My Life as a Man (13 page)

‘Where else is there for us to go? Isn’t that what you thought?’ And when I didn’t answer, she added, ‘That’s how they’ll see it, too.’

I wiped the cloud of my breath from the windscreen. Rubbing back and forward, I said, ‘We could give them the case. If that’s what they want, why not give it to them?’

‘And then?’

I shrugged. ‘Go back.’

‘Back to Bernard?’

The silence went on for a time, and then she started the car. We reversed out of there and retraced the way we’d come. What did she want me to say? That I was sorry for taking her from her
husband? I was sorry.

I wasn’t used to following routes and so I sat there waiting for the sea to appear again on our left and wondering what the two men would do if we offered them the case. Maybe we should
stop and get it out of the boot so that it was ready to hand over. I had a vision of them walking towards the car like highway cops in a B-movie and me throwing it out of the window and us driving
away so fast they’d never catch up. As I was thinking about that, we passed a signpost. It took a moment to register. It didn’t say Glasgow. It said Inverness. I twisted my head round
to make sure, but we were past it. I must have made some kind of noise in protest, for without looking at me Mrs Morton said, ‘Maybe it’s not about the case. Not for Bernard.’

What, then? I almost said that. The other possibility, though, was the obvious one. Driving off with a wife might be calculated to annoy most men.

‘You think he’s angry about the car?’ I asked. That sense of humour will get you in trouble, the Hairy Man had often told me. However I’d got into this mess, some of it,
it seemed to me at that point, had to be her fault.

She swung a look at me, sharp and hard. It felt to me full of anger or even contempt, but later I thought it might have been the first time I was not just a boy to her but someone she would take
account of. After that the best thing was to keep quiet, and I did for a long time.

I didn’t know anything about Inverness, except that it was in the north – ‘Gateway to the Highlands’, advertisements called it – and it had a loch with a monster in
it. I read road signs pointing off to the right: Portsoy, Cullen, Portknockie, Findochty. Port this and Port that, the sea must be somewhere in that direction.

We came into Elgin and I spat out a joke I’d heard somewhere, maybe in a school playground. ‘You know what they call a sheep tied to a lamppost in Elgin? A recreation centre.’
It had been set somewhere else when I heard it, but to a city boy one small town is like another and jokes are adapted like that all the time.

‘Don’t tell me this isn’t better,’ I bawled at her, a smart guy talking to the deaf.

‘What?’

‘Seeing the countryside. Don’t tell me it isn’t better.’ This time I said it in an ordinary voice.

‘Better than what?’

‘Better than sitting outside a factory all day.’

‘You don’t have to hate me,’ she said. ‘I’m not your mother.’

After that we didn’t talk.

I don’t know how often I heard her sigh before I glanced at her and saw how pale she was. The light was fading on the fields.

I said, ‘We should look for somewhere to stop. I think you’re tired.’

‘This road seems endless.’

‘If you want, I’ll drive.’

But then the road gave us a glimpse of the sea and we were at the edge of another small town and she turned into a gravelled space in front of what looked like more than a large house. She
booked two rooms and the landlord took us for a mother and son. He cooked for us, but I was so busy watching her I didn’t pay much attention to the meal.

Afterwards, when I brought in the cases from the car, the landlord leaned out of the kitchen door and said, ‘Your mother’s gone upstairs. Is she well enough? She hardly touched her
supper.’

‘We did a bit too much travelling. She’ll be fine in the morning.’

I told him we’d be going south the next day, towards Aberdeen. It was a stupid lie, but I’d begun to think like a fugitive and lies are what fugitives tell. At that, he told me we
should take the coast road: Lossiemouth, Portgordon, Findochty, Portknockie, Cullen, Portsoy, Banff and Macduff. Lovely views, he said. They’d cheer my mother up.

There were two rooms on the left of the upstairs corridor. She was in the first one. When I knocked and took in the cases, she was lying fully clothed on the bed. What surprised me was that she
hadn’t taken her shoes off.

