The old man’s head hung forward his mouth slightly open, a gleam of saliva wet behind the oxblood lips. The room sank into a long silence. Murray found himself watching the professor’s chest. It rested thin and unmoving behind the stains on his woollen pullover. When James eventually spoke his words were slow and measured, as if the old man had conjured up the past and was relaying events as they unfolded before him.
‘Valerie and I were going to watch our son Alexander play rugby. It must have been before he got his driving licence, because we were giving him a lift to the grounds. My daughter Helen was heading out on a date and Valerie was determined not to leave before her beau picked her up. She didn’t want them left in the house on their own, you see, worried about impropriety.’ James paused. Murray got the impression he was hesitating over a revelation, but then the professor continued. ‘The young man in question phoned to say he’d be delayed. So we were not a happy home that Sunday morning. There was Helen stewing because her mother didn’t trust her, Sandy desperate to get to the game, and Val finding tasks to delay our departure. Are you married?’
The question was unexpected and Murray stuttered slightly.
‘No, not yet.’
‘I recommend it, if you’re lucky like I was and manage to find the right woman, but it’s not all sunshine and roses. After a while you get an instinct for when to disappear and that morning was one of them. I made myself a coffee, lifted the Sunday Times from the kitchen table and sat in the car where I could read it in peace.’ There was a pause as James cleared his throat. ‘It was a tiny notice, just a few lines: “Man missing, believed drowned.” I’m not sure why it caught my eye. I’ve never been sailing unless you count rowing Val round Dunsappie Loch when we were courting, and I’m not particularly familiar with the part of the world where Lunan ended up, but for some reason I read it. I saw his name — “Archie Lunan, aged 25” — and knew then and there that he was dead.’
‘What made you so sure?’
Professor James hesitated.
‘I don’t know. I never considered Archie suicidal. Quite the opposite. I still think of him as someone with a keen appreciation of life. His nature poems are full of wonder at the world. Maybe it was just that he wasn’t the type for heroics. And the last time I’d seen him he’d been. .’ James paused again, as if searching for a word that would convey Archie’s state of being without slandering him. ‘He’d been over-elated.’
‘Under the influence of drugs?’
‘I’m not sure I would have been able to tell back then. But I don’t think so. It was more like the kind of rapture you see on the faces of the recently converted. Do you remember the Hare Krishna?’
‘Hare, hare, rama, rama?’
‘They were all over Edinburgh in those days. Helen was frightened of them when she was little. Too noisy, I suppose, with all their chanting and bells, but I liked them. They added a bit of colour to what was still a drab city. That’s what Archie reminded me of the last time I saw him, a freshly recruited Hare Krishna. One that hadn’t yet experienced living through a Scottish winter with a shaved head, wearing not much more than an orange bed sheet. Convention demanded I delivered my speech while Archie hung his head, but it was as if he couldn’t sit still. I remember he picked up a photograph of Helen and Sandy when they were toddlers and asked what they were called. I was so surprised, I told him. He nodded his head, as if to say “not too bad”, and then enquired how we’d managed to choose these particular names out of all the ones available in the world.’
‘Did you tell him to mind his own business?’
‘No, it was a poet’s question. Suddenly we weren’t tutor and student, but two wordsmiths. Maybe I already realised he was master over me in that realm. I told him they were family names. Archie laughed and said that would never be an option for him, but he didn’t sound bitter, just happy, as if he was anticipating a future in which he might father children and give them names that would help shape their future in turn.’ James’s voice faltered and he asked, ‘Do you mind if we take a break?’
He wanted to coax the old man on, but Murray closed his notebook.
‘Of course. Would you like me to come back some other time?’
‘Hadn’t you better get it all down before I pop off?’
He looked into the rheumy eyes and lied.
‘I’m sure you’ll be here for a while yet.’
James snorted.
‘I’m eighty-seven. My father died at eighty-six and my grandfather at eighty-two. I switch on the light in the front room at seven-thirty every morning and evening, it’s gloomy enough for it to show even in the so-called summer. If my opposite neighbour looks out and all’s in darkness, she has instructions to approach with caution.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s have a coffee. My taste buds are shot so, please, make it strong.’
Murray filled the kettle in a kitchen piled with dirty crockery. He noted the microwave, the discarded cardboard sleeves from consumed ready meals and recognised a scene from his own life.
James shouted from the other room, ‘Ignore that mess. Irene will be in tomorrow with her mop and brushes to put everything to rights.’
Murray brought the kettle back into the lounge, set it on the dining table and plugged it in, wishing he’d had the foresight to bring along a packet of biscuits.
‘Maybe I should get Irene’s number.’
‘It’s a closely guarded secret. It’d be less trouble for you to get married. Not that that would necessarily solve your domestic problems these days, from what I’ve seen.’
The kettle reached its peak. Murray poured hot water over the instant brown stuff he’d already spooned into their mugs.
‘Sadly not.’
‘Don’t try and ingratiate yourself with misogyny. Times have moved on, and for the better too. Look at your head of department and his wife, top-class academics the pair of them, though Rachel is the better scholar, of course.’ The old man looked at him slyly. ‘How do you find Fergus Baine as head of department?’
Murray wondered if news of his affair with Rachel had spread as far as here, the self-contained bed-sit in the heart of what used to be a family home. He took a sip of coffee. He’d put in too much of the instant powder and it tasted bitter on his tongue.
‘Very efficient.’
‘Yes, efficiency has a habit of propelling men to the top.’
Tiredness was slackening the professor’s face. If Lunan had been a bright, short-lived flame, James was wax, his features melting with time. Murray turned the tape recorder back on.
‘Tell me about Christie Graves. Did you see much of her?’
James sighed, as if disappointed to be abandoning the subject of Murray’s head of department.
‘Not at first, but pretty soon Christie became part of the package. She was Archie’s shadow, or maybe he was hers, who knows? She was very beautiful in a way that was fashionable back then: big eyes, pale skin and that red hair, very pre-Raphaelite. She’s always credited as being part of the group and, in a way, I suppose she was. She was certainly there a lot that year, but she never contributed anything, just sat there quietly with a Giaconda-like smile on her face. It irritated the hell out of me.’
‘She must have surprised you later.’
‘Oh, yes, Christie was a big surprise. Of course, in a way, Lunan’s death was the making of her. Maybe that’s a resurrection of sorts, though it didn’t seem so at the time.’ James took a sip of his coffee. The ancient goblin features drooped with the weight of memories. ‘There was no funeral. Lunan’s body was lost but somebody organised a wake in Mather’s, and someone else was mawkish enough to give a reading of “Preparation for a Wake”. Needless to say, Archie didn’t rise up like some thirsty messiah, ready to join in the drinking. Those that did attend got horribly drunk, myself included. Christie stayed away. I can’t say I blamed her. I only saw her once after Lunan drowned, quite soon afterwards in fact, walking down the Bridges. She’d cut her hair. I remember being terribly touched by that. She’d had such beautiful hair, been quite aware of it too. But it was gone, hacked off. I crossed the street to offer my condolences. She saw me, met my eyes and nodded, but she didn’t stop. I didn’t hear anything of her until a few years later when her book came out.’