‘I don’t know, dad. History?’
‘Histoire, seulement.’
‘What, dad?’
‘Nothing, Prentice. No, it was just a story.’
‘I think the story about you meeting mum’s more better, dad.’
‘Just “better” will do, Prentice; the “more” isn’t required.’
‘Still a better story, dad.’
‘Glad you think so, son.’
The children were entering the forest, funnelling into the path between the pines. He looked away then, across the rough geography of bough and leaf, to the village and the station, just visible through the trees.
The train chuffed off into the evening, the red light on the final carriage disappearing round the bend in the cutting through the forest; the steam and smoke climbed into the sunset skies beyond. He let the feeling of return wash over and through him, looking across the deserted platform on the far side of the tracks, down across the few lights of Lochgair village to the long electric-blue reflection that was the loch, its gleaming acres imprisoned between the dark masses of the land.
The noise of the train faded slowly, and the quiet susurration of the falls seemed to swell in recompense. He left his bags where they lay and walked to the far end of the platform. The very edge of the platform dropped away there, angling down to the deck of the viaduct over the rushing water beneath. A chest-high wall formed the furthest extent of the rest of the platform.
He rested his arms on the top of the wall and looked down the fifty feet or so to the tumbling white waters. Just upstream, the river Loran piled down from the forest in a compactly furious cataract. The spray was a taste. Beneath, the river surged round the piers of the viaduct that carried the railway on towards Lochgilphead and Gallanach.
A grey shape flitted silently across the view, from falls to bridge, then zoomed, turned in the air and swept into the cutting on the far bank of the river, as though it was a soft fragment of the train’s steam that had momentarily lost its way and was now hurrying to catch up. He waited a moment, and the owl hooted once, from inside the dark constituency of forest. He smiled, took a deep breath that tasted of steam and the sweet sharpness of pine resin, and then turned away, went back to pick up his bags.
‘Mr Kenneth,’ the station master said, taking his ticket at the gate. ‘It’s yourself. Back from the varsity, are you?’
‘Aye, Mr Calder; that’s me done with it.’
‘You’ll be coming back then, will you?’
‘Aye, maybe. We’ll see.’
‘Indeed. Well, I’ll tell you now; your sister was here earlier, but wi’ the train bein late an that ...’
‘Ach, it’s not far to walk.’
‘Indeed not, though I’ll be shutting up shop very soon now, and I could offer you a lift on the back of my bike if you liked.’
‘I’ll just walk, thank you.’
‘As you will, Kenneth. It’s good to see you back.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Ah ... that might be her, actually ...’ Mr Calder said, looking down the curve of the station approach. Kenneth heard a car engine, and then headlights swung white light across the iron railings holding the rhododendrons back from the tarmac road.
The big Super Snipe growled into the car park, heeling as it turned and stopping with the passenger’s door opposite Kenneth. ‘Hello again, Mr Calder!’ a voice called out from the driver’s seat.
‘Evening, Miss Fiona.’
Kenneth threw his bags onto the back, settled into the passenger seat and accepted a kiss from his sister. He was pressed back into the seat as the Humber accelerated off down the road.
‘Okay, big brother?’
‘Just grand, sis.’ The car skidded briefly as it swung onto the main road. He clutched at the grab handle on the door pillar, looked at his sister, sitting hunched over the big steering wheel, dressed in slacks and blouse, her fair hair tied back. ‘You have passed your test, haven’t you, Fi?’
‘Course I have.’ A car, coming in the opposite direction, honked at them and flashed its lights. ‘Hmm,’ she said, frowning.
‘Try the dip switch.’
‘Ah hah.’
They swept off the main road and into the house drive, roared up between the dark masses of the oaks. Fiona took the car grinding over the gravel, past the old stable block and round the side of the house. He looked back over his shoulder. ‘Is that a wall?’
Fiona nodded as she brought the car to a halt in front of the house. ‘Dad wants a courtyard, so he’s building a wall by the stables,’ she said, turning off the engine. ‘We’re going to have a conservatory overlooking the garden, if mum has her way, which I dare say she will. I think your room’s all right, but Hamish’s is being redecorated.’
