Dead of Light (4 page)

Jamie showed me then how right I was, giving me a glance that was all family, our brief alliance already broken; but he did at least answer. “Shetland,” he said. “He's been sent for, he's coming.”

That made sense, to find Uncle Allan so far north. The only one of us who ranged far outside the town, he'd always trumpeted our Celtic lineage, louder than necessary and too often to be interesting. I'd never felt it applied, in any case. There were other Macallans, to be sure, and they were profoundly Scottish; but they weren't us. We were border people, in any sense you cared for.

o0o

The big room must presumably have been called something else at some time, something more formal. But the big room we kids had christened it when Uncle James bought the house fifteen years back, give or take; and the big room it had remained.

There would never have been an easy label, in any case. Too broad for a gallery, too much to one side to be a hall, far too grand for any more domestic title, it would always have demanded a name to itself: the long room, perhaps, or the sun room after all its south-facing windows. But it rained just as often as the sun shone, and for some obscure childhood reason even our illicit games of indoor cricket had been played width-wise, we'd never used the length of it. All we ever called it was the big room, and the adults caught the habit from us as adults will.

And now we were adults also, and one of us was dead, and the big room was barely big enough to hold all us men in comfort. I'd not seen a family gathering, a clan moot on such a scale: not since my grandfather died, at any rate. My family tended not to assemble in such numbers, it wasn't entirely safe. Not even for us.

Shivers slicked my tingling skin as soon as I walked into that room; every hair on my body was suddenly alert, and the air crackled dangerously in my lungs. I eased my way past relatives on sofas and relatives in chairs, all of them male; I set my feet carefully in the spaces between younger relatives sitting on the floor, lads all except my sister; I hurried quietly all the way across to an open window, where I could breathe something other than concentrated Macallan.

And yes, I might be blood and my blood might allow me to survive in here where surely a stranger would be sick and maybe dying already; and yes, I might have shared memories with these people, shared affections grievously bruised today; but no, I was no part of this. I didn't belong and I didn't want to belong.

So I leant against the wall breathing what breeze there was that would venture into this house, with my head turned to the grass and the hills and the river. Couldn't turn my ears away, though, couldn't turn them off. I heard my uncle make his way to the far front of the room, and then I heard his speech.

“My son,” he said,
my eldest son, my pretty son, my pride
, “my son is dead, you have all seen him now. What was done to him, you have seen. If any of you understands it, I would be glad to hear from you now.”

Not a murmur, not the hiss of a pensive breath. My family does silence very well.

My family does everything well.

“Well, then. Allan will find it out, when he arrives.”

To be sure, Allan would find it out. And there would be no other autopsy for Marty: no police, no cold knives and his body opened under a harsh light and the harsher eyes of strangers, no inquest beyond our own.

“But how the thing was done is secondary now. That it was done, that my son was
killed
, by whatever agency — that is a matter not for Allan, but for us all.”

And I felt the agreement swell around me, I felt the tight-leashed anger build and build, my skin burned with it and there was a stabbing pain in my head; and how could it be otherwise, at a gathering of such a family at such a time?

But even so, my uncle was too certain, too confident of blood. Not for the first time, he was discounting me; or counting me in, rather, counting me an insignificant addition to the pack when in truth I was far outside it.

I had loved Marty and he was dead, strangely and horribly dead; but if that was a matter for my family, then by definition it was no matter for me.

The meeting ran on, as any meeting will; but there was no point to it, everything that mattered had already been said. And was implicit anyway, hadn't needed even that much saying. One of the family was dead, and this was vendetta.

When the last person who wanted to speak had spoken, Uncle James allowed just a minute of that good Macallan silence; then he dismissed us with a spread of the hands like a release, like a blessing,
go out into the world and find these fuckers, and bring them back to me.

Not that anyone was going anywhere yet, except for me. There was still that wake to come, and none of my family was much for missing a good party.

