The Red Road (7 page)

After a while the hippy sidled past Robert to the corridor, careful not to touch him, and continued with his speech. ‘There’s a toilet there. The flush is sticky but just give it a good yank. The library is in here.’

He went through a large door. Robert followed, his heart racing. The hippy couldn’t be here. Men were coming to kill Robert and they’d kill a housekeeper or a gardener without a thought.

The library was a newer addition to the building, a large square room with double height ceilings and windows that peeped around the shoulder of the house to the sea. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were built from a red wood, not terribly nice and hardly varnished at all. An upright piano sat in the corner, next to a large mahogany writing desk. The fireplace was huge, flanked by well-loved couches and a large square table between them with drawers for keeping games in.

The hippy pointed out the wood basket for the fire and the matches, the newspaper kindling.

‘There’s extra wood outside.’

‘Couldn’t you go away?’ said Robert desperately. ‘If I pay extra?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t want to.’

‘I’ve got cash.’

The hippy looked very suspicious now. He glared down his nose at Robert. ‘When are the rest of your party coming?’

He clearly thought Robert was ill and was hoping someone else would come and look after him.

‘Probably tomorrow,’ lied Robert.

He grunted, looked out of the window as if he hoped to see them there, unexpectedly early. ‘Suppose the afternoon ferry’ll be cancelled because of the storm.’

The hippy turned away then, heading back for the hallway. Robert followed him. As the hippy slunk down the corridor Robert saw him reach out a hand without glancing around, his fingers running across an ornament on the window sill. Robert hurried after him and, glancing down, saw a small brass statue of Pan. The furry-trousered god was blowing two pipes and skipping a dance on a grey marble plinth. The patina of the statue was black except for one hoof which was rubbed a shining bronze; it caught the light from the kitchen. The hippy had been here for a very long time. Robert thought suddenly that he must have grown up here.

He was waiting for Robert at the bottom of the stairs. ‘The bedrooms are upstairs,’ he said, and set off.

Upstairs he pointed to two doors. ‘Master bedroom. Bathroom adjoining.’

He opened a door and Robert followed him in. A four-poster bed with a tester covered and canopied in blue toile and a matching bedspread. Windows looking out over the castellated entrance porch and beyond to the bay. The patch of sun at sea had gone, nothing but grey rain. The white sand of the beach had a filthy black rim.

‘Are you the owner?’

The hippy seemed uncomfortable at that. He pointed at a door. ‘Bathroom.’ He hesitated then, and turned away, leaving the room.

Robert watched him walk away, noting the slight blush on the back of the man’s neck.

Out of the window the dark hills glowered. Whoever they had sent to kill him might be here already, they knew where he was all the time. They might have caught the ferry before him and could be out there now, on the hills, watching the lights flick on in the rooms, tracing their movement through the house. Robert wanted to shout out to the hippy, tell him that if he stayed here he would die. He should run, get out, visit a friend or a relative, just get out. But if Robert did that the man would call the police. Robert couldn’t have the police here. Worse, he might call a doctor – Robert did seem strange, he knew that already. He hadn’t changed his suit in two days and he had been drinking. He probably smelled odd. They would take him to the local hospital, they’d hear that his father had died. They’d mistake his terror for grief and sedate him, so that he couldn’t even think for the last few hours of his life. And then the murderer would kill whoever else got in their way.

As he processed these thoughts the hippy stared at him from the corridor. The house was terribly silent.

‘Why do you want to be alone?’ he asked.

Robert didn’t know what to say. ‘My father’s ...’ He didn’t know what to say. ‘Just died.’

‘Oh.’ He looked at the floor and then pointed at another door. ‘Twin room.’

Robert looked out of the window. He could hear the hippy padding around the house, now outside the door, now on the stairs. Robert didn’t move. He watched the sea claw at the beach. He watched the sky bicker with the land. He watched the opposing cliffs growl at each other. He had tried to remove himself, to make it safe for other people. He could just as well have gone to a Premier Inn by a motorway and paid with a credit card.

