‘Go on, get in,’ he said in a way that he must have thought persuasive. Getting in a car once with him was foolishness, twice might have been from necessity, but to get into the Cortina a third time was nothing short of lunacy.
‘I’m supposed to be doing an essay on George Eliot,’ I said, climbing into the cold, smelly car.
‘Oh yeah, who’s he?’ Chick asked, pulling away from the kerb in a nasty grinding of gears.
‘She’s a woman.’
‘Really?’ Chick said. ‘I knew a woman once called Sidney, she worked as a stoker on the White Star line, can you believe that?’
A greasy fish supper sat on the dashboard. ‘Chip?’ Chick offered, holding up something cold and limp. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said to himself when I waved it away. He ate the chips as he drove. ‘How’s the Prof? Nice guy, that. And the Yank?’
‘Terri.’
‘That’s a man’s name,’ Chick said.
‘She’s not a man.’
Chick finished his poke of chips, threw the paper out of the window and wiped his hands on the knees of his trousers. We were covering Dundee in an apparently random fashion on a route that took us along the Hawkhill and up the Hilltown and then back to the Sinderins and the Hawkhill again. This route took us to a newsagent, two different betting shops, a phone-box, an off-licence, a slow, mystifying drive past the Sheriff Court and a short tour of the docks. I noticed Watson Grant coming out of one of the betting shops. ‘Look,’ I said, giving Chick a dig in the ribs because he was absorbed in reading his Sporting Life (although, interestingly, still driving the Cortina), ‘there’s Grant Watson.’
‘Who?’
‘Watson Grant, you’re working for him, remember? Following his wife?’
‘Not any more,’ Chick said, ‘he couldn’t pay his bloody bill. Mr middle-class university lecturer,’ Chick said with some disgust, ‘he’s a bloody compulsive gambler.’
‘No?’
‘Yep.’
‘Maybe that’s why his wife’s having an affair,’ I said, remembering Aileen Grant’s rather sorrowful features.
‘Bet your bottom dollar she’ll leave him,’ Chick said, ‘then he’ll be in a real pickle.’
‘Why?’
‘Insurance policy,’ Chick said, ‘on his mother-in-law.’
‘Mrs Macbeth?’
‘You know her?’ Chick said suspiciously.
‘So, Grant Watson has an insurance policy on Mrs Macbeth?’
‘No, his wife has one on her, what’s-her-name?’
‘Aileen.’
‘Aileen, she’s got the insurance policy, but it’ll walk when she walks.’
‘I think I see. If Mrs Macbeth died now, or indeed if Aileen Grant died now, Watson Grant would get the money. But if Aileen divorces him he won’t get any money when Mrs Macbeth dies?’
Chick rolled down the window as she drew nearer and I wondered if I shouldn’t shout out a warning, especially when he took out a packet of Polos and offered one to her. Chick looked exactly like the kind of person who starred in public information films about not taking sweets from strangers. The girl took the mint, bent down, kissed Chick on the cheek and said, ‘Thanks, Dad,’ gave him a little wave, and carried on walking.
I was astonished. ‘That was the “mingin’ little bastard”?’
‘One of them,’ he said gruffly, driving off in a horrible grinding of gears. He drew level with the girl and said, ‘I suppose you want a lift?’
‘No thanks,’ she said, ‘I’m fine.’
‘Just as well,’ Chick said, ‘because I’m not a bloody taxi service.’
The girl laughed.
‘You must have quite weak genes,’ I said to Chick.
‘Just anything fishy,’ Chick said. Within seconds he was snoring.
I followed him into the funeral parlour, where we were greeted by a businesslike undertaker. What a shame Terri wasn’t with us, she would have thoroughly enjoyed this kind of visit. Undertaking was probably the perfect profession for her. The bland atmosphere in the funeral parlour would have disappointed her, though – it felt more like the Haze-freshened front office of a plumbers’ supplies merchant than a house of death.
‘Come to see the deceased,’ Chick said to the undertaker.
It turned out that the funeral parlour was affording temporary shelter to several deceased and Chick was unsure which one he was visiting. ‘The one from The Anchorage,’ he tried. The undertaker was polite but wary and it was only when Chick flashed his defunct warrant card that we were finally allowed to visit our chosen corpse.
‘This had better not be anyone I know,’ I warned Chick. I had never seen a dead body, never known anyone who had died—
We are waiting on a supper of potato soup to reach a semi-edible state and are passing the time by drinking some strange liquor which Nora has been concocting in a home-made still.
‘From?’ I ask dubiously. The drink looks and smells like the bottom of a stillwater pond.
~ Kelp.
