North Sea Requiem (5 page)

“We must go more often,” Rob said, knowing they wouldn't because both of them would be pestered to join the team by Frankie's dad.

•   •   •

“This is great,” said Don McLeod when he saw Hec's pictures on Monday morning.

“Given Hec started the whole fight, it's a wonder he didn't end up in the infirmary like some of the players,” Rob told them.

“You should take him with you more often,” Don said.

Once more the shinty team starred in the
Gazette
headlines, and once more Mr. Frank Urquhart and his wife were the talk of the community. And once again Hector was in trouble with Nurse Urquhart.

C
oach Frank Urquhart was not a man who noticed his wife much. He always assumed his tea would be on the table at six o'clock every evening, the bills paid on time, the washing done and ironed, and that Mrs. Urquhart—Nurse Urquhart, as he frequently thought of her—would, in spite of the incident of the foot in the boot, continue to launder the shinty team shirts. Which she did.

But Nurse Urquhart had other ideas when it came to bringing up her son.

That was another reason Frankie was friends with Rob McLean. Neither minded the washing-up. Both of them spoke with their mothers in words of more than one syllable, and in complete sentences. And both enjoyed their mothers' stories: Rob's mother, Margaret, about her high-society days in Edinburgh; Frankie Urquhart's mother, Nurse Urquhart, of recounting the silly sayings of the pupils at the local schools and the ridiculous prejudices of some of the parents about health and hygiene and inoculations.

“They should know better,” was how she put it, “ 'specially with the polio scare.”

So when the two young men discussed Nurse Urquhart's state of mind, it was with fondness. And concern.

Frankie Urquhart had called asking if Rob had time for a coffee in the Castle Brae café.

Rob asked, “Is it raining?” unable to tell through the only window in the reporters' room, a window set so high, it reminded him of his Victorian primary school, where the architectural principle was never to set windows allowing pupils to see out, in case the view distracted them.

“Not yet.”

“I'll see you in two minutes.”

From the window table, Frankie watched his friend run down the stairs and across the car park, the collar of his jacket turned up against a blustery wind that set Rob's hair waving like seaweed in an underwater kelp forest.

“Could you do a wee story about my new jazz club?” Frankie asked after the coffee arrived.

“Jazz club?”

Rob knew that his friend's taste ran more to jazz, but he had a fine appreciation of rock, particularly Elvis.

“It's at the top of Castle Street, down a close—but you'll never find it if you don't know,” Frankie said.

“Thon place?” Rob laughed. “It's a cellar with no windows burrowed into the hillside.”

“Aye, but I've had it done up, so it's a great place for pulling the birds. My idea is, one night jazz, one night blues, one night rock 'n' roll, but I might have to borrow your Dansette until we're more financial.”

Frankie grinned, and not for the first time, Rob saw from the glances of the females in the café that his old school chum and fellow devotee of most things musical from the U S of A was good-looking in a pop star kind of way, with great teeth and a great smile and very carefully chosen casual clothes.
No wonder he's star salesman in Arnotts' gentlemen's department,
Rob thought.

“I'll take a look, but it's a no to the Dansette. It's sure to disappear, and I couldn't survive without my music.” Rob tucked the
notes of the playbill in his jacket pocket. “How's your dad? Has he recovered from this business with the leg?” Rob asked, grinning at Frankie.

“His pride is sorely battered,” Frankie replied. “He's still getting no end of teasing at the shinty.” Frankie blew a long blast of cigarette smoke across the table, leaned back in his chair, and said, “No, it's my mother I'm worried about.”

Rob sensed there was something serious going on.

“She hasn't been herself the last couple o' months. Then the leg business—it really got to her.”

“Doesn't sound like your mother.” Mothers were not always people boys noticed—other than as a source of food. And clean clothes. They were not women; they were mothers.

But Mrs. Urquhart was also Nurse Urquhart. Rob remembered the brutal way she would grasp them by the hair and pull at the roots, checking for nits. The no-mercy way she would deal with any poor soul who was found with the wee beasties, the note they were given that said not to come back until the nits were gone. Then back at school, a further inspection, and if one nit, one solitary egg were found, further humiliation would descend on both child and the mother of the offender.

Tough as old boots,
had been Rob's mother assessment of Nurse Urquhart the one time when nine-year-old Rob was discovered harboring a bad batch of head lice.

“Your head is alive wi' the beasties,” Nurse Urquhart had pronounced, “and you from a good family, too.”

“I got them from Frankie,” Rob said, and he was supremely satisfied when Mrs. Urquhart checked her son and found that he too had them.

“Most likely he caught them from you,” she had said, and banned the boys from playing together until the nits were conquered, to no effect.

They laughed when Rob recounted the story. “I was always terrified of your mum, I can't imagine her scared of anything,” he finished.

“Aye, me too. Only . . .” Frankie gestured to the waiter for more coffees. “She had a wee accident two days ago. Fell off her bike, she says. But Mrs. Colquhoun across the road, her lass Jenny said a car hit my mother. It was pouring rain, and the driver, who must have known he hit something, he didn't stop. Mum's knee is bandaged, not much damage, gravel rash and the like on her hands and her knees, but she was really shaken, and the bike's a write-off. Jenny Colquhoun is saying it was deliberate, but she's only thirteen so no one pays her much attention.”

“What does your mother say?”

“That's just it, she's saying nothing . . . and you know how normally you can't get her to shut up.”

“That's all?” Rob saw his friend's face. “Sorry, I mean, what else happened?”

