The Man in the Moss (12 page)

           
What he needed was a neat, elegant opening line. Kind of
imagining - her general aura being so magical - that one would come naturally.

           
He carried his glass across, stood alongside her,
following her gaze around the overloaded walls.
           
He said, 'Uh ...'

           
And followed up with something so dumb he could only hope
to attribute it to the impact of fifteen-year-old malt on an uncultured brain.

           
'Impressive, huh?' he said.

           
She looked at him. Coldly. Looked at him like she was
thinking. Yeah, well you
would
have
to be impressed by this kind of Victorian shit. Where you come from, pal, this
most likely is what passes for ancient, right?
           
'After its fashion,' she said
mildly.
           
From the middle of a cluster
of people, the Earl was watching them. Or rather, watching
him
, because he was American and therefore could maybe buy this
place and everything else of its kind between here and Pitlochry many times
over.

           
The Earl was a sleek man, English all the way down to the
tip of his sporran. But the Earl wanted to be a real Celt and no doubt was
counting on the American wanting that too, all the way down to the deepest part
of his wallet.

           
A discreet buff-coloured card, handed to him several
weeks ago by his mother - who also, unfortunately, was his boss - had said:

                       
THE CELTIC BOND: A major conference of
politicians and
                       
poets, writers,
broadcasters and business people, to establish
                       
an international
support mechanism for the regeneration of a
                       
submerged European
culture. Hosted, at his Scottish family
                       
seat, by ...

           
'Shit,' he'd said in some dismay. 'You're kidding, aren't
you?'

           
She wasn't. Since she lost the use of her legs, the
single most important element in his mother's life had become her Scottish
ancestry. 'We are Celts, Mungo,' she'd say. 'Above all, never forget
that
.' By which she meant
her
side of the

family; hence he bore
her
family name rather than that of his
long-gone, long-forgotten father.

           
'If I can say this,' he said now, politely, trying to
recover some credibility, 'you don't seem too relaxed.'

           
'No?' She wore a long, black dress, very plain. He could
sense no perfume.

           
'I mean I can't imagine you'd be nervous about
performing.'
           
She wasn't looking at him. She
was still looking at the heads. Huge sets of antlers protruding from bleached
fragments of skull, all over three walls, from just above head-height to within
a couple of feet of the lavishly moulded ceiling.

           
'And I guess you aren't the nervous kind, anyway,' he
said. 'So ...'

 
Wherever you sat, the remains of three or four
dozen butchered stags were always in view. On the central wooden dais, where
she'd sit to sing, she'd probably feel herself constricted by some grisly
necklace of bone.

           
Gross.

           
'I
was just wondering,' s
he said at last, 'when it must have been clear he
wasn't going to go away, 'why people should be proud of being a Celt. Killing
things for fun and showing off about it.'

           
A good work popped up in the American's head, like
somebody had flashed him a prompt-card.
           
'Pantheistic,' he said. 'The
old Celts were highly pantheistic. So I'm told.'

           
'That means they had
 
respect
for animals,' she said
scornfully. She had a soft Scottish voice but not too much of an accent. 'A bit
like your Red Indians.'

           
'Native Americans.' He smiled. 'To be politically and
ethnically correct.' The smile was supposed to say, I may be devilishly
attractive, with my untamed curly black hair, this cool white tuxedo, thistle
in the buttonhole. But you can trust me. I'm a sincere guy. 'Can I get you
another drink?'

           
'No,' she said. 'No, thank you.'
           
'I ... ah ...' He hesitated.
'I have a couple of your albums.'

           
'Oh?' She didn't seem too interested. 'Which ones?'

           
'Well, uh, my favourite, I guess, is still the one you
did with The Philosopher's Stone. That'd be quite some years ago.'

           
'Oh.' She glanced away, as if looking for someplace else
to put herself.

           
'Uh, I also have your first solo album,' he said quickly.
'How I recognized you. From the sleeve. You haven't changed.'
           
'Oh, I've changed, believe me.
Look, I ...'
           
'You never did cut your hair,
though,' he said, urbanely displaying his knowledge of the album's prime cut.
           
'What?'

           
'"Never let them cut your hair,'" he quoted,
'"or tell you where ..." Listen, I ... I just wanted to say it's real
good to meet you ... Moira. No one said you'd be here. Makes me glad I came
after all.'

           
She said, 'I'm a last-minute replacement. For Rory
McBain. He's sick. We have the same agent.'

           
A flunkey needed to come past with a tray of drinks, and
he took the opportunity to manoeuvre her into a corner, unfortunately under two
pairs of huge yellowing antlers. He said, 'Listen, that album - with the Stone
- it had some magic.'
           
'He has bronchitis,' Moira
said.
           
'Huh?'

           
'Rory McBain.'

           
He smiled. 'See, when I hear you sing, it always sounds
to me like...'

           
'That album,' she said with an air of finality, 'was a
mistake. I was too young, too stupid, and I never should have left Matt
Castle's band.'
           
'Huh?'

           
She shook her head, wide-eyed, like she was waking up.

