The Man in the Moss (18 page)

           
For just a few seconds, the dun-coloured sky disappeared
as the Dobermans rose massively and simultaneously into the air. And then they
were on her, both heads into her exposed face, hot breath pumping and the
great, savage teeth.

           
'Oh, my God!' Moira shrieked as the rough tongues sliced
through her make-up. 'Do you guys know what this bloody stuff cost?'

           
She threw an arm around each of the dogs, trapping the
four big front paws to her tweed jacket, and they all staggered together
through the gate and on to the site, knocking over an empty, grey plastic
dustbin.

           
The elderly man in the black trilby caught the bin as it
fell. 'Moira!,' he yelled. 'Hey!'

           
'Donald,'
Moira said, arms full of black and gold paws. 'You all right?'

           
'Well, damn.' He pulled his hat off. 'We wisny expecting
ye today, hen, the Duchess didny say ...'
           
'That's because she doesn't
know,' Moira said. 'I hope she's not away from her van ... Down, now ...'
           
The dogs obediently sat at her
feet. 'Ye've still got the way, all right,' Donald said admiringly.

           
'They've grown. Again. I swear I've never seen Dobermans
this big. What d'you feed them on?
           
Donald didn't smile. 'Public
health officials.'

           
'My daddy,' she reminded him gently, "was a public
health official.'

           
'Aye, I know. But your daddy wisny like the hard-faced
bastards they send 'round these days.' Donald turned his head and shouted at a
woman pegging baby-clothes to a washing line outside a lilac-coloured caravan.
           
'Hey, Siobhan, the Duchess,
she in now?'

           
'Oh ... sure' The woman stumbled and dropped a nappy in a
puddle. She picked it up, wrung out the brown water and hung it on the line.
'Leastways, I haven't seen no red carpet goin' down today.'

           
'Tinkers,' Donald said disparagingly. 'They're all bloody
tinkers here now, 'cept for the few of us.'

           
Moira followed him and the dogs through the site, with
its forty-odd vans on concrete hard-standings and its unexpectedly spectacular
views of the Ayrshire coast. It might have been a holiday caravan site but for
the washing lines full of fluttering clothes and the piles of scrap and all the
kids and dogs.

           
They passed just one perfect old Romany caravan, bright
red and silver, originally designed for horses but with a tow-bar now. A man
with a beard and an earring sat out on the step whittling chunks out of a hunk
of dark wood. He wore a moleskin waistcoat trimmed with silver. Moira stared at
him, amazed. 'Who the hell's that?'

           
Donald turned his head and spat. One of the Dobermans
growled. 'Oh,' Moira said. 'I see.'

           
'Bloody hippies. Call 'emselves New Age gypsies. Wis a
time this wis a
select
site. All
kindsa garbage we're gettin' now, hen.'

           
He stopped at the bottom of six concrete steps leading to
the apex of the site, a flat-topped artificial mound with the sides ranked into
flowerbeds.

           
Nothing changes, Moira thought. Wherever she's living
it's always the same.

           
Evergreen shrubs, mainly laurel, sprouted around the base
of the shining silver metal palace which crowned the mound like the Mother Ship
from
Close Encounters
. The old man
mounted the bottom step. 'Hey, Duchess!'

           
It wasn't what you'd call a traditional Romany caravan.
Few like it had been seen before on a statutory local authority gypsy site.
Only movie stars on location lived quite like this.

           
Donald stayed on the bottom step, the Dobermans silent on
either side of him. There were antique carriage lamps each side of the door, a
heavy door of stained and polished Douglas fir, which slid open with barely a
sigh.

           
She came out and stood frailly in the doorway, a soft
woollen evening stole about her bony shoulders. The day was calm for the time
of year, no breeze from the sea.
           
Donald said, 'Will you look
who's here. Duchess.' From the edges of the stole, the Duchess's hair tumbled
like a cataract of white water almost to her waist. She looked down at Moira
and her face was grave.
           
Moira said, 'Hullo, Mammy.'

'You OK?'

           
He'd looked anxious, his tuxedo creased, the thistle
lolling from his buttonhole.

           
Well, actually, it was more than anxious; the guy had
been as scared as any of them in the room full of splintered bone - twisted
antlers across the tables on beds of broken glass, and one pair still hanging
menacingly among the glittering shards of a chandelier.

           
Moira had said, 'You ever see bomb damage in Belfast?'

           
'Huh?'

           
She was up on her knees now, examining the guitar for fractures.

           
'Bomb
damage,' she said, not looking at him.
           
He was silent. He crouched
down next to her, the two of them by the dais, all the others, the
multi-national Celts, brushing each other down, sheltering in groups in the
corners of the Great Hall.

           
The pale man had been helped away by the Earl and some
servants He'd looked just once at Moira with his damaged eye.

           
There were no cracks in the body of the guitar, although
its face was scratched and it looked to be very deeply offended.

           
'What's your name?' Moira turned to the American.

           
'Huh?'

           
'What are you called?'

