Island (6 page)
What I realise now looking back on that day at the library was that it was the pits. I couldn’t even imagine what might happen next. My head was puffy with Fear. But coolly now what could I have done? Only two choices. Sleep in a shop doorway or pick up some pervert in the street and offer to go home with him for £10. I was destitute. I was twenty-nine and destitute. My inheritance. Thanks Mum.
But then came the proof I’d bottomed out. I fell. Coming down the marble steps in the library my foot slid away from under me and I fell. I fell backwards on to the base of my spine then I bump-bump-bumped down the remaining twelve stairs. My head snapped back as I bumped and I was knocked out. I suffered concussion, whiplash, spinal bruising and a hairline fracture to a vertebra. I know in detail
the stages of the fall, the specific injuries sustained, because three doctors and two lawyers went into them extremely thoroughly. The stairs were wet, the cleaner had forgotten to put out a warning notice; an elderly man who hurried to my assistance also slipped and fell. It was a cut and dried case, the library was liable and owed us both compensation. It didn’t matter it didn’t even hurt, it was a relief to be scooped off and carted to hospital and tended. I didn’t even realise for a while that I’d get money as well. It took its time grinding through the system but eventually there came an offer of £12,000.
They kept me in hospital for six weeks because of my back; I had to lie flat. And that’s when I decided to kill her. I finally realised the futility of a life where whatever enterprise you embark on, after a short time the ground under your feet will run out and you will fall over the edge and disappear.
The plan to kill her gave me a path, it mapped out my course. The hospital chaplain (don’t you love these things? Out of the pages of a Victorian novel; he sits by your bed and talks about god’s love, he tells you how to get your benefits. If you are the only person in your ward with no visitors he clings to you like a burr) answered accommodation ads for me and even went and looked at a couple of rooms. He had a nice ground floor room all fixed up for when I moved out, and I was signed on to the sick for three months. I didn’t have to do anything but work at my plan and wait for my compensation to arrive.
I traced her from the address she’d put on the birth certificate. It was surprisingly simple. A second address in Manchester surfaced. I wrote and got a reply. Her parents had lived there till ‘89. Their new address
was enclosed. When I could walk I went to Manchester.
I was walking with a stick because of my back. It seemed to have a good effect on people. They wanted to help me. (One day they’ll help me, the next they’ll kick me in the teeth. Why is there hope then no hope? There were temperature graphs on the ends of the hospital beds going up and down like mountains, high low high high highest low. A switchback, a ride on a bucking bronco, being dragged screaming and unwilling from the heights to the depths and never knowing when the high will come again or how long last so I can’t even begin to relish it only know it’ll end – that’s the life she’s given. Me.)
The house was in a leafy suburb, Edwardian semi-detached. A prosperous pile. Two-job two-car two-children-and-an-au-pair territory. Needless to say no one was home. The security alarm winked redly over the door. I tried the neighbouring house. It was dingier, peeling paint, thick net curtains; a twitching at the corner of one. An old face peered at me. I smiled brightly and he came interminably slowly to the door. Opened it three inches on a chain. I was sweet I was a charmer.
‘Oh thank you for coming to the door, I wonder if you can help me? I’m trying to find the Lovages, I’ve been working at my family tree and we’re second cousins, I’ve been to their old house and they gave me the address next door to you, do you know if–’ His brain was as slow as his legs, I had to give him the bright patter three or four times before any of it sank in.
Creaky croaky noises in the dark behind him and there was an old woman too peering and
muttering. No give on the safety chain. Who can blame them? I’d have been in there in a flash, battering and mugging them, filling my pockets with their family heirlooms. Filthy pair of ancient dung beetles. It turned out the old Lovages (Granny and Grandad? Who would’ve knitted me mittens and held my hand to feed the ducks?) had been shunted off to a home. Were infirm/incapable/possibly dead (some wittering and grumpy mishearing between my aged friends here, she assumed they were dead because there’d been no Christmas card this year; he said why did she always forget Mrs Lovage had Parkinson’s which wouldn’t have got any better with time would it and how could she have held a pen?)
The son, young Mr Lovage (uncle?) lived next door now with his family but he and his wife both worked and–
‘And his sister?’ I chipped in cheerily. ‘I especially wanted to know about Phyllis Lovage, the Lovages’ daughter?’
He turned to his wife to confer but he had to glance back to check I wasn’t nicking the doorknob or the leaves off the privet. I smiled and twinkled gratefully and he turned away again. Then shook his head. No, they’d never seen her.
‘He did give us an address once, when he was–’ he turned to the invisible crone – ‘Didn’t he give us a relative’s address when he went on holiday just in case?’
‘Oh, if you had her address I would be so thrilled – you see she and my mother used to play together when they were young – my mother’s not well and it would bring her such happiness …’
Wasted effort because he retreated from the door and shuffled back into the hall to join his wife who was vaguely scuffling in a mountain of newspapers,
envelopes and telephone directories balanced on an ancient black chest. I put my foot gently against the door to stop it banging shut in my face. Each time she put something down in the heap after peering at it short-sightedly, he’d pick it up and carefully read it from beginning to end. They wouldn’t find it, even if it was staring them in the face. I would have to come back to the brother in the evening and who knows why Phyllis never showed her face there? Disgrace? Family feud? He’d want a better story than my current one – he’d have known his sister’s friends. The old guy shook his head. He began to shuffle back towards me.
‘Could I help?’ I tried. ‘I’m a very fast reader.’
‘I think you’d better ask Mr Lovage, he’ll be home around 6.30.’ Hideous drooling old idiot with my mother’s address pulsating in your hall, I’d put my hand straight on it, I’d know it–
‘Did you try the address book dear?’ croaked the female. Of course he didn’t you stupid bat he was looking for a piece of paper. She turned the pages of a big address book with her claws.
