The Lewis Man (21 page)

Donald laughed. ‘God did change me, Fin. But it
was
for the better. He taught me to control my baser instincts, to be a better person than I was. To do unto others only that which I would have them do unto me.’

‘Then why are you treating Fin and Donna so badly? It’s wrong to keep them apart. I know you think you are protecting your daughter, but that baby is Fionnlagh’s daughter, too. How would you feel if you were Fionnlagh?’

‘I wouldn’t have got her pregnant in the first place.’

‘Oh, come on! I bet you can’t even remember how many girls you slept with at that age. You were just lucky that none of them got pregnant.’ He paused. ‘Until Catriona.’

Donald glowered up at him from beneath a gathering of brows. ‘Fuck you, Fin!’

And Fin burst out laughing. ‘Now,
that’s
the old Donald.’

Donald shook his head, trying to hold back a smile. ‘You always were a bad influence on me.’ He got up and crossed to the dresser, finding and opening the fresh bottle. He returned to top up both their mugs and slumped again into his chair. ‘So after everything, we share a grandchild you and me, Fin Macleod. Grandparents!’ He blew his disbelief through pursed lips. ‘When did you find out that Fionnlagh was your boy?’

‘Last year. During the investigation into the Angel Macritchie murder.’

Donald raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not generally known, is it?’

‘No.’

Donald fixed him with curious eyes. ‘What happened out on An Sgeir last August, Fin?’

But Fin just shook his head. ‘That’s between me and my maker.’

Donald nodded slowly. ‘And the reason for your visit to the church the other day … is that a secret, too?’

Fin thought about it, staring deep into the embers of the peats, and decided that there would be no harm in telling Donald the truth. ‘You probably heard about the body they found in the bog at Siader a couple of weeks ago.’

Donald inclined his head in acknowledgement.

‘It was the body of a young man of seventeen or eighteen, murdered some time in the late 1950s.’

‘Murdered?’ The Reverend Murray was clearly shocked.

‘Yes. And it turns out he’s related in some way to Tormod Macdonald. Who turns out not to be Tormod Macdonald.’

Donald’s mug paused halfway to his mouth. ‘What?’

And Fin told him the story of his trip to Harris with DS Gunn, and what they had found there. Donald sipped thoughtfully on his whisky as he listened.

‘The problem is,’ Fin said, ‘we’ll probably never find out the truth. Tormod’s dementia is well advanced and getting worse. It’s hard to get any kind of sense out of him. Marsaili was there today and he was talking about using seaweed to fertilize crows.’

Donald shrugged. ‘Well, that’s not so daft.’

Fin blinked in surprise. ‘It’s not?’

‘Sure,
feannagan
means
crows
here on Lewis, or Harris. But in the southern isles it’s what they called the lazy beds.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Donald.’

Donald laughed. ‘You’ve probably never been to the Catholic south, Fin, have you? And I probably wouldn’t either if it hadn’t been for some ecumenical visits.’ He flashed him a look. ‘Maybe I’m not quite as narrow-minded as you would like to think?’

‘What are lazy beds?’

‘It’s what the islanders developed to grow vegetables, mainly potatoes, when the soil was thin or poor in quality. Like you’ll find in South Uist, or Eriskay. They use seaweed cut from the shore as fertilizer. They lay it in strips, about a foot wide, with another foot between them where they dig up the earth and turn it over on top of the seaweed. That creates drainage channels between the lines of soil and seaweed where they plant the tatties. Lazy beds, they call them. Or
feannagan
.’

Fin took a mouthful of whisky. ‘So it’s really not that daft to talk about fertilising the crows.’

‘Not at all.’ Donald leaned forward on his knees, cradling his mug between his hands and gazing into the dying fire. ‘Maybe Marsaili’s dad didn’t come from Harris at all, Fin. Maybe he came from the south. South Uist, Eriskay, Barra. Who knows?’ He paused to take another sip. ‘But here’s a thought …’ And he turned to look at Fin. ‘He’d never have got the marriage schedule from the registrar allowing my father to marry him if he hadn’t been able to produce a birth certificate. So how would he have got that?’

‘Not from the registrar on Harris,’ Fin said. ‘Because the dead boy was known there.’

‘Exactly. So he knew, or was related to, the family. Or someone close to him was. And he either stole the birth certificate, or was given it. All you need to do is find that connection.’

