The Closet of Savage Mementos (19 page)

Chapter Ten

M
y stomach is stuck to my back with the hunger, but I can’t eat. I poke at the smoked salmon on my plate, lifting its fat edges to watch its colour change from purple to silver to orange. I butter a wedge of bread, take a few bites and suddenly feel as full as an egg. There is a woman sitting across from me, spooning prawn cocktail into her mouth with gusto; she only stops gulping it down long enough to sip from a huge glass of red wine. She is thin, sick looking, and I sit worrying about her digestion. She makes no mess, I notice, with the Marie Rose sauce; none of it falls into her dainty lap or oozes from the corners of her mouth. I begin to fret less about her; she is all right, she has it together.

On the other side of me a man in a smart suit clips his nails with his teeth and spits the leavings into the air; I want to smack him, or at least tell him to stop. He is making me feel queasy so I turn away and watch the door. I look at the street through the window: urban roses nod their heads in troughs on the pub’s windowsill, made heavy by their own scent, maybe, and by exhaust fumes. On the way in I noticed the pub had turrets, of all things, and I fantasise about sitting in one and watching the comings and goings on the street below like a fairytale prisoner. The pub is called ‘The Fox and Thistle’ and there is a poorly mounted fox in a glass case behind the bar; Verity would spit feathers if she could see how high his ears sit and the way his eyes swing outwards. My God, I am getting as bad as her. I tap my fingers and swill spit around my cotton mouth to loosen it up; I drink from my glass of Coke but it clogs my throat. I cough and sniff. Am I getting a cold?

When they finally arrive I am rummaging in my handbag for a tissue and I completely miss their entrance. They stand over me and the woman is smiling. I fuss to my feet, knocking against my glass with my bag, and she grabs me into a hug, then stands too close. She is still grinning at me, as if she has achieved something great and hopes that I will acknowledge it.

‘Lillis,’ she says. ‘At last.’

‘Tanya.’ I pump her hand. ‘And Mal,’ I say, turning to him; I feel like some fool on a blind date. He waves, blushes, then takes my hand in his. I press both mine around his fingers until he pulls away, hitches his hoodie at the waistband and sits.

Tanya questions me in that way that makes you know you have been discussed and found worthy – she is open to me, and seems to will me to perform to her liking. There is a maniacal quality to her eagerness to hear what I am going to say next. It is flattering, somehow, but I also feel like I am being quizzed and I am not one hundred per cent sure if my answers are right. Still, when I speak, she nods, smiles and glances at Mal, and I keep thinking she is going to reach over and caress my cheek, or put her head on my shoulder and cry. Her eyes glisten with ready-to-drop tears. The questions are unending: Was my plane trip over OK?
It was.
Did I hire a car?
I did.
Do I like my job?
I do.
Are my parents still living?
They are.
Is Dublin my hometown?
It is.

She tells me that her husband – Mal’s Dad, Ian – is away on business and hopes to meet me sometime soon.

‘Here or in Ireland,’ she says. ‘We could come over.’

‘Oh,’ I say, feeling as if I am being pulled at a gallop to a place I am not altogether sure I want to go.

‘Are you…’ she hesitates, ‘in a relationship?’

‘I’m married. Recently married. Well, two years ago.’

Mal says nothing but his eyes drink me in; I want to stare at him, make sense of him, take in every detail of him, but I am rigid with nerves. I fidget with my handbag strap, twist a curl around one finger; I even poke my fingers into my ears, for God’s sake. I notice that Tanya’s helmet of dark hair doesn’t move when she moves. I look at Mal and look away; I look again. He has Struan’s frame and face, my hair – not dark like Struan’s was when he was young, but fair. His hands are feminine: he has slim, tapered fingers; neat, blunt nails; his skin is tanned. He is quiet.

Tanya speaks again and I notice for the first time that she lisps attractively, adding a sibilance to her ‘s’ words that sounds childish and charming, though she must be in her mid-fifties.

‘So, did you have any more kids, Lillis?
Do
you have more?’

‘I have a daughter. Nessa. She’s four months old.’

‘Four months. Imagine!’ Tanya says, looking at Mal. ‘Nessa is a pretty name. You name well.’

