Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

‘What else could we do? Archie was missing, presumed drowned, and we were drug-taking hippies in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t like we believed in God. I had neglected her and lost her. Do you know how the judicial system treats neglectful mothers? How the press crucifies them? How they get dealt with in prison? A funeral wasn’t going to make any difference and jail wouldn’t have made us better people. Archie had paid the ultimate price, people would have thought that I should too. We did what we thought we had to.’

‘And now?’

‘Tomorrow they’re going to start digging where we buried her. It’s only a matter of time before they uncover her corpse and Archie’s poems. It’s the last chance I have to be reunited with her before I die.’

Murray got to his feet. He felt weary in his bones.

‘Where’s your phone?’

Her voice was wary.

‘Why?’

‘Because one of us has to call the police. I think it would be better if it was you, but if you won’t then I’ll do it myself.’

‘There are no police on the island.’

‘I think they might consider this worth the journey.’

Christie leaned back in her chair, looking old and ill.

‘You haven’t asked me where Fergus is.’

‘I know where he is, up to his neck in shit.’

‘He had to go back to Glasgow. Apparently his wife tried to commit suicide. Like I said, he has a penchant for attracting women who want to explore their limits, then pushing them too far.’

The horror of it was hot in Murray’s throat.

‘Will she be okay?’

The woman made a gesture of impatience.

‘I expect so. There’s a difference between seeking attention and doing it for real.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘It takes real courage to kill yourself.’

Christie held Murray’s stare, and he remembered a piece of advice his father had given him: ‘Always approach a trapped animal with caution. It’ll bite you, whether you’ve come to kill it or set it free.’

He wanted to go now, back to Glasgow to see Rachel and find out how she was, but a suspicion that the woman still had more to reveal held him there.

‘Dr Watson, do you think I spent forty years on an island where I’m hated because I’m in love with the landscape? I stayed to be close to my child. She’s been on her own for too long. I want us to be buried together. If you help me, I’ll give you the original manuscript of my memoir, all the photographs and documents I have relating to Archie, and the poems buried beside our daughter. It’s more than you could have hoped for.’

The temptation of it stopped Murray’s breath for a moment. He took a gulp of air and plucked his jacket from the floor.

‘I reckon it’ll be around twenty minutes before I can get a signal. As soon as I do, I’m calling the police. I advise you to ring them first.’

Christie gave a wry smile.

‘It won’t be the ferry or a police launch that takes me from the island, Dr Watson. I already have what I need to transport me. I think I’ve proved my staying power, but I’ve no intention of waiting for the final chapter.’

He took a step towards her.

‘There’s no certainty you’ll go to jail.’

‘My mother would have said that my prison had already been appointed by a higher court — a wheelchair, incontinence, loss of speech, choking to death.’

‘You’re nowhere near that stage yet.’

‘Aren’t I? I didn’t realise you were a medical doctor as well as a doctor of literature.’ She sighed. ‘I’m tired of it all. If it’s time for me to leave my home, then it’s time for me to leave. You said you supported a woman’s right to choose. Well, this is my choice. Fergus understands that at least. He brought me the means.’ She forced herself to her feet and stood, her face raised, her eyes locked on his. ‘All I wanted was for you to help me make a good death, and to bring some peace to Archie and to our daughter.’

It was the words ‘good death’ that did it. Murray sat back down in his chair and put his head in his hands.

MURRAY DROVE SLOWLY, with the headlights off. It was the kind of night that men who wanted to be up to no good craved. The sky was free of moon and stars, the road ahead black, his vision marred by mist and rain. Murray kept his eyes on the darkness before him and asked, ‘How will I know where to dig?’

Christie’s voice was hushed, as if she were still afraid Murray might change his mind.

‘We left a marker. I used to visit every day, but lately it’s been too difficult.’

‘Is that what you were doing when I met you?’

‘The weather was too poor to drive down, but I could see her grave from the ridge.’

The rain battered against the metal roof of the car, a hundred drumming soldiers marching forth to halt the outrage.

Murray said, ‘It’s worse tonight.’

‘It helps. No one will be about and the ground will be soft.’

‘Isn’t there a chance it might have been dislodged? If it has, we may not be able to find it.’

‘Perhaps.’ Christie was in the seat beside him, but her words seemed to come from far away. ‘Her face was the last thing I covered. I swaddled her in my scarf, as if I was about to take her out for some air, then I tied it around her head. The people of the islands used to believe children who died as infants had been stolen by the faeries and a faery replica left in their place. I can understand why. She looked like my baby, but I knew she wasn’t. My child had gone.’

Murray glimpsed Christie’s ghost-white face as she turned towards him. Perhaps the fear showed in his expression, because she said, ‘It won’t be as bad as you’re anticipating. Imagine it’s simply the poems we’re excavating. We wrapped them in polythene. You don’t even have to go into the box, I’ll take them out for you.’

‘What then?’

‘You drive me home, collect the papers and photographs I promised you, and leave.’

‘And you?’

‘Will wait some days, perhaps months. Who knows, maybe remission will return and I’ll be spared for years. But I’ll have my child’s body and the means to make a good death when the time comes. Do you know how important that is?’

Murray stared at the road ahead and thought of the promise he and Jack had made to their father.

‘Yes, I know what a good death can mean.’

She reached out and stroked a finger down his cheek. It was a lover’s touch and he flinched.

Christie whispered, ‘I always half-thought he would come back. Some nights I still do. I sit by the window reading, something catches my eye and I think, There’s Archie, come for me . It used to frighten me. I’d wonder if he would still be angry, what he would look like after all that time. Do you remember “The Monkey’s Paw”?’ Murray nodded, but perhaps Christie didn’t see him in the darkness, because she continued, ‘A husband and wife wish for their dead son to be returned from the grave. No sooner is the wish from their mouths than they hear a hideous banging at the door. When they open it, in place of the hale and hearty boy they dreamt of stands a mangled wreck of a corpse half cut to shreds by the wounds that killed him. Wounds that now have the power of endless torment rather than the power of death.’

She reached out her hand to touch his face again and he said, ‘Don’t, I need to concentrate on the road.’

‘They never found his body. As long as it was missing, there was a chance he was still alive somewhere.’ Christie sighed. ‘I wouldn’t mind if he came back drowned.’

Murray imagined Archie striding towards them through the blackness, his body bloated and bloody, his ragged clothes strung about with seaweed.