Sam returned to the bedroom and dressed in clothes he considered appropriate for a director of a television crew – chinos, Timberland brogues, a white polo shirt with the logo of Etive Television on the front, and a blue baseball cap, skip to the rear, bearing the Latin legend Alere Flammam. He glanced at his watch. 09.40. He picked up a red canvas bag – there were at least four of them scattered around the room – and with trembling fingers opened it. He gazed with reverence at the dozens of little packets of shortbread, coffee, sugar and miniature jars of jam – the kind of snack food that can be found next to the kettle in most hotels. He whispered excitedly, ‘Wonderful!’
Me, I’m from North Uist. To tell you the honest truth, I don’t know. I don’t know if there is a shred of hope for us right now. I came to a decision that he was the man I wanted, and it may have been the wrong decision, but I made the decision anyway, and here I am right here. Honestly, I don’t know what can change that. I love Murdo, and I’m trying to do the honourable thing. There’s either some hope in that, or there isn’t.
Well . . . uh, Murdo . . . my father and mother . . . and lack of money.
Murdo’s the main problem.
He’s a hollow man.
He has no trade, he’s almost forty years of age, he’s been on the ‘Out-of-Work’ since he got the elbow from the university and . . . he drinks too much. Well, not so much recently. He’s really made an effort. But, despite all that, he makes me laugh sometimes. What I mean is, I’m comfortable with him. I can’t imagine me making it without him being in my life in some way or other.
But I don’t want to hurt my parents. God, they’re always giving me static because I’m going with him. Well, my father’s not as heavy as her, but I know he’s hurting. He’s disappointed in my behaviour . . . But it’s his own fault. ‘Daughter of mine,’ my poor dad must have said to me at an impressionable age, ‘never learn from your mistakes, never pay any heed to experience. Is that clear? Also, always be hopeful, that if you get involved with an old drunk, everything will turn out all right, even in the teeth of outright contradictory proof. Now, all right, let’s have it, what did I just tell you?’
‘What did you tell me?’ I must have hotly replied. ‘You told me nothing! I don’t need anyone to tell me anything! What the hell are you questioning me for? My life’s going to be like a Gaelic song.’ At which my daddy presumably chuckled and said, ‘That’s my girl!’
And then my poor old white-haired mother, her and her old black mourning gear, comes to my room looking like somebody that just got hit in the head. And I’ve got to sit through all that Gaelic psalm wailing. You know, ‘Cia fhad’ a bhitheas corruich ort, a Dhè, am bi gu bràth?’ ‘How long will wroth be upon you, Lord, will it be forever?’ ‘I pray for you, Rachel,’ she says. ‘I sent a donation to the Resuscitation Fund on your behalf. I hope you give that man up, Rachel. I know in my heart you’re a good girl.’
‘Rachel,’ she says, ‘you’ve got to get onto the straight and narrow.’ She writes to a religious bookshop in Partick every week and orders cassettes of famous Free Church ministers’ sermons. She’s offering to send me to Lourdes . . . and we’re not even Catholic!
‘Look, Mother, I’m not crippled,’ I tell her.
‘In your soul you are,’ she says.
Jesus, isn’t it great to be young! They disapprove of him. They think he’s too old for me, that his family are low-rent, that I should finish my course at uni . . . and that’s what I’m going to do.
As the old guy from Barra said, ‘I’m in a quadrangle.’
But I’d better start at the beginning, the summer of last year . . .
3
I know what you did in Golspie
24 August 2010, 10.15 a.m.
‘I had to sleep in the van. Well, I lay down in the van. Didn’t get a wink,’ Murdo said, shaking like a fishing rod.
‘Your conscience killing you, was it?’
‘It was the cold,’ Murdo said. ‘I looked round, first thing this morning, to see if old Admiral Scott or Roald Amundsen were hanging about. They’d have felt right at home in this van.’
‘You didn’t get a bed at the party, then?’
‘It wasn’t up to much.’
‘You didn’t pull a bird, then?’
‘There weren’t any women there,’ Murdo said.
‘The cruiserweight was there!’
