The Ecliptic (35 page)

Kerr went off to fetch his car, leaving me in the hush of the vestibule with my suitcase at my heels. Before I wrote my message in the book, I turned back through the pages to check the tenor of
the comments—I had never written a condolence before and did not want to draw too much attention to myself. There were a lot of platitudes:
Deepest sympathies. Always in our hearts. So
many memories.
I wanted mine to be more personal. As I searched for a clear space to write, I saw that a page had been turned inwards—creased so that one stumpy half jutted outwards from
the spine. I unpicked it. There was another short message there, and a signature:

‘Are we all set then?’ said Kerr.

I did not even realise he was behind me.

He jangled his car keys. ‘We could walk it, mind, but seeing as you’ve got your case . . .’ And he stooped to lift it for me. ‘You all right, love? You’re
shivering.’

It was definitely Jim’s handwriting. My heart was shuddering and so was my jaw, but I managed to get the words out: ‘Do you know if Jim was here earlier?’

‘Who?’ Kerr said.

I showed him the page.

‘Never heard of him,’ he said. ‘Who is he?’

I held the book tight. ‘A friend of mine.’

Kerr nodded. He eyed the tome of condolences vised against my chest. ‘You bringing that along for Mrs H? Good thinking.’

The Colquhoun Arms was less than half a mile from the church, back on the road where the bus had dropped me. Beyond the windscreen of Kerr’s Cortina, the outlying hills
were yellowed by sunshine. Low clouds seeped across the birdless sky. The treetops softly stirred. We drove in silence. The squat grey cottages of Luss smudged beside Kerr’s head. When he
wheeled into the parking space, I jumped out of the car so fast I almost left my case on the back seat. ‘Steady, love,’ he said. ‘It’s open bar.’

I hauled my suitcase across the car park and dumped it by the coat racks. One corner of the pub had been roped off for the function. A huddle of glum-faced men in black were sitting at a long
table with sandwiches, supping pints and rolling whisky in short glasses. There was no sign of Jim Culvers. I checked the corridors, the snug, the dark ends of the place. I peered into the Gents,
but there was just a bald old fellow standing at the urinal. The barmaid saw me coming out and said, ‘It’s the other one, hen. We need to change that sign. I keep telling
’em.’

Mrs Holden was in a wingback near the fireplace, clutching a tissue. A grey-haired lady was crouched beside her. Approaching them, it occurred to me that they must have been twins. They had
equally flat noses and high foreheads, and they both turned to me with the same mannequin expressions as I hovered near them, waiting to speak. ‘Mrs Holden,’ I said. ‘You probably
don’t know me, but I knew your husband. He was my favourite teacher. I’m just so sad to lose him.’ It came out as ingenuously as I hoped it would. The sister stood up and said,
‘I’ll get you that brandy, Mags, OK?’ She left us alone.

Mrs Holden hung a stare on me, lids twitching. ‘So good of you to come,’ she said. And she had to bite on her lip to keep from crying. ‘Were you in—’ She cleared
her throat. ‘I’m sorry. Were you in his mural class?’

‘I was. I came up from London as soon as I heard.’

‘Oh, that’s really good of you.’ She gulped something down. ‘And what is it you do now?’

‘I’m an artist,’ I told her.

‘You make a living that way, do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘A good one?’

I did not know if it was right to smile, but I did. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh, how lovely. He was always so proud of his students. Did you know Geoff Kerr? He’s here somewhere, I think.’

‘Yes, I just got a lift with him.’

‘A good lad, Geoff. He’s been such a help.’ Mrs Holden sniffed in a long breath. And, seeing the condolence book under my arm, she said, ‘Is that for me?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry—of course.’ I gave it to her. ‘I was wondering if you knew where I could find an old friend of mine. Jim Culvers. He was at the service, but I
can’t see him here.’

Idly turning through the book, she said, ‘Who?’

‘He’s another student of Henry’s.’ I showed her the page with Jim’s message.

She moved her eyes over the words, but there was no glint of recognition in them. ‘James Culvers. No. I’m sorry. I don’t know who that is.’ And she paused, considering
the empty fireplace. ‘There was an old student of Henry’s renting the cottage last summer, but I don’t recognise the name. Culvers—I’d remember that. This
fella’s name began with a B. Bailey, or Bradley, or something like that. Henry never got me involved.’

‘The cottage?’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘His father’s place. He liked to come out and paint there sometimes. Then his hands got too sore, and he preferred having the money is his pocket. We
planned on selling, but it wouldn’t be worth a lot now.’ When I asked for the address, she wafted her hand. ‘Ach, it’s not far. Get to the pier and turn left. It’s the
only house on the water that’s not been looked after—you can’t miss it. What was your name again, love, did you say?’

‘Elspeth.’

‘Elspeth what?’

‘Conroy.’

‘I’ll keep an eye out for it,’ she said. ‘In the papers.’

I touched her hand. The skin felt thin as a cobweb. ‘Take care, Mrs Holden.’

‘Aye, you too. Thanks for coming.’