‘Heard from him?’
‘Getting on famously with the piccaninnies, apparently.’
‘Fi; really. They’re Rhodesians.’
‘They’re little black Rhodesians and I shall always think of them as piccaninnies. Blame Enid Blyton, say I. Come on, Uncle Joe; you’re just in time for supper.’
They got out; there were lights on in the house, and a couple of bikes lying against the steps curving up to the front door. ‘Whose are those?’ he asked, taking his bags from the back of the car.
‘Couple of lassies camping over there,’ Fiona pointed, and he could just make out a dim orange shape, lit from inside, under the elms on the west side of the lawn.
‘Friends of yours?’
Fiona shook her head. ‘No; just turned up, asked to camp; think they thought we were a farm. They’re from Glasgow, I think.’ She took his briefcase from him and bounded up the steps to the opened double doors of the porch. He hesitated, reached into the car and took the keys out of the ignition, then glanced at the tent. ‘Ken?’ Fiona called from the door.
He made a tutting noise and put the keys back, then shook his head and pulled them out again. Not because there were strangers around, and certainly not just because they were from Glasgow, but just because it was irresponsible to leave keys in the car like that; Fiona had to learn. He pocketed the keys and picked up his bags. He glanced over at the tent, just as it flared with light.
‘Oh!’ he heard Fiona say.
And that was when he first saw Mary Lewis, running out of a tent in her pyjamas with her hair on fire, screaming.
‘Christ!’ He dropped the bags, ran across the gravel drive towards the girl haring across the grass, hands beating at the blue and orange flames crackling round her head. He leapt down to the lawn, pulling off his jacket as he went. The girl tried to run past him; he tackled her, bringing her down with a ragged thump; he had the jacket over her head before she properly started struggling. After a few seconds, while she whimpered, and the stink of burning hair filled his nostrils, he pulled the jacket away. Fiona came running; another girl, dressed in too-big pyjamas and a fawn duffle coat, and holding a small flat kettle, followed her from the house, wailing.
‘Mary! Oh, Mary!’
‘Nice tackle, Ken,’ Fiona said, kneeling by the girl with the burned hair, who was sitting quivering. He put one arm round her shoulders. The second girl fell to her knees and put both arms round the girl she’d called Mary.
‘Oh, hen! Are you all right?’
‘I think so,’ the girl said, feeling what was left of her hair, and then burst into tears.
He extracted his arm from between the two girls. He brushed his jacket free of grass and burned hair, and put it round the shoulders of the crying girl.
Fiona was pulling bits of hair away and peering at her scalp in the gloom. ‘Think you’ve been lucky, lassie. But we’ll call the doctor anyway.’
‘Oh no!’ the girl wailed, as though this was the worst thing in the world.
‘Now, now, Mary,’ the other girl said, her voice shaking.
‘Come on, let’s get into the house,’ Kenneth said, rising. ‘Take a look at you.’ He helped the two girls to their feet. ‘Maybe get you a cup of tea
, eh?’
‘Oh, that’s what caused all this in the first place!’ Mary said, standing pale and shaking, eyes bright with tears. She gave a sort of desperate laugh. The other girl, still hugging her, laughed too. He smiled, shaking his head. He looked into the girl’s face, finally seeing it properly, and thought how bizarrely beautiful she looked, even with half a head of frizzy, whitened hair, and eyes red raw with crying.
Then he realised he was seeing her - and seeing her better all the time - in the light of a flickering glow that was blooming in the west of the garden, under the elms. Her eyes widened as she looked past him. ‘The tent!’ she howled. ‘Oh no!’
‘And I missed it! Damn damn damn! I hate going to bed this early!’
‘Shush. I’ve told you; now go to sleep.’
‘No! What happened next? Did you have to take all her clothes off and put her to bed?’
‘No! Don’t be ridiculous! Of course not!’
‘Oh. That’s what happened in this book I read. ‘Cept the girl was wet from being in the sea ... she’s fallen in the water!’ Rory completed the latter part of this sentence in his Bluebottle voice. ‘She’s fallen in the water!’ the wee voice said again, in the darkness of the room.
