Иэн Рэнкин - The Flood

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.

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.