Chapter Eleven
Perez had offered Sandy a lift back to Lerwick. ‘If you want to go back to town, that is. You’re too tired to drive. You can come back to Whalsay and collect your car another time.’ For a brief moment Sandy was tempted to leave Whalsay. Usually he did what Perez told him, not because he thought his boss was always right but because it was the easier course of action. And how good it would be to drive away and leave the mess surrounding his family behind. An afternoon’s sleep followed by a few pints with the boys in The Lounge in Lerwick and he’d feel fine again. What good was he doing on Whalsay anyway? His mother would deal with all the practical details of arranging a funeral for Mima and he was in no position to provide the reassurance Ronald needed.
But he told Perez he’d stay for another night on the island. It was an instinctive feeling that it was the right thing to do. His father wouldn’t have run away in this situation and ever since he was a boy, more than anything Sandy had wanted to be like his father. Now he saw Perez give a brief nod of approval too and that reinforced his sense that he’d made the right decision. He watched Perez drive into the ferry and waited until it had moved out of the harbour. He felt suddenly bereft.
His car was still on the jetty where he’d left it after driving down to meet his boss. He switched on the engine and the clock on the dashboard lit up. It wasn’t midday yet. It always amazed Sandy how much Perez could pack into a small space of time. If you met him you’d think the inspector was kind of slow. It was his way of thinking before he spoke so you knew that when the words came out they were just the ones he’d intended. But Perez wasn’t slow at all. There was a sort of magic in his asking the right questions the first time, picking up the clues in a situation, knowing when it was time to move on.
As he drove past the Pier House Hotel on his way back to Utra he saw that Ronald’s car was parked outside. Sandy jammed on the brakes, felt the car slide on the greasy road then pulled in too. Getting pissed at lunchtime wasn’t going to help the man. Sandy thought he might not have Perez’s brains but he knew that much.
The woman in the pink overall had finished cleaning the bar but the place still had that smell of last night’s beer mixed with furniture polish, the smell of bars everywhere before customers arrive and start drinking. Cedric Irvine stood polishing glasses. He’d owned the Pier House for all the time Sandy could remember. He’d served the boy his first under-age pint, winking as he slid it over to him. There’d never been a Mrs Irvine, just a series of live-in barmaids and housekeepers who, it was rumoured, satisfied all his needs. The skinny Glaswegian was the most recent. Nobody was ever quite sure what the relationship was between Cedric and these women. When one of the regulars got sufficiently drunk to ask, Cedric would only shake his head and say that gentlemen never spoke of these things. ‘And neither will you if you hope to set foot in this establishment again.’ That was how he spoke. Sandy thought there was something of the preacher about him.
Now Cedric looked up from his work and gave Sandy a smile of welcome that was more than professional. He nodded to the corner of the room, where Ronald sat in front of a pock-marked copper table. The man had finished his pint and was halfway through his whisky chaser.
‘He needs a friend,’ Cedric said. ‘It’s never a good thing drinking on your own. Not like that. Just drinking to get drunk.’
‘He feels dreadful.’
‘So he should. Mima was a good woman.’
‘It could have happened to any of the boys.’ Sandy had seen it before. The young men would get fired up on beer, then jump into cars and vans and roar across the island with their shotguns to try for rabbits or geese or anything else that took their fancy, as likely sometimes to hit each other as what they were aiming for. They were lucky there’d been no other accidents. On a number of occasions Sandy had been with them, whooping and cheering them on, behaving like a moron. It didn’t only happen in Whalsay. Whenever men got together and drank too much they made fools of themselves. Never again, he thought. How would he feel if he’d been the one to kill Mima? But he knew that if he were with a gang of his friends he’d get dragged along on other foolish escapades. He’d never been able to stand up to them.
Cedric had pulled Sandy a pint of Bellhaven. Ronald still hadn’t noticed that his cousin had come in. The whisky glass was empty now and he was staring out of the window into space.
‘Give me another pint for him,’ Sandy said. ‘Then I’ll take him away for you, before anyone else comes in and there’s a scene.’
