Chapter 20 #3
“Oh yeah? Because I definitely heard the minister say: ‘You! You who are predestined to be saved must leave behind your wife or husband, your sons, and your daughters!’” The tears took him by surprise. He wiped his face. “So I’m chained to his side in this life, but to hell with me in the next.”
Innes didn’t respond. They fell into an uneasy silence.
Innes excused himself quietly and went to the toilet.
The women at the next table were watching Cal out of the corner of their eyes as he wiped his tears on the neck of his jumper.
When he finally glanced over his shoulder he saw the bar had filled up and that Innes was standing in the middle of the crowd, not advancing towards the bar, nor pushed to the back, just waiting, stranded in a sea of drinkers.
It was some time before he returned with the drinks. Cal tried to smile and thought they might change the subject but as soon as Innes sat down, he began: “You said I was part of the problem. What did you mean by that?”
“I mean I’ve had too much to drink.” Cal reached for the whisky.
Innes withdrew the glass. “Don’t be coy.”
“I mean Big John is lonely. But not lonely enough.”
“Enough? I don’t understand. You think my friendship holds him back?”
“A little. You’re these two unhappy rams wandering the hills.
I think you’re a friend to his loneliness, yes.
” Cal made a gesture for Innes to pass him the whisky and at last, Innes slid the tumbler across the table.
Cal glanced up to see if he had gone too far but Innes was watching him with the usual calm expression that was hard to read.
“He’s a miserable bastard – but he’s a good-looking miserable bastard.
He could marry again. He should marry again.
I hear him sometimes, late at night, when he thinks we’re asleep.
I hear him and . . .” He trailed off, aware that he had been indiscreet.
“There’s a comfy widow out there for him. Some pleasing, pious thing. I know it.”
“And would that solve his problem or yours?”
“I’m stuck. I can’t leave him and Ella alone in that house.”
“Aidh—for a moment there, I thought your concern was for him.”
Cal huffed unkindly. “You of all people should understand.”
“I chose to care for my father. I have no regrets.”
“Oh yeah?” He made a wide-eyed expression as he sipped his whisky. He decided not to press Innes on his lie. “Anyway, maybe he’s finally had enough of his loneliness.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“I think he’s met someone new. He’s seeing a woman up in Tolsta.
I’m sure of it. We went up to Stornoway a few weeks back.
He told me he was going to see some sheep farmer but he was wearing his good suit.
You know he would never step onto any field in his visiting shoes.
He would sooner walk ten miles home and ten miles back just to change into his boots. ”
Innes sat back. His green eyes black in the low lamplight. “Have you met her?”
“Not yet. But when he came back from Tolsta he didn’t seem like himself.
We spent the night in the car and I could smell someone on his skin .
. .” He considered asking the bachelor if he knew that particular smell of sex, but he recalled what his father had said about Innes being a virgin.
“Oh, I don’t know. But I think he’s met someone.
” He tapped his glass off Innes’s. “Let’s pray for it to be true.
If it is, then there’s hope for me yet.”
Innes lowered his gaze. He swallowed a few times as if he was digesting what Cal had told him. “You know,” he began, “you can be a little sharp when you’re drunk. It’s not your best quality.”
The men waited to be served. The late-night chippie was three deep at the counter.
A few times another punter cut in line or called an order over their heads and the men stepped aside, a look of quiet sufferance on their whisky-burnt faces.
The owner eventually took pity on them and called them forwards.
Cal ordered and Innes paid for their suppers.
Innes had been quiet since they left the pub.
As they huddled in the corner tipping salt and vinegar onto their chips, a drunk girl in tight-looking shoes bumped into him.
He caught her and stopped her sliding to the floor.
She surrendered to him. She burrowed her face into his neck as her friends shook with laughter.
She helped herself to his fish, chewing with her eyes closed, gobbets of batter on her disobedient tongue.
The woman was part of a large group of young couples.
Her friends slowly gathered around and Cal was pushed to the edge of the crowd.
He didn’t mind. The crowd was drunk and unpredictable, likely to tip over into singing or fighting at any moment and it felt safer, natural somehow, to watch it all from the outside.
