Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

Murray sat staring at the blank monitor, hearing the shop man’s cheery greeting and Christie’s low replies, feeling a sense of loss that brought back other losses, too sad to even wonder who had sent him the photographs and what he could send them in return. He heard the door swing shut as Christie left the shop, but even then his eyes remained on the black screen of the sleeping machine.

PETE HAD BEEN apologetic about the state of the bothy, but in the afterglow of the race down Everest, Murray had thought it the perfect solution. Back then Rachel’s call had seemed like a spark of hope. She had thought of him, and even though she had hung up when he said he missed her, she’d sounded sad. Sadness had seemed something he might be able to work with. Now he felt that he might drown in it.

In the pale light of the afternoon the small cottage had appeared charmingly simple. Viewing its front room through the beam of his battery torch, Murray thought it embodied a decrepitude that matched his mood. The floor was covered in old cardboard, ‘your original underlay’ Pete had called it, to keep out the damp in the earth that sat directly beneath the wooden floor the crofter had laid when he and his family had camped there three years ago.

Pete dumped the carton of supplies they’d bought at the shop onto the makeshift table that took up most of the first room and swung the beam of his torch around the stone walls.

‘It’ll be a bit isolated for you after Glasgow, but we’re only a couple of miles down the road and I’ll drop by from time to time to see if there’s anything you need.’ Jinx padded around the room, sniffing into corners with an enthusiasm that hinted at vermin. ‘Hi, you. Sit,’ Pete commanded, ‘or you’re going out.’ He primed the Calor heater, the blue flames bursting into life on the third press of the ignition. The dog settled herself in front of the fire. Pete scratched her belly roughly. ‘That’s not for your benefit.’ He turned his attention back to Murray. ‘There’s an extra canister of gas for when this one runs out and there’s butane for the Primus stove. I’ve brought you the wind-up radio we used when we were down here. Do you know how to use an Aladdin lamp?’

Murray said, ‘I think so.’

But Pete showed him anyway. The room grew more present, but no more cheerful, in the lamp’s yellow glow.

‘You’re going back to basics. The kids loved it when we lived here, but that was in summer. I made damn sure our cottage was ship-shape well before the winter came.’

‘It’ll be fine.’ Murray opened the door to the cottage’s second room and saw the sleeping bag and extra blankets neatly folded on top of the camp bed. An upturned wooden box sat beside it, ready to serve as a bedside table. Something about the Spartan neatness of the arrangement made him wonder if Pete had been in the army. ‘I think you’ve thought of everything.’

‘I doubt that,’ the crofter grinned. ‘It’s been a bit of a rush job. But if there’s anything missing, you can let me know.’ He went out to the trailer and returned with a carton of supplies. ‘The plan’s always been to eventually turn this place into a summer let, but it’s got sidelined over the last couple of years. I’m afraid it’s not exactly tourist board standard.’ He set a car battery in a corner, then went back out and returned with another, which he placed beside it. ‘Okay, that’s you got one and one spare. I’ve another charging at home. I reckon they should last you a week at least, but if they don’t, drop round and I’ll swap them. I’ve set up the chemical toilet in the shit box, as Martin liked to call it.’ Pete laughed. ‘You know what teenage boys are like.’

Murray didn’t, but he forced a smile.

‘I take it that’s the outside lav.’

‘Got it in one. There’s a rain butt by the door that you can use for washing, and it’s okay for drinking if you boil first. Sheila says to come down to the house if you feel like a bath or a hot shower.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure you’re all right with this? I feel a bit guilty charging good money for something so basic.’

Murray wished the small man would go, but he knew that he needed to endure the rigmarole before he would be left in peace. He forced a smile onto his face.

‘Don’t worry, it’s ideal.’

‘Good.’ The crofter’s grin looked relieved. ‘I’m hoping the place is still watertight. I put the roof on myself before I moved the family in.’ He shone the beam of his torch up into the eaves. ‘I had a look this afternoon when I brought the camp bed down, there doesn’t seem to be any ingress of water.’ Pete clicked the torch off. ‘Time will tell.’ He reached into one of the boxes he’d brought and pulled out a half-bottle of Famous Grouse. ‘A dram to welcome you.’ He opened it and poured a little of the whisky onto the floor. ‘The old bloke that helped us move made me promise to always do this in a new house. The faeries like a drink too, apparently.’ Pete shook his head at his own foolishness. ‘It’s probably a joke he plays on all the English wankers.’ He took two glasses from the top of a box, poured a large measure into each and handed one to Murray. ‘Cheers.’

‘Good health.’

Murray thought his own toast sounded more like a curse. But Pete smiled and raised the glass to his lips.

‘So is your poet well-known in Scotland?’

‘No, he’s pretty obscure.’

‘This glen’s going to be proper cultured, what with you beavering away down here on your biography, and Mrs Graves up on the topside working on her novels.’

Before the blows the photographs had dealt, Murray might have quizzed Pete on the exact location of Christie’s cottage. Now he merely asked, ‘Do you see much of her?’

‘Not really, no. We phone to check on each other in the bad weather, and if the lines go down we drop round — you have to when you’re as remote as we are, and her mobility isn’t so good these days — but apart from that, we leave each other in peace.’

‘Have you read any of her books?’

‘Sheila’s the reader in our family. She used to be an English teacher before we settled here. She read the first one.’

‘ Sacrifice ?’

‘I think that was it.’ The crofter smiled apologetically. ‘It wasn’t a great hit, I’m afraid. Sheila usually likes books set on islands.’ He took another sip of his drink. ‘They remind her of here, I suppose, but she said this one was full of dead folk digging themselves from their graves.’

Murray felt a prickling on the back of his neck and resisted the urge to look towards the cottage’s small windows and the night beyond.

‘It’s about a group of hippies who move to the countryside and start dabbling in things they shouldn’t.’

‘Raising the dead?’

‘Amongst other things. It’s a bit silly.’

The wind had got up again. Somewhere a gate was banging, but the crofter didn’t seem to notice. He said, ‘Maybe I should give it a read.’

Pete met Murray’s eyes and his grin was wide enough for madness. Outside the banging became louder, then ceased. Murray wondered who or what had stopped it. He filled the silence with a question.

‘What did you do before you moved here?’

‘I taught too. Science. I decided to get out before I became the first teacher to do a Columbine and go on the rampage with a shotgun.’

The small man laughed. The lamplight caught the creases in his weathered face and twisted his smile into a grimace. Murray wondered if he had a gun up at the white cottage, and if he drank whisky there at night, alone in the middle of nowhere, with his wife and children asleep in the rooms above.