Beneath the Abbey Wall (31 page)

Annie answered the door. “It's Uncle Neil,” she said. She was still up.
Eight o'clock is for babies,
she told her mother every night, so, on Saturdays, bedtime was nine. And every Saturday night,
her sister Jean tried to keep awake until big girl's bedtime. So far, she hadn't made it.

And every Saturday Joanne said to Jean, “You're getting too big for me to carry,” but knew she would be sad when her youngest no longer wanted her mother to pick her up, tuck her in, and whisper silly seashell sounds in her ear.

“Is Uncle Rob not coming in?” She peered into the dark, but the noise of the engine and a flash of red taillight was her answer.

“He has to rush home to listen to his music on the radio,” Neil told her.

“We say wireless.”

“So you do. But I'm not from here.”

“Annie, bed.” Joanne smiled at Neil and smiled at her daughter, and for once, Annie did as she was told without arguing. Joanne knew Annie would read in bed with her secret torch, bought with her pocket money, but said nothing. She had done the same at boarding school.

“I'll put the kettle on.” Joanne needed to be in the kitchen. She needed to recover from the hours she had spent waiting, listening, alternatively hoping for and dreading his visit. “So, what did you get up to today?” she asked when she brought in a tray with tea and shortbread, biting back
Where were you? I was waiting . . .

“Working in the morning, band practice in the afternoon . . . ”

Why didn't you ask me? I love being at band practice
. She was remembering her miserable hours glancing at the clock every five minutes, wondering whether to look for him at the library, or at the boardinghouse, to accidentally on purpose bump into him, so she missed the beginning of his account of the meeting at the Ferry Inn.

“So Jenny took offense at my questions and left in a huff.”

“She can be thrawn when she wants to be.”

“My favorite word.
Thrawn.
My mother called me that. She said I was as stubborn as a Shetland pony.”

“As thrawn as . . . ” Joanne corrected him.

And in their laughter, in his reminiscing, they were comfortable again. They did not see the crack in the girl's bedroom door where Annie, sitting up in bed in the almost dark, was listening to every word. And when the laughter ended, when the voices sank to a murmur, she knew for certain that her mother was in love, like Anne of Green Gables.
But how can she love another man when she is still married to Dad?
She fell asleep to the idea of Canada, specifically Prince Edward Island.

It could have been the warmth of the room, or the sound of rain, or the three whiskies or Joanne sitting on the leather pouffe, listening in that way his mother had when, after his regiment had returned from Italy, he had told her about his friend being shot and his being unable to save him because he was dead before he fell. So Neil found himself saying all that he had bottled up,
since my mothers' death,
he thought,
or a lifetime.

“I believed that coming back here, I would find answers,” he started. “I had my lists, what I need to complete my thesis and hopefully a book. The work is almost finished, needs a good edit . . . ” He paused. He did not know how far he could go. “But I will be leaving with so many personal questions unanswered, questions I thought were of no importance until I came here.”

Joanne felt sick at the word.
Leaving. Is there no place for me in your life?
she wanted to ask.

“You'd love Canada.” The change in his voice startled her.

“I'm sure I would.” Her clouds were turning into rainbows.

“I thought when I came here, it would be different; the whispers about women alone, about a child with no visible father, the poverty, the narrow-mindedness, the sheer hard work to just stay alive. I didn't expect here to be the same. I believed all those
tales about Highland hospitality, about everyone looking out for everyone, about the mountains and glens being so bonnie they broke your heart . . . ” He laughed. “That's why I live in a city now.”

Joanne was lost.
What was he trying to say?

“My mother was a completely selfless woman. She ruined her hands, her health, gutting fish to make sure I had all the books I wanted, all the things a normal boy with two parents had.”

He remembered the new bicycle, the trip to Ottawa, the fountain pen when he was accepted at the academy.

I promised I'd look after you,
she told him as she was dying.

“She didn't need to sacrifice herself.” He was not looking at Joanne as he was speaking. His legs stretched out straight, and he was leaning back in the only armchair in the room, his eyes closed.

“When she died, a solicitor contacted me. There was money. Every year since she arrived in Canada, a deposit went into an account labeled Education Fund.” He didn't tell her the deposit arrived on his birthday. “Mum had taken out sums here and there, always coinciding with the start of a new term. She had barely touched the capital and told me the extra came from overtime . . . Then the solicitor, a decent man who'd known me all my life, saw how much I blamed myself, believing that to pay for my education my mother had worked herself to death. He went against her wishes and revealed that the money came from a mysterious benefactor, in Edinburgh, Scotland.”

Joanne reached over and put her hand on his knee.

He opened his eyes and smiled. “So . . . this is quite some journey for me.”

“I'm glad you told me.” Joanne hesitated, then asked, “Have you been looking for your . . . family?” It was the only word she could think of.

“No, not
looking
 . . . ” His lips tightened. “But it's strange what you come across when you're not looking.” He looked as though he was about to say more, when Jean came into the room.

Joanne felt he was about to say more, when Jean interrupted him. Three-quarters asleep, she said, “I need a wee-wee.” The child didn't see Neil. She went to the bathroom with her mother. When she was finished, she went back to bed, without completely waking. Joanne was glad her daughter no longer wet her bed.

Maybe it was the reality that Joanne was a mother that did it, maybe the remembering that she was still married, but when she came back to Neil, the connection had been broken.

“It's late,” was all he said.

No it's not,
she wanted to reply, but that sounded so childish.

He stood. “I'll see you soon.”

When?
She wanted to ask.

