"The winter afternoon darkened.
I ate at the hotel, studying my newly bought map, humming my new tune and playing around with it. The map showed there was a walk round the coast from Arisaig to Back of Keppoch, I thought about taking that route to the address Mrs Gray had given me, but it was getting dark and I´d probably break my neck falling over some cliff. That would be ironic; putting my Will into effect while still alive and then dying the next day.
I´d take the main road and risk getting run over by a car instead.
I got to Jean´s house just after four. It was new, a bungalow, one of about half a dozen under a group of pines, looking out over a curved beach and a rocky bay to the Sound of Sleat and the distand mountains of Skye.
The house was dark. I sat down on a wall, to wait. I hoped there was nobody else in any of the other houses, a couple of which had lights on, who´d look out and see me sitting there... then felt annoyed with myself, for being so easily embarrassed, so prone to guilt. I put my chin in my hand and tried to ponder the links between guilt and embarrassement.
I decided I wasn´t smart enough to figure it out, not right now, anyway. But is there a song in it? that was the question. Never mind there any truth in it; was there a song?
No idea. I sat on the wall and I sang silent songs to myself.
* * *
A car came along the road, lights bright in the gloaming. It stopped outsinde the house. Faces looked towards me. Somebody got out on the far side. I heard people talking, in the car. The person in the far side was talking to the driver and somebody else inside. I heard a young, female voice say, `Wait a minute, then´.
A young girl walked round the car. Slim, dark, short-haired, schoolbag, uniform. She walked right up to me, lifted her face to mine (I´d slid off the wall). `Excuse me, are you Mr Weir?´
`Ah... I... yes.´Surprise. How did she know? It took a second or two for me to realise this must be Dawn.
`Are you...´
`Dawn. Pleased to meet you.´She put out her hand. I shook it; it felt tiny and fragile and warm, Dawn; her grandmother had described her as `bright´. I smiled, remembering. She turned back to the car. `It is; it´s a friend of my mum´s.´
`Right you are, Dawn. See you tomorrow.´
`Aye. Thank you; good night,´the girl said.
The car drove off. Dawn turned back to me. `Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Weir?´
`Call me Daniel, please,´I said, inside the house. Dawn had made tea. She poked at the banked-up coal fire.
`All right. Would you excuse me a minute?´She went back through the kitchen. I sat, holding my cup of tea. The living room was a little bare, but warm. The house still smelled new; paint, new carpets. TV and video and hi-fi; a home computer on a shelf beside the TV. I saw these things with a sense of relief; they didn´t seem too badly off, even though the room did have that vague air of containing only half the contents of another room, in another house, somewhere else.
Dawn came back struggling with a huge wicker basket full of chopped logs. I managed to put my teacup down without spilling any and jumped up to help her, far too late, as usual. `Oh, thanks,´she said, as I helped her lower the basket to the hearth-side. She chucked a couple of logs in tto the fire. `Mum should be back in a wee while. How´s your tea?´
`It´s fine,´I said, sitting down again. Dawn sat down too, straight-backed, in a seat. She was thinner than I´d expected, especially about the face. I tried to remember what her father had looked like but had only the vaguest impression, and even that somehow included a pair of overalls, whereas the one time I´d met him he´d been wearing a suit.
Dawn was looking at me. There was an uncanny sense of calm, almost serenity about her. It made me uncomfortable.
`How did you know it was me?´I asked her, breaking a silence only I seemed to find awkward.
`Mum described you,´she said. `She´s got all your records,´she added. `You havend made any recently, have you?´
`No, not for a while.´
`Why´s that?´
I opened my mouth to speak, then couldn´t. I closed it again. I put my cup down, suddenly consumed by a ridiculous urge to cry. I coughed and cleared my throat.
`That is a very good question,´ I said. `I think it was because I was ... fed up. Fed up with ... recording, with music.´The urge to cry vanished as quickly as it had appeared. I sat there, looking at this calm, self-possessed kid, and felt about three years old. I shrugged. `I don´t know,´I admitted.
`Oh,´she said, politely, and sipped her tea. A car engine sounded outside; Dawn got up and left the room. Lights swung over the closed curtains of the living room. My heart started misbehaving again, thumping madly. I was going to have a heart attack just sitting here. That should make for interesting legal complications if anybody contested the Will.
I heard the outside door open. I stood up. smoothed back my hair. Footsteps. Then, `Hello, honey...´
`Mum...´
`Mmwah´(the pronounced noise of a quick kiss).
`Look, can I put that lasagne in the microwave? I said I´d help decorate the hall; I´ve got to ... What is it? What? Through... ?´
I cleared my throat. Jean came through the door into the room, looking puzzled, and a little concerned. I smiled, gave an awkward sort of a wave with both hands, jerking them out from my body one, then back again. `Hello ... Jean.´
`Daniel ...´She put her scarf and bag down on a chair, came up to me. `Hello.´ She laughed, hugged me. I hugged her back, smelling the perfume of her dark coad an her short, still wildly curly brown hair; a few tiny threads of silver in it now. She drew back, still holding my arms. Her face was a little fuller than I remembered, but it seemed to have matured, rather than aged. `What are
you doing here?´
Dawn sidled in through the door, looking bashful.
`I was nearby ... I thought I´d drop it...´I said, and felt a quiet moment of despair, that the first thing I´d said to her was a lie.