Kenneth wanted to laugh, but stopped himself. ‘Please shut up, Rory.’
‘Go on; tell me what happened next.’
‘That’s it. We all came into the house; mum and dad hadn’t even heard anything. I got the hose going eventually but by that time it was too late to save much of the stuff in the tent; and anyway then the primus really blew up, and -’
‘What? In an explosion?’
‘That’s the way things normally blow up, yes.’
‘Holy smoke! Oh damn, hell and shite! I missed it.’
‘Rory; mind your language!’
‘Weeeellll.’ Rory turned over in the bed, his feet prodding Kenneth in the back.
‘And mind your feet, too.’
‘Sorry. So did the doctor come or not?’
‘No; she didn’t want us to call him, and she wasn’t badly hurt; just her hair, really.’
‘Waa!’ Rory gave a squeal of excitement. ‘She’s not bald, is she?’
‘No, she isn’t bald. But she’ll probably have to wear a scarf or something for a while, I expect.’
‘So they’re staying in the house, are they? These two lassies from Glasgow? They’re in the house?’
‘Yes, Mary and Sheena are staying in my room, which is why I’ve got to sleep with you.’
‘Ffworr!’
‘Rory, shut up. Go to sleep, for Pete’s sake.’
‘Okay.’ Rory made a great bouncing movement, turning over in bed. Kenneth could feel his brother lying still and tense beside him. He sighed.
He remembered when this had been his room. Before his dad had unblocked the fireplace and put a grate in it, the only heating during the winter had been that ancient paraffin heater they hadn’t used since the old house, back in Gallanach. How nostalgic he had felt then, and how distant and separated from Gallanach at first, even though it was only eight miles away over the hills, and just a couple of stops on the train. That heater had been the same height as him, at first, and he’d been told very seriously never ever to touch it, and been slightly frightened of it at the start, but after a while he had grown to love the old enamelled heater.
When it was cold his parents would put it in his room to heat it up before he went to bed, and they would leave it on for a while after they’d said good-night to him, and he’d lie awake, listening to the quiet, puttering, hissing noise it made, and watching the swirling pattern of flame-yellow and shadow-dark it cast on the high ceiling, while the room filled with a delicious warm smell he could never experience after that without a sense of remembered drowsiness.
It had been a precious light, back then; must have been during the war at first, when his dad was using the probably illegal stockpile of paraffin he’d built up before rationing began.
Rory nudged him with one foot. He ignored this.
He ignored another, slightly stronger nudge, and started snoring quietly.
Another nudge.
‘What?’
‘Ken,’ Rory whispered. ‘Does your tassel get big sometimes?’
‘Eh?’
‘You know; your tassel; your willy. Does it get big?’
‘Oh, good grief,’ he groaned.
‘Mine does. It’s gone big now. Do you want to feel it?’
‘No!’ he sat up in the bed, looking down at the vague shape of his brother’s head on the pillow at the other end of the bed. ‘No, I do not!’
‘Only asking. Does it, though?’
‘What?’
‘Your willy; get big?’
‘Rory, I’m tired; it’s been a long day, and this isn’t the time or the place -’
Rory sat up suddenly. ‘Bob Watt can make stuff come out of his; and so can Jamie McVean. I’ve seen them do it. You have to rub it a lot; I’ve tried but I can’t get any stuff to come out, but twice now I’ve got this funny feeling where it’s like heat; like heat coming up as if you’re getting into a bath, sort of. Do you get that?’
Kenneth sighed, rubbed his eyes, rested his back against the low brass rail at the foot of the bed. He drew his legs up. ‘I don’t think it’s really up to me to have to go into all this, Rory. You should talk to dad about it.’
‘Rab Watt says it makes you go blind.’ Rory hesitated. ‘And he wears glasses.’
Kenneth stifled a laugh. He looked up at the dim roof, where dozens of model aircraft hung on threads and whole squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes and ME 109s attacked Wellingtons, Lancasters, Flying Fortresses and Heinkels. ‘No, it doesn’t make you go blind.’
