The Burry Man's Day (24 page)

This was, at the same time, both strange beyond reckoning and also too good to miss. In fact, its strangeness only made it the more irresistible for there had to be a story behind this ostentatious absence from the send-off, surely. The only question was whether I could summon the nerve to cross the threshold, alone this time, join a strange man at the bar, and strike up the conversation necessary to find out what the story was.

To excuse ducking out of it, I could tell myself that Alec would be able to grill the other helper at the funeral or afterwards. On the other hand, there was no guarantee of this; Alec after all was relying on Cad being able to pick the face out of the crowd or, failing that, being able to ask around discreetly for an introduction. Imagine his disgust if he missed the man or could not get him to talk and then he heard that I had let this other one slip through my grasp out of sheer . . . I did not even know for sure what one would call it.

I put my gloved fingers firmly around the brass handle of the door and pulled it open. Mr Brown had disappeared into the back room while I was dithering, and only the man at the bar remained. He spoke, without turning, saying:

‘He’s no’ open.’

‘Oh!’ I said, flustered, and on hearing my voice the man turned around in some surprise.

‘It’s yoursel’,’ he said, obviously remembering me from our first encounter.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. (I have never been able to decide exactly how one should respond to this particular greeting.) ‘And I’m not really looking to buy a drink. I’m just . . . Well, to tell the truth, I was out for a walk and then seeing the street so quiet and realizing
why
, I’m looking for cover. It would be pretty blatant to parade along the High Street and then roar off in my motor car.’ I had joined him at the bar during this speech and he was nodding slowly in apparent understanding, but he was – I could see this now that I was close up – extremely drunk. As if to confirm the fact, he gave a huge wuthering sigh and sank his head to his chest with lips pushed out.

‘What brings you here?’ I asked, rather too brightly. He did not answer. ‘I should have thought you’d be up at the Kirk. Mr Brown too, for that matter.’

‘We’ve no’ been introduced,’ said the man, swinging to face me. I had to work hard not recoil from the beer fumes on his breath, and almost found myself offering him a peppermint. ‘Pat Rearden,’ he said, and held out a hand. I shook it faintly, wondering at the non sequitur, then I realized that it was not a non sequitur after all.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘What a shame. How awful for you, I mean, if you were great friends.’

‘We
were
friends,’ he announced, much more belligerently than was needed since he was, after all, agreeing with me. ‘Rab and me. We didnae give a – didnae care what folk said. And we aye kent that if he went first I’d be sittin’ in a bar and if it wis me he’d be sittin’ in a bar. Load o’ bloody nonsense.’

‘Hear, hear,’ I answered. ‘As someone else said just the other day in another context: we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns.’

‘We are,’ said Mr Rearden, thumping the bar. ‘We are that. You nivver said a truer word.’

‘What about Mr Brown? Why isn’t he there?’ I said. He looked blank. ‘ Shinie?’ I prompted.

‘Same as me,’ said Mr Rearden shaking his head morosely. ‘Just the same as me. Father Cormack would have his guts for garters if he crossed the door. And it’s worse for him. Fur Shinie. He’s practically ane o’ the family.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘So it wasn’t another context after all. It was exactly the same context. Ah well, Miss Brown seems to have been a staunch support to Mrs Dudgeon in the last few days nevertheless.’

‘Should have been ane o’ the family,’ said Rearden again, threatening real tears now. ‘That f– . . . bloody war.’ I nodded, sympathetically. ‘Left all of us old men whae’d lived wur lives and took the boys.’ He gave a rough sob, and I patted his arm. ‘And their boys were like brothers from they were laddies,’ he said, echoing what Mrs Dudgeon’s sisters had told me.

‘Yes, so I believe,’ I said. ‘They joined up together, didn’t they?’

‘Aye, the Black Watch,’ said Rearden. ‘Rab Dudgeon’s laddie was a’ for the King’s Own Borderers, but Billy got his way for once and the Royal Highlanders it was.’

‘For once?’ I said.

‘The usual thing o’ it was that the Dudgeon laddie said jump and Billy did the jumpin’.’

‘I had heard it was the other way round,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ said Rearden. ‘Ye’d have heard that from them, right? That would be whit they were sayin’.’

I smiled, acknowledging the point.

‘How impossible for Joey, in that case, then,’ I said. ‘Guilt as well as grief.’

‘Shinie’s boy was lost an’ all, ye ken,’ said Rearden. ‘Her brother.’ This I had
not
known, although it was hardly startling news. ‘Missin’ presumed,’ he went on. ‘Jist like wee Rab. And ye’d think it could have brought them closer, eh? Would ye no’? Would ye no’ think that?’ He glared at me until I nodded, agreeing with him on who knows what. ‘They nivver talked aboot it,’ said Rearden. ‘Not one word a’ these years, the both o’ them.’