As I say Nessa’s name, my breasts tingle and I feel milk surge; I fold my arms across my chest and press hard so that I won’t leak. But the let-down has started. I jump up, excuse myself and go to the pub’s bathroom. In the cubicle, I fold loo roll into wads and slip them into my bra. How could I have forgotten to wear breast pads? Stupid, stupid, stupid. In the mirror over the sink I look hunted and strained. And something else – frightened, maybe. There is a taste in my mouth; my tongue is as bitter as burnt toast. I pull a packet of Polo mints from my bag and crunch one quickly; I neaten my hair and rub my finger over my teeth.

Tanya stands up as I approach the table. ‘I’m going to leave you two alone,’ she says. Then, ‘The weather is beautiful,’ as if the sunshine is something she has gifted to me, gifted to the world.

She squeezes Mal’s shoulder as she moves behind his chair and smiles hugely. I look at him and wonder if he has been coddled and cosseted all of his life, the way only children often are. I wonder if he had difficult teens. Was there ever a maelstrom in him, or was he always as becalmed as he seems now? Surely every youngster has their sullen, sulky, monosyllabic spell. Or did Tanya and Ian do such a great job that Mal stayed on an even keel, untroubled by hormonal storms? I feel the push of jealousy at the thought. Still, sitting beside him aerates me; every part of me feels more able, stronger, settled. But giddy too.

‘So I have a wee sister,’ Mal says, when Tanya is gone out the door.

‘A half sister, yes.’

Mal winces and I am not sure why on earth I made that distinction.

‘Do you have any snaps of her?’

‘Sure.’ I take my digital camera from my bag and watch as he arrows silently through the pictures of Nessa – they are all that are on it. He takes his time, studies Nessa’s face. I wonder what he sees in her tiny, serene features. ‘She’s so new; she relearns the world every day.’

‘She’s bonny,’ he says.

‘An angel.’

‘I was a demon, according to my mother,’ Mal says, and the word mother hangs between us like a sprite, flickering out after a few moments but not until we are both squirming.

‘Well, I was a demon too, apparently,’ I say, eventually, and lift my glass to sip at the dregs of Coke. ‘The paperweight arrived in one piece, you’ll be glad to hear.’

‘Good, I’m glad. I wanted you to get it on my birthday. Did you?’

‘I did. I always think of you that day. I think of you all the time.’

He nods and looks down at his runners. ‘And I think of you.’

‘The paperweight belonged to Struan, your birth father.’

‘I know.’

I set down my glass. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I knew Struan all my life, pretty much.’

‘What? Oh. Really?’ I consider this. ‘You said you “knew” him?’

‘He died two summers ago. Lung cancer.’

I recede into my own head and something clicks in my throat. ‘Oh, my God.’ I rub my forehead. ‘Were you close?’ I whisper.

‘Sort of. We met up a couple of times a year, here or in Kinlochbrack. He told me all about you.’

‘All about me.’

What Mal has said churns me up but I need to put it to one side, to concentrate on him during our small, precious time together. I ask about his life with his parents, with friends. He talks about Crieff, that it is quiet but he likes it; about how most of his pals went off to Glasgow and Dundee to university, but he stayed to work in his Dad’s timber yard. He shrugs as he says it and I’m not sure what to take from that.

‘Did you have to stay?’

‘I love the yard but sometimes I wonder if I should have gone to uni. Just to try it.’

‘What would you have studied?’

‘I don’t know. Art, maybe.’

My heart jumps. ‘My mother is an artist. I’m a photographer.’

There is effort in my voice as we chat, though I am extraordinarily happy to be sitting in this pub, in this small Scottish town, talking with Malachy. It feels like the oddest conversation of my life and I flounder from one thing to the next, hardly daring to draw breath in case I run out of things to say. He tells me he plays guitar badly and I detect this is modesty, while I imagine him perched on his bed, his head bent low, watching his fingers pick and strum.

I ask if I can photograph him and he nods. I take a few pictures quickly:
flash flash flash
. A smatter of sunlight falls through the window across Mal’s hair, making it glow. He is beautiful, my son, and his Scottish accent sends me spinning as I listen to him talk. In all the years I have been imagining this reunion I have never heard his voice in anything but a Dublin accent. It seems so stupid now, but there you have it; I can be a very stupid woman at times.