‘L-L-Lovage. Mabel and Peter. Yes, in Altrincham – that’s the home … Phyllis. This’ll be it will it? Phyllis MacLeod but she’s under the Lovages, I can’t think of any other Phyllis can you Harold? We’ve got a Scottish address for her.’
Oh glory be and patience rewarded. They creaked and they croaked as they looked for a pen.
‘Here! I’ve got one in my bag – here–’ and she copied it out like a snail on Valium and finally it was passed into my hot sticky hand. A
this will be your lucky day; open to check your bonus number!
envelope with the address of one Phyllis MacLeod spidered on to the
back. Unfamiliar unpronounceable place names. MacLeod. MacHaggis. MacTartan. Married to a Scot. Who was oblivious to my existence? Nice little surprise for him as well as her, then.
When I got back to the station I phoned Directory Enquiries with her name and address and
they gave me her number
. She was still there. I dialled and a woman said ‘Hello?’ I asked for Phyllis MacLeod. ‘Speaking.’ Middle aged middle class not Scots it was her. On the end of the line, my mother. My ignorant unsuspecting mother. So easy to find, it was meant. She hadn’t even bothered about me enough to cover her tracks. She hadn’t even gone ex-directory. Chucked me away and never even considered I might be dangerous. Her indifference conjured,
entreated
my plan.
Calum‘s treasureIt turned out my mother lived on an
island. An island in the Hebrides, a small tear-shaped island called Aysaar just off another bigger island. She had certainly distanced herself. You wouldn’t drop in casually, on the off-chance. Perhaps she thought distance would be enough to keep me away.
I gave up my room; not knowing how long it would take and not wanting to waste money. No point in hanging onto a faceless old room. When I came back it would be a new start. Why should I come back here at all?
If you book the rail ticket in advance it’s 20 per cent cheaper, which was £17 off the price of the sleeper. Never once have I caught a train I booked in advance. It was another thing I imagined the death of my mother might facilitate. The catching of booked trains.
I missed my train because I had
left a box of books at Patsy’s years before and she rang to say she was moving and had nowhere to put them. In desperation I took them in a taxi down to Yewtree Housing offices because there used to be room on top of the metal cupboards in reception but it turned out the metal cupboards had been removed to create more seating space for clients (
clients
= homeless). There was no one there who knew me so they wouldn’t keep the books and I ended up going back to my room and putting my rucksack in the taxi too and belting down to the station and taking the box of books to left luggage. There was a queue of half-wits there and an old git with Alzheimer’s who wanted to know how long I was leaving the books because they charge in advance. Also the box was too big. By the time I had finished arguing and paid for two weeks and walked away so he had no choice but to keep them it was four minutes after the train departure time and needless to say it was the first train ever in the history of rail transport to leave New Street on time.
So I missed it. I caught the next one (same time next day) and managed to bluff the ticket.
Which is not in itself interesting. But when I arrived after my night in a coffin of a sleeper and my change of train to a small sit-up-and-beg Scotrail through brochure-type scenery (stags, mountains, heather etc.) and finally the sea, I discovered that the ferries had been cancelled for the past 24 hours due to gales at sea. They had even closed the toll-bridge in the night.
Everything at Kyle was very still, and a lot of things were smashed. Signs hung crooked and splintered on their posts. A shop awning had been sucked out and half ripped off. Along the narrow shoreline was flotsam and jetsam in heaps, branches with the leaves still on
them, a shattered canoe, broken plastic chairs. The still gleaming streets were littered with the contents of wind-scoured bins. A bus shelter had fallen into the road.
It was very quiet, almost stunned. The odd lorry or car drove cautiously over the bridge. The ferry started chugging over from the other side. The water was still as milk.
I walked across the bridge and the sky was pale empty blue; not so much as a seagull moved. A motorbike lay sprawled on its side near the jetty, and when I went into the town the pavement was spattered with shattered fragments of tile. I had to catch a bus to the next ferry, and the whole island lay still as death around me, like a spell.
I tried to plan. The island (by Patsy’s old Phillips school atlas) was small. Maybe a couple of miles wide, ten or eleven miles long. There wouldn’t be many people. Her address was Tigh Na Mara, Main Road, Ruanish. That was the only village of any size on the island. It was late September, end of the tourist season; maybe hard to find a place to stay.
How long would it take?
I wouldn’t just find her and kill her, that wouldn’t be right. First I would investigate her. Get her story out of her and put her in suspense. I would kill her when I was ready and when I had figured out a way of covering my tracks. No point spending the rest of my life in jail.
I considered my murder weapon: knife, or heavy blunt object? Considered that it would be necessary to have a story; why should I be on the island? How could I justify the length of time I might need to stay?
This is what I came up with: I would
be a student doing research on the island. A woman in Patsy’s house was doing an OU course for years. From time to time she would whine about her project – how the deadline was on Wednesday and she still hadn’t done it. Her project was the usual pointless academic exercise. She had to ask people from specified areas about their shopping habits and correlate them with their income and home address. Is there any form of so-called education more tedious than gathering and analysing facts to prove something you already know? Rich people from big houses use posh shops. Unemployed people on estates get ripped off by the local corner shop.
Wow
. That’s interesting.
I invented myself a project. The study of an island population and recent demographic shifts, to cover my mother’s life. Giving me licence to pry into all the cobwebby corners and stay there as long as I liked.
From the ferry the island looks dark and steep, half forested rising to a naked mountain. It’s wild and uninhabited. Primitive, a place for primeval actions, perfect for a matricide.