The Flood

1

‘Come in, come in.’

The Reverend Walker was older than Darroch had imagined. Middle age had waved him goodbye and he was settling into a slow, steady pre-retirement stage. He gestured for the young man to go through to the sitting room, then closed the front door with a nervous cough.

Darroch disliked people’s nervous coughs. They made him feel awkward. He studied the elderly man’s back. It had been strong and straight once, perhaps as recently as ten years ago. Now, however, it was stooped as if in a constant prayer for forgiveness. Death, Darroch supposed, was a preeminent concern of the old. He thought about it himself often enough with just the slightest tingling of foreboding. What price then old age and the clutching of fragile straws?

‘Sit yourself down. I’m sorry we’ve not been able to meet sooner. I’ve been in hospital for some tests. Gracious, these days there’s not a part of the body that’s left sacrosanct after a visit to the hospital. These doctors think they know it all. They think they have some kind of divine secular right when it comes to poking and prodding the flesh.’ The old man scratched at his rich, whitened hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We have much to suffer in the ministry in this age. Wouldn’t you agree?’ Darroch nodded. ‘We have to explain divinity,’ continued the minister, ‘to people who are more and more susceptible to the apparent truths of science. Joseph Conrad once called science “the sacrosanct fetish”. An interesting juxtaposition, but a wise phrase, and he was talking in the earliest years of the century. A wise phrase. Have you read Conrad?’

Darroch was allowed the chance of speaking. He merely shook his head.

‘Nor I. I found that quote in a dictionary of quotations. I love reading through books like that. It makes you seem astonishingly well read when you meet anyone.’ Reverend Walker giggled like a child. ‘I even read dictionaries, you know, and send the editors lists of words that have been missed out. You’d be surprised at the words some dictionaries omit. I think I have a list somewhere that I’ve just finished preparing.’ He walked with effort to a writing desk in one corner of the room. It was closed, and when he opened the lid sheets of foolscap slid gracefully to the floor. Darroch rushed over to help. The sheets were full of scribbles from a shaky blue fountain pen: notes for a sermon or something similar. There were no paginations, so Darroch shuffled them into a random pile and placed them on top of the bureau. The old minister was still hunting in the desk for his list. He mumbled as he looked, peering closely at scraps of paper before dismissing them. He appeared to have forgotten that Darroch was there, so the young minister, hands behind his back in a suitable pose, examined the glass bookcases which filled one complete wall of the room. The books were old, some with spines faded to obscurity. He saw many theological works, of course, but there were also books of Scottish and English literature and some historical works. He saw two big books concerning the history of central Fife.

‘No, I can’t find the blessed thing. What a nuisance.’ The Reverend Walker closed the bureau sharply, catching many corners of foolscap in the edges of the desk as he did so.

Darroch smiled. It was like a scene from an Ealing comedy. The old man peered at him. ‘A cup of tea? No, something a little stronger I think, in order to celebrate your first parish proper. My goodness, how I remember my first parish, and that wasn’t yesterday.’ He shuffled over to a large cupboard and opened it, producing two crystal glasses from within. In another, smaller cupboard he finally found the whisky. Ice and water would not be necessary: he was of the traditional school. ‘Nor the day before,’ he said, chuckling as he filled the glasses, his hand shaking. He did not spill a drop. Darroch was still standing by the bookcases, hands behind back, face a blur to the old man. ‘Come away and sit down,’ he said. ‘I can’t see you over there. Sit here.’

Iain Darroch sat on the proffered settee. The Reverend Walker handed him a glass before slumping into an armchair, his breath heavy, his tongue glancing around his pale lips.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. He put his glass to his lips, paused, and toasted his visitor. ‘Slainte.’

‘Tour very good health, sir,’ said Darroch, biting on the whisky before it could bite him.

There was a reflective silence. It was a good malt. The aroma of thick peat told Darroch that it came from the west coast, probably one of the Isles, rather than from the Highland glens. There was a good drop still left in his glass, and the old minister did not look particularly mean. Darroch took another sip.

‘And how are you enjoying Carsden so far?’ asked Reverend Walker. Darroch cleared his throat.

‘Very much, sir. Yes, very much. The parishioners seem nice. A bit dour, perhaps, but I think that has a lot to do with economics.’ Reverend Walker nodded.

‘You are quite right. Economics. This used to be a thriving industrial town. Miners settled here from the Lothians and Lanarkshire when coal was discovered. Villages grew from nothing. The pit-owners built rows of houses which became miners’ rows. These streets did not have names, only numbers. There was no room for imagination, you see. I believe some areas of Belfast still operate along the same lines. I was born.in Thirteenth Street.’ The old man spoke as a schoolmaster to an intelligent pupil. ‘I’ve been coming back ever since, watching the village grow, then crumble. Watching decay set in like sugar on a tooth. It has not been pleasant, and the Church has been pretty powerless throughout. The best we’ve managed so far is to write a history of the parish. That was done by one of my predecessors at Cardell. I’ve a copy here somewhere. I must lend it to you. It tells how St Cuthbert settled here for a time and set up his church. It should interest you.’

‘I’d like very much to read it, Reverend Walker.’

‘Call me Alec. Most people do.’

‘Very well. And I’m Iain.’

The old man nodded. ‘Well, Iain,’ he said, ‘will you have another nip?’

Darroch reached his glass over towards his new friend.

‘That’s very interesting about St Cuthbert, Alec’

‘Indeed it is. But then Fife, including Carsden, is a very interesting region. I have several books on the subject. Really, it’s quite a remarkable county. Were you born here?’

‘Crail.’

‘Oh, a glorious place, a really beautiful place. Of course, the East Neuk of Fife and central Fife are two different worlds. Industry has scooped the heart out of central Fife. We are living in an empty, echoing place. You may have noticed that?’

‘I’ve noticed the looks in the eyes of some of my neighbours. In fact, one reason I wanted to see you was to ask you about one of them.’

‘Ah yes,’ the old man nodded, ‘sadness. This was not a sad place, Iain, oh, maybe twenty years ago. But it does not take long to utterly destroy a sense of community. Oh dear, we’re getting maudlin.’

Both men sipped their drinks and smacked their lips appreciatively.

‘This is excellent whisky, Alec,’ said Darroch, embarrassed by his own ingratiating tone. The Reverend Walker nodded.

‘The water of life,’ he said in all seriousness. ‘The Church here, you know, is not what it was. I hope that you may be able to reverse the trend, but I quite doubt it, to be honest. The congregation of St Cuthbert’s was once over three hundred when the population was considerably lower than it is now. My own church has suffered also. We both know that it is a general trend, but it is still appalling. I begin to wonder if this is truly a Godless age. If it is, then we are fools, are we not?’

Darroch reflected upon this. It was an old story, a story that came with the Ark. The Church was in decay, or at the very least relapse. Yet the coffers were full enough in some quarters. Churchmen never went hungry. They were satisfied with their lot. Perhaps there lay the root of the problem. What if ministers were paid by the number of people they converted per year? The churches would fill, or at least the ministry would try to perform its duties rather than sluggishly conforming to a lazy imitation of them. Darroch quite relished the thought of his reverie turning into reality. He was guilty of apathy himself, he realised. But now his host was speaking again.

‘St Serf turned most of Fife into a Christian area. Prior to that Fifers had been picts, heathens. Much later, Fife was the home of the Seceders, a movement influenced by the teachings of Knox. There was much religious zeal and arguing in Fife at that time. More so than in any other county in Scotland. Coal-mining, it seems, went hand in hand with Christianity. The monks at Newbattle were Fife’s first miners. And then Pope Pius the Second visited Scotland in the reign of Jamie the Saxt and was amazed to find beggars at the various churches receiving pieces of black stone as alms. This was coal, of course. According to records, Bowhill Colliery used to employ more men than any other Fife colliery. That was at the beginning of the 1900s, I believe. Bowhill Colliery used to lie towards Cardell. You’ve probably passed by it. It is still used for coal-washing, when there is not a strike on, but much of the original pit has been demolished. It was a big pit, and the population at that time must have been proud of it. They are still proud people, Iain, but they have lost anything to have a pride in. That’s the crux of what’s happening here. In some ways, however, I’m glad that we don’t depend on mining as much as we used to. Goodness, how this last strike would have hit us. I can remember the first soup kitchens, back in the days of the General Strike. I was little more than a lad, but it was devastating, and it has left its indelible mark. There are modern soup kitchens now in places like Glenrothes and Cowdenbeath. If we do not realise the full force of modern disputes, then it is because we were in many ways the forerunner of it. Children here run around in gangs and vandalise the shops and paint slogans on the walls. The adults beat each other up on Saturday night and drink too much and have bad marriages. It’s a ghost town at nights because there are no amenities.’ He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘There are social problems here that the Church cannot solve on its own. That’s the truth. I apologise for my dejected tone, but it is better not to dream in a place like this.’

Darroch nodded thoughtfully. He sat with his hands folded in an imitation of prayer. ‘Would you say then, Alec, that the people here are good in their hearts but have been let down by outside forces such as politics?’

The old man nodded, glass to his lips.

‘Then,’ continued Darroch, ‘could you tell me about the attitude of these good people towards a woman called Mary Miller?’

The old man looked at him, and his gaze forced Darroch to lower his eyes into his own lap. There was a silence so powerful that for the first time Darroch could hear the grandfather clock ticking slowly in the hallway. The old minister sighed. ‘That’s a long and complex story, Iain. Should I tell it to you?’

‘She is a member of my congregation, Alec.’

‘Then shouldn’t she be the one to tell you?’

‘But would she tell me? Would you rather I got the story from some biased source?’ Darroch had won the point. Alec Walker shrugged his crouched body and settled deep into his armchair. ‘Very well,’ he said, reaching for the bottle. ‘Another refill is needed, I believe. I hope you are a good listener, Iain. This is not the most pleasant of stories.’

2

The dissolution was evident in and around Robbie’s eyes. Sandy could hardly bear to look into those watery, red rimmed pools. It was like gazing into a forbidden bedroom at the terminal patient within. He found a spot on Robbie’s shirt collar where the material was fraying and concentrated his eyes there instead.

Robbie was wondering why Sandy had not been up to the mansion recently. The boy shrugged his shoulders and grunted. Robbie nodded his head but still looked at Sandy for an answer. Sandy shrugged again.

‘The pressure of life,’ he said finally.

‘A fucking lot you would know about that, Alexander. A fucking lot.’

Sandy could not get things straight in his mind. This slouching youth was supposed to be evil, the ogre in the fairy story. The princess was being forced to slave for him. Yet Robbie still wore the guise of an innocent. He looked like his sister’s keeper, yes, but not her pimp. Sandy was bursting to ask him outright about Rian’s accusations. He blushed.

‘What pressures of life have you got?’ continued Robbie.

‘Fuck off, Robbie. Stop talking about it.’ This was man’s talk; Rian was not present. Swearing was common speech among the men in the town. Some were known to communicate through swear-words alone. There were few words that Sandy did not know. He had been reading American crime novels for several years. Even serious literature in America used bad language. He was sure he knew words that no one else in Carsden knew. In the coming term, his last useless term at school, he was determined to use bad language in his essays for Andy Wallace. He was determined to register a protest about everything.

‘You started it,’ Robbie was saying.

‘That’s hardly fair.’ Sandy managed to sound scoffing. Robbie shrugged his shoulders. He gazed at his companion, his eyes milky but keen.

‘Not long now,’ he said, to keep the conversation turning. In his life, Robbie talked to very few people, and fewer listened. He enjoyed Sandy’s company more than he could say, and regarded him as a friend. He could not quite understand the change that had taken place in Sandy recently, but he knew that it had something to do with Rian. He knew that as well as he knew himself. Sandy seemed determined not to talk about it for the moment, but something in the boy’s attitude told Robbie that he would talk about it soon enough, and that the conversation then would not be happy.

They walked quickly, but were held back by the steepness of The Brae. They were walking to Craigie Hill, just beyond Cardell, behind which a quarry was in operation. Craigie Hill was sheer at one side and sloping at the other. The tinkers’ encampment was at the base of the sheer side. Sandy expected that one day a bulldozer would push the whole hillside down on top of the gypsies and their small modern caravans.

He had met Robbie near the school; a chance meeting. Previously, he had been wary of being seen with him, but the long summer had instilled a sense of carelessness in him, or rather recklessness, and so he walked with Robbie along the town’s outskirts. Robbie was going to visit his Aunt Kitty. From her, Sandy hoped he would learn some truth.

Robbie coughed into his cupped hands, than spat noisily into the road.