The thin light of the fire is our only illumination tonight. There is no electricity here, of course. It went dead a long time ago. We are conserving our resources for we are down to our last few candles and have only one can of paraffin left. We need supplies but the seas are too heavy for the little Sea-Adventure. Nora’s seamanship is extraordinary and unexpected – she can row the little boat for miles without tiring, she can navigate by the stars, she knows every eddy and tide and current of these her home waters. All the years we lived by the sea I never once saw her on the water. Where did she learn about boats?
~ From my sister, she says, she was a water-baby.
Beautiful Effie who drowned on the day I was born? How do water-babies drown?
~ With some difficulty, Nora says grimly. You’re in the funeral parlour, she reminds me, like someone trying to change the subject, you’re about to see your first dead body—
‘I’ve seen my share,’ he said tersely as if there was a quota for each of us. ‘Miss Anderson,’ he said to me as though introducing me to the body. I advanced cautiously towards the coffin. ‘She won’t bite,’ Chick said. One would very much hope not. Chick took me by the elbow to encourage me to move closer.
The coffin was lined with a kind of white ruff, like a soufflé dish, and the corpse of an old woman that nestled inside the ruff was, thankfully, unknown to me. The skin on the old woman’s face was like tallow candlewax and her thin lips were pursed in a way that suggested she had died with a complaint on her lips. Miss Anderson, I recalled, was a ‘crabbit wee wifie’ according to Mrs McCue.
‘So do you think someone killed her?’ I whispered to Chick.
‘Why would I think that?’ Chick said.
‘Well, why are you here then? And why were you at Senga’s funeral?’
‘She was my aunt,’ Chick said. ‘Aunt Senga.’
‘Aunt Senga?’ Maybe she was, but somehow nothing Chick said ever sounded as if it was true.
I told him that, according to Mrs Macbeth, Miss Anderson had a terrible fear of premature burial and Chick said, ‘Is that so?’ and took out a penknife from his jacket pocket and without any preamble jabbed Miss Anderson in the back of one of her hard veiny hands. I screamed, but quietly, given the hushed atmosphere of the funeral parlour and the undoubtedly illegal nature of the deed.
‘She’s definitely dead,’ Chick said, as if he’d just done me a favour. But I had already left.
Next we spiralled up the slopes of the Law, the extinct volcano on whose ashy skirts Dundee was built. We parked, like tourists or lovers (and we were definitely neither), got out and walked round in a circle to view the full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama on offer. There was snow on the Sidlaws and the Tay was the colour of polished tin.
‘Aye, it’s a bonny place,’ Chick said, ‘from this distance anyway.’ He took another half-bottle of Bell’s from his pocket – I had a vague, rather queasy recollection of having finished the last one.
‘Go on,’ Chick said, ‘it’ll put hairs on your chest. Just like Sidney,’ he added and laughed – an odd phlegmy noise that ended in a hacking cough and an unpleasant choking that apparently could only be cured by lighting a cigarette.
‘So do you think someone’s killing the old people?’ I persisted.
‘Did I say that?’
‘Maybe it’s Watson Grant. Maybe he’s hoping to kill Mrs Macbeth before Aileen leaves him and he’s killing other old people to divert attention from his real victim – Mrs Macbeth.’
‘You read too many books.’
It began to snow – cold wet stuff that melted as it fell. ‘That’s enough of the great outdoors,’ Chick said, climbing quickly back in the car.
The snow grew thicker, whirling round in the eddies of wind at the top of the Law so that sitting in the car was like being inside a giant snowshaker. Dundee began to disappear behind a white veil while Chick drank his way steadily down the half-bottle. The odd thing about being with Chick – odd given the severe defects in his character – was that I felt safe with him, as if no harm could befall me in his presence. Maybe that was what it was like to have a father. But how could I know?
I tried to encourage him to tell me more of his own story. This request elicited a barrage of bad feeling, Chick again cursing the cow and the loss adjuster, particularly the loss adjuster’s canary-yellow Capri.
‘Maybe you adjust to it,’ I suggest.
~ I don’t think so.
Nora is distinctly gloomy tonight – perhaps on account of the seaweed aperitif.
~ Yes.
‘Well . . . OK,’ I said.
~ There’s plenty of water on the island, Nora says.
There’s nothing but water, the rain has lashed the little rock for days now, the burns are overflowing, the little waterfalls have grown to cataracts, I expect that soon the sea-level will start to rise. My mother is a murderer. Or murderess. Did I mention that? Apparently we are caught up in some ghastly plot that we cannot escape.
~ There’s a storm coming, Nora says, sniffing the air like a dog.
But she’s always saying that.
