Orkney Twilight (15 page)

‘It’s not history,’ she said to Jim. ‘It’s a saga. Story. Myth.’

‘History is always part myth. Anyway, it’s a great book.’

‘Is it?’ asked Tom.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It might be a classic of Norse literature. But I borrowed a copy from the library once and I couldn’t finish it; it’s just a liturgy of Viking murder and revenge. The Earls of Orkney killing each other. It was too boring for me. I just don’t understand the point of revenge.’

‘Who would have thought,’ said Jim testily, ‘that I could have produced such a pious daughter.’

Tom snorted. She glanced at the book again. Now she knew what to look for, she quickly located another page with a creased corner. This one had been folded and unfolded twice, like an abandoned origami attempt. Page seventy. She etched the numbers in her brain, filed them away for future reference: thirty-eight, seventy.

‘Well, I’m right about it being nothing but killing,’ she said, skimming the contents of the double-folded page. ‘I mean, take Chapter 29 for example. The Death of Rognvald. It’s all about his murder. Of course. He was trying to escape from his enemy, Thorfinn. So he took his lapdog and hid among the rocks on the shore. But his dog barked and betrayed him. Then Rognvald gets killed. And so do all his mates.’

‘But I quite like that,’ said Tom. ‘Viking dies because of barking lapdog. Man betrayed by best friend.’

‘Exactly,’ said Jim. ‘It’s full of great stories. Your problem is you don’t know a good book when you read one.’

‘It’s not a good book. It’s bollocks.’

‘That’s your attitude to everything,’ said Jim, with a sudden flash of aggression that took her by surprise and, as he spoke, he stretched over, twisted her arm and snatched the book from her hand.

‘Everything is bollocks as far as you’re concerned. You know what you’re against but you’ve got no idea what you’re for. You think you know everything, you and your smug middle-class mates who sit around all day smoking dope and criticizing everybody and everything without ever shifting off your lazy arses to help anyone or anything apart from yourselves. But the fact is, you and your lot know bugger all about anything. You haven’t got a clue. It’s all slogans with you. You’re a bunch of bleating whingers. I reckon my lot know more about politics than you—’

‘Your lot?’ she interrupted. ‘Your lot is just the same as all the other lots of boot-boys in the bloody Force.’

‘Oh, right. So now you’re an expert on policing, are you? Well, I reckon half the time my lot is saving your lot from your own bloody naïvety. There are dark forces out there you know nothing about—’ he stopped abruptly. He must have realized he had momentarily let his guard down, forgotten that Tom was in the room.

‘What are you on about, Dad?’ she demanded. ‘What dark forces?’

Jim glowered. She almost laughed; he looked more comic than menacing. He was definitely losing it these days. He just wasn’t that intimidating any more.

Jim carried on with his rant. ‘You know what your problem is? You’ve got no…’ he paused, searching for the right word. ‘Soul. No soul at all.’

‘I have got a soul. I just don’t feel the need to say I appreciate boring Norse sagas to prove it. You’re the one who has sold his soul to the devil.’

‘At least I had something worthwhile to barter with in the first place.’

‘Well, at least I’m actually going to do a real history degree and I’m not just pretending.’

She realized she had gone too far as soon as the words left her mouth.

Jim’s lip curled. ‘Ha bloody ha. I suppose you think that coppers are too thick for university. I suppose you think that you and Liz are the only ones in this family capable of completing a degree. I suppose you think that the Open University is a joke and Oxford is the only place worth going to.’

Her face burned. Tom shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

‘I suppose you think I’m not as smart as Roger the bloody plonker and his fancy shirts.’

‘I didn’t mention Roger. I’ve never noticed his shirts.’

‘He wears orange shirts.’ Jim flicked his hand as if he were brushing away an irritating midge. ‘He thinks that makes him interesting. Daring.’

She didn’t know how to respond. They stood awkwardly for a moment, all three of them, unspeaking, deafened by the embarrassed silence.

Jim broke it first. ‘Well, I’m going to bed to read.’

He strode towards his room with
The Orkneyinga Saga
gripped firmly under his arm, the front-cover crackpot berserker peering out crazily above the crook of his arm.

‘He has a point,’ Tom said. ‘You are a bit of a snob sometimes. What’s so ridiculous about the idea of him doing a degree?’

