North Sea Requiem (16 page)

“Don't go anywhere on your own at night, will you?” she asked Mae.

“Here? In this town? Is there anywhere to go at night? Do tell!” The way she said it, her hands and her eyebrows acting out her remarks, made Joanne laugh.

“Honey, I'm all grown up, I can take care of myself. And changing the subject, have you gotten rid of your rat of a husband yet? Are you and McAllister now ready for a bit of loving—real loving? Do you have anyone else dangling around? Tell me all—I love a steamy story.”

“I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

Joanne's laughter made Mae smile and say, “Steamy stories, no, but I will tell you about my true love.”

It only took about twenty minutes. Joanne had never heard anyone talk so truthfully, so tenderly about love and loss and the deep, raw pain of grief. Later she would remember not the words but the sensation of being touched, a sensation almost physical, as Mae Bell recounted the day she met Robert Bell, the day she received the telegram, the days and weeks of waiting for confirmation, each hour the hope draining away, and the day Mae knew, a sensation like ice water running down the spine, she said, that Robert, her love, was never coming back.

“We first met in Germany. Nineteen forty-seven. His brother was a good friend of mine; he played piano in a big band. I was the singer—we were entertaining the troops. Robert and I caught up again in Paris two years later.”

“That was when McAllister heard you sing.”

“Must have been. I was with that band for five years. Robert played saxophone and sat in with us a few times, but flying was his love. Until he met me, he always said, it was his way to touch the sky, he said, same as you reach heaven when you sing. And love, I told him. You touch heaven when you love,” Mae Bell said.

Joanne felt a stab of envy. She once, maybe twice, thought she was in love. But she had mistaken destructive attraction for real deep-down unconditional love—of the lasting kind. Now she was not sure she knew what real love was.

“He never had enough schooling to be a pilot,” she continued, “but he was clever, good at math and at reading maps, and had this amazing homing instinct. Towards the end of the war, his captain recommended him to stay on and retrain. His lucky charm, he called Robert. So Bobby signed up and went from rear gunner to navigator.”

“Bobby?”

“Everyone called him Bobby except me.”

“Bobby Bell.” Joanne said it slowly, making Mae smile.

“He called me Mae Bell, always. He told me how proud he was that I was his wife, so it was always Mae Bell, never plain Mae.” Again that laugh, the sound a song of a laugh, a song that made Joanne glad.

“We had a joke between us.” The way Mae Bell said it, Joanne knew it was no joke. “He said if he was ever in trouble, he would send out a Maeday. You know, Mayday, the distress call?”

Joanne nodded.

“Only he said it would be M-A-E day, Maeday, because if anyone could rescue him, it was me. In the end, of course . . .”

That he had left a message with a waiter at the club two days before the fatal flight, she never told anyone, not even his brother.
That one call, barely understood by the Frenchman, but written down at Robert's insistence on a scrap of paper . . . and even after Robert spelled it out, it didn't make sense to anyone except to Mae. The written message read: Maeday.

Repeating Robert's words, the waiter said “Maeday” clearly, plainly, no interpretation necessary. Mae tried to contact Robert. Telephoned every number she could find. She'd spent a small fortune talking to operators in local Scottish exchanges who all said the same thing; they could only connect to the base switchboard number.

Mae spoke to commanders who knew nothing except Robert had been on a training mission. Trying to contact his closest friends, who were on the same exercise, she spent days of tears and frustration. There was nothing, no contact, no news—until an officer from the U.S. embassy tracked her down at the club. The moment she saw his uniform she knew.

Now she had the unposted letters. Two of them. Found in that box of his effects, kept by the police and forgotten about, with very little there except a lighter, a notebook, a music score for
Porgy and Bess,
and a dictionary—she smiled when she held it, remembering his aim to learn five new words a day.

