Scrap Metal (5 page)

I must have been turning over answers in my mind since the old man’s sudden return. I hoped so, anyway—the lie was ready on my lips, and I didn’t like to think I’d come up with it spontaneously. I looked at Cameron. I had no idea what I was doing, no idea if he would pick up the line I was about to throw. “I forgot to tell you. I got an email off the agricultural college in Dumfries. They wanted to send a student for a bit of work experience—I forgot he was arriving today.”

Harry sat back in his chair. He pulled out the Aga drawer and briefly examined the ewe lamb still prostrate inside it then pushed it back in with a grunt that raised a painful lump in my throat. “Work experience?”

“Yeah. We’ve had students from them before. I thought it would be okay to say yes, but—”

“Student or not, he’ll still want paying. Did it slip your mind we turned our last hand off for want of wages yesterday?”

You turned him off, not me.
I’d have said it if not for the trace of tears in the old sod’s eyes. He’d never wept for his daughter or grandson any more than I had. I was suddenly so bloody sick of him, his farm, the life he’d obliged me to lead, that I didn’t care if he bought my story or not. I couldn’t even finish it. I’d pack up and leave with Cameron, if…

“Er, no, sir. I don’t need to be paid.”

Harry and I both jumped. Cameron had taken a cautious step or two towards us and was standing with his hands in his pockets. He looked nervous but resolute. Respectful, too—I wondered who had last accorded Harry a
sir.
I was glad I’d given him the clothes. He could just about pass for a would-be shepherd.

“It’s a new scheme,” he went on diffidently. “Because of the recession. We work for free if you let us have bed and board. I know you don’t know me, so…I’ll kip down in the barn if you like.”

Harry took him in. I could see the cogs whirring clearly, as if his pragmatic old skull had been made of glass. Inbred suspicion of strangers, and of any innovation I ever suggested, fighting it out against the prospect of free labour… The struggle didn’t last long. “Work without pay, will ye?”

Cameron nodded.

“Well, more fool you. Damned if you’ll sleep in any barn, though, with this rattling ould hulk of a house and all its bedrooms wasting heat.”

That was rich. “You don’t heat the bedrooms,” I reminded him, and copped a terrible look. I shut up. I’d gained my point, hadn’t I? “Sorry, Granda.”

“You want to be. Your brother never would have cheeked me in front of a stranger, lad, and I’ll tell you now, you’re no’ fit to hold a—”

“Nichol?”

Harry glanced up angrily at the interruption. I was too busy feeling sick about the way his speech would have ended to react at all, but Cameron had come right up to the Aga and was looking into the open drawer on my side. “You know the… You know the dead lambs?”

“Aye? What about them?”

“Do they…twitch around a bit, then, after they die?”

What was he on about? “No,” I said bitterly. “They pretty much stay still, like other dead things.”

“Then should you take another look at that one?”

I sprang up. Harry and I were well off our form this morning. Sentiment aside, the beasts were our livelihood, and we’d normally have watched much longer for signs of revival. Cameron was right. The poor Leodhas tup was kicking in his tray, little hooves scrabbling. “Bloody hell!”

I reached to retrieve him, but Harry shouldered me out of the way. “Shift,” he commanded, and I gave place to him gladly. Sick of him I might be, but his misery had cut me like a blade, and it was good to see the capable clutch of his big hands around the lamb. He pointed a finger at Cameron. “You, whatever your name is—lad—student—fetch me the Quick Start. Now!”

I stood, blocking Harry’s view of him. Cameron was backing up, his face a panicked blank. “White tub in the corner,” I mouthed at him, giving him a little shove in the right direction. “Go on. It’s marked.”

He ran for it. Harry took the tub from his hand. I didn’t need instructions—already I’d fetched one of our sterilised bottles from the pan on the hob, and I held it while Harry poured in a dollop of thick white syrup from the tub. Nothing more Catholic than a convert, and he swore by the stuff now after years of resistance, forgetting, I imagined, that I’d been the one to bring a batch home and drag twin lambs back from the edge of weary death beneath his suspicious gaze.

“Teat,” he demanded, gripping the tup between his knees, and I screwed on the rubber nipple and stood clear. Stubborn or not, he was a powerful figure in the life-and-death dramas around here, like the doctor in a mumming play, and he liked to have elbow room and sole charge for his resurrections…

But he looked up and smiled. Not at me—at Cameron, who had backed off as well, pale with the effort of keeping up. “You, lad,” he said. “Student. Sit down.”