“Nothing.” Frankie stubbed out his cigarette. “But I know something is wrong.”

“Her age?” Neither Rob nor Frankie knew much about a woman's life cycle, but they knew there were times when there was nothing you could say or do without being in the wrong.

“Aye. That's likely it,” Frankie agreed even though in his bones, he knew there was more to it.

They let the subject rest because out the window and across the street they watched a very unusual person struggle with an umbrella that had turned inside out in the wind, before chucking it into a rubbish bin, then running across the road and straight into the Castle Brae café.

They watched her shake her raincoat at the door then take a table next to theirs. They listened as she ordered coffee and toast and eggs “lightly scrambled.”

“I'm not sure we're up to that,” the waiter told her. “How about a nice spaghetti bolognese?”

“For real?” she asked.

The waiter nodded towards his mother, a large, round woman dressed all in black. “Third-generation Scots and not one drop of her Calabrian blood diluted.”

Mae Bell laughed.
“Molto bene,”
she said.

“You speak Italian?” the waiter asked.

“New York Italian . . . only to order food,” came the reply.

Rob and Frankie were completely captivated. They were more than captivated when Mae Bell crossed her legs, the sheer nylons shimmering, making that swoosh, that singular sound that made Rob think of sex.

“Can I trouble you for a light?” She had a cigarette, a Lucky Strike, Rob noticed, in a holder, and was leaning towards Frankie. He produced a Zippo. Before he had a chance to open it and strike it up, she clasped a hand around his. “Can I see that?”

The badge of the USAF was engraved on the shiny silver surface.

“Oh my,” she drawled, “that was my late husband's squadron.”

“You must be Mrs. Bell.” Rob was trying not to stare. Unsuccessfully.

“Oh please, I'm not much older than you boys, call me Mae.”

A good ten years older, Rob calculated, but he said nothing.

“I got the lighter as a present when I arranged for a dance band to play at the air base,” Frankie explained. “I'm Frankie Urquhart, music promoter.”

“Pleased to meet you, Frankie.” She held out her hand. “And you are?”

“Rob McLean,
Highland Gazette
.”

“Joanne's colleague.” The cigarette remained unlit. The pasta arrived. Mae Bell excused herself, and when the waiter had
produced a sparkling white napkin, which no one had ever seen in the café before now, Mae tucked it into her cleavage and started to eat.

The young men turned away to allow her the privacy necessary to eat spaghetti, but were too awestruck to leave even though they both had to be back at work.

When Mae Bell pushed aside the plate and reached for a cigarette, they dawdled, taking time to pay the bill, taking time to say cheerio even though they normally would part with nary a word other than “See ya.”

“Bye, Mrs. Bell. Nice to meet you.”

“Hope to see you again.”

“It's been great to meet you.”

“Hope you enjoyed your meal.”

“See you again.”

“Cheerio.”

“Bye.”

“See you soon I hope.”

Falling over each other's sentences, hoping that the other would have the courage to offer a phone number, offer a tour of the town, a suggestion to meet up again, they left, waving through the window, taking in Mae Bell's smile, her wave back. They walked down the brae in a dwam, parting on the high street, neither saying much; Mrs. Mae Bell was like no one they had ever met before—but had dreamed of plenty.

•   •   •

Joanne had written a follow-up story on Robert Bell and the unsolved mystery of the plane that went missing. She found many articles about the accident in the archives, and her interview with Mae read well. Although short and in the Women's Page—human interest, McAllister called it—over the next weeks, it became a second talking point with the
Gazette
readers, reviving memories
of the search in the North Sea in atrocious weather, with nothing ever found of the plane or the men on board.

Then, to Joanne's chagrin, Mae Bell became communal property: with McAllister the connection was jazz; with Rob, stories of New York; with Frankie Urquhart it was love—
No,
Joanne corrected herself, lust—
an emotion I know all too well.

Is lust an emotion?
was her next thought.
I must ask Mae
. This thought annoyed her even more.
When do I have a chance to talk to Mae? She's always surrounded by her court of admirers. Court of admirers?

“Penny for them,” McAllister said as he came into the reporters' room.

“Is it a ‘court of admirers'?”

He laughed. “Are we talking about you? I hope not. I want you all to myself.”

It did not work as either a quip or a compliment. That innocuous phrase,
all to myself,
that inference of ownership, sent Joanne into a panic.

She stood. “I've an interview with a poacher whose defense in the magistrate's court is that all those named Fraser have a divine right to fish the waters of the Conon. The argument has not gone down well with the Fraser clan chief. Must dash.”

She was down the stairs and out into Castle Wynd before she remembered that the interview with the defendant was tomorrow.
But I knew that,
she told herself. Her heartbeat was loud; her breathing noticeable.
What's wrong with me?

A coffee would only increase her agitation, but her feet took her across the bridge and into Gino Corelli's café, coming to a halt at her favorite window table. But she moved to the back. Being on display in front of all the passersby was not what she needed. She took a table beneath the mural of Vesuvius painted in Neapolitan ice-cream colors, a mural her youngest daughter had christened Muriel.

She tasted the espresso, which she was teaching herself to like because it was McAllister's drink, and shuddered.

“Grappa, I put it in the coffee.” Gino was standing beside her and saw her face after her first swallow. “It is good for the sadness.”

“Sadness? What sadness?”

He said nothing, just patted her on the arm. His look was that of a dog owner saying,
Good puppy, good girl, there, there.

Panic she had to admit to. But the cause? She would need the emotional equivalent of the Rosetta stone to work that out.