‘Well, there was one woman called Yvonne,’ Murdo said, ‘who worked for that television guy . . . the guy who was buying me all the drams last night. I thought he was going to offer me some work . . . since you and I are . . . more or less, er, finished.’
‘Oh, we’re not quite finished yet, Murdo.’
‘Anyway,’ Murdo said, ‘I put up a kind of black along with Yvonne and Sam.’
‘Yvonne . . . She was the one in the dungarees, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘Timberland boots on? Peroxide hair, cropped into her head?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Murdo,’ Rachel said with a chuckle, ‘she wouldn’t go with you if you were the last man on earth. She’s buckled, you half-wit!’
‘If I were the last man on earth,’ Murdo said defiantly, ‘I’d be far too busy to bother with the likes of her!’
‘What a stud you are!’
‘Rachel, I just thought you’d let me . . .’
‘What? Stay where you are, you gimp!’
‘Will you not let me get the head down in your room?’ Murdo said.
‘I’m going upstairs for a shower,’ Rachel said. ‘I reckon you’d have . . . maybe five minutes in it.’
‘That’s not what I meant at all.’
‘I know fine what you meant,’ Rachel said.
‘Shall I tell you about the black I put up?’ Murdo said.
‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m sick fed up of all the blacks you’ve put up.’ She turned to face Murdo full on. ‘Murdo, we’ve got to talk.’
‘What is it you want?’ Murdo said.
‘I’ve never asked you for anything, have I?’ Rachel said.
‘No, you haven’t,’ Murdo said, ‘but if you had done, I’d have done miracles for you.’
‘That’s good to hear, Murdo,’ Rachel said. ‘And I was always straight with you, wasn’t I?’
‘You were,’ Murdo said.
‘Whatever we made at the shows we put on, didn’t I give you half?’
‘You did.’
‘I never once opened my mouth about you drinking too much.’
‘No, you never did.’
‘I’ve been a good partner to you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because I could’ve been pretty rotten to you if I’d wanted.’
‘Aye, right, just a minute, Rae . . . let me . . .’
‘I could’ve left you in the gutter, if I’d wanted,’ Rachel said. ‘I know what you did in Golspie. Do you remember that night?’
‘Yes!’ Murdo replied vehemently. ‘I remember that night.’
‘That’s good,’ Rachel said. ‘After every gig we played, I wrote down every single penny of income we made at the door. I knew how much should’ve been there.’
‘Just tell me what you want.’
‘Am I keeping you back from anything, Murdo?’
‘I need to see somebody in the hotel.’
‘Yvonne?’
‘Maybe.’
‘The one with the facial hair?’ Rachel said.
‘Now, Rachel,’ Murdo said, ‘there’s no need for you to be so sarcastic towards me just because I made some little mistake up in Golspie.’
‘Some little mistake?’
‘Rachel,’ Murdo sighed, ‘I’m out on my feet here. Okay, I had a small refreshment along with . . . uh, friends, last night. That’s all. I’m feeling like a raw egg in a bowl today. I’m . . . what I need is sleep, know what I mean? But all you want to do is . . .’
‘Have a word with you?’ Rachel said. ‘You can talk rubbish all night with your
friends, but you can’t spare a minute to talk to me?’
‘You know I was doing some PR last night . . . so that I could get – so that we could get – some work.’
‘Is that what you were doing?’ Rachel said. ‘I thought you were polishing the backsides of Yvonne and Sam. Why wouldn’t you come up the stairs with me at midnight?’
‘I did come,’ Murdo said. ‘You’d locked the door.’
‘I heard you,’ Rachel said. ‘At four o’clock in the morning.’
‘I went back downstairs again.’
‘Oh!’ Rachel said. ‘You went down to have some more drams with your friends?’
‘No,’ Murdo said. ‘I went to the van here. And I wasn’t a happy unit about that. I was looking forward to the last night of our tour.’
‘I’m sure you were,’ Rachel said. She spoke solemnly: ‘The Day of Judgement has arrived, Murdo.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘We’re in a fix,’ Rachel said. ‘Deep in the pit of poverty, Murdo. The bottle has been . . . uh, drained . . . the fire has been doused.’
