And the Land Lay Still (32 page)

He spoke with such confidence that it was as if he’d witnessed it all himself. Don wondered where he got his information from. The whole escapade put Don neither up nor down. He couldn’t be doing with all the medieval claptrap the affair was generating, but he was intrigued by the effect it was having on otherwise sober, sensible people around him. Men at Byres Brothers shouting ‘SCOTLAND!’ for no apparent reason in the middle of their work; auld Tam Byres, a terrible reactionary and dour pillar of the Drumkirk Unionist Association, chortling, rubbing his palms at the notion of four hundredweight of stone being wheeched out from under the noses of some toffee-nosed English bishop and a glaikit London bobby; even Liz brightening up at the news, saying she hoped whoever the brave wee lassie was she didn’t get the jail.

‘So what dae ye mean?’ Don demanded of Jack. ‘Are ye saying it’s irrelevant because it’s the wrang stane, or it’s irrelevant because it disna make ony difference at all tae people’s lives, whichever stane it is? Which is my position, in case ye didna realise.’

‘Both,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a distraction. Although,’ he added, ‘there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing the authorities so upset about it.’

‘Is that all ye’ve got tae say?’ Bulldog said. ‘A certain satisfaction? Man, it’s the greatest drubbing the English have had since the Wembley Wizards beat them five-one.’

‘Ye weren’t even alive for that,’ Don said.

‘I was tae,’ Bulldog said defiantly.

‘How old were ye?’

‘Two. All right, I dinna mind it exactly, but everybody’s always going on aboot it. And everybody’ll go on aboot
this
as well. It
does
make a difference. The day the Stone of Destiny was taken back frae the English. It’ll go down in history.’

Jack began solemnly to intone:

‘What’s that?’ Bulldog asked suspiciously.

‘An old poem,’ Jack said. ‘Bruce’s address to the troops at Bannockburn.’

‘Burns?’

‘Much older. Very ancient, in fact. Anonymous.’

‘Great stuff,’ Bulldog said. ‘Ken any more?’

‘No,’ Jack said, ‘that’s it. Just that fragment.’

‘Shame,’ Bulldog said. He drained his glass. ‘Same again, Don?’

‘Aye, thanks,’ Don said.

Jack was maintaining his independence, as usual. ‘I’ll get mine when I’m ready, Bill,’ he said, and Bulldog winked at Don and went up to the bar.

‘What on earth was
that
?’ Don said.

‘William Topaz McGonagall,’ Jack said. ‘Does it matter?’

‘It could be Shakespeare for all Bill kens.’

‘Precisely my point,’ Jack said.

‘I wonder how lang it’ll be afore the thing turns up.’

‘Do you care?’ Jack said. He looked very hard at Don. ‘It’s all a distraction,’ he said. ‘It’s all irrelevant.’

The odd thing was, in spite of himself Don did care. It was like the English nurse. He wasn’t bothered
about
it. But he was bothered
by
it.

§

Liz was in a mood again, and Charlie, as usual, was fractious. It was a Sunday afternoon in March, cold but sunny. Don and Billy escaped
up the hill to the woods, where they found clumps of snowdrops past their best and daffodils just ready to open out. As they went higher the ground hardened and a few thin patches of snow showed. Billy was intrigued by the streams of white breath he could send out into the air, so they practised that for a while, and stood watching the chaffinches flitting about and puffing their chests out in song. When they moved on a robin led them along the path, striking poses on tree stumps and rocks and chivvying them in his nippy way before flying off. Billy was full of questions, full of energy. He was so easy. Don wished they could just keep walking, for miles, for days. The more they walked, the more spring asserted itself, the further he felt from the weight of responsibility, the oppression of the house.

At the green bench they stopped and looked for their roof down in the village, and Don pointed out factory lums and kirk spires in distant Drumkirk, gleaming and clean-looking in the sunshine. ‘D’ye want tae go on a wee bit?’ he asked, and Billy did, so they followed the path deeper into the woods. It was chillier at first out of the sun, then warmer and brighter again as the trees thinned and the incline rose towards the great moor that stretched north to Glenallan. Don was amazed that his four-year-old son could go so far and at such a pace, and wondered when he would tire and if he would have to carry him all the way back, and didn’t care if he did.

As they reached the last of the trees two figures appeared in front of them, a man and a boy. It was for a moment as if they had somehow come upon themselves, only the boy was older, twice Billy’s age at least, and the man, taller and more gaunt than Don, was Jack Gordon.

