The Flood

1

‘One of those,’ he said, and the man’s plump hand fished in the glass jar for one.

‘On the house, Sandy,’ said the man, handing it to him and reaching over the crowded counter to ruffle the boy’s unwilling hair. ‘But don’t tell your pals, mind, or they’ll all be in here shouting about discrimination.’ The man winked. ‘And don’t tell your mother. You know what she’s like. I’m not giving you charity.’

Sandy smiled shyly. He was embarrassed by his standing as Mr Patterson’s favourite. He knew that behind the action lay real pity for him. Mr Patterson was good that way; everyone said so. The old and the young women discussed him in the street with string bags full of shopping weighing from their arms like pendulums. They called Mr Patterson “sweet” and “a treasure”. Mr Patterson was a bachelor and owned the Soda Fountain, which was Carsden’s sweet shop. He also cut hair in a tiny room at the back of the shop whenever anyone asked him to. He cut Sandy’s hair sometimes, and would take great care when doing so. Sandy knew that Mr Patterson used to be friendly with his grandfather, and that Mr Patterson had been with his grandfather the night he had been knocked down. His mother had never spoken to him about that night, and so he assumed it was something nobody wanted reminding of. He knew that this was why Mr Patterson gave him his sweets free, and even money sometimes, especially at Christmas, but always with the admonition ‘Don’t tell your mother. You know what she’s like.’ Yes, Sandy knew. Mr Patterson’s kindness would only remind her of times which had been pushed into the past in order to be forgotten. Sandy smiled, thanking Mr Patterson for the sweets.

‘Cheerio, son,’ said Mr Patterson, who was rubbing his pudgy hands together as if trying to wash away the stickiness of the sweets.

When Sandy left the shop its bell tinkled and some women outside stopped talking and stared at him instead. As he passed the silent huddle, sucking on the hard nougat, he wondered if they had been talking about his mother, and his face flushed. They would not be as generous as Mr Patterson in their words. Sandy was the son of the local witch, and although he seemed a nice enough lad — quiet, kind, polite still you could never be sure. They pitied him his fate, whatever that might be, but they scrubbed at his clothes with their eyes, imagining the filth beneath.

Sandy could have told them that, being fifteen, he took baths often. He could have told them that the reason they thought him just a little grubby was his root-black hair, shot through with hints of blue. He had dark eyes too, with thick eyelashes which curled like a girl’s.

It wasn’t his fault if he was dark.

His mother’s hair was silver and black, but mostly silver. It straggled down her back when she brushed it out in front of her mirror. His mother had dark eyelashes like his. Her face was pale and fragile. Yet the townspeople thought of her as the witchy woman, and she had never, to his knowledge, denied it. But she wasn’t a witch, he knew as he swung his satchel to and fro and made his way vaguely homewards. She wasn’t a witch.

It had begun even before he had started school. He had not wondered at his lack of friends. In his solitude it seemed to him that everyone had to be the same. Then the taunts had begun. Witchy, witchy, tinker, your mummy is a stinker, she casts a spell and runs like hell, witchy, witchy, tinker. And he a tiny boy and amazed by it all, carrying bread home to his mother and his grandmother. Witch. Tinker. If he came into the house with mud all over him from having fallen, then his grandmother would slap the front of her apron and stand back to mock him: ‘Well, well,’ she would say, ‘and who’s this wee tinker-boy, eh?’ Tinkers were gypsies. They travelled around in cars and caravans and hoarded their money while pretending poverty. They came to your door and offered to sharpen your cutlery, then ran away with your forks and knives and sold them elsewhere. They tried to sell you flowers which they had picked from dead people’s graves. They were dirty and sly and not to be trusted.

‘I’m not a witchy-tinker!’ he had shouted at the pack of taunters one day. They had stood back a few paces at that, as if expecting him to lash out at them. His face was red. He repeated the denial and some of them giggled. He started to chase them, but they flew apart like leaves in a sudden breeze. He touched one or two, no more. They shrieked and ducked and flew further from his reach.

‘I’ve got bugs!’ one yelled. ‘The tinker got me!’ The others had laughed and he had continued to chase them. The boy who had cried out stood catching his breath and trying to blow on to the spot where Sandy had touched him, as if that would cleanse the stain. Sandy walked up to him, the loaf of bread squashed beneath his arm, and touched him again. The boy screeched. Someone said, “You’re it!” and the boy began to chase them all. Sandy soon caught on and ran with the best of them, dodging and weaving and never once being touched. His grandmother called to him from the end of the road. Everybody stopped playing and looked towards her.

‘Come on, Sandy. Tea’s ready.’ He began to walk away.

‘Cheerio,’ said one of the girls.

‘Aye, I’ll see you.’ Sandy began to trot towards his retreating grandmother. He was eager to tell his mother that he had been playing with his friends.

Was it soon after that that his grandmother had died? He could not remember exactly. No, it was after that that she had taken the first of her bad turns; the first at which he had been present. It had scared him for days afterwards.

He had described it to his new friends as they played behind the picture-house. ‘She couldn’t speak or anything,’ he had told them. ‘She just sat in her chair. Her mouth was open a little and she was dribbling. Spit was running down her jersey.’ They made funny faces at that. One or two laughed. The girls seemed more intrigued than the boys. ‘And her hand was shaking like somebody shivering, but she was sweating. She was like that for ages. Sometimes her eyes would open. Then they would close again.’ The girls gasped in horror at the thought.

‘Sounds like what happened to my uncle,’ said one of the boys, chalking his name on the wall with a stone. ‘He was sitting reading in the house one day and the next thing he was on the floor. He coughed and blood came out of his mouth.’ He gazed at them to fathom the effect of his words. One of the girls put her hand to her throat and said, ‘Eeyuk,’ while another closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her ears theatrically. Even Sandy was sweating a little as he imagined the scene. Blood coming out of your mouth! It was horrific. He tapped his fingers on the stone wall and tried not to look a sissy. He noticed that the other boys were doing much the same thing. Someone suggested a game of football and it seemed like a good idea, but the ball was at the boy’s house in Dundell, and Sandy didn’t think he was allowed to go that far away. He watched them all leave, still shouting at him to join them. He smiled and shook his head.

‘I’m going somewhere with my mum,’ he lied. ‘I think we’re going to Edinburgh.’ He flushed immediately, ashamed of the whopper. He walked home slowly, kicking a stone the length of Main Street without it once rolling on to the road. He left the stone outside his gate and went indoors.

It was a good stone, and he would keep it. By the following morning he had forgotten it, and when he finally did remember a few days after that the stone had disappeared. He found another, better one, and thus had started his collection of good stones.

He thought about his mother’s hair now as he walked up the street from the Soda Fountain. Black and silver, hanging in thick threads. Black night shot through with wisps of moonlight. He had described it like that in one of his English essays. He liked English, and especially liked writing essays. He got good marks for them. He had been rather annoyed when his mother had started going out with his English teacher, Mr Wallace. Now people would think that any future good marks were due to that and not because he was good at writing things. He had seen Mr Wallace stroke his mother’s hair as if checking that it were real.

‘Don’t pull them out,’ his mother used to say if Sandy’s curious fingers lingered over the silvery threads. ‘They just come back in thicker than ever.’ When she had said that he had thought that maybe she was a witch after all. She was something magical that talked on bad days with the long dead and sang sacred songs with a shawl strewn over her lap in the small back room where the memories were kept. Some warm Sundays, if he was in his bedroom with the door a little ajar, doing his homework, he would hear her voice lullabying spirits in that back room. Her hair would be hanging around her in a manner that caused Sandy to stir uneasily in his adolescent body. He would chew on his ballpoint pen and stare at the wall. There were no exams important enough to be worth studying for on days like that, days which would be emerging again soon by the look of the buds on the trees, though there was a coolness to the sun still, like porridge watered and milk-soft.

He clambered over a wall and skirted the edge of a field. His mother would be expecting him home, but she was not anxious these days if he was a bit late. He was fifteen and could stay out till after ten o’clock if he liked; could say that he had been visiting a friend without really having to lie. He had some friends at school — Mark, Clark, Colin — but he could not visit them comfortably in their homes. Sometimes they flushed as they tried to lie an explanation to him as to why he could not actually enter their houses. He was old enough now to shrug off most of the resentment. He knew that it was the old-fashioned stubbornness of the parents that was to blame, that kept him waiting at street corners, hands slouched low in his pockets. He knew that some of his friends even had to lie to their parents in order to go out with him. Fuck that. Fuck that. Could he dye his hair and change his mother into something else? That was it all right. That was it. His shoes stamped deeper into the soft earth as he trudged towards his destination. At least he could be sure of being accepted there without fear of embarrassment. Even if it was dangerous. Even if someone saw him and told his mother. Did anyone care about him that much or mind him that much? He doubted it.

On the golf course to his left some men were shouting and hitting the ball off the first tee with a satisfying swish. Sandy might want some clubs for his birthday in September, a whole summer away. If he had a job he could save the money to buy them. He had only to wait until Christmas. He could not leave school until Christmas. Then he would buy everything on his list: golf clubs and motorbike and all. He would get a job in Glenrothes if he could, and one day he might move away from the area. His mother wanted him to stay on at school to do Higher exams. Where was the future in that? The only future was to see yourself at the first tee with your half-set or even full set of clubs, plus all the extras. Teeing off, the ball going swish into the sky like a tiny satellite. That was the future. He climbed another wall, higher than the first, and was in the garden of an empty mansion.

2

Her grandmother had made the most beautiful shawls, crocheted intricacies of nature. She placed them back in the chest. Her mother too had worked with wool. A jersey remained, as fresh as washing on a line. She put it back, patting it neatly into place on top of the shawls. There was still a good six inches of space to the brim of the chest. She could not hope to fill that space, for her own hands were out of touch with delicacy. They could never know the peace of mind that comes with patterns. She closed the heavy lid of the brass chest and sat down on it, humming softly. This room smelled damp even in the spring and summer. In winter it was an ice-box, unusable. No electric fire could take anything but a superficial chill from the air, leaving still the depth of the room’s iciness, a depth beyond mere physical presence. She looked at her watch. He would be home from school soon, her son, her only child, her bastard. Born out of shame... But what was the use in thinking about all that? She had spent too long thinking back to it. She rose from the chest and started downstairs, holding on to the banister with one of her long, awkward hands. She felt weak today. Her period was coming on. She would have to be careful not to snap at Sandy. He was always in a sulk these days. His age, she supposed. He was either out for much of the night, or else sat in his room with the record-player blaring, and even when he deigned to slip downstairs around ten o’clock he would say that he had been studying. What could she say to him? She fingered her silver-dark hair. If only her mother were here; she could talk to him, and he would listen. She had held him spellbound with her long, rambling stories right up until the day before she had died. Sandy had cried at his grannie’s funeral. Would he cry at hers? Oh, of course he would. She was being stupid again.

She began to check the pots on the cooker, stirred one of them and replaced its lid. Everything was fine, but where was he? It looked as if he was going to be late again. She sighed, but set the table anyway, making sure to put out the tomato pickle to which he had so taken recently. She had found a recipe for it in one of her magazines and would make some of her own soon. She sat at the table and let her fingers dance over the cloth. Dance to your daddy, my little laddie. She felt most comfortable late in the evening when, Sandy in bed reading and the lights out and the fire still glowing brightly, she would speak to her mother and sometimes even her father. There was comfort in speaking to the dead, and it showed that you had not forgotten them. How could people forget their dead? Yet they seemed to. After a while, the funeral a few weeks past, they would just stop talking about them, and all the traces of grieving would leave their faces so that the living could begin again in earnest. That was unwise. She knew that that was unwise. You had to keep their memory burning brightly and then they did not really die, then you could speak to them at their graveside or in your own living room. You had, in effect, lost nothing.

He’s too late now. He’s not coming. Probably he’s down at the corner with his friends and the girls who hang around with them. He still blushed when she mentioned the possibility of there being a special girl in his life. He still shook his head. He was a fine-looking boy. He would not stay innocent for much longer. Fifteen. Fifteen. That’s how old she had been... But what’s the use? No bloody use at all. Here she was, nearly thirty-two, having done nothing with her life other than bring up Sandy. She knew that she could not put into words how important that made him to her. He was everything, and she thanked God that the townspeople had taken to him at last and let him become one of them. She had always resented their shunning her. She still felt bitter sometimes. The years had been hard. They could have been harder, yes, but they would have been a lot easier had she been accepted and not made subject to stupid rumours about witchcraft and the like. She felt like sticking pins in the whole lot of them. If only they would accept her, or even cast her out altogether. But no, instead there were the looks and whispers, the snide jokes. They would go no further. If she pressed them, they would tell her that they were merely having a bit of fun, no harm meant. They were cowards; neither cold nor hot. She found them despicable, and yet this was still her town, and these were still her people. Some of them were reasonable people, of course. The minister was very nice, and Andy made all the difference. Would he visit her this evening? She could not remember having arranged anything, but he might turn up anyway. Her stomach began to growl.

She sat at the table and ate her meal in silence. She heaped food on to Sandy’s plate, covered it, and placed it in the warm oven. She then washed and dried the dishes, pots and utensils before making herself some coffee and taking it through to the living room. She looked out of the window for a while, then closed the curtains and switched on the television. She stood in front of the television and sipped her coffee. Eventually she sat in her chair, sighing once before doing so. She resigned herself to sitting like this for several hours. It was a dour prospect. On the screen a quiz show was reaching its climax. A couple from the west coast were dressed up in rabbit costumes and acting out a kind of pantomime. She thought of them sitting at home watching themselves and feeling embarrassed, but laughing it off because they had won the tea service and the grandfather clock and the decanter with six crystal glasses. These prizes would be crammed into their already overflowing house, and if they had video-recorded their efforts they would inevitably show it to any visitor from now until New Year. They would show off the decanter on a shelf in their wall unit. They would open a cupboard, and there, in shadowy hibernation, would be the tea service, awaiting that elusive “special occasion”. They would squeeze past the dully ticking grandfather clock in their narrow hall when they went to bed at night. Their life had been full. Mary wondered why she watched these programmes at all. They did not excite her. People shopping on the following morning would talk about the television programmes, would mention the prizes on the quiz shows admiringly. They seemed excited by it all. Real people, she supposed, were being shown winning for a change, but it was a hollow enough victory.

There was a knock at the door: one, two, three in rapid succession — Andy. She flicked channels to a documentary, and examined herself in the mirror. It was far too late to do anything about her appearance. She hurried to the door and opened it. The street lamp was on now, though the sky was still blue, a deepening blue as if it were a sea rather than a sky. Andy was smiling.

‘Sorry for interrupting,’ he said, but she was already ushering him awkwardly inside. ‘And so late. I hope I’m not...’

‘Nonsense, Andy. I was going out of my mind. Yet another quiet night in front of the goggle-box.’ She felt more relaxed once the door was closed, separating them from the outside world of looks and whispers, whispers and looks. She could feel him relax too. ‘Sandy didn’t come home this evening, so I’ve not spoken to a soul all day.’ This was a white lie. She had spoken to the usual people whom she met while shopping. She had also spoken to her mother, who would turn in her grave if she heard her daughter lying. Mary giggled to think of it, and Andy continued to smile.

‘Anything good on the box?’ he asked, still a slight distance from her.

‘No,’ she answered, nearing him and hugging his waist.

‘We’ll switch it off.’ Their lips touched.

They had met at a parents’ night. She had spent an age that evening in her bedroom making herself presentable. She always liked the teachers to know that Sandy’s mother was nicer than local folklore would have them believe. Mr Wallace was quite new to the school then, and quite new to the area. An outsider, she had thought, a bit like herself. They had got on famously. It had been a few weeks later, however, when they had bumped into each other in Kirkcaldy, that he had actually asked her if they might go for a drink some evening. She had asked him if that were not rather irregular, having already decided to go. He had mumbled something flattering. Yes, it was that meeting that stayed in her mind rather than the more formal first encounter. She had wondered at the time about the propriety of the thing, but Sandy had not batted an eyelid on discovering their attachment. Word spread like wildfire, of course, and the town saw it as a bewitchment. She had made a schoolteacher break the silent golden rule. Andy’s headmaster had spoken to him twice about it, but as yet the young man was refusing to give in to any discreet pressure. He still saw the mother and he still taught the son, and the town still whispered with hissing venom behind their backs. Carsden had become just a little colder since then, but Andy did not care. He knew that he was infatuated, and he knew that the infatuation was worth anything, even if it meant having to resign. Sometimes he wondered if the woman with the old hair and young face, who could tell so many bitter tales, really was a witch. Sometimes there seemed no other explanation. Then he would become rational again and smile at his foolishness. Just as he was smiling now, sitting with a cup of coffee in one hand while the other curved against Mary’s back. The radio playing old songs. The newly kindled fire sparking its way into life.