‘Your turn,’ I tell her, throwing another inadequate log on the fire. ‘Go on.’
~ Must I? Nora asks. Can’t I go to the toilet or make a cup of tea, answer a ringing phone or commit any other number of tedious distractions?
‘No. And we have no phone.’ Even the postman doesn’t knock here, not even once. ‘Tell me about your beautiful sister who died on the day that I was born.’
Nora sighs a sigh so profound that it fathoms the bottom of the sound.
~ This is a very far-fetched tale, she warns, which you will find hard to believe. So . . . first there was Deirdre – who died – then Lachlan, then a year later came Effie, conceived in a thunderstorm, born during an earthquake.
‘In Scotland?’
~ A small one. It happens. Occasionally.
‘Very occasionally.’
~ She was born on the winter solstice when there is no light in the world and everything has shrunk back into the earth. Born when the earth sleeps, yet Effie never seemed to rest and had soon worn out a rather fragile Marjorie. To look at Effie you might have thought that she was possessed of a salamander nature, that her elements were air and fire or some insubstantial matter, but in truth she came from some dark underground place. A spiteful sprite, a malevolent kelpie. Only Lachlan could put up with her and that was because he was made from the same flawed clay. They were never more their true selves than when they were together.
The pair of them were wild, undisciplined creatures. Neither Marjorie nor Donald seemed to know what to do with them. Marjorie had never really recovered from having three children in as many years and soon resorted to the comfort of the gin bottle and Donald was, of course, quite old by then and he’d never been particularly interested in his children, so Lachlan and Effie’s upbringing was left to a succession of nursemaids and nannies. These were all eventually driven away, there was even a rumour that one nanny had been hospitalized – something to do with flypapers and cocoa – and one of the downstairs maids had certainly been paid off with her arm in a plaster. They were the sort of children who could always be found in the vicinity of an accident. Marjorie called it mischief and downed another gin.
They were sent away to school eventually, Lachlan to Glenalmond to follow in the family tradition, Effie to St Leonard’s. Their behaviour improved a little once they were separated but nonetheless it was a wonder they were never expelled. And they still had the holidays to run wild together and torment every living thing.
They roamed the woods and fields like gypsies, sticking pins in caterpillars, cutting worms in half with their pocket penknives, catching fish and smashing them on rocks. There was some incident with the gamekeeper’s cat, apparently – it was found hanging from a tree with its tail cut off—
‘Are you sure you’re not making this up?’
~ Why would I do that?
Their favourite place was the loch. No-one else ever went there any more. It was a gloomy place with its black water and its overhanging willows, surrounded on all sides by overgrown woodland. The man-made channels that had once fed and drained the loch had become clogged over the years so that it always had a rank, stagnant air about it. Occasionally, a long, dark pike-shaped shadow passed through the clouded water like a small enemy submarine.
When he was seven, Lachlan threw his sister into the loch – that was the kind of boy he was. By the time she dragged herself out amongst the half-rotten bulrushes she had learnt to swim. That was the kind of girl she was.
‘That was when she became a water-baby?’
~ Yes.
‘Then what?’ My mother (who’s not my mother) is not very good at this storytelling lark, is she? ‘And she was beautiful?’ I prompt, which gains a reluctant ‘Yes’ on Nora’s part. ‘In what way?’
~ The usual – blue eyes, Titian hair, round limbs, high breasts. Personally I always thought her eyes were too far apart. Made her rather frog-featured. She bit her fingernails down to the quick.
‘What about her personality?’ Nora shrugs. This is like pulling teeth. ‘Incomplete sentences will do, single words if necessary,’ I urge. ‘Try adjectives, for example. Start with “A” if it helps.’
Nora takes a deep breath—
~ Abhorrent, blameworthy, catty, dreadful, empoverished (spiritually, obsolete usage), fearless (or fearsome), garrotted (should have been), histrionic, indolent, jadish, karmic (bad), left-handed, mean, negligent, oligarchic, psychopathic, quarrelsome, reckless, sly, tyrannical, ugly (inside), vain, xenoglossiac—
‘Really?’
~ Might have been. (Quite a) yachtswoman, a zombie. The living dead.
‘No redeeming features, then?’
~ No.
‘No saving graces at all?’
~ No.
A bad case of sibling rivalry, it seems. But then Effie was fourteen years old when Nora was born and away at school, wasn’t she? And how did a gin-sodden Marjorie and an ageing Donald manage to have another baby, even an ‘afterthought’?
‘Go on, carry on with your unlikely tale.’
~ Effie grew up, eventually. Got married, got divorced (twice), died. End of story.
‘You can’t do that.’
~ It’s the post-modern day and age. I can do what I want.