Chapter 23 #2
Later, as she served them a dinner of fried eggs and frozen chips – which brought a wrinkle of disappointment to his father’s brow – she said, “I think I’ll away an’ live with Grace now.
Those weans of hers are running amok. Heathens in the heather.
” She said it all so casually, like she had asked if the eggs needed more salt.
Cal took up his tea, leaving space, waiting for his father to respond.
“If this is about what I said . . .” John trailed off.
Cal lowered his tea slightly, waiting for his father to say it: for once in his life, to say he was sorry. How they would love him if he’d only say it. How they’d be paragons of Christian forgiveness, if only he could admit that he was wrong.
But after a moment John cleared his throat and said, “Yesterday was an unusual day. Hard. With Isla. With the baby.”
Cal went on drinking his tea.
“Well, I’ve decidet, so. And youse are big enough to cook for yersels.”
They prayed and John asked that Isla find her way back to Jesus. The others were lost to their own thoughts and he had to repeat “Amen” because Ella and Cal had missed it the first time.
Then they ate in silence. The eggs came from Licky’s hens. The yolks were thick and gluey.
Cal expected his father to enquire about the tenancy, but John didn’t mention it.
“I’ll talk to Innes,” he said eventually. “We can pay him to move you. And I thank you, Ella. I’m remiss to have not done so sooner. I thank you for helping me raise our boy into a man. We haven’t always seen eye to eye, but you’ve been a blessing in our lives.”
It would be many hours before the supply boat sailed. They could not watch television so he tried to read a book, but after a while he found he couldn’t settle, and so he grabbed his jacket and told Ella he would go and gather the chains.
In the last of the daylight, he went inland and wove his way around the lochans.
When he crested the first hill, he spied his father down by the water.
John was walking Tick along the shoreline searching for driftwood, or better yet, a little ambergris.
Cal was wondering how long the silence would last this time, two weeks, six weeks, eight, when it occurred to him that he would not be here to find out.
When he arrived at the slipway, the inn was dark but he could hear hushed voices inside.
Several of the senior church men were locked in, discussing Isla, drinking their fill.
Flash would have admitted him if he knocked, but he had no taste for hypocrites, especially not Shockie who, only hours before, had lectured them on temperance and read from the gospel of St Matthew.
He uncoupled the Sabbath chain and the swings swayed in the wind.
He didn’t want to go home, so he wrapped the links around himself and wandered further up the road.
He had no destination in mind, but as he walked he thought only of Innes.
The anger he had felt had dissipated, and now he realised it was not anger at all, but hurt and feelings of rejection.
He thought he might go to the MacInnes croft and, if he could find Innes, he would try to talk to him again.
Perhaps he would tell him that he was leaving.
He passed an abandoned croft that was overrun with wildflowers.
He stopped and gathered a fistful of harebell and saxifrage.
As he worked, he entertained a juvenile fantasy where Innes would be so overcome with the fear of losing him that he would confess his hidden feelings and beg him to stay.
He tidied the flowers into a ragged bouquet.
When he came to the MacInnes croft, he realised how late it was and how poorly thought-out the idea had been.
The house was settling down for the night.
But he felt this was the moment to do it, that he might never get another chance, and so he cut a path around the back of the house.
If nothing else, Innes would laugh. If nothing else, he would sit up and take notice.
He arrived at a new shed that the brothers must have been building.
The walls were framed out and there were large rolls of insulation under a tarp.
He dropped the chains and hid them behind the pile of materials.
He wasn’t sure which bedroom belonged to Innes, but as the lights went off, he chose the bedroom that went dark second to last, thinking that old MacInnes would be the first to sleep, and that Sorley would stay up late to read.
Shaking the scabby bouquet, he crept towards the house.
He scaled the drainpipe he hoped led to Innes’s room.
He opened the window slowly. The sashes juddered in their casings. He climbed through the opening and just as he straddled the ledge, a lamp flicked on.
Innes was sitting up in bed, his back to the wall. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Ah, good,” he giggled in relief. “I don’t know what I would have done if you had been Sorley.”
Innes made a motion that he should lower his voice.