‘I had a letter from my brother this morning,’ Mary said. ‘He’s very interested in you. He likes to take an interest in what’s going on.’

‘He’s never been back here, has he?’ asked Andy, pushing gently at the tight contours of her spine.

‘Not for a long time,’ she said.

3

Weeds sprouted regally through the growing mesh of lawn around the mansion. They crept, too, along and up the cracked and flaking walls. Silent, insidious, they coloured the air with an aroma of rank and abundant decay, and tinted the house with the hue of disuse.

The mansion was silent beneath their onslaught, like an exhausted and dying elephant, once majestic. Its large ground-floor windows were securely covered by sections of wood which had dried and moistened through recurring seasons, twisting and knotting their sinews like those of a living thing. The upper floor, with its slightly smaller windows, had shutters too, but parts of these had slipped and fallen, allowing areas of glass to appear as targets for an evening’s energetic and restless children. These jagged edges of glass caught the red of the early evening sun and seemed to run rust-coloured streaks to the wood beneath them.

People usually averted their eyes from this building whenever they passed, for they felt chilled by the boarded up windows, by the complacent and public display of what was, after all, a slow death. The grand illusion of ownership.

The mansion, built in the late nineteenth century at the request of, it was said, a close friend of the Earl of Wemyss, was best known for the role it had played of hospital. No local knew its complete history, but it was known that it had once been Fife’s first hospital for the treatment of tuberculosis, and many patients had entered through its doors for the promised revolutionary treatments. Its wards had quickly filled with those admitted by the local doctor and those from further away who hid in small private rooms and were visited daily by well-dressed people burdened with flowers and boxes of delicate chocolates. Curiously, the patients themselves all looked the same: the same pallid faces and heavy chests, the same defeated eyes. They would sit all day in front of the large windows and soak up what sunshine there was. This was in the early 1900s. Later, with tuberculosis a menace of the past, the hospital became a home for shell-shocked war veterans. Cries could be heard over the growing hamlet, the cries of men for whom war was still a raging demand on their nightmares. Later still, the local doctor moved into the sprawling house, but, finding it ghost-ridden and difficult to heat, soon moved out and into a smaller house which had once belonged to one of the local pit managers. People knew even then, in the 1960s, that the town was in some way preparing for its last stand, and the mansion became a symbol of incipient decay and neglect. No one, it seemed, wanted a ghostly house, a large damp house, a rambling hospital which had once been splashed with blood and bile and the echoing groans of madness and death. So it was that, after countless raids by gangs of children, the edifice was nailed shut. A local solicitor still held details of its owner and value, should any offer be forthcoming, but that was just so much dust and fawn-edged paper in some long-forgotten file. Much of the lead now gone from the roof, tarpaulin and polythene having taken its place, the mansion was a soiled relic, a fitting beast to be overlooking the smoky town from its slight and now anachronistic prominence, its quarter-mile of distance.

But home still to some.

Home almost to Sandy, who kicked at the pale yellow heads of the weeds as he crossed the raging lawn, scraping mud from his shoes on to the grass, hacking out the roots of purple-headed thistles with the heel of his left foot. He aimed at a dandelion and it swirled into nothingness with a feathery puff, its seeds scattering on the air towards the house itself. Sandy felt one strand tickling his nose. He sneezed and wiped his nose against the sleeve of his jersey, having pulled the arm down past the cuff of his jacket. ‘God bless,’ he said to himself. He made his way around to the back of the house. From here he could see across the low wall to the golf course and the countryside beyond. Very occasionally there was money to be made in the summer by caddying for those golfers who wanted their friends to see how affluent they were. He would have to keep that in mind now that the warmer weather was bringing those types out of hibernation. The only figures he could see on the course at present were already walking away from the first tee, and so had their backs to him. He clasped his hands around the drainpipe, tested it for the strain, and began to climb, his shoes scraping hard at the wall for support, kicking off tiny chippings of plaster, exposing even more of the brickwork beneath. His cheek grazed the rusting drainpipe. It was cold and ragged. When he looked up, the sun tried to blind him by flashing its light on to the shards of the window above. Not far to go now, though.

The first time he had climbed this drainpipe he had been petrified, had needed a push from below and the hissed advice not to look down. That had been when the house was a haven for children. They had wandered its corridors, let loose in an adult and sacred environment. They had made play of its rooms and its staircase. Now Sandy climbed quickly and skilfully, his legs sliding behind him as he moved in peristalsis towards the window ledge. That was always the most difficult part: at the top he had to swing towards the sill. His eyes would be catching side-swipes of countryside and he could feel the space beneath him trying to pull him down. His hand would rake across the sill, pushing at the wooden board until it fell back with a clatter into the dusty gloom of the house. The slight smell of mould caught his throat then, and made his heart beat a little more strongly. The feet swung out, caught the sill, hung over it, one hand still grasping the drainpipe while the other gripped the window frame. Then he had to release his hold on the pipe and heave himself inside. For a second he would be hanging back into space, his legs threatening to weaken as they tightened on the sill. Fear as much as anything drove his slow body through those few final inches. His arms ached from overuse, but he was safe. Looking out he saw only the vertical drop which would once have made him dizzy. He replaced the wooden board and was suddenly in a deep, shadowy half-light.

He was in a large room which would once have been a ward. The floorboards creaked from his unusual pressure upon them. The walls were grey-green, histories almost in themselves. The door was closed. He held his breath a little and turned the handle, then opened the door quickly in order to have it over and done with. He was in an empty corridor. The windows along its length threw substantial shadows across his path. He walked uneasily along the corridor, past several open doors which, thankfully, let him peer into their dull interiors to assure him that nothing was there. He found himself, in the end, confronted by a closed door which had to be opened if he was to continue. By now, though, it was more a game than anything else. No surprises had been planned today, and he could relax. He opened the door easily, just as he would have the living-room door at home, and walked into a room which contained two dark figures who shuffled away from him.

Sandy smiled at them. The man came forward and ruffled his hair.

‘And how are you, Sandy boy?’ His voice was clear and deep. It might have been Irish, sounding as if it had been arranged specially for the occasion, as one would have arranged a room in which to receive visitors. Smooth as a velvet dress, it faded behind him as its owner left the room: ‘Just going to take a leak.’ The door was pulled shut until only a gash of crimson light was left to lend any reality to the scene.

There she was, though, crouching low by the fireplace, her arms stretching down to the floor as she balanced herself on her toes. She felt comfortable like that, she had told him. She was a black cat about to strike. Sandy smiled towards her blurred face, etching her with an inner eye before approaching. He squatted down near her.

‘Hello, Rian,’ he said. She brushed her hair away from where it lay across her solemn face. Her eyes seemed to cut through the space between them like metal through water. He was, as always, affected by her, and he coughed his nervous little cough and bowed his head to a meditative silence. Bugger you, he thought. I’ll not speak again till you do. They sat and awaited the brother’s return. Sandy was about to speak when the door opened behind him.

‘Hands off, Sandy. That’s my bloody sister that you’re manhandling there.’ He adjusted his crotch as he entered, as though he really had been urinating. Sandy smiled and the young man chuckled. ‘I know you young lads,’ he continued, ‘and you’re all after just one thing. You won’t let up until you get it. Well not from my sister you don’t.’ He chuckled again and Sandy smiled compliantly. The man was glancing nervously towards the girl. Sandy knew that for all his bravado, all the shoulder-punching and joking, Robbie really feared the girl. It was the fear that he would go too far in his jokes, in his teasing, the fear that she was more than she seemed. It appeared to Sandy that this somehow gave him an amount of power over the brother. He could sit in silent naivety and wait. Wait for all time. His eyes now sought those of the girl, but they were not yet to be had.

Robbie lit a candle between them, kneeling so as to make a triangle of crouched figures.

‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘It’s definitely getting lighter these evenings, though, Sandy.’ The boy nodded. Robbie, for all his ways, was only five or so years older than him. His growth of beard was thin and slow, and his eyes were playful and filled with a bright life still to be lived. Yet he was his sister’s protector, and so was a man. He had been a man almost from the day Rian had been born. His aunt had provided the feeding of the pair of them, it was true, but the small boy who had watched his mother’s newly dead face being covered with a lace handkerchief and who had touched her cold forehead while simultaneously hearing the mewling of the new-born baby had known at once that he had somehow become his own father, though he could not be allowed to run away as his father had done so bitterly. His sister and he were inextricably joined by thick blood, and he would be a little soldier, as his Aunt Kitty repeatedly told him to be, and fend for his sister until the time came for an adult parting. Thereafter he had held tiny, rubber-bodied Rian in his arms as gingerly as if she had been a good china plate. He had watched her sup on her bottle, had tipped her over his shoulder and rubbed her soothingly, coaxing her to laugh, which she seldom had done. Sometimes, however, she had managed a little soldier’s smile back at her brother.

‘I was a father at six,’ his story to Sandy had begun, ‘and to this little horror at that!’ His thumb had jerked towards the faintly smiling girl. She had been curled on a blanket like a small kitten, Sandy recalled, and had sucked the edge of the blanket as though she were still teething. She had smiled that first time, but had said little. He had forced his eyes to remain trained on Robbie’s face, not wishing him to perceive his own interest in the girl. Only when she had spoken had he turned to her, drawing in huge gulps of her as if she were water to his thirst.

He had fallen in love on that first day, and had known it, for he had thought about her all the next week at school and had walked often past the mansion hoping for a glimpse of her. On the following Friday, as had been agreed on that first day, after that surprise meeting (he had expected to find nothing but ghosts and memories in the old hospital), he had returned to the room. Robbie, drinking from a beer can and smoking a cigarette, had noted Sandy’s acute embarrassment at even being in the same room as her. He had leaned across to the boy and given him a stinging slap on the thigh, saying, ‘Ah, Sandy, Sandy, so you’ve caught the fever, eh? Too bad, son, too bad. It happens to the strongest men when they look at Rian, when they see that shining innocence, that knowing look, that mystery.’ He had risen to his feet. His eyes were on his sister as she sat on her blanket. He had staggered a little, dragging his feet around the room while the candle sent grotesque shadows dancing on the walls. ‘Me too, man. Me too. She caught me before anyone else, before she could walk even, and only the thought of my...’ he struggled with language, the mystery of words he needed but did not know, and frowned ‘... my task, or something — only that knowledge, and the drink of course, keep me from... keep me sane.’ He had leaned over his sister, studying her face as if he were a painter, his words hanging in the smoky air. Sandy had thought it time he was going. His cheeks were burning. He was full of questions and emotions. Robbie had slid silently down the wall and rested his chin on his chest. She had risen, had seen him silently to the window, had allowed him out on to his ledge before reaching forward to kiss him on the cheek. Still her face had remained a mask. She might have been kissing the minister. He slipped down the pipe uneasily. His heart had been trembling. It would tremble for a long time as the kiss grew in his fertile mind.

That had been a full month ago. Now Robbie looked on Sandy as part of the scenario, albeit a moving, trustless part; the kind of thing a gypsy could appreciate.

‘What’s it like being a gypsy?’ had been Sandy’s first question to Rian. She had shrugged her shoulders. Robbie had answered for her.

‘If gypsies are outcasts from their own tribe, then they’re shadows in the dark, which is to say useless.’

Sandy knew that there was a loneliness in Robbie, and he could feel his visits bolstering the young man’s sense of purpose. They were friends of a sort now. Rian was not Sandy’s friend, nor could she be. A larger intent lay behind their thin but strengthening bond. It was something Robbie might one day find himself unable to stop. Sandy knew that his relationship with Rian would work inversely to his relationship with Robbie, and these were knotted strings with which his nimble fingers but clumsy brain played. Something was unfolding, and Sandy shut from his mind the notion that its culmination would be pain or despair or frustration. He simply refused to consider those possibilities. But he knew. And Robbie knew also, so that there was an inevitable tension in his visits: psychological jousting, with Rian looking on as impassively as a fair princess. There would be no favourites in the game. Not yet.

Tonight Robbie was speaking about some of the day’s incidents. Rian had been begging in Craigore, a nearby town. They had some cheese and bread if Sandy was hungry, and a little milk besides. ‘Time was,’ Robbie was saying, ‘you could have gone down to the river and used the water straight from it for a pot of tea, but not now. Pollution. A gypsy used to fend well for himself before all this... this... plastic shit.’ Sandy studied the beer can in Robbie’s hand as he waved it around. He felt that Robbie’s drinking was frowned upon by Rian. It might prove a useful weapon in the fight. He had not accepted a drink from Robbie yet, though he was keen to, for it was something that had to be done at his age. He had resisted in order to impress Rian, and she looked across at him whenever he denied himself as though she were unusually full of curiosity about him. ‘Suit yourself,’ Robbie would say, and would then finish the contents of the tin quickly and noisily, smacking his lips in challenging satisfaction afterwards. Tonight Sandy felt like saying: ‘Always enough money for drink, though, eh Robbie?’

That would have scored points, but it seemed unnecessarily cruel. Sandy said nothing; only listened and hoped that his princess would speak. Robbie talked about the snooker hall in Craigore. ‘You can sometimes make a few bob on a game, but not often and never much money. They’re tight-fisted in that town all right. Mean shower. Rotten snooker players too. Almost embarrassing.’ He looked at Rian, then at Sandy, and crushed the thin beer can with one hand, rubbing at his nose with the other.

‘An itchy nose,’ said Sandy. ‘My mum says that means you’re going to come into money.’ Having said it, he felt stupid. It seemed banal. Robbie’s eyes lit up, however, and he shook his head vigorously.

‘Your mum’s wrong. An itchy palm means money. An itchy nose doesn’t mean anything. No, wait a minute. That’s not right. It does mean something but I just can’t think what.’ He furrowed his brow, put a hand across his eyes like a mind-reader. ‘My Aunt Kitty used to tell me about all that stuff when I was a kid, but I’ve forgotten most of it. Superstitious crap. No,’ he shook his head and waved his hands in the air, ‘I’ve forgotten it. She could help, though. My Aunt Kitty at the caravan.’

‘Caravan?’ said Sandy.

‘Caravan,’ said Robbie. ‘Where the hell did you think we came from? We didn’t just appear out of thin air, man. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t Rian? We belong to the tinkers’ site at the foot of Craigie Hill.’

‘Then why did you move here?’ Robbie hesitated at Sandy’s question. He looked over to his sister, then at Sandy. Sandy nodded, though he felt that he had only half the picture. ‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Robbie continued, ‘we should visit my Aunt Kitty some day.’ He again looked to Rian, who suddenly came alive.

‘She’s my aunt too! She’s not just your aunt!’ She stared at her brother in a rage while he scratched his beard, then she blushed and dropped her eyes. Robbie chuckled.

‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Well, maybe that’s something to ask her, after what happened. Maybe all three of us should go up there just now and see what Aunt Kitty says to it. I seem to remember her saying something like “She’s no relation of mine.” Isn’t that right then, Rian?’ The girl was already on her feet. She moved swiftly, and in her movement Sandy was attracted to the shape of her body. She slammed the door as best she could behind her. Robbie hooted loudly, smiled at Sandy, then turned his eyes to the floor and thought to himself.

‘I suppose I should be going,’ said Sandy.

‘But you’ve only just got here!’ complained Robbie, who seemed genuinely upset.

‘Yes, but my mum will have my tea ready. I’m hellish late for that.’ Sandy had a sudden inspiration. ‘And I want to ask her about the itchy nose. Then we can go and see your auntie. Okay?’ For a second Sandy thought that it might have been a mistake to mention this, but Robbie nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You do that. Will you come back tomorrow?’

‘Maybe, Robbie.’ Sandy was already on his feet.

‘Fine then.’

There was no sign of Rian in the corridor. ‘Cheerio, Sandy,’ said Robbie. As the door closed on him, he was hunting in his pockets for a cigarette.

‘Cheerio, Robbie.’