It was one harsh winter away from a wreck—a simple stone cottage with a pitched slate roof, so bearded with moss it was already bowing. There was a pale craquelure on the
window frames, hay-coloured, moulting. The gutters were shot. The door glass was patched up with tape. A trampled path meandered up to the house, away from the brow of the loch, where the
steel-blue water roiled quietly and a clutch of white sloops lilted on their moorings. I walked up the slope, skimming the waist-high grass with my palm, until I came to a doorstep, half painted
black. There were old net curtains at the windows, dishes on the outer sill with food scraps: brown-bread crusts and pickle, a saucer ringed with coffee. But there was no sign of movement inside. I
knocked several times and nobody answered.

There was no letterbox to peer through, and the windowpanes were coated in a sooty grime that made it difficult to see beyond the nets. I put my case down and side-stepped through the weeds. At
the back of the house was a small garden, overrun with nettles, and a dank wooden outhouse. Behind it, a bank of firs, and two great hummocks pushing at the clouds. There was just one downstairs
window, looking into the kitchen—a newspaper was on the table, but I could not read the headlines or the date. If the place was lived in, it was lived in sparely. The tap was dripping, a
dried-up dishcloth spread over it. I could not think what I should do. Soon, I found my hand was reaching for the door. The handle turned, the latch came away. It was easy. The hinges squealed as
the door opened. I waited, pondering the bareness of the kitchen. The tiles were scuffed by chair legs. The newsprint seemed bright, recent. I decided to go in.

But I was barely past the threshold when I heard his voice: ‘Never would’ve picked you for a burglar, Ellie.’ It came from directly behind me: slow, amused, admonishing.
Spinning round, my knuckles grazed the doorframe, but I did not feel the pain until later.

Jim was standing there in a black woollen jacket. He was holding a small basket of flowers. His face was tanned and shaven. I could see his breath steaming out. It was close enough to gather, to
bottle, to keep. ‘Why d’you look so afraid?’ he asked. ‘I’m not going to turn you in.’

‘Oh my God—
Jim
.’ It was all I could get out of me. ‘
Jim
.’ I stepped forward to hug him, and he did not move, accepting the embrace without
returning it. He held the basket aloft, protecting his flowers. Then, giving me one soft tap on the back, he said, ‘All right, all right, enough.’ He smiled at me apologetically, those
familiar big teeth still as gapped as ever. But there was such a newness about him, too. His hair was cut neatly and combed into runnels—it seemed hard as wicker. The skin was smooth about
his cheeks and it gave off a limey scent. He looked as sober as a child. ‘Go on inside,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get these into brine.’ When I did not budge, he said
again, ‘Go on. I can’t stand about all day. And you seem to ‘ve cut yourself a bad one, look.’ My knuckles were streaking blood.

He followed me into the kitchen, got the iodine from the cupboard. I sat down at the table. My head was in a daze, and I was shivering again. I could not tell if I was relieved to see him or
frightened of him leaving me. Dabbing a cloth into the iodine, he came and pressed it on my wound. ‘It’ll sting,’ he said, but I did not care. ‘Just let me take these
flowers in. I’ll only be a moment.’

The through-door from the kitchen was just a wall of beads like you might find at the back of a dreary restaurant. As he pushed through them, they swung and clattered, and I could see into the
room beyond. It was a bare shell with no carpet and only a wooden rocking chair for furniture. He had made it into a studio. Two narrow tables were arranged beside an easel with a board set up to
paint on.

I trailed after him. He was unscrewing the lid of a tall jar filled with cloudy water. The painting beyond him was only part-finished, but it appeared to show the dying blossoms of a cherry tree
scattered over flagstones. He tipped the flowers from his basket into the jar. ‘How’re the fingers?’ he asked, not turning to face me. When the lid was screwed tight, he shook the
jar vigorously, side to side.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s a process. Helps with the yield.’ And he stopped quaking the jar and put it on the table. He took a metal colander and a bucket from underneath its legs. Removing the lid
again, he poured the contents of the jar into the bucket, straining out the sodden flowers. He picked up the colander and began sorting through the petals, selecting only the pinkest, which he
placed on a wad of fabric to dry.

I said, ‘Can’t you stop all that for a second and talk to me?’

‘Sorry, it’s really quite time-sensitive. I just need another moment.’ He patted the flowers and folded them into the fabric, as though wrapping a parcel. ‘You might want
to close your ears.’ With the base of his fist, he thumped down several times on the parcel, and all of the brushes and tube paints on the table rattled like fine china. Then he scraped the
flowers into a mortar and started grinding. He turned to me, working the pestle, and looked over at the clock above the hearth. ‘Twenty minutes until this lot needs to come out,’ he
said. ‘That’s all the time I have for talking.’

I sensed that Jim’s account of things had been rehearsed so many times in his head over the years that he had learned how to hesitate at just the right moments in the
telling of it; when to stutter and stumble over details, which gaps to skim over and which joins to show. But I was simply glad to hear him speak. Too much time had elapsed without the sound of his
voice near me. I did not try to interrupt or scrutinise. I just sat in the rocking chair, watching the motions of his mouth as he formed the words. How much of what he told me was a falsehood I
could not tell, but if it hurt me less than the truth, I was willing to bear it.