‘Do you feel it getting cooler these days?’ he asked Sandy. The boy shook his head.

‘Well,’ said Sandy, ‘the summer’s not over yet. It’s a long time since there was any rain. I can’t say that I’ve noticed it cold. Are you feeling all right?’

‘Fine, fine. Just a wee summer chill, that’s all.’ Sandy examined Robbie while he coughed again.

‘Are you eating enough, Robbie?’ he asked, embarrassed by the sympathy which was evident in his question.

‘Oh aye, we eat well enough. We can’t really eat hot food though, unless it’s from the chip shop. My Aunt Kitty gives me a square meal whenever I visit. Rian’s a decent enough cook, but there isn’t the — what-do-you-call-thems? the facilities — in the mansion.’

‘Aye.’ Sandy nodded his head. He had never known hunger or malnutrition. Hunger to him was the half-hour before lunch, soon appeased. Malnutrition was when his mother forgot the bacon for Sunday breakfast. He was like a fattened chick in a warm nest. Robbie, though, was a scavenger-hunter. He had to make kills if he was to eat, and had to make double the kills in order to feed his young sister. Was that the truth? Sandy could not see truth anywhere. He could see nothing but appearances. Things might or might not be what they seemed. He had written a poem about this problem, based upon a record by a rock group. He hoped to buy the group’s new album with the money he would be given on his birthday. His sixteenth birthday was only two weeks away, a week after school restarted. Sixteen. Some things became legal. He could marry. That seemed absurd. He still could not go into pubs. He had promised himself that on his birthday he would go to Edinburgh by himself on the train. He would spend his money there. It would be an adventure. He had been there with his mother on childhood sightseeing trips, but this would be quite different. He would be sixteen. It seemed the perfect age. He did not think that he would like to be any older than sixteen, so long as he were still served in pubs.

Finally, at the top of the hill, they came to the encampment — four caravans and a couple of cars set on a patch of derelict ground in the shadow of the sheer rock face. Sandy knew the spot well. He could see it from the playing fields of his school. He knew that the locals had been trying to evict the gypsies ever since they had arrived there some ten months before. He did not know why they had not succeeded, but he knew that the bad feeling towards these people had shifted the balance of intolerance away from his mother, who might well be a witch in the eyes of the town but was still local born and bred and of decent parents. Sandy felt a pang of sadness. His mother’s life had been one of peripheral contact, of balancing on a slender edge between acceptance and outright rejection, never knowing when the scales might perilously tip. It was horrible. She had no real friends. It was worse than having enemies. He felt his own resentment towards Andy Wallace lifting. It flew into the fine wind that curled around the field. It was scooped up over Craigie Hill itself and deposited in the growling quarry. The odds, Sandy knew, were against Andy Wallace as surely as they were against his mother. He prayed silently, to a God he was slowly recognising, that they might endure.

‘That’s my Aunt Kitty,’ Robbie said. He was pointing a long arm towards a small, solid woman who emerged from one of the caravans and went behind it. Robbie shouted towards her, into the wind.

Her head appeared round the caravan. She waved, then the head disappeared again. She looked a bit like a rag-doll to Sandy. Her arm seemed a bag of stockings. When she came from behind the caravan, tugging at her patterned dress, Sandy saw that one sleeve of the dress was folded back and, presumably, tied behind her. The arm she had raised in welcome was her only arm. She chuckled now, displaying some black and crooked teeth. Her hair was tight with curlers and pins.

‘You beast, Robbie, why haven’t you been to see your old auntie before this? I was of a mind to come and see you meself.’ There was no kissing, no handshakes. They stood a foot or two apart and smiled. Then she ushered them both towards the caravan. Sandy was having second thoughts. He recalled fairy stories his grandmother had told him. Her fairy stories could not be found in books. They came from her head, as if it were some great repository of knowledge. Sandy had the feeling that, because she told her stories with her eyes closed and without the aid of books, his grandmother’s tales had been real. This had shocked him into full attentiveness as a listener, and he had forgotten few of them. He remembered one now. It concerned a young girl who was taken to a gypsy camp and made to dance until she died, but when she died her spirit had been strong and she was able to cure her little sister who had been crippled. Sandy knew that in essence the story was concerned with not fearing death, but there was something more to it. Who could say that he was not walking into a sacrifice? Rian had told him never to trust Robbie. Now he was in the hands of both Robbie and the aunt who, according to Rian, had wanted to use her cruelly. He had been stupid to come to this place.

A large mongrel dog, as if confirming his growing fears, barked at him viciously. It was tethered to one of the caravans, but only by a rope. He backed away from it, and in so doing edged closer to the old, cackling woman and her caravan. Robbie approached the animal and stroked it. It ignored him and went on barking and baring its teeth at Sandy.

‘Come on and make friends,’ Robbie called to him, patting the snarling beast.

‘Come inside, dear,’ coaxed the old woman with her dark mouth.

Sandy tore himself in two. Part of him ran to safety, but that was his spirit self; his body climbed the two iron steps slowly and was inside the caravan.

The woman stooped low over her cooker and ignited the gas. She pushed a blackened kettle on to the ring. Sandy inspected the cramped interior. There was nothing romantic or sensational about it. A small television sat on the only table, wired to a car battery on the floor. There were two bench-seats facing into this table, the whole contrivance becoming a small double bed when adjusted. Sandy liked caravans. He liked their clever compactness, not an inch of space wasted. He realised that life in the town was a little like that. He looked at the paintings on the walls, crude, cheap reproductions in plastic frames. There was no toilet. He remembered the woman emerging from behind the caravan. He could taste mothballs at the back of his throat.

‘Cup of tea, son?’

‘Please.’ The old woman grinned at him again.

‘Scared of me, son? People are. People say it’s because of me teeth. They say I should get new ones, but the price of these things is ridiculous. Besides, these have done me well enough over the years. I can still chew me meat with them, so there you are.’

So there he was. ‘Yes,’ he managed to reply.

‘You a friend of our Robbie’s? Robbie’s not got many friends, has he?’ She was watching the kettle as it began to steam. She moved to the tiny sink next to the stove and rinsed three cups in a thin trickle of water from the faucet. ‘Bit of a loner like. Gypsies have to be, haven’t they, son? Not much else open to them. Still, I wish the townies — no offence to yourself, son — would stop bothering us.’ She glared at him for a moment, so that the point was not lost on him. ‘It’s a respectable life that we lead. Ancient, too. Goes back before towns was even invented. You look it up in your library, son. Gypsies has been here since the country itself.’ She chuckled. It was, Sandy realised, a matronly sound rather than a wicked one. He could talk.

‘My mother’s supposed to be a witch,’ he said. He wondered why he had said that. Perhaps, he thought, to show that he understood.

‘Is she now? Oh yes, I seem to remember being told about the town’s witch. Ah yes. Cause of bad luck, wasn’t she?’

‘She’s not really a witch.’

‘Gracious me, of course she’s not. Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re all witches in one way or another. Witches was the invention of mankind, son. We’re all witches beneath the skin.’ Her words sounded wise to Sandy. She poured boiling water into a battered teapot. He wanted suddenly to be her friend.

‘My name’s Sandy,’ he said. She smiled and nodded. His eyes were mesmerised by the loose fold of material pinned behind her with a large safety pin.

‘You’re wondering about me arm, Sandy,’ she said, her back still towards him. He was stunned. It was as if she had really read his mind. He remained silent and she turned towards him and chuckled again. ‘Course you are.’ Then she went to the open door. Sandy noticed that it was growing dark outside, though it was only two o’clock. Clouds were gathering for a storm. The drought was about to break. ‘Robbie!’ shouted the old woman, ‘Tea’s up!’ The dog barked keenly as Robbie sprinted to the caravan. There were specks of water on his shoulders as he entered, stooping.

‘That’s the rain on,’ he said. ‘Looks like a heavy one, though.’

Sandy began, almost instantly, to hear the raindrops on the roof, like sharp raps against a drum. Carsden had a fine pipe band, but they would have been hard-pressed to play the tune that was soon dancing on the caravan’s skintight roof. They sipped the tea around the small table, Sandy’s knees rubbing uncomfortably against those of the woman. They listened to the rain as if it were music.

‘That’s summer over,’ said Kitty. She winked at the boy. There was a trace of matter in one of her eyes. Sandy wondered if the eye, like her arm, was useless.

‘You could be right, Kitty,’ said Robbie. ‘I was telling Sandy that I’ve noticed a cold air this past few days.’

‘A cold air?’ Kitty stared hard at her nephew. ‘Cold air nothing. Look at you. You’ve been drinking too much and not eating a thing. You’re dying of the wrong diet, Robbie. She’s to blame. You should come back here where you belong.’

‘What about Rian? She belongs here too.’ Robbie, having said this, supped his tea and kept his eyes on the table. There was a silence, broken only by the heavy battering of the rain upon the roof.

‘Leave her to her ruin,’ said Kitty, her mouth brushing the edge of her chipped cup.

‘I can’t do that, Kitty.’

There was a pause, the most excruciating silence Sandy had ever heard. The air seemed tense with thunder. The rain was easing.

‘Don’t I bloody know it!’ exploded the old woman. She glanced at Sandy and calmed down. ‘Sorry, son. You shouldn’t have to listen to this. It’s the same every time Robbie conies back.’ She chuckled hollowly. ‘Will I make you something to eat?’ She rose from the table. Sandy looked at Robbie, who was staring out of the rain-daubed window.

‘Any smokes, Kitty?’

She rummaged in the pocket of her dress and threw a small pack of tobacco, a thin roll of papers and a box of matches on to the table.

‘Ya,’ said Robbie. The threat of thunder eased, Sandy remembered that rain comes after thunder, not before it. He was sweating. The air was still and thick. The rain would freshen everything. It was great to walk about after rain. He hoped he could escape soon.

‘Sandy here fancies Rian,’ said Robbie casually as he rolled a cigarette. Sandy was startled by his friend’s cruelty.

‘Is that surprising?’ muttered Kitty. She turned towards them. ‘Remember what I said about witches, Sandy? I take it all back. Witches do exist, and that bitch is one of them. Steer clear of her. That’s my advice and always has been.’

‘Full of the milk of human kindness, that’s my Aunt Kitty.’ Robbie lit his cigarette and winked at Sandy. Kitty shuffled over from the stove. Her hand snaked out viciously and she slapped Robbie so hard that the cigarette flew out of his mouth and into Sandy’s lap. Sandy picked it up quickly and held it. There was a long, staring silence before the woman shuffled back to her stove. Robbie held out his hand for the cigarette. He puffed on it until it seemed to ignite from nothing.

‘That girl is nothing but trouble and you know it.’

Sandy wondered if this were an act for his benefit. It did not seem like one. So was Rian lying to him then? Was she more than she seemed? Who could he trust to tell him the truth? The answer was simple — no one.

The sun broke through the fine sheen of rain. Sandy stared at the small window. Dirt was now visible on the inside of the glass. The faint smell of soup touched his nostrils and pushed further back the tang of mothballs. It was a good smell; rich like the soup his grandmother had made, vegetables thick with a hint of stock. His stomach felt suddenly empty, though he had eaten not two hours before. The pot was soon steaming. Two plates were placed on the table, either side of the small television, then two slices of thin white bread, and two discoloured spoons. Sandy warily examined the spoon before him. He knew that it would taste of metal and the thought made him shiver.

‘Put out that roll-up while you eat.’ It was a soft command.

Robbie flicked the butt out of the window.

‘Satisfied?’ he said. Kitty ignored him. She served the soup and squeezed in beside Sandy again. He felt his leg tingle as hers touched it. He drew it away awkwardly, and felt his other leg brushing against Robbie.

‘Are you still at school, Sandy?’ asked Kitty.

‘Just until Christmas.’ He drank the soup without letting the spoon enter his mouth. Kitty was studying him.

‘And you’ve sat your exams then?’

He nodded. ‘I got the results this morning.’

‘You never told me that,’ said Robbie, taking big gulps of soup.

‘You never asked.’

‘Were the results good?’ asked Kitty. Sandy nodded. ‘Tour mum must be pleased, eh?’

‘She doesn’t know yet. I’m going to tell her tonight. It’ll be a surprise for her.’

Kitty chuckled again. She was rolling a cigarette of her own. She did the whole thing expertly with her one hand and her teeth. Really, it was hard to believe that she had only one arm. Sandy tried not to stare.