He sat on the window ledge for a long time. Rian did not appear. Robbie was whistling in the far room. Sandy did not want Robbie to come out and find him still sitting there. It would be too much of an admission of interest in Rian. He sat for a full count of sixty. The golfers had abandoned the course. It was too dark now to play, though there was still a faint red glow in the sky. He reached out for the drainpipe and shimmied down, jumping the last five feet and feeling the drop through space thrill in his stomach. He landed with a grunt on the lawn. Some jotters had fallen from his satchel. He crouched and replaced them. When he stood up, she said something behind him.

‘Don’t believe him, Sandy. Don’t believe anything he says. There’s a streak of badness in him.’ Her voice was quiet and sugary. He turned to her and she stepped towards him. It was the easiest thing to just snake his arms around her waist. She touched his arms with her fingers. Her chest was against his ribcage. She was skinny, thought Sandy. All skin and bone really. ‘Promise that you won’t let him turn you against me. Promise me, Sandy.’ There were tears in her eyes. She put her head to his shoulder. He felt an erection swelling and pulled his hips back a little so that she would not feel it. He had been embarrassed more than once at school dances when a girl had noticed his erection during a slow dance and told her friends, who would then giggle at him for the rest of the night. He wanted there to be no mistakes with Rian.

‘Don’t get me wrong, Sandy,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. Robbie is my brother and I wouldn’t hurt him for the world, but he’s bitter at having had to look after me all this time. He feels he’s losing out on life, and yet he won’t leave me alone because he feels it’s his job to look after me. There’s a jumble of things in his head, but he will try to turn you against me. I know he will. He’s tried it before.’ Sandy wanted to ask her a question then, but she gave him no opportunity. ‘He’ll do anything. He’ll tell any lies he wants to. Don’t believe them.’ As he held her waist, her hair tickled the backs of his wrists. Her hair was longer than he had imagined. It reached down to her waist and beyond. He looked down at her cowering head, resting so easily upon him.

‘I promise,’ he said, ‘if you’ll kiss me.’ It was easily said, as if he were dreaming. He felt like running away or making a joke of it, but something made him hold his ground. She looked at him and he could feel her eyes as they overwhelmed him. Everything he was, everything he had decided he would be in life, it all went out of the window in one easy fall. She kissed him. It was a slow, steady kiss, breathy. She seemed at ease, which unnerved Sandy slightly. He opened his eyes for a peek and saw that hers were open and rigidly upon him, studying him coldly. He closed his again quickly. It was as if his mother had found him to be feigning sleep. Her lips tasted of soap. He shrugged off the comparison and tried to enjoy himself. He should have been enjoying himself. It should have been heaven. Later it would seem as though it had been, but the moment itself was too curious and strained to be anything other than strange. He accepted its strangeness. He accepted everything. She breathed in his ear.

‘Oh, Sandy,’ she said. Then she pulled away from him, looking into his eyes as if uncertain of something. Eventually she forced herself to smile, and Sandy felt that she was depending on him for something profound, something beyond his immediate grasp. He felt a tiny weight of responsibility being shifted on to his shoulders. Did Robbie feel it too, inversely?

He watched her as she turned from him and began climbing the drainpipe. She was a small, brittle-boned monkey. He admired her long arms, the way her feet dug into what purchase the wall would afford. Her hair swung in rhythm with her body. Her skirt was flailing too, and suddenly, as he had not dared to hope, he was looking up inside it. She was calling something to him, but it was lost, like a distant voice calling across a swelling tide. Up inside it. The pants soiled but feminine. The tuft of hair crawling from beneath the cotton. A flush went through his whole body. He tried to control it. Useless; he had come. Oh God, he had never done that before, not standing up, not in his denims. His legs were as weak as if he had been swimming. He watched the boards appear in the window, covering that doorway. The house was closed again, dark, apparently lifeless. He trotted gingerly across the lawn and climbed his wall. The wet smell was all around him. He would have to take the quiet way home, and he hoped that he would meet no one. That kiss. Her saliva was still in his mouth. It was turning cold now. He had to get home, had to rush upstairs, ignoring his mother’s call from the living room, and change into clean clothes. Perhaps he could have a bath. No, this was not his regular bath night. The water would not be warm, and his mother would suspect something. He would have to wash his trousers in the bath tomorrow morning while his mother cooked the breakfast. And his pants. Her pants. That kiss. It went home with him, becoming more than it had been at the time with every step as the imagination took over. For once he hoped that Mr Wallace would be there. That would keep his mother occupied while he ran upstairs. Rian. He would watch Robbie. He would listen closely to any accusation, and would challenge any lie. Rian was his girlfriend after all. He had to protect her. She was depending on him.

4

5

The daytimes glazed through the rest of the spring, blowing warm winds and the smell of grass into the nostrils of those still aware enough to appreciate such things. Everything opened up into the transient summer. Sandy would rise early, afraid of oversleeping for his exams. He took them seriously, and did an hour’s revision before breakfast. Then, leaving his mother at the door, he would choose a stone to kick all the way to school.

The examination hall was stuffy and full of smiling, unserious contenders. He feared to look up in case his attention should be distracted and his crammed memory evaporate entirely. He had been storing rote answers for weeks. It needed only one of Belly Martin’s funny faces to knock a dozen equations from his head. So he kept his eyes on the desk, though the air near the wood was dank and overpowering. Here was his school career: scrawls on a scratched desktop; a rickety chair; a list of multiple-choice questions; a one-in-five chance; feet sliding over the dusty tiled floor. One teacher sat at the front of the hall reading his newspaper. Another stared out of a window as he paced the rows of desks. This was it. Everything. It was ludicrous. Nothing about it equated with ten years of schooling. Sandy was suddenly glad that he had swotted — not that he meant to stay on, but grades mattered. It had been drummed into him until it had seemed as casual a knowledge as the gospel stories he had known as a child, and like them this new knowledge — not knowledge, but facts pure and simple would be forgotten in time.

The examinations weren’t too difficult. Between them there were days of nothing, a time to laze and to taste freedom and to study the few sentences which constituted a distillation of several years’ teaching. Sandy carried his lists of important sentences and equations around with him. He would take a list from his pocket and study it at random moments. These nuggets replaced, for a few weeks, his collection of good stones.

After each exam he was pleasantly surprised to feel himself drained and in need of sleep. He would go home and doze in the chair until tea-time. On waking, he would be unable to recall many of the exam questions. He would delete from his lists the information no longer needed, then would take the examination paper from his pocket and examine it as if it were an alien object. He could not have answered it. It would not seem the same paper that he had so recently sat. Even the words would be unfamiliar. It was a curious sensation, and one which others experienced. Belly Martin laughed at them when they discussed it one day.

‘You’re fucked then, aren’t you? When that happens it means you haven’t been concentrating. You might have written anything down. Serves you right, you fucking swots. What good will it do you when we leave? There’s no jobs anyway. Why bother?’

Belly Martin’s stomach sagged obscenely over his waistband, and his pudgy fingers would lift leftovers from a neighbour’s school-dinner plate straight into his gaping mouth. Fat boys are usually ridiculed at school, both in comics and in reality, but Belly was too ghastly to have even that fate befall him. He was not the archetypal fat boy.

Indeed, Sandy often shuddered when he contemplated the differences. Belly was vicious. He would hug you to him in a clinch and would crush your face against his chest, smothering you. His shirt smelled of vinegar, as if he had not washed for a long time. He lied and stole and cheated, and if confronted by a teacher would retreat into the guise of typical fat boy — picked on, unloved, unwanted, innocent. To the frustration of his classmates, it was a part he played to perfection. He would spread his arms wide plaintively, and his eyes and mouth would open in astonishment, then he would blurt out his controlled acting until the teacher frowned and looked again for a culprit. Belly would soon be grinning, and would reach a hand deep into his trouser pocket, wriggling it around until he found some ancient paper-covered sweet. This he would crunch into tiny pieces, still laughing and slavering mild taunts at those who had informed on him.

‘Ha! Better luck next time, clipes. Go tell fucking teacher. Ha!’

Sandy was revolted by the boy and always had been. He seemed impervious to pain, either mental or physical, like a lumbering dinosaur. That was the frustrating thing. Sandy tried not to be sitting near him in the examination hall. Belly scratched his bemused face with a rasping sound like the unwrapping of a difficult toffee and made life unbearable for those around him.

Revenges, often colossal in intent, were planned against him, but were never carried through with any degree of success. Sandy had planned several of his own. The simplest was the braining of Belly with an empty bottle in a dark alley. The most complex involved pieces of machinery, a trifle containing ground glass, and a nest of rats. Sandy used to keep these plans in a stolen jotter in his secret drawer at home, but he had guiltily torn them up just before his exams in case there was a God and it or he or she decided to spite him with low marks. It had been childish anyway. Any worthwhile revenge would be simple and short-winded. But what? That was the problem.

After the final examination, Economics, a few of them went down to the park with a carry-out filched from Colin’s father’s drinks cabinet. They leapt what had once been the hot burn — now a sorry old thing, dehydrated, its clay a raw, rusty colour — and jogged across the playing field in the direction of a small pond in the Wilderness. They carried the cans of warm lager inside their rolled-up jackets. They were so nearly men, only weeks away from the dole and the free money that came with it.

All except Sandy.

‘Christmas!’ yelled Colin. ‘Christ’s Mass! Sandy’s got to stay on till Christmas!’ As Sandy wiped his damp forehead he found it impossibly difficult to envisage snow and being wrapped up in layers of clothes and rushing to the fireside. It seemed too ludicrous an idea to have any grounding in the real world. He became disorientated, and almost asked his companions if they really believed in something as alien as snow. Then his head cleared a little, just in time for him to realise that they were crossing the pipeline over the river. He watched the others playing at being acrobats as they walked over the slender cylinder, then walked across himself, his legs trembling. They were waiting on the other side, laughing and pleading with him to fall off. He tried to smile, but kept looking down at the long green tendrils of weed in the water below. Once over, he leapt from the pipe on to crumbly brown earth. It was a good feeling. They jogged the rest of the way through the field to a pool of algae covered water. Immediately one of them, Clark, stripped, and penis waving like a comedian’s wand ran into the pond. He shrieked, but no one told him to be quiet. They were truly in the wilds here. No one would hear them shout or laugh or scream. Clark splashed out of the pool, green tapioca clinging to his white body. He scratched it away with a look of disgust.

‘It’s freezing in there,’ he said. ‘Dare you.’ He looked around, but the rest of them were busy opening cans and catching the foam in their mouths. He wiped himself with his T-shirt. ‘Fair shares,’ he said, walking towards them.

They lay in the long grass and stared at the sky as if it were a picture-show. They had blades of grass in their mouths. It was a time for lazing. They had spent their energy fighting in the pool.

‘The dole in eight weeks,’ said Clark. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘It would be better if we all had jobs, though,’ said Colin.

‘Ach, we’ll get jobs eventually,’ said Mark. ‘We’ve deserved our rest. Complete rest and relaxation. No early rises except when you’ve to sign on. It’s just what the doctor ordered.’

‘Oh aye?’ said Sandy. ‘Seeing the doctor, are you, Mark? I wonder what for?’

‘The clap if I know him.’

‘Now, now, lads. Let’s not be too hasty in condemning the poor sod. Let’s condemn him slowly.’

‘Ha fucking ha,’ said Mark.

‘Any advance on that?’ said Sandy.

‘But seriously, guys. No more school! It’s like being let out of jail after doing thirty years’ hard labour.’

‘Now, now, Mark. Remember one of us has to go back.’

‘Oh yes. Sorry, Witchy. I forgot.’

‘I don’t like being called Witchy, Marcus.’

‘I don’t like being called Marcus, Witchy.’

Sandy stuck a hand up into the air and Mark clasped it. They shook. Then there was silence for a time. Sandy lay with his shirt crumpled over his genitalia. They had to be protected, he had told his friends, as you never knew when they would come in handy. Sandy worked hard at every utterance he made in this group. His jokes were his defence in a way, and were also what had first gained him entrance to the gang. He did not want to lose his privilege.

‘Freedom,’ said Clark. ‘It’s okay, Sandy. You don’t have any exams when you go back. No work to do. Just sit it out, like you were in jail in Monopoly.’ Everyone chuckled, grass still wedged between teeth. The sun was too bright. It made Sandy’s eyes dizzy to look at it. He watched the blood red of a foetus form whenever he closed his eyelids.

‘That little shit Belly Martin. It’s about time somebody got him. And good, too. Give him something as a souvenir.’

‘You’re right, Colin. But how?’ They thought for a few moments.

‘Bring him down here,’ said Sandy, savouring the words as they formed inside his aching head, ‘and throw him in the pond. Then leave him, naked, wet, lost in the dark, and just go home.’ Somebody sat up. Their shadow blocked the sun.

Sandy peered up but could not see who it was.

‘That’s brilliant, Sandy. But how do we capture him?’ said Colin.

‘Kidnap him some evening when he leaves the chip shop,’ said Sandy, closing his eyes again.

‘It’s a fine plan,’ Clark said lazily.

‘A great plan,’ said Colin. Everybody agreed. ‘So great that I think we should have a trial run!’ Colin was on Sandy immediately. Sandy gasped, nearly choking on his blade of grass. He clung with one hand to his shirt while the other clawed at the earth. Colin was dragging him by the feet towards the pond. Too late, Sandy released his grip on the shirt and grabbed for Colin. With a splash, he had been thrown in a semi-circle right into the pond. He was going down. It seemed incredibly deep, and certainly much deeper than it had been twenty minutes before. It was like being tossed into the sea from a helicopter. Sandy turned and turned. He sucked in some liquid and began spluttering. The water was sour for a second and then was bland, filling his mouth, trickling down his resisting throat. It was dark down there, but he fought against the darkness. His feet touched bottom. He pushed hard, and his head rose above the surface. Someone was shouting.

‘By Christ! Here comes the Loch Ness Monster!’

He stood coughing and retching for a minute. They were at the edge of the pool and began to help him out. They could see that something quite frightening had just happened.

‘Sorry, Sandy,’ said Colin, patting his back. ‘It was just a joke. Are you all right?’ Sandy nodded.

‘Fine,’ he said. Then, tipping his body slightly forward over the pool, he brought up a foamy concoction of lager and lemonade and algae and water. The others stood back a little.

‘Well,’ said Mark, ‘we’ll not be swimming in there for a while.’

They lay down again and were reflective for some time. Sandy stared at the grass and let himself dry in the hot sun.

He felt fine, but shaky.

‘Are you still seeing Shona McKechnie?’ Mark asked Colin. This brought an interested glint to every eye: sex.

‘Well, lads,’ said Colin, ‘that’s confidential. Hush-hush. I wouldn’t like to say, really.’

‘That means she’s chucked him in,’ said Clark, hoping it were true.

‘Just you keep thinking that, young Clark, if you want to.’

‘Well, tell us then, Colin.’

‘Okay, boys. Are you sitting comfortably?’ They shifted closer to Colin. ‘Once upon a time,’ he began, ‘there was a sexy young lad called Colin McLintock. Now, Colin happened to stumble across a ravishing princess one day...’

‘Stumbled is the right word! You were pissed as a fart.’

‘Okay, Mark,’ said Colin angrily, ‘you tell the story.’ But they poked Mark in the ribs and pleaded with Colin to continue. ‘No more interruptions then,’ he said. ‘Now, as I was saying, this handsome lad one day met a lady at a party, and the lady’s name was Shona McKechnie. They enjoyed one another’s company, and started necking on the couch. He walked her home. There was a passionate goodnight kiss on her doorstep, and that, thought Colin, was that. But no! It was not to be, my children. For, as it turned out, this Shona person had a fiery reputation with the older boys in town. After school, it turned out, she would go up into the Wilderness and cavort with the whole of the Cars gang. Word had got around that Shona had the hots for noble young Colin, and so the Cars, in their infinite stupidity, decided to scare him away from the princess, a bit like the Ugly Sisters in “Cinderella”...’

‘Christ, Colin, you better watch that they’re not hiding in the grass this very minute. If they could hear you...’

‘So,’ Colin’s voice became even louder, ‘the aforementioned Cars gang, being a cowardly bunch of shits, chased poor Colin for weeks and would be waiting for him outside school, forcing him to sneak home by devious routes, and they made his life hell to the extent that he gave up seeing Shona, though she still chased him in school. So you see, lads, he was in a tight spot. Chased by two fearsome elements.’ Colin was on his feet now, acting with gusto. ‘What could he do? He did what a man must do.’