He carried the pints across to the table. At last Ronald looked up. Sandy thought he’d never seen the man look so ill.
‘I thought we’d already done the wetting of the baby’s head.’
Ronald glared. ‘Leave the baby out of this.’
‘I take it Anna doesn’t know you’re here,’ Sandy said. ‘She’d kill you.’ He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken, but Ronald didn’t seem to have heard them.
‘I can’t see how it could have been me.’ It came out as a cry. He’d changed into a shirt and a tie. Perhaps it was his way of paying respect, but it made Sandy see him as a different person. The sort of person Ronald might have become if he’d stayed on at the university for that last year and got his degree. Someone who worked in a museum or a library. When they’d talked about careers at primary school Ronald, to the astonishment of the rest of the class, had announced that he wanted to be an archivist. Where had that come from? Not from Jackie and Andrew.
Ronald continued: ‘There were times when I was reckless with a gun, but not last night. Last night I knew where I was and what I was doing. But it must have been me. No one else was out there last night. Am I going mad, Sandy? Help me here. What can I do?’
‘We can get you away from the Pier House for a start,’ Sandy said. ‘It’ll do no good for people to see you in here so soon after what happened. Finish your pint and I’ll take you back.’
Ronald looked at the full glass, pushed it away from him so the beer slopped on to the table. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be drinking at all. I’ll give it up. It won’t bring Mima back but I’ll not do that to anyone else. I’ve got the bairn to think about now. And it’ll make Anna happy. Maybe. You have it Sandy.’
But suddenly Sandy couldn’t face the beer either. They walked out of the bar leaving the glasses untouched on the table.
They stood together at the cars. The mist was still so low that they couldn’t see much beyond the harbour wall. The fishing boats with their huge winches and aerials turned into the silhouettes of sea monsters with spiny backs and serrated jaws.
‘What’s Anna up to?’ Sandy asked.
‘She’s at home. The midwife was going to visit. I’d only be in the way.’ Sandy was surprised by the bitterness in Ronald’s voice and wondered what it must be like to live with a woman who made you feel that way. His mother was desperate for him to marry someone with brains and an education but that was the last thing Sandy wanted.
Ronald continued. ‘I wish I could be at work myself. Usually I hate it, but just now it would be good to have a few weeks in the Atlantic after the white fish.’
Sandy couldn’t understand that either – working at something you hated, even if the money was so good. He supposed there’d been pressure from Ronald’s family for him to take his place in the boat. And how would they be able to afford that huge house without the money it brought in?
‘You don’t mean that, not with the baby just home.’ Though Sandy thought babies brought out the worst in women. All the female relatives would be crowding into the bungalow, cooing and gurgling, sharing stories of labour and the cowardice of men. He could understand why Ronald had taken himself off on his own with a gun the night before.
‘Will you be OK on your own?’ Something about the way Ronald was talking made Sandy picture him holding a shotgun under his chin and blowing his head off. It couldn’t happen that way, of course – Ronald’s shotgun was in Perez’s boot on the way to Lerwick – but in Shetland suicide wasn’t hard to arrange if you wanted it badly enough. There were cliffs to jump from, water to drown in.
‘Sure.’
‘Do you want to come back to Utra for a meal? You could ask Anna to come too. Mother would be delighted to see the bairn.’
‘And have Auntie Evelyn reliving what happened last night and enjoying every minute of it? No thanks.’
‘We could take a drive up to the golf course. Just for a laugh. Catch up on the old times.’
For a moment Sandy thought Ronald was tempted, but the man shook his head and got into his car. He was probably close to the limit for driving, but this wasn’t the time for a lecture. He followed his cousin as far as the turning to the Clouston bungalow and then continued on his way home.
In the yard outside his house he met his father on his way in for the midday meal. All the time Sandy was growing up Joseph Wilson had worked as a joiner for Duncan Hunter, a Shetland businessman. Joseph had put up with being treated like shite and ordered around as if he was an apprentice and not a craftsman, just for the sake of a pay packet at the end of the week. There’d been times when he had to stay out in Lerwick to get the work finished. The croft had been a kind of hobby, fitted in after the regular work was done. There’d been little time left over to spend with his sons.
