The Low Road (16 page)

That's why Mary Ballantyne is an ace reporter
, he told himself.

“Right,” she said when she came out. “First we try the beach.”

McAllister shrugged, took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulders, then hurried to catch up with Mary. By the time he arrived she was deep in conversation with a woman who had been trying to ignore her, trying to sell rides on a raggle-taggle assortment of donkeys and ponies to passing families, and so far not succeeding.

“They're only just arrived,” Mary reasoned with the woman, who looked like a man who'd seen hard times but wearing a dress. “They'll hire a pony when the bairns get bored.”

“You trying to tell me ma job?” the woman snarled.

“If you help me, I'll get out o' yer hair . . .”

McAllister thought that a strange comment, as none of the woman's hair was visible under a floral scarf tied up turban-style.

“I'm looking for an auld pal o' my dad's, Jimmy McPhee . . .” Mary persisted.

“Never heard o' him.”

She brushed past her, almost elbowing her out of the way. But this made no difference to Mary Ballantyne. “He'd good wi' horses . . . maybe he's looking for work . . .”

“Do these look like horses?” She was pulling a donkey's ears through the slits in a battered straw hat. The donkey didn't seem to mind; the hat and the placid creature looked so old, they had probably been a summer-holiday fixture for at least a decade.

McAllister, standing a short distance away, was enjoying himself, noticing how Mary thickened her accent, made herself smaller, younger, playing up the ingénue.

Sitting on a camping stool set up beside a sandwich board advertising the donkey rides was a man.
He's enjoying the conversation too
, McAllister thought as he noticed the old man's head swiveling like a spectator at a tennis match as the conversation went from woman to woman. Then McAllister saw the white stick lying beside the stool. He looked more closely. Under the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat dark around the band with sweat stains, the man's head, looking as wizened as a witch doctor's juju skull, held eyes that although open were empty of expression.

McAllister hesitated, then went towards the old man, hoping he would be more talkative than the vixen-woman.

Mary waylaid him first. “Come on, we don't have much time.” She grabbed his elbow and steered him up the beach on to the esplanade and towards the west end of the town, where the rocky foreshore attracted fewer visitors.

“Where are we off to?” he asked as they reached a row of normal shops—a grocer, a butcher, a bakery. A newsagent with a display of plastic buckets and spades, and a stand of postcards in the entranceway, had a billboard out on the pavement. Huge headlines from down-market tabloid read, “City Gang Warfare.”

Mary saw it and said, “Steal all my stories that lot do, too chicken to chase it up for themselves.”

“What are we . . . ?”

“We're going to hire bikes and cycle around the island,” she told him.

He stared. “Bikes? Me? On a bike?”

Seeing his dismay, she laughed. “Cumbrae's a wee place—four miles round at most, and we're only going to the top of the hill. On a day like this we can see forever, maybe spot horses in the fields. Jimmy has to be somewhere and the town is crowded, so maybe he's on a farm.”

It was a ridiculous plan—so McAllister thought. But when
they reached the triangulation point at the top of the island, and when he managed to get his breath back, and they could see all across to the Isle of Arran and to Ailsa Craig, some forty miles distant, he appreciated the view. And appreciated how unfit he was.

“Well,” Mary said, “I can see cows, but no horses. Come on, McAllister, we'll check out the farmhouses.”

“We've only just got here . . .”

“It's downhill from here on.” She was on her bike and off.

They checked out the farms, all five of them. No sign or knowledge of Jimmy McPhee.

“A tinker, ye say,” one woman asked. On Mary's replying, “a Traveler,” she looked as though she might set the dogs on them.

All day they searched. At farms, boardinghouses, pubs, tearooms, they asked after Jimmy, and discovered nothing.

Mid-evening, it was bright light still. McAllister was exhausted. He desperately wanted beer and whisky and a sit-down, but they had to catch the ferry back.

“We'd better find a taxi to get us to the pier,” he told her as she sat licking an ice cream bought from the same newsagent that sold everything, and then some, as well as hiring out bicycles.

“Last ferry is long gone,” she said, swinging her legs as she sat on a bench that was fractionally too high off the ground.

“Gone?”

“It left an hour ago.” She looked at him and grinned. “Don't worry, we'll find somewhere to stay. I'll tell them you're my uncle to save your reputation.”

Again he found himself discombobulated by her forget-me-not-blue eyes and could think of no quick or witty reply.

It took much asking before they found a place to stay.
No. Nae chance. You're kidding?
These were the polite answers to their pleading for a room. It was the stares and the frank looks implying
dirty auld man
that McAllister hated most.

Eventually, at the unfashionable end of town, up a narrow lane that smelled of a late-night city alleyway, in a house that was hidden behind another, taller, more respectable boardinghouse, a man wearing a string vest answered the door.

With a cigarette dangling off his bottom lip, he said, “Youse can have the attic for five pounds.”

“Five pounds?” McAllister was outraged.

“We'll take it.” Then she nudged McAllister. “Pay the man.”

He was about to snap at her,
You pay
, and she saw it. “It's all on expenses,” she said, but as he was still annoyed while he counted out the change, she said, with the landlord listening in, “Oh, I get it, you don't want to put in a claim in case some nosy parker in accounts starts wondering why we're sharing a room and spreads the gossip.”

“Right,” was all he replied. But that wasn't why he was annoyed. She was a rich girl; he knew how they behaved around money, always expecting someone else, someone as rich as herself, to pick up the bill. It was only in his twenties that he discovered the rich never paid cash; all bills, accounts from the butcher, the baker, the dressmaker, the department store, came in the mail, to be paid by a retainer. And in spite of her ability to change her accent, drink with her colleagues, and mix with the hoi polloi, she was still a rich girl. Still part of the Scottish aristocracy.