‘Quite right,’ said Sandy.

‘He started seeing Shona again, but making certain that it was kept as secret as was humanly possible. He told only his most trusted friends. And, my most trusted friends, he is still seeing her. He is seeing her tonight, he thinks. And he is regularly getting his nuts from her.’

‘You jammy bastard,’ said Mark.

‘What’s she like then, Colin?’ asked Clark.

‘Princesses are not to be discussed in such terms,’ said Colin, sitting down again. There were groans of dissent.

Sandy knew these games. They were old, and their utility value, as the Economics exam would have had it, seemed to decrease with each rendition. They all knew what sex was. They had learned about it from boys with older brothers, from glossy magazines flicked through in public conveniences, from tentative dates at parties and school discos. But probably, despite all their bravado, Colin was the only one of them who had properly lost his virginity. The rest of them were left straining on the leash like bug-eyed dogs. Sex for them was the toilet at home or under the sheets with a handkerchief and the mild queasiness and guilt afterwards. The horror that your mother would find or had already found some telltale stain. Not all the boys at school were as innocent. The Cars, the town’s gang, were not innocent, but then they were mostly older boys who had already left school. Sandy picked a new blade of grass and chewed it, crushing the sap with his teeth. He thought of his own princess. Dark golden kisses, treasured like jewels. He had written some poetry for her, but would never let her see it. What if she couldn’t read? All the better: the poem was terrible.

He was embarrassed by it, but he would keep it in his secret drawer beside the others and the stories he had written and hope his mother did not find it. His friends would laugh at him if they found out. All they knew was that he was good at writing stories and poems when asked to in English by a teacher who was going out with his mother.

He had visited the mansion one day in every week for a while now. He was waiting for Rian to suggest some meeting in a secret place. She had not yet done so. He had to content himself with a stolen kiss when Robbie was not around, and then only if Rian were in the mood. If not, she would sit with her face as dark as a coal-box and her arms folded firmly across her chest. On those days he would talk more with Robbie, and be more friendly towards him, just to spite his cruel princess.

They were talking about videos now — about the ones they had seen lately and the ones they would see when their parents were out. Sandy thought that he would leave and go to the Soda Fountain. Mr Patterson had promised him a whole lot of chocolates when he had finished his exams. But Sandy did not eat many sweets these days. Their taste was debilitating. It slowed him down, making his insides all sugary and numb. He preferred fruit. He would visit the fruit shop. But then he was being asked a question.

‘What about you, Sandy? You never had a dad, did you? I mean, you never knew who your dad was?’ They were talking about someone whose father had died suddenly. Now they had directed the conversation towards him. He looked at the serious faces and the acne and the thin, pallid bodies.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I never knew.’

‘Did you ever try to find out? Didn’t you ever ask your mum?’

‘No.’

How could he have done that? It had taken time to discover that children ought to have a father. By the time he found out, he had become sad for his mother. How could he have asked her such a personal and unnecessary question? Often, though, he had thought of asking her. He knew some of the rumours which had been currency when he was a child. It was his Uncle Tom, who had then quickly scarpered. It was the Devil himself, and his mother was a witch after all. It was one of his Uncle Tom’s friends. It was a fairy king. Would she tell him if he asked? Perhaps she would, now that he had grown up, but what did it matter? It was a moment’s curiosity every few months. It was nothing.

‘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.

As Mary left the cemetery, she saw George Patterson toiling up The Brae. She took to her heels and ran, dodging into the housing scheme so as not to be seen by him.

Mr Patterson was going home for lunch. He had shut the Soda Fountain at half past one, aware that young Sandy was not going to show up after his exam. It was a beautiful afternoon and quiet. He was glad of the fresh air. The shop was a tomb as far as he was concerned. He was selling less than ever, which meant smaller profits, but more importantly fewer customers with whom to while away the time. George Patterson was in his fifties and was waiting to die. It was a slow process. He ate packets of sweets and smoked cigarettes and drank himself silly in isolation, but still he could not die. Perhaps this hill would do the trick.

George Patterson wanted to die because he could not see that it could be worse than living. He went to church sometimes, but no longer believed in God. It made it easier for him to want to die. All he wanted was not to exist. That he was liked in the town only made it harder. He wanted to be hated, but people would not let him be hated. What was worse, he would not let himself be hated. When he met people, he would feel a smile appearing on his face, though he willed himself to frown, to hurl abuse. He found himself forced to make noble gestures, all the time hating himself, all the time aware of the grossest hypocrisy.

Mr Patterson was a bachelor. He lived alone in a small house in Cardell, on the outskirts of town. He read lots of magazines and newspapers there and listened to the radio. He had no pets. He had no housekeeper. He tidied the house himself and did his own washing and ironing. He was portly from having eaten too many sweets during his lifetime, but was not entirely unfit. That he was also bald and ruddy faced merely added to the endearment others felt towards him. He hated it all. This world was a mockery, and human beings were mockeries of life. Another flood was needed, if there had been a first, a flood to wash away all the debris, to leave only a handful of starry-eyed children and the few good people who had to exist somewhere. George Patterson would have prayed for that, had he still believed in God. Being an unbeliever, he merely thought about it.

He sweated his way towards his shaded house and hoped that the pain in his side would not intensify. He passed the old minister, or rather he made to pass him. The minister, as always, stopped to speak with one of his respected and respectable parishioners. One, admittedly, who was not seen at church as regularly as might have been expected, but who nevertheless showed the true Christian spirit.

‘A lovely afternoon, Mr Patterson. Is this you just getting home for lunch?’

‘Yes, Mr Davidson, I’m afraid so.’ Mr Patterson loathed himself for his newly arranged smile and simpering tone. He came to a halt beside the old man with the cherub’s face and the silver hairs curling from his nostrils telling everyone that he was a man of God but a hard man too, a man one could deal with realistically.

‘And how is the sugar trade, Mr Patterson? Are you still corrupting our youth with your tooth-rot?’ There was a smile on the old man’s face, but his gaze was honest enough. Mr Patterson laughed uneasily.

‘Everyone has their little sin, Mr Davidson. I’m not saying that sweets aren’t bad for you, but there are other pleasures a lot worse.’ The minister laughed heartily.

‘True, very true, but it’s a weak defence if defence it is. I would agree that there are degrees of temptation. I am often tempted by a dram now and then, but would certainly consider the yielding to such as something less heinous than being tempted to commit a crime and carrying through the act. But look at it another way. You are selling something you know to be bad...’

And so are you, old man, thought Mr Patterson in an evil moment, so are you.

‘... so does that make you the better man?’ Mr Patterson, lost in his thoughts, had missed some part of the minister’s argument vital to its understanding. He smiled and shook his head.

‘You’ve got me beat there, Mr Davidson. What do you want me to do? Sell my livelihood?’ The minister laughed and shook his head. He took George Patterson’s hand and patted it lightly. His clasp was soft and dry.

‘Indeed no, George, I was only joking with you. You better away and get your lunch now. Don’t be disheartened by the jabberings of an old man. Will we see you in church again soon?’ The minister’s eyes suddenly stopped their survey of the houses around them and concentrated themselves on those of Mr Patterson, who felt the blood tingling responsively in his cheeks.

‘Yes indeed,’ he said as keenly as he could, ‘probably this weekend in fact. I’ve been rather busy, you see...’ This time the minister patted his shoulder.

‘No need for excuses, George. Only too glad to have you come when you can manage. I look forward to seeing you. Maybe I’ll drop in for some of your pandrops sometime.’

‘Please do,’ said Mr Patterson, walking away. Old bugger, he thought to himself. He’ll want them on the house if he does. Still, the old minister wasn’t a bad sort. Quite wicked in his own way, always berating people for their occupations or preoccupations or sins of indulgence. He was in a right nest of vipers here. Carsden stank of corruption. Mr Patterson remembered it as it had been, or at least had seemed, when he had been young. Times had been hard, yes, but the people had been honest and generous. People, after all, were all that towns had going for them. Mr Patterson had fallen as far as anyone, and further than many. No one knew the sins he had committed. People thought him the salt of the earth. He smiled bitterly as he walked the rest of the way home. If only he could die. He could not commit suicide: he was too much of a coward for that. He wanted needed — to die naturally, but quickly. Let him die quickly.

The very next morning, Mr Patterson learned from his first customer that the old minister had died in his sleep. He shook his head in disbelief. So this was the world. The bitter irony overtook any idea of immediate mourning. It was as if a malevolent creator had decided to show him something of its truly impersonal power. He stood behind the old wooden counter all day and heard nothing but good spoken of the man. He dipped his hand into many glass jars of coloured sweets and guiltily filled many paper bags. No one bought pandrops. Pandrops were for the kirk on a Sunday.

Sandy came in at four o’clock for a haircut. Mr Patterson was silent much of the time, forgetting about the sweets he had promised the boy. He made a good job of his fringe, however. Afterwards, Sandy asked for a quarter of pandrops for his mother. Mr Patterson stared hard at him. It was like staring at his own conscience magnified many times. He should have said something more to the old man. Too late now, too late. He should have said much, much more to the old minister. He gave Sandy the mints and would not take the proffered money.

7

For over a week he had not seen her. It was like something gnawing inside his stomach. He thought that he might have an ulcer or something, but did nothing about it, afraid that it would be true. He sat in his bedroom much of the time and scribbled on pieces of paper and in old jotters. He read a lot of books from the library. When his mother told him off mildly for sitting indoors when it was so warm outside, he would silently pick up his books and switch off his record player and trot downstairs. He would sit sullenly on the doorstep with a book held close to his face while his mother watched his protest in mounting frustration. He was becoming a zombie to her. She was worried, naturally, but could think of no way to ask him what the trouble was without him clamming up even more than he already had. She again wished that her mother was alive. She wished that she herself had been a stronger mother when Sandy was growing up. She wished a lot of things. Then she would get on with her housework.

Sandy sat on the step. He boiled like an egg in a simmering pan. It was an unpleasant heat. It made him tired and unable to think. He had to squint at his book because of the sun, and that gave him a headache. He could not win. He was reading a quite funny American novel. He guffawed at a few of the jokes. That was as far as a laugh could force itself from his body. He thought about Rian. He fantasised about her, and always in his fantasies she was not the Rian he knew but some wilder, more animal figure. She bit and scratched and connived. Robbie looked over her shoulder into Sandy’s face as Sandy pulled her to the ground and she laughed. These images scared him, and made him uneasy about the true relationship between sister and brother (he remembered the rumours about his own mother and her brother), but at the same time he was gloriously in love with the new version of Rian, a girl who would know things he needed to know and who would teach him the rules of new games. She pulled on his hair as she twisted his face towards hers. He champed like a tethered horse to go to the mansion. His exams had kept him away at first, and then he had been made to visit an ill and very old grandaunt in Leven. He might have gone today, but something held him back — the self-imposed tether. Tomorrow he was going to Kirkcaldy on the expedition planned a few days ago. He had taken some money out of his small bank account for that.

His mother brought him a glass of lemonade, though he had not asked for it. She placed it on the doorstep, while his body tensed.

‘There you are,’ she said. He stared at his book. He thought for a second of ignoring the glass, of not drinking it. She was always doing things like that for him. Then he gave in.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said, listening to the ice-cubes tinkling as he lifted the glass. His mother was smiling as she stepped back into the kitchen. She thought that perhaps a small victory had been won.

Sandy sipped the sweet drink and felt his teeth going grainy immediately. Plaque, that was the enemy. He did not want false teeth. He tried drinking without letting the liquid linger in his mouth, and coughed when some fizz went up his nose. He examined his breath by breathing out through his mouth and then in through his nose very quickly. His breath did not smell too bad. He had some spots, though. He would have to start shaving soon, and then his spots would get worse. Thankfully, he did not have any trouble with his hair. It was dry and thick. It never ran to grease like Colin’s or Belly Martin’s, which was a miracle considering the amount of chips he ate. He had read in a girls’ magazine at school about the causes of acne: fatty substances, sweets, not washing properly. The same things did for the hair too, apparently. He washed often, yet whenever he scratched with his fingernails across his face he would find grey grime beneath the nails. This he would scrape out with the edge of a tooth and spit on to the ground. He would look in the mirror. He would look sparkling clean. He would scrape his nose with a fingernail. There would be dirt beneath the nail again. It astonished him. How did Rian wash? Did she ever? She did not smell, except for the sweetish smell of grass, so he supposed that she did. Perhaps down at the edge of the river, or from the stand-pipe at the golf course. Yes, that seemed obvious. Then it struck him: she must wash either early in the morning or else late at night so as not to be seen. Someone hiding in the gorse could watch her, could meet her.

Could watch her washing.

Another fantasy revolved in the hot sun, and in it Rian was the Rian he hoped for, and Robbie was nowhere to be seen. He left his book and his lemonade and returned to his room.

Mary lifted a stool out of the kitchen and on to the doorstep. She flopped down on it and raised her head towards the sun. She closed her eyes and felt the rays on her skin, burning and tingling and soothing. She opened her eyes and looked at the garden. It was in need of some work. She would ask Sandy, but not now, would tempt him with a pound. She used to give him threepence to go to the corner shop. That was a while ago now. Her mother had tempted him with biscuits and bread and butter and gooey strawberry jam. Times changed. It was a phrase overused but true. Times changed and people changed with them. She could have done with a man around the place when Sandy was younger, someone who would have taken him fishing or for long walks. Too late for that now. Now she needed a man for herself, alone as she would be in a year or two. It frightened her, but if Andy stayed it would be fine. It would be heaven. Tom was right: she needed a good man and she wasn’t so old. The older you got the more you needed them in some respects. She smiled but the smile quickly disappeared, like a young animal in strange territory. Poor old Mr Davidson had died, and him such a fit-looking man usually. He had been good to her, had listened to her in the very worst times. He had given her the Church as a solid rock of fresh life, and she had clung to it ever since with the frantic scratching fingers of one who is near to losing her balance and falling off. To hell with the sneering congregation. She spoke to her God.

The Church mixed uneasily with some of the ideas handed down to her by her mother and her mother’s mother, but she held both sets of beliefs dearly and would part with neither. Sandy had no religious sense at all. It saddened her. He had reneged on going to church when he was twelve and had not gone since except to weddings and funerals. When Mary looked around her on a Sunday she could see why. The pews were quarter full, and then with predominantly elderly people: the women in their ageing Sunday coats and 1950s hats; the men mouthing the hymns while their wives sang shakily. It was a drab spectacle. There were only a few young people dotted around. The young men sang lustily. Their cheeks were ruddy with righteousness. Some of them would glance at her bitterly. Now Mr Davidson was dead. Who would replace him? Someone younger, certainly, and someone who, being young, would please the older churchgoers less. If the congregation grew any smaller it would be embarrassing.

It was a good day for a walk, but Mary knew that Sandy would not go with her, and a walk by herself was a lonely thing. Andy had promised to drop by in the afternoon, school drawing to a close for the summer, and take her out. Perhaps he could be persuaded to go walking. They would have to drive some distance from the town before it would be possible for them to walk together without embarrassment, without the whispers and stares from the women in their long old-fashioned coats, bags hanging heavily from their arms. They would have to drive into the country, way out by Kinross. A car made all things possible, even escape. She would take a bath after lunch in case she had been sweating. The lavatory flushed upstairs. The pipes gurgled and the liquid ran into the underground system of sewers. There were countries worse than Scotland. If only lives could be made better through decent plumbing and housing. But life wasn’t quite that simple, nor was it as concrete. Dig beneath the surface and you would not find a system of pipes and taps to be switched on and off; you would find, rather, wild depths, guilty feelings, an ever-changing geography. Mary shivered a little as a wind blew across her from the garden. Goosebumps appeared on her bare arms. She heard Sandy padding about upstairs and decided to go in herself.

‘What do you fancy for lunch, Sandy? There’s some cold meat and salad. Is that okay?’ This she shouted from the bottom of the stairwell. She heard his reply from the distance of his room.

‘Fine, Mum. Whatever you like.’ She knew from the tone that he felt she was intruding again, calling on him merely as a pretext to find out what he was up to. She did not care what he was up to.

‘I’ll leave everything on the table then, and you can help yourself when you feel hungry.’ She waited. ‘Okay?’

‘Fine, Mum.’

If only she could understand him. If only he would open himself to her. Tom said in his letters that it was an adolescent thing. Everybody went through it. But who was Tom to know about that? He had never had to bring up a child.