There were family pictures around the room. Robert registered it as the home of a nice, old-money family. His parents’ house wasn’t old money or nice money. His family home was a big Bearsden status symbol but inside was dirt and chaos, misery running down the walls, dripping from the curtains, everything sticky dirty because Margery met the cleaning woman at the door twice a week and paid her to go away.

In moments of calm like this Robert knew that he was at a crisis point in his life. He was drinking too much, like his mother, making bad decisions, like his father. A lot of men went through a nihilistic period in their lives, when they wanted to die, he was sure. But in it, right in the eye of the storm, he felt certain it was true and that the periods of his life where he had hoped and loved and felt connected to other people, those were the times when he had been pitifully deluded.

He couldn’t honestly remember the ages of his kids. Nine, eight and seven, was it? Was Jessica seven yet? He hoped she was. Give me the man until he is seven, as Nietzsche said.

He didn’t see that much of them. He got in from work after they went to bed, left for work before they got up. He worked most weekends. He didn’t know them.

Every year they went on holiday to his father’s villa in Nice. It was like going away with cantankerous strangers. Robert remembered the holiday this year, sitting on that sun lounger at the edge of a hotel swimming pool. He was sitting in the sun, pretending to read the same shit book that everyone else was reading that year, minding the children in the pool while Rose and Francine went shopping. The kids were screaming at each other, pushing each other around, the seven-year-old (was she seven yet?) was shouting ‘You’re
ugly
’ at her brother. Robert knew he should do something, take control, get in the pool and make them behave, but he looked at them and realised he didn’t know these people. A waiter, a stranger, would have had more sway over them. He didn’t know them. He sat there, listening and wondering if he was lying to himself, if he just couldn’t be bothered getting up and was making excuses. He wasn’t. He didn’t know these people. He’d started to cry, just quietly, and then he realised the children weren’t shouting any more. He looked up. They were staring at him, waiting for him to tell them to shut up. And everyone around the swimming pool knew that he was in charge and he’d done nothing, and now that he was crying.

Better this way. His father and himself gone within weeks of each other. A sad story for later in their lives but the stain dealt with in a short brutal swipe. He half hoped they would make it look as if he had committed suicide, so that the story would end with his funeral instead of dragging out through an investigation and possibly a trial. He had seen those families worn thin by the long slow process of a murder trial, seen them wait and hope and dream that they would feel better soon. He had witnessed the crushing fury at the end: the sentence was never long enough, the culprit never sorry enough. They all made the mistake of thinking the trial was for their benefit. Arrogant in a way, the assumption that all the institutions of State would whirr into action to lessen their loss.

Tomorrow, probably. The storm was gathering strength. Even if they hired a private boat they would have trouble getting over tonight.

This would be his last night then. He thought of final meals, watching TV, building a fire, a good sleep. He didn’t really want any of those things. He didn’t want anything but for it to be over. He was ready to die.

He looked out of the window at the fierce waves trying again and again to claw their way up the sheer cliffs and he took comfort in the knowledge that though he would die, he’d be taking the right people with him. The hippy was annoying anyway. He didn’t do meditation, Robert guessed he was smoking cannabis down there. He probably grew it himself. He talked like a stoner too: delayed speech, odd clothes, and he hadn’t even left home. So better him than the kids or Rose and Francine or his mother, or the people in a local hospital.

He was damp. His suit was sticking to him. He had a poly bag in the car with other trousers in it. He went downstairs, feeling in his pocket for the car key.

‘Hey.’ It was the hippy. He was in the drawing room, standing in front of the small fire, as if he had been there a good long time, waiting for him.

Robert touched his damp jacket. ‘I need to ...’

The hippy pointed to a small table standing at the elbow of a comfy couch. Sitting on it, glinting invitingly, were two large crystal glasses. In each was a finger of dark amber liquid.

‘Whisky?’

‘Aberlour. Twenty-five years old. Take it. Drink.’

Robert forgot the damp prickle of his clothes; he kept his eyes on the whisky and went into the warm pink room.

5

Darkness was falling, winter-early, as heavy rain stole what was left of the day. The Bath Street traffic crawled respectfully around two black Daimlers parked outside the Glasgow Art Club.