‘Mr and Mrs Dudgeon didn’t?’ I said. ‘Or Joey and Mr Brown? Didn’t talk about what?’

‘Shinie and Rab,’ said Rearden. ‘Both o’ the laddies gone and they nivver once sat doon and had a dram together. We tried. Bringing him in here. Doing the old routine wi’ Joey. Cannae say we nivver tried. Look up there,’ he commanded suddenly, pointing a wavering finger to the row of bottles behind the bar. ‘See that? Does that no’ break yer heart?’ I looked along the row, but saw nothing that could be called heartbreaking except to Mr Turnbull or another of his Temperance chums. ‘Where is it?’ Rearden was muttering to himself. ‘Where is it away to?’ He tried to focus, slapping a hand over one eye and slowly tracing a pointing finger along in mid-air in line with the shelf. ‘That bottle there – it’s up there somewhere – that bottle o’ malt is fur the laddie. Eh? Kept there fur the laddie comin’ hame and naeb’dy else is let lay a finger on it.’ His voice was throbbing with emotion again, and as mawkish as this was in one way, it was hard not to get a little lump in one’s throat at the thought of Mr Brown keeping a bottle of special whisky, saved against the homecoming of his beloved son, who lay buried under the soil somewhere in France, too horribly mutilated even to identify and send home to his father.

‘Shinie!’ Rearden bellowed, all of a sudden, as loud as a gun going off in my ear. I yelped. ‘Here, Shinie! Where’s yer laddie’s drink away tae? Aye well,’ he said in a quieter voice, to me. ‘He’s mebbes put it behind him at last. I mind once a year or two back he took it doon and had done wi’ it. But then back it came. Shinie?’

I could hear Mr Brown advancing up the cellar steps, grumbling as he came.

‘Whaur’s yer laddie’s bottle?’ said Rearden, once his head came into view behind the bar. Brown frowned at me, understandably amazed to see me standing there. ‘Whaur is it?’ said Rearden. ‘I was jist tellin’ this lass aboot it.’

‘Hush now,’ I said, mortified to let Mr Brown think that Rearden had been spouting such intimate concerns of his to a practical stranger. ‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet about something, Mr Brown, and no mistake. I’ve no idea what the matter is.’

‘It’s Rab Dudgeon ye should be thinkin’ on the day, Paddy,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Not me. It’s Rab’s day the day. That’s who we should all be thinkin’ on.’ His voice was strained and thick, although he seemed sure enough in his movements and his eyes were clear. Perhaps he was regretting the silly joke he had played on his daughter on the Burry Man’s day, which after all needed Robert Dudgeon for a stooge and was not at all in the spirit of the Fair. Or perhaps he too was superstitious enough to think that he really had brought bad luck on Dudgeon with the dropped whisky. Certainly Brown had been keen enough to observe the ritual as to rush out into the street and try again, and Robert Dudgeon had been angry enough at the trick that he had dashed the dram to the ground. Or perhaps, in fact much more likely, it was not superstition after all. It was as Rearden said: with both their boys gone to the same fate and the union of the families never to come to pass, they should have been able to breach that wretched divide that cleaves so many Scotch towns in two, and now it was too late. Brown’s repeated insistence on the respect due to Robert Dudgeon certainly pointed that way.

‘It was indeed a terrible thing,’ I said. ‘And such a shock. He seemed so very hale and hearty just the day before.’ Mr Brown simply shook his head and walked away. I heard a couple of doors open and close, dividing him from us and then, despite them, the sound of dry, hacking sobs.

Rearden gazed owlishly across the bar with his bottom lip pushed out, saying nothing, and a few slow tears began to roll down his face too.

‘Well, at least you spent his last day with him,’ I said, grasping at straws. ‘That’s something rather wonderful for you to look back on.’

‘Aye but it wisnae richt,’ said Rearden. ‘The laughs we had on Burry Man’s day over the years, I could tell you. But no’ Friday. Rab Dudgeon wis in a state about somethin’ that day. Awfu’ strange first thing, and then goin’ daft like that richt at the end. He wisnae himsel’. An’ more nor me said it.’

‘I saw the strange little turn at the end,’ I said. ‘Saw it for myself. When he suddenly broke away from you and rushed into the hall? I thought at the time that maybe it was part of the ritual, but I believe not.’