A reluctant smile crept up on Fin, and he cocked one eyebrow towards the minister. ‘You know, Donald, you always were smarter than the rest of us. But a connection like that? It would be like searching for a speck of dust in the cosmos.’

Catriona had given him a pair of Donald’s trousers and a woollen jersey which he wore now under his oilskins as he braved the winds that swept unimpeded across the machair.

It had taken until the early hours for the two men to work themselves halfway down the second bottle. Fin had woken up on the settee some time after seven with the smell of bacon wafting through from the kitchen.

There had been no sign of Donald as Catriona served him a plate of bacon, egg, sausage and fried bread at the kitchen table. She had gone to bed long before they had finished with the whisky, and made no comment about the amount consumed. Neither Fin nor she had felt much like engaging in conversation. That she disapproved of him, and whatever had happened the night before, was evidenced by her silence.

The rain had stopped some time during the night, and already soft southern winds had dried the grasses, another change in the weather. The sun had rediscovered its warmth, and fought to take the edge off the wind.

Fin needed the air to clear a head still fuzzy and delicate from the words and whisky that he and Donald had spilled and consumed between them. He had not been back to his tent yet, dreading to think what state it might now be in, having left it open to the elements all night. There was a chance it might be gone altogether, and he wasn’t sure that he was ready yet to face that possibility.

Whether drawn by his subconscious, or by pure chance, he found himself on the track leading to Crobost Cemetery, where headstones stood out on the rise of the hill like the spines of a porcupine. All the Macleods and Macdonalds and Macritchies, the Morrisons and Macraes, who had lived and died in this narrow neck of the world were buried here. Hard like rock, and carved out from the mass of humanity by the wind and the sea and the rain. Among them his own parents. He wished, now, he had brought Robbie back to put him in the ground here with his ancestors. But Mona would never have allowed it.

He stopped at the gate. It was here that Artair had told him all those years before that he and Marsaili were married. A part of him had died that day with the loss, finally, of the only woman he had ever loved. The woman he had driven from his life, by thoughtlessness and cruelty. A self-inflicted loss.

He thought about her now. Saw her in his mind’s eye. Skin flushed by the wind, hair unravelling behind her. Pictured those cornflower-blue eyes piercing through all his protective armour, disarming him with her wit, breaking his heart with her smile. And he wondered if there was any way back. Or was it true what he had told Fionnlagh? That they hadn’t been able to make it work all those years before, why would it be any different now? The pessimist in him knew that it probably was. And being consumed by pessimism, it was only the tiniest part of him that thought they had any chance at all. Was that why he had come back? In pursuit of that smallest of chances?

He didn’t open the gate. He had revisited the past too often, and found only pain.

With alcohol still fogging his brain, he turned weary feet in the direction of the road home, past the school where he had so often walked with Artair and Marsaili. It hadn’t changed much. Nor had the long straight road that led up to the Crobost stores, the silhouette of the church on the hill, and all the houses standing four-square to the wind along the ridge. Nothing grew here but the hardiest shrubs. Only man, and the homes he built, could stand up to the fury of the weather that swept in across the Atlantic. But only for so long. As the cemetery on the cliffs and the ruins of so many blackhouses could testify.

Fionnlagh’s car still sat on the apron in front of the store, where it had been abandoned the night before, its ignition key lost somewhere in the bog. No doubt Fionnlagh would return some time later in the day to hotwire it and take it home. Fin’s car stood proud near the summit of the hill, buffeted by the breeze at the top of the path leading down to Marsaili’s bungalow. He had handed his keys to the boy and told him to take Donna and the child home with him, then driven back in Donald’s car to the manse.

He knocked at the kitchen door before going in. Donna turned from the table where she had poured herself a bowl of cereal, her face a mask of apprehension. She relaxed only a little when she saw that it was Fin. Her features were devoid of all colour. Painfully pale. Shadows beneath frightened eyes. Her eyes flickered past him, as if she suspected he might not be alone.

‘Where’s my dad?’

‘Sleeping off a hangover.’

Her face creased in disbelief. ‘You’re kidding.’

