Chapter 26 #2
John sucked his teeth. His shirt was soaked with sweat so he took it off.
Cal could count on one hand all the times he had ever seen his father’s body – and rarely this far from water.
Years of shepherding had left a mark like a tideline on his forearms, and if Cal squinted, it was as though he wore gauntlets of Vachetta leather.
He was like a man stitched together from other men.
His face an entirely different race to his pale body and, now that Cal could study him, he saw that one tarnished forearm was in fact much darker than the other.
John unfolded a clean shirt of thin, wrinkled cotton. He put it on and buttoned it from the bottom up. When he was finished, he noticed Cal watching him with tears in his eyes.
“Come on. What’s wrong now?”
“Nothing. Just . . .” Everything was upsetting him these days. Everything felt like a loss, a failing, a defeat. He wiped his eyes and, in the process, smeared fresh dirt on his face and this made him blub a little harder. “Dad, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
John turned his back to him. He searched the scrub for their lunch things and the last of their tools. Cal knew he was keeping himself busy so that he could weep in private. As he finally gathered himself, John straightened up and turned around with impeccable timing.
“Let’s go and see Innes,” he said. “Take our scolding for starting without him.”
“Maybe I should just walk home, Dad. I’m not feeling my best.”
John stabbed the clean shirt into the waistband of his trousers.
Now that it was buttoned, Cal could see the tear at the placket and how it had been mended by a careful hand of small neat crosses.
His father was wearing that old checked shirt of Innes’s, the one that he had slept in on the mainland, the same one that John had torn from his body.
“Well,” said John, lifting his bag from the grass. “Whatever has caused this rift between the two of you, please make an effort to mend it. Please,” he said again. “For me.”
The sunlight made the sea shimmer like hammered tin. They drove with all the windows down.
John was humming a psalm, enjoying the fair weather.
Cal studied his father in the mended shirt and wondered how much he knew about Innes and him.
It was hard to read his expression. He thought about all the years his father had stood in the pulpit with the blankest of faces, all the years of worry and want, of infighting at home, and how he wiped the concern from his face the very moment he climbed up those stairs.
He recalled the time his father had taken him aside and delivered a sermon on gossip. John had scolded him, told him he confused seeing with saying. He said it was a womanly form of incontinence to comment on everything he saw. Real men knew when to hold their own counsel.
He stood over the faithful every Sabbath and saw clearly when they were restless, doubting, disbelieving.
He spent his mornings watching over a flock rooting out illness before it could spread.
Cal knew then that his father must have seen how friendly he and Innes had become around the lambing, how they continued jokes that they had begun somewhere else, in some private conversation that he was never part of.
And he would have noticed the sudden distance that came between them, how the laughter and small talk had ended.
And perhaps he had asked Innes about it.
Asked him what had happened for them to go from neighbours to friends to strangers so abruptly.
And perhaps Innes, who was a poor liar, had lied poorly and said that he no longer enjoyed Cal’s company, that he found the boy immature and a little self-centred.
They pulled up at the MacInnes croft. The sheep van was gone but the day was fair and so John said they might knock and ask for his return.
They went around the side of the house, picking their way around car parts and farm equipment.
Sorley was in the back garden tipping standing water from a trough.
When he saw the men, he let go of the tub and it fell, releasing a tidal wave of old rain.
“Sisyphus wept,” said John.
“Ah, I live for the great drying-out. Best day and a half of the year.”
“Where’s that brother of yours? I thought he’d given up as the travelling repair man?”
“Oh, no. He’s definitely given it up.” Sorley frowned. “Did he not come see you?”
“No. See me about what?”
Sorley scratched his chin with the back of an elegant hand. It was a strangely effete gesture that exposed the dandy poet he wished to be. “That’s not like him. I know he went door to door and said his goodbyes. He saw Flash and Shockie. He sat with Sarah and held the baby.”
“Goodbye? What are you talking about? Where has he gone?”
Sorley shrugged with an irritating limpness. “He didn’t say.”