‘I’m not being a snob. For God’s sake, he’s an undercover cop. He tells lies for a living. That’s why I find it hard to buy his history degree story.’

‘Who is Roger the plonker anyway?’

‘He’s the head of the English department where Liz works. She’s known him for ages. They met at University in fact.’

Tom nodded knowingly. ‘And Jim doesn’t get on with him.’

‘That’s putting it mildly. They’re at each other’s throats given half a chance. Jim nearly decked him at Mum’s last New Year’s party because he quoted something from
Ulysses
and Roger scoffed and made a comment implying Jim couldn’t really have read such an abstruse piece of literature.’

‘Has Jim read
Ulysses
?’

‘It’s one of his favourite books, best approached after half a bottle of whisky, he says.’

‘Has he still got all his hair?’

‘Roger?’ She paused. ‘Actually he has. He’s very bouffant. Lots of strawberry-blond hair. Helen calls him Roger the Todger.’

Tom laughed. She joined in. He gave her a furtive glance.

She stopped laughing. ‘Let’s carry on with the Triv,’ she said.

Thirty-eight, seventy, she chanted to herself while Tom asked her questions. Thirty-eight, seventy. Thirty-eight, seventy. And she wondered what the numbers signified and who had passed Jim his coded message.

Sunday evening, the day frittered away; cups of coffee, holiday cottage pursuits.

‘I’m just going to drive down to the phone box in Tirlsay to call Liz,’ Jim announced, poking his head into the front room. ‘I shan’t be long.’

The tyres churned the gravel as he pulled away.

‘Do you think he’s really going to call your mum?’ Tom asked.

‘Yes.’

Jim was away for an hour perhaps, maybe more. On his return he clanked around in the kitchen for ten minutes before he entered the front room, hovered in front of the fireplace, making her prickly with his looming presence.

‘How was she?’ Sam asked.

‘Who?’

‘How was Mum?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t get through.’

She could tell Tom was smirking without having to look at him.

‘Maybe we’ll walk down to Tirlsay,’ she said. ‘And I’ll see if I can make the phone box function for me.’

‘Good idea.’ Jim filled his tumbler and settled down in an armchair, opened the paper he had bought in Stromness, disappeared behind the front page: oil workers boost local economy, bike stolen, ferry delayed by mechanical fault.

Nine. The sun was sliding slowly towards the rim of hills behind. They trotted briskly down the valley, sheltered from the nagging wind by the high hedgerows on either side, their shadows leading the way.

‘I’m right about your dad,’ Tom said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He clearly didn’t try to phone your mum.’

She snatched at a bobbing grass head, scraped its seeds off between her finger and thumb, threw them up into the air.

‘Maybe he didn’t try and phone Liz. But that doesn’t mean to say he was phoning another woman.’

They had reached the straggling edge of Tirlsay and the phone box now. She stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind her so Tom couldn’t hear her conversation, turned her back to the door, dialled her home number.

Almost immediately, Liz picked up at the other end. ‘Hello,’ said the disembodied voice.

Sam pushed the coins in the slot.

‘I wondered when anybody would remember to call,’ said Liz. ‘How is Orkney? Has it changed?’

‘No, it’s pretty much the same as it was last time we were here. Lots of birds, lots of wind.’

‘And what about Jim? What is he up to?’

She wondered how much she was obliged to report, how bound she was by their unspoken contract. ‘Oh, the usual – a lot of drinking, a lot of swearing, a lot of arranging things with his mate.’

‘Has he said anything about the Open University?’ A touch of desperation in her voice, Sam thought, a touch of delusion.

‘Not exactly. We’ve only been here a couple of days.’ Why was she making excuses for Jim? ‘We’ve not had any major arguments and he mentioned something earlier about an outing together tomorrow morning. So he must be relatively happy.’

‘Well, that’s good, I suppose. Nice for you to spend a bit of time with him.’

Awkward pause.

‘He didn’t say anything about mushroom picking, did he?’ asked Liz, a sudden note of alarm in her voice.

‘Mushroom picking. What about it?’

‘Don’t let him take you. When you were little, he used to take you mushroom picking along the cliffs. It was his idea of fun: taking all three of you over the edge and down the sheep paths, even in a force eight gale. I used to wait at the top, terrified, and wonder what I would do if you were all blown away.’

