The Low Road (22 page)

Supper of ham and salad and new potatoes, followed by the rhubarb crumble and egg custard, disappeared fast, and was much appreciated. Especially the crumble.

Mary and Joanne talked comfortably, easily. They asked which schools they'd gone to. They discovered they could have played each other at hockey, if not for the five-year age difference.

McAllister did not join in the conversation; his working-class socialist prejudices he kept in check.
What school did you go to? Who asked questions like that except the privileged?

He hadn't noticed when the new subject came up, but when he looked across at Joanne he saw her laughing—the first time in a long time.

“Now you've discovered our guilty secret, McAllister,” Mary said. She was looking at him, seeing in him something she couldn't quite fathom. It was as though she was reappraising him, seeing him differently in this setting of domesticity.
Or maybe it's my paranoia.
“A passion for the love stories in the
People's Friend
.”

Mary turned her spotlight back on Joanne. “I have to hide my copies from my mother, else she gives them to our housekeeper—before I've even read them.”

“I pretend I buy them for the recipes,” Joanne said.

How do women do that? As soon as they get together it becomes a conspiracy.

The girls disappeared, happy to be put to bed by Mrs. McAllister, but not before Annie reminded Mary of her promise to write to her. “Promise. Guides' honor,” Mary said, and gave Annie the Girl Guides salute, which Annie returned.

When they went into the sitting room, Joanne said, “That's me for the night. Can't keep my eyes open a minute longer.” She walked over to McAllister, kissed him on the head. She looked at the others. “Night, all. And Mary, let's keep in touch.”

“Love to,” Mary replied. They both knew that was unlikely
and if asked why, neither would be able to answer. “I'm happy we met,” Mary added.

The summer night was dimming and the whisky bottle diminished by three-quarters as Mary continued the conversation, filling them in on her “big adventure” with Jimmy McPhee—a phrase she used deliberately, trying to diminish the fear. Mostly her fear.

Later, when the gloaming had truly set in, and just before McAllister switched on the standard lamp and table lights, Mary admitted being terrified by the realization that the men on the beach were willing to pull out open razors in front of dozens of spectators, if not a hundred, showing no fear of the consequences. “But we were saved by the ponies—and McAllister, remember that poor donkey?”

Rob enjoyed the account of the braying donkey, the furious Shetland ponies, laughing at her account of the gangster being kicked in the family jewels.

“We were lucky the fisherman had enough fuel to get us to the mainland. And we were really lucky there was a train leaving two minutes after we got to Largs,” she continued, leaving out the pain in her side, the sweating terror of the race for the harbor, and the train, and safety.

“When we got to Glasgow, I borrowed my mother's car and immediately left for Perthshire.”

She left out the description of her mother's reaction when she introduced Jimmy McPhee. But she could recall every syllable of the icy upper-class voice saying, “McPhee. Are you related to the McPhees of Blairgowrie?”

“Ma couseens,” Jimmy replied, hardening his Muir of Ord accent, staring at her, defying her to show him the door, as she ordinarily would when a tinker came calling.

“We need the car,” Mary said.

“And if I require the use of the car?”

“There's a bus stop outside out door,” Mary replied. She did not add that it was she who paid the road tax and for the petrol and the servicing of the old Jaguar—her late father's pride and joy.

Mary continued, not relating how fast she'd flung the heavy car around the bends on the road to the foothills of the Grampians. “When we arrived, Jimmy looked up and saw the turrets. He asked if this was Colonel Ballantyne's place. I said it was.
Used to steal apples from the orchard when we were bairns
, he said.”

“That's tinkers for ye,” Don quipped.

“I asked him about his family, his life on the road,” Mary continued, “but he didn't say much.”

“That's Jimmy for you,” Rob added, grinning at Don.

“But did he say why these men are after him?” McAllister asked. “And who they are?”

“He did say he knows the man who wants him—”

“Wants him hurt? Maimed? Killed? And for what?” He watched her considering her reply.

“It's a debt, goes back a few years . . .”

“You mean we might have been killed over money?” McAllister was furious. “If that's all it is, I can pay.”

“I pay ma own debts, thanks all the same.” Jimmy had come in.

If it had been a ghost McAllister would have been less surprised. The others were smiling. Jimmy helped himself to the decanter, then gestured to Mary to move over, and sat on the sofa beside her. From the chair directly opposite Jimmy, Rob nodded. “Good to see you alive.” Although somewhat afraid of Jimmy, he was always glad to see him.

McAllister now remembered how, on more than one occasion, Jimmy had startled him with a sudden silent appearance in this house. In a bar, in open countryside, or down a dark alley,
he had a specter-like ability to turn up when least expected, sometimes wanted, sometimes not. This time his face was also specter-like, his usual working-outdoors-in-all-weathers tan now grey. His cheekbones were more prominent, and he looked leaner, smaller, more whippet than greyhound.

“I'm not stopping long,” Jimmy began. “I've only come to thank you.” His eyes met McAllister's, and, giving him the prison-yard stare, he said, “And to tell you it's over as far as you're concerned. You too,” he said to Mary but still looking at McAllister.

McAllister stared back. “First you want my help, now—”

“Ma
mother
—she was one who asked. No me.” It was clear from the way he rolled the “r” at the end of “mother” that was unhappy with her decision.

Don felt the tension and broke in. “Maybe you should settle this wi' a round o' bare-knuckle boxing.” When McAllister looked away he continued, “So, Jimmy, I hear your mother has gone?”

“Aye, she's taken to the road.”

“Fine time o' year to be out on the open road,” Don said. “I envy her the freedom, the nights around the campfire, sleeping under the stars.”