Rory sat back, legs drawn up too. Kenneth couldn’t make out his brother’s expression; there was a soft glow from the small nightlight candle on Rory’s desk, near the door, but it was too weak to let him see the boy’s face clearly.
‘Ha; I told him he was wrong.’
Kenneth lay back down. Rory said nothing for a while. Then Rory said, ‘I think I’m going to fart.’
‘Well, you’d better make damn sure it goes out the way.’
‘Can’t; got to keep it under the covers or it might ignite on the nightlight and blow the whole house up.’
‘Rory; shut up. I’m serious.’
‘... ’sail right.’ Rory turned over, settled down. ‘It went away.’ There was silence for some time. Ken fitted his legs round Rory’s back, closed his eyes, and wished that his father had concentrated on restoring more rooms in the old house rather than building courtyard walls.
After a while, Rory stirred again and said sleepily, ‘Ken?’
‘Rory; please go to sleep. Or I’ll kick you unconscious.’
‘No, but Ken?’
‘Whaaat?’ he breathed. I should have beaten him up when we were younger; he isn’t scared of me at all.
‘Have you ever shagged a woman?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Go on; tell us.’
‘I’m not going to.’
‘Please. I won’t tell anybody else. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die I won’t.’
‘No; go to sleep.’
‘If you tell me, I’ll tell you something.’
‘Oh, I’m sure.’
‘No, really; something dead important that nobody else knows.’
‘I’m not buying it, Rory. Sleep or die.’
‘Honest; I’ve never told anybody, and if I do tell you you mustn’t tell anybody else, or I might get put in the jail.’
Kenneth opened his eyes. What’s the kid talking about? He turned over, looked to the head of the bed. Rory was still lying ‘ down. ‘Don’t be melodramatic, Rory. I’m not impressed.’
‘It’s true; they’d put me in jail.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘I’ll tell you what I did if you tell me about shagging.’
He lay there, thought about this. Apa
rt from anything else, the horrible and ghastly truth was that at the ripe old age of practically twenty-two, he had never made love to a woman. But of course he knew what to do.
He wondered what Rory’s secret was, what he thought he had done, or what story he had made up. They were both good at making up stories.
‘You tell me first,’ Kenneth said, and felt like a child again.
To his surprise, Rory said, ‘All right.’ He sat up in bed, and so did Kenneth. They waggled closer until their heads were almost touching, and Rory whispered, ‘You remember last summer, when the big barn burned down on the estate?’
Kenneth remembered; it had been the last week of his vacation, and he had seen the smoke rising from the farm, a mile away along the road towards Lochgilphead. He and his dad had heard the bell sound in the ruined estate chapel, and had jumped into the car, to go and help old Mr Ralston and his sons. They’d tried to fight the fire with buckets and a couple of hoses, but by the time the fire engines arrived from Lochgilphead and Gallanach the old hay barn was burning from end to end. It stood not far from the railway line, and they’d all assumed it had been a spark from an engine.
‘You’re not going to tell me -’
‘That was me.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Promise you won’t tell, please? Please please please? I’ve never told anybody and I don’t want to go to jail, Ken.’
Rory sounded too frightened to be lying. Kenneth hugged his young brother. The boy shivered. He smelled of Palmolive.
‘I didn’t mean to do it, Ken, honest I didn’t; I was experimenting with a magnifying glass; there was this wee hole in the roof, and this beam of sunlight, and it was like a sort of searchlight falling on the straw, and I was playing with my Beaufighter; not the Airfix one, the other one, and I was melting holes in the wings and fuselage ‘cos they look dead like bullet holes and you can melt a big long line of them and they look like twenty millimetre cannon holes, and I pretended the sunshine really was a sort of searchlight, and the plane crashed, and I’d thought I’d see if I could make the straw go on fire, just a little bit, round where the plane had crashed, but I didn’t think it would all burn down, really I didn’t; it just all went up dead sudden. You won’t tell, will you, Ken?’