The entrance to the room in the eaves was off an outside flight of stairs, ending on a wide wooden landing, which McAllister suspected was unsafe. They found it was indeed an attic, the window a skylight, and the only other source of light a single bulb dangling from a long frayed chord. Behind them the cliff rose not two feet from the building's back wall. At the top, about fifteen feet higher than the rooftop, it gave way to a rocky ledge. Exposed tree roots clung to the damp rock formation, with ferns growing out of crevices. A smell of cave or cellar or mausoleum
completed the sense that this was not a place to be in winter; even the brightness of high summer never touched this rock face.

“Leave the door open,” Mary said. “It's warm enough.”

There was one bed, single, with metal ends similar to a hospital bed. There was a sink. The tap dripped and had probably dripped for years, if the long rust-colored stain was any indication. There was a chair, large, leather, rounded arms, the bottom sagging, with a piece of fabric that looked like a horse blanket thrown across the back.

“You take the bed. I'm tiny. You're tall. And I can sleep anywhere, anytime,” Mary said, flinging her bag on the chair. “Unless you want to share.” Even in the dim light she could see his terror. She laughed. “I'll just think of you as one of my father's old pals.”

He tried to not look offended but was taken aback.

“Sorry, I didn't mean . . . I'll think of you as my boss, and you know what they say about ‘on your own doorstep.' ” She took his cigarette from him, took a puff, then gave it back. “My father's pals, some of them were a right randy bunch. Oh so polite and respectable but leching at me, checking out how my breasts were developing. One man, a major, suggested I sit on his knee. I was all of sixteen, and he was visiting to pay his respects to my mother, who'd only heard a month previously that my father did not survive Hellfire Pass on the Burma railways.”

She pulled off the scarf, shook out her hair, scratched her scalp with both hands, then twisted her head and stretched her neck, enjoying the release. She kicked off her shoes, then settled into the chair, turning this way and that to get comfortable.

McAllister was reminded of his soon-to-be-stepdaughter Jean's cat. He wouldn't have been surprised if Mary started purring.

He hung up his jacket and sat on the edge of the bed. It creaked. He took off his shoes. He had seldom felt so uncomfortable.

“Sandy Marshall says you're to be married soon. Tell me about your fiancée.” Whether Mary said this because she was interested, or to distance them, he couldn't tell. But he began, “Joanne.”

He swung his legs up and rested his back against the metal bed end. Then leaning forward, he pulled the pillow behind him. It was still horrendously uncomfortable; the smell of mildew didn't help. “Joanne worked—works—at the
Gazette
; she was there when I started as the new editor. Nearly three months ago she was hit on the head by a madwoman and kept prisoner for two and a half days and almost didn't make it.”

“Aye, but she did make it. That's what counts.”

“Yes. She did.” McAllister considered Mary's comment. And was glad to be reminded. He had been dwelling on what-ifs for too long:
What if she doesn't recover? What if she's brain-damaged? What if I can't live with a ready-made family? What if I can't live in a small town any longer? What if? What if?

“So what's she like?”

“She's kind. She's beautiful. She laughs a lot. She makes me a better person.”

“That's a very sound basis for a marriage.” Mary had pulled the blanket over her knees. The distance between the chair and the bed was not far enough for McAllister, and he was glad to be reminded of Joanne. Certainly he had occasional lustful thoughts towards Mary. But that was not it. It was her youth. Her intelligence. And, he admitted to himself, he was jealous; she had a future, he had a past.

“And you? Any plans for marriage?” He didn't know why he asked this. He knew women like Mary, knew them far better than a woman like Joanne.

“You disappoint me, McAllister. I wouldn't have taken you for one of those rare men who doesn't believe a woman has to have a husband—and children—to be complete.”

“I'm not.” But this sounded lame even to himself. “You should move to Paris. There are intellectuals there, not only women, who would agree with you.”

“Maybe I will,” Mary replied. “When I'm made a foreign correspondent for the
Manchester Guardian
I will do just that.”

She let out a huge yawn. “Night-night, McAllister. Sleep tight.”

It was that last phrase that did it.
Joanne says that
, he thought.
Night-night, sleep tight.
Sleep tight he did not. He lay awake. He dozed. He listened to her breath. He chastised himself for being an idiot—longing for what he couldn't have. His youth.

M
cAllister awoke to the dawn chorus and a cockerel crowing. His knees hurt, his thighs ached, mostly from the bicycle trip, but also from the bed that sagged in the middle and was too short, with the horsehair coming through the mattress in numerous patches.

The armchair was empty, the blanket discarded on the floor. After a wash in the bathroom out the back he felt better but, unable to shave, he saw himself in the cracked mirror looking like a crook in an Ealing Studios black-and-white crime film. When he came back he found Mary sitting outside on the wooden landing, leaning against the brick wall in a narrow shaft of sunshine.

“Tea”—she handed him a mug—“and rolls straight from the oven.” She passed over a paper bag with two floury soft white buns. He sat on a step below her. “The baker wasn't open, but I went to the back door and used my feminine charm. They're buttered, but no bacon.”

It was not yet six o'clock when, breakfast finished, they walked to the harbor. As yet there were no holidaymakers, but there was plenty of activity amongst the small fishing boats, and the wooden cobles with local men preparing lobster pots to lay along the rocky shoreline at the back of this and neighboring islands.

“Grand day,” said one man, his skin weather-worn to the color of a native of India.