‘You know how this happened?’ she said, the cigarette wagging in her mouth. ‘I’ll tell you. I was mauled by a dog that was set on me by a farmer up north. Near Inverness, wasn’t it, Robbie? He saw me coming up his drive and he set his bloody dog on me, the bastard. I wouldn’t see no doctor afterwards, you see. Then it hurt too much, but by then it was too late. They had to amputate it. Robbie was about thirteen then, wasn’t you?’ He nodded, his eyes on the empty bowl in front of him. ‘Aye, thirteen he was. You know what we did? A few of the menfolk and wee Robbie here, they snaked up to the farm one afternoon while the farmer was about his business and they killed the dog.’ She chuckled mirthlessly. Her eyes were strong upon Sandy’s. His stomach turned the soup in a slow, sickening revolution. The matter in her left eye was like a tiny maggot, alive and wriggling. ‘They stoned it to death and threw it into the farmhouse. We had to get out of that neck of the country in a hurry, I can tell you. But it was worth it.’ She laughed this time. Her mouth was a deep red cavern surrounded by teeth like chippings of coal. Robbie was scraping his spoon across the base of his bowl.

‘I’ve got to go now,’ said Sandy. ‘Excuse me. Thank you for the soup and the tea.’ He was aware of his false formality, aware that it showed his weakness. He blanched. The old woman slid from her seat to let him out.

‘I’ll stay on for a bit,’ said Robbie. ‘Aunt Kitty and me have things to talk about.’ He reached across the table for another roll-up.

‘It was nice seeing you,’ Sandy said to Kitty.

‘And you, son.’ She chuckled, knowing the truth. ‘Come and see us any time.’

He stepped outside and breathed in the grass-heavy air. The dog stood up and barked again. He ignored it. A man watched him from the door of one of the other caravans. He was scratching his grizzled chin as if sizing the boy up for a potential meal. Sandy, his heart thudding, walked smartly away.

‘Sandy!’

He turned and saw Robbie running awkwardly towards him, as if he had never run in his life. Sandy waited for him. Robbie walked the last few yards and puffed on his cigarette. He stopped beside his friend and stared into the distance. He mumbled something, then looked back towards the caravans.

‘Promise you won’t tell Aunt Kitty,’ he repeated. ‘Promise you won’t ever tell her or anyone else.’ Sandy nodded. ‘Promise,’ said Robbie.

‘I promise.’

‘Okay.’ He took a gulp of air. His eyes were like a mongrel’s. ‘Listen then. We never killed the dog. None of us had the guts. We sat in the woods for a while, had a smoke, then went back to the camp and told everyone our story. We said that we’d best be moving. We moved away so that she wouldn’t find out that we’d not done it. It would have killed her and killed us if we’d confessed. So don’t feel bad about it, okay?’ He put a hand gently on Sandy’s shoulder. Sandy nodded. He was about to say something, but Robbie was already starting away. ‘See you later,’ he called back. ‘Come up to the house.’

‘Fine,’ yelled Sandy. He walked away, sure in his heart that Rian had been lying to him about her brother and her aunt. He did not want to believe it, yet the evidence was before his eyes like the scenery. He could accept it or not; it was reality. He frowned. There was something he had meant to ask Aunt Kitty. The meaning of an itchy nose. That was it: what was the meaning of an itchy nose?

3

George Patterson had locked the door, pulled down the blind, and was busying himself with the small change at his till when a sharp rapping on the door told him that his friend was waiting to be let in. He came from behind the counter, crossed to the door, peered through the glass, and, a smile settling on his face, drew back the lock.

‘Hello, George. Busy day?’

‘Not bad, Matt. Yourself?’

Matt Duncan scratched his cheek. He had not shaved that day and the bristles were iron-grey and hard.

‘Doing away, George,’ he said. ‘That’s all we can do, eh? Just doing away.’

‘Aye, Matt, it’s the truth.’ Patterson relocked the door and ushered the smaller man through to the back room where hair was occasionally cut. ‘Go on through, Matt,’ he said. ‘You know your way. I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He went back to his counting, his fingers springy and agile. He totalled the day, scratched with his pen on a piece of paper, put the paper and the notes in his pocket, closed the till and locked it. Then he walked slowly through to the back room, opened another door, and was in a tiny room which was comfortably furnished. Matt Duncan was opening a can of beer.

‘It’s grand to have a beer these nights,’ he said, handing the can to Patterson.

George Patterson sat down. He knew that Matt Duncan was a bit of a rogue, but he was an old friend. Patterson did not have many friends. He rejected invitations the way other men refused to play with their children. Yet he had known Matt Duncan, who was five years older than him, since his schooldays. Only in the past five or so years, however, had they become good friends. Both had bitter pasts to complain about, and both had patient ears as long as they knew that their own complaints would be listened to eventually. Patterson watched the foxy old man sink into an ancient armchair. The room contained two armchairs, a small writing desk, and a fridge. The beer had been kept in the fridge. It was chilled, and the bubbles caused Patterson to burp silently and often. It was gassy stuff this; not the same as you got in the pub. Eventually they would go out to the pub, but it was nice to sit and talk together first.

‘Weather turned stormy today,’ said Matt Duncan.

‘Aye,’ said Patterson, ‘but not before time. It’s been a good few weeks since we had some rain. I could see the paper bags and rubbish blowing about outside, just like tumbleweeds in a Western.’

They both chuckled, sharing as they did a liking for old cowboy films. Duncan liked novels about the West, too, but George Patterson found them banal. They did not discuss these novels in case they should argue. Neither could afford to lose the other, though neither really knew why.

‘It was terrible. I got caught in the rain as I was going down to the bookie’s.’

‘Win anything today, Matt?’

Duncan’s face screwed in disgust. ‘Not a bloody thing,’ he said. ‘But Dod Mathieson, a man that’s not needing money, he won naturally.’ His voice was bitter. He hated the man who had won. ‘I’d like to know how he manages to win so bloody much and I lose. I think he’s in on some game with the manager of that shop. They’re always gassing together, yet the bugger would hardly give me the time of day. Aye, there’s something funny there all right. You take my word for it.’

Patterson shook his head in sympathy. Yes, the world seemed cruel to Matt Duncan. The grass was always greener. You lose a son, you lose your job. You’ve lost everything, and you’re bitter. Patterson was not himself a bitter man, not really. He fed on guilt instead. He was, he knew, worse off than Matt Duncan, for he could not reveal his guilt, though often he had come close. Poor Hugh. What good had it all been? He had to feed perpetually on his shame, with no one knowing. Well, hardly anyone.

‘Mind you, Matt Duncan’s not a man to go telling on people. If they’ve got shady dealings, it’s up to the shop owner to find out. He must be raking it in if he can afford to ignore a swindle like the nice one they’ve got going.’ The conspiracy was now an incontrovertible fact for Duncan. He drank his beer noisily, as if its flavour were the taste of his rage.

‘Are you sure there is a swindle, Matt?’ ventured Patterson hesitantly. ‘Couldn’t it all be luck?’

‘Of course I’m sure, George,’ snapped back the small, sharp-faced man. ‘What do you take me for? I ken what their game is. You can’t keep anything like that hidden from Matt Duncan. I’m too fly for them, you see. They think I’m dunnert.’ His mouth was a savage twist and his breath came short and noisily. Patterson kept quiet and drank his lager while the tumult continued. There were a lot of twisted men like Matt Duncan throughout the mining towns of Fife. Usually they were not the best workers, had lived bitter, ignorant married lives, and had been brought up in similar households. In other words, their hate was handed down to them from their parents, handed down through the generations like a christening shawl. It seemed an attitude peculiar to the working class. Patterson often mused over it. It appeared to him an easy way out, an excuse for not having done anything in life. If you succeeded you were “lucky”, or a crook; other factors did not enter into it. If you failed, you had never had a chance. Everything had been against you in the first place. A shiver went through Patterson. He had been living in this community for fifty-five years. Luckily, his father had been a professional person. That was regarded as his lucky beginning. Only once had he felt as Duncan felt all the time. Just that once. His mind recoiled from the self-hatred and the grotesque thought of that isolated time. He shook his can.

‘Empty?’ asked Duncan.

‘Yes, Matt. Very empty,’ said Patterson thoughtfully. ‘I’ll get my coat and we can go to the hotel for a proper drink.’

‘Fine,’ said Duncan, patting his pockets. ‘Ach,’ he said as always, ‘I’ve forgotten my wallet again, George, and that thief of a bookmaker cleaned me out. Shall I run up to the house and fetch it?’ Patterson, as always, shook his head.

‘No need for that, Matt. No need for that at all.’ He even smiled.

His mother had invited Andy Wallace round for an evening meal. They were planning to go to Kirkcaldy afterwards to see a film. The three of them sat around the seldom-used dining table and the only sound for a time was that of good cutlery against china.

‘Haven’t you had your results yet, Sandy?’ said Andy Wallace finally.

‘Got them this morning,’ replied Sandy, toying with a potato. His mother put down her fork. Her hands lay against either side of her plate as if she were about to ask for more.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Five As, a B, and a C.’

‘Well, well, well.’ Andy Wallace sat back in his chair, smiling, looking across at Mary. ‘That’s a very good performance. Better than your marks in your prelims.’

Mary Miller tried to squeeze her son’s hand, but he slid it away from her and scratched his nose.

‘With results like those,’ continued Andy Wallace, ‘you’d be daft to leave at Christmas. Why not stay on for your Highers?’

‘Yes, Sandy. Stay on.’

Sandy looked at his mother and his English teacher. He was surprised by the emotion in his mother’s voice. Andy Wallace, though trying not to show it, was astonished at himself. A little while ago he had been hoping that Sandy would leave school at the earliest opportunity. Now here he was telling the boy to stay on. He was pleased at his morality; he had the teaching reflex.

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Sandy.

‘You do that,’ said Andy Wallace. Mary smiled at both of them. It was like being part of a family. Recently she had been worrying about Andy’s attitude towards her. For how long would he continue to be so patient? She could not know, but she sensed his growing frustration. If only she could make love, just the once, then it would be all right. If only.

‘You could go to university with marks like that if you were to stick in,’ said Andy, anxious not to let the table recede into another silence. He pronged four peas on to the end of his fork and grabbed them between his teeth. ‘They’re as good as I ever got,’ he said.

Sandy, however, had retreated back into his meal. He cut the meat delicately. He concentrated on his plate. He did not want this conversation to continue. His mother’s cheeks were a proud red. She looked more than ever like a princess trapped in a tower. Sandy remembered the poem he had written about Rian. It could have applied just as well to his mother. Her hair was tied simply behind her. Silver through black. Metal through water. She seemed to glimmer in the pale light. Sandy was looking forward to having the house to himself for the evening. He was going to invite Rian round to visit in his mother’s absence. He smiled at the thought. His mother noticed his smile and returned it. He had not the heart to turn away from her in her happiness.

It was quiet at the mansion. A cold breeze ruffled the ancient oaks and carried the cries of the golfers towards him from the first tee. He waited until they had moved off across the fairway before he climbed the pipe. He was an adventurer now. Nothing stood in his way. He only hoped Robbie was still at the caravan. It seemed a forlorn hope, but he would get Rian away despite any move made by her brother. He had to take her to neutral territory (or, if the bravado held up, to his home territory) in order to put certain questions to her.

He kicked in the shoddy piece of board, hoisted his legs over the sill, and was in. He walked quickly through the shadowy corridor, looking neither left nor right, and opened the door to her room. There was nobody there. He walked inside anyway, not believing his bad fortune.

‘Oh, it’s you.’

His heart missed a beat in fright. He turned. She had been hiding behind the door.

‘I heard the window,’ she said. ‘It didn’t sound like Robbie, so I hid.’ She was facing him now, close. He took a step towards her and their lips met, their tongues twisting like tiny serpents at the mouth of a cave. He held her waist. Her hair touched the backs of his hands. When he opened his eyes this time he saw that hers were ecstatically closed. The black slits of her lashes gave more passion to his kiss. She pulled away.

‘We’re going out. Okay?’ Sandy’s voice, prepared to be manly, was trembling and uncertain.

‘Where?’ Her eyes were wide. She folded her long arms around herself. She was cold. Sandy remembered that her skin had been deathly to the touch.

‘Somewhere warm,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like to see where I live. My mum’s out with her boyfriend. They won’t be back till midnight. Would you like to?’ Now he was the pleading schoolboy with a would-be friend. His eyes were as wide as he could make them. Rian messed with her hair.

‘I should wait for Robbie. He’s been gone all day.’

‘He’s at his Aunt Kitty’s.’

‘Is he?’ She was genuinely surprised. ‘That’s not where he said he was going. How do you know?’ As she moved to the window he noticed that her face was puffy from sleep, as innocent as a new-born. She leaned against the half-boarded window.