And Fin realized that Donna knew only the biblethumping, God-fearing, self-righteous bully that Donald had become. She had no idea of the real man who hid behind the religious shell he had grown to conceal his vulnerability. The Donald Murray that Fin had known as a boy. The man he had glimpsed briefly once again in the small hours of this morning, when whisky had lowered his defences.

‘Where’s Fionnlagh?’

She nodded towards the living room. ‘He’s feeding Eilidh.’

Fin frowned. ‘Eilidh?’

‘The baby.’

And he realized it was the first time he had heard her name. She had only ever been referred to as ‘the baby’ or ‘the child’. And he had never thought to ask. He caught Donna looking at him with eyes that seemed to read him so easily, and he felt himself blushing. He nodded and went through to find Fionnlagh sitting in an armchair, cradling the baby in his left arm, holding a feeding bottle to her lips in his right hand. Wide eyes in a tiny face stared up at her father with absolute trust.

Fionnlagh seemed almost uncomfortable at his father finding him like this, but he was in no position to move. Fin sat down in the armchair opposite, and an uneasy silence settled on them. Finally Fin said, ‘Eilidh was my mother’s name.’

Fionnlagh nodded. ‘I know. That’s who she’s named after.’

Fin had to blink hard to disperse the moisture that gathered suddenly in his eyes. ‘She’d have loved that.’

A pale smile drifted across the boy’s face. ‘Thanks, by the way.’

‘What for?’

‘Stepping in last night. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t showed up.’

‘Running away’s not the answer, Fionnlagh.’

The sudden fire of indignation flared in the young man. ‘Then what is? We can’t go on like this.’

‘No, you can’t. But you can’t throw your lives away either. You can only do the best for your child by making the best of yourselves.’

‘And how do we do that?’

‘For a start you need to make your peace with Donald.’

Fionnlagh gasped and turned his head away.

‘He’s not the monster you think he is, Fionnlagh. Just a misguided man who thinks he’s doing the best for his daughter and his granddaughter.’

Fionnlagh started to protest, but Fin raised a hand to stop him.

‘Talk to him, Fionnlagh. Tell him what it is you want to do with your life, and how you intend to do it. Show him that you mean to support Donna and Eilidh when you can, and marry his daughter when you’re able to offer her a future.’

‘I don’t
know
what I want to do with my life!’ Fionnlagh’s frustration caused his voice to crack.

‘Hardly anyone does at your age. But you’re bright, Fionnlagh. You need to finish school, go to university. Donna, too, if that’s what she wants to do.’

‘And in the meantime?’

‘Stay here. The three of you.’

‘The Reverend Murray’ll never accept that!’

‘You don’t know what he’ll accept until you talk to him. I mean, think about it. You’ve got much more in common than you know. He only wants the best for Donna and Eilidh. And so do you. All you have to do is convince him of that.’

Fionnlagh closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Easier said than done.’

The rubber teat slipped from Eilidh’s mouth, and she burbled her protest. Fionnlagh refocused his attention on her and slipped it back between tiny milky lips.

Fin recognized Donald’s car parked where his own should have been, on the curve of the road above the derelict croft and his wind-battered tent. Heavy low cloud scraped and grazed itself against the rise and fall of the land, pregnant with rain, but holding it still as if in realisation that the ground below was already beyond saturation.

Fin reached the car and looked around. But there was no sign of Donald. At least his tent was still there, beat up and bedraggled, guys slack and vibrating crazily in the wind, but still clinging to their pegs. He slithered down the slope towards it, and through the open flap saw that there was someone inside. He knelt down and crawled in to find a tousled-looking Donald Murray sitting crosslegged on the sleeping bag, the hit-and-run folder open on his knees.

Anger spiked through Fin and he grabbed the folder away. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

Donald was startled. And seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Fin. I didn’t mean to pry, honestly. I came down looking for you and found the tent open, and the contents of your folder blowing all over the place. I just gathered up the sheets, and …’ He paused. ‘I couldn’t help seeing what it was.’

Fin couldn’t meet his eye.

‘I had no idea.’

Fin tossed the folder towards the back of the tent. ‘It’s old news.’ He backed out of the tent and stood up into the wind. The great rolling banks of cloud seemed to be just above his head, pressing down on him, and he felt the odd spit in his face. Donald clambered out after him, and the two men stood side by side, looking down the slope of the croft towards the cliffs and the beach below. It was some minutes before they spoke.