‘I’d like very much to read it, Reverend Walker.’
‘Call me Alec. Most people do.’
‘Very well. And I’m Iain.’
The old man nodded. ‘Well, Iain,’ he said, ‘will you have another nip?’
Darroch reached his glass over towards his new friend.
‘That’s very interesting about St Cuthbert, Alec’
‘Indeed it is. But then Fife, including Carsden, is a very interesting region. I have several books on the subject. Really, it’s quite a remarkable county. Were you born here?’
‘Crail.’
‘Oh, a glorious place, a really beautiful place. Of course, the East Neuk of Fife and central Fife are two different worlds. Industry has scooped the heart out of central Fife. We are living in an empty, echoing place. You may have noticed that?’
‘I’ve noticed the looks in the eyes of some of my neighbours. In fact, one reason I wanted to see you was to ask you about one of them.’
‘Ah yes,’ the old man nodded, ‘sadness. This was not a sad place, Iain, oh, maybe twenty years ago. But it does not take long to utterly destroy a sense of community. Oh dear, we’re getting maudlin.’
Both men sipped their drinks and smacked their lips appreciatively.
‘This is excellent whisky, Alec,’ said Darroch, embarrassed by his own ingratiating tone. The Reverend Walker nodded.
‘The water of life,’ he said in all seriousness. ‘The Church here, you know, is not what it was. I hope that you may be able to reverse the trend, but I quite doubt it, to be honest. The congregation of St Cuthbert’s was once over three hundred when the population was considerably lower than it is now. My own church has suffered also. We both know that it is a general trend, but it is still appalling. I begin to wonder if this is truly a Godless age. If it is, then we are fools, are we not?’
Darroch reflected upon this. It was an old story, a story that came with the Ark. The Church was in decay, or at the very least relapse. Yet the coffers were full enough in some quarters. Churchmen never went hungry. They were satisfied with their lot. Perhaps there lay the root of the problem. What if ministers were paid by the number of people they converted per year? The churches would fill, or at least the ministry would try to perform its duties rather than sluggishly conforming to a lazy imitation of them. Darroch quite relished the thought of his reverie turning into reality. He was guilty of apathy himself, he realised. But now his host was speaking again.
‘St Serf turned most of Fife into a Christian area. Prior to that Fifers had been picts, heathens. Much later, Fife was the home of the Seceders, a movement influenced by the teachings of Knox. There was much religious zeal and arguing in Fife at that time. More so than in any other county in Scotland. Coal-mining, it seems, went hand in hand with Christianity. The monks at Newbattle were Fife’s first miners. And then Pope Pius the Second visited Scotland in the reign of Jamie the Saxt and was amazed to find beggars at the various churches receiving pieces of black stone as alms. This was coal, of course. According to records, Bowhill Colliery used to employ more men than any other Fife colliery. That was at the beginning of the 1900s, I believe. Bowhill Colliery used to lie towards Cardell. You’ve probably passed by it. It is still used for coal-washing, when there is not a strike on, but much of the original pit has been demolished. It was a big pit, and the population at that time must have been proud of it. They are still proud people, Iain, but they have lost anything to have a pride in. That’s the crux of what’s happening here. In some ways, however, I’m glad that we don’t depend on mining as much as we used to. Goodness, how this last strike would have hit us. I can remember the first soup kitchens, back in the days of the General Strike. I was little more than a lad, but it was devastating, and it has left its indelible mark. There are modern soup kitchens now in places like Glenrothes and Cowdenbeath. If we do not realise the full force of modern disputes, then it is because we were in many ways the forerunner of it. Children here run around in gangs and vandalise the shops and paint slogans on the walls. The adults beat each other up on Saturday night and drink too much and have bad marriages. It’s a ghost town at nights because there are no amenities.’ He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘There are social problems here that the Church cannot solve on its own. That’s the truth. I apologise for my dejected tone, but it is better not to dream in a place like this.’
Darroch nodded thoughtfully. He sat with his hands folded in an imitation of prayer. ‘Would you say then, Alec, that the people here are good in their hearts but have been let down by outside forces such as politics?’
The old man nodded, glass to his lips.
‘Then,’ continued Darroch, ‘could you tell me about the attitude of these good people towards a woman called Mary Miller?’
The old man looked at him, and his gaze forced Darroch to lower his eyes into his own lap. There was a silence so powerful that for the first time Darroch could hear the grandfather clock ticking slowly in the hallway. The old minister sighed. ‘That’s a long and complex story, Iain. Should I tell it to you?’
‘She is a member of my congregation, Alec.’
‘Then shouldn’t she be the one to tell you?’
‘But would she tell me? Would you rather I got the story from some biased source?’ Darroch had won the point. Alec Walker shrugged his crouched body and settled deep into his armchair. ‘Very well,’ he said, reaching for the bottle. ‘Another refill is needed, I believe. I hope you are a good listener, Iain. This is not the most pleasant of stories.’
2
The dissolution was evident in and around Robbie’s eyes. Sandy could hardly bear to look into those watery, red rimmed pools. It was like gazing into a forbidden bedroom at the terminal patient within. He found a spot on Robbie’s shirt collar where the material was fraying and concentrated his eyes there instead.
Robbie was wondering why Sandy had not been up to the mansion recently. The boy shrugged his shoulders and grunted. Robbie nodded his head but still looked at Sandy for an answer. Sandy shrugged again.
‘The pressure of life,’ he said finally.
‘A fucking lot you would know about that, Alexander. A fucking lot.’
Sandy could not get things straight in his mind. This slouching youth was supposed to be evil, the ogre in the fairy story. The princess was being forced to slave for him. Yet Robbie still wore the guise of an innocent. He looked like his sister’s keeper, yes, but not her pimp. Sandy was bursting to ask him outright about Rian’s accusations. He blushed.
‘What pressures of life have you got?’ continued Robbie.
‘Fuck off, Robbie. Stop talking about it.’ This was man’s talk; Rian was not present. Swearing was common speech among the men in the town. Some were known to communicate through swear-words alone. There were few words that Sandy did not know. He had been reading American crime novels for several years. Even serious literature in America used bad language. He was sure he knew words that no one else in Carsden knew. In the coming term, his last useless term at school, he was determined to use bad language in his essays for Andy Wallace. He was determined to register a protest about everything.