‘I went with him this afternoon for a little while.’ Her eyes darted to him like stinging things.

‘You did?’ she asked, her voice quivering.

‘Yes, to find out the meaning of an itchy nose. You remember.’

‘Oh, but that was a long time ago.’ She was hesitant. Then she smiled. ‘Well, if my brother can go off to our scheming aunt’s without telling me, I can go with my friend to his house. Isn’t that right?’ She approached him and took his arm. ‘Shall we go?’ she said. He smiled, took off his jacket, and made her put it on.

‘Oh, Sandy.’ Her face was suddenly ill again, only half alive. ‘I’m scared of what they might be planning there. You know they hate me. Everybody there hates me. They want to use me and hurt me and...’ She broke off to cry, her head bowed to his shoulder. ‘Oh, Sandy,’ she said again. He lifted her head, kissed her brow perfunctorily, and began to manoeuvre her towards the corridor. He placed one arm around her. Her feet slid across the floorboards as if she were learning to walk again after an accident. Sandy’s groin pulsed. He could not believe it. He was not even sixteen yet.

Soon he might join Colin in knowledge. Soon he might have something to tell the gang. He felt strong.

They crossed several fences and trudged through several fields to reach the back of his house unseen. In Carsden, secrecy was well-nigh impossible, but Sandy felt that they had done a good job. Though Rian complained, he did not tell her the reason for his furtive actions.

In the garden, they scraped mud from their shoes on to the edge of the path. The garden needed digging, and he promised himself silently that he would put some work into it at the weekend. He opened the door to the kitchen, with his own key which had been made a long time ago without his mother’s knowledge, and, when the door was open, made an extravagant gesture towards Rian. She bowed gracefully and entered. He closed the door behind them.

Now that Rian was in his home, Sandy felt confused. Her aroma was everywhere. It made the house different, made it strange to him. He showed her around like a trainee estate agent. In his room, the last to be investigated, he sat casually on his bed and asked her to sit down. She sat beside him, her hands stretched along her lap. He pecked her cheek. She smiled, but looked apprehensive. She was examining the posters on his walls and his two rows of books.

‘You’ve got a lot of books,’ she said.

His bravado faded like a song that had gone on for too long. He suggested that they go back downstairs for a drink and she readily agreed. As they left the room, Sandy patted his bedspread flat again, erasing the mark of her from it for ever. He was flushed and had assumed a nervous cough.

In the living room they watched television and drank a little whisky, not enough to be visibly missing from the bottle. Rian was entranced by the television screen. She sat close to it, her face turning the rainbow colours of the programmes as she flicked from channel to channel. She stroked the carpet with her free hand as if it were a slumbering cat. Outside it was raining again. They would get soaked going back through the fields. Sandy had closed the curtains. He had turned off the lights. The television was their magic lantern. He put on a small electric fire and Rian shifted close to it. She had her thumb in her mouth now that she had settled on one channel to watch. Sandy sat on the floor beside her, his feelings for the slender girl jumbled but passionate.

‘Rian,’ he said, but she did not answer. ‘Rian.’ This time she grunted, glanced at him, smiled, pecked his cheek, and turned back to the television. He reached behind his back towards the wall and silently dislodged the plug of the television. The picture fizzled and faded from the screen. Only the red of the fire illuminated them in the sudden silence.

‘What’s wrong with it, Sandy?’ Her voice was childlike. ‘Have you done something? You have, haven’t you?’

He looked aghast. ‘Me? I’ve not done anything.’ He pushed a few of the buttons on the television, felt behind the set, frowned, and finally said, ‘It must be the fuse.’ He brought a screwdriver from one of the drawers and, pulling the plug completely out of the socket, began to open the casing. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Can we talk about things?’ He said this as he made his thorough inspection of the plug’s interior. Rian looked on like a spectator at an operation.

‘What things?’ she said slowly, her curiosity shifting.

‘That day down at Kirkcaldy. What you told me. What you said about Robbie. Was that all true? Or were you making it up?’ His eyes were still firmly on the plug. He spoke as if preoccupied. She looked on, never glancing at him.

‘Of course it’s true,’ she said. ‘Why do you say that?’

He shrugged. ‘Just a feeling, that’s all. To tell you the truth,’ now he did look at her, ‘I don’t think Robbie would do that, what you said. That’s why I’m wondering.’ He bent to his work. The screwdriver forced the fuse out from the casing. ‘Ah ha,’ he said. Her face was crimson beside his, her cheeks hot from the fire. She edged closer.

‘Sandy,’ she said, ‘every word was true. I swear to God.’ She made a crude attempt at crossing herself. ‘Every word. Robbie is horrible. You can’t see that, but he is. He doesn’t let you see him as he really is.’ Her words became choked. Tears sharpened in her eyes. As on the sea-wall that day, she did not allow them to fall. She looked at him. ‘Robbie tells men about me. He gets them to give him money, then I have to toss them. You know what that is, don’t you?’ He blushed, nodded, continued to examine the fuse. Inside he was a single pulse. ‘Or else he tells me to go and find men for myself, then I’ve to give him the money. He hits me if I don’t get any money. Sometimes I steal so that I don’t have to do it, but that just makes him think that I’m good at it. Oh, Sandy.’ Although his head was bowed, she could see that he was crying. He wept silently, but his shoulders jerked in spasms. She put her arm around him. He did not know why he was crying — it could even have been jealousy. He had not cried for a long time, perhaps not since his grandmother had died. He hardly knew the meaning of the thing. Rian saw in his tears, in the traces streaked down both cheeks, his humanity. Her own were small things by comparison. ‘Oh, Sandy,’ she said. ‘Why are you crying?’

She might as well have been asking him for his definition of love. He shook his head and sniffed. His nose was running like a baby’s. He felt his cheeks flush in embarrassment. So much for bravado. So much for the great lover. He was still a fucking virgin baby at heart. He blew his nose angrily. Her hands were on his face. He put his arms around her and slowly pulled her to the floor. They lay still together. Sandy stared at the ceiling while Rian stroked his face and his neck. When she made to sit up he pulled her towards him again and kissed her as forcefully as he could. If he was her boyfriend, then didn’t he deserve it? He drew her in towards him like a twin just before birth. She resisted a little. He rolled over on top of her and, after a moment’s significant eye contact, placed his hand on her tiny breast. She closed her eyes. He moved his hand downwards, watching her face. His hand was as sensitive as the nerve in a tooth. He discovered every ripple in the material of her skirt. His fingers touched her knee. He began to slide his hand upwards again. Her eyes opened like sentries caught napping. She pushed him, rolled away from him, and stood up. She was nearly shouting, her voice a tremor.

‘No, Sandy, not with you, Sandy! I won’t. I won’t.’ She paused, breathing heavily. ‘You have no right.’ She looked away. ‘I don’t mean it like that.’

‘I’ve got some money upstairs if that’s what you mean.’ He thought that a worthy line, like something a film actor would have said. She glared at him and started to walk towards him. He knew, as surely as Robbie had known in the caravan, what was coming. He reeled from her blow. She looked strong now, and vicious. She spat words at him.

‘You can’t talk like that. I won’t let you. You’re just like the rest. You’re like all of them. I hate you.’ She turned, looking for her coat. She had no coat, only his jacket. She walked to the door. He chased after her.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. She stood at the kitchen door, her back to him. ‘I apologise. I didn’t know what I was doing. Please wait. I’ve got a present for you. Will you wait?’ She nodded, her long hair waving. ‘Okay,’ he said.

He ran up the stairs three at a time, his speciality, and went into the cold back bedroom. Had it ever been a bedroom? Yes, for a short time before his grandmother had died he had slept in it. Perhaps for two years. He could not remember. Probably his mother had slept in it too, when Uncle Tom had been too big to share with her. But it was a cold room. He remembered having nightmares in it. He pushed open the trunk and selected one of the many woollen articles from it. It was a beautiful shawl, one of his grandmother’s creations. He closed the lid and hurried downstairs. She had not moved, apparently.

‘Here,’ he said. Still she would not turn. He placed the shawl gently around her shoulders. ‘A present,’ he said. She seemed to examine its corners. Then she turned. She was smiling. They embraced. Her hair was clean like a wet seashore. He stroked it. They stood like that for a while.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I think I’ve got an idea.’ He spoke in her ear, his face towards the kitchen. ‘Would you like to come and live here with us? I could talk to my mum. She would understand. I’m sure she would. She’s sort of an outsider too, remember.’

‘Oh, I’d like that I think, Sandy. But I can’t leave Robbie. He’d, well, I don’t know what he’d do without me. But...’ Her voice tailed off. He could feel that she was torn between something like familial masochism and freedom.

‘But listen,’ he said excitedly. ‘I’d make sure Robbie was all right.’

‘How?’ Her voice warmed to him.

‘What about if I gave him money, enough to see him through for a while?’

‘Money?’

‘Like buying you from him, but really buying you your freedom.’ His voice was heated. He felt like an old philanthropist. He was acting out a history lesson.

‘Money,’ she whispered.

‘Yes.’ He hardly heard her. ‘I’d give him some money.’

‘How much?’ He smiled at her swift words. He hugged her to him and his eyes gazed like new stars through the door of the kitchen, through the back door, right out into space itself. Anything was possible. Anything.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Maybe thirty or forty pounds?’ she said.

‘Forty?’ His voice was unconcerned.

‘But fifty would be better, wouldn’t it? He’d take fifty.’

‘Fifty?’ It seemed like a great deal of money, but it had to be a bargain.

‘But where would you get fifty pounds, Sandy?’ Where indeed. Schemes loomed in his mind. Anything was possible, but what was probable?

‘I’d get it,’ he said, feeling heroic. She pulled away from him a little, saw confidence in his face, gasped, and kissed him three times quickly.

‘Oh, I love you, Sandy. I really think I do.’ She stroked her shawl. ‘And thanks for my present. It’s lovely. I’ve never been given a present before, honest. I really think I love you.’ She kissed him again. He was chuckling now. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘It’s an old shawl,’ he said. ‘No use here. We’ve got plenty. It’ll keep you warm at night. We don’t want you getting cold.’ He looked at his watch. ‘My God, it’s past eleven! Come on, I’ll see you back to the mansion. You look like a lady in that thing.’ He nodded at the shawl as she pulled it around herself. ‘You really do.’

He switched off the lights pensively, hoping he would have enough time left on his return to clean up before his mother came back with Andy Wallace. Fifty pounds. It was the price of a stereo. The price of ten records. He would get it, but he could not think of a likely source at the moment. That was for the future anyway. For the moment he was happy to be climbing the fence behind his girlfriend, remembering her climbing the drainpipe, leaping into mud and grass, walking heavily through the boggy fields and the drizzle to her castle.

4

The air was chilled in the manse. Iain Darroch rubbed his hands together as he entered, letting the books under his arm slip noisily to the floor. He ignored them for the moment, switched on the fire in his adequate sitting room, then returned to the hallway, closed the door properly, picked up the books and, his coat still wrapped around him, returned to the faint but growing glow of the fire.

September. The leaves were turning. The summer was over. He looked towards the long winter ahead with morose eyes. In winter the sap really was at its lowest ebb, spiritually as well as physically. He did not relish the prospect. He made some tea in the clutterless kitchen and brought it through to the fireside. He sat down on the sheepskin rug. Sipping the tea, he pulled a book towards him from the small coffee table.

The conversation with Reverend Walker had fired something in him, some need to know his parish as one would know one’s ancestors. He had read several books from Reverend Walker’s collection, and had now brought three more from Kirkcaldy Public Library. Carsden had a strange, fascinating past. Fife itself was notable as a historic county, but it was Carsden that really interested him. He began reading. His notebook lay beside him, a fountain pen hooked over its edge. Fife, he had found, was riddled with superstition. The Church had never been as strong, perhaps, as was thought. Witches had been burned in Fife right up until the end of the seventeenth century, and those figures came from incomplete records. Who could say what might have happened thereafter? Robert Baillie, a Presbyterian minister of the time, had recorded that in 1643 thirty witches had been burned in Fife in a few months. James Hogg had written or procured a lyric ballad called “The Witch of Fife”, and there was also a well-known poem called “The Witch of Pittenweem”. Pittenweem was near to Darroch’s birthplace, and the whole East Neuk appeared to be riddled with tales of witchcraft. Darroch found it all fascinating.

