Everything was simple and well-constructed, a living space composed of clean lines, too practical to be stylish, too cold to be completely comfortable. This was the place where she had lived with Archie. Murray tried to imagine it as it had been, the tumbled bed recess, the squalid table and circling flies, but it had grown too civilised for him to recognise.
Unlike Mrs Dunn, Christie hadn’t yet closed her curtains. Two armchairs sat staring out onto the blackness of the moor through the large picture windows. A slim document folder rested on a small table between them. Christie led him towards the chairs and he saw that her limp had grown worse. The right side of her body swung stiffly with each step, her leg rigid, as if muscle and bone would no longer co-operate.
‘I thought we could talk here.’ Christie settled herself awkwardly into one of the armchairs. Murray took off his wet waterproof, bundled it on the floor beside him and sat. He could see their reflections in the glass. The two of them unsmiling on the high-backed chairs, like an old queen and her younger, more barbarous consort. He wondered how she could stand it, this view of the self imprinted onto dark nothingness, like a glimpse of purgatory. But Christie was looking away from the window, towards him.
‘Have you deliberately styled yourself to look like Archie?’
‘No.’
Surprise made him sound defensive.
‘You gave me a start the day I saw you in the shop. Though now I look closely, I can see you’re not like him at all. Archie’s features were finer, almost feminine.’
Murray was taken aback by his disappointment.
‘Do you have many photographs of him?’
‘Some. I might show you a few later.’
‘It’d be a privilege.’
‘The ones of him as a young boy are charming.’
She was like a cruel child baiting a kitten.
He leaned down and took his tape recorder from his jacket pocket.
‘Do you mind if I record our conversation?’
‘I’m afraid I do.’ He hadn’t noticed the smallness of her mouth before. It was the feature that robbed her of beauty. She twisted it as if strangling a smile. ‘Before we start, let me ask you a question: what would you like from me?’
Murray leaned forward, opening his palms in an unconscious, ancient gesture designed to show he came unarmed.
‘Your memories of Archie, what he was like.’ He paused and said, ‘What you remember of his final days.’
She nodded. ‘Nothing else?’
‘You mentioned photographs.’ To his own ears Murray’s voice sounded as if it had been infused with the oiliness of the life insurance salesmen who had always done so well from his widowed father. ‘I’d appreciate the opportunity to go through them, but obviously I’d also be very keen to see any other notes, letters or memorabilia you have relating to Archie.’
‘Strange how you call him by his first name, as if you know him.’
‘I don’t feel I know him at all.’
‘But you’re in love with him?’
She arched her eyebrows. It was an old-fashioned style he’d encountered in some female academics of her generation, a need to provoke, as if years of being overlooked had left their mark.
‘I’m in love with his poems.’
‘What would your ultimate prize be?’
Murray looked at his feet.
‘To discover a new work, even one new poem.’
Christie smiled. ‘Of course.’ She leaned back in her chair and stared out into the darkness. ‘I think it’s only fair to tell you that I’ve written an account of my time with Archie. It will only be published, even in extract form, after my death. I should also tell you that as far as I’m concerned it’s the only statement I’m prepared to make on Archibald Lunan’s life and death.’
Murray closed his notebook and slid his pen into its spiral spine. She had brought him here to make clear her refusal to cooperate, nothing more.
‘Thank you for being so frank. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’
Christie’s tone was soft and reasonable.
‘Dr Watson, you must realise you’re here because there’s something you can give me.’
He still hadn’t reached out for his coat, though it was on the floor at his side.
‘All I can offer you is the chance to bring Archie’s work to a wider audience, and the possibility of a more secure legacy for him.’
‘No.’ Christie’s gaze was level and serious. ‘That’s what I can offer you.’ Her voice grew brisk. ‘Could you go into the top drawer of the desk, please, and pass me the box you find there?’
Murray crossed the room to her desk. He pulled open the drawer and saw a white plastic box. Even before he lifted it, he knew it held medication rather than the papers he’d hoped for. He handed it to her.
‘Thank you.’ Christie snapped open the lid and Murray glimpsed a bewildering range of pills. She caught his gaze and said, ‘One advantage of living miles from a chemist is that I’m issued with more or less as much medication as I need.’ She selected four tablets. ‘There’s some bottled water by the couch. Could you pass it to me, please?’ He did as she asked, then stood by the window as Christie swallowed the pills, placing each one singly in her mouth then washing them down. She choked on the last one and he moved to help her, but she waved him away. When she’d regained her breath she asked, ‘What would you do to lay your hands on my recollections of Archie Lunan and a final, unpublished collection of his poems?’
Murray turned towards the window so she wouldn’t witness his expression. But once again the darkness threw his image onto the glass.
‘I don’t know.’
The nervous undercurrent he’d noticed before was back in Christie’s voice.
‘I’ve done what all the blackmailers do in the movies and provided you with a sample of the goods.’
Murray wanted to look at her, but stayed where he was, staring out into the blackness, seeing nothing but the room’s reflection and the rain streaking in rivulets down the outside of the pane.
‘A poem by Archie?’
‘No, the poems are elsewhere.’ She slid a page from the folder and handed it to Murray. ‘You’ve got three minutes in which to read it. I think that should be more than enough time for a doctor of English literature.’
Murray asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘Read first, then I’ll tell you.’
The paper was in his hand. He lifted it and started to read.
Archibald Lunan and Christina Graves were born three years apart to two very different sisters. Archie’s mother Siona Roy left the island of Lismore at the age of sixteen to work as a maid of all work at a hotel in Inverness. The war came as a boon to girls like her and in 1939 she moved to Glasgow, where she became a canary bird in one of the large munitions factory. Archie arrived the year after the war ended. Mrs Lunan, as Siona was now known, was never forthcoming about the circumstances of Archie’s birth, but his arrival sent her home, to her father’s croft.
Life was to change a lot in Scotland over the next decade, but many crofters still lived very much as their ancestors had. They heated their cottages with peat which they cut from the ground. Lighting came from oil lamps. They grew crops, baked their own bread, and salvaged what they could in the way of driftwood. Some, like Archie’s mother, collected their cooking and washing water from streams and wells.