Sheep grazed stoically in the fields beyond, their fleeces grey and shit-stained, ruffled by the same wind that bent the tall grasses edging the roadside. He’d left the village behind at the pier, but now and again he would pass a cottage built out of stone as grey and uncompromising as the sky. He slowed to take a corner and saw two children staring at him, hand in hand from the edge of the road, their hair matted, faces bronzed by sun and dirt. They looked like the kind of feral kids that might commune with faeries, and he was almost surprised to notice their stout Wellington boots. Murray raised a hand in hallo and was met with incurious stares.
A few drops of rain smeared the windscreen, but there was no need for the wipers yet. The radio had died, the signal left behind on the mainland. He turned on the CD player and Johnny Cash croaked into ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’.
Murray had a sudden memory of his father singing the song in the kitchen one evening as he dried the dishes, his father’s inflections the same as Cash’s, but his words slower, his voice leaving the tune behind on his adapted chorus, I’ve been to Fraserburgh, Peterburgh, Bridge of Weir, very queer. Dunoon, whit a toon, Aberdeen where folks are mean. I’ve been everywhere, I’ve been everywhere.
Murray turned the music off and, as if on cue, saw the sign for his B&B swinging bleakly at the edge of the road.
He offered to pay in advance, but Mrs Dunn the landlady laughed.
‘It’s all right, son, I trust you. Anyway, you’d not get far if you tried to do a runner. Peter wouldn’t let you on the ferry.’
She was a pensioner of a type he thought HRT and aqua-aerobics had rendered redundant: broad-beamed, big-busted and solid-corseted, dressed in a heather-coloured two-piece too stiff to be comfortable. Her hair looked freshly set, a tinge of blue livening the pewter. He hoped it hadn’t been done for his benefit. He felt as morose as Peter, the sullen ferryman, guardian of the island.
Mrs Dunn got him to sign the visitors’ book, and then started up the small staircase.
‘Your room’s up here.’
He followed her to the tiny landing, careful not to knock his rucksack against the photographs of long-grown-up children lining the walls. The smell of damp reminded him of his father’s house towards the end, before he and Jack had agreed a care home was the only option.
‘You’re on the left. The bathroom’s in the middle and I’m on the right.’
He had a vague sense that he should say something to assure her he was no madman come from the mainland with mayhem and pensioner murder on his mind. But the old lady was ahead of him, pushing open the bedroom door as if there was nothing left to be feared in the world.
The little room was suffused with the sickly glow of a Disney sunset, its small twin beds draped in shiny satin spreads that almost, but not quite, matched the princess-pink walls, the rosebud-sprigged carpet and blushing curtains. A portable TV inscribed with a Barbie logo sat in one corner next to a towel rail decked with rosy towels.
‘Well?’
It took Murray a second to realise she was awaiting his verdict. He tried to put some warmth into his voice.
‘Very nice, thanks.’
Mrs Dunn nodded gravely, as if agreeing with him on an important point of scripture, and then asked, ‘What time do you want your dinner?’
The journey still sat uneasily in his stomach.
‘Don’t go to any trouble, I’ll get something in the town.’
The old woman snorted.
‘There’s no town, son. No café, no pub, come to that. It’s my cooking or nothing.’
The small room seemed to do a quick pulse as the house took an inward breath, closing around him. He drew in the rose-tinted air, silently blessing the impulse that had sent him into an Oban off-licence for a bottle of whisky.
‘What about seven?’
‘Seven’s fine.’
Murray said, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
But he mustn’t have sounded convincing because Mrs Dunn added, ‘Don’t worry. It’s a while since I poisoned anyone’, and shut the door smartly behind her.
Murray sat on the bed nearest the door, wondering again at his talent for alienating every woman he met. Maybe it was losing their mother early that had done it, though Jack had always managed to use the motherless-boy stuff to good effect.
Murray slid his computer from his rucksack and switched it on, vaguely hoping a wireless signal would appear on the screen. It didn’t.
No café, no pub.
The pink room took another inward pulse. He’d imagined a tourist brochure cliché, a leather armchair pulled close to a crackling fire, a crystal glass of malt in easy reach as he worked on his opus.
The colour of the room was surely irrelevant. He needed to make progress, to start writing, continue with the research, sure, but move on to the text, begin ordering his thoughts before they spiralled out of reach.
He still knew next to nothing about Archie’s childhood, had got ensnared instead in the episodes leading to his death. He could begin with the end, of course; have the poet’s head dip beneath the waves, the fronds of his long hair floating free in the water, air bubbles nestling in his beard, lips parting as he welcomed oncoming peace.
Murray took off his shoes and went into the small bathroom on the landing. He had to rid himself of this Hollywood vision. Drowning would be no better than other deaths. Painful and nasty, with shit and vomit clouding the last moments, a desperate clinging to a life already lost.
The smell of damp was more intense here. The shower was hemmed in a tiny, plastic cubicle sealed with a concertina door. He wondered if it leaked, wondered if he would be able to wash in the small space without breaking anything. The thought made him realise he’d forgotten to pack any soap. Maybe there was a local shop where he could buy some (he hoped to God it was licensed), otherwise he’d be forced to lather himself from the same bar that had slid around his host’s aged body. The disgust the thought brought with it made him feel guilty and he washed his face in the sink, avoiding his reflection in the mirror.
Back in his room he unpacked the box folder that held his notes. Here were his analyses of Lunan’s poems (these, at least, he could be confident of), some notes on suicides he’d managed to glean from Dr Garrett’s research, his interviews with Audrey, Meikle and Professor James, each neatly transcribed and assigned its own plastic envelope. He laid them across the spare bed, mourning the bedroom’s lack of a desk.
So far his work had amounted to little. Maybe Fergus Baine had been right and he should limit himself to a discussion of the poetry, rather than the man. After all, that was what counted, wasn’t it?
He picked James’s folder from the pile. In retrospect, he was surprised the professor hadn’t raised the same objections as Fergus. Murray remembered James being close to fanatical on the importance of divorcing writers’ lives from their work.
Reductive, simplistic, crude and lacking in analysis!
He could still conjure the sound of ripping paper that had shocked the tutorial room as James tore a student’s essay concentrating on Milton’s blindness to the detriment of his poetry both verbally and physically to shreds. But the projected biography of Lunan had raised no barbed comments. Despite the ready excuses offered by retirement and failing health, James had welcomed Murray, granted him hours from the depleted bank of time reserved for his own researches. The professor might simply have changed his opinion on the significance artists’ lives had on their art, or been motivated by a sense of collegiate duty; but holding the folder in his hand, Murray was struck again by a suspicion that the old man hadn’t been as forthcoming as he might have.