I listen to Lady Ga Ga as I drive north, away from Crieff, and grow to love her voice; she starts to sound as recognisable and comforting to me as a friend. Right at the end of one track, the burble of a didgeridoo cradles me in its long, anticipative tone, matching my mood perfectly.

It is a hot, blue-sky day. The good weather is a blessing – I hate travelling unfamiliar roads in rain – and the hazy sunshine makes everything look smooth: the hills, the signs, and the fields of golden rape that bracket the road. It is odd to be driving by myself, with no Cormac or Nessa. Usually Cormac takes the wheel and I sit in the back. He treats driving as a solvable puzzle, whereas I go at it like a battering ram. I am a bad navigator and a poor follower of instructions too so, when I’m alone, I plunge forward, mapless, hoping for good signposts.

The road to Inverness has changed in twenty years and I barely remember it anyway, but it is straightforward; there is no opportunity to get lost or take a wrong turn. Cows, just like Irish cows, bask in the sun and the sheep are woollying up already after their spring shearing. Windmills sit on slopes like enormous candles on a cake; their blades cut the horizon, moving lethargically in the still summer air. I pass sweet, hilly villages with musical names: Lochty, Huntingtower, Logiealmond. Iceland trucks drag their orange glow ahead of my car and behind it too.

I feel the backward pull to Crieff as I move further away from it; I have a thousand more things to discuss with Mal, a million more. I go over every word that passed between us and guess the
Why?
he must ask will come later. And what do I tell him? That I come from a line of unsuccessful mothers and that I did not think he deserved to be mothered by the next one? That Struan and I were incompatible? I wonder how much Mal knows. I wonder what Struan told him about me, about us. It galls me now to think that Struan knew our son and I didn’t. Why did he not contact me or try to draw me back?

I think about the fact that Malachy looks a lot like Robin at the same age, but he is composed, on a more even keel than my brother was, it seems to me. I feel sick and skittish; I want to turn the car around and go back to him. I want to talk and listen and explain. But I also need to go to Kinlochbrack.

The road that leads to it is gentle – it is wide enough for two cars, and is flanked by dog daisies and pink rhododendron. It runs by peaks and lakes, past a reservoir and the odd cluster of holiday cottages. The roadkill is more exotic than at home: I see a fawn and a bird of prey along with the wrecked carcasses that were once hedgehogs and cats. Verity would want to stop and haul them into the car, of course; the thought makes me smile.

All of Kinlochbrack village is bathed in Sunday quiet; I park the car on Shore Street and walk. The Caledonian MacBrayne ferry still hulks in the harbour, the biggest thing to fill the sightline apart from the hills and the loch itself. The Klondykers are long gone. Kinlochbrack looks smaller and yet, oddly, bigger than my memory allows; I can’t explain or understand it. The streets, though they occupy the same grid that they have for over two hundred years, confuse me. How did Clanranald Street get
there
? Was Market Street always this long? I take photographs as I walk, surprised by how acquainted I begin to feel with each scene; it feels like groping in a dark room that is slowly being saturated with light.

I make my way towards the Strathcorry Inn and it squats, a long white jumble of buildings, with lavender and ferns in pots under the windows. I sit outside with a cup of tea; I see a grey-haired man with a beard who could be Kenny; I see a woman I recognise from the inn’s laundry who looks healthier than she did twenty years ago. I see another man, his red-raddled face a result, maybe, of years of drinking. He looks familiar to me the way everyone is suddenly familiar. Even the hill walkers in their top-notch fleeces and boots are like the hill walkers who always gathered outside the inn to eat and drink on fine days.

I order a glass of Syrah from the waitress who has an Antipodean lilt to her voice – more familiarity. She brings me salted almonds in a ramekin; I crunch them and sip the wine while listening to one Englishman bore another Englishman with an account of a sailing trip he took to Malta. The quiet one drinks faster than his companion and he catches my eye and winks.

In truth, I don’t know what I am doing sitting outside the Strathcorry Inn, watching everyone who passes; I feel I am trying to grasp at a group of ghosts who have left no imprint. And how could they have? How could
I
have left any trace? Everything is turned around. I go into the Strathcorry and walk through. The rooms are divided differently – the gallery now sits off the bistro, the reception is larger yet everything seems small, so small. The staff are friendly and seem content but, without Struan, the place feels all wrong.