Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

They’d driven back down from the country park in silence, Rachel taking the turns more slowly this time, only gathering speed when she reached the straight road that bordered the reservoir.

She’d been hitting seventy-five when the headlights of another car shone in from behind, illuminating the dashboard. Murray turned and saw Rachel’s face caught in shine and shadows like a black and white photograph, her jaw set somewhere between a smile and a grimace. He realised she would have seen the car’s approach in the rear-view mirror and wondered if it, rather than the straightness of the road, had prompted her increase in speed.

The car was a Saab. It started to overtake and Rachel hit the accelerator, staying level with it, racing. Up ahead the road curved into a bend. Murray’s right foot pressed on an imaginary brake, the Saab zoomed on and Rachel dropped speed, letting it pull in front. Up ahead the car’s brake lights shone red. Rachel tailed it down to the cross, where the Saab made it through the traffic lights. For a second Murray thought Rachel was going to put on a spurt and follow it through, but at the last minute she hit the brakes. Murray jarred forward. The seatbelt’s inertia reel held him tight.

‘Sorry.’ Rachel looked at him. ‘Bit of a bumpy ride.’

Murray tried to reconstruct the shadow of the parked car in his mind, but it had only been a shape in the dark. There was nothing except his intuition, or perhaps it was paranoia, to suggest it had been the Saab Rachel had raced.

‘You had me worried for a moment.’

‘You’re always worried, Murray, it’s your default setting.’

‘That’s not fair.’

She put a reassuring hand on his knee.

‘Your being old school is part of what I like about you.’ Rachel glanced away from the road, letting her eyes meet his for a moment. ‘How are you getting on with the elusive Archie?’

‘Elusive is the word.’ Murray’s voice grew warmer. She’d never said that she liked him before. ‘I’ve been on the phone to the National Library. They have a few boxes of bits and pieces they’re going to let me have a root aboot in. What I’m really missing is first-hand accounts, contact with people who knew Lunan. It’s amazing how many of that generation are no longer with us.’

‘That generation.’ She laughed. ‘He wasn’t much older than Fergus, you know. Maybe you should interview him.’

‘I doubt they moved in the same circles.’

‘You’d be surprised at the circles Fergus has moved in.’

Her archness matched the grudge in his voice.

They drove on in silence, the city taking form for Murray as they began to get closer to the university. He looked again at the clean lines of her profile and wondered why she betrayed Fergus with him, him with Fergus.

They waited at the pedestrian lights on the Great Western Road. He could see the fish fryer in the lit window of the Philadelphia shovelling fresh chips into a vat of hot fat. Maybe he should offer to buy Rachel a fish supper, drive the scent of their sex from the car with deep-fried cod and vinegar. The lights shifted to green and she swung the car round a dawdling pedestrian.

‘You should seek them out.’

‘Who?’

‘Old associates of Archie’s.’

‘I intend to.’

‘It could be fun, like being a detective. Maybe you’ll go undercover.’

He put a hand on her knee.

‘I’d rather go between the sheets.’

‘I prefer you in your natural habitat.’

She changed gear, knocking him away.

‘The library?’

‘Now there’s a thought, between the stacks.’

She hit the emergency flashers and drew into the side of the road, double-parking so he could get out and catch the underground the rest of the way home.

He’d placed the same small classified ad in the Herald, Scotsman, TLS and Scots Magazine the following day.

Doctor Murray Watson of the University of Glasgow’s Department of English Literature seeks memories of the poet Archie Lunan from anyone who may have known him.

It had resulted in nothing, until the phone message. He pressed Return Call and listened to the telephone ring out at the other end. He counted to twenty then broke the connection and dialled again. The ring had its own tone, its own rhythm, regular as a heartbeat. It jangled on, until he cut the call.

He thought back again to the drive home, Rachel in the seat beside him, her hand guiding the car down the gears as they descended into the city. Sometimes lately he remembered their moments together as if he were on the outside, a viewer watching a film, or a man behind the wheel of a car in a darkened car park.

MURRAY WASN’T SURE what happened to widows in the first three years after their husband’s death, but if he’d imagined Audrey Garrett at all, it was as stoical and underweight, a lady depleted if not destroyed.

The woman who buzzed him up to her third-floor tenement flat was well-nourished, with pale skin flushed red, and strawberry-blonde hair tied firmly back in a thick ponytail. Her black jogging pants, white Aertex top and air of no-nonsense vigour reminded him of the members of the Officer Training Corps he sometimes saw loading the university minibuses. Then she smiled, and the impression was dispelled.

They shook hands at the door. Her palm was warm to the touch. Murray was aware of a savour of fresh sweat and realised she was straight from exercising. He’d brought her flowers, a small bunch of yellow roses, conscious of avoiding anything flashy or funereal. He shoved them at her nervously, like an awkward suitor.

‘Thank you, but there was no need.’ She softened her words with a smile. ‘It’s a pleasure to share Alan’s work with someone who might be able to turn it to some use.’ Audrey raised the bouquet to her face, dutifully searching for scent in the cellophane-wrapped blooms, and Murray saw he’d forgotten to peel off the garage’s price sticker. ‘Come on through.’ She led him into a square entrance hall, messy with half-opened cardboard boxes, a jumble of bags and tangle of bikes.

He’d thought she was English, a Londoner perhaps, but now he recognised an antipodean inflection to her accent: Australia or New Zealand? He couldn’t tell.

‘You’ll have to excuse the mess. As you can see we’ve just moved in. Normally, of course, we’re a super-tidy household.’

She turned to check that he had got the joke and Murray met her eyes guiltily, wondering if she had seen his gaze drop reflexively to the tilt of her bottom. He looked away and met another pair of eyes peering at him from behind an open door in the hallway. They belonged to a small, solemn-faced boy with a mass of dark hair. Murray couldn’t judge his age: older than five but younger than ten, he guessed.

‘Hello, I’m Murray.’

The boy’s expression remained grave. He silently pressed the door to.

‘You’ll have to excuse Lewis. He’s shy of new people. My sister-in-law’s coming round to take him swimming in a while.’ Audrey Garrett glanced at her watch. ‘She should be here by now, but as you can see everything’s running late — as usual. I meant to be showered and changed before you arrived.’

‘I’m grateful you made time to see me at all.’

Murray glanced back towards the boy’s bedroom and saw Lewis Garrett’s eyes peering out again from the slit in the open door. He wondered if he should play the uncle and slip him a pound. But the boy saw him looking. This time he slammed the door.

Audrey said, ‘Lewis, that’s not very polite’, but didn’t stop to argue the point. She led Murray into a large bay-windowed sitting room piled high with boxes, like a fence’s secret warehouse.