The gathering clouds had eluded the island, though the wind reaped the ocean-like grass in fitful gusts, pledging a bitter day if not a grey one.
Three figures hurried through the knee high grasses, their long shawls flapping as they trudged toward the cluster of dilapidated buildings sheltered by sprawling skeleton trees.
Behind them puffins hung in the air, buoyant in the wind. They wheeled about one another and strutted proudly about the squat cliffs, honking and squawking.
The men walked in silence, their bearded faces shielded from the wind beneath hessian cowls.
‘It’s a day long gone since you could walk these fields without losing your foot in the marsh,’ Red said, trying to remember the last time he had felt the ground of Lundy so dry. His voice was low and even, as though he were more used to offering orders than making conversation. His tone had suffered the same continual attack as his body however, and left his once thick voice with a dry rasp. He hated the sound of it, and was reminded how much he had withered when his sons spoke, their deep timbres as his once was.
‘True, da,’ Keenan replied.
Everything withered, Red considered as they stepped down the long field toward a stone wall. Even the strongest of men, the broadest of oaks. He pondered this for a moment, though he considered it didn’t matter. Whether the broadest oak withered or not was none of his concern, he was sickened by the onslaught of time.
He was the oldest of the community by some years, and had so many webs left half-spun. He couldn’t give in to time, and yet he felt fluid on his lungs, and knew that he had little time left.
He looked up to his sons. He couldn’t leave the game in their hands, they weren’t interested enough in the welfare of others to take on its responsibility.
Gorran, to his left, strode with the gait of a peacock. Forty years old, he strutted as though he were a young prince ready and waiting impatiently to take over the running of a kingdom. He was dangerous, Red thought. Proud and dangerous, and thought nothing of bedding whomever he wished, regardless of marriage or betrothal. He would get the community into trouble one day, there was no mistaking it. His bravado and sexual insatiability had brought turmoil to the island more than once in his forty years; Red had clout his brains with leather and threatened him with exile more than once because of it.
Kenan was another matter entirely. A year older than his brother, he was as voracious, though more manipulative, and forever plotting. Since childhood Kenan had spent his hours scheming to steal food and wine from the Marisco Tavern, and was forever the bane of anyone owning that which he wished for himself. Red considered that he may have killed him himself if he thought for a moment that he had ever wished to take over his reign. As it was, it wasn’t the intention of Kenan’s manipulation to land him with any more work than was absolutely necessary. He was a schemer, but a lazy one at that. He had always shunned the responsibility that his father dragged behind him, however, wanting nothing to do with it himself.
A rapist and a thief, he thought as a wheeze escaped him, that’s what you spawned, Harriet. A rapist and a thief.
They scaled a low wall, Gorran and Kenan turning to aid Red, who uttered a barely audible moan as he swung his leg. The far side of the wall was thick with mud, indicating a recent downpour that had not sated the fields thirst.
‘Damn it, get off me!’ he shrugged away their support, and pushed his way onward, his galoshes sucking and kissing the mud. ‘We should-a been back days ago with that wind.’ He turned, uneasy in the mire. ‘But no, you two had to be whoring when you should have been rowing!’
‘I was rowing!’ Gorran said, imitating rowing whilst thrusting his hips animatedly. Kenan laughed darkly and the wind swept back his cowl to reveal small coffee coloured teeth beneath a wiry auburn beard.
Red strode forward and grabbed Goran’s throat. Though he was smaller than his son he was palpably stronger, and fiercer than both combined. ‘Think that’s funny, do you, you little cock-wart?’ He thrust a boot in Goran’s shin and tugged his beard, thrusting his son face down into the sludge. He transferred his knee to the back of his head while Gorran thrashed. ‘Everything that is happening around you and you’re still playing the whore-starved fool? What part of recent months has made you think that you’ve nothing to think about than drinking and emptying your balls? Murder? Did that make you crave women? When you think about what is going to happen… does that arouse you? You’re ma would have been ashamed to call you her sons.’
Driving Goran's face deep into the mud, he released his son with disgust and Gorran rolled over, gasping and spitting. He was terrified of his father, even though he was twice the size and weight of the man.
‘Sorry, da! I didn’t...’
‘Quiet, you retarded little stink! Kenan, help your brother from his knees.’
‘Da,’ Kenan replied obediently. He clasped his brother’s wrist and pulled him sharply from the mud. He was looking across the pathway as he did so.
‘What is it?’ Red sneered, noticing his son’s concern for something he had seen.
‘Look,’ he raised a gloved hand, pointing to a stretch of pathway. ‘Someone’s been here,’ he stepped lightly on the muddy grass and crouched beside the prints. His father followed, hobbling awkwardly. Gorran picked himself up and wiped his sleeve across his face, joining them quietly, not wishing to provoke his father’s anger.
‘Not boots,’ Kenan offered. ‘They’re smooth. Thin. No grip on the outsole...’ He looked up to Red. ‘Moccasins.’
‘Mortehoe.’ Red growled.