The facts had piled up in his notebook randomly at first, but then more selectively. He thought he had found a kind of connection between two aspects of Fife’s history. Cromwell had selected Burntisland as one of the first places to attack (circa 1651?) because of its importance as a port. An Act of 1842 prohibited women from working underground. Thereafter sprang up the superstition that it was unlucky for a woman to venture into a pit. Pit. The very word stirred him. A pit had been opened by the Queen at Glenrothes in the late — 1950s (?). She inspected it. A few years later it was forced to close due to flooding. It was seen as part of the superstitious truth. The Earl of Wemyss had owned many of the Fife collieries, though not those around Carsden. Some of these pits were sunk, according to family records, on the sites of what had been witch-burning places. The people had been given chunks of coal as alms. Coal was a magic rock, a black diamond, mysterious and life-giving.

Carsden had its own witch-burning site, not a colliery now but the local park, which meandered down to a shallow river, aptly named the Ore. Suspected (proven?) witches were placed in a barrel by the good people of the village, and the barrel was then coated with tar and ignited. A lid was nailed on, and the whole contraption was rolled down the meandering slope where children now played and into the river. The screams carried downriver, the barrel smouldering and fizzing like a firework. It was horrible, and it was happening in the seventeenth century. Three hundred years ago. Mary Miller was, in a sense, lucky.

The random jottings had begun to connect for Darroch. Mining, it seemed to him, was a superstitious occupation, and it had gone hand in hand with the superstitions and witch-burnings of that age. He thought of Mary Miller. Poor woman. The superstitions held fast, gripped by the downtrodden class as a means of creating scapegoats for their bad fortune. It was the easy solution. Instead of raging at the landowners or looking to themselves, they merely picked on an outsider and branded her a witch, blaming her for any misfortune, any hiccup of economics. That made the villagers feel better in their hungry bitterness. They fed on it like a fire feeds on coal. Darroch checked himself. These were his parishioners. He should have patience with them, and Christian tolerance. It was hard, though, with all their chiselling ways. He read his book again, the fire warming his clothes so that they smelled newly laundered and ironed.

The very name of the town worried him. Carsden. It was named, presumably, after Carsden Woods just outside the town. The den was a valley near these woods. But what about the etymology of Carsden itself? There were two possibilities, one of which seemed ominous. He had travelled to Edinburgh, to the National Library, for these notes. He had looked at Grant’s Scottish National Dictionary, Craigie’s A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, Chambers’ Scots Dictionary, and Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary. He had found a kind of consensus. “Car” meant left or left-handed. It also meant (presumably because left-handedness was considered ominous by superstitious people) sinister, fatal, or wrong in a moral sense. “Carlin” (also “carling”, “carline”, “karlyn”, “karling”) meant a witch. This was especially true when used in the Lothians, Ayrshire (another notorious witch-hunting area) and Fife. This had led Darroch to deduce that Carsden would mean den of the witch. He researched into other similar place-names. Carlops, on the road south from Edinburgh to Biggar, was named after its imposing rock. He found that there were two versions of the etymology. One stated that it was a place from where witches had flown, originally Carlings-Loups. The other claimed that the rock was the site from where villagers would hurl suspected witches, shouting at them to fly now if they could. If Carlops derived its name from witches, then why not Carsden? In Jamieson’s Dictionary, however, he found that “car”, used as the initial syllable of a place-name, could mean “fortified place”, which would mean that Carsden had been a fortified den. No history of the area, however, spoke of fortifications until the time of St Cuthbert and the building of the kirk. It was a puzzle. Wickedly, he preferred to think of the former as the truth.

But no, no “witches” had ever flown away to safety from Carlops Hill. No “witches” had ever survived the grotesque drowning ritual in Carsden. There were no witches. All there was was superstition. He had entered a community where such beliefs still lived on. The mines had closed. Who was to blame? Abstracts such as economics and investment? You could not shake your fist at them. Better to find a scapegoat instead. That was what they had done. An unfortunate accident had marked Mary Miller physically as an outsider. Misfortune had dogged her publicly. She had been the perfect brunt. Darroch grew angry as he pretended to read. What could he do? He felt like rushing to the woman’s house and asking for her forgiveness on behalf of the whole town. He wanted to speak with her, to see her. She was endurance. She was Christianity. He was a sham by comparison. He had to tell her these things. He had to tell her not to be afraid. Her eyebrows were like lines of velvet or the backs of sleek black cats. Her face was pale but deft. Her hair was silver. Silver and black. He had to tell her. He had to see her.

Reverend Walker had told him that Mary did not work. Darroch put on his jacket, switched off the fire, and slammed shut the front door as he left.

He examined the character of the town as he walked. It was different now, different, certainly, from that first day when he had looked over his church with pride and hope. Raindrops dotted his shoulders, but he paid them little heed. They refreshed him.

It was a longish walk, and the wind blew into his face all the way, as if trying to deter him. Pieces of grit were swirled around Main Street and some picked at his eyes. He bowed his head into the gathering wind and walked on.

The cemetery stood at the top of a steep hill called The Brae. Her house was on the other side of the hill. Sweat was clogging his back beneath the nylon shirt, the woollen jersey, the jacket. He stopped for a second at the summit. The cemetery was quiet except for the cracked voices of the crows at Cardell kirk. He might pay Reverend Walker a visit while he was in the neighbourhood. He caught sight of a figure tending one of the graves. No, not tending it, but sitting in front of it on the damp grass. Her hair was unmistakable. He opened the gate to the cemetery and walked across the grass towards her. As he approached, he heard her voice. He realised that she was speaking to her dead parents. He stood stock still, numbed. Her voice was low and soft, like small sticks travelling with the river’s current. He hung back, not wanting to eavesdrop so publicly but doing it anyway. Finally she stood up, turning and seeing him. A quick rising of blood made her cheeks glow against her wind-pinched face.

‘Oh,’ she said.

He was, however, more embarrassed than she. He opened his arms in contrition. A horn sounded at the gate. She looked past him and he turned towards the sound. A man was waving from the car. She waved back.

‘I must be going,’ she said. ‘My boyfriend. The car.’ She pointed, then started off.

‘It was nothing,’ he said with mock heartiness. ‘I was just passing and thought I...’ She was waving back at him, smiling warily. Then she reached the gates and the car door opened from within. Darroch let his arms fall, then pushed his hands safely into his jacket pockets. She would think less of him now. He had been spying on her. Her graveside. Her parents. He looked at the marble, at the gold lettering. She had been speaking with them. It was the most private of things, and he had blundered in like a... a... Her boyfriend. She had a boyfriend. Perhaps, then, she felt happiness too.

So why did Iain Darroch feel dejected?

Only two people had seen the boy and the tinker-girl as they picked their way hand in hand through the fields, the rain like a sheet behind them and the sky the colour of a deep purple bruise. One of these was Matt Duncan. He watched from the country path at the end of his evening walk, and his eyes were deeply focused slits. He felt his brain stir with incoherent thoughts. He slouched his hands into his jacket and cursed.

The other was Mrs Fraser, who owned the local grocery shop. She was on her way home, having delivered some produce to Reverend Walker. He had kept her late as usual, talking about the old days and the new minister. She had been walking home past the field next to the old hospital when she had seen the two shadowy figures on the other side of the wall. They were whispering together and giggling. She stood on tiptoe to see them better. They were past her and could not see her, but she saw them well enough and her mouth opened in a small O as she recognised the boy. She vaguely remembered having seen the girl, too, and knew her for what she was. Dear oh dear. Mrs Miller (she called her Mrs out of propriety’s sake) was a good customer. Mrs Fraser would have to tell her about her son’s unsavoury friendship. She would tell her first thing in the morning, for Mrs Miller was always bright and early in the grocery so as to avoid the mass of shoppers. A girl from the gypsy camp. Well well. Perhaps it was to be expected. Wait until the town found out.

They ate the evening meal in near silence. Sandy was happy enough. His thoughts were on how to broach the subject of Rian to his mother. Should he play on her sympathy, or should he come right out with his request? He was so full of his own concerns that he did not notice his mother’s anxious face, the way she glanced at him and only played with her food.

At last she rose from her chair and collected his empty plate. She walked to the sink and began to run the hot tap. Sandy belched in his seat. He studied his mother’s back. Her hair was tied in a thick bun above the nape of her neck. Tufts of black ran down either side of her neck and disappeared into the shadows of her dress. He wished his own hair was as attractive, but it was becoming slightly greasy, and he could do nothing with it but let it take its own shape and its own line. He scratched at his neck.

‘What happened to your grandmother’s shawl, Sandy?’ She had turned the tap off and was facing him, her hands on the rim of the sink behind her.

‘What?’ He knew that the red was already rising to his cheeks. His heart was like a sports car. It had just been let loose along a long, straight road. Oh shit, he thought. Oh shit.

‘Did you give it to her?’

‘To who?’ His mother’s consequent laugh was unpleasant.

It had the hacking quality of a witch’s triumph. She did not smile.

‘To the tinker, of course. Your girlfriend.’

‘Look, Mum, she’s...’

‘I know what she is! Everyone in this town knows what she is. But they all try to ignore it. It doesn’t really concern them. And now you’ve gone and got yourself mixed up with her. How could you be so stupid?’ The final word was like a judgement of fire. Sandy’s face burned as brightly as a tongue of flame. He had never, never seen his mother so angry and so disgusted by him. It was hard to hear out the rest of her verdict. ‘She’s just a slut. You’ve been lucky, Sandy. You’ve managed to gain some kind of acceptance in this town. I’ve worked hard for it. It hasn’t been easy for you, and it hasn’t been easy for me, and now you’re going to throw it all away because of her. That’s stupid. There’s nothing clever in it at all. It’ll be all round the town by now.’

‘So?’

‘So? I’ll tell you so. Don’t you think it’s hard enough for me as it is without people laughing at me because my son’s going out with a hoor?’ There were tears forming in the corners of her dark eyes, so suddenly alight.

‘She’s not a hoor!’

‘Oh? What is she then? You tell me.’

‘She’s...’ It was impossible. All his pretty speeches, his arguments and his statesmanship had flown out of the window. His brain was soggy. He was up against a cruel and professional opponent. He felt cut, winded, leaning on the ropes with nowhere to go but back into the centre of the ring. ‘She’s like us,’ he managed. His mother opened her eyes wide in astonishment. She laughed again, cutting him deeper.

‘Like us? How dare you. She’s a slut. She’s not like us, Sandy.’

He wanted to play a cruel trick then, wanted to say “So who’s my father?”, but he could not make himself do it. He swallowed hard. In the silence, his thoughts seemed to have struck home anyway. His mother came and sat at the table.

‘Mum,’ he began, his face pleading, ‘I want her to come and stay with us.’ He might have been asking to share his mother’s bed. Her eyes only opened wider. ‘Listen, I can explain. Rian’s not what you think...’

‘Worse then.’

‘No, better. She’s been used, that’s all.’

‘Used? I’ll say she’s been used! And everyone knows it. At least she’s not fooled you there.’ The sarcasm lasted only a second. She was looking at the table, was studying the texture of the sauce bottle. Her fingers played with the saltcellar. The tears, their assault having failed, retreated. ‘Sandy,’ she said calmly, taking several breaths of air, ‘please promise me that you won’t see that girl ever again. Promise me that and things will be all right. You’ll see.’ He stared at the false love on her face. It was useless. He needed time. She wasn’t giving him any. He pushed back his chair, not hearing its horrible scraping across the linoleum floor, and left the kitchen, climbing the stairs as noisily as he could.

In his room he lay on his bed, face down, and closed his eyes on everything: on his mother, on Rian, and on the small, tight world into which he had been so mysteriously born.

5

On his birthday, as planned, Sandy boarded the early train to Edinburgh. His mother had given him fifteen pounds. He had taken the money quietly, thanking her as politely as he would have thanked a distant aunt. She had been quiet, too, but had refused to weaken during the several fights that they had had in the past fortnight. He had even said that if his mother would accept Rian into the house, then he would return to school to do his Highers. She had shaken her head. Blackmail, she had truthfully called it. School had started three days previously. Secretly, Sandy was tempted by Highers. His friends had found nothing waiting for them outside school. Whether he liked it or not, he had until Christmas to decide. He knew that when he joined them it would be to a cold, flat world of quick-setting adult cement. Already Mark and Clark were bored, and were calling him “lucky” because he could return to the womb-like warmth of the school with its ancient radiators and its sarcastic teachers, teachers like Andy Wallace, who had tried talking to him about Rian and his mother, but who had been a flabby, impotent interrogator.