“So that's why I'm here, why I visited Elgin and Kinloss and Findhorn. I wanted to meet some of the local guys he worked with, to talk, to remember him, maybe find some kinda . . . when someone goes missing, no wreckage found, no funeral, you keep hoping . . .” She sighed, smiled, chuckled. “We sure did have a huge wake in that club in Paris though. Robert's brother Charlie composed a piece for him,
North Sea Requiem
—a hymn to his brother, a hymn of joy as well as pain.” And the smile and the laugh were through eyes that still shed tears, though not as frequently as before, for her lost husband.

“I don't know that area,” Joanne said, just for something to say.

“Beautiful in a bleak kinda way.” Mae reached for another cigarette. “I'd love to see it in summer.”

“Wouldn't make much difference.” Joanne smiled, wanting to lighten the conversation. “Scottish winters, Scottish summers, all beautiful—in a bleak kinda way.” They laughed at Joanne's attempt at an American accent.

“That's what a lady in the hotel there told me.”

The woman in the hotel had also told Mae Bell of the great times the local lassies had with the American air force men
. Great fun they were. And the dancing, we loved that. Mind you, there was many a person who disapproved. But no, we had fun.

Mae Bell did not doubt it for a second. The end of a war, a distant location, the long winter nights, a recipe for fun, she thought.

“So”—she winked at Joanne—“on a more cheerful note, how's the divorce coming along?”

“Cheerful? Mae Bell!”

“Honey, from what you
haven't
told me, this is your liberation.”

Joanne thought of divorce as a defeat. This was the first time she had heard her well-suppressed dreams said out loud. Free. Freedom. Liberation. It was true. Mostly she dwelt on the consequences of being a divorced mother in a small town in the Scottish Highlands. Dwelt on the scandal, the gossip, the consequences for her and her children. But liberation? This was a notion not new, but longed for.

“Thank you. I will work on seeing it that way.”

“And don't let that McAllister escape or I might be tempted to snatch him up for myself.” Mae said this not because it was true—she was not ready for another man in her life—but because she saw Joanne's hesitation, and McAllister's need, and felt her new friend needed a push.

“I really like him, he fascinating, he's . . . I'm not sure I'm ready.”

“He may not be the love of your life, Joanne Ross, but you need someone to care for you and your children, and good men are hard to find.” Mae Bell was nothing if not practical. “And love can grow.”

“You really believe that?”

“I do.”

When they parted—Joanne back to work, Mae Bell back to planning her next move, Mae took her time walking along the river, watching the rush of water, watching the angler in high rubber leggings cast his rod, remembering her last visit to Findhorn, remembering another time, another walk, a sea, not a river.

Watching the North Sea, where lay the bones of Robert Bell, horizon fused with sea, forming one vast, heaving expanse of grey, one limitless sense of melancholy, Mae Bell had turned away, pulling her coat tighter. Tasting the salt from the wind and the tears. Walked back along the shoreline. Sand in her shoes, she thought of calling into the local hotel for a drink and the warmth. Instead she walked on past the caravan park, on to where the river met the sea. Once more she looked out at the heaving pewter and gunmetal, shades of shining grey, now flecked with white, and said, “I'll be back, honey.”

Without a quiver of self-consciousness she waved to the sea, to her husband. She waved not farewell but
au revoir
. “Bye, Bobby, talk soon.”

•   •   •

Two days later and another deadline over, Joanne went back to McAllister's for supper.
We're like an old married couple,
she thought, as she served the shepherd's pie she had made that morning at home and carried carefully in the basket of her bicycle.

They were doing the dishes, she washing and he drying, when the doorbell rang. Someone opened it and came in.

“Are you decent, you two?” Don McLeod's voice echoed down the hallway.

Joanne was giggling at his ridiculous insinuation when the look on his face stopped the smiles.

“Someone held up the delivery van taking the papers down the Great Glen. They were wearing balaclavas, so the driver can't identify them. He's fine, but the papers were dumped in Loch Ness.”

Don sat down at the kitchen table. “Any chance of a brew, lass?” Since he had cut back on drinking, he was an eight-or-ten-or-more cups a day man.

McAllister sat down with him, and they both lit up.

