William McIlvanney - Strange Loyalties

‘I loved him in some way, you know,’ she said. ‘I think a lot of people did a bit. He could be a pain in the bum could your Scott. But even while he was doing it, you could see how vulnerable he was. I fell out with him very badly a few months back. It wasn’t like him. He didn’t come in for two weeks. You’ve no idea how much that upset me. I thought a part of my life was gone. When he walked in that door, it felt like Christmas for me. And you getting the best present you’d ever had. Oh, he could brighten the day.’

She finished her coffee.

‘Her name was Ellie,’ she said suddenly. ‘She was a teacher. She didn’t have any children. That’s all I know.’

‘She worked beside him?’

‘Jack.’

She made my name a long, slow accusation. Having admitted me to the sanctum, she didn’t want me trampling all over it.

‘What do you think Scott did. Jack? Show me pictures? Maybe three or four times in here, in the early hours, he mentioned her. Always just “Ellie”. No second name. And I didn’t ask for it. I know she mattered to him a lot. I know the guilt was damaging him. I know it seemed to have broken up between them. I was sharing his pain. The details weren’t what mattered. He was bleeding for somebody. Was I supposed to ask for her phone number? He needed a bandage. I was a bandage.’

‘But who is she? Where did she live?’

As soon as I said it, I knew I had closed the door on myself. She stared at me as if focussing the lens on the microscope. What strange creature have we here? She spoke with carefully muted anger.

‘Why don’t you go to the crematorium and sift the ashes?’

‘If I thought it would help, I would,’ I said.

I stared back through the lens at her. What strange creature thinks I’m a strange creature?

She stood up and lifted her cup and lifted mine, though it wasn’t empty, and crossed to the sink and rinsed them out. She went on with making the soup. I wondered, perhaps unworthily, about Katie. Maybe her motives for not wanting to talk about the unknown Ellie were less noble than she made out. Maybe jealousy was one of them. I always suspect self-righteousness. I think it’s usually a way of cosmeticising the truth of self, like a powdered periwig on a headful of lice.

Katie had brought her pot of soup to the boil and turned it down to simmer.

‘Buster,’ she said.

Buster recognised his name. He wasn’t as dumb as I had thought. Katie took the leash that was draped round a hook on the kitchen door.

‘If that starts to boil over,’ she said, ‘turn it down some more, will you? I’m taking Buster out to clean himself.’

I thought about the euphemism when they were gone. It was an expression my father had used. ‘Take Bacchus out to clean himself,’ I could remember him saying. Or Judie. Or Rusty. Or Tara. We had a lot of dogs, which is why I have always liked them as long as they don’t develop delusions of grandeur and begin to think they’re the householder. The phrase reminded me of my family, the four of us living together. I thought of the possibilities there had seemed then and how strangely they had led to me sitting alone in the kitchen of the Bushfield Hotel. The other three were dead. I was glad my parents hadn’t known Scott’s death. I felt somehow responsible towards the other three. We had tried to make some kind of honest contract with the world and it seemed to me the world had cheated on us. The least we were due was some retrospective understanding. I decided I was here to collect.

I lifted the phone and dialled Glebe Academy. It was the same nice woman from yesterday who answered. John Strachan was with a class. They would have to fetch him. While I waited, I reflected that I had to know more about that closed room of Scott’s life Katie had allowed me to glimpse. If I couldn’t go through the door, maybe I could get in a window. But I would have to be careful in speaking to John Strachan. I wasn’t sure what John knew. I wasn’t even sure what I knew yet. Approach by indirections.

‘Hullo?’

‘Hullo, John. It’s Jack Laidlaw.’

‘Hullo, Jack.’

A session in a pub can be a great force-feeder of intimacy.

‘Look. I’m sorry to bother you again so soon. Especially taking you away from a class.’

‘No problem. It’s one of my more civilised groups. The room should still be there when I get back.’

‘What it is — ’ is something I’ll have to work up to. So let me cover my tracks a little by saying — ‘I was just wondering. Scott must have left some things at the school. I mean, he didn’t exactly know that he was leaving. I’m thinking of papers and stuff like that. Something that might help me to understand what he was going through at the end.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘I know it’s probably a terrible nuisance for you. But do you think you could check it out for me? Take a look at his room? And see if there’s anything there at all? That would give us a clue.’

I was trying to read the pause that followed. I wondered if he was going to refuse.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘his room’s been taken over. You know? There’s somebody else in it now. It was a coveted room. Terrific windows for an art room.’

I understood his hesitation. He hadn’t wanted to convey to me how quickly Scott’s dying had converted to administrative practicalities. One man’s death is another man’s sunlight.

‘So I think it’s been cleaned out,’ he said. ‘But I’ll go up there today and have a look. I suppose there might be something.’

‘Thanks, John. Oh. There’s something else,’ which I casually mention since it’s why I phoned. ‘Ellie Somebody? It’s a woman I thought I might try to speak to. But I can’t get her second name. Does that name mean anything to you?’

This time the pause was impenetrable. Did he know about Scott and her? Was he instinctively deducing what I had just learned about them? Was he simply baffled by the name? The slowness of his answer, when it came, suggested alien matter caught up in his thoughts, grinding the machinery to a halt.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. It’s not an unusual name. But there was a woman who worked here at one time. Ellie. But I don’t know if that’s who you mean. She’s left now. Ellie Mabon. Do you mean Ellie Mabon?’

I didn’t know. But if all you have are shots in the dark, you’d better check out anything you hit to see if it’s what you’re after.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It could be. Anyway, thanks.’

‘All right,’ he said at last, perhaps not sure what I was thanking him for. ‘I’ll see about Scott’s room. I’ll phone you if there’s anything.’

‘I’ll be out and about today, John.’

‘Well. If I can’t get you personally, I’ll try and look in at the Bushfield. Sometime in the evening. All right? I better go and see if the natives are getting restless. Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

I put the phone down and went to look for Katie’s phone-book. I could hear someone walking about upstairs and imagined Mike pacing the psychological prison he seemed to have made for himself. The phone-book was behind the bread-bin. With Katie, it would be. We weren’t so different from each other as she thought.

I was on my third Mabon before I found an Ellie. The first one hadn’t answered. The second was what sounded like an amazingly old man who insisted on telling me about a mix-up with the plumbing in his house. I promised to look into it. The third was at a good address in Graithnock. The voice was brusque but with interesting undertones, like a sensuous body in a business-suit.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello. I’m sorry to bother you. I may have a wrong number here. I’m looking for Ellie Mabon.’