‘They're relatively small, as well. And whoever they belonged to were light. Like kids.’ He added, kneeling close and running a finger across the imprint. ‘Old, too. must have been dry and warm here for a while, except the recent rain.’
Red made no comment further than a contemplative exhale before he marched in the direction of the Marisco Tavern. He felt a tumultuous nausea sweep across him, a feeling he hadn’t felt for, what was it now, twenty, thirty years? A feeling that had returned like an unexpected haymaker the day he had received the broadcast of Richard Kelly’s death. The feeling that stirred in his gut had a face, a smell, and a name. Carrick Tupper.
Kenan picked himself up and jogged after his father until he was by his side.
‘Who do you think it was?’ He asked, Gorran catching them up. The siblings shared disquieting looks.
‘Don’t you find it curious,’ Red asked, ‘that we should be paid a visit by Mortehoe with everything we’ve been up to recently?’
‘You think they know?’ Gorran asked. It was impossible, he thought. They couldn’t know. Everything had happened too quickly for them to find out, and they had taken care of anyone who might let on. Camberwell, Waeshenbach, Colt. Silenced.
Red ignored the question and stormed into the courtyard which housed the Marisco Tavern. He pushed the door open as though he expected resistance; it slammed loudly against a wall and knocked over a ceramic vase that had been waiting to fall from the mantel piece for months. It shattered, and his galoshes turned the remainder to powder as he stepped behind the bar, snatching up a demijohn, unstopping it, and taking a long draught.
‘Joan!’ He rasped loudly, cuffing his mouth and pouring a tankard with ale. ‘Joan, you whore, where are you?’ His voice returned to its former strength and his son’s hearts quickened momentarily, both remembering childhood beatings that had always been preceded by that tone.
Gorran stepped from the bar to search Joan’s rooms, though she appeared flustered at the door as he was ducking to step through it. They collided with each other and Gorran stepped back, holding her by the arm and thrusting her toward his father.
‘What’s going on?’ She said, confused by the sudden disturbance. ‘When did you get back?’
‘There have been strangers on the island, what do you know about it?’ Red asked, stepping towards her, scrutinising her.
‘What... Strangers? No, I...’
‘There are footprints i
n the mud made by moccasins!’ He shouted, spilling his ale. ‘You’re telling me that no-one saw anything?’
‘There was the couple who stayed for a night... They weren’t any harm...’
‘What couple?’
‘They came about a fortnight after you left for Iceland... They’d just been married and asked if they could spend their honeymoon on the island.’
Red thought about this for a moment. It was perfectly plausible that a couple had chosen to honeymoon on Lundy, it had happened several times in the past. It hadn’t happened in recent years however, and he didn’t like the thought of rarities occurring whilst he was spinning his threads.
‘They were just honeymooning?’ he asked, his voice a little less menacing.
Joan wrenched her arm from Gorran and stared vehemently at Red.
‘Yes, they were just honeymooning. The boy got as drunk as a fiddler’s bitch and the girl just sat at the bar talking.’
Red grasped his tankard tightly. Was this something he needed to be concerned about? His mind was already awash with the various outcomes of events already in motion. He didn’t need the hindrance of possible interlopers.
‘And you’re certain they meant no... Malice?’
She twisted her lip downwards and shrugged. ‘What are you talking about? They were teenagers, slips of things. They almost shit when they walked through the door.’
He gave a consenting grunt and turned, sitting down at a small table piled with dirty plates and dirty tankards. ‘We'll be away again in the morning, we've business in Mortehoe.' He turned to Gorran. 'I want a meeting held with the men by this evening, Gorran. You know how important this is, don't get distracted. Everything in Ireland has lead up to this, right?' He rounded on Joan once more. ‘You’ve kept this place well in my absence.'
‘Fuck off,’ Joan spat, gathering her breath and reaching for the piled crockery, ‘you don’t own the Tavern, Red.’
His liver-spotted hand grasped her wrist, halting her as she tried to take the former night’s washing away. His hand was cold on her skin, and she looked at him with scorn.
Their eyes locked for a moment, Red considering telling her that he owned her, and possessed the Tavern as an extension of that. But instead he released her and let her go.
‘Bastard,’ she said under her breath, disappearing into the kitchen.
Gorran sat opposite his father while Kenan took a seat at a nearby table. The two younger men took their pipes and filled them with dark tobacco, then lit them with pink-tipped matches.
‘What do we do now?’ Kenan asked through a blossom of smoke. His father was deep in thought, though he considered he might find favour if he showed some interest in their next actions.
Red sighed and took another draught of ale. ‘It’s all in motion. We do nothing until morning.’
They sat in silent contemplation for a while until both sons had finished drawing on their pipes and Red had finished the demijohn. He excused them and sat alone, the sound of the clock his only companion.
His thoughts returned to the journey he had just returned from and how, now returned, he felt overwhelmingly tired. He’d had no time to be tired before, but now, with the slow ticking and the dusty stillness of the room, he felt as though his legs were weighed by anchors.