Cal tumbled into the room. He dusted off his trousers. The flowers had been crushed in the climb, so he blew on them, shook them, and then offered them to Innes.
Innes stared at them in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” He got out of bed. He was wearing pyjama bottoms and he crept across the room, back hunched in modesty. He found a nightshirt and pulled it on. “My brother is next door. My father is across the hall.”
“Yes, but I waited till they were asleep.”
“You cannot be here. You cannot do this.”
“I only came to apologise. I can never get you alone. And I needed to do it tonight. I have something to tell you.” He felt like a fool holding the flowers.
He laid them on the bed like the bed was a grave.
“I waited for hours in that hotel. Then I went downstairs and waited on the street like a dog without a master.”
Innes went to the door. He smoothed his hand along the crack to be sure it was completely closed. “I’m sorry. I should never have done that. I thought it would be easier.”
Cal took a moment to look around. Innes’s bedroom was unchanged from when he had been a boy.
There was a small desk and a narrow bed.
The painted bookshelves were filled with collections of things he loved: Airfix planes, CB radios, and here and there, clusters of little green soldiers.
There were several wirelesses and Innes turned one on, tuned it to the late-night news, then hitched the volume down till it was just loud enough to cover their talk.
Cal moved to the desk. There was a tray of wristwatches in various states of repair. “I’m sorry for kissing you.”
“Aidh—and so you thought you’d apologise by climbing in my window?”
His shirt hung open. Cal stole a glimpse of the lean chest, the wiry chest hair already greying. He had a small paunch, not from gluttony, but from the softening of age. It was an ordinary body belonging to an ordinary man. He wanted to caress it.
“Why can’t I visit you if we are friends?”
“The fact that you even have to ask tells me you’re not serious-minded.”
“Yeah? Maybe I’ve had enough of serious minds.”
Innes went to his wardrobe and eased it open, careful not to upset the hinges.
He took something off the top shelf, some bundle of rags, and brought them over to Cal.
He handed the pile to him and Cal unfolded it and saw that it was the shirt that Innes had left behind in the hotel, the shirt his father had torn in his fury.
“I have put you in a terrible position.”
“It’s OK. I told my dad I found it lying around.”
“But I told him you were cold. I told him I loaned it to you.”
“I don’t care.” Cal balled the shirt, tossed it onto the bed.
Cal took a step towards him, but Innes stepped around him and moved towards the desk.
He acted like he was busy and Cal watched him straighten some papers that were already straight.
After a while, he said, “I should never have come. I should never have agreed to meet you. Your friendship flattered me.”
“It’s not flattery.”
“I pretended I didn’t know why you were going to the mainland, but I knew, I knew it from how you looked at me in the van.”
“Then?” Cal paused. “Why did you come if you’re not . . .” he faltered. “Innes, are you?”
The room was dim. The gesture was so quick, so subtle, that in the days that followed Cal could not be sure if Innes had nodded at all. And perhaps that is how Innes intended it. If Cal had anyone to tell – which he did not – then Innes would be able to deny it and call him a liar.
Innes stared at the floor by Cal’s feet for a moment, and then he turned away. “Sometimes I feel so lonely it’s like I don’t exist at all. There are times my own father doesn’t recognise me, and my brother . . . well.”
Cal took him by the arm. He turned him gently until Innes was almost facing him again, but even now, Innes would not meet his eye.
Cal put his hand on his chest. He felt his sleep-warm skin. The fabric was so thin.
Please. Don’t.
It was only a whisper. A thought given air. A request, not a refusal.
Cal moved lower. His fingertips slid inside the open shirt. They were barely touching Innes but he felt his skin prickle and answer the almost-kiss of his fingers.
Innes placed his hand over his. He rubbed the back of it with his thumb. Then he removed it from his body. “I have put you in a terrible position,” he said again. He stepped away from him. But there was nowhere to go.
“Is it the age difference?”
“You don’t understand, and I cannot explain.”
“But is it the difference that bothers you?”
“Even if I was twenty years younger, I . . .” He shook his head.
Cal tried not to say what he said next. He could hear how pathetic it sounded before he said it. “But why?” he asked, “. . . Don’t you like me?”