I dumped the big case on a stand by the wardrobe. She opened her eyes as I set the small case on a chair, and asked, ‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s locked.’ I pushed at the catches. They were square and looked like brass. The case itself was made of heavy leather and every corner was clasped with the same
brass-coloured metal. ‘If I had a knife,’ I speculated. ‘Maybe they’d lend us one downstairs.’

She sat up with a groan and swung her legs round so that she sat on the edge of the bed. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

I stared at her. It seemed so obvious to me. ‘We need to know what’s in it.’

‘Why?’ When I couldn’t think of anything to say, she repeated herself, ‘Why do we?’

‘Because they’re after us and we don’t know why. Because we should know what’s in it.’ I pushed at the catches. Because I was curious. But how could I say that to
her? Maybe that went with being young.

‘Leave it alone,’ she said sharply. ‘It doesn’t belong to you.’

Something in her tone made me blind with anger. ‘Fine,’ I said, and I stormed out.

I had just enough sense not to slam the door behind me, but I shut the one into my room with a bang. Before I could do more than take off my jersey, there was a knock at the door.

It was only the landlord. ‘Your mother asleep?’

‘I expect so.’

‘Well, I was thinking, if she’s still under the weather in the morning, come down and tell me. I’ll make up a tray for her and you can take it up. She can have it in her
bed.’

‘She’ll be all right, I’m sure she will, after a sleep.’ I couldn’t imagine what would happen to us if she was ill.

‘Well, just in case. It would be a shame if her trip was spoiled. Weather’s fine, you’ll enjoy the run. See, if you have the time, take a wee detour to Portessie. They’re
quaint places those fishing villages. If your mother’s all right in the morning, I’m sure she’d enjoy them. And it looks as if the weather’s going to hold for a few days
yet.’

He said goodnight and that he would see us both in the morning. I watched him to the end of the corridor, trying to make up my mind, then went and tapped at her door. There was no response. I
thought she might be in bed or even asleep. Either way, she was all right, she wasn’t ill. I told myself I was a fool and was turning away when I heard her calling from inside.

When I went in, her eyes were wide as if she might have just wakened, but she was still fully dressed though she was lying on the bed. She had a flush of red on each cheek.

‘The man knocked my door. He says if you’re not feeling well in the morning you can have your breakfast up here.’

‘How nice of him,’ she said. ‘That’s not usual.’

When she smiled I saw that she was pretty, and it occurred to me that that might be why the landlord was being so nice. I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it before.

‘I was being stupid about the case,’ I said. ‘I know it’s not mine.’

‘It’s not mine, either,’ she said. ‘There could be anything in it. Correspondence he wouldn’t want anyone else to see. Contracts, maybe.’

It was still on the chair. We both looked at it.

‘Private stuff. I understand.’

She shook her head. ‘No, not like that. Not because it isn’t yours, or even mine. What I meant was that it would be safer not to look in it.’

‘Safer?’

‘Maybe that’s not the right word.’ She shook her head as if to disclaim it.

‘I have to sleep,’ she said, and her eyes closed, flickered open, not seeing me, and closed again.

I stood there for what seemed a long time and then went quietly out of the room.

‘My belly thinks my throat’s been cut,’ I said.

She waited so long I thought she didn’t understand and I was about to explain when she said, ‘You’re a growing boy,’ and went back to staring out of the window at the
fields going by.

Never mind me, I was worried about her. She’d come down though the landlord had offered her breakfast in bed, but she hadn’t really eaten, just picked at the edges of an egg and
pushed her plate away. He was concerned enough to come out to the front door and see us off. In the rear mirror, I watched him step out into the road and half raise an arm, as if trying to tell us
we had set off in the wrong direction, heading north not south.

When we got to Inverness, she was asleep, sitting over against the door with her head resting on her hand, so that it seemed a shame to waken her. With a vague idea she’d feel better if
she could sleep, like a fool I drove on.

