Peter May - The Lewis Man

Mr Anderson’s eyes flickered towards the defiant Alex Curry, who was sitting up now in his bed, leaning his forearms on his knees. ‘So what are you going to do, Anderson? Belt me? Just fucking try it.’

A mean little smile crept across Mr Anderson’s lips. ‘You’ll see,’ was all he said. And he turned towards little Tommy, with the acid of contempt in his voice. ‘I don’t admire boys who clype on their friends. I’m sure that’s a lesson you will have learned before this night is out.’

He flicked out the lights and pulled the doors shut, and there was a long silence before Tommy’s frightened voice trembled in the dark. ‘I didn’t mean it, honest.’

And Alex Curry’s growled response. ‘Ya wee fucker!’

Mr Anderson was right. Wee Tommy learned that night, the hardest way possible, that telling tales on your peers was not acceptable behaviour. And most, if not all, of those who had raised their hands were taught similar lessons.

As for the rest of us, we could only await with trepidation whatever retribution Mr Anderson had planned for us in the morning.

To our surprise nothing happened. The tension in The Dean was palpable over breakfast, a strange muted dining room with inmates and staff alike afraid, it seemed, to speak. By the time we left for school, marching in pairs down the hill to the village, a little of the anxiety had lifted. By the end of the day we had almost forgotten about it.

We returned as usual, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except that Alex Curry was gone. Left The Dean for good. And then we got to the dorms. Which is when we realized that the sacks of belongings which sat at the end of each bed were gone. All of them. I panicked. My mother’s ring was in my sack. I ran down the stairs full of fire and indignation, only to bump into the janitor in the corridor below.

‘Where’s our stuff?’ I shouted at him. ‘What’s he done with it?’

His face was the colour of ashes, almost green around the eyes. Eyes that were filled with anxiety and guilt. ‘I’ve never seen him like that, Johnny,’ he said. ‘He came out of his apartment like a man possessed after you’d all left for school. He went around the dorms and collected all the sacks, making me and some of the others help him.’ His words tumbled out of his mouth like apples spilling from a barrel. ‘He gathered them all together down in the basement, and got me to hold open the door of the central heating furnace while he threw them all in. One at a time. Every last one of them.’

I felt anger blinding me. All that I had left of my mother was gone. Her ring with the intertwining serpents. Lost for ever. And Peter’s album of cigarette packets. All ties to the past severed for eternity. Burned in petty revenge by Mr Anderson.

Had I been able, I would have killed that man and never had a moment’s regret.

Fin was a little uncomfortable. It felt strange to be back in this house, filled as it was with so many childhood memories. The house where he and Artair had been tutored by Mr Macinnes. The house where they had played as children, best friends since the time they could first walk. A house filled with dark secrets that both had kept by unspoken assent.

To Marsaili it was just the house where she lived. Where she had spent twenty thankless years married to a man she didn’t love, caring for his invalid mother, bringing up their son.

On their return from Stornoway she had invited Fin to eat with her and Fionnlagh, and he had accepted gratefully, spared from the can of soup he had planned to heat on his tiny gas camping stove.

Although it was still light outside, low black cloud had brought a premature end to the day. A fierce wind whistled around doors and windows, driving rain against the glass in unrelenting waves, blowing smoke down the chimney in the sitting room and filling the house with the stinging, toasted scent of peat.

Marsaili had prepared the meal in silence, and Fin had guessed that her whole conscious being was filled with something like guilt for having abandoned her father to a strange bed in a strange place where he knew no one.

‘You’re good with him,’ she said suddenly, without turning. She kept her focus on the pot on the hob.

Fin sat at the table with a glass of beer. ‘What do you mean?’

‘With my dad. Like you were experienced in dealing with dementia.’

Fin sipped at his beer. ‘Mona’s mother suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s, Marsaili. A slow deterioration. Not too bad at first. But then she had a fall and broke her hip, and they hospitalized her at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, and put her in a geriatric ward.’

Marsaili wrinkled her nose. ‘Bet that wasn’t much fun for her.’

‘It was disgusting.’ The depth of feeling in his voice made her turn. ‘It was like something out of Dickens. The place stank of shit and urine, people crying out in the night. Staff who sat on her bed, blocking her view of the TV that she was paying for, watching soap operas while colostomy bags overflowed.’

‘Oh my God!’ The horror was painted on Marsaili’s face.

‘There was no way we could leave her there. So we went with a bag one night, packed up her stuff and took her back to our place. I paid for a private nurse and she stayed with us for six months.’ He took another mouthful of beer, lost in the memory. ‘I got to know how to deal with her. To ignore the contradictions and never argue. To understand that it was frustration that caused her anger, and forgetfulness that made her cussed.’ He shook his head. ‘Her short-term memory was almost non-existent. But she could remember things from childhood with pin-sharp clarity, and we would spend hours talking about the past. I liked Mona’s mum.’

Marsaili was lost in silent thought for a while. Then, ‘Why did you and Mona split up?’ And no sooner had she asked it, than she qualified her question. In case, perhaps, it was too direct. ‘Was it only because of the accident?’

Fin shook his head. ‘That was the breaking point … after years of living a comfortable lie. If it hadn’t been for Robbie we’d probably have gone our separate ways a long time ago. We were friends, and I can’t say I was unhappy, but I never really loved her.’

‘Why did you marry her, then?’

He met her eye and thought about it, forcing himself to confront the truth, perhaps for the very first time. ‘Probably because you married Artair.’

She returned his gaze, and in the few feet that separated them lay all the wasted years they had let slip by. She turned back again to her pot, unable to face the thought. ‘You can’t blame me for that. You were the one who drove me away.’

The outside door flew open, and the wind and the rain blew in briefly with Fionnlagh. He shut it quickly behind him and stood pink-faced and dripping, his anorak soaked, his wellies caked with mud. He seemed surprised to see Fin sitting at the table.

‘Get those things off you,’ Marsaili said, ‘and sit in. We’re almost ready to eat.’

The boy kicked off his boots and hung up his waterproofs, and brought a bottle of beer from the fridge to the table. ‘So what happened with Grampa?’

Marsaili swept back the hair from her face and served up three plates of chilli con carne scooped on to beds of rice. ‘Your gran won’t have him at home any more. So he’s in the care home at Dun Eisdean until I can figure out what to do about him.’

Fionnlagh shovelled food into his mouth. ‘Why didn’t you bring him here?’

Marsaili’s eyes darted towards Fin and then away again, and he caught the guilt in them. He said, ‘Because he needs professional care now, Fionnlagh. Physically and mentally.’

But Fionnlagh kept his focus on his mother. ‘You looked after Artair’s mother for long enough. And she wasn’t even your own flesh and blood.’