Passing drivers craned to see the funeral party, the sleek solemnity of the big cars, the blackness of the mourners’ dress. They slowed for a glimpse of the memento mori, briefly remembered how sad it was that death was always happening to strangers, before driving onwards towards bland lunchtime sandwiches and afternoons squandered as if their own lives would go on for ever.

Rose stood by the car holding a big umbrella over the door. The children scrambled out, giggling at the frantic rain ricocheting off the pavement, nipping at their ankles.

The Art Club was in an elegant Georgian townhouse in the centre of the city. A broad staircase swept up from the street, furnished with cast-iron boot scrapes. It led up to twin doors of elaborate carved oak, branches to frame the heavy leaded glass looking into the club’s lobby. Margery had booked it for the funeral drinks. Rose didn’t see why. It meant that they had to go all the way back into town from the crematorium, with three frustrated children, to a room full of already quite drunk lawyers. Rose did not like her kids there, in a room like that. It felt unsafe; small people near big, drunk people. She didn’t like the company either, their phoney, aggravating cynicism, barks of laughter that depended solely on the speaker’s status. It was exhausting remembering who she was supposed to be with them.

She clucked and harried her gaggle up the steps to the door. They were only here to imprint them with the memory of the event. They didn’t need to participate in the party. She guessed thirty, forty minutes would be long enough. Fifty, if there were speeches. Please don’t let there be speeches. She didn’t want to be here a minute longer than she had to be.

From the shelter of the doorway she turned back to see Dawood, Francine and Margery coming out of the front car. Dawood hung back, watching as Margery walked slowly to the steps. She took hold of the handrail, sighed and began the climb. She was only sixty-three. Francine held onto the opposite handrail, paralleling. They walked up the steps in tandem, brackets around the chasm between them.

Behind them, through the veil of grey rain, Rose saw the funeral cars skulk back into the stream of traffic, panthers returning to the hunt.

Margery arrived in the porch. As the Art Club member she was the only one who could press the buzzer and be let in, but she made them wait. She stood in the oak porch and critically appraised the children, then Francine. Francine stood with her hands passively at her sides until Margery was finished, too tired to resist. Only Dawood escaped the inspection.

‘You,’ aloof, Margery pointed at Rose, ‘you wait here. We’ll go in first. Wait for a moment, then come in.’

Rose dropped back on her heels, enveloped by the dark corner. She looked down and found Jessica grinning up at her, baring her gappy teeth, too young to be embarrassed at her granny belittling the staff. Hamish, ten years old and young enough to believe in fairness, glared at his grandma, his mouth tight and furious.

Margery didn’t care; she had turned away to press the buzzer and put her flat hand on the ornately carved door, waiting for the lock to snap. The door dropped open, a growl of chat and laughter yawned out at them.

Margery, matriarch of her clan, entered her club. Francine followed behind, eyes radiating fervent apologies back at Rose. Rose gave her a reassuring blink and cupped the back of Hamish’s head as he passed her.

The door shut between them. Keeping her face neutral for the children, Rose watched them through the fingered glass. The family of Julius McMillan assembled, braced themselves and processed into his funeral party.

The slight stung. They shouldn’t treat her like that. But then, she countered to herself, they were bereaved. Julius was a terrible, shocking loss to them, and Robert might be dead for all they knew. Plus, Margery was Margery. She was a doll in her day, Mr McMillan used to say. Though her charm and looks were gone she still retained the mannerisms of someone with massive social cachet. She treated all women, even seven-year-old Jessica, as a potential rival.

So although Rose was slighted and upset and scared, she knew that she had been those things before. She had been those things very recently and she knew she wouldn’t die of them. She could choose the thoughts in her head. She decided to use this time alone to remember who she was here. It had been a hard week, confusing, sore and busy. I’m a nanny, she thought. She corrected herself and smiled – I’m
the
nanny. I don’t go out. I don’t meet people. I’m the nanny. The shy, nearly thirty, nanny. I don’t have hobbies. I have no past. I’m the nanny. The persona came over her like a cassock. Her shoulders rolled forward, her eyes dropped, her jaw loosened.