‘What’s it like then, not having a dad?’
‘It’s not like anything really. It’s not very different.’
‘How can you know if you’ve never had one in the first place?’ Colin was good at arguing. Sandy was forced to shrug his shoulders.
‘Well, it doesn’t seem any different,’ he said. ‘Am I different from you?’
‘Well, you’re witchy for a start,’ said Clark, laughing.
‘I’d put a spell on you if I was,’ said Sandy. ‘I’d change you from a frog.’ They all laughed at that. Sandy felt safe again. He was tempted to visit the mansion, but he knew that it would probably be empty at this time of the day. It was tempting, too, to visit the gypsy encampment at Craigie Hill. It would only take ten minutes from the Soda Fountain. The wind was beginning to blow a bit anyway. They could not lie here for much longer. Sandy pressed a finger down on to some of his goosebumps. They flattened for a second, then swelled. The dark strands of hair on his arms stood on end when he shivered, like the sea rolling up to the esplanade in Kirkcaldy.
‘Why don’t we go to Kirkcaldy?’ he suggested.
‘No money,’ said Clark. Colin and Mark nodded.
‘Well, let’s arrange a trip for when we have money. To celebrate the end of the exams. We can go to the Harbour Tavern. Dicky Preston says they serve you in there even if you’re underage. He says it’s easy.’
‘Okay,’ said Colin. The others were nodding. ‘That sounds fine. We’ll need a good bit of cash, though, so start hunting through your mum’s purse and looking in your dad’s pockets. Okay?’
‘Magic’
6
The cemetery sat at the top of The Brae. It was quite large, sprawling with the headstones of mining accidents and many other less newsworthy deaths. Matty Duncan was buried here in an untended but often visited corner. Mary passed this corner, and glanced at the gravestone. If he hadn’t died, it would have been my father...
The cemetery contained most of Mary’s family. A lot of plots had gone untended for too long, and yellow-flowering weeds were beginning to make serious inroads, giving the place a rank, lush look and a constant pungency resembling that of urine.
Mary stooped over one or two graves on her way to her parents’ plot, and pulled up some of the silent, stubborn weeds. Seldom did they come up at the roots. Mary knew that hers was merely temporary surgery.
Her parents’ tombstone gleamed still. In a few years it would lose its shine, but not yet. The letters were dull gold and indented clearly. Mary squatted by the graveside and placed her posy of flowers on the grass. She lifted the two glass jars from either side of the tombstone. There were partly withered stalks in one. The other was empty, someone having taken the flowers she had placed in it so delicately last week. She said nothing and thought nothing, just walked with both jars over to a small hut beside which stood a bin and a cold-water standpipe. She emptied the stalks into the bin where they landed on top of other matted and decaying vegetation, and rinsed out both jars under the tap before filling them. The icy water lingered on her hands, freezing them, sending all feeling to some foreign region. She blew on her fingers, trying to warm them, as she carried the jars over to the graveside, her parents, and the small tribute of flowers.
Having placed the jars in their original positions, marked by the greener grass beneath each, Mary made herself comfortable on the slightly damp ground at the foot of the grave and smiled. She had not smiled for a long time. She seemed to be studying the plot, just as she would have studied a work of careful embroidery. When she was satisfied with the arrangement of the graveside, she began to speak in a soft, respectful voice.
Clouds moved overhead with a regal gait befitting the calm afternoon. Crows were arguing in the distance, probably in the trees of the kirkyard. She told this to her mother. Her mother was interested in details and in the kind of day it happened to be, in the sights and sounds from which she had been banished. Mary’s mother had been a nature-lover all her years, taking the children out for long rambles on Sunday afternoons, summer evenings, and school holidays. She would point out wild flowers and trees to her two children, telling them the names of each and making them repeat these names so that they would remember. Then, later in the walk she would suddenly ask, “What was that called again?”, pointing to something, and when they shouted out the answer she would chuckle and say that they seemed to have learned more that day than in a whole week’s schooling.
They would laugh together and rush down the steep hill hand in hand and shrieking, collapsing eventually into the sofa at home, the sweat on their brows linking them inexorably to the day’s events, making them grin and glance at the father who pretended not to mind being excluded from their group.
Those were days of near innocence, days which all too soon had become irretrievably the past. She never talked with her dead mother about the day when she had been thrown into the hot burn, or about the days that followed. Those times sat in crouched silence in Mary’s mind, grinning rictus-like and festering.
She spoke with her mother of flowers and brooks and country walks, of a land which might once have existed but was now no more. Her father listened in silence, doubtless impressed by their relationship, sisters more than mother and daughter, sharing their thoughts and their vision like girls tucked beneath the bedclothes in a darkened room. Her father would nod and listen, but make no comment other than to grunt when spoken to. He seemed further away than her mother, and Mary knew the reason why. His face had vanished from her memory, leaving only the vague outline of a shuffling, heavy man with a pipe clamped between his teeth. But Mary knew her mother’s face better than she knew her own. It was kindness and russet cheeks and a cold compress on a headache. It was love. It was love that she talked to now as she sat by the cool graveside and stroked the bristles of grass as if they were long weavings of hair.
Blushing like a schoolgirl, she told her mother about Andy.
‘Yes, Mum, he’s lovely. He really cares for me. He’s always doing little things like bringing me chocolates or flowers. Like an old-fashioned suitor in a way. He has a car and we go out into the country sometimes to little pubs and interesting places. People look at us as if we were man and wife.’ She paused. ‘I think maybe one day we will be. Sandy’s still growing, though he says he isn’t. He’s sitting his exams at school just now. He’s been swotting for weeks. He comes home exhausted. Mind you, he’s still quite a laddie. He’s out till all hours some nights. No, I’m being strict enough with him, Mum, but you have to give them a bit of freedom these days or they go off the rails. He never gets into trouble. I think he’s got himself a girlfriend. He blushes like a schoolgirl when I ask him.’ She chuckled. ‘I don’t know who it is yet. I just hope it’s someone nice and not one of those tarty young things that hang around down the street. But I think Sandy’s got enough sense not to get into trouble in that respect.’
She was silent for a few moments. The crows continued their dialogue. Smaller birds began bickering in some bushes nearby. ‘The birds are fairly singing today, Mum. I can’t really tell what kinds of bird. There are crows and sparrows, of course, but goodness knows what else. You would know them all. I’ve forgotten all those bird-songs that you taught Tom and me. Tom’s fine, by the way. I had a letter from him recently. Have I seen you since? I forget. My memory seems to be going a bit haywire these days. Sandy’s leaving school. He’s adamant about that. I wonder what he’ll do with himself. If you were here, Mum, he’d listen to your advice. He takes little or no notice of his own mum. Independent as anything, and still only fifteen. Fifteen, Mum.’ She paused as if listening to something. ‘Yes, Mum, it has been the ruin of me. But I love my Sandy and I wouldn’t not have had him. I can’t think of such a thing. What do you think, Dad? What do you think?’ She was weeping now. She rose to her feet and, drying her eyes on a delicate handkerchief, walked quickly from the grave. The flowers in their jars trembled in the slight breeze.