‘What’ve . . . how much money have we got left?’
‘Forty-seven pounds and fifty-three pence,’ Rachel said.
‘That’s not much,’ Murdo said.
‘No, it’s not,’ Rachel said, ‘but it’s enough to . . . well, you know yourself, don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ Murdo said. ‘We’ve enough for what?’
‘There’s enough to pay for the room and be out of here by twelve noon.’
‘I was only in the room for two minutes,’ Murdo said. He thought for a second. ‘That means we’ve got two hours . . . nearly.’
‘Wouldn’t your teacher be proud of you today, if only he could see how slick you are at the mental arithmetic!’
‘I just thought we’d plenty of time to . . .’
‘To do what?’
‘To . . . you know . . .’
Rachel chuckled and said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well . . . to go for a wee lie down together,’ Murdo said. ‘Just to heat myself up. I nearly froze to death in this van.’
‘If you’re cold, wear long johns,’ Rachel said. ‘And with regard to the other thing, forget it.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Murdo said. ‘You pay the bill . . . before noon. What’ll we have left?’
‘Seventeen or eighteen quid and smash,’ Rachel said.
‘What’ll we do with that?’
‘I can buy a ticket that’ll take me back to Uist,’ Rachel said.
‘What about me?’
‘You can stay here . . . along with Yvonne,’ Rachel said.
‘For God’s sake!’
‘Wrong, Murdo,’ Rachel said, ‘it’s for your own sake.’
‘How?’
‘Do you want me to show you how much money we made?’ Rachel said. She made to hand over a notebook.
Murdo would not even look at it. ‘That’s fine, Rachel,’ he said airily. ‘I trust you.’
‘I don’t trust you, though,’ Rachel said. ‘Do you know this, Murdo?’
‘What?’
‘We could’ve made a fortune on this tour.’
‘We could have.’
‘Everything went brilliantly for us at the start.’
‘It did that,’ Murdo said. ‘I was – we were marvellous in Harris, Uist and Barra . . . aye, in Argyll and Lochaber, too . . .’
‘And then something happened in Golspie,’ Rachel said.
‘Yeah . . . Golspie,’ Murdo said.
‘You don’t want me to mention Golspie, do you,Murdo?’
‘No.’
‘Okay,’ Rachel said. ‘Time’s wearing on. We tried to make some money from the concerts and we failed. We’ll have to go down another road now. And you’ll have to get shot of those rags you’re wearing.’
Murdo looked down at his clothing. ‘What’s wrong with this gear?’ After a pause, he said, ‘Oh, I get it. People’ll know I’m a media person, isn’t that it?’
Rachel gave her cheek a light slap. ‘When you gaze at the stars at night, Murdo, don’t you ever get homesick?’
‘All right, just a minute, Rae . . . let me . . .’
4
Rachel’s not finished yet
24 August 2010, 10.30 a.m.
Suddenly, Rachel jumped out the van, flung open the rear door and began to rake among the clothing strewn around the floor. She threw some bits and pieces in Murdo’s direction. ‘Put these bits and bobs in a plastic bag,’ she said. ‘This is yours . . . trews . . . Balmoral bonnet . . . this tie – I think that belonged to your old man before you. Oh! The engagement ring you bought in Woolies . . . the one you tried to give me in Inverness when you were drunk . . .’ She tossed a little cardboard box towards him.
Murdo failed to catch it. He had to keep on forcing scraps of clothing down into the plastic bag until, finally, he picked up the box containing the ring and carefully placed it in his pocket.
Rachel continued her recital: ‘False breasts . . . drawers . . . a wig . . . Jew’s harp . . .’
‘Uh . . . I forgot I had so many props,’ Murdo said.
‘Never mind,’ Rachel said, ‘I’ve still got a good memory.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Murdo said.
‘Get out!’ Rachel said. ‘Get out of my sight!’
‘You’ve put me off my stroke,’ Murdo said, pulling a half bottle of spirits from the inside pocket of his fleece. He cracked open the cap. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a mouthful of this – a drop to wet my throat, know what I mean?’