John turned to Cal. He had an imploring look in his eyes as if he had found himself in a foreign land where nobody understood him.
Cal stepped forwards. “Where has he gone?”
“I only know what I overheard him tell my father. He is going to see some of those places he got a radio response from. You must have seen that folder of cards. He was showing my father all the towns, saying he wanted to see them before he got too old.” He pointed to the empty driveway where the tell-tale slick from the leaking oil pan had blackened the stones.
“He stripped the mattress off his bed and laid it in the back of that van. He packed up his books, a few of his radio transmitter-y thingies, bought a new camping stove and well, he . . . left.”
“When will he be back?”
Sorley reached into a planter and slopped out some scum that had been flourishing. “That I don’t know. The impression I got is he’s gone for good. He told Shockie and Flash he would be back soon – of course he did – but I think that was just to avoid a . . . fuss.”
Cal could tell that Sorley was enjoying his audience. He had an annoying habit of withholding the very last word.
“No,” said John, in a quiet sort of defeat. “No. He wouldn’t do a thing like that. He wouldn’t abandon your father like that. Not now. Not so near the end.”
“My father’s not been himself for years. My brother has said goodbye many times over.”
Cal felt the blood drain from his face. It occurred to him that Innes had left because of what he had done. He felt certain his father would eventually arrive at the same conclusion. “How can you be so sure? How can you know he won’t come back?”
Sorley hummed as if Cal had asked the right question at last. “My brother wrote me a letter a few weeks back. He made me an offer. Said if I gave him some money, he would give me the tenancy, the house, the sheep. So, I went up to Stornoway and took out a small loan. I slid the money under his door and, well, now . . .” He gestured at the MacInnes portion. “All this is mine.”
“He would never let go so easily,” said John in disbelief.
There was an awkward silence before Sorley said, “Well, I’m sorry if this has come as a shock.
And I don’t know why Innes didn’t tell you his plans.
But I’m to marry Anna-Marie. We’re hoping to raise a small family here – God willing.
” He glanced back at the house. “Innes knew that this would be the best thing in the long run. What can a bachelor do but let the old place die with him?”
John turned abruptly and went back down to the road. Cal saw how there was a conflict in his gait, like he wanted to hold himself with dignity, like he wanted to run.
While John searched the horizon, Sorley caught Cal’s eye and gave a hideous grimace that showed how awkward he thought the situation was.
He treated Cal as if they were in this madness together, witnesses to John’s overreaction.
Cal thought how he would help his father beat this man to a pulp.
How they would take turns ramming fists into his smug face.
“Innes could reach for nearly two thousand miles by the end. Clinkie Muir, Droop . . . Flange.” He grinned.
“I only remember those because they were funny sounding. But he mentioned Dungeness, Marseille, Le Havre.” He gestured towards the enormous radio antennae.
“I don’t know where he’s going because I don’t think he knows.
But I assume he’s winding south, then down through England and maybe over to Rotterdam.
We have cousins on my mother’s side in Ghent.
Forty-six years old and he applied for his first passport.
He wrote me a note asking how to do it and so I wrote him one back.
” Sorley took out his wallet. He searched until he found a small passport photo. “The old crofter meets the world.”
John came striding up the path and took the photo from him. “Why do you have this?”
Sorley shrugged. “He’s my brother.”
Innes wore a white shirt against a white backdrop. The flash had bleached all the colour from his skin in a way that highlighted his deep green eyes, which seemed a little lost, a little fearful. He seemed faded, belonging to another time, distant already.
Sorley held out his hand but John closed his fingers around the photo.
“I know what you’re thinking, John. But in the end, I couldn’t ask for more from a brother.
He has given me a great gift. A fine start to my new life.
” Sorley motioned for the men to follow him and he led them past the barn and up a mud path.
They climbed a set of mossed steps and there, at the back of the garden, hidden from the road, was a brand-new work shed.
“Oh!” The sound escaped John before he could stop it.
Sorley was pleased. “Wonderful. Isn’t it?”