Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

‘I’d have thought this was the wrong time of year.’

‘You’d have thought right. We’re at war with the industrial archaeologists. Word is they want to excavate the limekilns this summer, so we leaned on some contacts and got in first. Forecast was for a dry autumn, but as you can see, the forecast was shit.’

‘So will you postpone?’

‘Come hell or high water, we’ll be out there tomorrow.’ Jem’s laugh was cheerful. ‘We’ve a dozen students stashed around the island. I’ve pledged to keep them from drinking the contents of the shop, indiscreet drug-use and orgies, which is hard if I can’t tire them out.’

‘Does it ever disturb you?’

‘No, they’re good kids for the most part. We were the same when we were their age.’

‘I meant digging up the dead.’

‘I wish, but most of the time it’s not so dramatic. We turn up bits of crockery, bones from the midden, the odd cooking pot. A skeleton or even a skull is big excitement. But I take your point. These people were buried according to whatever beliefs and rituals they had, and then along we come and disturb their rest. But I manage to comfort myself with one thought.’

‘What’s that?’

‘When you’re dead, you’re dead. You won’t hear the sound of the shovel that’s come to dig you up.’

A light shone wanly up ahead.

‘I think this might be it.’

Jem slowed the Land-Rover.

‘A bit of a derelict spot. I wouldn’t fancy it, and I rob graves for a living.’ He pulled the handbrake on. ‘Do you want me to wait?’

Murray pulled his woollen hat back on and zipped up his waterproof.

‘No, thanks. I’m staying not far from here, I can walk back.’ The red Cherokee was parked in the drive, but he was relieved to see no sign of Fergus’s Saab. Murray patted his pocket and felt Professor James’s slim volume stiff in his pocket, still in the unopened envelope it had been sent to Mrs Dunn’s in. He thought about dumping it on the seat of the car, but suspected Jem would go out of his way to return it. ‘It was kind of you to give me a lift in the first place.’

‘No worries. I’m bored out my skull.’ The archaeologist’s sharp teeth were hidden behind a bearded frown. ‘Watch how you go round here. The ground’s good for preservation, but it can be a bit dodgy.’

‘Sinkholes.’

‘Yes.’ Jem gave him a grin that only needed a cutlass to complete it. ‘Sounds like you know what you’re doing.’

Murray returned his smile.

‘I wish I had your confidence.’

He jumped out of the Land-Rover, slamming the door behind him, then raised a hand in thanks and jogged through the rain to Christie’s front door.

MURRAY STOOD UNDER Christie’s porch light and watched as Jem turned the Land-Rover towards the crossroads. The archaeologist gave a friendly toot, and then he was away, driving back to the warmth of Mrs Dunn’s pink guest room or maybe off to check his students weren’t disgracing the venerable institution now so widely represented on the island.

The Land-Rover’s lights glowed distantly then faded from view, and the cottage’s front door opened, as he knew it would. Christie was all in black, dressed against the cold in a pair of stretch pants tucked into woollen socks and a chunky polo neck that drowned her slim form. She wore silver sleepers in her ears, but was otherwise free of jewellery. It was the kind of outfit a dancer might adopt after a heavy workout, and it looked both stylish and incongruous matched with her stick.

‘You’re earlier than I expected.’

There was a slur to her words, the kind of imprecision that might occur after a couple of drinks.

Murray pulled back his hood. The scent of wood smoke mingled with the falling rain and the damp rising from the sodden earth. It was an ancient smell, the same one the earliest islanders who could yet be resting, preserved beneath the peat, had known a millennia or so ago.

‘Would you like me to take a walk around the block?’

‘Of course not.’

She gave Murray a smile that might have been nervous and ushered him through the small vestibule into a brightly lit lounge. His glasses clouded in the sudden warmth. Murray unfastened his waterproof and rubbed his lenses against his scarf. The exam-day tingles were on him, a cocktail of excitement and dread that fluttered low in his stomach.

The contrast between this room and Mrs Dunn’s overstuffed lounge couldn’t have been greater. The space was long and open, its oak floors laid with good rugs, the ceiling gabled. One wall was completely taken up by a large wooden bookcase loaded with hardbacks. He scanned their spines, looking for copies of Christie’s own novels, but they were absent, or perhaps his eyes simply missed them amongst the mass of other volumes. A large desk was set at right-angles to the shelves, its chair facing into the room to avoid the distraction of the view. A brown couch sat opposite a wood- burning stove, the coffee table in front of it also piled with books.

Everything was simple and well-constructed, a living space composed of clean lines, too practical to be stylish, too cold to be completely comfortable. This was the place where she had lived with Archie. Murray tried to imagine it as it had been, the tumbled bed recess, the squalid table and circling flies, but it had grown too civilised for him to recognise.

Unlike Mrs Dunn, Christie hadn’t yet closed her curtains. Two armchairs sat staring out onto the blackness of the moor through the large picture windows. A slim document folder rested on a small table between them. Christie led him towards the chairs and he saw that her limp had grown worse. The right side of her body swung stiffly with each step, her leg rigid, as if muscle and bone would no longer co-operate.

‘I thought we could talk here.’ Christie settled herself awkwardly into one of the armchairs. Murray took off his wet waterproof, bundled it on the floor beside him and sat. He could see their reflections in the glass. The two of them unsmiling on the high-backed chairs, like an old queen and her younger, more barbarous consort. He wondered how she could stand it, this view of the self imprinted onto dark nothingness, like a glimpse of purgatory. But Christie was looking away from the window, towards him.

‘Have you deliberately styled yourself to look like Archie?’

‘No.’

Surprise made him sound defensive.

‘You gave me a start the day I saw you in the shop. Though now I look closely, I can see you’re not like him at all. Archie’s features were finer, almost feminine.’

Murray was taken aback by his disappointment.

‘Do you have many photographs of him?’

‘Some. I might show you a few later.’

‘It’d be a privilege.’

‘The ones of him as a young boy are charming.’

She was like a cruel child baiting a kitten.

He leaned down and took his tape recorder from his jacket pocket.

‘Do you mind if I record our conversation?’

‘I’m afraid I do.’ He hadn’t noticed the smallness of her mouth before. It was the feature that robbed her of beauty. She twisted it as if strangling a smile. ‘Before we start, let me ask you a question: what would you like from me?’

Murray leaned forward, opening his palms in an unconscious, ancient gesture designed to show he came unarmed.

‘Your memories of Archie, what he was like.’ He paused and said, ‘What you remember of his final days.’

She nodded. ‘Nothing else?’

‘You mentioned photographs.’ To his own ears Murray’s voice sounded as if it had been infused with the oiliness of the life insurance salesmen who had always done so well from his widowed father. ‘I’d appreciate the opportunity to go through them, but obviously I’d also be very keen to see any other notes, letters or memorabilia you have relating to Archie.’