Sam said nothing. She didn’t recognize that scene. In her head there was another image – cliff, sheep paths, but she was laughing in the wind, carefree, messing about with her sisters. No danger.

Liz continued, ‘I tried to stop him, but you know what your father’s like. He never listens to anything I say. He never listens to anything anybody says.’

‘But Mum, why—’ Sam started to say. The phone beeped. She dug around in her overcoat pockets; they were empty.

‘Please, avoid the mushrooms,’ said Liz. ‘If you survive the cliff, you’ll probably end up being poisoned because I’m not sure he really knows what he’s looking for. I sometimes think he’s his own worst enemy. Call me from Inverness station,’ Liz commanded. ‘Let me know when you’ve made it back across Caithness.’

The phone line cut out. She slammed the handset down on to its cradle, uncertain whether she was angry with herself or with Liz. Or Jim.

‘Okay?’ said Tom as he opened the door with a satisfied grin. ‘Sounded like you were having an argument with your mum.’

‘Just normal mother–daughter stuff.’

‘Jim didn’t try to call her, did he?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Do you think he was calling someone else, then?’

‘I’m not sure I really care what he was doing, right at this moment.’ She strode off down the road without looking where she was going.

He caught up easily with his lanky strides. ‘Happy families are all alike,’ he said. ‘Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’

‘Arguing is different from being unhappy. God, I’m beginning to sound like Liz. Do you know what she told me? She said Jim used to take us looking for mushrooms over the cliff edge when we were kids. How dangerous is that?’

‘Sounds fairly harmless to me.’

‘Well, that shows how little you know then.’

‘Do you think there’s a pub here?’

She didn’t reply, continued her angry march along the road. Fed up with him and his smug observations about her family.

‘I could do with a drink,’ he said.

She relented. ‘There must be a pub here somewhere. Jim reeked of the boozer when he came back from Tirlsay yesterday evening. Let’s just try at the end of this road.’

They hung a right down a narrow lane enclosed by dry stone walls and spears of rosebay willowherb towering over their heads. Not exactly promising pub territory, but they carried on anyway, enjoying the stroll now, away from the sea and the breeze, air heavy with humidity, pollen, dancing midges glinting in the sun’s low rays. They rounded a blind bend and were confronted by a herd of swaying cows; an unstoppable tide of steaming flesh and flies. Tom nodded, indicating a wooden stile in the hedgerow. They dived towards it; he clambered over and she perched on the top bar, inhaled the sweet-sour smell of milk and shit as the herd flowed past.

‘What’s up here anyway?’ Tom asked. The footpath cut across a field in the direction of a small copse, treetops angled from too much bowing and scraping to the prevailing wind. She assessed the trees from the stile, a flock of rooks rose in the air, circling in the coral-pink sky above the low canopy, alarm calls rasping. Something about the suddenness of their cries made her nervous.

‘Crows,’ said Tom. ‘A murder of crows.’

‘Rooks. A crow in a crowd is a rook. A rook on its own is a crow.’ Where had she learned that?

‘What’s the collective noun for a flock of rooks?’ he asked.

‘Storytelling.’

‘That’s a good one. I like that. Storytelling.’

He raised his hand to his shirt pocket as if he were about to scribble something in his notebook about collective nouns for birds, had second thoughts, let his hand slip back to his side again.

‘It couldn’t have been us that disturbed them.’ She squinted up at the agitated birds, still cawing their warning. ‘We’re not close enough. There must be somebody else in the wood.’ She hadn’t thought of that possibility until she said it.

‘It is a public footpath. People are allowed to walk through here.’ He was so prosaic. She stared at the boundary, where the copse engulfed the daylight.

‘Somebody was standing there, watching us walking up the road. They scarpered when they saw us coming over the stile. That’s why the rooks flew up so suddenly.’ She twitched, unnerved now by her own logic. ‘Let’s go. I don’t like it here.’

‘Don’t be girly. Come on, let’s have a walk in the wood anyway. See if we can find anything. Or anyone.’

He set off across the meadow; she trailed reluctantly behind, single file through the long grass. A huge black bird took off from just underneath their feet, lazily flapping its ragged wings as if it really wasn’t that bothered whether it remained airborne or nose-dived into the end of the runway.

‘Crow,’ said Tom. ‘It’s on its own. A rook on its own is a crow.’