Chapter 25 #2
“I don’t know. I feel guilty.” He pushed his hand up his T-shirt and ran it across his belly. “I feel like I let her down.”
Ella searched for a chin hair that had been bothering her.
As she tilted her head and ran her nails along her jowls, she considered, once again, telling him the truth about his grandfather.
But what good would it do him now? How could she take his grandfather from him?
And how could she burden him with the knowledge that he wasn’t half the man that old Calum had been?
Calum had saved her just in time, but Isla’s baby was already here and so what was the use anyway? It was already too late.
Ella exhaled with a whimper of real sadness that made Cal look up in concern. Her fingers found the hair she had been searching for and she plucked it with a little tug.
She watched enough television and she flicked through enough of Grace’s fashion magazines to have a sense that times were changing for the better, but almost as soon as she hoped it, the voice in her head huffed woodenly and said, Perhaps, but weren’t men always just the fucking same.
There was a knock on the door. John was standing in the doorway, looking at the narrow room, taking in all the details as if this was the very first time he had visited the back of his own house. “Innes is all loaded. Are you ready to go?”
Ella made a fretful sigh. She gestured at all the little things still to be packed.
“Go,” said Cal. “I’ll finish packing this. They’ll be ready when you come back.”
He helped her carry a few final things to the van.
She was wearing a lemon-coloured cardigan and a pretty floral dress which she had ordered from the catalogue.
She had a new pair of sandals and her feet pressed against the basketweave which made Cal think of the latticework on an over-stuffed pie.
She looked like a new woman, the picture of robust health, and with some bitterness, he told her so.
Innes took the last box from his arms without looking at him. “Do you know how many people are helping at the far end?”
“I don’t,” he said. “But I can come and help if you like?”
“I have no room.” Innes frowned at the mountain of junk. “I expect we’ll manage.”
In the weeks that followed that night in his bedroom, Cal had not had the opportunity to speak with Innes.
He had seen him at the funeral and four times each Sabbath.
He had seen him on the hillside but every time he approached him, Innes moved away.
Then one afternoon when he was passing the MacInnes croft, Innes came to the window.
He was looking out at the sky checking if the weather would hold when he saw Cal standing in the road gazing up at him.
Cal had walked this way at least two dozen times in the past few weeks all in the hopes of running into him.
He wanted to wave and beckon Innes out, but before he could Innes looked away and disappeared into the shadows again.
Cal glanced over his shoulder to check they were alone. “Innes, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Can we talk? Can you please forgive me?”
But before Innes could respond, John appeared. He was wrapping a cord around the base of a lamp. “Do you have room for this?”
The Macleod men watched as Innes found the last free space for the lamp. He closed the doors of the van gently, and the accumulation of Ella’s life settled, then it sank into a heap.
Isla arrived early to help Cal cook the lunch.
She parked the pram and left the baby sleeping in the fresh air.
Cal left her alone in the kitchen while he went outside and clipped chives from his grandmother’s garden.
When he returned through the back door, there was a brief moment in the opening of the door, where he glimpsed Isla standing alone at the sink, pale as bone, a look of utter emptiness on her face.
She had been staring out the window and he caught her in the exact moment when she had exhaled all the air inside her and was deciding if it was worth it to inhale again.
When she saw him at the door, she shook herself and smiled sweetly.
He had bought the spoots from a man who went door-to-door.
The long razor clams were ugly to look at, like phlegmy white tongues, or worse: flayed, bloodless penises.
He knew how Ella loved them fried with a little bacon, piled on burnt, buttered toast. She was the only one in the house who cared for spoots and so they almost never ate them.
But it was meant to be a happy day, one last meal with his grandmother before she left for the west coast, and he wanted to show her how well they might cope without her.
His bandaged hand made it difficult to split the shells.
Isla tapped one on the counter, and they waited, like two curious monkeys.
Neither had any idea how to cook the shellfish.
They tried frying them, but the shells remained closed and the clams slid around the black pan.
Cal thought to flash-boil them and Isla squealed with delight as they finally snapped open, a futile attempt to escape a bubbling, buttery death.
