Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

THE WATER BOTTLE was still in his hand when he reached the bothy. Murray looked at it as if unsure how it had got there, and then launched it into a corner. The room was freezing and he fired the Calor heater into life. The flames blazed blue, and then took on an orange glow that made him think again of Christie’s cottage. He wondered how long it would burn.

Murray pulled off his jacket and saw the package James had sent him still miraculously jutting from his pocket. He took it out and laid it on the table. One end was scuffed and edged with mud, but otherwise it had weathered the dreadful adventure better than he had. It seemed that paper was more durable than flesh and blood. James had been trying to tell him something, but it didn’t matter now. He had got as close to Archie as it was possible to get. All the rest was nothing.

Murray stripped off his clothes and washed outside at the water butt, not bothering about whether he soiled his drinking water. He dried himself in front of the heater, still shivering, then slid his belt from its loops, shoved his filthy clothes in a carrier bag and sealed it. They would tell their own story.

He guessed that Pete would come round at some point to discuss the island’s finds. Murray would add to its discoveries. It couldn’t be helped. He wondered about writing an account of what had happened, but found he didn’t think that he could write; he, who had lived half his life with a pen in his hand.

Murray took the whisky from the shelf where Fergus had placed it and drank a good long swallow straight from the bottle. He started to cough as hard as Christie in her last throes and it was a battle not to splutter the precious spirit across the floor.

Archie had slammed out of the cottage, or maybe he had been slammed from it. Either way the door had crashed in its frame, expelling him from the disaster that lay inside.

Murray remembered the red corduroy notebook he had held in his hands in the National Library all those weeks ago, the list of names:

Tamsker

Saffron

Ray — will you be my sunshine?

What visions had sprung in Archie’s mind from Christie’s swelling belly? What hopes had he harboured? The poet had been right to let their loss propel him into the waves. Archie had purified himself, accepted his share of blame and escaped the future, the pain, the whole fucking uselessness of living on.

Murray sat naked in front of the fire, his elbows resting on the table, and took another deep draught. He looked up at the hook he had noticed when Pete first showed him the cottage. He supposed it had been used for drying herbs or curing meat.

What had Archie thought of as he walked down to the shore, his hair flying around his face? Had he known death was waiting for him, or had he simply given himself over to the fates in the same way Alan Garrett had? Murray raised the bottle to his mouth again and imagined Archie on the little jetty, freeing the small boat of its moorings then jumping aboard. If his fate had been a throw of the dice between Death and Life-In-Death, surely better that Death should win.

Murray gave the bottle another tilt and slid James’s envelope towards him. Fergus’s face gazed out in black and white from the book’s back cover. He’d been handsome when he was younger, a blond shock of fringe falling across his eyes, every inch the poet. Murray had an idea what lay between the covers, but he let the book fall open and began to read where fate had chosen.

A moored boat tied tight

Has more play than you

Wood and water

Earth and rope

He worked his way through the rest of the bottle, reading the poems as he went. Each swallow and every word seemed to make him more sober. There were computer programs that could decode vocabulary and syntax to show the truth of his conviction. Perhaps someone would pursue it. Rab Purvis maybe. He took a pen and wrote on the title page: These poems were written by Archie Lunan.

That would be the extent of his biography.

He drank the final dregs in the bottle and sent it across the room. It landed unbroken and rolled until it rested softly against the wall.

If there had been an open fire in the cottage, Murray would have taken his notes and consigned them to the flames. He could have spent an hour ripping them apart instead, then scattered them to the wind, but it would simply be another delay, an empty gesture in a night of weighty deeds.

Instead Murray took his belt from the floor, where he had dropped it. He used the chair as a step and climbed up onto the table, hoping it would take his weight. The belt had been his father’s. It was a good one, made from Spanish leather. Originally it had boasted a buckle in the shape of a Native American chief in full headdress. Jack had replaced it with a plain silvered one and given it to Murray. He’d given him the old buckle too, wrapped in an envelope he’d marked Cowboy Chic . It was an old joke from when they were teenagers. A long time ago.

Murray slid the belt’s tongue through its buckle, not bothering to fasten it. He’d never got round to getting it shortened to fit his waist and he reckoned it would be long enough.

It was better to decide your exit for yourself. You could be a long-legged, wisecracking urban cowboy, good for a laugh or a wise word, and then, quicker than you could credit, an old man unable to recognise the people you held most dear.

The people you had held most dear.

Murray wiped his eyes. He tied the belt around the hook, gripped the collar he’d made and swung on it for a moment. The knot above tightened, the buckle crushed against his hand, a painful flaw in his design.

It would have to do.

Murray stepped back down onto the floor, the cardboard gritty against his bare feet. He dragged the table a little to the left, climbed back up and fitted the makeshift collar around his neck.

It was still dark outside. Somewhere a bird crowed. He thought of the rook pacing the path beside Christie’s body, and drew a hand across his face; a moment’s courage and then peace.

Soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Murray stepped from the table, seeing Archie’s face at the window as he fell. His legs kicked and the noose tightened, belt buckle biting into his neck as he’d known it would. There was a rushing in his ears, an ocean’s weight coming towards him, and above it another sound.

Someone — Archie? — grabbed his legs and raised him shoulder-high, taking his weight. Murray could feel his assailant’s face against his hip, their arms around his knees swinging him back to the table’s raft.

‘You stupid fucking bastard!’

The voice was loud and frightened and instantly recognisable.

The belt was still around his throat. Murray clawed at his neck, but the noose stayed tight. Jack leapt up on the table beside him and pushed his hands away, trying to ease the buckle loose. Murray could hear him panting and smell the alcohol on his breath. At last he got it free and Murray managed to take one deep whooping lungful of air and then another.

His brother pressed his head against Murray’s chest. After a moment Jack pulled away and managed to untie the belt from its hook. He said, ‘You better be trying to kill yourself, Minty, because if this is some fucking sex thing, I’ll bloody swing for you myself.’

Murray grabbed his brother in a hug. He’d all but lost his voice, but he managed to croak, ‘We let him down, Jack. We promised he’d die at home and he didn’t. He died on his own in that fucking place.’

‘I know he did.’ His brother was holding him tight. ‘But they’d told us there were days, weeks maybe. Dad knew we were doing our best. He was proud of you, Murray. He loved you. He wouldn’t want you to do anything like this. You know that. He’d be fucking furious. Now, come on. Let’s get down from here and get you dressed.’