           
'I, uh ...' He grimaced, the suaveness gone, black curls
sweated to his forehead. He looked as limp as the thistle he wore. 'I don't
believe this has happened. Some kind of earthquake? Or what? Uh ... Macbeth.'

           
'That's your name? My God. Here, hold this a second.' She
passed him the guitar while she untangled her hair.

           
He held the instrument up by the neck, gripping it hard.
           
'You have earthquakes in these
parts?'

           
'What?' She'd started to laugh.

           
'Earthquakes. Tremors.'

           
She said 'Macbeth. I thought you were going to be Irish
despite the thistle. New York Irish '

           
'Just New York. Born and raised. Mungo Macbeth. Of the Manhattan
Macbeths. My mother said I should wear the kilt.' He straightened the thistle.
'We compromised,'

           
'That's a compromise?'

           
He said, 'You really are OK now?'

           
'Oh, I'm fine. Just fine.' Feeling like she'd come
through a war - a whole war in just a few minutes.

           
Mungo Macbeth had been looking around at all the wreckage,
where the stags' heads had fallen. Then up at the ceiling.

           
'There isn't one of them left hanging,' he'd said, awed.
Not a goddamn one.'

           
He was right.

           
What have I done?

           
'I mean, is that weird?' Mungo Macbeth said. 'Or is that
weird?'

'And what was it that made
you think,' the Duchess said contemptuously, 'that it was you?'

           
She didn't sound at all like Moira. Her voice was like
the refined
tink
you made when you
tapped with your fingernail on crystal glass of the very highest quality. A
most cultured lady who had never been to school.

           
'Not me on my own,' Moira said. 'Someone ... something
was ... you know, like an invasion? I felt threatened. This guy ... Also, I
didn't like the setup anyway, generations of stalkers' trophies, and all these
elitist folk, like "we are the Celtic aristocracy, we're the chosen ones
..." '

           
The Duchess lifted her chin imperiously. 'What nonsense
you talk. Do you seriously think that if you began to suddenly resent me or
something, you could come in here and break everything on my walls?'

           
Virtually all the wall space in the luxurious caravan had
been decorated with fine china.

           
'Your walls, no,' Moira said.

           
'I should think not indeed.'

           
'But this place, I felt very threatened.'

           
She kept seeing, like on some kind of videotape loop, the
man unfastening her guitar case. But it was all so dreamlike, part of the
hallucination summoned by the song and the strangeness of the night. She
couldn't talk about it.

           
'I'm mixed up, Mammy.'

           
'Don't whine,' the Duchess said mildly.

           
'I'm sorry.' And the smoky form in the fireplace? The
sensation of Matt - and yet not Matt?

           
And the
knowing.
Confirmed by the call.

           
Lottie? Lottie,
listen, I know it's late, I'm sorry ... Only it's Matt. I've been thinking
about Matt all night...

           
The Duchess said, 'Have you the comb with you?'

           
'Surely.' Moira pulled her bag on to her knee.

           
'Show me.'

The Earl had said he
couldn't explain it; the heads had been accumulating on the walls for four or
more generations, and had ever been dislodged before. Some sort of
chain-reaction perhaps, the domino effect. He had suggested everyone go through
to the larger drawing room, and the servants had been dispatched for extra
chairs and doctors to tend the injuries, none of them apparently major.

           
Uninjured, Moira and the American called Macbeth had gone
outside into the grounds.
           
'Clear my head,' he said.

           
The house behind them was floodlit, looked like a wedding
cake. A narrow terrace followed the perimeter of the house, and they walked
along it, Moira carrying the guitar in its case.
           
'Why are you here?' she said,
drifting. 'What do you do? Or are you just rich?'

           
'TV,' Macbeth said. 'I make lousy TV shows. But, also
we're rich, the Macbeths. Which is why they let me make my lousy TV shows, and
also why I'm here. That is, my mother ... she was invited. She owns the
company.'

           
'Uh huh.' Moira nodded, as if she was interested. White
flakes of bone were still silently spattering her vision, like static.

           
'They sent me," Macbeth said, 'on account of, A I'm
about the most expendable member of the family, and B - they figured it was
time I reconnected with my, uh, roots.'

           
Roots sometimes need to stay buried,' Moira said. 'You
dig up the roots, you kill the tree.'

           
'I never thought about it like that '

           
'It's probably just a clever thing to say. You
found
your roots? Have you been to where
Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane?'

           
'No,' he said. 'But I think I just found one of the three
witches.'

           
'Really?' Moira said coldly.

           
'Only these days they come more beautiful.' Macbeth stopped
suddenly and threw up both hands. 'Ah, shit, I apologise. I don't mean to be
patronizing, or sexist or anything. It was, uh ... The hair ... your wonderful,
long, black hair ...'

           
Oh,
please
...

           
'With that lonely grey strand,' Macbeth said. 'Like a
vein of onyx. Or something. I recognized it soon as you came into the room
tonight. See, I don't know much about Celtic history, but rock music and folk
... I mean, I really do have those albums.'

           
'Would that you didn't,' Moira said quietly. Then she shook
her hair. 'Sorry. Stupid. Forget it.'