Now he had money in his pocket and was sitting on the old train, an engine pulling three carriages of second-class compartments. He was not intending to spend much of the money, only enough to satisfy his mother. The rest he was going to use to tempt Robbie, for he had not given up his plan. Instead he had modified it slightly: Rian and he would leave Carsden together, or Rian would hide out somewhere away from her brother and her aunt. The former was a drastic measure. The authorities would seek him out. They would be a wanted couple. He was not sure nowadays that melodrama like that could work outside of Hollywood films. Still, the alternatives were few and unsatisfactory. He watched Carsden swing away from him like a ball on a rubber string. It was rapidly replaced by spent countryside and indolent cows. Electric pylons swept across the landscape like giants, and he watched their rhythms from his window. The train seemed to pass a lot of back yards, as if it were an inspector of the shabby reality in every town. Rubbish strewn in gardens. Factories and warehouses with their rusting cast-offs. Earth-moving equipment at work right across Fife, and a petrochemical plant burning in the pale, smoky distance.

He considered the possibility of someone outside throwing a rock at his window. What would he do? He would not duck, just as he had not attempted to dodge Rian’s slap. He would sit and watch the rock’s trajectory cutting towards his reflection. His eyes would close over the splinters of glass. Why would he sit there? To experience, and so that afterwards he could curse his maker for creating the incident. He believed in God now, but it was a malevolent thing and he would speak of it with a small, vehement “g”. He believed in god. He believed in the cruelty and the inevitability of suffering. And he believed that he was doomed. As if to reassure him, thunderclouds gathered above the Firth of Forth. The train passed over and through the red structure of the bridge in a mist that hid from view the road bridge and the water. He knew that it was all because of him.

Soon enough, Edinburgh presented itself to him as a grey smothering of tall buildings. He walked up the steep incline from Waverley Station and was confronted by roadworks and fumes and a slow drizzle. He made towards Princes Street, one hand in his pocket so as not to lose his tiny roll of money. The city’s coldness was a physical thing. People brushed past him without noticing. No one nodded or acknowledged his existence. Soon he was soaked. The drizzle was fine, but the traffic blew it into his face as though he deserved no better.

In a café, he was overcharged for a can of lemonade. He clutched his pound notes more carefully. The large shops were like nests of vivid ants. The streets were strewn with litter and curious men who asked for money or slouched on benches. Tourists walked by slowly, seeming not to see any of it except what they were there to see. Sandy began to wonder if it were real at all. He bought two records cheaply in a shop in South Clerk Street. Everywhere shops were being closed down, redecorated, and opened again. Many of the windows were boarded up. FOR SALE signs cluttered the immediate skyline. He found himself in a small concrete square. People sat on the steps around this square and talked. They seemed quite young, though a few years older than him. It was quiet all around. The road curved away from the square at a decent distance. The buildings were a mixture of the very old and grey and the very new and white. He ventured into one of the newish ones. It had a glass dome, beneath which sat a clump of tropical plants and trees. Music played in a café. There was a bank. Two other sorts of shop were closed. By reading various notices dotted around, Sandy was able to conclude that he was in a part of Edinburgh University. He was startled. He looked around furtively, but no one seemed about to throw him out. He walked out of the building and crossed the square to another, older construction. Inside, it offered much the same facilities as the first. They were like small, self-sufficient communities. For some reason they reminded him of Cars- den. He wished that he had brought Rian with him. He wondered why he had not thought to ask her. He had not seen much of her in the past weeks. His mother had scared him off, but he had not given her up. He had not had enough money to bring her with him; that was all. He needed more money. Robbie, he felt, would never agree to let her go for less than thirty pounds. Sandy had only twenty-seven pounds fifty, less what he would spend today. He squeezed his pocket, wishing the money would grow.

He sat in the building for a long time. He ate a sandwich in the empty cafeteria. It was peaceful in there. He did not want to leave but the train home was in less than an hour. In a good bookshop near the University he bought a book of poems by Ted Hughes, whom he had studied at school, and a novel which he had heard about somewhere. Then he walked down to the station, getting lost twice and having to ask directions twice. Once, he could not find anyone who knew anything about Edinburgh and he ended up asking a news-vendor, from whom he felt obliged to buy an evening paper, though it cost him another sixteen pence.

The train was crowded with people going home from work. He had to stand in a smoking compartment, and began to feel sweaty and sick from the fumes. The people seemed used to it all. They read their evening papers or their books and never talked or looked at their neighbours. Sandy, clutching his books and his records, could not read. Instead he watched from a small piece of available window as the thunderclouds over Fife churned and churned their way towards the interior.

6

George Patterson watched the empty, wind-lashed streets through the grimy window of the Soda Fountain. He had counted the day’s taking, a pathetic sum. He had been thinking of the approaching winter. He could not face another one. He was thinking now of Carsden, of the town it had once been, of the man he had once thought himself. He was in ruin, like the town. He had lived a life that had been nothing less than a direct damnation for over sixteen years. He had sinned grievously. He had lied, had cheated, had watched his foulness push its way into the hearts of others in the deceptive guise of smiling acknowledgement, and he had detested every minute of it — wondering when his lies would be revealed, hoping and praying that they would, but never having his wishes granted. Wondering when he would crack, when he would reach the final edge of the final pit, stare deeply into it, and resolve the crisis. That stage had been reached. He had spent this last day ticking off the tumours in his life, an act of worthless self-excoriation that he had performed before, but never with the same resolve. Takings could be no lower. The summer was over. His life could be measured out by the half-empty jars of sticky, indeterminate things on his shelves. He was full of self-pity, and the only way to end his hypocrisy was the easy way, and the most difficult.

He went through to the alcove and swept up the trimmings of hair from the day’s two appointments. He tipped the lot into a bin and stood the brush against the wall. Then he went into the tiny back room, where a bottle of whisky was wrapped in thin brown paper on the desk. In a drawer of the desk sat three small bottles of assorted tablets. These tablets had challenged him before. Now he felt equal to their challenge. He wagered the whisky against their success. He sat at the table, took a sheet from the drawer, and began to write in a childish, antiquated script.

It had rained all day and all of the night before. The river had burst its banks and flooded the park to a depth of nearly twelve inches. Part of the main road to Lochgelly was also flooded, though not quite impassable. Water gathered at roadside drains and waited patiently to be consumed. People were saying that they had never seen rain like it. It had fallen like a judgement in sheets of thick silver and black. Now it lay in the gutters and in pools, and people inspected it as if seeking the force that had been evident in its falling. But it was broken now, seeping back into the land as though its purpose had been fulfilled.

Broomsticks might be hanging in the sky. You could not say for sure that they were not. It was certainly dark enough up there for them.

But it was not Hallowe’en.

There were no whooping children, no turnip lanterns reeking, no outlandish costumes. Yet Sandy, walking silently through the drying streets, was thinking Hallowe’en thoughts. Chap, chap, chap, we are the guisers. That was the song for Hallowe’en, the witching time. But this was only the end of September. Hallowe’en was a long way off. He walked nervously past houses where he was known. He listened to the blaring televisions and arguments in every house, the arguments reminding him of those he had been having with his mother. Yet he had signed the options for Highers. He had not told her that, but he was sure that Andy Wallace would have. Homework begged to be done now, but his mind was full of Rian.

Today he had stolen a pound from his mother’s purse. Three days ago he had done the same thing. His guilt echoed in the arguments around him, and beyond these sounds lurked the conspiratorial silence of the distant night air, mocking him for what he was about to do.

But he would do it, for he needed the money. He had stolen, he had scrimped, he had done everything he could think of. Everything except this. He shivered. It had to be tonight. All he needed was confidence. He was walking towards Cardell, towards where Rian lived. There were new houses there, incomers who did not know him. He was not the witch’s son to them. He fingered the tin of boot-polish in his pocket. The dimmed light from Venetian blinds showed him his targets. And suddenly he thought again, I’m too old for this, much too old. I’m too old and it’s too early and it’s stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He rubbed at his brow as though worrying a headache. It was for the money. He needed the money and he needed it tonight. The money for Rian. He was so close now, and yet this gaping distance confronted him. He sighed. For the money then.

He crouched beside a hedge and took the tin from his pocket. It was half empty. His mother used it on her black leather boots, he on his school shoes. It smelled of warm kitchens, of fruit in bowls, making him even more uncomfortable for some reason. He dabbed his hand into the tin, smearing the thick polish over both cheeks and his nose, all the time forcing himself not to think about the minutes to come. Then, having wiped his hands on the edge of the pavement, he took off his jacket and turned it inside out. When he put it back on it was orange and furry with arms of cotton-white. It would have to do.

The house reared in front of him, looking bigger than ever. He stood at the gate, feeling sick, feeling his heart pounding with fear. Then he remembered that it was only a Hallowe’en prank after all, and he shuffled up the path towards the imposing wood and brass of the door. He stood on the doorstep for a long time, not thinking, just standing there. When someone finally walked through the hallway he panicked, thinking that they were coming out and would find him standing there suspiciously. He thought that he had his story ready, so he pushed the bell. The person in the hallway stopped, put something down on a table, and opened the front door.

It was a man in his early fifties, dressed for an evening in. His slippers were furry-brown and well used. His cardigan hung loosely about him. He wore glasses and had a silver moustache. Sandy suddenly remembered that it was not Hallowe’en and that he was strange to the man in his strangeness.

‘Well?’ said the man. Sandy was purple-faced and hoped the polish would disguise the fact. ‘Well?’ Two mugs of coffee were steaming on a small telephone stool behind the man, and on the wall next to them hung an ornate mirror in which Sandy caught glimpses of himself. He looked like a tinker. ‘Well?’

‘Penny for the Guy,’ he stammered. The man stretched to look outside.

‘What Guy exactly?’ he asked. Sandy stared stupidly towards where the man was looking. He began to remember his story.

‘I’ve not built it yet,’ he said. ‘That’s why I need the money.’ Need the money for Rian. ‘It’s going to be the biggest Guy in the village. I’m having to start it early, you see. It’s for charity.’ The final lie made him lower his eyes guiltily to the doorstep. He had been talking too quickly, he realised.

The man chuckled.

‘That’s fly,’ he said. Then: ‘Margaret! Come out here for a minute!’

There was a tortured, smiling silence until a fat woman, knitting in hand, came to the door. Her husband made room for her. Between them hung the mirror.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘someone to see us.’ Her voice and her face were ripples of condescension.

‘He’s a guiser,’ explained her husband, ‘but he doesn’t have a Guy. That’s why he needs the money. That’s why he’s more than a month early in calling. It’s for charity, he says.’

Sandy hoped that his own silence would force the money from them. He wanted to run from their doorstep, and was prevented from doing so only by the thought of their laughter.

‘And will we see this Guy when it’s finished?’ said the woman.

‘Oh yes,’ said Sandy. He watched himself in the mirror. He looked a bit like Robbie, though dirtier. The comparison attracted him for a moment until he realised that the woman had spoken again. ‘Pardon?’ he said.

‘I said can you do something?’

‘Do something?’

‘Aye,’ said the woman. ‘Sing something.’

‘Sing something?’ he echoed, looking to the man.

‘Is it a boy we’ve got here, Margaret, or is it a bloody parrot?’

They both had a good laugh at that, bending over slightly. Yes, he looked a little like Robbie, hard and unmoving.

‘I can’t sing,’ he said.

‘Well,’ said the woman, ‘tell a joke then.’

‘You’re a bit old for this, son, aren’t you?’ said the man.

‘You must be able to do a dance at least,’ said the woman, shaking her fleshy bulk like an aunt at a wedding reception.

‘Go on.’

Sandy stared at his feet. They were monsters, infected with elephantiasis. He moved one of them out of curiosity, then began to do a little shuffle. He gazed at himself in the mirror. He saw a scruffy adolescent with jet-black hair and his coat inside out doing a stupid jerking dance on a strange doorstep. He forced himself to think of Rian, but it did not work. A solidity was gathering in his throat. He thought again of running, of turning on his heels and flying up into that beautifully clear night air. His audience smiled and clapped their hands in time to his movements, standing back a little into their doorway for a better view. The man began to whistle. The woman hummed in a broken-down voice, her hips moving obscenely. Sandy was appalled. He stared at them like a bear on a chain, and they were clapping and whistling and tapping their feet and humming along with the rhythm. He came to a furious stop. They stopped clapping.

The man examined Sandy with sudden depth.

‘You’re not much good at this, are you?’ he said. ‘You’re not much good.’ He chuckled. It was not a kind sound at all, Sandy realised. Children could be heard in the distance. The thought of money was all that held Sandy there, and he wanted to blurt out the truth to these stupid people, these warm, happy, stupid people. He bit his lip thoughtfully, hoping it would be interpreted as a sign of stubbornness. When he looked into the mirror now he saw a resolute face, a face anonymous and to be feared. He liked this look. He stared hard at the man. The woman had stopped humming. She took her coffee uninterestedly from the stool. She clutched her knitting to her bosom.