He took a deep breath, there it was again - that gurgling sensation on his lungs. He considered it was an encroaching cold. He pushed it to the back of his mind, his thoughts returned to Gorran ruling the community once he was dead.
Then, strangely, his thoughts were with his wife Harriet, and how she had danced so spiritedly when the tables and chairs of the pub were pushed back to the walls. He imagined her sitting in the chair opposite him, young and beautiful and her eyes staring into his devilishly. What would she look like, he wondered, if she were here today? Would her eyes be as bright, and as devilish?
His thoughts were interrupted by Joan and she placed a new demijohn on the table. Her former anger had subsided, though she still scowled at him.
‘I just spoke to Jamie.’ She said, sitting where Harriet had been. ‘He said he saw you coming by dinghy. What happened to the tug?’
‘Motor’s gone. It’s being repaired.’ He said, for a moment she thought she saw the old man behind his determined eyes.
‘You sailed from Iceland?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You were gone a long time, people were asking questions.’
‘Let them ask if they have nothing else to talk about.’ He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he should say more, though he spoke before he had really made up his mind. ‘We went to Ireland.’
‘Oh? I presume that’s where the tug is then? We didn’t need another run for a while though... Should I send the boys to pick up the cargo?’
‘There’s no cargo,’ he already regretted opening his mouth; though speaking to someone after days alone with his sons loosened his tongue. ‘It was a personal errand.’
‘A personal..?’ She looked at him incredulously. ‘What business is there in Ireland that’s personal? What personal business do we have with anyone outside of this bloody island?’
‘Hold your mind still, woman, you’ll hurt yourself.’
She held him in his gaze for a moment, and then looked aside. There was no use in arguing with him, she considered. He was a bully and competitive besides. If he didn’t want to talk there was no use in trying to make him, surreptitiously or otherwise.
‘You’ll find out soon enough when Gorran gathers everyone here. There was a broadcast, someone has been murdered in Mortehoe.’
‘A murder?’ She looked to the table, reminded of the troubled days of Carrick Tupper’s governorship.
Red looked down into his tankard, his fingernail pressing against the rim. ‘The phlegm on my lungs is back.’ He said quietly.
Joan said nothing, even though she knew he was telling her that he was dying. The way he had spoken indicated it. Soft and detached. She remained watching the grain in the table.
‘I know I fought it off before, but that was some years ago. I’ve grown weaker since then... And winter will be here before I get any better.’ The ticking of the clock made the silence seem protracted and seemingly spurred Red to say more, as though the thought of silence reminded him only of the eternal one which awaited him.
‘Gorran will want to take over the community when I’m done... Doesn’t bear much thinking about, does it?’ He pulled a face and took a draught. ‘I suppose he’ll be fine once he’s given some responsibility. He deals well with the Islanders, I mean the ones in Iceland, and he’s a good hand when it comes to fixing the boats.’
‘And Kenan?’ Joan asked. ‘Won’t he want what his brother has?’
‘Not likely. If he can’t pilfer it and drag it back to his lair then he’s not interested.’ His face turned sour, his former thoughts returning to him. ‘I’ve not been blessed with the sons I wanted... Your boys, Rowan and Fada, they’re the kind of men I wanted running this place once I’m gone. Not a... A waste of fucking space and a lazy bastard.’
‘You can give them some direction yet,’ Joan offered, tired of his conversation. He was right, Rowan and Fada should be in charge once Red was gone, and she intended to see that’s what happened.
‘Direction!’ He scoffed. ‘How can I direct those two. Harriet would be ashamed to see them now. I curse her sometimes, Jo, for giving birth to a rapist and a thief.’
‘She only gave birth to them, they learnt everything else from you.’ She had said the words softly, though the insinuation could not have been veiled had they been spoken underwater.
His eyes burned into her, and yet this time she did not look away. Her pride wouldn’t let her.
‘Da,’ Kenan said, breathless from having run from their upstairs rooms.
Red still loured at Joan, as though he would reach across the table and throttle her. ‘What is it?’ He growled.
‘The papers in the drawer have gone. They’r
e nowhere.’
‘Your brother hasn’t moved them?’ Red asked, his eyes still on Joan.
‘He hasn’t touched them. He’s not been in there. He’s out gathering the boys...’
‘Let me ask you, Joan.’ Red said deliberately, his knuckles growing white as he grasped his tankard. ‘These honeymooners. You wouldn’t have given them our rooms by any chance, would you?’
Joan said nothing, though her hesitation was all the confession Red needed. He leant forward with a swiftness that seemed near impossible. He grabbed her by the hair, crushing her ear as he did so, and thrust her from her chair. She sprawled to the floor as he screamed at her, telling her she was a stupid fucking bitch.
‘Find Gorran!’ He shouted angrily to Kenan. ‘Spread the word that our meeting is now, not later. Tell the boys to drop everything! We hit the water before sunset!’
Chapter Thirty.
Birmingham.