Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

He rubbed his eyes and said, ‘Aye, I sometimes feel that about my students,’ though the thought had never occurred. ‘I still feel bad about almost bumping into Miss Graves’s car, even if she isn’t Booker Prize material. Maybe I should call round with a bunch of flowers or something.’

Pete shrugged.

‘You’ll meet her sooner or later.’ He closed one eye and held the half-bottle to his other, regarding the room through a golden whisky filter. ‘Mrs Graves is unpredictable. Some days she stops and chats, others it’s as if she doesn’t see you. Sheila says that a hundred years ago she would have been fuel for a bonfire.’ He laughed. ‘The way she says it, you’d think it wasn’t such a bad idea.’

‘Your wife doesn’t like her?’

‘She doesn’t like being snubbed. Me, I don’t care. After all, no one moves out here for the company. And it must be hard for Christie. She’s got MS. She had a bad episode a while back which more or less paralysed her. We thought that might be it, but she seems to have bounced back. Still, I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be able to be independent, let alone live in the back of beyond.’ Pete unscrewed the bottle’s cap and poured the remains into their glasses. ‘We may as well finish this, then I’ll leave you to get settled. I promised Sheila we wouldn’t go beyond the half-bottle. She doesn’t like me driving after I’ve had a couple, even when there’s only sheep to bump into.’

Murray nodded at the unmet Sheila’s wisdom, relieved he’d soon be rid of his new landlord. He thought of Alan Garrett and remembered Audrey saying that he wasn’t over the limit.

‘I heard there was a bad crash on the island a couple of years back.’

Pete’s expression grew serious.

‘Not long after we arrived. Sheila was really upset by it. Kept saying what if one of the kids had been walking by when it happened? What if he’d hit them instead of the tree? We’d met him too. Seemed like a nice guy, a family man. I heard he left a wife and kiddie.’

‘Was he under the influence?’

‘Apparently not.’ Pete gave him a half-suspicious look. ‘You didn’t know him, did you? I heard he was a university lecturer.’

‘No.’ Murray remembered the photograph of Alan Garrett that sat at his son’s bedside. ‘I heard about it, though. Bad news travels.’

‘That’s the truth.’ Pete clicked his torch on and off, pointing its beam at the edge of the room, as if the sudden shafts of light helped him think. ‘I shouldn’t do that, I’ll waste the battery.’ He set it back on the table and looked at Murray. ‘If I tell you something, will you promise it’ll go no further?’

‘Of course.’

The crofter looked Murray in the eye, as if assessing his sincerity. Either he decided to trust him, or the pull of what he wanted to say was strong enough to make Pete disregard any doubts, because he continued, ‘I never mentioned it to Sheila — she was upset enough as it was — but I’ve often wondered if he did it deliberately.’

Murray remembered the piles of journals devoted to suicides, the carefully logged statistics detailing artists’ age, gender, sexuality and the means they’d used to end their life. But the notion that Alan Garrett had committed suicide sat badly beside what he knew of his wife and child. He couldn’t imagine how the smiling man on the mountainside could have wanted to abandoned them.

‘Why?’

Pete shrugged his shoulders. There was something in the gesture that made Murray wonder if there had ever been a time when he’d contemplated smashing his tractor into a tree or convenient wall. He remembered the sickening feeling when his dad’s car had slewed towards Christie’s, the relief when he’d managed to bring it to a halt, and said, ‘I guess you’re sincere if you hit something as solid as that at full speed.’

‘That’s the thing.’ The small man’s voice was pensive. ‘You’ll have driven that road a few times yourself now. If you think on it, you’ll remember there’s not much along there that you could crash into that would have much of an impact. Sure, there are plenty dykes, but they’re low. I’ve dwelt on it more than’s healthy. That tree was about the only thing guaranteed to do the job. If he didn’t mean it, it was very bad luck.’

‘Bad luck anyway.’

Pete nodded and tipped back the last of the whisky in his glass.

‘Not a very cheerful subject for your first night.’

‘No.’ Murray forced a smile. ‘So tell me about the sheep.’

The crofter grinned.

‘Why? Is there one you’ve got your eye on?’

They talked farming, then university and education, until the whisky was gone. Murray offered a dram from his own bottle. Pete hesitated, and then turned him down.

‘I’d best get back. That’s one thing about this life, early to bed, early to rise. It doesn’t make you wealthy and wise, but it sure as hell makes you want to avoid hangovers.’ He leant into one of the boxes and pulled out an unset mouse trap. ‘You’ll maybe need one of these. The little buggers like to come in out of the cold at this time of year. Can’t blame them, I suppose. I’ll lend you one of the cats for a few days if they become a problem.’

‘Cheers.’

He must have looked dismayed because Pete laughed.

‘Don’t worry, they’re tiny. Nothing like those big restaurant rats you get in Glasgow, just a bit cheeky. They don’t seem to realise we’re the superior species.’

He rose and pulled on his jacket. Jinx followed her master to the door, tail wagging. Murray got to his feet too. Standing, the two men seemed to fill the room.

‘I almost forgot.’ Pete fished the tractor keys from his pocket. ‘When I collected your bags, Mrs Dunn said she’d like you to drop by tomorrow afternoon, if you can spare the time. You’ve not reneged on the rent, have you?’

‘No, you can trust me on that score. It might be about her bedroom carpet. I got mud on it.’

The crofter laughed.

‘The whole island’s mud, and worse. Landladies can’t afford to get upset about that kind of thing. Likely she wants to feed you up, doesn’t know about all these gourmet tins of sardines and baked beans you hunter-gathered at the shop this afternoon.’

‘Aye.’ Murray leant down and scratched Jinx between the ears. This time the dog tolerated him. He could feel the warmth of the gas heater still stored in her rough fur. ‘That’ll be it.’

Murray stood at the door staring into the cold night, long after the rumble of Pete’s tractor had faded. There must have been a host of clouds hidden behind the night’s blackness, because the world beyond his door was a trembling mass of dark.

‘Starless and bible black.’

He wondered if he would start talking to himself more, now that he was to be so much on his own; found himself envying Pete Jinx’s company. He and Jack had campaigned hard for a dog when they were boys, but their dad had been adamant in his refusal. Murray had secretly suspected they would have had their way if their mother had lived. When he was very young there had been a point where the desire for his mother and for a dog had seemed equally strong. The two impossible wishes had merged and he’d imagined her up in heaven, a remote and smiling Isis guarded by a noble canine companion, the lost dog they never had.

Murray closed the door, turned off the heater and took a last glass of malt to bed with him, then lay in the utter dark, unsure of whether the noises he could hear came from the next room or from beyond the cottage’s stone walls. Mice or the faerie folk tidying up in return for the dram Pete had gifted them. Either option seemed horrid. He pictured Bobby Robb’s bed, shipwrecked in Fergus Baine’s grubby tenement flat, and ringed by spells. He wondered if Archie had believed in the occult too — interested in the beyond — or if the intelligence which had helped him fashion poems from the rough stuff of words had saved him from that particular delusion.