‘What do you think went wrong between them?’ I asked.
They both smiled and shook their heads.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Cancel the question.’
‘No,’ John said. ‘I suppose, knowing them as well as we did, we got a few pointers. But how do you referee that stuff? You just see them sometimes coming out of their privacy and you know the game’s changed.’
‘That’s right,’ Mhairi said. ‘You know what I’ve noticed? One of the signs is when a couple start to overreact to something in public. A subject comes up and they’re both going over the top. And you realise it’s not that they’re talking about at all. It’s something else. That’s just the excuse for a much deeper enmity. I think that’s when it’s bad. Because they’ve stopped trying to sort out the real problem. They’re just using it as fuel to fight about other things.’
‘I know what you mean,’ John said. ‘Know when I noticed that with Scott and Anna? Know one of the first times? The private school discussion? Remember that?’
Mhairi breathed out and shook her head.
‘Do I remember the Vietnam War? That was terrible. I thought Scott was going to get violent.’
‘He would never have done that. But he took words as far as they would go.’
‘Private school?’ I said.
‘It was Anna’s idea,’ Mhairi said. ‘She said she wanted David and Alan to go to a private school. It was one night they were in here. Just the four of us. I think Anna mentioned it in company deliberately, to see if she could get some support.’
‘Fat chance,’ John said. ‘I teach where I teach because I believe in it. It’s not just the money. That helps, though. The little there is of it.’
‘Oh, the three of us were agreed. But Anna still had the right to her opinion. But Scott was outraged. By the time he was finished, I was beginning to think maybe I agreed with Anna. Excuse me. But he was out of order that night.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I believe you. I think it’s a family characteristic.’
‘It was as if she was trying to undermine the meaning of his life,’ John said.
Catriona and Elspeth entered the room like a Molotov cocktail, exploding in the middle of us.
‘Come on, girls,’ Mhairi said wanly.
All right, Canute said: turn back, tide. They had devised a different game. This game was less complicated than the previous one, marked a distinct regression in subtlety. What this game was about was simply decibels.
‘Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah,’ Catriona sang. ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.’
‘Nyoo, nyoo, nyoo,’ sang Elspeth. ‘Nyoo, nyoo, nyoo. Nyoo, nyoo, nyoo.’
The lyrics were a lot better than the tunes. Mhairi nodded to John.
‘Sh!’ John said, a man trying to blow out a forest fire. ‘What Mhairi and I were thinking. You and I could nip round to the pub. Have a blether there.’
Mhairi smiled at me and nodded. I was grateful to them, not just because the shift would make communication possible but because I liked them and I didn’t want to repeat the brief vision I’d just had of shooting their children.
‘You sure you’ll be all right, love?’ John said.
I could understand the question.
‘I’ve survived so far. I’ll get these two to bed. You won’t be too long?’
‘No. We’ll go to the Akimbo. Okay?’
John kissed her and kissed the children. I thanked Mhairi and waved to Catriona and Elspeth.
‘Maybe we’ll see you sometime when the circumstances are less sad.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘I think I would like that.’
7
Walking with John Strachan, I found myself surfacing too quickly from the depth of my preoccupation with Scott’s death into an ordinary evening. I felt a psychological equivalent of the bends. I couldn’t relate to what was going on around me.
I seemed alien here. Yet I knew this town well enough. Our family had lived here for five or six years when my father — inveterate dreamer of unfulfilled dreams — had brought us to make another of those fresh starts of his that always curdled into failure by being exposed to too much harsh reality. But tonight the town didn’t feel familiar. Maybe I was seeing it not so much as the place where I was as the place where Scott wasn’t, an expanse of buildings that had lost my brother as effortlessly and effectively as an ocean closing over a wreck.
Suddenly I didn’t want to sit in the Akimbo Arms, a pub I had known slightly, and be invaded by the anonymity of the town. I needed a place that would give me a stronger sense of Scott.
‘John,’ I said. ‘What you say we don’t go to the Akimbo? We could walk to where I’ve parked the car. And I’ll drive us to the Bushfield Hotel. I need a room for the night anyway.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I have the odd pint in there. It’s all right.’
The Bushfield was a converted private house. It was mainly a pub but it had perhaps ten bedrooms as well. Katie and Mike Samson, who owned it, had known Scott well. I had spent a few sessions in there after hours, enjoying the singsong. The sweetly ample Katie had been very fond of Scott. Maybe Mike had liked him, too. But with Mike you couldn’t be sure. Tall and lean, he sometimes gave the impression that you might need a power-drill to find out what was going on inside his head. Together, they were tune and descant, Mike providing a slightly lugubrious undertow to Katie’s joy in things.
I parked the car in front of the hotel and took out my travelling-bag. As John Strachan and I went into the hotel, Katie was crossing the hallway from bar to kitchen.
‘Have you got a room here for a wayfaring stranger?’ I said.
‘Oh, Jack,’ she said.
She stood staring at me. I thought I understood what the stare meant. She was reaffirming the death of Scott in seeing his big brother. Scott would never again be standing where I was. Katie being Katie, as spontaneous as breathing, the thought brought tears to her eyes. She approached with her arms open and pulled me down into an embrace where breathing was difficult. The travelling-bag hit the floor. Just when I was going down for the third time, she released me.
‘You’re thin as a rake,’ she said.
‘That’s just muscular leanness, Katie.’
‘Don’t dodge. What have you been eatin’? Or what have ye not been eatin’, more like?’
‘I’m the worst cook in Britain.’
‘Ach, Jack. I heard about yer other bothers, too.’ She meant my marriage. ‘Trouble always travels in company, doesn’t it?’
I tried to introduce John Strachan to her but she knew him already. She would. She treated even casual customers as if they were part of an extended family. She shooed John through to the bar to get a pint and took me upstairs to show me my room. It was freshly decorated and beautifully clean.
‘This is the best one,’ she said. ‘Some of the others are getting done up. Then there’s two fellas from Denmark staying the night. And a man from Ireland’s been here for nearly a week.’
I didn’t unpack the bag. I told her I wanted to phone Glasgow. She wouldn’t let me use the payphone. She took me back downstairs to the kitchen. Fortunately, Buster the dog recognised me, although that didn’t always guarantee you immunity from threatening noises. She left me dialling Brian Harkness’s number.
‘Hello?’
‘Hullo, Morag?’ I said. ‘It’s — ’
‘I know who it is all right. I’d recognise your growl anywhere. It’s Black Jack Laidlaw, the mad detective.’
It’s nice to be recognised.
‘Where are you?’ she said.
‘I’m in Graithnock. I’m still in Graithnock.’
‘Whereabouts in Graithnock?’
‘I’m just booking into a wee hotel. I just got in there.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. Morag had the kind of directness that often goes with authentic generosity. Kindness was such a natural thing with her she never bothered to dress it in formal clothes. ‘You’re forty minutes down the road from us. Get your bum in the car and get up here.’