“My dad said you did a shift on the boat?”
“It wasn’t too bad,” she said. “Bitter cold, but lovely to be out there, all alone on the sea.”
“But you’re still leaving, aren’t you?”
“I am,” she said without much conviction. “I am.”
They had harvested the samphire at the exact right moment. It was succulent and yet to turn woody with the season. Isla chopped the seaweed and Cal fried it in lard.
As they buttered the toast, they heard the grumble of Innes’s van returning.
The house already felt stripped of its soul.
All the things Cal assumed had belonged to his parents, had in fact belonged to his grandmother.
The only reminder of Ella would be little softnesses, the blankets she made for birthdays, the bolster cushion she made for the time John had fallen and hurt his back, the seamless socks she had knitted for their winter boots.
There was a sense of regime change. He could feel the small ways in which his father’s practicality was ushering out his grandmother’s more considered touch.
He hated the twenty-four-pack of toilet paper that now sat by the bowl.
He hated the sticky cutlery drawer that always had to be jiggled, that now lay on top of the kitchen counter, where it would remain until the end of time.
Innes helped Ella into the kitchen. She pretended to be happy to see Isla standing at the sink but Cal could tell she felt put out. “You haudin’ auditions for my replacement?”
“You’re irreplaceable, Ella.” He turned to Innes and tried to be friendly, casual. “Will you stay for your lunch? My dad’ll be back soon.”
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll need to be getting up the road. My father is on his own today and he’ll be wanting his tea.” He looked exhausted. “Aidh—I suppose you haven’t heard? But Sorley is having a day away. He’s gone to Luskentyre with the bold nurse.”
“Wait, what? But I saw her a few weeks ago.” Cal raised his bandaged hand as evidence. “She said she was giving up on him. That she would go back to Glasgow!”
“And as a strategy, that worked beautifully.”
“Good on the lassie,” said Ella with a small, pleased, hee-hee. “So, it’s to be a winter weddin’?”
Innes made a wavering motion. “Aidh—it’s hard to say. But the fish is on the hook and she’s reeling it in nice and slow.”
Innes washed his hands before he left and when he was gone, the three of them sat down to lunch. Cal had done a careful job of setting the table. He had brought the chairs in from the shed so that they might face each other as they ate.
Ella asked Isla about her mother, her father, the baby. The conversation flowed easily and Isla told Ella many small details that she hadn’t bothered to tell Cal.
Cal sat back. He enjoyed listening to the women talk. There was butter on Ella’s chin. Isla laughed now and then. And in the centre of the table were flowers he hadn’t picked, in a vase he didn’t know they owned.
Earlier that day, John had watched Innes and Ella leave Falabay.
He waited a few minutes then he drove all the way to Pàrras and parked some distance from Grace’s house.
He watched Grace’s neighbours help Innes unload Ella’s belongings.
There were three women around Grace’s age, all of them in blue jeans, genderless in a mainland sort of way.
They created a chain, with Innes at one end and Grace at the other.
John sat in the Landy and watched his wife and his lover laugh as they passed boxes down the line.
In the end it had been a rare day away from the sheep that left him feeling optimistic about the future.
He drove to Huisinish where he walked the deserted beach.
He stripped to his underclothes and swam in the frigid ocean.
The shock of the Atlantic was like a reviver.
He emerged from the waves feeling like an absolved man imagining himself surrounded by a bright white light.
As he dried himself on an old shirt he marvelled at the landscape.
He felt certain that if all this beauty existed, then it was no great leap of faith to believe there must also be a heaven.
When he reached home, there was music coming from the kitchen and he knew that Cal would be saying goodbye to his grandmother. He could hardly believe his luck. It was all coming to an end. He would finally be his own man, in his own home.
Innes returned with his van later that evening.
As the men loaded the last of the furniture, Ella spent an hour in the pantry tidying her handbag.
She laid the contents on the stripped bed, wiping each item with a cloth, before putting it all back in her bag.
As soon as she had repacked the bag, she had the urge to empty and check it again.