Innes looked tired under the harsh lights.
He was a melancholy sort of noble as he gazed upon the youth with the face of a weary minister.
His gentleness, his benevolence – which Cal had never appreciated before, which, if he were honest, he would have said he found boring, unsexy in younger men – now seemed like a rare quality in the late-night chaos.
As the other men bantered and shoved, Innes was a stolid pillar at their centre.
The group made plans to go on to one of the waterfront nightclubs.
The girl should have gone home, or perhaps to the hospital, but her friends held a can of Diamond White to her lips and made her swallow it.
Her boyfriend tried to pry her from Innes’s side but she wrenched free, grumbled, and clung tighter.
“Ah dinnae want tae go with youse,” she whined.
“Ah want to stay wi’ him.” She thumped her head against Innes’s chest in an attempt to burrow into him.
“Kuhrstay, don’t make a fuckin’ show of yersel!
” The boyfriend had a soft jawline. He had round shoulders and a put-upon face.
Kirsty was better looking than him and she knew it.
She raised her pretty face and with eyes half-shut said, “Whut’s your name, mister?” Then in a too-loud whisper, “These people have nae class. Take me away from here.”
Innes smiled down upon her, a father indulging a child. “Good friends are hard to come by. You should hold on to the ones you have.”
She pulled a face at his strange accent. “You’re no wan ay they sheep shaggers, are ye?”
Innes caught Cal’s eye in the mirror. Cal was preparing to rescue him but Innes winked and in the wink was a flash of wickedness. “Well Kirsty, I am from the islands and if you’d like me to come home with you, then I would be grateful for the opportunity to talk about our Lord and saviour.”
The girl reared back as if he’d spat on her.
Men who were not with the group glanced over their shoulders at him. The girl let go like a tired child leaving one parent for the other. She reached for her boyfriend and fell into his arms.
Outside the chippie, Cal had a desire to flee before any trouble broke out but Innes just sauntered away, picking the best bits of fish out of the batter.
They passed several pubs, a hotel, and a dingy-looking nightclub on the seafront.
The road was busy with prides of young men stalking herds of young women as they migrated from one place to the next.
The wind pushed the rain inland from the sea, yet none of the pinkened drinkers seemed to feel the cold.
The crofters moved in and out of clusters of goose-fleshed women.
Cal fell behind, engrossed in his chips, and he watched as Innes passed a group of women and bid them ‘good evening’.
All the women glanced at him and when he had passed two of the women turned to glance after him.
His clothes were a size too large, as though he had recently lost a considerable amount of weight, and he tucked his shirt into trousers hitched a little too high.
Cal watched him weave through the crowds in his naff leather jacket and thought of all the ways he could improve him.
“You’ve gone quiet. Have I offended you?”
“Like when you said I was the problem in your father’s life and so the problem in yours?” He wiped his finger on his trousers. “No.”
They passed a packed curry house festooned in coloured lights.
A group of young men spilled out, their pale faces flushed with lager and spices.
They were roaring with laughter, throwing their arms around a man who was mocking their Indian waiter by repeating “Would you like some new potatoes?” in a grotesque caricature.
As he passed them by, Cal noticed a familiar face in the crowd.
One of the young men had a dossan of blonde hair, pretty blue eyes in a cruel face.
Cal stared and the man stared back until Cal had to look away or risk a fight.
He walked on a few yards wondering how he recognised this man, if he was a boy from college or a man from one of the gay bars in the capital.
When he reached the corner, it dawned on him: the young man had been one of the stranded fishermen who were bringing drugs to the islands, one of the group that Flash had threatened to drown.
He tugged Innes’s sleeve. “Hey, I know that guy. He sells drugs. Maybe we could get some speed, or some eccie, and go dancing?”
Innes laughed. He grabbed Cal by the scruff and dragged him onwards.
People were lining up for minicabs. A couple fought on the corner.
A man in a Kappa top threw his head back and whistled.
It was a shrill, alarming sound but other men were delighted by it.
They mimicked it on and on, until the sound travelled across the low town and the night was blanketed beneath a flock of whistling curlews.