‘Hello again, Jack,’ Don said as they approached. They’d met in the pub the previous evening, the usual routine. They’d talked a bit of politics, had some longish silences, walked up the road together. Now Don said, ‘Fine day for it, eh?’

‘Aye,’ Jack said. He stared at Billy staring curiously back at him. ‘This your boy?’

‘Aye, this is Billy.’ He remembered that Jack hadn’t met Billy the day they’d called round. ‘This is Mr Gordon, son. And this …’

‘… is my sister’s son, Jimmy,’ Jack said.

Don held out his hand. ‘I’m Don,’ he said. ‘Pleased tae meet ye.’

The boy, who had been standing slightly behind and apart from Jack, came forward to shake hands. He didn’t say a word. There was
a physical resemblance, Don thought, but the greater likeness to Jack lay in his watchfulness, his taciturnity. It was Jack in miniature.

‘We just came oot tae stretch our legs a bit, did we no, son?’ Don said. ‘Gets us oot the hoose, oot frae under Liz’s feet. How’s Sarah and Barbara?’

‘They’re fine,’ Jack said. ‘My sister’s family are visiting from Slaemill. Jimmy’s family. So we came out for some fresh air too. Right, Jimmy?’

‘Aye.’

‘We’ve been having a talk,’ Jack said. ‘Getting to know each other.’

‘Very good,’ Don said.

‘Discussing the state of the nation.’

‘Och, that’s a hot topic wi your uncle,’ Don said to the boy. ‘Dae ye feel the same aboot it as he does?’

The boy nodded. Barely a nod. Don felt that he was being assessed, analysed. The boy’s gaze was intense yet also somehow off hand, as if he were simultaneously interested and bored.

‘He says a lot,’ Don said, attempting joviality.

‘He says all he needs to say,’ Jack said. ‘Suits me fine.’ A smile flickered. ‘As you might expect.’

They stood there, the four of them, all waiting in their own ways for something to happen, or not to happen, until Don could bear it no longer. ‘Weel,’ he said, ‘we’re aboot tae head back hame again. Are ye coming?’

‘Not just yet,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll follow you down in a minute. We’ll catch you up, perhaps.’

‘Fair enough,’ Don said. ‘See ye later.’ He nodded at the nephew, and he and Billy set off together back through the woods. At one point he turned round to see what the others were doing. They were standing watching them go, silhouetted among the trees. Don raised a hand to wave, but they didn’t respond. He thought, what are they waiting for? Then Billy called on him, and he turned and broke into a trot towards where his son was standing, holding his arms out for a carry. He didn’t look back again.

§

Where did ye go, Jack?
For years afterwards, Don would silently ask that question. He’d wake in the middle of the night and the question would be there, even though he hadn’t thought about Jack Gordon
for weeks. Liz was sleeping beside him, real and dependable, but his mind was away chasing shadows. Or he’d be at his work, and a man coming round the front of the lorry he was working on would be Jack for a second, and then not Jack, just his ghost. He’d see a man enter a shop, and some need to be sure would make him follow, and it wasn’t him of course, it was never him. That was what it was like: Jack haunted Don, not because he was dead – which he almost surely was – but because he might still be out there somewhere, alive.

There was no trigger, no rational explanation that Sarah or anybody else could think of – but why would there be for such a thing? A man disappears. There is only the fact that he went missing before. A precedent, but not a pattern. How do you make a pattern out of absence?

It was the Tuesday after the meeting in the woods. Jack hadn’t been at the bus stop on the Monday morning, nor had he been on the bus home in the evening. When he didn’t appear on the Tuesday morning Don began to feel anxious, but he refused to let his mind dwell on it. He wasn’t going to get worked up for nothing, not again.

When he got home that evening Liz had his tea ready for him, a shepherd’s pie heavily biased in favour of the potatoes. While he ate she stood over by the sink with her arms folded, watching him. ‘Are ye no eating?’ he asked. ‘I’m no hungry,’ she said, in a brittle tone. He knew something was coming.

‘Sarah Gordon was here this morning.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Her man’s missing.’

He held the forkful that was on its way to his mouth in mid-air.

‘Jack’s missing?’

‘That’s what I said. Since yesterday. He never came hame frae his work. It turns oot he never went
tae
his work. She didna ken what tae dae. I tellt her tae call the polis.’