Jimmy dropped his hard-man persona. He was tired. He wanted to be with his mother, his people. “Aye, me too. But she'll be back for the Black Isle Show. Never missed one yet.”

“And back for the wedding. Joanne has asked her to sing,” Don said.

McAllister let the remark go, even though this was news to him. He was watching Mary watching Jimmy, noticing how quiet she was.
Perhaps she learned on the trip north that Jimmy doesn't do conversation
.

He'd known Jimmy McPhee three years. But he would never say he knew him. He knew his reputation as a hard man, sergeant-at-arms to his mother, who was matriarch of the McPhees
of the North East of Scotland and related to most of the other Traveler families of Scotland through ancient and convoluted marriage bonds.

Jimmy knocked back the generous dram he'd poured himself. “I'm sorry ma ma involved you, McAllister. But I thank you all the same.”

He turned his eyes on Mary, and she flinched slightly. “Miss Ballantyne, I owe you, so I'll tell you straight. This man who's after me has no respect. Makes no difference to him you're a woman, a wee scrap o' a thing. If you keep on writing about his business, he'll go for you.” What the man's business was he wouldn't say.

When Mary tried to speak, Jimmy held up his hand. “Naw, he'll no' have you killed, he's no' that stupid, but rearranging yer bonny face wi' a razor, or chopping off yer fingers so ye canny write no more, that's his style.”

He stood. “Night, McAllister. Mr. McLeod. Thanks again, Miss Ballantyne.” As he walked past Rob he stopped and said quietly, “You an' all. You've had enough troubles lately, so no getting ideas in yer head about investigating or whatever you ca' it.” He squeezed Rob's shoulder. It hurt, a reminder to Rob that Jimmy was not a man to cross.

Then Jimmy McPhee of the Highland McPhees was gone, as silently as he had arrived. Only the sound of an engine starting broke the hush of the evening.

“I'm away home an' all,” Don said. “Good to meet you, lass. If you're ever in need o' a job . . .”

“I'm way too ambitious, and expensive, for you, Mr. McLeod.” She smiled as she said it.

He laughed. “Right enough.”

Mary turned to Rob. “We should be getting back, too,” she said.

“Mary's staying at our house tonight,” Rob explained.

“Then first thing in the morning”—she grinned—“that's journalists' time, so maybe nine o'clock, I'm driving back to Glasgow.” She shook McAllister's hand. “It's been fun.”

He wanted to say,
Stay
. He wanted to hear more. He needed an explanation—of Jimmy's troubles, yes, but also of what had passed between her and Jimmy McPhee. What would happen next? Would they remain friends? Would he count in her life? So many questions. And no answers; it was no longer his business.

As Mary and Rob walked down the path to the car, in the still night their voices were clear. McAllister could hear her chatting as happily as a child who'd been to a birthday party. “My mother will be having hysterics if she's without the car any longer. Not that she needs it . . .”

McAllister was left with the remains of the evening and the remains of his fantasies. And, as he shut the front door, he hated himself for being such a fool,
and an old fool at that.

D
omesticity and routine returned to McAllister's household. For a day.

Joanne was distracted but in a loving, smiling, vague way.

“Now, where did I put the scissors?” she'd ask. Or “McAllister, have you any idea if we invited your colleague Sandy Marshall to the wedding?” He didn't want to remind her that she had been the one to insist he ask Sandy to be his best man and that Sandy had agreed.

Jean was being her sweet and smiling self, sometimes too eager to please everyone, including her cat, but there was a touch of anxiety in the child's unwillingness to leave her mother's side, her nervousness every time the district nurse visited.

Annie read. Constantly. But McAllister was occasionally disconcerted by the way she would look over her book, examining him as though expecting the worst. On one occasion, when he had to attend an evening function with the bigwigs of the County Council, and when Joanne did not feel up to accompanying him, Annie had asked, “Do you have to go?”

Joanne had said, “It's McAllister's job—he's the newspaper's editor.” And Annie shot him a glare of disapproval and contempt—a look that said,
What's more important than my mum?
A look he had seen before from children trapped in war zones.
She is a child of domestic violence
, he reminded himself,
and recently, she saw her mother in hospital, badly injured.

That his mother and Granny Ross were waging a guerrilla campaign over the kitchen he found amusing, in very small doses. And his mother, who neither approved nor disapproved of her son, kept to her room mostly. “I'm right tired,” she said. But he knew it was shock. She would never tell him that he was a stranger to her, having lost him when, after he started at Glasgow High School, he denied he was from Dennistoun, and refused to wear the jumpers or socks she knitted, wanting only shop-bought clothing they could ill afford. They did not have a relationship where, if she told him what a petty tyrant he had been as a thirteen-year-old, they would laugh, he would tell her he was ashamed and apologize, and Joanne would tease him and tell his mother how much he would love hand-knitted socks now, especially if they were black.

And McAllister was unable to admit how much he was missing the peace of his bachelor days, the excitement of the city, the loss of his youth. No, these were not issues that affected him, John McAllister, former war correspondent, former big shot, or so he told himself. Most of all, he was unable to see that he was scared.

The
Gazette
office became his refuge. But even there he was restless. With Mary gone and Jimmy who knew where, the Technicolor of the past weeks had dimmed to sepia. He stayed late at work, especially on Wednesday, deadline night.
Wanting to see the paper to bed
was his explanation.

“I can manage fine,” Don told him. “You spend time with Joanne. She's still recovering from . . .” He could not finish the sentence, for once not having the words to describe Joanne's ordeal. And Rob's.