“His name’s Cameron, Granda.”

“Whatever. I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off this tup so soon, and nor should you, Nichol Seacliff. I’m glad somebody was watching on. Here,” he said, hoisting the lamb across to poor Cameron, who had sat down obediently in the chair opposite. “You have the first feed of it.”

Okay. We were probably sunk. God knew it wasn’t rocket science to shove a bottle tip into the mouth of a lamb, but many simple things were mysteries first time round, and this was obviously an absolute first for the bewildered town boy. He tried gallantly to deal with the honour bestowed on him. I tried to help, getting behind Harry’s shoulder and offering a mime of how to hold the flailing little beast, how to lift its head to get it to take the teat. But the lamb, having decided to live, was now launched into the next stage of its natural order of business, which was to get itself onto its feet and away with its mother and the flock out of the reach of wolves. It fought and kicked, sending the bottle flying.

“Ach!” Harry exclaimed, after I’d retrieved the bottle and he’d watched another failed attempt, the expensive syrup spraying everywhere. “For a farming student, laddie, you have’nae a clue!”

Cameron looked up. “Sorry, sir.” He glanced at me as if for inspiration, though I could only shrug. “Er…we’ve only done theory of lambs so far, is the thing. The practical’s next term.”

“What?” Harry frowned, and I was sure the jig was up. He’d be royally pissed off. He didn’t like strangers, and he’d never countenance a lie. I got ready to step between them. But after a moment he shook his head. The gesture was familiar to me—sad bewilderment at a world going headlong to the dogs. “Well, I don’t know how they think to turn out shepherds that way, boy. You learn by doing. I’ll show you when I’ve got more time. Here—give that to me. I’ll get it started in the barn then put it to that ewe that’s fostering yours, Nichol.”

He stumped away. His sheepdogs were waiting for him by the door. They hadn’t barked at Cameron, but they had been distracted, and they followed Harry outside with lowered ears and tight-tucked tails. They took the loss of one of their charges with every sign of human shame.

And we had lost one. I took a last look at the female. She was gone beyond retrieval, though, her little body no more than a shell. Sorrow and laughter fought for room in my chest.

I turned to my visitor, who was still sitting by the fireside, looking as if he might faint. “Cameron, for God’s sake—
theory
of lambs?”

“It was all I could think of.”

“I can’t believe he swallowed it.”

“I didn’t want to lie to him. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”

“No, of course not. I didn’t mean to chuck you in like that.” I frowned, wondering at his intensity. He was watching in the direction Harry had gone, his eyes bleak. “I’m sorry. That story was all
I
could think of.”

“An agricultural student?” He returned his attention to me, a tiny smile beginning. “They wouldn’t even let me take the school guinea pig home at the weekends. That’s how much I know about livestock.”

“You know now what to do with hypothermic lambs.”

“Yeah. Why’d you do it for me, Nichol?”

“I wanted to give you a chance. You don’t have to keep running. Stay here for a bit if you want.”

“I thought you said this was a bad place to hide.”

“You won’t be hiding. You’ll be our trainee farmhand from Dumfries. If nobody tailed you out from Brodick, I doubt anyone will find you here. And God knows we could use the help.”

“Even from someone like me?”

“Well, you come cheap. And like Harry said—we learn by doing.”

I hadn’t meant it to sound seductive. I couldn’t even work out why it had, except that the sight of him, there by the fireside in his borrowed clothes, splashes of the Quick Start still on his face, made my heart race and my throat tighten. Oh, and he hadn’t missed the softened little scrape in my voice.

He got up and came to stand in front of me. “None of my business,” he said gently, “but I get the feel I won’t be bumping into any of your girlfriends around here.”

I held his gaze. It wasn’t a challenge, just a question. When I thought about his reasons for wanting to know, a heat began to kindle in my spine. “That’s right.”

“About it not being my business?”

“About the girlfriends.”

He nodded. “Was that difficult, growing up around here?”

“Was it difficult where you come from?”

“Sometimes.”

We stood together quietly. Outside, the island day was gathering pace—the first day of spring, it felt like. Harry had left the porch door open. Scents of warming earth made their way in on the air. In a different world—an Eden swept clean of pain, of duty, family ties and loss—I’d have taken this stranger by the hand, walked out with him to the cliff-top meadow where the turf grew springy and rich, and lain down with him. As it was, I had work to do. “Will you stay, then?”