‘Have you written that letter to Uncle Tom yet, Sandy?’

‘Not yet,’ he answered impatiently. ‘I’ll do it this afternoon.’ Sandy had decided that he did not want to go to Canada, not this year. His mother had been mildly surprised by his rapid, unshakeable decision. ‘Maybe next year,’ he had said at the dinner table that evening. She had not pressed him for a reason, but he had given her one anyway. ‘My pals,’ he had said, ‘this is maybe my last chance to see them before they all go off to get jobs and get married. They’re all talking about moving away, so I’d like to spend the summer just seeing them.’ His mother had nodded in silence and sipped her tea. Rian, he had been thinking, I’m not giving up Rian. Not when I can feel that she’s so close. Maybe one day he could take her to Canada. Besides, it was true that he wanted to see Mark, Clark and Colin as much as possible. They had been good friends, and they would soon be leaving. The summer holiday promised lots of adventures together. Kirkcaldy. Edinburgh. Football. Fishing. Rian. It would be a great summer.

Sandy sat in his bedroom and thought about the minister dying and whether there was a God or not. He thought that it must be good to die believing that there was something after death. To have no belief was as scary a thing as he could think of. He considered the possibility of an afterlife. The idea of Heaven, of pearly gates and angels with harps, was unthinkable. But then what if that idea were merely a simplification, an analogy, because the idea of an afterlife proper was too difficult to explain? That might make sense. Sandy did not want to die, but death was around him at every moment. A vague friend had died in a car crash ten months before. Sometimes his sides ached for no reason and he lay in bed thinking that he was about to die. He did not want to go to church and pray and sing hymns, but it would be good to believe in life after death, life of any kind. The old minister had seemed a happy man. He had spoken with Sandy whenever he had met him. He had shaken his hand in a firm, dry grip, had patted his shoulder like Mr Patterson and had offered words of advice on things Sandy at the time had thought the man could know nothing of, like growing up, and being a scapegoat, and the like. Yet his smile had always been sincere and only a little patronising. What if he had known things Sandy had not? What if he knew rather than simply believed? How could Sandy find out? There was no way. The old minister was dead. Then he had an idea. He knelt beside his bed, having first wedged a chair against the bedroom door, and began to whisper.

‘Oh Lord, if there is an afterlife, if there is something after we die, then let the minister, Mr Davidson, talk to me. Let him come to me when I’m dreaming, or better still while I’m wide awake, and let him show me that there’s an afterlife. If you do this, God, then I will believe in you and will go to church with my mother and suchlike. Amen.’ He opened his eyes. He was a sinner, so maybe nothing would happen. But then, he thought, all the more reason for God to want to save him.

He would not visit Rian that evening and so would show his sincerity to any God that might be around. He reached under his bed, beneath the carpet, and pulled out one of his small collection of sex magazines. Deliberately, he tore it in half, then in half again. He rose from his floor and gazed out of the window. He saw a car pass. He saw a lamp-post. He saw the wasteland that stretched to the site of the old mine. He saw nothing that resembled God, and nothing that looked as if any hand of God had ever passed over it. He frowned. Was it all a trick? Should he go to the mansion anyway? No, he would stay put. He wondered if his mother would like to go for a walk up Craigie Hill. He left his room and started downstairs.

8

The alarm woke Sandy at seven thirty the next morning. He thrust a hand from beneath the bedclothes and brought the clock into bed with him, fumbling to switch the bloody thing off. He stuffed it under his pillow and let it run down to a mechanical nothingness, then he drifted back into his dream. It was not a dream about Mr Davidson. It was a dream about Rian, a lengthy narrative dream. He was nearly sound asleep when he realised that this was the day they were all going to Kirkcaldy. He threw back the covers and, peeling open his eyes, swivelled out of bed.

Andy Wallace washed his car. His neighbours were just beginning to leave their homes for Saturday shopping trips. The sun was cool, but the sky promised a good day. Andy soaped the car’s roof. Blimps of paint showed here and there where the rust was aching to break through. The car was a wreck, but it was all he could afford. If he coaxed it, and spoke nicely to it, it usually choked itself into some kind of life. His next-door neighbour smiled as she passed, an empty canvas shopping-bag tied to each of her hands. Her small son walked disconsolately a few feet behind her.

‘But me want sweeties,’ he moaned.

‘I know what you’ll get,’ his mother warned.

Andy studied her back. She was young, still in her twenties, and her body was in good health. But, like all women in Carsden it seemed, her voice was coarse and she had no dress sense. Her jeans were tight, but not tight enough in the right places, and her high-heeled shoes made her wobble along the pavement. Her son appeared to be wearing grubby cast-offs. His shoes scraped the ground like flints. Andy watched the boy watching him, and turned his attention back to the car. Her husband was a television engineer. He was a gruff young man whose voice was often raised when at home. Andy hated using his own living room because of the noise from his neighbours’. Their television set was kept loud, lifting any conversation with it. The transistor radio, the vacuum-cleaner, the wails of the child. Andy preferred to use the small spare bedroom which he had turned into a sort of comfortable working office. A lot of his books were kept there, as were desk, chair, typewriter, and two extra speakers connected to the stereo in the living room. He was planning to decorate the house during the long holiday. Not that it looked bad as it stood, but there was something queasy about living with someone else’s colour scheme.

The house itself had been a snip at twelve thou, the building society pleased to lend him the necessary money, but it had been a mistake. He should have moved somewhere with a bit of privacy, somewhere out in the country. Still, you took jobs where you could find them, and ditto houses. This was the first house that he had actually owned. During his time at university he had stayed in rented flats and bedsits, and in his last school he had lived in a horrendous bed-and-breakfast establishment with no freedom whatsoever, his landlady being one of those Sunday spinsters who would be found loitering outside his room and would go into the bathroom after him to check for any misdemeanour. Andy had often considered leaving something nasty for her to find, but she had been a good soul in some respects, always giving him a special breakfast, and did not warrant such mischief. At a party once, when he had been an undergraduate, some student vets from Edinburgh had arrived with a sack. Later, a female scream from the bathroom had rung out. The stiffened corpse of an Alsatian dog was found sitting in the bath, a cigarette dangling from its mouth, reeking of formaldehyde. It had been a good joke for those drunk enough to appreciate it at the time, but then it had not been Andy’s bathroom.

Those had been good days, dead dogs aside. Only thirty now, he was feeling that it was downhill all the way nevertheless. Mary brightened his life to an extent, but sometimes, when soulful, he would think that he was getting old and had nothing before him but the schoolteacher’s life of Sisyphus. He watched the process unfold before him. When given a class of thirteen-year-olds, fresh enough from primary school, there was still a spark there, both of creative drive and of trust. As the years grew with them, however, the mistrust formed, the interest died, and the values — debilitating homely values — of the parents and elders took over, dragging them down into safe mediocrity. He saw some of them occasionally after they had finished with their schooling. Other teachers, friends, said that it was the mark of a good teacher that his or her kids kept coming back for a chat. If that were true, then he was a good teacher. He could certainly feel the distaste of some of the school’s older, disciplinarian teachers towards him.

‘It doesn’t pay, Mr Wallace, to become too familiar with the children, or at least to be seen to be familiar with them. It causes unrest, a breaking down of the authority by which we keep them in check.’ That from the assistant headmaster, a stocky, balding man who had won some kind of medal in the Second World War and wore it to church on Sundays and who terrorised the children by showing them what he could do with his tawse to a stick of chalk. It was pathetic. It was worse than that. Authority could have no hold over ninety per cent of the kids. With the belt now banned, the disciplinarians saw chaos descending and had nothing to fall back on, too late to make friends with their pupils. The pupils these days were definitely out to break weak teachers. It was a war, but one which could be won, to a large extent, through arbitration. There had to be talking. He was not like George McNair, the History master, who challenged unruly pupils to fights after school on the playing field behind the main building. That was one way to earn respect, but what price failure? One day McNair would be beaten in one of his bouts. Where would he stand then? He had put himself up against a wall in an alley of his own making.

Andy bent down to wash the hubcaps and felt his stomach straining over his waistband. He did little exercise, though he helped out during football practice sometimes. This afternoon Mary and he might go for a drive, then a walk, depending on the weather. God, he wanted her. He wanted her badly. There had not been a woman in his life for many months. He needed more from Mary than her company and conversation. He needed to have her silver-black hair loose and hanging across his bared chest. He knew that there were real complications. It was one thing to see a pupil’s mother, though even that was fraught, but to be her lover... Ah, if only Sandy were leaving school at summer. If only there wasn’t the wait till Christmas. Still, now that the boy had finished with exams there could be no more accusations of grade-rigging. At least no one could threaten Andy’s relationship with Mary via that device. All the same, it was a problem until Christmas.

The sun pressed its weight upon him. He squinted up into the sky. It was as blue as a sky could be, bluer than the sea outside Kirkcaldy. He smiled into it and hoped that it was a good omen. He straightened up and cracked his spine. He was way out of condition. He studied the house, his house.

There were no chimneys on the houses in this estate. They looked like rows of Lego buildings. He was cleaning his car in Legoland on a sunny Saturday morning. He shook his head and chuckled. He was not going to let anything get him down today. Not anything.

When the bus pulled away, its new cargo rattled their way up the winding stairwell and sauntered to the very back of the upper deck. They slumped into their seats and turned their heads to watch Main Street disappear behind them. Old people, staggering under the weight of bags, looked distantly at the roaring vehicle. Children stared up at the upper deck. The boys made gestures from the window. They were going to Kirkcaldy for the day. They were the most important people in the world.

Sandy, though he would not let it be known, was not keen on going upstairs. For one thing, all the smokers were there, and the smell of cigarettes made him queasy. For another thing, he could not be sure what gangs would board the bus between Carsden and Kirkcaldy to challenge his right to be sitting at the very back of the bus. He kept one hand in the pocket which contained his money. He examined the dying and unhealthy faces around him, faces which stared from the grimy windows as if fixed to a television screen. These people were lost, as hollow as the most brittle seashells. Sandy thought of days when he had been taken to Kirkcaldy beach by his grandmother. They might go there today, but it would be in a different guise. Today he was part of a group, a gang. He would walk differently and talk differently and act altogether differently. Walking to the bus stop, they had fed from each other as if studying older men. They aped those they wished to be. They strained towards manhood like little waggy-tailed dogs towards bigger bitches in heat. Sandy smiled wickedly.

He wanted to escape all of this, yet he did not even know what “this” was.

Mark had brought along ten cigarettes. He offered them round as if they were cigars at his daughter’s wedding. Sandy couldn’t not take one. He lit it, but sucked on the cylinder only feebly, exhaling without really having inhaled in the first place. Still his mouth tasted horrible. His stomach began to do its little travelling dance. It was always worst on buses. When he was a child his grandmother used to stand with him at the door of any bus he travelled on, telling him that he would not be sick, and he never was.

He examined the faces along the edge of the bus, studying their reflections in the glass. The sun streamed in, and the tiny openings of the windows caused the passengers to broil. One old man looked on to the countryside as if surprised by it. His head shook like a clockwork toy. Sandy thought to himself that this man must have seen a lot of things — the war, the hunger of the Twenties and Thirties, death, decay, a quickly changing world. What good had it done him? He looked as if he might die at any moment, not having comprehended half of what he had seen in his life. Waste. That was the keyword. Perhaps Sandy would write a story about it all when he returned home. It seemed an important enough thing to write about. He wrote a lot of stories and poems in his room.

He tossed the stub of cigarette on to the dirty floor and crushed it underfoot. The others puffed slowly, drawing in the smoke as if it were life, holding it until their lungs demanded new oxygen, exhaling slowly, their eyes intent on the stream of blue. They were dragons. That was why they smoked. Sandy smiled again. Colin’s mouth had broken out. Severe red patches of acne curved around his lips and chin. A few of the lumps had yellow heads. It was disgusting. Sandy had had the occasional spot, but the lotions his mother now bought for him ensured that he was not, as she had put it, scarred for life. He fingered his face now. He wet the tip of one fingernail and scratched around his nose. He examined the fingernail. A tiny rind of grey was trapped beneath it. He scooped it out with another nail and flicked it on to the floor. Clark and Mark, who sat between Colin and Sandy, discussed records they might buy. There seemed so many. Mark kept the cigarette packet on his lap, as if showing it off to anyone who cared to look. He shook the matchbox against his ear and hummed a pop song to its rhythm. Sandy looked at him and saw that Colin was looking too. They smiled at each other, and Colin put his finger to his skull. Sandy nodded.

They were emerging from the brief countryside now, and approaching the new housing estates which marked the extent to which Kirkcaldy was growing. In a few years, Sandy saw, Carsden would be merely a part of Kirkcaldy, rather than being, as his Geography teacher had put it, a dormitory town. The old man with the nodding head looked at all the white houses where fields had once been. His lips puckered into a wet, creased O. He pointed towards the houses. He was mumbling to himself, ignored by everyone. Sandy knew that people were naive. They would not accept what was happening in the world. Yet, in a way, they were responsible. No, that was not correct. People elsewhere, far, far away from Carsden and these new houses, were to blame. They it was who pushed the town’s boundary out a few more feet. They were to blame, yet Sandy did not know even who “they” were.

He nodded his head. He would be old himself one day, but he would not be as stupid as the old man in front of him. He watched from his window as Kirkcaldy grew before him, exhibiting itself to him proudly. It seemed at once malevolent and strange. There were places here in which to get hopelessly lost. There were gangs here more vicious than any in Carsden. There were tower-blocks and a dark, foaming sea and thousands of people, people whose home he was now invading. Having passed the Georgian houses which sat uneasily around the postwar shopping centre, from the top deck of the bus Sandy could see the sea, the North Sea, in its dark grey covering. Even today, with the sun high above it, the sea remained a grizzled colour of the past. The occupants of the bus were excited now. The old people fretted to get their bags ready, keen to be seen not to be dilatory. Young families shouted at one another. The husband would clasp his cigarette between his teeth and wrestle with the youngest child while the mother pushed around the other children and caused them to scream harder. Mark and Clark hovered above their seats, squinting towards the shops and the Saturday crowd.

‘What’s the plan then?’ asked Colin, sensibly.

‘Record shops,’ said Clark.

‘And the pub,’ said Mark.

They all looked at Sandy for his suggestion. He was still horrified by the squabble in front of him. The old man was tottering towards the stairs. What if the bus toppled over? Then all these people would fall over one another, smothering in a jellied mass of flailing and crying. Horrible. He would smash the back window quickly and crawl out. He would bring help. He looked towards his expectant friends.

‘What’s it to be then, Sandy?’

‘The sea,’ he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. ‘The sea.’

They laughed and slapped him and thought that he was joking.

Andy Wallace revved the car once, turned off the ignition, leapt out, and opened the squeaking gate to Mary Miller’s house. He had brought along a travelling rug, he told her, in case they took a picnic with them. Mary thought it a good idea. She found some meat spread and cheese and made up some sandwiches while Andy fingered the many ornaments in the living room. Most of these ornaments were either Mary’s mother’s or else her grandmother’s. What others there were had been bought for Mary’s birthdays and Christmases by Sandy when a small boy. Andy loathed the tiny ornaments, mostly cheap reproductions, which were to be found crammed into many of the houses, working-class and middle-class, in this part of Fife. He felt they were like useless fancy goods shops — the garish reminders of holidays and the stupid little animals were everywhere. They were part of the sham life that had nothing to do with the realities of the situation. Still, he quite liked Mary’s ornaments: for one thing they were Mary’s, and for another they were mostly rare, original pieces (apart from Sandy’s additions, which were easily discerned). They were also tasteful. He played with a paperweight. It was heavy, and made a satisfying slap in his palm when he tossed it and caught it. This was his kind of ornament.

Mary put everything in a cake tin: sandwiches already wrapped, some biscuits, two hard-boiled eggs, napkins, salt, pepper, a knife. She filled a flask with coffee and milk. Andy came through as she was pouring the water in, thinking to herself of the times when she had, as a youngster, filled her hot-water bottle on cold nights, the task overseen by her mother. Andy said that he had a bottle of wine in his car. Mary brought two glasses out of a cupboard and wiped them. Did he have a corkscrew? He did. She pecked his cheek. He informed her that he also had two crystal glasses in the car. They both smiled. He continued to smile. After a picnic and some wine, lying on a tartan rug in some distant, deserted field, who could refuse him his request?