Rachel seized the bottle and took it from him. ‘You’ve just quit, Murdo.’
‘I just need a charge,’ Murdo said.
‘Did you need one in Golspie?’
‘Oh, come on, Rae,’ Murdo said. ‘I just don’t want to start shaking like a fishing rod.’
‘The shakes never killed anybody,’ Rachel said.
‘In Golspie it was different,’ Murdo said. ‘Things were coming to an end.’
‘Coming to an end?’
‘Between me and you,’ Murdo said.
There was a long pause before Rachel spoke again. ‘Murdo?’
‘What?’
‘Do you like me?’
Hurriedly Murdo pulled her by the shoulders to his chest. He tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away. She laughed and handed him the bottle.
‘Take a sip, Murdo,’ she said. ‘It’ll calm you down.’
Murdo refused to accept the drink.
‘That’s good, Murdo,’ Rachel said.
Murdo sank to his knees and seemed to be on the verge of tears. ‘Listen, Rae,’ he said, ‘I always tried to do my best for you.’
‘Your best?’
‘Didn’t I write the comedy sketches when you wanted to go on the road?’ Murdo said.
‘But you weren’t terribly good at bringing them alive onstage at the latter end.’
‘I wasn’t always drunk,’ Murdo said. ‘I did well in Tarbert, Harris, Sgoil Lianacleit in Benbecula and in Castlebay . . .’
‘Golspie,’ Rachel said.
‘But we made it anyway,’ Murdo said. ‘We’re still together.’
Rachel glanced at her wristwatch. ‘Until two o’clock,’ she said, ‘at the very latest.’
‘Maybe we could put on a show here,’ Murdo said.
‘I’m going back to Uist,’ Rachel said. ‘You put on a show here.’
‘I don’t know,’ Murdo said.
‘I’ll tell you what your only option is,’ Rachel said. ‘You’ll have to get hold of some money.’
‘What good’s that going to do?’
‘Well, first of all,’ Rachel said, ‘I’ll get my money back. Who knows? Maybe we’ll make a fresh start. I just don’t know.’
‘I’d be – er, I am willing to help you, Rae, any way I can,’ Murdo said. ‘You must know that. I’ve always been fond of you. But . . .’
‘Fond?’ Rachel
said. ‘You’re only willing because you’re fucking crazy about me.’
‘Crazy?’
‘I know what your heart’s desire is, Murdo,’ Rachel said.
‘What?’
‘Me,’ Rachel said. ‘Me, Rachel. The Doctor’s daughter from North Uist.’
‘What do you want me to do, Rachel?’ Murdo said. ‘Do you want me to sell the van?’ He placed a finger on his ear lobe. ‘You wouldn’t want me to sell my earring, would you?’
‘It’s just a wee notion that’s come to me . . . uh, gradually, like.’
‘What kind of notion?’
‘Subjects like guilt and redemption,’ Rachel said.
‘Oh, I know nothing about those subjects, Rachel,’ Murdo said. ‘I only went to Torlum School. In Donald Macleod’s wee blue bus.’
‘Oh, you know about them all right, Murdo,’ Rachel said.
‘Wait a minute . . .’
‘I’ll wait until the ferry sails at two o’clock, if you want,’ Rachel said. There was a moment of silence. Then her voice became decidedly harder. ‘Why did you take the money, Murdo?’
‘I hate talking about money,’ Murdo said.
‘Did you buy yourself new clothes – something you really needed?’ Rachel said. ‘No! You did what you always do. You drank it!’ She stopped talking for a short while. ‘And what’s the particular attraction this Yvonne has for you, anyway? Do you think a big, strapping lassie like her can do some trick that no other woman can do? Do you fancy her putting a leash round your neck before you go to bed?’
‘No.’
‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘Rough handling like that wouldn’t be to your taste at all. You’d rather be petted by some girl . . . you know, “drowning in the ocean of a thousand kisses”.’
‘Hey, that’s right,’ Murdo said.
‘But you were never treated like that, were you?’ Rachel said.
‘No,’ Murdo said. ‘No, I wasn’t.’