‘How much will we give him?’ asked the man, turning to his wife. She shrugged, then looked for a second at Sandy.

‘He wasn’t worth much,’ she said icily. Then: ‘The programme’s back on.’

‘I was worth much!’ Sandy called to her retreating back.

The man attempted a more open chuckle.

‘Aye, you don’t do much these days for your money, do you? That’s the trouble with this country. As little as possible for as much money, that’s the way of it. You’re learning the ropes fast, son. Not too fast, I hope.’ He was digging into his pocket. His hand came out in the shape of a small fist and extended towards Sandy, who opened his own palm and received the chinking money without looking at it.

‘You don’t half talk a lot of shite, mister,’ he said, turning to go.

The man chuckled again. The sound of bats against a window pane, of candles being snuffed.

‘Don’t go casting spells now,’ he called bitterly as he closed the door. Sandy’s stomach did a single somersault, no more, and then he grinned at having forced the feeble old man into saying that. He took off his jacket and reversed it as he walked. He felt stronger now, different. But he could not go through that again, not for anything, not even for Rian, his Rian. He moved further up the hill, away from the noises of the children. He lifted some newspaper from the ground and spat on it, scrubbing it against his face. He opened his warm, grubby hand and counted nearly fifty pence. Fifty pennies only. But he had gained something else, something that oozed from him as he rubbed harder and harder at his cheeks, enjoying the harsh, bright pain. Fifty bright pennies for Rian, his Rian.

So he had twenty-four pounds and eighty pence with which to tempt the gypsy.

There seemed to Darroch something religious about Mahler’s Fifth. He listened to it while sipping dry sherry, the glass absurdly small between his fingers — strong, hair glazed fingers. He had finished Sunday’s sermon. His sermons — full of disguised morals, and some not so disguised — had been warmly received by the congregation, none of whom, however, sought to put them into practice. He felt frustrated. What else could he do? He scribbled in the margin of the sermon, which was balanced on his knees. If only he could summon up the courage to speak with the woman in some depth, then he could fathom the extent of the town’s feelings towards her. Yet each time he spoke to her he felt himself choking back the words and the feelings. It was absurd. Her eyes made him totally unable to say aloud what he felt so intensely. He was becoming obsessed by her. He did not want to think of it as love, and decided instead that it would only be cured if he were able to make himself talk with her about her life in the town. That, however, only led him back to his initial dilemma. There was emotion in Mahler’s piece too, and emotion in the warming sherry. He felt them acting on him like chiding, agreeable friends. They put their arms around his shoulders and whispered, snake-like, in his ears. The room surrounded him like mortality itself: oppressive and inescapable. He shook himself free of these growing abstractions. It was time to be rational and clear-headed. He thought of the long walk to Mary Miller’s house, and decided to take his car. The flooding between St Cuthbert’s and Cardell was not too bad. He would manage to get his car through, God willing.

She wept for the first time in a week. She had resigned herself to the gulf which had opened out of nowhere between Sandy and herself. She had watched Andy as he had explained the reasons why he felt it best that they separate for a while. She had watched him make his apologies and leave her house, the house of her parents and of her grandparents. She had felt the world collapsing in on her. She had walked in a dream to the telephone box, but had not been able to get through to Canada. Now she was in the dreary graveyard, and, the grass being too wet to sit on — no, that was not the reason — she stood by the grave of her parents. She formed words in her head. She opened her mouth once or twice but produced only a dry clucking sound. Then she wept. She wept and she sniffed back the tears into her eyes, not wanting to waste a drop, and she wept again. She stared through the blur at the engravings on the headstone. She read her father’s name. His age at death. The tiny sentiment at the bottom. Then she started to speak. She spoke to her mother alone, and the story she told would make her father disappear from everything for ever.

‘I’ve lost him, Mum. He’s decided that we should not see each other for a while. You know what that means. The coward’s brush-off. It wasn’t his fault though, Mum. No, he tried. It was me. I wouldn’t have sex with him. That was the problem. It’s a big problem with me, Mum, but I’ve never told you about it, have I? It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? But shall I tell you why? Shall I tell you what I could not bring myself to tell Andy? Dear Andy. You’ll hate me, Mum. You’ll hate me for eternity.’ She blew her nose. The sky around her was darkening. Streetlamps suddenly came on outside the cemetery. ‘You always thought that it was Tom, didn’t you, Mum? It wasn’t. People here believe that it was Tom too; I think even Sandy believes it. You know that he has never asked me seriously who his father was. I would never have told him anyway. But I’m going to tell you, Mum. Lord knows I’ve kept it bottled up for too long.’

She paused again and pulled her coat around her, though the evening was milder than the day had been. Sandy had given one of the shawls away, one of her mother’s shawls.

She could never forgive him for that. He had given it to that bitch of a tinker. And after all she had done for him... ‘Sandy,’ she said. ‘Sandy.’ Then she collected herself. She was here to speak with her mother.

‘You remember that day, Mum. It was Boxing Day. You were going to Auntie Beth’s in Leven. I said that I wasn’t feeling well. Tom and Dad had arranged to meet with friends in the evening. So you went by yourself. I really thought that you were leaving us then, I mean leaving us for good. But you came back. I thought that Dad’s drinking and his depressions were becoming too much for you. I know, he wasn’t really to blame. The pits were all closed or closing and he didn’t have much money left, or much of his pride. It was hard for everyone, wasn’t it? There were always excuses. But when you came back, and when I told you late that I was pregnant, you thought it had happened on that night. You were right.’

A car passed on the road outside. It was a brave body who was driving on a night like this.

‘Tom was out most of the night at a dance, then probably with that girl he sometimes saw in her front room. I was upstairs lying in bed, but dressed. I heard dad and George Patterson come in. You remember, mum, that they were very friendly. George Patterson was with dad the night he died. It was suicide, you know. I figured that out right away. It was suicide that night, and George Patterson has had the guilt all on his own shoulders ever since. I’ve done remove it. I hope his life’s been hell!’ Her voice, uncannily calm, had now built towards minor hysteria. She tugged at her coat, staring over the wall of the graveyard at the clouds beyond. ‘They were drunk and noisy downstairs. I could hear glasses falling, and then a bottle rolled across the kitchen floor. It’s funny how those details stick in my mind, but they do. I can remember some of what they were shouting, too. All about the death of the town and the death of the workers and the death of pride. High-blown stuff. Self pity mostly. They shouted and laughed and grew angry. They cursed the system and the bureaucrats. They cursed the NCB. They cursed just about everything but themselves. Dad did most of the shouting, didn’t you, Dad? George was just backing you up. He had little enough to worry about. His shop was doing nicely. He was like a tiny fat king in a sugar palace. But he grew angry with you anyway. I couldn’t stand it. By that time I really did have a headache. I crept downstairs.

‘When I entered the living room it was like walking into somewhere for the first time. It seemed to have changed utterly. The chairs had been moved, and the settee. Some glasses were on the table, some others were on the sideboard, and two were on their sides in the middle of the room. A cardboard box half filled with cans and bottles of beer was on the floor. I remember it all so clearly. And a bottle of dark rum stood beside another of whisky on the mantelpiece. Dad had his arm round George Patterson. They were swaying in the middle of the floor, circling round the box. Dad saw me first. His hair was plastered down over his forehead. Sweat was hanging in the folds of his throat, or it might have been tears. His shirt-tail hung out over his trousers. I’d heard him that drunk before, when I was lying in bed sometimes, but I’d never seen him that drunk. Although I was looking at my father, I knew that I was dealing with someone else, someone with a different voice from the person I knew and with a different look in his eye. He came up to me and put an arm around my waist, but it wasn’t funny, Mum. I slipped away from him and went and sat on the settee, arms folded. I was scared, yet I wanted to be in on it, do you see? I wanted to be part of their grown-up, men’s world. I was fifteen, remember. I was already on the edge of that world. So I acted like a grown-up woman. Stupid of me. I sat on the settee and scowled. And Dad slumped down beside me and asked for a kiss from his daughter. He brought his face near mine and kissed me on the lips. It felt obscene. His face was bristly, and it scratched me. But he held me there for a few seconds. Then he pulled me to him again and kissed me again, not a dad’s kisses this time but adult things. He was talking too, talking about the waste he had made of his life, and how I was the only thing he really lived for, how he had always cared more for me than Tom. He was stroking my back, and his breath was rancid. I thought he was all I had. I thought you’d run away. I suppose I was a bit sorry for him, but not much. I was sorrier for myself. He grasped me hard, pulling me towards him all the time. His grip was tight, a real miner’s grip, and I fell against him. Oh, Mum, that was it, you see. It all happened then, and Patterson was there too. But Dad was half-hearted. No, I’m not telling it right.’

She paused. Her throat was dry. She scooped up some water from a puddle and lapped at it like a dog. She felt she was going too quickly; none of it seemed plausible.

‘I don’t really know what I’m trying to say, Mum. It was so long ago. But later, when Dad was sick and had to go to the bathroom and collapsed there, well, Patterson. He did it. He did it. And it was against my will all right, but I was confused. I hit him, but he was a big, heavy man. And he was talking to me, but differently from Dad... He was trying to talk like a boyfriend. It was horrible. Talking about maybe getting married. Eventually I ran upstairs and sat with my body against the bedroom door in case they tried to get in. I was awake all night while they slept. It was disgusting, Mum, but how could I tell you? How could I? I don’t know why I’m telling you now.’

She wiped tears from her face. Her breath was heavy. Her heart was a slow machine, rusted. She looked again at the ground, at the broken flowers in their jars, at the earth which held the two corpses.

‘Oh, Mum, I don’t know, I really don’t know. But that’s why Dad committed suicide. Because... I’m not even sure if he knew about Patterson. Probably not. So all the guilt was on him. But now all the guilt is on Patterson, you see. And though I love Sandy with all my might, still I can’t help feeling sometimes that part of him belongs to someone else, someone I hate. Oh, Jesus, help me. You see now, Mum, don’t you? And I couldn’t tell Andy. If only I could tell Andy. Tom had nothing to do with it, you see. Nothing at all. He was mystified when he found out. He thought it might have been one of his friends. Oh, Jesus, how can I talk to you again, Mum? How can I make you listen? I’m sorry. But it wasn’t my fault, Mum. It wasn’t my fault.’

She breathed deeply, her face to the cast-iron sky. Rain was falling somewhere, and soon would fall here again. She walked quickly from the cemetery, her coat around her like a rough skin. A car had stopped at the gates, but it was not Andy. There were to be no miracles. It was the minister. He walked around the car towards her. She was elsewhere, but he could not see it.

‘Miss... Mrs Miller, eh, I was just coming to see you. I didn’t catch you at your house so I...’

‘Go away, will you? Just leave me alone!’ She began to run downhill. She did not know where she was going, but she knew that it had to be somewhere lonely and somewhere uninvolved. In the end, she ran towards the flooded park.

Robbie was blind drunk. That much Sandy knew by just looking at him. The young man was slumped against the outside wall of the mansion. He cradled a near-empty bottle of vodka in his arms and sang to it as if it were his baby sister.

‘Oh ho,’ he said as the boy approached. ‘It’s Sandy, is it? Will you sit down here and have a drink with me, Sandy?’ He waved the bottle in Sandy’s general direction. ‘You will have a drink, won’t you? I’m hellish lonely these evenings. You stopped coming to see us. What’s wrong?’

Sandy crouched in front of him. With one hand he steadied himself on the ground, while the other hand stayed in his pocket, where the roll of notes lurked.

‘Listen, Robbie,’ he began, staring at the bleary slits of the young gypsy’s eyes, watching the eyes themselves glisten and roll and pull themselves into focus, ‘I want to speak to you about Rian.’

‘About Rian? Ha! That little bitch? Don’t let’s speak about her, Alexander. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Here.’ He motioned towards Sandy with the bottle. Sandy took it from him and gulped down the vodka. It burned in his throat, but made him feel better.

‘Tea,’ he continued, ‘about Rian. I’ve got some money together, Robbie, and I want to...’ Robbie’s head rolled.

