‘That’s sentiment,’ Evelyn said. ‘You can’t eat sentiment.’
‘He said you’d tell me what this was all about.’
She paused for a beat, stared at him sadly for a moment. ‘Oh Sandy, you’re the last person I could tell.’
It was as if she’d slapped him in the face.
The phone rang then and his mother went to answer it. She came back frowning. ‘That was your Auntie Jackie. She wants to know if you could go up to the big house. Andrew’s fidgeting to talk to you, she says.’
‘Aye. Why not? I’ll walk over.’ He knew he was a coward but he couldn’t wait to get out of the house.
Walking up the track to the Clouston place, he did feel better. There was a wheatear bouncing along the stone wall and skylarks singing in the field beyond. He found Jackie in the kitchen. The table was full of clutter – bags of flour, sugar and oats, tins of syrup and treacle. ‘You look busy. Is this for something special?’
‘Evelyn’s asked me to do some baking for her grand do in the hall,’ Jackie said. ‘I thought I’d make a start today. Anna’s helping me out.’ Then Sandy saw that Anna Clouston was there too, sitting in the corner. She was breastfeeding the baby. You couldn’t see exactly what was going on because she was wearing a loose jumper, but he felt embarrassed just the same, felt his face colour. He turned away.
‘As you see,’ Anna said, ‘I’m not helping very much at the moment.’
‘I’ve told her she should give the bairn a bottle.’ Jackie began to beat together a lump of butter and some sugar. ‘He might start to sleep at night. He’s probably starving.’
‘He’s fine,’ Anna said. ‘He won’t be a baby for long. I don’t mind a bit of disturbance for a while. I don’t mind putting myself out for my child.’ The implication was clear: she thought Jackie was selfish.
Sandy thought this was how women fought. With civilized words carrying poison.
‘Where’s Andrew?’ Because it had come to him that the room seemed quite different and that was because of his uncle’s absence. Andrew usually sat in his chair by the stove, a permanent fixture, like the shiny American fridge and the china dog on the dresser. Huge and imposing, he seldom spoke but somehow made his presence felt.
‘He’s in the lounge. We’re having one of the bedrooms decorated and I’ve asked him to clear out some junk. He’s found some photos and thought you might be interested. Go on through.’
Andrew was sitting in one of the big armchairs with his back to the view. There was a pile of photograph albums on the coffee table in front of him. He looked up when he heard Sandy come into the room and smiled. He didn’t speak. Sandy found it hard to imagine him as a boy, scrapping with Joseph in the school playground. He had fought with words too, Sandy thought. Like the women battling in the kitchen over a baby barely a month old.
‘You remember Jerry,’ Sandy said. ‘My grandfather, Jerry Wilson.’
Andrew screwed up his face in concentration. ‘I don’t remember so much these days.’ The words came out as a series of stutters.
Sandy looked at him. He thought the lack of memory could be kind of convenient. ‘But you told me the story about him. About him killing the Norwegian man during the war.’
Andrew frowned and nodded.
‘How did he die?’ He’d asked Joseph the same question but had no real answer.
‘He was killed in an accident at sea. He was out fishing with my father. There was a storm. A freak wave that turned the boat over. He was drowned.’
‘But your father was saved.’
‘He was a stronger swimmer and he got hold of the upturned boat. He tried to hold on to Jerry Wilson, but he lost his grip.’
‘Are you sure that’s true? It wasn’t just another of the island stories? You know how that happens. People make things up. Like the stories you told about my grandfather being a murderer.’
There was a moment while they stared at each other. Sandy could hear the gulls on the roof and the sheep on the grass by the shore.
‘This isn’t a made-up story,’ Andrew said. ‘I was there when your grandfather died.’
‘You would have been a child!’
‘I was ten years old. Old enough to go fishing with my father. We just had the small boat then.’
‘How did you survive when my grandfather didn’t?’
‘Don’t you see?’ Andrew fixed him with his blue, staring eyes. ‘My father couldn’t save the both of us. He chose to save me. You can’t blame him for that.’
And Sandy supposed that was true. A man was always going to save his son ahead of his friend.
‘Was Jerry’s body ever washed up?’
‘Not here. Not that I heard.’
‘I wondered if his remains had been buried at Setter.’ Sandy had been thinking about that in the night. It was one explanation for his father’s reluctance to let the place go.
Andrew looked up at him. ‘No, I never heard anything like that.’
‘Shall we look at these photos then?’
‘Aye, why not?’
But Sandy was still haunted by thoughts of the past, of buried secrets. ‘Did you ever hear what they did with the dead Norwegian?’
Andrew didn’t respond.
‘The Norwegian who came over with the Bus,’ Sandy said. He found himself becoming frustrated again by Andrew’s slowness. He wondered how Jackie and Ronald managed to keep so patient. ‘Mima’s lover. What happened to him?’
Andrew said nothing. Sandy remembered the sort of man he’d once been, big and loud, easy to rouse to anger. Mima had once said; ‘Andrew Clouston has a tempestuous nature. Like a storm at sea.’ Sometimes she came out with things like that. There was no sign of Andrew’s tempestuousness now. Sandy thought he was more like a boat with a bust engine, becalmed and useless.
‘Let’s look at the photos,’ Sandy said, giving up the struggle to force an answer.
He opened the album and recognized the first picture straight away. It was the one from the wall in Mima’s bedroom with the women who were carrying peat and knitting at the same time.
‘Do you know them, Andrew? Who are they?’
For the first time since he’d come into the room, Andrew seemed aware of what was happening. He pointed to the woman on the left. ‘I know her. That’s your grandmother.’
‘Not Mima! She was never a knitter!’
‘No, no, no.’ Andrew was frustrated by his lack of fluency. ‘Evie. They called her Evie. She was Evelyn’s mother.’
And now Sandy could see the likeness. He’d only known his maternal grandmother as an old woman. But the family resemblance was there. He could see Evelyn in the woman’s sturdy build, the determined look on her face. This is where I come from, he thought.
Andrew had lost interest in the picture and turned the page of the album. He stared at the next photograph, seemed completely lost in his memories.
‘Who’s that then, Andrew? Is it someone you recognize?’ Sandy moved closer to the man so he could get a better look at the book.
The picture was of two men, standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning out at the camera. They wore elaborate hand-knitted jerseys, baggy trousers and caps. The sun must have been in their eyes because they were squinting. Sandy thought it had been taken on the shore at Lindby, because he recognized the bit of drystone wall in the background.
‘Who is it, Andrew?’ he said again when there was no immediate reply. ‘Is one of them your father?’
‘That’s my father.’ The older man stuck a finger on to one of the figures. ‘That must have been taken when I was very young. That’s Jerry Wilson.’
Sandy could see now that the man on the right was his grandfather. There was the same quirky smile as in the photo that had stood in Mima’s kitchen. He thought now it looked a bit cruel. This was a man who might make fun of you, so it sounded like teasing but was hurtful all the same.