Mark laughed. He had stolen some cut-price singles from the counter of a small record shop and had not been caught. He fanned them out and laughed. The others smiled nervously. Sandy dared to look behind them as they walked, just to make sure. They would try to get into the afternoon’s X-certificate offering at the ABC, but first they would eat pie and chips from a baker’s shop, then would have a quick pint each at the Harbour Tavern. They were walking now from one end of the High Street to the other, dodging the frazzled shoppers. They glowered at other gangs of four or less, who looked just like them. They grinned at girls their age in tight jeans and budding T-shirts. Clark whistled loudly through the window of a shop to the young girl behind the counter therein. Sandy sang a pop song, allowing his voice to become louder than usual. The shoppers looked at him askance, and he hardly even blushed. They were having a good afternoon. It was Saturday. It was being alive.

When they reached the Harbour Tavern, having noisily consumed their greasy lunch while taking a slight detour down to the esplanade, Colin was the brave one who went through the chipped wooden door first and into the smoke and beer and the noise of the television. Sandy held back. He had seen something. Near the Harbour Tavern, on the other side of the road, was a snooker hall above an amusement arcade. Robbie was speaking to Rian outside the entrance to the snooker hall. It was the first time, Sandy realised, that he had seen either of them outside of the grounds of the mansion. They looked strange, incongruous, as though something only dreamt had suddenly appeared in real life. Sandy watched as Robbie entered the hall, cue in a bashed case tucked beneath his arm. Rian looked at her feet, then sat on the front step of the hall. She rested her head on her hands and watched people walking past eating chips and other vinegary foods. Sandy realised that she was hungry. He felt guilty. His heart pounded. The money felt heavy in his pocket. Yet he did not want his friends to know about Rian. Hearing them call from inside, he pushed open the door. Rian looked across towards him, and he quickly closed the door behind him.

Four men played pool in the middle of the pub and swore at each other. They were vivacious, and they were practically the only people in the bar. A jukebox fought with the volume of the television, from where a racing commentator tipped his hat towards Sandy and murmured something about the afternoon’s racing. Sandy looked for a clock. It was one twenty. His friends were being served with beer at the bar. The barman was courteous, knowing that they were all underage. They walked timidly, but pleased, with their drinks over to a corner table. Colin picked up a newspaper lying there and began to read nonchalantly. Mark and Clark gulped their drinks greedily and looked about them, examining the bar’s interior like pioneers in a new continent. Sandy, last served, was wondering what to do. He had not seen Rian for some time. He wanted to see her, especially when Robbie was elsewhere, but how could he get away from his friends? He sat down at the table. It had not been wiped recently, if at all in living memory. Rings cut into more rings, the whole becoming a complex, interlinked artwork. Sandy made several more marks with the bottom of his own glass. His mother, when baking, cut out circles of pastry with the rim of a cup. He ran his finger around the rim of his cold, wet glass. Mark and Clark spoke in hushed, respectful tones. They watched the men playing pool, but not too closely.

‘The film starts in twenty minutes,’ said Sandy, having taken a long draw on his drink and consequently feeling gassy and sick. ‘There’s something I really have to do before then. I’ll leave you here and meet you at the ABC. Is that okay?’ They looked at him.

‘Scaredy-cat,’ said Clark.

Colin rubbed at his face, touching lightly the landscape of acne around his mouth.

‘Fine then,’ he said, reaching the same hand for his drink. ‘See you.’

‘Who wants this?’ said Sandy, pointing to his glass as he rose. There were three takers. He walked back into piercing daylight and fresh air. She had flown from her perch. Shit. He crossed the road quickly, hearing change jangling in his pocket. Perhaps she had gone off begging for money for food. He had money he could give her. He opened the door of the snooker hall, climbed the stairs, and stared through the glass into the hall itself. There was Robbie, playing by himself and cursing a bad shot, then looking slyly around at the other players. There was no sign of Rian. Sandy ran back down the stairs two at a time and opened the door. He looked left and right. There were so many people milling around, presenting him with a constantly slow-moving obstacle. He walked back along the High Street, looking in shops and crossing the road often to maximise his search. People were already queuing for the film. He did not have much time. Where was she? He remembered her kisses. He could hardly recall her face, but he knew her kisses as he had once known his mother’s nipple. Both were sustaining forces. He clung to images of Rian and felt his shirt sticking to his back as he ran.

At the other end of the High Street he cursed the emptiness of his search. He decided to cut down on to the esplanade. Yes, if she were waiting for Robbie that would be as nice a place to wait as any. He found a narrow close between two shops and began to hurry down it, realising almost immediately that, as if in a dream, Rian was walking towards him from a long way away, her eyes on the ground, her legs weary. A man was walking the other way, down towards the esplanade. Sandy stopped. Rian looked up. Her face was red, her mouth redder than the rest. She was flustered by his sudden appearance, as he was by hers. They stood some feet apart, Sandy dripping sweat and breathing heavily.

‘Rian?’ he said, taking a step closer. Then he looked past her to where the man had been. ‘What are you doing?’ She became a bad actress.

‘Oh, I’ve just been walking. Waiting for Robbie. He’s playing snooker. Losing money probably. I’m just...’ She smiled at him. Her eyes were slightly wet, shell-like, as if the tide had touched them some time before. ‘Let’s walk,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘What are you doing here? You’ve been running. Did I see you going into a pub near the snooker hall?’ She moved him away with her towards the High Street. Sandy panicked. He did not want to go back up there, back where all the people, all the potential enemies were, where his friends might see him with her. He tugged her arm.

‘No,’ he said, ‘this way,’ and she, compliant, let herself be taken down to the sea.

They sat on a hillside, sheltered by a boulder which made an excellent windbreak, and talked and laughed and ate and drank. Mary felt happier than she had done in some time. She looked at her “young man”, as she called him, and was happy. He was the perfect gentleman. He served the wine and told her funny stories about school. He acted one of them out for her. She choked on her drink and got hiccups which took some time to dispel. The wine was finished. He let her in on a little secret. He had another bottle in the car. He winked and trotted downhill to fetch it. Mary stifled her hiccups and tried to think straight. She was getting drunk. She focused on the landscape. From her position on the side of a sloping hill she could see Loch Leven in the distance. Tiny boats bobbed on the still surface of the loch, doubtless fishing. Kinross was even further away. They were going to Kinross for an evening meal, though she had said nothing to Sandy about being back late. Andy had told her that she needed to enjoy herself for a change. Rashly, she had agreed with him. She heard him singing as he clambered back towards her, his eyes alight and a bottle swinging from one hand.

They ate bananas and grapes while they sat on the seawall. The tide was out. An ominous trawler sat a good way out in the steel-coloured water. Sandy wanted to ask her about the man, but could not force himself to speak the words. They spoke instead of more banal matters. Her voice was a soft, living thing, something that might be found on a beach as the tide was turning. Something no one would take home with them because to do so would be to destroy it for ever. She spoke to him of her youth and her childhood and the few remembrances she had of when she had still been a baby. Sandy could remember nothing as far back as that. Ah, she told him, it was a special gift. She could remember her aunt lifting her to her breast and holding her face to that suffocating dull thing for a long time, longer than a feeding time. It might have been days. Sandy blushed at this image. He looked at her casually, but her face was innocence. She spoke on. The first time she had seen Robbie drunk. The first time she had been sent to beg for money. The time they had moved to the mansion. All the times. The sun was coming down low over them, curving down from its once great height until it swathed them in gold. Sandy thought that it must be getting late. Finally Rian coughed and said, ‘Sandy, I’ve got to tell you. Promise you won’t say anything. Promise.’ Her insistent eyes made him nod his head. She lowered her eyes then and spoke on, while gulls played on the seashore and a small boy poked with a stick at shadowy things by the waterline.

‘I told you that you must trust me and not believe anything Robbie tells you. You’ve got to believe what I’m telling you now. Robbie is fed up with me. He’s fed up of having to go out begging. He knows that it’s me that brings in the money anyway. He’s started to sell me, Sandy.’ Her voice faded to nothing for a second. She coughed again, swallowed, and continued. ‘I’ve got to do things for money, you know, with men. Nothing really serious. But it’s horrible.’ Her voice became a whisper, like a ghost in his burning ear. ‘Robbie makes me give him the money. It saves him having to do any work himself, you see. That man in the alley... You almost... Well, you know.’

I don’t really know, Rian, he wanted to say. Tell me. Tell me. He was ashamed of his grown erection, but there was disgust in his heart. Beer and pie and fruit churned uneasily in his stomach.

‘It’s not anything too serious yet, but I’m afraid. We had to leave the camp, you know. It was because our Auntie Kitty wanted to use me for much the same thing, I think. I’m not sure now. But Robbie still goes to see her. I think she’s poisoned his mind against me. Oh, Sandy...’ Tears glimmered in her lashes, but would not fall. ‘I don’t know what to do. Robbie’s all I’ve got. Don’t tell him I told you. Please don’t. But I had to tell you. I had to. I love you, Sandy.’ She looked at him and sniffled.

Sandy was staring hard at the beach where two gulls fought over a scrap of food. He was thinking back to his evenings in the mansion. It did not seem to fit. Hadn’t Robbie been the one who looked scared? Hadn’t Rian seemed the strong one? Robbie had been quite good to him, had said things. He could not think straight. Sandy thought that it must be after five. The film would be coming out. He had to catch the bus. His mother. His friends. What about Robbie?

‘What about Robbie?’ he said.

‘What time is it?’ she asked. He shrugged his shoulders. Easily, she slid from the sea-wall and walked coyly over to a strolling man, who told her the time with a leer. Sandy examined her, this girlfriend of his. He realised that he had not the power to make her truly his, that any decision would be hers and hers alone. He shrugged off the knowledge, but felt wounded by it all the same.

‘It’s just five o’clock,’ she said. ‘I suppose I should go and get Robbie.’

They walked along the esplanade together, their bodies about a foot apart, their arms dangling close to each other.

They spoke little. He left her near the snooker hall and walked back along the esplanade towards the bus stop. He went into an amusement arcade and was asked by the proprietor if he could prove his age.

‘I’m just past eighteen,’ he protested.

‘Well, you don’t look it, son. If you don’t have any means of proving your age then you’ll have to go.’

‘But I got served at the Harbour Tavern!’

He found himself astonished and back on the pavement. Seagulls laughed overhead. He glared at them as they swerved high in their inviolable space. He would build wings and swoop up beside them, grabbing with nimble hands and throttling them into his sack. Nobody would laugh at him then.

Colin, Clark and Mark were unmistakable, even against the low and orange sun. They were coming down from the High Street like spent gunslingers. Sandy walked towards them.

‘Hello, Sandy. What was the film like?’ asked Colin before Sandy could ask him the same question. ‘Did you get in?’ It took a second for the truth to dawn on Sandy.

‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘Where were you lot?’

‘We didn’t get in. Not old enough,’ said Colin, while Mark and Clark asked Sandy for details. The four young boys, nearly men but not quite accepted as such, walked with hands in pockets towards a revving bus, Sandy lying to his friends gloriously about a film he had just not seen.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary. She was sobbing. Her blouse was disarranged. She plucked fibres of wool out of the travel-rug. Andy rubbed his hair, scratching at the scalp. He sighed.

‘No, I’m sorry, Mary,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t even have tried. I apologise. I don’t know... the wine and everything. I just felt, well, I’m sorry.’

Mary’s sobbing increased. She shook her head violently.

‘No, no, no,’ she said, ‘it’s not you. It’s me. Me. I’m to blame. But you’ve got to listen to me, Andy. I don’t want to talk about it, but you must listen.’

Andy lay back. The sun was low over the hills. They seemed so very far away from everyone and everything. Yet it had not happened. He had planned it all to perfection, but Mary had not allowed it to happen. He felt embarrassment more than anything else. He had timed everything so well. The second bottle of wine had been finished. Mary had been lying on her back with her eyes closed. A light breeze had curled around the rock, wafting over her face, drawing fine strands of silver hair across her eyes. Andy had bent low over her and kissed her neck, then her chin, then her ready mouth. He had slid down beside her and held her in his arms. Finally, and a long time later it was, she had panicked and pushed him away, gasping. She had sat upright and rigid. She had begun to weep.

Now she summoned up the courage to speak.

‘Andy,’ she said, ‘I’ve not slept with a man for over sixteen years.’ She was still pulling fibres out of the travel-rug. Andy watched her fingers as they slashed at the wool. ‘In fact, since the night... the night Sandy was... was conceived. I’ve slept with no man since that night.’ She looked up at him. Her eyes were difficult to interpret, melting yet defiant. ‘I’m frightened, that’s all. I need time. Please give me time.’ These words were evenly spaced by slight pauses, as if she were rehearsing a speech. Andy’s eyes were on hers as she spoke, but she closed her eyes suddenly as if fatigued. A single tear pushed from her eye like a chick escaping from its shell and wriggled its way down her cheek.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked softly. She shook her head. He wanted to press the point, but could not. She lay in his arms and slumbered until the sun fell away from the earth and the evening grew too cool for human sleep. It was time to return home.

9

The elderly man, hands dumped in his pockets as if stitched to the material, spat on to his favourite spot of pavement and watched the boy through slanted eyes. He had just left the bookmaker’s, having lost a couple of crucial pounds, and was now, in his eternal bitterness, confronted by the memory of his only son’s tragic death. He watched closely as the boy jauntily walked down from the direction of Cardell towards him. He curved his hands into taut fists. He was old perhaps, but there was strength in his heart for hatred, and hatred was what he felt for the boy and the whore of a witch who was his mother.

Sandy came to the low wall around one of the elderly persons’ bungalows. He hoisted himself on to it and, dangling his legs, thought about Rian and her cryptic words to him. Could he believe her? And if he did, what more was she hiding from him?

The sun was shining again, and there was even sceptical talk in the town of a drought. Sandy looked across the road to where the fruit shop sat. He had no money today for fruit. A small foreign car slowed as it near him. It stopped. The window was rolled down slowly and a voice called him over to the car. A bearded but young man craned his head out of the window as far as his seat-belt would allow. His blue eyes glistened. Sandy could not meet their intensity. He looked casually off into the distance as he crouched beside the yellow car. He saw an old man’s figure hunched outside the betting shop. He knew who that man was. His eyes found their only shelter on the mottled tarmac of the pavement.

‘Sorry,’ the man was saying, ‘but I’m trying to find St Cuthbert’s Parish Church. I think these instructions must be wrong.’ He rustled a piece of paper on which were drawn several black lines. His voice was Scottish, but never Fife. He was certainly educated. He sounded like a television presenter. ‘I’ve been there before, but I’m afraid my sense of direction must be hopeless.’ Sandy nodded and creased his brow.

‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘you’ve got to go back the way you just came, but then turn left over the bridge.’ The man nodded. He had come from the right, from central Fife, from further afield, from Edinburgh perhaps.

‘Thank you very much,’ the man said. ‘I’m to be the new minister here, God and the people willing. Can I expect to see you and your parents at church some day?’

Sandy stared at him. The cheek of the man! He was grinning through his beard, and Sandy creased his own mouth wryly.

‘Some day,’ he said. ‘Some day.’ The minister laughed. It was a great big open natural sound. Sandy liked the new minister so far. The window was rolled up. The car drew away, did a quick three-point turn, and, with a toot of its horn, a toot Sandy acknowledged with a casual wave, made off. Sandy had decided to ignore the old man. Let him stare. He had as much right to be here as anyone.

Matt Duncan spat again. He had been in this town for sixty years. Was he not the man to ask directions off? But no, someone had stopped and asked the dirty black little upstart. Well let them, and let everyone forget about his son Matty. Let the town forget that tragedy; the wickedness of the witch. He would never forget. He forged horseshoes made of fire in his heart. There could be no forgetting. His son had died by fire. Now fire burned within the father. Let them all forget. But before he, Matt Duncan, died, there would be a reckoning. He screwed up his eyes until only a thin sliver of vision remained. In this sliver, the boy, seated again on his wall, became a blurred thing, a crouched goblin, the spawn of a witch, something insignificant which Matt Duncan would have squashed with a hardened and unfeeling palm as if eradicating a sin.

There were some little notebooks in a cupboard, and inside these discoloured relics, in the tiniest, neatest script, her grandmother had written down recipes for certain herbal curatives. This, to Mary’s knowledge, was as close as her grandmother had ever come to witchcraft.

