Chapter 24 #3
There were scratchings on the door frame, chalking off Doll’s journey from boy to man.
It was something his mother had done on Doll’s birthday until his father joked that they should measure his breadth and not his height, and the markings moved to the overhead lintel.
Cal ran his finger over the years. In a few places Cal’s height was marked next to Doll’s, coming and going over the years as they had fallen out and then made up again.
“You don’t have to stay. You can go back downstairs, if you like.”
“Do you want to come? I can take you.”
“I can’t do that to my mam. Not today,” she sighed. “I am going mad with the Word of Deuteronomy, Cal. I’m to be denied the assembly of the Lord. If I hear about it again, I might levitate and burst into flames in the middle of the room. See what they deny me then.”
Her cheeks were hollow under the curve of her cheekbone, her thick hair seemed like an ill-fitting wig. “You’re not eating, Isla. I could fetch you something.”
“I’ve no appetite.” She wiped her nose. “You know, we heard from the procurator fiscal.”
It caught him unawares. He’d been wondering whether she preferred tinned fish or ham.
“We got the official report,” she said. “The fiscal said Doll had the liver of a much older man, that it was all burnt and black and fatty. But he said that in the end, it wasn’t the drink that killed him. He drowned.”
“How can that be? We found him on the shore, near the van.”
“Yes, but there was saltwater in his lungs. They think he was trying to get out of his wet clothes when he drowned.”
“Isla, you can’t drown on dry land.”
“Oh, so, you’re the expert now?” It was sharper than she had intended.
She took a deep breath. “Sorry. My father asked the nurse and apparently it happens sometimes . . . to children mainly. It can happen days after they swallow enough water. One woman drowned driving along the motorway, hours after being at the beach.”
“But it was freezing. Why was he even in the sea?”
“Licky was saying maybe he wanted to drown himself. But honestly, I just think he was bored.” She looked to the closed door. “I fucking hate Licky. How dare she say that to my mother? My mother loved him so much. She loved him more than the rest of us put together.”
“It just feels like that.”
“This will kill her. It will . . .” Isla sobbed suddenly. She clamped her hand over her mouth. “I want my mam. I feel so selfish for saying it, but I’m so scared.”
He crouched before her. “Let’s go find Ella, eh? You can ask her anything.”
Isla brushed her fringe down over her eyes as if she wanted to hide her tears, but the tears were already dripping off the end of her nose. “My mother will lose her job if they find out about the manse. And my father will lose the boat. He can’t afford to split the haul with someone else.”
“Then we can all take a turn to help.” He grinned, in an attempt to cheer her up. “I mean, Doll did it. How hard can it be?”
Isla surprised him by trying to arrange her sorrow into something more appealing, to cover her grief with a fake, tremulous smile.
“When one of my rabbits died, I went out to build her a cairn. I’d gone to the west side of the hills because I thought Juliet would like to watch the sunset more than the sunrise.
I should add that I was eighteen,” she laughed, chewing her lip with shame.
“But that’s what comes from reading too much Bronte. ”
“Listen, if one of my rabbits died, Ella would chuck it in the stew pot.”
Isla laughed. “My mamaidh sent Doll to come find me. He’d been on the boat, working all day, and I could tell he was hungry and annoyed to have to come searching for me.
But when he found me, he saw how sad I was.
So there he was, a six-foot-six lump of a man, scrambling over the hillside, ripping up moss and flowers for a rabbit’s grave. ”
“He could be very kind.”
She made a murmur of agreement. “I could tell he was missing you. He’d never bothered to talk to me much before you went away to college.
” Isla motioned for Cal to sit beside her and he plonked down on the carpet with his back against the bed.
They could see each other in the dresser mirror and he gave her a small wave and she waved back.
“When we were younger, I was so jealous of you for stealing my brother away. And then as I got older, I started to feel jealous of him, for spending all that time alone with you. The summer holidays were a torture.”
“You had your sisters.”
She stroked his ear lobe. “I always wondered why you loved that ugly van. Why you went there in all weathers.”
“That’s just it. You could hide from the rain.”