Trying to filter through the crowd as it spilled out into the hall to join the women, trying to be invisible, hoping to catch my sister quickly without anyone else catching me, I failed utterly. And no surprise there, it was just something else that marked me out from the rest of them. They succeeded, and I failed. That was a given.

Specifically, in trying to escape everyone's attention I came face to face with my parents.

Dad gripped my arm and said my name, heavy with last night's beer and this morning's sentiment. His belly had grown to overhang his belt now, and he had jowls where he used to have a jaw. That made it easier, a little. Easier to stand off, to hold yourself apart from a man when you only see him in time-lapse and his body is melting.

My mother wasn't melting, she was fading gently as her black funeral dress was fading into grey. Her hair was on its way from blonde to white, caught in that uncertain ground between; the fine creases of impending age had softened the lines of her face, so that it too seemed to be losing definition. She was a classic Macallan wife, my mother. Quietly pretty and well domesticated, subservient and content, she might have been made for the role, unless she'd been remade to fit it. We were a male line, almost without exception; wives were necessary adjuncts, for the breeding of more men. Daughters likewise, and daughters were expected to marry cousins. Never mind genetics, inbreeding was a boon to us. What we had, we kept to ourselves.

Or they kept, rather, what they had. Not I. I had none of it, and blessed be. It was a birthright impossible to sell, and loathsome to me.

“Benedict, lad,” my father rasped, punching me lightly. “How's the rebel, eh? How's the rebel?” Meaning,
you came, of course you came
, and
so much for your rebellion
, and
welcome back, my son.

My mother had always had the greater share of whatever brains there were between them. She looked at me and shook her head, said, “I expect your sister brought you, didn't she?”

“Oh.” Even Dad could follow that. “Oh, did she?”

“Yes, Dad. Of course she did.”
You think I'd have come here else? Even for Marty?

“He's your cousin, Ben.” No part of his true talent, but sometimes my father could read minds. Read mine, at least. We'd often had these conversations, where he replied to what I hadn't said.

“He was,” I agreed. “Not any more.” And let them read that whichever way they chose, whether the relationship ended with my leaving or with Marty's death. It didn't matter. They'd still misunderstand me, either way. That was one of the facts of my life, that my parents truly didn't understand.

And then my sister joined us, with the smell of soap on her hands.

“We've been dressing him,” she said. “For the wake.” And her eyes glancing at me said what I'd already deduced, that I wasn't invited for the wake.
Time to go, bro
, her eyes were telling me.

“You taking me home, then, or what?”

“Get a bus, Ben,” she said wearily, tired of me now; and that was what I did. Of course it was. I always did what Hazel said.

o0o

I looked around for Jamie on my way out, but didn't spot him and wasn't going to search. I was as keen to go as Hazel was to see me gone; and a friendly goodbye from my closest coz would have been good, maybe, but I couldn't depend on it. And didn't need it, either.
Divorced, disinvested, disowned
, right?

Right.

So I positively sauntered out of the house under the eyes of those my relatives who could be bothered to watch, who betrayed that much interest in me: hands in pockets and head high, all the treacherous insolence of youth and none of the respect due either to death or to family.
Get you gone and good riddance
, I wanted them saying,
don't come back.

I walked out on my gathered family for the second time in my life, and had no intention of going back.

o0o

The bus stop was up on the main road, ten minutes' steep climb from the house; and buses were one an hour or used to be, and unless they'd changed the timetable radically I'd just missed one.

No hassle, that was utterly cool. I'd been climbing this hill and missing those buses half my life, I wasn't going to get uptight about it now. Nor was I going to resent Hazel's cavalier dismissal, nothing so foolish.
She brought me here, she could at least take me back
— but such a thought would be stupidly inappropriate, and I wasn't going to think it. This was Hazel, after all. Hazel was as Hazel did, and this was exactly the sort of thing that Hazel did. I'd had a lifetime of it, or at least a childhood and adolescence; and three years'-worth of other living wasn't anywhere near enough to break an acceptance so deeply ingrained.