She took the biscuit tin full of notebooks to her bedroom, closed the door properly, and sank on to the bed. She had let herself down. If she was frightened by Andy, gentle Andy, then she was ruined and would be better off dead. She did not seek a poison yet, but was looking for some recipe for the relaxing of women under stress. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that the problem was deeper than could be cured by any drug, yet she had to try, had to do something. Else she would go off her head. For Sandy’s sake, she could not do that yet. Sandy. Sandy. He was her life’s work, her everything. If only he was a little older. He seemed in a limbo: still tied to school, and yet not doing anything with his remaining time there. He was at an age that was no age. She wished she could help him, but then who was she to help anybody? She leafed through the fragile books, but found the writing difficult. Photographs showed that her grandmother had been a tiny creature with a pointed, puckered face and childish hands. White strands of hair flaked loose from her bun. She looked comical, ancient and wise. Sandy used to marvel that, to an extent, he was her kin. He would study her photographs for hours when a child, asking his mother and grandmother impossible questions as to identities of people and places. The album of loose photographs was now left untouched, and only seldom added to, such as in the period immediately after she had given Sandy a camera for his eleventh birthday. Photographs were memories of happy times. Perhaps that was why the album had become so little used. Ever since... Oh, she could burst that knowledge from her mouth! It was intolerable. Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, why have you never asked who your father was? Why? And why had she kept it bottled up all those years to have doubt and rumour still cast upon her?

She put a notebook to her nose and, sniffing its powerful smell, closed her eyes to let the weeping begin. She sat there, convulsed, and allowed her tears to drop noisily into the biscuit tin, splashing the ancient mementoes within.

The Reverend Iain J. M. Darroch, MA, BD, looked around his new church. It was a dull, dreary old building, smelling of polished pews and damp rafters. The only ornamentation came from the brass rails, the stained-glass depiction of Christ, and the empty vases on the window sills. He paced the floor between the aisles. He had been driven here for a preliminary look at the place a few days before, but had not really been looking at all. He looked now, though. A regular congregation of one hundred and thirty. One hundred communicants. It was dreary, but then he liked the prospect of a challenge, after the stuffiness of the degree itself and the nightmare time he had spent in the Oxgangs district of Edinburgh as an assistant. That had been a terrible year, a year which had cast doubt on his abilities. But here he was: his first full parish, if he were accepted. Things could only get better. Mr Ancram, the elder he had met on his first visit, came into the church through the small door beside the pulpit. He greeted the young minister cordially, apologising for not having been present on his arrival. Did he wish to go across to the manse? Did he have his things with him? Iain Darroch replied that the car was pretty full, and that a furniture van would be bringing the bulk of his possessions in a few hours’ time. Mr Ancram nodded. Mr Ancram and two other members of the Vacancy Committee had been to see the Reverend Darroch preaching at Oxgangs on the previous Sunday. All three thought that there would be no problem regarding his acceptance by their congregation. The minister looked around his new church one last time. He knew that his first sermon would have to be stimulating, or else he would soon lose his parishioners and his congregation. They feared young ministers around here, the minister of nearby Cardell Parish Church had written to inform him. He hoped to meet with that minister, the Reverend Walker, soon. But first he would have to get settled in and finish the inaugural sermon, which he had been preparing for the past three days. He would lose no kirkgoer without a fight. And he would succeed, with God’s grace.

Iain Darroch had been born in the East Neuk of Fife, the nose of the Scottie dog when Fife is examined on a map. Crail had been a quiet fishing port, more a tourist spot than an actual working harbour, though once it had been industrious and important. As a child, he had been uninterested in the quayside, in the lobster creels and their dark snapping catches. He had been a bookworm; not enough in the sun, his parents contended. They might well have been right. He was now pallid and skinny. The beard had been grown to hide his sallow face, but still it could be seen in his watery eyes. His mother had been proud of his intention to become a minister. His father had been surprised, but had said little. So, without much of the congratulation which the boy had assumed would be his, he had entered the local university of St Andrews, going on to do his Divinity degree at Edinburgh. This was his end. A town in Fife, more dead than alive. Not one of the East Neuk’s prosperous and civilised villages, but a redundant mining town, a town where God was needed, but was perhaps so seemingly absent as to have been rejected altogether by the majority of the inhabitants. Yet the town boasted two kirks — his own (his own]) and Reverend Walker’s. He hoped that there would be no poaching, then rebuked himself to the cloudless sky.

‘Couldn’t have asked for a nicer day,’ said Mr Ancram.

‘Very true,’ said Iain Darroch. He crossed the busy road. ‘Where does this road go?’ he asked.

‘Kirkcaldy that way,’ said the elder, ‘and Lochgelly the other. Which way did you come in?’

‘I think I misread my directions. I came in through Lochgelly, but then ended up coming through Dundell.’

‘Yes, that’s a long road round all right. Still, it’s the only way to find your way around, isn’t it?’

‘True, very true.’ Iain Darroch was aware that, in his attempt to impress Mr Ancram, he was sounding boringly ministerial, very self-righteous. He sounded like his minister at Oxgangs. He rebuked himself again for that cruel thought. The Devil was afoot today.

The manse was a small detached house. ‘Used to belong to one of the pits,’ explained Mr Ancram. ‘One of the foremen or something used to stay in it. Belonged to St Cuthbert’s since about 1965,I suppose. A nice little place. Maybe a bit roomy for a bachelor. The Reverend Davidson and his poor wife liked it well enough.’

Ancram looked at him. It was the first hint. They liked their ministers to be married, thought Darroch. He said, ‘Yes, I saw it when I was here on Monday. Do you remember? Yes, it is a nice house.’

Mr Ancram opened the door with a small batch of keys, then handed the whole bunch to the minister. ‘All yours, Mr Darroch. You’ll find out what they’re for.’ He smiled. The minister smiled back. He felt thankful for his beard. It could be used as a defence against the outside world. He hid behind it now as one would have hidden behind a clump of gorse. He entered his home, his new home. It smelled of past occupants. He blessed it silently when he entered, hoping that the past occupants would take the hint and skedaddle with their aromas of old beds and polished dressers. He opened the doors and some of the windows that would actually open. He looked in drawers and cupboards and was pleased to find that, as promised, the house boasted sufficient linen, cutlery and crockery for his immediate needs. He brought in some of the boxes from his car, aided by Mr Ancram. From the first of these he took an electric kettle. He let the tap in the kitchen run for a full minute, then filled the kettle and plugged it in to a handy socket. From the same box he took a jar of coffee and a plastic container of dried milk. Mr Ancram came in from the toilet, shaking his hands to show, perhaps, that he had washed them.

‘A cup of coffee, Mr Ancram?’ asked Darroch, proud of his efficiency in the matter. Mr Ancram shook his head, still wafting his hands.

‘I don’t drink the stuff,’ he informed the minister. ‘It is an irritant.’ Darroch looked at the man, making a mental note that Mr Ancram had not yet invited the new minister to address him by his Christian name, whatever that might be. Mr Ancram looked at his watch. ‘Actually, I’d better be off,’ he said. ‘I’ve to pick up my wife from the supermarket in Kirkcaldy. She’s doing the month’s shopping.’ Darroch nodded, spooning one of milk and two of coffee (just to spite the man) into a cup. ‘I’m sorry I won’t be here to help you move in the rest of your belongings,’ Mr Ancram apologised. ‘I’ll drop round later and see how you’re managing. Bye now.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Ancram,’ said Darroch, ‘and thanks for your help.’ He ignored the man’s exit and rummaged in another, smaller box until he found the packet of cream biscuits. He smiled to himself. Luxury. He went through to the living room and sat in the large fireside chair. A wind was blowing through the open window. It was a good breeze. Darroch sat and drank his coffee. It was far too strong. He considered his new surroundings. It did not really matter where he was Crail, Oxgangs, Carsden — the situation and the realities were the same. The Church was in a state of acute decay, which seemed to run hand in hand with the decay of the communities. Which came first? Did either? It seemed to him that a larger, much more potent force was at work, and it was a force of evil. He could not feel God in this town. It would be his job to bring God back to these people, who were more walking shadows than real flesh and blood. The Church had become lazy. Aching gashes had opened up which now needed filling. God, let him do his job well enough. He sucked crumbs from his fingers and prayed.

Every summer, Andy Wallace began reading Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and every summer he failed to finish it. He saw no reason why this summer should be any different. He had been reading the book for about three hours when he felt his eyes and his mind falling from the page. He read two pages more, but could not, having read them, remember the slightest detail of their content. He put the book down and sat staring into space. He was thinking about Mary. He was thinking about the problem he must help her surmount. There were sex manuals in his house, little more than masturbation fodder, but he had reread them anyway. They threw little light on the dilemma. He sat in his study, which had now become almost his whole existence. He had work to do. Apart from the Cervantes book, there were exercises to be set, essays and exam papers to be marked, and the part completed novel which had been sitting untouched in a drawer for three months. It was a bad novel, amateurish, but just to finish it would be achievement enough, even if it was the worst novel in the world, read by no one save himself. He had given it none of his time since he had begun to see Mary. She was still on his mind. That Saturday afternoon on the hillside played again and again like a bad song on popular radio. He caught its melody again and again. There was no escape. What to do about Mary. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? He shook his head clear of the reverie and sat down at his desk. He removed the lid from the typewriter. He began to type his thoughts down on to the black rubber carriage. He could see the ink wet and bluey-black against the fainter black. He pressed his finger to a word and examined the imprint. Mirror writing. He smudged it, wetted the finger, and the word vanished completely. It was as easy as that on a typewriter carriage.

10

She was drowning. There were weeds above and around her. They twisted themselves sinuously around her arms and legs, embracing her. She could not find the bottom. There was no bottom. Bubbles of precious air escaped from her nostrils. Her lungs ached. Her brain told her one thing, but her heart was telling her another. Eventually her heart won. She opened her mouth and felt the water gushing in. The choking commenced. Her eyes began to darken. Then the pain hit her, centred in her head, right at the scalp. She began painfully to rise towards what looked like the surface. She was a long way beneath the glittering pool of light, but slowly she floated towards it. She broke the surface with a choke from her mouth and water dribbling down her chin, as if she were some badly fed baby. She roared. The pain was in her stomach now, as if her belly was distending with some quickening foetus. She wiped her face and cried out at the injustice. Andy was there to comfort her. Some of her hair had come out at the roots and he wiped it from his hands. He settled her back on the wet grass. Her dress was clinging to her. She was almost naked. Her body was clearly visible through the saturated cotton, as if she were a dancer behind the silkiest of veils. She lay back to rest, but Andy’s fingers were touching her. He was towering over her. He was peaking, but the water still rushed in her ears. The word she could make out was “reward”. He was tugging at her dress, lying across her now. All at once she realised what he was about to do. She pushed at him, her arms weak. She wanted to tell him that she was already pregnant. She tried to shout, but only water gurgled from her throat. She had become a fish, flailing on land, the line still holding her. She gurgled in protest. There was a shadowy figure behind Andy now. Then two shadowy figures, watching interestedly, their hands behind their backs. She beat at Andy with her fists. She cleared the water from her lungs and screamed...

The pillow was over her head. She shook herself free of it, drew back the bedcovers, and sat up. She was damp with sweat. It was light behind the blue curtains. She fumbled for the clock, brought it to her, and found that it was five thirty. The birds were singing outside. What a nightmare. She shook her hair, crumpling it into place. Patting the sheets, she found that she had wet the bed.

She rose quickly, put on her slippers, and stripped off the sheet. She tucked it under her arm and padded down to the kitchen, avoiding the creaky parts of the staircase for fear of waking Sandy. In the kitchen she stuffed the sheet into her washing basket, filled the kettle, plugged it in, and slumped on to one of the stools.

She had very occasionally, in the past twenty years, dreamt of drowning, of that day in the hot burn, but never had Andy been a part of the dream before, and never had she wet the bed. The reason why Andy now entered the dream was crystal clear to her. She felt like crying, but the kettle had boiled, so she made the tea and, feeling that this was breakfast-time, buttered some bread which she then cut into half-slice triangles. She stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea. She tried to persuade herself that it would take time, this curative. With Andy’s patience she would win through. She hoped that she would not need to submit herself to any specialist. She could not tell anyone her horror story. Not even Andy? Not yet anyway. She looked to the ceiling. The paint was cracked from light fitting to back door. It had been like that for years. Sandy was asleep just a few feet above her. She closed her eyes for a moment. No, she did not regret it. Regret lay elsewhere. Regret lay in someone’s shame, in someone’s eternal shame.

She heard the floorboards creak. Sandy walked slowly to the bathroom. The toilet flushed. He padded back to bed. She sat in silence, comfortable with the secret that she was already awake and up and listening to him.

Sandy, having wiped himself with toilet paper, returned to his bed and tried to avoid the chilled, clammy patch on his sheet. He had not experienced a wet dream for a long time. He tried to get to sleep again, to perhaps take up the dream, but could not. He listened to the silence of the house. Sometimes he thought that he could hear his mother’s breathing. He had been dreaming of Rian, naturally. She had been walking naked through the mansion, touching things. He had watched her, nothing more. Just her nakedness had brought him beyond. The cold patch of wet had rung like an alarm clock and brought his dream to an inconclusive end. He could not recall at what point exactly in the dream he had come. That was unusual. He wanted Rian more badly than ever. He wanted to walk up Main Street with her, his arm over her shoulders, and show everyone, all the gossipy old women and the unemployed men and the gangs of young boys, that she was his, only his. But these stories she told: could they be true, and if they were, then what exactly did she do for these men? And for Robbie, come to that. Sandy knew that he could not beat Robbie in a fair fight. What he could do was take Rian away from him by stealth and bring her here to stay with his mother and him. It was the wildest of plans. It was the only plan he had. How could he ask his mother? Would she understand? Surely, once he had put the facts to her, she could not refuse. She, more than anyone, knew what it was like to be an outsider, to be cast out and have to depend on yourself. He would put it to her that Rian was in the same situation. A refugee of sorts. He would ask her, but first he had to see Rian. And he had to find out the truth, which meant talking with Robbie when Rian was not present. He had much to do. A trickle of watery semen escaped and ran coolly down his thigh. He rubbed it dry and hoped that the sheet wouldn’t stain.

Mary, tidying his room later that day while Sandy was out (he hated her doing this, feeling that it breached his privacy), found the hardened patch on the white sheet. She smiled a little as she tucked in the top sheet and threw the blanket over the bed. It was about time Sandy had a girl of his own, she thought to herself. He was a bit old now for this sort of thing. She caught herself — what was she thinking! The boy was only fifteen, albeit fifteen and ten months. She was his mother after all. The last thing she should want was for him to get some girl into trouble. Nocturnal emissions did no harm. She piled up some pop magazines and put them beside his bed. Then she dusted, spraying polish on to the wooden surfaces. The smell was beautiful. Nothing resembled it. She put the duster to her nose. Beautiful. She hummed a song to herself as she closed the door and went through to her own room. She rarely dusted in the back room.

This afternoon she would visit the grave and tell her mother about the wonderful weather, the ban on hosepipes. Later, Andy was taking her to Kirkcaldy. She had to make out a shopping list, though he would be disappointed that it was not to be a pleasure-only trip. She hoped that Sandy would come along too. There was a tension between Andy and her son, quite understandably, but the only way to break it was for them to meet often and find out about each other. She thought of herself as a humble amateur psychologist and matchmaker as she sprayed her polish liberally on to the pre-war dresser. She worked the polish in slowly, humming a nonsense tune and smiling. The wood became like the surface of a pond and, staring into it, Mary recoiled from the memory of her nightmare. She went giddy and gripped the edge of the dresser until her eyes cleared. She had to sort things out. She had to. This was something she could not talk to her mother about, not with her father listening. And she could never be certain that he wasn’t. Especially today, when she had Tom’s letter to tell them about. Her father was bound to be there today. Her speech was nervous when she thought her father might be listening. The man who had killed himself. She was sure it had been suicide. God save him. Dear Lord God save him. She began dusting again. Suicide, because of her.

There was a new minister in town, it was said. It had not taken long. Out with the old and in with the new, with no respectful period of mourning. She would have expected better from the Church. She would go to kirk this week and see what he was like. She doubted if she would like him nearly as well as she had liked the Reverend Davidson. Still, she had to give the man a chance. Everyone warranted a chance.