A couple of years before, Joseph had given up working for Hunter and taken on the croft full-time. Sandy wasn’t sure now how he managed for money – Evelyn had never worked – but that wasn’t the sort of thing he could discuss with his parents. The new arrangement seemed to be working out fine. Evelyn liked the idea of having a husband who was his own boss and Joseph had always been happier as a farmer than a builder. Maybe they’d managed to save some money when Joseph was working for Hunter.
Recently Perez had taken up with Hunter’s ex-wife and Sandy didn’t know what to make of that. He teased Perez about having a woman in his life again and Fran seemed a fine woman, but in his opinion anyone who’d been involved with Hunter was trouble.
It was lambing time and Joseph had been up on the hill to check his ewes. Many of the islanders didn’t bother so much. Mostly the hill ewes could manage on their own, and now there was no subsidy for headage it didn’t even matter if they lost a few lambs. But Joseph was conscientious and this time of year he walked miles.
His father had heard the car on the track and waited for him outside the house. ‘Aye, aye.’ This was Joseph’s form of greeting to the whole world. Sandy thought if the Prime Minister arrived on his land he’d say the same thing. He stood at the kitchen door watching as Sandy crossed the yard. He was wearing a blue boiler suit splashed with creosote.
Sandy couldn’t think what to say. He wished he had Perez’s gift with words. Now phrases floated around in his head and all he could come up with was ‘We’ll miss her. I’m sorry.’ He touched his father’s shoulder, which was as close as they got to physical contact. He knew Joseph had adored Mima. Once Sandy had heard his mother say to his big brother Michael, exasperated because of something Mima had done, ‘She’s a poisonous old witch. I’m sure she’s put a spell on your father.’ And sometimes that was how it seemed. Joseph would drop everything to fix a slate on her roof or hoe her vegetable patch.
A brief moment of pain crossed his father’s face, then he made an attempt at a smile. ‘Aye well, maybe that’s the way she would have chosen to go. She never minded a bit of drama. It would have been quick. She’d never have been able to stand illness, hospital.’ He paused. ‘I thought she had a good few years yet in her though.’
That was his father’s way. Things he couldn’t change he made the best of. He said there was no point in taking on the world. He’d never win. Besides, he had Evelyn to do that for him. All Joseph needed to keep him happy was football on the television and a few beers in the evening. He’d worked all over Shetland for Duncan Hunter. Now he’d be quite content if he never left Whalsay again. Evelyn had always been ambitious on his behalf, with her plans for the house, the croft and her sons. Sometimes Sandy thought she might be happier if she moved away, to Edinburgh maybe, to be close to Michael and his family, that Whalsay was just too small for her.
Inside the house she seemed content enough now. Perhaps like Mima she enjoyed a bit of drama, needed it to make her feel useful. She was sitting in the old chair, feeding the lamb from a bottle. Before she realized they were there, she was talking to it in nonsense language as if it was a baby. When she saw them she put it back in the box, ran her hands under the tap and stood at the Rayburn to stir a pan of soup. ‘Reestit mutton,’ she said. ‘I had some in the freezer and I know you like it. I was thinking of Mima while I was heating it through. It was her favourite too.’ Joseph went to wash at the sink. She came up behind him, turned him to face her and pecked his cheek. Sandy was still taking his shoes off. ‘Are you ready for some lunch too, son? Has that nice inspector of yours gone?’
‘He’s away back to Lerwick to see the Fiscal. I’ll take a small bowl of soup.’
‘He thinks a lot of you, I can tell. I’m proud of both my boys.’
‘Have you told Michael about Mother?’ Joseph sat himself at the table, laid his hands flat on the oilskin cloth. The fingers were fat and red. Sandy remembered again the day they’d struggled to kill the pig, the noise that seemed to drill into his skull before the poleaxe silenced the animal, the blood.
‘I rang him at home this morning but he’d already left for work. Some early meeting. I caught Amelia as she was on her way out and left a message with her for him to call me. He was on the phone a few minutes ago. She’d only just managed to get through to him.’