           
'Matt Castle?' He had his elbow resting on a wooden ledge
below another damned antlered skull.

           
'He was ... He was just the guy who taught me about
traditional music when I was a wee girl. Look, I don't know why I said that, I
...'

           
Her poise wavered. She looked suddenly confused and
vulnerable. Something inside of him melted with pure longing while something
else - something less admirable but more instinctive - tensed like a big cat
ready to spring. The album cover hadn't lied. Even after all these years, she
was sensational.

           
'Traditional music,' he said, looking into her brown
eyes. 'That's interesting, because that's all you do these days, right? You
used to write all your own songs, and now you're just performing these
traditional folksongs, like you're feeling there's something that old stuff can
teach you. Is that this, uh, Matt Castle? His influence?'

           
'No ... No, Matt was a long time ago, when I was in
Manchester. He ... Look, if you don't mind ...'
           
He was losing her. He couldn't
bear it. He tried to hold her eyes, babbling. 'Manchester? That's the North of
England? See, why I find that interesting, this guy was telling us at the
conference this afternoon, how the English are the least significant people -
culturally that is - in these islands. Unlike the Scottish, the Welsh, the
Irish, the English are mongrels with no basic ethnic tradition...'

           
She smiled faintly. 'Look, I'm sorry, I ---'

           
'See this guy, this Irish professor - McGann, McGuane? -
he said there was nothing the English could give us. Best they could do is
return what they took, but it's soiled goods. At which point this other guy,
this writer .... No, first off it was this Cornish bard, but he didn't make
much sense ...
then
, this writer -
Stanton, Stanhope? - he's on his feet, and is he
mad
...This guy's face is
white
.
I thought he was gonna charge across the room and bust the first guy, the
professor, right in the mouth. He's going, Listen, where I come from we got a
more pure, undiluted strain of, uh, heritage, tradition ...than you'll find
anywhere in Western Europe. And the guy, this Stanfield, he's from the North
...'
           
Moira Cairns said, 'I'm sorry,
I really do have to make a phone call.'

           
And she turned and glided out of the doorway, like the
girl in the Irish folksong who went away from this guy and mov'd through the
fair.

           
' ...the North of England,' the American said to the
stag's head.

           
This wasn't a new experience for him, but it was
certainly rare. You blew it, he told himself, surprised.

She could feel him watching
her through the doorway, all the way down the passage.
           
Was he the one?

           
She took a breath of cool air. The man was a fanatic.
Probably one of those rich New Yorkers bankrolling the IRA. Surely there was
some other unattached female he could find to sleep with tonight. Why were
fanatics always promiscuous?

           
And was he the one whose examination she could feel all
over her skin, like she was being touched up by hands in clinical rubber
gloves?

           
'Phone?' she said to a butler-type person in the
marble-tiled hallway.

           
'Next to the drawing room, madam, I'll take you.'
           
'Don't bother yourself, I'll
find it.'
           
Dong.

           
She'd found herself, for no obvious reason, while this
smoothie American was trying to come on to her, hearing the name Matt Castle,
then saying it out aloud apropos of nothing ... and then ...
           
Dong.

           
This was the
dong
.
The hollow chime. Not the link, not the
ping.

           
Aw, hey, no, please ...

           
The phone turned out to be in the room where she'd left
her guitar, where it would be safe - the black case lying in state, like a
coffin, across two Jacobean chairs. Safe here, she'd thought, surely. This is a
castle. But she'd take it with her when she'd made her call.

           
She stood in front of the phone, picked it up and put it
back a couple of times. She didn't know who to ring.

           
Malcolm. If in doubt, call Malcolm. She was planning,
anyway, to strangle the bastard for tonight. 'You'll enjoy it,' he'd insisted.
'You'll find it absolutely fascinating. Rory's mortified.'

           
She rang him at home in Dumbarton. 'Malcolm,' she said,
'I may never convince myself to forgive you for this. I may even cast about in
the shark-infested waters you inhabit for a new agent.

           
He didn't say a word. Had he heard all this before from
her? More than once? Was she becoming querulous? Creeping middle age? She felt
tired, woozy. She shook herself, straightened her back, raised her voice.

           
'Listen, there are so-called Celts here not only from
Ireland and Wales and Brittany, but from Switzerland and Italy - with Mafia
connections, no doubt - and America and some wee place nudging up to Turkey.
And they are, to a man, Malcolm - they are a bunch of pretentious, elitist,
possibly racist wankers.'

           
'Racism?' Malcolm said. 'I thought it was about money. EC
grants. Cultural exchanges. More EC grants ...'

           
'Aye, well ...'

           
'Is
it not a good fee for you?'

           
'Is
it the same fee as Rory's fee would have been?'

           
'Oh,
Moira, come now ...'

           
'Forget
it. Listen, the real reason I disturbed you on the sabbath ...'

           
'Not
my sabbath, as it happens.'

           
' ...
is my answering machine is on the blink and I suspect someone's trying to get
hold of me, and it's no' my daddy because I called him.'