“I want to. I don’t know if I can carry it off. I’ve only got the clothes I arrived in and these ones you gave me, for a start.”

“Aye. We’d better get you your own or Harry will notice. I tell you what…” Reluctantly I turned away from him and went to the drawer in the huge oak dresser where I kept cash for deliveries and daily expenses. “Go and get yourself kitted out. Don’t go back into Brodick—there’s a bus on the hour that goes west of here into Blackwaterfoot. They’ve got a decent farm store.”

“All right. You don’t need to give me money, though. I’ve got a few quid left.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know—a tenner or so, I reckon.”

I smiled. “That won’t get you far, you townie. You need two sets of overalls, waterproofs, a couple of changes of warm clothes that don’t look like they came from Topshop. Boots and gloves I can give you, but you’ll need this much at least.” I held him out some notes. “Don’t worry. It’s just a loan.”

“Why would you trust me?”

I shrugged. His question had come out hoarsely, and he had flushed up. Maybe I was being stupid, but an old faith was stirring inside me, a willingness to lean on the tides of the universe instead of swimming desperately against them.

I put the money into his hand. “Why would I not?”

Chapter Three

I might have done nothing more than aid the flight of a criminal. I knew that, and about a tenth of me was resigned to never seeing Cameron or my money again.

The rest of me felt wonderful. I couldn’t account for the change. All right, I’d had my fill of sleep for once, but that hardly explained the energy surging through me as I set about my daily routine. Occasional glimpses of my cat, darting about among the sheds and outbuildings, kept refreshing my sense of miracle.
The luck of the farm…
I should have told Harry about her return. He was off now at the Campbeltown sheep mart, but the news would cheer his superstitious Gaelic soul when he came back. I wondered how many we’d be sitting down to dinner tonight. We’d stopped sitting down at all over the last weeks, just grabbing what we could on the run. That was bad. I decided to get a casserole going once I’d finished my work outside.

First I had to do the midday round of feeds. Harry had taken our ancient Toyota truck to the mart, leaving me the quad, so that was quickly accomplished, a short exuberant roar around our pastures with bales of fresh hay in the trailer and new blocks for the salt licks. I’d thought we were out of those but a glance into one of the sheds had revealed a last batch of them. Dropping them from our shopping list had been a false economy—the lactating ewes needed the minerals, and the overall health of the flock had deteriorated since we’d stopped putting them out.

Back at the farmhouse, I cleaned out every pen and stall in the barns without pause for breath. The change in the weather had transformed everything. I could shed my layers and stride about the yards in a T-shirt and jeans, sun warming the back of my neck. I felt as if I’d been limping head down through a rainstorm for as long as I could remember.

I was lying underneath the second quad bike, trying to figure out why it had died on us, when I heard the approaching engine. It was too soon for Harry to be home, and we weren’t due any deliveries. I stood up, wiping my oily hands on a rag. We very seldom got passing visitors.

Oh, great. There on the track that led down from the main road, jouncing and rolling on its ruts, was the white police 4x4 from Lamlash. The only man privileged to drive that was the last one on the island I wanted to see. I thought about a dive for cover, but it was too late. He’d spotted me and was raising a hand in greeting.

It wasn’t that I hated him. In fact it was impossible for me even to dislike him, and I’d got used to thinking of him as PC Archie Drummond, our friendly local bobby, carefully burying memories of the passionate affair we’d carried on until he’d woken up one morning with the urge to join the police. He’d decided the Strathclyde Constabulary would like him better without a gay lover on his bio sheet, and that had been that. I hadn’t had a leg to stand on. I’d accepted my offer from Edinburgh uni, so I was leaving too. I just hadn’t known that the changes would mean the end of my life’s first and only love.

Hadn’t seen that one coming at all. I cringed inwardly when I recalled my shock, my protests. Jesus, I’d made a fool of myself. Of course it all felt faint and far away to me now, but still I found it hard to play it cool around Archie. I’d been living like a hermit for the past twelve months and had scarcely seen him. It might have been nice if he’d arrived when I was striding through the meadows with the wind in my freshly washed hair instead of here in the yard, daubed from head to foot in motor oil and manure. You know how it is with ex-lovers—you like to look as if you’re doing okay. Just ordinary pride, not at all a desire to shove down their throats what they’re missing…