‘Aye, weel,’ he said cautiously, ‘that’s probably the best thing.’

‘She was getting hersel in a right state, though she didna want tae break doon in front of me. And she had the wee lassie wi her tae. I’ll need tae go up there, see how she is.’ A pause. ‘Or maybe you should go.’

There was a sting in the way she said it. He put his fork down and looked at her.

‘Ye’ve got the experience, Don, efter all.’

‘What dae ye mean?’

‘Well, it’s no the first time, is it? Sarah was telling me aboot how ye helped her afore. Asked in the pub. Searched in the woods. Like Sir bloody Galahad ye were, apparently.’ She was eyeing him steadily. With
suspicion
, for God’s sake.

‘What are ye looking at me like that for?’

‘Are ye denying it?’

‘Denying what?’

‘That ye were roond at her hoose.’

‘Aye. No, I’m no denying it. There’s nothing tae deny. I was trying tae help her.’

‘Withoot saying a word tae me? What am I supposed tae make o that?’

‘I tellt ye, Liz. She met me aff the bus. I tellt ye that. Ye were aboot tae gie birth tae Charlie. It was that same weekend. I went roond tae help her while ye were haein a nap and when I came back ye were away intae the hospital.’

‘Ye never said that. Ye said ye were taking Billy for a walk.’

‘I was, but –’

‘And ye never said a word aboot it efter. Never a word in seven months.’

‘It went oot my heid.’

‘Aye, and mine buttons up the back. Why would ye keep it a secret? Were ye up tae something wi her?’

‘No, for God’s sake! It wasna a secret. I forgot, then later it didna seem worth fashin ye wi.’

‘So what were ye daein?’

‘I was trying tae find oot what had happened tae Jack. But I didna find oot, and then he came hame the next day.’

‘Aye, weel, he’s away again noo. Maybe he’ll no be back this time. Maybe that would be better for everybody. That’s what I think onywey.’

‘Oh, Liz!’ he said, appalled.

‘I dae. I said it afore, I feel sorry for her being saddled wi him. Did
you
feel sorry for her?’ That nippy note again, making him feel guilty about nothing. But if it was nothing why did he feel guilty?

‘No the way you’re implying. I was trying tae help, that’s all. I’ve never looked at another woman, Liz, and ye ken that’s the truth.’

‘Ye’d better bloody no,’ Liz said.

He held her stare, fighting back images of the English nurse that night in the hospital. They had come to a crisis but neither of them wanted to face the real root of it: the fact that since Charlie’s birth they’d had little to say to each other that wasn’t about the mundane details of daily life; that one child had been a blessing, two felt more like a penance; that they lived like drones, sacrificing their own aspirations in order to feed and nurture the boys. But what were their aspirations? It was easier – had less awful implications perhaps – for Liz to imagine that Don might have strayed, and for Don angrily to deny that possibility, than to answer that question.

Then it passed. Neither of them apologised. Liz said, ‘You make up a bottle for Charlie, and get Billy tae his bed. I’ll go roond and see her.’ And Don said, ‘Aye, all right.’ ‘Leave the dishes, I’ll dae them later,’ she said, but as soon as she was out of the door he did them anyway, then went to see Billy, who’d been playing quietly in the front room all this time. Charlie was asleep in his crib, but on cue woke up and began to cry, so he had to deal with him first. ‘Ye’ve the patience o a saint,’ Don said to Billy, who answered with one of his wee, slightly uncertain, totally disarming smiles. ‘No like your brother, eh?’

By the time Liz came back he’d fed Charlie and quietened him, and Billy was asleep. The police had been and gone, Liz said. They’d asked questions, made notes, and taken away a wedding photo as Sarah didn’t have anything of Jack more recent. By then he’d been gone maybe forty hours. ‘He’s got a head start,’ she said, as if he was a fugitive from justice, a character out of one of her mysteries. Liz had quizzed Sarah much as Don had on the previous occasion. Had Jack said anything, done anything, that might offer a clue as to why or where he’d gone? He hadn’t. Had he taken money from the house? Not that she could see. Sarah found the bank book and there were no recent withdrawals. But then Jack was secretive, she said, he could have had money hidden away somewhere. It looked like he’d taken a change of clothes, his good boots, a heavy coat, a haversack.

‘He’ll no go far withoot money,’ Liz said. ‘I said tae her, he’ll be back soon enough when he runs oot o money.’