered like this.”
“Honestly, John, go fuck yourself.” He said it in the calmest of voices. “Climb the highest, tallest hill and take a running, flying fuck.”
Innes was studying the shock on John’s face while John was thinking if this insult allowed him to play the victim now. Innes saw it and worked to steady himself. He didn’t want John to have any excuse to discredit his feelings.
“This is it,” he said. “We’re done.”
“Behave.” John grabbed his arm and squeezed it. “Behave yourself, now.”
Innes shook him off. “I have to have something to show at the end of this life. If I’m for hell, then I deserve a love that was worth it.”
John’s face twisted in anger. He glared at Innes for a moment and then all of a sudden it dawned on him and he chuckled in relief. “Ah, I didn’t realise that this was where we were at.”
Innes rounded on him. “Who are you laughing at?”
“You,” he said. “I could set my watch by you.”
The men became aware of Cal approaching and they separated. Cal came whistling across the grass, swinging his feet, kicking rocks. “You fishwives done counting your wrinkles?”
John turned away.
“Almost,” said Innes, massaging where John had grabbed him. “I’d say we’re fairly close to being done.”
“Cool,” said Cal, rocking on his heels. “Listen, I was thinking. If old grumpy there won’t come look at your transistor, then I’d be happy to.
I don’t know much about electronics, but I have these .
. .” He held his long hands in the air and flourished them as though he was a magician. “I’m good with delicate things.”