‘Nivver done it before,’ Mr Rearden assured me. ‘And when we got in after him, he had ripped a’ his suit off his heid and halfway off his back as if they burrs were red hot needles in him.’ I could not help but stare at him on hearing that. Was it possible that there really
was
something off about the burrs? That Dudgeon had borne it stoically all day but had been unable at that moment to stand it a second more? Could we have hit on something with the story of poison after all?

‘How odd,’ I said, trying not to sound too interested. ‘And usually . . . what? Usually he would just stand quietly and let them be taken off by helpers?’ Pat Rearden offered nothing for another long, long moment. He was at that stage of drunkenness when the subject settles into himself like a melting jelly; almost asleep but with his eyes open.

‘Aye for sure,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a tricky job takin’ them off. No’ as tricky as getting’ them a’ on, mind, since it disnae matter whit it looks like, but they’re jaggit wee buggers, they burrs. Excuse ma language, madam, Ah’m forgettin’ myself. But Rab wis scratched to bits, Friday nicht, the way he’d jist hauled them off hissel’ like that.’

‘And first thing?’ I said, speaking loudly and slowly, hoping to get through the drink which seemed to be descending over him like a blanket of fog. ‘You said he was peculiar then too?’

‘Wisnae himsel’,’ said Rearden, mumbling it into his chest. ‘“Leave me, boys,” he says. “Leave me a minute, I need a minute jist tae myself.” Nivver wanted a minute on his own afore. Should o’ kent. We should o’ kent.’ He was beginning to work himself up again and I attempted to console him, telling him that no one could possibly have known anything and that he wasn’t to berate himself now. All the time, I was thinking furiously to myself. Both he and Mrs Dudgeon, then, had been asking to be alone, begging for time alone. There was something very suspicious about it. What possible reason could there be for the Burry Man to want to be alone before his round and to want the same thing so much at the end that he broke away from his guards and made a run for it? Could it be the same reason that Mrs Dudgeon begged to be left on her own? Wandered the woods in the night to get away from others and even put her beloved husband’s body away from her if that was the only way she could get rid of the mourners. I could not imagine any common purpose behind the two desires that did not smack of witchcraft, but perhaps one explanation could suffice for the Burry Man’s behaviour at the start and the end of his day.

‘When was this exactly?’ I said, wanting to get the clearest possible picture of the thing. It was rather a stretch, but if the burrs were poisoned perhaps Robert Dudgeon knew as soon as he was dressed that something was wrong. Perhaps he felt dizzy or sick and thought he needed a moment alone to gather himself. It was far-fetched but I thought I should press Rearden on it while I had the chance.

‘When did Mr Dudgeon ask to be alone?’ I persisted. ‘Mr Rearden?’ But Rearden only repeated to himself that it had never happened before and he should have known there was something wrong and that ‘Rab’ was not himself then he put his head down upon his crossed arms on the bar and was lost to me.

I watched him for a while and eventually heard doors opening again. Mr Brown returned to the bar.

‘I’ll ask you to forgive me, madam,’ he said. ‘It just . . . brought it all back.’

‘Of course it did,’ I said.

‘I couldnae just stand here and listen to Paddy,’ Brown went on. ‘What’s he . . . Eh, what’s he been saying anyway?’

I did not wish to tell him. There was no need to mention his son and the whisky and cause him further pain for one thing, but also I was reluctant to give him any information about the case. He was, after all, Joey Brown’s father and I was still very interested in Joey Brown.

‘Nothing very coherent,’ I settled on at last and Shinie gave his friend a rueful look.

‘Just as well I’m closed,’ he said, ‘or I’d be in trouble for lettin’ him get in thon state this early in the day.’ I could well imagine what the Turnbulls would make of the scene, and I could only agree.

‘He’ll sleep it off soon enough, poor chap,’ I said, still firmly on the side of the drinkers, thinking that the ten minutes I had spent with a maudlin drunk in this public bar had still managed to be more congenial than the turgid half-hour of lukewarm coffee and red-hot invective in the Turnbulls’ parlour. Mr Brown seemed to be feeling real remorse, though; the expression on his face as he looked at the top of Rearden’s head was quite bleak.

‘What the Temperance gang never do seem quite to understand,’ I said, ‘is the very real comfort of getting absolutely blind drunk when life has thrown you something unspeakably nasty.’ Mr Brown looked understandably surprised at this sharp turn in the conversation, as well he might. ‘I had coffee with Mrs Turnbull this morning,’ I explained. He could not prevent his lip from curling and I smiled. ‘And you know, even the hangover can be a comfort sometimes,’ I went on. ‘A real enemy to battle and a distraction from whatever caused one to get drunk in the first place. And then when the hangover clears, one is so happy to be feeling better that one’s spirits can’t help but lift a little. There’s a great deal to be said for strong drink in response to sorrow, all in all.’