I walked slowly up the lane, past all the cars and past little groups of people coming down. Non-family, these: guests invited for the wake or some part of it, the public part. Important people, councillors and bankers, the movers and shakers of the city all coming when my family whistled, and doing this last stretch on foot because they couldn't get their cars anywhere near and not even grumbling because you didn't do that, you didn't grumble at any inconvenience the Macallans might put you to.

What I wanted to do, what I really wanted to do was stroll up that lane with a coin or a key in my hand, digging deep into the cars' paintwork, leaving a multicoloured scratch behind me all the way from the house to the road. And of course I didn't, I would never have dared; but not from fear of the witnesses, all those movers and shakers.

I was a Macallan, my inheritance too clearly marked on my face, unmistakable; and they wouldn't have said a word, those important people.

o0o

But I didn't mark the cars, I only dreamed about it; and when I reached the road I only sat politely in the bus shelter, stone-still, bone-still, still as Marty's bones. No chucking pebbles at the traffic as I used to do with Jamie, points for contact and bonuses for breakage; no solo games of chicken; no games at all. I was too old now — older than yesterday — and too much alone, and we'd learned all those from Marty.

And having no one to talk to now about girls, as Jamie and I used to do sitting right here waiting for buses to take us to them, to carry us to the girls of our dreams, all I did was sit and think about girls, about one girl, waiting for a bus to take me at least closer to her, to the girl of my dreams,
oh Laura.

o0o

When the bus came, I didn't know the driver from Adam; but he knew me. Or the set of my features, at least, he knew that. He'd have to, driving this route.

And he drew back a little in his chair, waved my proffered money away with a mutter I couldn't make out, didn't bother to give me a ticket.

It happened, even in the centre of town it happened, and I was almost ready for it today, with so much out of kilter and my new life all but lost in this sudden surge of past tides. I nodded politely, trying to look accustomed, and made my way to the back where I could sprawl with my feet up and look, aye, every inch a Macallan.

It was an old wreck of a bus, vinyl seats slashed and torn and leaking foam rubber, smoking very sensibly forbidden but the reek of stale smoke in the air regardless, stubs on the floor. I didn't like the feel of those seats, cool smoothness and sudden cracks, recalling Marty's blisters to my fingers' ends; so I shoved my hands back in my pockets again,
feel nothing, nothing to feel
, and turned my eyes to track the route outside: familiar, resurgent, and I'd thought it all so thoroughly suppressed.

o0o

Back in the city, telling myself
back home
, I didn't go back to the flat. Jacko would be full of questions, just when I was emptied out of answering; and besides, it was no safe refuge any more. Hazel had been there once, and forever after I'd be falling silent at the sound of an engine slowing in the street, wondering
is that a bike, is that her, if it's a car it could be one of the others come to get me again...

No easy life, being the family traitor. If the family started to show an interest, it would be, I would be paranoid and impossible.

What I wanted, I wanted to run to Laura, my only true refuge, my inherent safety. But lessons learned hard bite the deepest, and I'd never, never put her in that position again. She couldn't cope, bless her, she couldn't handle being so elevated out of the common pool of my friends; she needed not to be different just when I needed to announce her difference, and neither her logic nor mine could handle the discrepancy. The one time I tried to force the issue the whole system crashed, and took months to rebuild. We were on safer foundations now, with those limits clearly, brutally defined. She'd be a friend in need, of course she would, that lay well within her parameters of friendship; but she'd never be the friend I needed.

So no, I didn't run to her, didn't strand myself on her doorstep and both of us on a desperate shore. Best I could do, best I could hope for was to persuade fate into a chance meeting, let her find me in trouble, let her think I hadn't come to her. Not good, not what I needed; but as with so much — as with everything that touched Laura, everything that Laura touched — it would at least be a long way better than nothing.