She laughed, shaking her head, brought a handkerchief out on one jumper cuff, put it to her nose. `Sorry.´She sneezed. `I´ve a cold.´She looked up, eyes bright, shook her head againd and said, `Oh, this is good; it´s so good to see you again. How are you? What have you been doing? Have you eaten yet? I´ve got to dash out... or you could...´She turned round to look at Dawn, leaning her back against the far wall, looking and not looking at us. `Has Dawn...?´
`Dawn´s given me some tea,´I said. `I ... I heard you say something about ...´
`The hall.´Jean turned back to me. `We´re putting up the decorations tonight, for the dance tomorrow. Why don´t you come along?´She patted me in the ribs with the back of her hand. `You´re just the height to reach up into the corners.´Before I could reply, she turned to Dawn. `You want to come, love?´
Dawn shook her head, smiling shyly, and looked down. `Homework´, she said. `My turn to go to Alison´s.´
So we dropped Dawn at another house and headed towards the local community hall, in the village, in Jean´s car. `I thought you must have a car. You´re not travelling by train, are you`?´
`Um ... yes, yes, I am.´
`What, just you? I thought you´d have managers and midners and groupies and hangers-on and... ´
`No, just me.´
`Well, it´s great to see you again. Are you going to stay? We´ve got a spare room.´
`Umm ... well, I thought I might. I did ask them to book me a room at the hotel.´
`What?´She sounded slightly shocked, almost insulted and thoroughly amused, all at the one time. `Oh, we can´t have that. If you don´t stay with us people´ll think we don´t wash the sheets or something.´
`Well, I thought people might ...´
But then we were there, and the car was parked. The sunset was really over, but a thunderously deep stain of red still lay across the furthest limit of the western sky. I looked out to it for a moment. Skye was somewhere out there, more felt than seen.
`Bonny place, isn´t it?´
`Aye, it is that.´I looked at her. `What brought you out herè?´
`Friends,´she said, `I know people here. What brought you?´
`Oh ... I wanted to see you.´
She was silent for a moment. `Very good,´she said, and I could almost smell her nodding more than I could see her. `Good. right; come on in to the body of the kirk.´
We walked towards the village hall. `Hope people don´t mind me showing up... ´I said.
`Why should they?´she said.
`I don´t know. I worry about just .... turning up.´
`Thank God you have. I´m a terrible blether, Daniel. I told people I knew you and I think they´ve been waiting for you to appear for about a year now. I was getting ready to explain that I only knew this famous rock star
fairly well. She squeezed my arm briefly as we went up the steps into the hall. `And don´t worry about staying with us; I´ve been trying to cultivate a reputation as a wicked woman and you´re the first real chance I´ve had.´
I didn´t get a chance to catch her expression as she said this, or say anything else, because then we were in the hall, bright with lights and full of people standing on tables and chairs, and full of tables and chairs anyway, and people were trailing coloured streamers and long unconcertinated lenghts of glittering decorations and pinning up puffballs of Santa Clauses and snowmen and twirling pointed stars, and there was a wee boy on a trike who was pedalling furiously round the place, in the open spaces of the wooden floor, tearing past people and ducking under tables and skidding round chairs, and people were laughing and shouting and throwing packets of drawing pins and reels of sticky tape about and music was playing.
I was introduced to a variety of people whose names I instantly forgot, and told where to hold up decorations. I did as I was told and then couldn´t find anything else to do, as all the high decorations were put uo, and so I just stood, looking a little confused, in the midst of all this work and effort and hilarity and the wee boy whizzing round on his bike.
`Here; sit down out the way, Daniel´, Jean said, pointing me at a chair. `You look confused.´
`It´s funny; I come out here to the wilds and the wilderness, and I´m surrounded with all these
people.´I laughed.
`Not putt off, I hope?´She stood, arms crossed, looking down at me; indulgent, amused... and I don´t know what else.
I rsted one arm on a table by my side. `No; not put off.´
`Can we tempt you to stay over Christmas ... maybe even Hogmanay?´Her voice was a little lower, a little more measured than it had been.
I looked up at her. `Oh ... yes. Of course; Christmas ... New Year ...´I nodded. ´Yes, that would be ... if you don´t...´
`We´d love to have you. How long can you stay?´
I shook my head. `Well ... I don´t know. I´ll ... . Look, just ... I mean ... as soon as ... I mean I might ...´ I couldn´t even think what it was I wanted to say, let alone start trying to say it. `Oh´, I said, leaning back in the table, temporarily exhausted by the effort of it all. `Kick me out when you want.´
`Daniel,´she said, smiling very seriously and shaking her head, `I wouldn´t kick you out of anything.´Then she went back to help with the decorations.
I leant my elbow on the table again, and felt it itp. I looked down at one of the legs. I patted my pockets, looking for a wedge. I found a piece of plastic, cracked it in half and slid it underneath the leg, steadying it.
It was only after I´d sat up abain and done a double-take and looked down that I realised what I´d used was my platinum Amex card ... I swear.
I look up again, laughing quietly to myself. The wean on the trike races past.
They´ve tied great long lengths of different coloured paper streamers to the back of the wee boy´s bicycle. He´s still speeding round and round the hall, past people and between sets of chairs, head down and pedalling as hard as he can, but now he´s got a long, swirling train of colour streaming after him.
On the tape machine somebody is playing the Northumbrian Pipes, and in the midst of that simple, tootling, jigging music, I´m sitting back, rubbing my bristly chin and feeling happy again, and wondering if it´ll last, and watching the bairn on the trike, the streamers flowing behind him like a rainbow whake, whizzing round and round and round."
Extract of
Espedair Street by Iain Banks.
