Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

Magnus must have muttered something out loud because Jacob and Belle stopped talking.

‘Are you okay?’ Jacob sounded smoothly unbothered, but then he had shot a man in the head without suffering any obvious ill effects. There was no reason why Magnus’s drunken ramblings should trouble him.

‘Aye.’ Magnus took another sip of malt. So many dead and still his cousin haunted him. ‘I’m okay.’

Jacob had said there were six people staying at the house, but so far Magnus had only met Jacob, Father Wingate and Belle. Henry was accounted for by his absence, but that still left two more survivors. There were too few people left not to be curious about those who remained. He remembered the brown face of the woman he had glimpsed crouching in the ditch with the girl who might have been Belle.

‘What if Henry went the same way as Mel?’ the girl said.

‘Melody made her own decision. We should respect that.’

‘What happened to Melody?’ Something in the tone of Jacob’s voice had already told Magnus, but the words were out before he could bite them back.

Jacob levelled his gaze at Magnus. His eyes were creased and tired-looking, but there was an alertness in them that suggested the cleric was not as relaxed as he appeared. He said, ‘Melody struggled with the fact that she was a survivor. She couldn’t understand why she had been allowed to live when everyone dear to her had died.’ Jacob tipped back his dram and downed it in one, swift gulp. ‘I’m afraid she killed herself.’

‘She hanged herself in the barn,’ Belle said, as if it were important to get the facts right. ‘Henry found her.’

Jacob turned his gaze on Belle. ‘That may be one of the reasons Henry decided to leave us.’ He lifted his glass to his mouth, but it was empty and he set it down without bothering to refill it. ‘Henry found it hard even to look at the barn after he discovered poor Melody’s body. He made all sorts of detours to avoid the place.’

‘He promised me he would stay.’ Belle sounded tired.

Magnus finished his dram. He rolled the empty glass between his palms and realised he was staring at the bottle the way a well-trained dog will stare at its bowl before being given permission to eat. He pulled himself to his feet.

‘I’d best get myself to bed.’

‘Take the bottle with you, if you’d like.’ Jacob slid the whisky towards him, but the moon was on the wane that night and the moment had passed.

‘Thanks, but I’ve a long drive tomorrow.’

‘You know your friend won’t be well enough to go with you?’

Magnus nodded. ‘He was never going to go as far north as me anyway.’

‘Why does everyone go?’ Belle asked.

The whine was back in her voice, but this time Magnus felt sorry for her. She was not far off a child, and the world was less fun than it used to be.

‘Other folk will come along.’

Belle gave him a small smile. ‘At least your friend is staying.’

Magnus heard the brightening note in the girl’s voice. He wondered if he should tell them where he had met Jeb, but it occurred to him that Christian charity might not extend to caring for a sex offender and he decided to sleep on the decision.

‘You’ve got a captive audience there, but I’d leave him alone if I were you. He’s a grumpy old git.’

‘Belle might cheer him up.’ Jacob was leaning back in his chair, his half-shut eyes trained on the girl. He looked and sounded like a pimp. Magnus wondered again if the man was really a soldier-priest. It was a new world. Perhaps everyone could be whatever they declared themselves, for a while at least.

‘Trust me.’ Magnus got to his feet, the floor pitched and he realised he had drunk more than he meant to. ‘Jeb’s used to being on his own. He prefers it.’

He took a candle to guide his way and closed the kitchen door gently behind him, leaving the pair of them still sitting silently in the dim light of the kitchen.

Belle had already shown Magnus the room where he would sleep. It was on the second floor, small and musty-smelling, but it had a bed equipped with a mattress and bedclothes. After nights spent on a bedroll on the ground it looked like luxury. Belle had lingered by the door, and Magnus had considered reaching towards her, taking her hand in his and seeing where things led, but her wrists were as thin as a child’s and the thought of her fragile body beneath his had made him feel squeamish.

Magnus paused on the first-floor landing, wondering if he should make his way to Jeb’s room and warn him to ignore the girl, unless he wanted his cover blown. The prospect of meeting Father Wingate gave him the creeps. His mother was an active Kirk member, but Magnus had never completely trusted ministers and their ilk. He had been a pallbearer at his father’s funeral for his mother’s sake, but had spent the day of Hugh’s cremation driving his motorbike full speed to the far side of the island. There had been a moment on the Churchill Barriers when he had felt the urge to turn his wheels towards the water and plunge the bike, with him still on it, down into the depths among the wrecks of the German fleet, but it was only a moment and it passed. His Aunty Gwen had forgiven him for not attending, but Magnus was never sure that she forgave him for being alive when her own boy was dead, and he had avoided their house from then on, though it had been a second home to him.

He had been staring at the stair carpet without seeing it; now its pattern came into focus, an abstract arrangement of reds, greens and dulled yellows that coalesced into a sharp goatee-chinned devil’s face, repeated over and over. Magnus closed his eyes and opened them again, forcing himself to unsee the image. It was a trick of the mind, like the faces he had conjured in the woodchip that papered his bedroom walls as a child.

He leaned against the banister for support as he climbed the stairs to his room. How could Father Wingate and Jacob Powe hold on to their faith in the face of so much death? What kind of god was it they worshipped? He pushed open the door to the room. The candle cast a thin pool of light over the worn carpet, the rose-sprigged wallpaper, the rumpled counterpane. The bedcovers shifted and Magnus saw the woman who had hidden in the ditch beside Belle at the sound of their motorbikes. Her long hair was spread across her shoulders, her expression was grave.

He said stupidly, ‘Are you Melody?’

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Melody’s dead.’

She drew back the sheets making space for him and he saw the curve of her breasts, her dark nipples.

Magnus whispered, ‘I don’t know you,’ and thought what a ridiculous thing it was to say.

She said, ‘I need to be with someone tonight. My thoughts are too loud in my head.’

Magnus could feel himself hardening, all his thoughts beginning to flee. He touched the doorjamb with his fingertips.

‘You’re grieving.’

‘We’re all grieving. The least we can do is comfort each other.’

Magnus stepped into the room and set the candle on the bedside table. His body threw dark shadows against the bedroom walls as he started to pull off his clothes.

Her name was Raisha and she had been a pharmacist in a large branch of Boots. She had also been married with two small boys. Her husband had died first, followed by her younger son, then the elder. She had had a mother, two brothers and a sister, none of whom survived. Those of her husband’s relatives she had been able to seek out were also victims of the sweats.

Raisha told him all this as dawn stretched golden into the small bedroom. The birds were chorusing the arrival of the new day. Their songs seemed to stretch further and higher, as if there were more space for them in the new, unpeopled world.