“There's more.” Don said through a haze of Capstan Full Strength. “The Glen Achilty Clubhouse was burnt to the ground early this morning. No one phoned it in. It seems they want to extract revenge in their own way.”

“Shinty clubhouse?” Joanne asked.

“Aye. A shinty vendetta has begun, it seems like,” Don replied.

McAllister ended the conversation saying, “I've heard of blood feuds. But a shinty vendetta is a new one on me.” He was shaking his head wondering what to do. “Do we print more papers? How about distribution?”

“Nothing can be done until morning,” Don advised.

But next morning the news was worse. Dozens of bundles of the newspaper were not delivered, or missing, or had been stolen from the doorsteps of local shops and newsagents. Some had been set alight; some were soaked in water, and, in one village, pig manure.

The father of the chapel was livid. He was standing in McAllister's office shouting.

“You have to do something.”

McAllister said, “The police . . .”

“Forget the polis, Frank Urquhart's team is behind this. Aye, the man has a right to be upset, but this is no fair.”

“Do you know this for sure? The other teams could be responsible. Or are you accusing Coach Urquhart?”

“No, I'm no' accusing him directly, but the lads from his team . . . I knew running a shinty column would lead to trouble.”

He welcomed the new column when it started,
McAllister remembered.

But there was no placating the man. He took the loss of the newspapers as sorely as if he had lost his own precious possessions.

The police are investigating,
a policeman said when McAllister phoned for information.

Don McLeod had his network of moles, spies, and barroom pals looking.

Rob McLean and Frankie Urquhart were asking around the billiard hall, the shinty teams, their old school pals, and their old school enemies.

“
No one knows nothing,
that's a quote,” Don said at the end of a long day when they were all gathered in McAllister's office, Hector included. But not the father of the chapel; he had gone home, where his wife, who feared he might have a heart attack he was so angry, had the good sense to say nothing. For once. Nor was Mal Forbes there.
He's never here,
Joanne thought. She knew he would be equally upset. No matter how much he condescended to her, Mal Forbes was a dedicated newspaperman.

The loss of the newspapers, the letters, the death of Nurse Urquhart, the leg in the laundry hamper—round and around the conversation went. Getting nowhere.

“I was wondering . . .” Joanne started, again with that hesitation that annoyed McAllister. Again he told himself,
Bite your tongue.

“The letters are hand delivered to the
Gazette
reception. But how?”

“Good point,” McAllister said, but wanting to say,
Listen to yourself, your ideas are good.
“DI Dunne asked me that, and I can't think how.”

“Does Fiona have any suggestions?”

“No. She was interviewed but said she saw no one suspicious.”

Joanne accepted that, but decided to have a talk with Fiona, preferably outside the office
. I want to know about persons above suspicion.

It was Rob who remembered—but only because Frankie Urquhart had phoned to remind him. “This Saturday, we have an away game against Glen Achilty.”

There was no need to say who “we” were, no need to say “shinty.” And no need to say that a game against Glen Achilty was played in Glen Achilty, on a field that no longer had a clubhouse, only a blacked wreck with one and a half walls standing, the roof a twisted torment of corrugated metal.

“I'll take extra film.” As ever, it was Hector who said the unsayable.

“I'll join you.” Don McLeod was upset that the shinty community was upset.

“Might as well come too,” McAllister said. They all looked at him—his idea of sport was wrestling with a book in a language he barely knew with the aid of a dictionary. “It's our town team, so our newspaper is involved; let's show a united front.”

“In that case, count me in,” Joanne added.

•   •   •

Frank Urquhart attended the game. Frankie stood at his side. Morag had the first aid kit. The teams' supporters were out in force and lining along the pitch, the remnants of the Urquhart family in the center.

Glen Achilty supporters faced them across the field. There seemed to be more female supporters than usual.

On each side of the narrow glen, the hills stood sharp and clear, smelling of spring green and heather and emptiness. Inhabitants mostly clung to the narrow valley floor. Few wanted to live along the northern loch edge, fearful of the darkness of that body of water, the fault line of legends. And monsters.