Twenty-Three
Jacob poured himself a small measure of whisky from the not quite full bottle on the kitchen table. He raised the glass to his nose and inhaled the malt fumes. The house was without electricity and the room was lit by a cluster of candles that threw weird shadows against the walls. ‘This isn’t a prison.’ He had said the same thing as they sat down to dinner. His expression was serious, as if it were medicine he was about to put to his lips and not a fine Lagavulin. ‘Henry was at liberty to move on.’
‘He said he was going to stay.’ Belle’s voice had a rich-girl whine to it. ‘He promised me.’
Magnus swirled the liquid in his glass, smelled a faint whiff of peat, took a sip and felt the malt slide down, warm and golden. The politics of the place were nothing to do with him. Now that they had eaten, only the bottle held him at the table.
They had laid Jeb on a door and carried him up to the main entrance. He was delirious and Jacob had sent the girl, whose name was Belle, indoors to find something to strap him to the makeshift stretcher with. Magnus had expected to deposit Jeb somewhere on the ground floor, but the priest had led the way up a grand central staircase and they had manhandled the stretcher to a room on the first floor. Now Jeb was in bed, tucked tight in a medicated sleep, his leg firmly bound, his ribs cushioned on either side by pillows. Father Wingate was sitting with him.
The elderly priest was a slight, shrunken figure whose head seemed too large for his body, the way the heads of children or anorexics sometimes can. His hair was thin, but brushed over his forehead in a style that might once, when the hair had been thicker and darker, have been considered foppish. Father Wingate looked too slow to avoid a coffin for much longer, but he had been quick to offer his help. Magnus imagined him in the room along the passageway, murmuring prayers over the bed, trying to inveigle God into Jeb’s soul.
‘Maybe something happened to Henry.’ Injury tinged Belle’s voice, as if the sweats had been a mean trick played on her alone.
‘Maybe,’ Jacob agreed. He stared at his barely touched glass, his voice as calm as the liquid it held.
Magnus wondered if the cleric had helped himself to something from the medicine cabinet when he had been dosing Jeb. There was a lifetime of whisky and pills still out there for the taking. If he got to Orkney and found it deserted he could drink himself to death on the supply in Stromness alone and if that did not work he could drink himself from house to house until he reached Kirkwall and beyond. He would take a man’s way out, unlike Hugh. His cousin had died a hysteric’s death. Stones in his pocket like some lady poet. I was much too far out all my life and not waving but drowning. They had learned that stupid poem at school, but Hugh had not been out of his depth. The inquest had reported that the water had barely reached his chest before he sank beneath it.
Magnus must have muttered something out loud because Jacob and Belle stopped talking.
‘Are you okay?’ Jacob sounded smoothly unbothered, but then he had shot a man in the head without suffering any obvious ill effects. There was no reason why Magnus’s drunken ramblings should trouble him.
‘Aye.’ Magnus took another sip of malt. So many dead and still his cousin haunted him. ‘I’m okay.’
Jacob had said there were six people staying at the house, but so far Magnus had only met Jacob, Father Wingate and Belle. Henry was accounted for by his absence, but that still left two more survivors. There were too few people left not to be curious about those who remained. He remembered the brown face of the woman he had glimpsed crouching in the ditch with the girl who might have been Belle.
‘What if Henry went the same way as Mel?’ the girl said.
‘Melody made her own decision. We should respect that.’
‘What happened to Melody?’ Something in the tone of Jacob’s voice had already told Magnus, but the words were out before he could bite them back.
Jacob levelled his gaze at Magnus. His eyes were creased and tired-looking, but there was an alertness in them that suggested the cleric was not as relaxed as he appeared. He said, ‘Melody struggled with the fact that she was a survivor. She couldn’t understand why she had been allowed to live when everyone dear to her had died.’ Jacob tipped back his dram and downed it in one, swift gulp. ‘I’m afraid she killed herself.’
‘She hanged herself in the barn,’ Belle said, as if it were important to get the facts right. ‘Henry found her.’
Jacob turned his gaze on Belle. ‘That may be one of the reasons Henry decided to leave us.’ He lifted his glass to his mouth, but it was empty and he set it down without bothering to refill it. ‘Henry found it hard even to look at the barn after he discovered poor Melody’s body. He made all sorts of detours to avoid the place.’
‘He promised me he would stay.’ Belle sounded tired.
Magnus finished his dram. He rolled the empty glass between his palms and realised he was staring at the bottle the way a well-trained dog will stare at its bowl before being given permission to eat. He pulled himself to his feet.
‘I’d best get myself to bed.’
‘Take the bottle with you, if you’d like.’ Jacob slid the whisky towards him, but the moon was on the wane that night and the moment had passed.
‘Thanks, but I’ve a long drive tomorrow.’
‘You know your friend won’t be well enough to go with you?’
Magnus nodded. ‘He was never going to go as far north as me anyway.’
‘Why does everyone go?’ Belle asked.
The whine was back in her voice, but this time Magnus felt sorry for her. She was not far off a child, and the world was less fun than it used to be.
‘Other folk will come along.’
Belle gave him a small smile. ‘At least your friend is staying.’
Magnus heard the brightening note in the girl’s voice. He wondered if he should tell them where he had met Jeb, but it occurred to him that Christian charity might not extend to caring for a sex offender and he decided to sleep on the decision.
‘You’ve got a captive audience there, but I’d leave him alone if I were you. He’s a grumpy old git.’
‘Belle might cheer him up.’ Jacob was leaning back in his chair, his half-shut eyes trained on the girl. He looked and sounded like a pimp. Magnus wondered again if the man was really a soldier-priest. It was a new world. Perhaps everyone could be whatever they declared themselves, for a while at least.
‘Trust me.’ Magnus got to his feet, the floor pitched and he realised he had drunk more than he meant to. ‘Jeb’s used to being on his own. He prefers it.’
He took a candle to guide his way and closed the kitchen door gently behind him, leaving the pair of them still sitting silently in the dim light of the kitchen.
Belle had already shown Magnus the room where he would sleep. It was on the second floor, small and musty-smelling, but it had a bed equipped with a mattress and bedclothes. After nights spent on a bedroll on the ground it looked like luxury. Belle had lingered by the door, and Magnus had considered reaching towards her, taking her hand in his and seeing where things led, but her wrists were as thin as a child’s and the thought of her fragile body beneath his had made him feel squeamish.
Magnus paused on the first-floor landing, wondering if he should make his way to Jeb’s room and warn him to ignore the girl, unless he wanted his cover blown. The prospect of meeting Father Wingate gave him the creeps. His mother was an active Kirk member, but Magnus had never completely trusted ministers and their ilk. He had been a pallbearer at his father’s funeral for his mother’s sake, but had spent the day of Hugh’s cremation driving his motorbike full speed to the far side of the island. There had been a moment on the Churchill Barriers when he had felt the urge to turn his wheels towards the water and plunge the bike, with him still on it, down into the depths among the wrecks of the German fleet, but it was only a moment and it passed. His Aunty Gwen had forgiven him for not attending, but Magnus was never sure that she forgave him for being alive when her own boy was dead, and he had avoided their house from then on, though it had been a second home to him.