The bother was I couldn’t find anywhere to eat. Places I saw signposted might be only villages, or three houses at the end of a farm track, for all I knew. With every mile we were climbing
higher, and now mountains that had a brown, sear look even in March were rising up high and stark ahead of us. At the sight of them the road felt suddenly narrower, not one that seemed likely to
take us anywhere in particular. Just then, I saw an opening on the right and had the impression of a descending landscape with a suggestion of buildings tucked among gently rolling folds.

‘What are you doing?’ She’d come out of her trance.

‘One road’s as good as another,’ I said.

She sighed. The minute she did, I understood how stupid and depressing an answer it was. Fine, let her feel like that; we could starve to death, for all I cared.

Pretty soon I felt even stupider as the road turned into a single-lane one with passing places. The only thing was to give in and retrace the way we’d come. At the first likely-looking
farm gate, I slammed to a halt and flew back in reverse. The car hit something, I braked and accelerated at the same time and everything went quiet as the engine stopped.

I got out. The back bumper was dented round a post of splintered wood.

While I was staring at it, Mrs Morton tooted the horn. Opposite, a board nailed off the straight to a post bore the word
SNACKS
in big, straggling letters as if a kid had
got hold of a paintbrush. As an advertisement it wasn’t much. If we hadn’t stopped, I’d have missed it. There was an arrow pointing at the sky, which I took to mean go up the
narrow road, almost hidden between high hedges, beside it.

I jumped back in and shot the car across the road. I didn’t say a word or look at her. My silence defied her to say anything. She must have heard the crunch and felt it as we hit the
post.

It was blind driving, a little twisting road, hedges giving glimpses of fields and hiding the way ahead.

‘I can’t stand much more of this,’ Mrs Morton said.

She sounded alive again. Irritated but alive. I put my foot down, and then up again at once as the corner jumped at me. We were going about fifteen miles an hour.

This time the little faded notice was nailed to a tree:
SNACKS FIRST LEFT
.

Her sigh said louder than words how ridiculous all this was and I imagined another even narrower road round the corner, dwindling to a farm track and us stuck between hedges, not able to turn
round. Reversing. I wasn’t good at that. Hitting everything as we trundled backwards – rocks, trees, hedges, cows. I imagined Morton’s face if ever he saw his car again.

But first left was a double gate into a yard with a van parked in the middle. It had a piece of what looked like cardboard taped on the end:
SNACKS HERE
. There was plenty
of room and I turned into the yard and pulled in behind it.

‘There we are,’ I said. ‘That was easy enough.’

When I got out, though, there was nobody in the van. Mrs Morton was sitting up very straight in the passenger seat watching me. There wasn’t any sign of food behind the counter. Clean
shelves. It didn’t smell of cooking, it smelled of damp. There were buildings on either side with sagging doors, barns or byres, I supposed them to be. They looked neglected and probably
empty. In front of me was a farmhouse, rough stone and peeling whitewash with windows set deep into the wall like old men’s eyes. Rubble was piled at one end with a slash of red across it
that might have been brick dust or the colour of the earth. A length of broken rone pipe was tipped against it. The place to my eye looked derelict.

Imagining Mrs Morton’s sigh, I crossed the yard and knocked, then banged on the door with the edge of my hand as if chopping wood. I made an uproar, but only to delay going back to the
car. I opened the car door and told her, ‘There’s no one there.’

‘Yes, there is. A woman came to that window.’ She pointed up at it.

I turned round. There were two windows above, and two below to the left of the door. Curtains hung, limp and unmoving. I wondered at the point of covering windows in such a remote place. A woman
looking down from one of those blank windows and turning away: the image made me uneasy.

‘I don’t see anybody.’

She got out of the car.

As if at the summons of her knock, the door opened. I made out the shape of a woman, and then as I started to move forward the figure retreated. Mrs Morton went inside and the door closed behind
her.

It was very quiet. As a city boy, I felt the quality of the silence. Then one by one little noises rose like shadows in water. Little fish noises of sucking and sighing; earth drying and old
wood settling. The loudest came from over the fence, a stealthy trampling that stopped my breath until a plump brown bird bustled out from under a clump of bushes. Just as I was relaxing I heard
the child sound.