He went for his coat and scarf.

“Much as I'd like to, I obviously can't stay in your narrow bed tonight, Mrs. Ross.” He pulled her to him, put his chin on her head. “But I'm really looking forward to next deadline night.”

She kissed him inside the house but had to break off the kiss, as she was in danger of begging him to stay and she still had enough pride to know that begging was not somewhere she wanted to be.

When she was closing the front door after watching until he was out of her garden and down the lane, she heard him start to whistle. It was not a song, more a walking, or marching, or mending a broken machine or car or bicycle tuneless whistle, beloved of workmen and soldiers and those who had not a care in the world. And it broke her heart.

She went to bed quickly and quietly. She pulled the eiderdown over her head. It would muffle the sound of her sobbing.

The despair was salted with the understanding that she
was letting herself down—again.
Didn't you swear you would no longer let a man hurt you?
She turned the pillow over to hide a big wet patch.
It's not him, Neil; he's not the one hurting me. I'm doing this to myself.
She sat up, reached for the glass of water without switching on the light.
How can I even dream of marriage? He doesn't want that. Only sex.
She burrowed back down into her nest. She returned to the country of doubt and self-loathing and was too lost to see how mistaken she was.

T
he sooner Don is back running this newsroom the better,
Rob was thinking. But having typed up his notes for Mr. Brodie, QC, he had his doubts that would happen.
Because who else could have done it? The knife is Don's . . . he inherits . . . he has keys . . . he was there . . . he drinks . . . he . . .

“Rob? Are you with us?” McAllister asked.

“Sorry.” They got back to the business of the Monday meeting.

Rob noticed that this Monday morning, McAllister seemed marginally more aware of his surroundings. Neil was alert but quiet. Joanne was shifting about in her chair, chewing a strand of hair. Rob saw that she too needed a haircut.

What's happening to us all?
he thought. He glanced across at Hector. Even he was not his usual chortling-at-jokes-that-only-a-nine-year-old-would-appreciate self.

The major contents of the paper decided, McAllister asked Rob into his office. “What was the name of your barber?”

Rob laughed. “Hairdresser. Mr. Raymond.”

“Are you sure men go there?”

“Tell him I sent you.” Rob checked McAllister as though the editor was going for a job interview. “You could also buy a duffle coat. All the best intellectuals and members of CND are wearing them.”

“Out.” McAllister grinned. “No. Hold on. Jimmy McPhee; have you seen him lately?”

“Ah.” Rob closed the door. It took twenty minutes to tell McAllister about the second meeting, equally inconclusive, between Neil Stewart and Jimmy and Jenny McPhee.

“So you think the McPhees are hostile to Neil?”

“Jenny McPhee isn't. Wary would be a better word. And Jimmy was no more than his usual hostile-to-everyone self.”

When Rob left to cover the Magistrates Court, McAllister fetched his hat and coat. He put his head around the door of the reporters' room.

“I'll be back by eleven. All okay?”

“If I've any problems they can wait till then,” Neil replied.

“I'm fine,” Joanne said.

The shadows under and in your eyes? No, you're not fine, my bonnie lass,
McAllister thought as he went down the stairs.

The hairdresser was on the north side of the river. McAllister took a circuitous route, leaving messages for Jimmy McPhee in the three likely bars. He then took the steps down to the footbridge, hurrying, almost running down; he did not want to imagine Mrs. Smart dead. He wanted to remember her in her chair, in the newsroom, pen poised, eyes bright, head to one side as she listened, considered, giving a slight nod or a shake, and, McAllister remembered, that was the matter decided. And only now that she was dead did he understand that the small smile, hovering at the corners of her mouth, had been for Don, her husband.

McAllister hesitated at the salon door, checking up and down the street as though he were about to enter a house of ill repute. The first thing that hit him was the smell, all too familiar from his mother's home perm kits that Mrs. Muir the neighbor used to administer in the kitchen in their tenement house in Glasgow.

Mr. Raymond—McAllister was not sure if this was a first, last, or only name, insisted on a hair wash.

The “girl,” as Mr. Raymond referred to her, was at least forty, revealing a bosom that would put Betsy Buchanan to shame.

Not quite the thing on a Monday morning,
McAllister thought.

He was presented to the hairdresser wrapped in a gown a shade of apricot unknown in nature, suitably clean, smelling of perhaps lavender, perhaps freesia, perhaps a kitchen cleaning product. Mr. Raymond danced around him, scissors poised, examining his head as though he was about to sculpt it, and finally started. And the haircut was good; the editor looked his age again, and interesting.

“Thank you,” McAllister said when shown the back of his head in the mirror. He went to pay.

“Really?” said the “girl.” “Can't we do the usual arrangement?” She saw his bewilderment. “Mrs. Buchanan runs an advertisement for free instead of paying for her hairdo.”

McAllister had no time to ask more about the arrangement; Jimmy McPhee was standing in the doorway.

“Very posh,” Jimmy said.

The assistant went as still as the statue of Flora MacDonald in front of the castle. Mr. Raymond dropped a towel over an open leather folder of cutthroat razors.

“Jimmy.” McAllister nodded. “You're not here for a haircut, I presume,” he said before paying what he considered an astonishing amount.
No wonder Betsy Buchanan has done a deal.
But he would speak to her later.

They went and sat in Jimmy's car, parked on the riverbank near another church, the Roman Catholic one. Across the river he could see the churches bordering the fatal steps.
How many churches are there in this one small area? Three, four, maybe five? Plus the remnant of the Abbey of the Black Friars.