“No. Don’t.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I saw you, you know. Lying together. I saw it with my own eyes.”
He regretted sitting on the floor and facing her in the mirror. There was no easy way to get to his feet and pretend he saw something on the other side of the room that called for his attention. She stared at him unblinkingly, her gaze clear as loch water in the polished glass.
“It was the summer before you left for college. I was angry with Doll for squandering all your time, so I followed you down to the van one evening. I saw you through the window. I saw him lying on top of you. I saw you spread flat like a woman. I heard you moan.”
“We were only playing.”
She laughed and then, scandalised by the sound of her laughter, her eyes brimmed with fresh tears.
He could taste the men chain-smoking beneath the window. Downstairs, the women began to sing softly, ‘Mo Chridhe Trom’s Duilich Leam’. ‘My Heart is Heavy and I am Full of Sorrow’.
“Please,” he pleaded. “Isla, please.”
“Why did he have to drink like that?”
He had seen Doll’s eyes as they laid in the van. He had seen the hesitation, and the shame and regret that came over him once the lust and the hunger had bled away.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “But I don’t do it for you. Or for him.” She pointed at the floor as if she could draw a line to her mother sitting in the room below. “I do it for her.”
Out in the hallway, there was the tap of thumbs clicking on a Gameboy and the manic loop of the Tetris theme tune. There were weary footsteps on the stairs, then the sound of children being shooed out of the way.
The door opened. Donnie’s eyes were drooping and underlit with the burn of whisky.
He looked from his daughter to the stricken Macleod as Eilidh wove herself into his side, her bright eyes flicking up from her electronics to the trouble unfolding before her.
“Why is this door shut?”
Cal got to his feet. He felt like a hillside covered in scree. He was falling away, tumbling down. He folded his arms, not to defend himself, but to hold his very being together.
Isla’s hand disappeared under her fringe. “We miss Doll, Dad. We were sharing stories.”
Donnie stared at Cal, his face white as an ashet. Whatever they had been doing, it had not been lovemaking, Donnie was certain of this.
“What did you say to your Auntie Màiri to upset her like that?”
“It was me,” Cal interjected. “I didn’t like how she was talking to Isla. And I told her so.”
Donnie was wrongfooted by this. It confused his loyalties. He turned back to Isla. “You know she means well. She just has this tone.”
“I know, Dad.”
Donnie didn’t know what to do now. He seemed lost in his own home.
Isla sensed his confusion. She held her hand out to him and he took it.
He placed his other hand on her cheek and kissed her crown.
Then he ran his eyes over Cal one final time and, shooing Eilidh out before him, he went back to the hallway.
When he had gone a few steps, he turned and closed the door behind him.
When Isla looked up again, Cal was standing before her with an envelope in his hands.
“What’s that?”
“Money. Enough to get you back to university.”
“I can’t take that.”
“You have to. I don’t think I’ll offer it again.”
“You don’t have to buy my silence.”
He pressed it upon her.
It was just under three thousand pounds. He had counted it. It was a staggering amount when he considered how long it must have taken Ella to shave the odd fiver from their weekly offerings. “Ella gave it to me. She said I should do whatever I wanted.”
“But she intended you to go back to the mainland. I can’t take this. What will you do?”
“I don’t know.” His next thought was of Innes. “Carry on as I am.”
Isla stared at the envelope in her hands.
She peeled off a stack of notes, an amount that looked to be roughly about a fifth of the total.
“I want you to buy Doll’s car. If you offer this money to my dad, he’ll take it.
Please. You’d be helping everybody. It’ll give him a couple of months to figure out what to do with the boat.
And you need a car of your own. You could visit your mother.
You could go up to the town whenever you like. ”
“But the thing never ran right.”
“It will now. I promise.” Isla pushed the money upon him. “It was my mam. She worried he’d drink and drive. So she would wait till Doll was on the boat and then she would tinker with it. Whenever he fixed something, she would break something else . . .”
Cal folded the notes and put them in his pocket.
“Buy the car,” she said. “And come visit me in Glasgow.”
“Yeah,” he said, and then with less certainty. “Maybe. We’ll see.”