‘Money,’ he said, ‘money, is it? Oh yes,’ he rubbed at his chin and a little wise old man’s face came over him, ‘the money. Rian told me about that. You’re supposed to be getting together some money. What for again? Oh yes, to buy her from me. Ha! That’s a good one! Buy Rian! As if she could be bought. She can be bought, mind you, but not like that. No, not like that at all.’ It was as if he were talking to himself. His eyes stared at the gathering dusk, seeking answers to unspoken questions, then were dragged towards the ground by the weight of the alcohol. ‘No, Sandy, you can’t buy Rian. It was a trick. She told me all about it. Told me to keep quiet. But you’re me pal, aren’t you? I’ll tell you. It was her idea, Sandy. Nothing to do with me.’ He shook his head vigorously, but his eyes fixed themselves on the sky. ‘Rain. Any minute. Anyone can see that. More fucking rain. It’s damp in that house. Why does nobody ever come to fix the roof? The tarpaulin’s all torn or worn away or something. The ceiling is rotten. Not fit to live in. Not fit. Ah, but Sandy me boy, she was taking you for a ride. Not her usual ride, but a ride all the same.’ He laughed at the gods. ‘It was the sound of drunken jubilation. It would be forgotten by morning. Taking you for a ride, my son. She wanted me to grab the money, then neither of us would have anything to do with you afterwards. We’d board up the windows proper, or disappear, and never see you again. What could you do, eh?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing. Unless you were prepared to tell people that you had been planning to buy yourself a gyppo girl, and who’d have sympathy for you then, eh? No-fucking-body. Not in this town, Sandy. So you’d be up the creek, right? Without a paddle, right? But never fear. Your old pal has told you. He’s saved your fucking neck, so sit and have a drink with him. Sit yourself down.’

He patted the ground beside him. The grass was sodden. Sandy could feel it underhand. His heart was racing. He understood now, and he believed. It had been stupid all along not to. Robbie, Aunt Kitty, his own mother — they had known, they had instinctively known the rottenness that was core deep, for they had lived through it themselves in many manifestations. Yet she had been loving towards him, gentle, fragile. Could it possibly have been merely a game, a charade for her own benefit? Robbie was speaking again.

‘You’re awful quiet, Sandy. Did you fall for it then? Did you really save up all your pennies? So have others before you. You’re not alone. Have you come here to give all your pennies to Robbie? Do us a favour and go get another bottle instead. Keep the change. You can have the bitch for free, but I doubt if you’ll be able to take her.’ He grew less animated. ‘She makes good money sometimes, and when she does she gives me some for a little drink. To keep me quiet, I suppose, and so I’ll look after her and protect her from the big wide world out there. But I’ll let you into a secret, Sandy. I’d look after her anyway, without the bribes and the booze. She’s my sister, you see, and I’ve been looking after her since I was a kid.’ He waved his arms in an uncertain sweep. ‘How much did you bring, Sandy? Fifty pounds? She said you’d manage fifty, said you had some nice things in your house. Myself, I said I doubted whether you’d get more than thirty or thirty-five, but she was adamant that you’d manage fifty for her. She said you were that much in love.’

‘Shut up!’ The final syllable racketed around the garden and in Sandy’s ears. ‘Shut the fuck up!’

Robbie put his hands comically over his ears, grimacing, letting the bottle slip to the grass. Sandy remembered that he was only a few years younger than the gypsy. He reached out and slapped Robbie with his free hand. The feeling was shocking, but satisfying too, as if he had done something really wicked against authority: dropping litter or shitting in the playground. He touched his stinging palm with his fingertips. Robbie rubbed at the spot of red on his grey cheek. He was not going to retaliate. Sandy wondered if this were the same strong, cocky person whom he had encountered in a shadowed room only a few months previously. It was like watching a cancer victim growing old too quickly. It was like watching his grandmother as she had wept herself towards death.

‘Where is she?’ he asked. His voice was firm like a film actor’s. Robbie shook his head. He was studying Sandy’s feet now.

‘Could be two or three places,’ he said, still drunk but trying not to be. ‘Could be down by the river in the park, but it’s flooded, isn’t it? Sometimes she takes them to the back of the swimming pool. Other times it’s behind the Miners’ Institute.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s no use, though. What could you do? Nothing. Better leave her alone, Sandy. You’ll only hurt yourself. I don’t want my pal hurting himself. Stay here. Come on, we’ll finish this bottle and get another. Nothing’s to blame really. Just, well, everything. This fucking town. This fucking country. Anything you want to blame.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Stay here, Sandy. It’s getting cold. We can go inside, if I can get up the bloody pipe. You can wait for her inside. Look, look,’ he put his hands out, palms upward, like a slouching Buddha, ‘look, Sandy, it’s beginning to rain again.’

But when Robbie looked up, Sandy had vanished. He peered into the gloom, but saw nothing.

‘Sandy,’ he said. ‘Sandy, you’ll only...’ Robbie slid sideways down the wall and was asleep.

She was not at the Miners’ Institute. He walked on, down the hill towards the swimming pool. It had been a gift to the town from the miners, built in the mid-1960s when things were already beginning to turn sour. It had been popular throughout Fife for a time, but then a much larger pool had been built in Kirkcaldy, and another dream had become merely an echo in the showers. Now it was used by the town’s swimming club and by some old people. It was falling into disrepair. Gangs painted its walls with vaguely sectarian slogans and would gather against its back wall to be warmed by the hot air ducts there. Some public conveniences, much vandalised, stood locked nearby, and the park was separated from the pool only by the town’s bowling green.

Sandy took a short cut behind the bingo hall, wary of the shadows. The Cars might not be far away. He could easily fight them all on a night like this. The slap he had given Robbie stung in his memory.

The rain hardly touched him, and his eyes stared at the backs of the buildings. It looked as though someone had broken into the Soda Fountain, but that was of no concern to him. She had been cruel. She had been needlessly cruel. Every fibre of her was rotten with experience. She might burn in hell, but she would have to face him first. His fingers tightened into hardening fists.

Mary walked by the edge of the flooded park. Her shoes were sucked at by the sodden grass, but she could not feel the dampness rising around her. She had stopped crying, and had set up the necessary barriers between herself and her grief. She would survive, but she wished that the night were over. She wished that she could transport herself many weeks into the future, to a time when everything had healed and seemed to have taken place in an unreal time. Either that or let her fade into the long past, beyond the Boxing Day to a time when the world had promised much and asked for little. She stopped to look over a railing. The stagnant, near-dead burn had filled with rain-water. It was as if it had been revitalised. For a moment she might have been ten again and watching Tom playing football. She remembered that day. The goblins in the burn. Her burning hair. It was dreamlike now, as this night would sometime be...

Sandy heard the animal sounds and recognised them. His stomach like a sea-squall, he turned the corner. She was against the wall, moving with a forced motion up and down it. A duct hummed above her and sent a small amount of steam curling down over her and the figure which obscenely wedged her against that rough wall. He knew that figure. It was the worst thing he could have imagined. The grunts were unbearable. He watched in fascination as the rhythm played itself out. He almost laughed. It was banal; like adults playing at being children. Then he walked toward! them. Her head turned and she saw him approaching. She pushed at Belly Martin, but his weight was on her like heavy winter blankets. His head rested against her as he eased himself down towards reality.

The reality was stunning. Sandy pulled him away from Rian by the hair, lank and greasy, away from the unresisting He threw him, grunting, against the wall, turned him, and kicked him solidly in his absurdly baby-like genitals. The squeal was satisfying. His fist sank into an unfeeling, doughy mass. He stood back and kicked again, and Belly Martin squealed again and went down on all fours to be sick.

Sandy, breathing lightly, looked at her. She had smoothed her skirt down and her head was bowed, her lips red and bated.

‘Slut,’ he said. It was as if he had hit her. She jerked a little, but kept her eyes on the ground. He saw that she had the shawl, grubby now and hanging heavy with rain, around her shoulders. He did not want to touch it. Suddenly he felt subdued, tired. His brain was tired and his legs were tired and he wished that it would end. He eased himself against the wall beside her and rubbed at his forehead. Boot-polish still hung in the air around him, the grubbiness of gypsies. She had not moved.

‘Sandy...’ Her voice was quieter than Belly Martin’s retching. ‘Sandy, it was Robbie...’ He shook his head in disgust.

Belly was cursing him with what breath he had. Sandy pushed the obscenity with his foot and watched it roll over. It curled itself into a foetal, protective position, rather like a snail, and did not move.

‘Sandy, it’s not like you think.’

‘No more tricks, Rian. I’ve been too fucking stupid for too long.’ But then why was he listening to her at all? And why was his head thumping like some tightened drum-skin? He should leave now. He should make the best of it. What was the best of it? He levered himself from the wall and moved past her. She put a gentle hand on his back.

‘No, Sandy, listen to me. It’s you I want, Sandy. It’s you.’

When he turned she was right behind him, and she stood forward even then to kiss him on the lips. Her tongue ran along his teeth, her hand snaking to the back of his neck, caressing the headache, the tension. He felt her cool saliva. How much of it, he thought with sudden revulsion, was Belly Martin’s? He pushed her away, but she fell against the wall, steam wafting around her. Graffiti encircled her like the frame of a painting. Her hands were behind her back and inviting, the whole of her body open to him. He faced her and felt triumphant, a warrior claiming some prize. But she was... He should... There was no sense... Her hand went to his thigh. He was a child again, staring at what he did not really understand.

Then he heard the scream. He had never heard his mother scream before, and yet he knew that the sound was hers. It lasted only two seconds, but it was his mother, and he knew that it was coming from the park. He turned away from those wide, knowing arms and began to run.

It had been a miracle, as if God had ordained it. Here she was, delivered unto him, at his mercy. She had had no mercy, and he would show none. Poor George. What had she done to him? She had bewitched him, as she had bewitched others. She had destroyed Matty, and now she had destroyed George. There was no one left in his life. They had been systematically taken by her. She had put a blight on the town and on his own life. Poor George.

He had gone to the Soda Fountain late. He had told George that he would not be coming at all, but had managed to anyway. The door was locked. It was strange that it should be locked so early in the evening. He had knocked, but to no avail. He had walked round to the back of the shop, peering on tiptoe through the small, blackened window into the back room. George was hunched over his desk as though writing. He had tapped on the window, then had knocked and called out, but nothing had moved inside. Only then had he seen the bottles. He had put a stone through the window, had opened the catch and strained towards the bolt on the door. He had pushed his way inside. His friend was cool, growing cold. He could not believe it. An envelope lay beside him, addressed to Mary Miller. In his stunned grief Matt Duncan had torn it open. He had unfolded the note.

So, she had driven him to his death, the bitch. The witch. He had been infatuated by her. There was evil in her. Evil. He had called for the doctor and had given a short statement to the local policeman, Sergeant Jobson. Then, left alone to his misery, he had walked down to the park. And there she had been, delivered into his hands.

He approached her from behind, his shoes splashing water. She appeared not to hear him. Her hair was tied in a ball behind her. He grabbed for it, trembling.

‘Murderer!’ he spat out. ‘Bitch. Murderer.’ She screamed then as he forced her head down, her body following, towards the water. There was a slight splash, as of bathwater, as her head sank. He pushed her in further, his legs becoming wet and his face spattered with rain. She was not really struggling, though. Her hands beat down in the water, but she was not really trying. He held her strongly, his face twisted with the effort. He fell on to his knees, still holding her down. He felt justified at long last, and released from his ancient burden.

Her mouth brushed the grass. Her nose was pressed painfully against the ground, but that was the only real discomfort. Her eyes opened on darkness, yet just above her must be dim light. Her hair stung with the memory of it, as if she were only now living out the dream of all those years ago. The grass was a living thing beside her. It caressed her and spoke to her in bubbles of emptying air. Her whole front was saturated — she was becoming part of it. She wanted to release her last breath and finish the act, but something held her back. She could not tell what it was, but she knew that it was working against her will. Her hair flamed behind her, each strand calling out for peace. If only Sandy and she... If only...

Then, with a sudden jolt her hair was free and floating, and the pressure on her head and back fell away. She rose from the shallow pool like a fish on a thin, strong line and saw, through the water streaming down her face, the old man humped like a camel while the young boy played on his back. It was comical for a moment. Then she realised that the man had just tried to kill her, and that the boy was her son. Sandy was shouting at the man as he wrestled with him. Her ears drained and she could hear his cries.

‘Leave her alone! Leave my mum alone! Leave us alone!’

He thumped on the man’s silent back and kicked at him. She noticed that he was looking very grubby, as though he had just come out of the Wilderness. She did not understand what was happening, not exactly, but she saw Sandy’s bright teeth gritted in determination, and she knew that whatever he was thinking, it had to do with endurance and even perhaps, just perhaps, a kind of resurrection.