And perhaps, just perhaps, she would find that she could talk to him.

11

The single bell of St Cuthbert’s Parish Church pealed out across the sleeping rooftops of the hungover houses in its midst. The Sunday morning had begun with the sluggish movements of the newspaper boys. A few keening dogs had been walked by their listless owners. Birds feasted up and down Main Street on the discarded wrappings of fish and chips from the raucous night before. These gouged balls of paper would be blown by the morning’s breeze down Main Street and into the churchyard itself, lying against the dank walls of the church as if listening to a neighbour’s argument. A car would stop occasionally beside the newsagent’s for the Sunday paper and the day’s ration of cigarettes. A pool of vomit near the door was finally and inexorably trodden into the shop, making its sticky smell obvious to those who had so carefully tried to avoid its presence outside. Old ladies with old hats pinned to their heads, so long unfashionable as to be nearly fashionable again, would mutter dark utterances to the bleary-eyed newsagent before departing with their pandrops towards the church. They would walk the slow length of Main Street commenting upon a full week’s gossip, would enter the awkwardly gravelled kirkyard, and would stand outside talking until the chill pushed them into the doorway, where a trim and proper elder stood smiling, hands clasped importantly in front of him. He would offer them a hymnbook as usual, and they would refuse as usual, having possessed their own (they would inform him) since they had first been able to read, and that wasn’t yesterday. The organist, ruddy-cheeked, had chosen his piece and was playing it to the morning chorus of whispers and coughs as the self-conscious congregation settled into the well-worn, comfortable rhythm of Sunday morning. The bell tolled overhead and around them. It was as if the outside world had never been.

When Mary came into his room carrying a cup of tea and two ginger-nuts, Sandy was waking from another tolerable dream — though a kind of nightmare — concerning Rian and himself.

They were being chased by a gang, and had climbed to the top floor of a block of flats in order to escape. They had found one flat open and had swept inside, locking and bolting the door behind them. It had been a nice flat and Rian had immediately made herself at home, trying out the gadgets in the kitchen and turning on television, radio, stereo. He tried to make her see the danger they were in. The door was being pushed at by some vast, faceless force, but she had ignored him. Look, he said, I’m trying to save us. Can’t you help? She had come to him, smiling, as distant as ever, had kissed him on the cheek and had placed a bread knife in his hand. Use this, she had said, and kissed him again. He looked at the obscenely serrated edge of the knife. The door opened a fraction, held only by the chain, and a hand crawled round its edge, fiddling with the lock, trying to snap the flimsy chain. Methodically, but hating himself, he had begun to slice at the hand, which he wedged with all his might into the gap in the door so that it could not escape, and suddenly it was an animal, its body its own, belonging to nothing outside of the door. Gashes, but no blood. Screams, but no mouth. It had dropped to the floor in snake-like agony. Rian had come up behind him with a cup of tea. She had tapped him on the back. A cup of tea, Sandy, she had said. A cup of tea.

It was his mother’s voice, too sharp to be part of the dream. He blinked open his eyes and brought his head out from beneath the sheet. The light bit him. The curtains had been opened and his mother was standing in her dressing gown with a mug of tea in her hand.

‘Cup of tea?’ she repeated. He was plunged back into the dream for a moment, and at the same time was aware of an erection beneath the bedclothes. He sat up, concentrating on the tea and the new day, feeling the throb easing.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said. She began to leave the room.

‘Don’t bother going back to sleep now. There’s new bread and jam for breakfast. I forgot to get bacon yesterday.’

He could smell the bread. His erection was dying. Hunger and the need to pee redirected his thoughts. He swung out of bed and began to dress, sitting on the bed when finished to dip the ginger-nuts in the milky tea and suck the flavour from them. He had no plans for today. Unless his mother had anything arranged, he would go for a walk later and see who was around. Perhaps Colin would be in the park. He would not go to the mansion. He had not the courage yet.

Downstairs, the ritual of Sunday breakfast was waiting like some seldom-visited aunt. On Saturdays he would usually be out of the house before his mother could call him back to eat something. Saturday was the exciting day of the week. Everything else was build-up or anticlimax, but not a minute of Saturday could be wasted. During the weeks prior to the holidays breakfast had been the rush not to be late for school, a hurried, near-involuntary thing. He would cram toast into his mouth while moving from kitchen to bathroom, bathroom to bedroom. Inevitably, along the way his mug of tea and some piece of vital written work would be lost, and a trail of minute crumbs would show the steps taken to locate both.

Sundays, however, were different. On Sunday there was nothing to hurry for, no school to be late for. On Sunday Sandy had to sit through a lengthy interrogation by his mother while she fed him and poured out mug after mug of tea. She would ask him about his week, and they would discuss important things like potential holidays and television and work. He would answer patiently: she deserved nothing less. He could see how much these mornings meant to her. It was as if she were trying to pretend that they were a normal family, cramming all the mundane details of the week into one overlong morning. She seldom complained on those odd Sundays when a game of football took him careering out of the house, slamming the door on breakfast and conversation and her loneliness. Sometimes when he looked at her across the table he would notice something insignificant in itself such as that her hand shook as she poured the tea, or that she seemed tired, or that she had blistered the back of her hand on the iron leaving a raw red scar against the purer white, and on those occasions something would well up in him: pity and love perhaps, but those words were never adequate.

She was his mother, and one day she would die. It was a chilling reality. He fended it off with thoughts of Rian. Perhaps they would marry one day. On this particular Sunday morning his mother seemed sombre, and he contemplated telling her that he had a girlfriend to cheer her up. But having said that, what else could he truthfully tell her? No, he could not yet bring himself to share his secret love with anyone — especially a love so strange and uncertain and the knowledge of this isolation caused him to fidget in his chair as his mother leaned over the table with her plate of new bread, heat rising from it even in the warmth of the kitchen.

‘Are you going to church this morning, Mum?’ he asked.

She stopped stirring her tea. She contemplated the bread before her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Yes, I thought I might go along to welcome the new minister. And then I thought I’d go visit your gran.’

‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘Gran and Grandad?’ He was losing himself again, this time to the warm, soft wetness of the bread, the saltiness of the butter, the sweetness of the jam. He sucked on the paste in his mouth for a long time until the blend of flavours was only a memory, then swallowed and drank some tea and bit off another piece to repeat the process.

The longer they sat, the brighter Mary became. Her eyes at last took on a truly living look. Sandy looked at the clock.

‘Is it good bread then?’ she said. He nodded. She tipped her head a little in agreement. There was a short silence, not uncomfortable. ‘And are you still intent on not staying on at school, Sandy?’

His heart sank.

‘It’s important,’ his mother continued. ‘With jobs so short these days you’ve got to get as many qualifications as possible. You listen to some of the men down the street. They’ll tell you. They could kick themselves now for not having stuck in at school. They’re all on the midden now that the pits have shut and there’s nothing else around here except computers and things that they’re not trained for. Brains over brawn, Sandy. That’s the way of the world. More and more. The world revolves around intelligence. It’s the only way you’ll escape this place. So you stick in, and if you need any help, well, I’ll see what I can do.’ She was eating now.

‘Yes, Mum.’ It was his best defence. After a few more minutes he looked meaningfully at the wall clock and she caught the trick and followed his eyes.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘I’d better get dressed if I’m going to the kirk. You finish your breakfast.’ He was nodding. She rose from the table. ‘I’m away upstairs.’

Sandy relaxed when she left the kitchen. He could hear the creaking of the floorboards above him, locating for him his mother’s exact whereabouts. He could picture her every action from this succession of sounds: she was searching in her chest of drawers for clean bra, knickers, tights. She was over by the wardrobe, selecting and taking out her dress, hanging it up. She was gathering the lot together and was walking across the hall to the bathroom. In the bathroom she locked the door for some obscure reason of propriety, then took off her dressing gown and her nightdress. She squatted to pee, tore off some paper with which to wipe herself, and flushed the toilet. She stood at the small sink and looked in the mirror while running the water, then gave herself a good wash, water splashing the floor and the toilet seat. She then dressed quickly, zipping things and clipping things. Snap, the door was unlocked and she padded in her tights to the bedroom. She sat down at her dressing table and again wasted a minute staring into her mirror. Perhaps she was examining her hair. This she would then brush, using long, slow strokes. Perhaps she would dab a little make-up on to heighten the colour of her face, would spray a tiny amount of perfume on to her neck and her wrists, shaking the wrists to dry the spray, then would pull her dress on, bring her shoes out from beneath the bed and slip them on to her feet. Now her feet made great tapping noises on the floor, like a carpenter at work on a roof. Sandy’s eyes fixed themselves on the kitchen ceiling. A moment of stillness now from upstairs, a moment he could never explain, then she was descending with her coat over her arm. He rose from the table.

‘Your tea’s getting cold,’ she said. Sandy took her coat from her and helped her into it. She thanked him. ‘Quite the gentleman this morning,’ she said, smiling, though he did it every time she went to church. ‘Not that you’re keen to see me go or anything.’ She checked in her clutch-purse. ‘Right.’ She looked around her. ‘I’ve got my key, so if you’re going Out, lock the door. And please wash the dishes, all right?’ He nodded. ‘See you later.’ She bent down and he offered his cheek to her kiss. Perfume surrounded him, embraced him with its curious strengths. He was smiling all the time. She looked so different when dressed up: so cultured, so otherworldly. She might be beautiful. Sandy had a guilty peek at her legs as she walked to the front door. The boys at school had said that she was a bit of a ride, so she might well be beautiful too.

Iain Darroch stood in his puffed vestments and welcomed his congregation one by one at the porch. Some of the older ones looked him over obtrusively, as if they were planning to buy him like beef at market. Many, indeed, had come solely to inspect the new minister. Some of the younger women stood together gossiping in the kirkyard. They looked at him occasionally, and straightened their backs when doing so. It was a curious sign, and Darroch, though he had some knowledge of human behaviour behind him, was at a loss as to its meaning. He thought perhaps that they were admiring his stature. He was a good inch over six feet, and his chest and shoulders seemed broader than usual due to the unwieldy amount of cloth over them. His stomach sagged only slightly — unnoticed under the robes in any case.

The little old women in their little old hats had trouble climbing the few steep stone steps to the doorway. They puffed and croaked then extended greetings to him, smiling with rows of stained false teeth. He smiled back. His teeth were, excepting two crown fillings, exclusively his own. He was as afraid of dentists as he was of damnation, sometimes believing them to be one and the same thing. He checked himself, raised his eyes briefly and, he hoped, piously to heaven, and begged forgiveness for the flippancy.

A breeze was blowing cold enough to chill his handshake. The men who shook his hand were members, almost to a man, of the Masonic Lodge. He returned their greetings cordially. The church was filling. He had spent the morning going over his notes one last time. Today he knew that he might have the sympathy vote behind him. The real test would be sustaining the momentum over the next few Sundays. Ideally, he should start off strongly, yet get stronger in the weeks that followed. The butterflies in his whole trunk danced a fandango. It was like being at the dentist’s.

The single bell was pealing, activated by an ingenious electric system. No need for a bell-puller in this day and age, unfortunately. A tall well-dressed woman was now treading carefully over the gravel of the kirkyard in her highish heels. Some of the gossiping parties looked at her and then spoke quietly among themselves. He was struck by her dark features, her air of distance from all around her, her white hair blowing out behind her as she moved into the breeze. She climbed the steps and took his hand.

‘Mary Miller,’ she said. ‘How do you do. We live down by where the colliery used to be, at the foot of Cardell.’

He looked into her eyes. They were hazel, but could almost have been black, hidden as they were under a canopy of darkest eyelash and eyebrow.

‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs Miller. My name’s Iain Darroch, newly arrived from Edinburgh.’ He knew that she had a son. The resemblance between her and the boy of whom he had asked directions was stunning: the same dark aloofness, the same bearing of isolation.

‘It’s actually Miss Miller, though I don’t much go in for titles,’ she said, smiling. He blinked. Surely he could not be wrong. Discretion was needed here. He bowed his head slightly, but kept silent, smiling also. The striking woman moved into the church, her heels resounding until they reached the carpeted aisle. Having met with most of the congregation, Iain Darroch slipped around to the back of the church quietly, opened a little door there, and prepared himself for the service. Climbing a few wooden steps, he would come to a small door which would take him into the church proper and only a few steps away from his pulpit. He would walk solemnly to the base of the pulpit, climb the stairs to its small, paunch-high door, push it open, and enter the lap of the Lord God to preach His words. Prior to this, the session clerk would have placed the large, heavy Bible open on the rim of the pulpit. He was waiting now for the clerk to come and collect the Bible. God, please be with me this day as I face my trial by jury. Please don’t let me bungle anything or seize up. Please, dear Lord, don’t let it be like the dentist’s.

‘We will now sing hymn number three-nine-six. Hymn three hundred and ninety-six. For those of you with the Revised Hymnary, this can be found in the little pamphlets on the pews. Hymn three-nine-six,

Hymn three-nine-six then. The organist played the tune while the congregation coughed and turned over the pages of their hymnbooks and pamphlets. Now the organ ceased, and the congregation quietly rose. The young minister’s hearty voice drowned out, to his own ears, much of the muted singing from the pews a dizzy depth beneath him. At the singing of the hymn’s second line he saw a few eyes wander from their books towards the dark woman, so erect and contented in her pew. She stood to Darroch’s right, alone in one of the side pews. The eyes of some of the women strayed often towards her, and now more than before. The heart of sin. Iain Darroch thought that he knew something now of her son. He knew, moreover, of her isolation, this woman with the eyes of a wounded but indomitable soul. He nearly lost his place in the hymn, but recovered with a quick glance at the next line. The poor woman, and so beautiful. He had wandered into a town of enmity and spitefulness, into a town of age-long memories and the slowest forgiveness. How could he remedy things? And dear Lord, should he even try?’

‘To dwell with thee above.’

The organ ground its way to a stop. The organist, a Mr Bogie, had a painful style and was of limited resources. His face was ruddy with piety, and his hands gleamed as though soaped to perfection. The small choir sat down, followed by the rest of the congregation. Iain Darroch began the intimations. It was a long list. This was the social side of the Church of Scotland, the side most people relished so far as he could tell. The Church was for coffee mornings and bazaars and Young Mothers’ groups and whist drives and the like. The Church was for a society of coffee-swilling whist-players, no different from those portrayed so keenly in The Rape of the Lock, one of Darroch’s favourite poems. This was a society, moreover, which held hatred at its core, hate and bitter hypocrisy. There would be some strong sermonising in the next few weeks. Pity welled up in the young man. Who could he ask about Mary Miller? Perhaps he had one ally: the Reverend Walker of Cardell Parish Church. He would invite himself to the older man’s manse. He finished the intimations.

‘The collection,’ he said, ‘will now be taken.’ The organist began some unassuming dirge. Iain Darroch sat himself down and did some thinking.

He went all the same, drawn by her irresistible magnet. He walked around the perimeter of the mansion, hoping that she would somehow sense his presence and come down from her high prison to see him. He whistled and kicked some stones at imaginary goalposts on the walls of the house. He hacked out interminable thistles with his heel. There was no sign of life around the mansion, only the distant shouts and curses from the golf course.

He suddenly felt very afraid. What was he doing there, and what could he say to Robbie or Rian should he encounter them? He felt like the dog tied up outside the butcher’s shop.

He crept away from the house and climbed on to the wall adjoining the field of barley. He looked up at the boarded windows, behind which might lie either his girlfriend or else an empty and moaning puzzle. His girlfriend? The word seemed unfit for their strange, queasy relationship. Internecine was a word he had found quite recently in a novel. He had jotted it down in his list of unusual words and had found its meaning in a dictionary. It seemed to fit his situation. Internecine. It had a vague sound like nectar and intercourse, and like nectarine. Internectarine. He smiled, still looking at the house. He would write a poem and call it “Internectarine”, and it would be about two lovers and a peach. He had only the vaguest idea of how to link the two concepts, but then that hardly mattered in poetry.

He slid from the wall into the crumbly earth of the field. He worked his way around its edge, stroking his face with a ripe and broken beard of barley. He might go to the café if it were open. He had a little money. He could go to the newsagent’s. He remembered with guilt that he had not washed the breakfast dishes, such as they were. His mother would be home from church, fresh and humming, in a little while. He jogged to the far wall, climbed over, and ran all the way home.