And the Land Lay Still (38 page)

Every Tuesday he went on a train to Edinburgh and attended classes in shorthand and typing in a seedy private college near Haymarket where all the other students were female and frumpy and suspicious of him. He, for his part, was filled with a total absence of desire for any of them. There seemed to be a financial arrangement between the college and the paper that made his journey worthwhile to both parties: each week a sum was deducted from his wage, a sum he managed to discover was greater than what the college received for taking him in. He swallowed his pride and said nothing, but when, not long after turning eighteen, his call-up papers came, he didn’t protest or seek a deferment. Other boys dreaded National Service and did everything they could to avoid it, but Jimmy Bond was off like a whippet.

Sounds like a lot of fun, Edgar said.
Citizen Kane
in, where is it again, Drumkirk? Are you going back?

Not if I can help it, Jimmy said, and the man with the hand over his mouth grunted his approval.

What do you think of all that trouble with Burgess and Maclean? Edgar asked. Not much of a Scotchman, eh, Donald Duart Maclean? He rolled the name out with as much of a burr as
his southern tongue could muster. More of an English fop, wouldn’t you say?

Jimmy nodded agreement. Here was Edgar doing this pathetic put-on Scottish voice while he was concentrating on squeezing his own words out as flat as he could get them. He could hear his mother’s voice –
Don’t say
dinna
, say
don’t – and for once he was grateful for her efforts. He was in a play, or an audition for a play, and he wanted to set the right tone. He wanted to be a country cousin, not a barbarian.

Actually, he said, I don’t think anything much about it. He’s got nothing to do with me.

Quite, Edgar said, and the other man nodded. Nothing to do with you, Edgar said. You wouldn’t be inclined in that direction, would you?

No fear, he said vehemently, assuming they meant homosexuality, not the USSR. Another right answer, which also happened to be the truth. It was easy, given the cues he was getting. Don’t venture an opinion, say what they want to hear. When Edgar asked how he’d feel about a move to London, he hesitated just enough to reinforce the image of a backwater boy they could mould to fit their own purposes: he’d miss home, he said, but it would be a challenge, a chance to see the world. Inwardly he was praying this would be his pass out of Slaemill, West Mills, Drumkirk and Scotland.

If you’re selected, Edgar said, you will learn things about the world, and about yourself, that you would never otherwise know.

Four years later, he couldn’t believe how tiny home was. Not just Slaemill and its neighbouring communities tucked under the hills, but the whole country. He’d been back at least once every year and each time it shrank a little more, and the bustle and noise of London seemed magnified, and he wanted to be back amongst it. And it wasn’t that he’d made new friends there and was missing their company: it was the opposite. He didn’t want closeness. That was what he’d wanted to get away from. He realised he’d come home only out of a sense of loyalty that was fast draining away.

Sunday was interminable. He was reduced to reading the
Sunday Post
cover to cover, twice – including the Fun Section,
which wasn’t fun the first time. In the afternoon, desperate, he walked to the next village, where he had a coffee in the only café: it seemed slightly ashamed to be open, the few customers ashamed to be patronising it. They spoke in low tones, as if in church. On the way back he bumped into a couple of old schoolmates. They exchanged news, but it was an unfond reunion. One of them worked in the paper mill, and talked about being trained to use a new Hyster forklift as if he’d landed the best job in the world. Peter could tell they thought he’d got above himself by leaving: he felt they’d diminished themselves by staying put.

On the Monday everybody was at work. If Uncle Jack had still been around he’d have gone over to Wharryburn to see him, but Uncle Jack was long away and so were Sarah and Barbara, off to a new life in Glenrothes, not that he’d have bothered with them. He took a bus into Drumkirk and wandered the grey streets, the cold of them creeping up through the soles of his shoes. He tried a pub at dinner time, the Toll Tavern – a dark, cheerless retreat which he’d had rare glimpses into as a boy walking by – exchanged a few droll comments with other men propping up the bar, then thought he’d drop in on the
Gazette
.

Neither Bill nor Bob was in. There was a new girl on reception who just about managed to keep the grin off her face when he gave his name as Jimmy Bond and asked to see Mr Gray. After a minute the editor emerged from his office. He seemed to have aged about twenty years since Peter had last seen him.

We’re winding down, he said, back behind the firmly shut door of his room. It’ll all be over by spring. I’m too old for this game, and the proprietors don’t want to replace me. Can’t say I blame them. We’re losing money hand over fist.

That’s too bad, Peter said. How are Bill and Bob?

Bob’s gone, Mr Gray said with grave finality.

Gone?

Fired. I felt bad about it, but somebody had to go, there’s hardly enough to keep Bill on, if I’m honest. The
Observer
will clean up after us. Well, you can’t stand in the way of progress. But what about you? You’ve done all right. The War Office, eh? Enjoying London?

Aye, it’s fine.

Good for you. Glad I was able to put in a word for you.

How do you mean?

You know, give you a recommendation. Eyes and ears of the local community, that’s me. Was, I should say. Happy to oblige when they asked.

When who asked?

Mr Gray tapped the side of his nose. Och, Jimmy, he said. What a question! Goodness me!

He wouldn’t be drawn any further, just tapped his nose again and winked. Well, thanks for coming in, Jimmy. Just as well you did. Shouldn’t think you’ll find us here next time you’re home.

On the bus back to Slaemill he pondered this revelation. He knew that the Service had a network of people – teachers, professors, doctors – who provided recruitment tips and other information. Nothing was an accident. Yet he was surprised, and disappointed. He liked to think he’d got where he was on his own merits.

His mother’s nose wrinkled at the beer on his breath. Her disapproval reassured him a little. He went to his room and slept for a couple of hours before tea.

Christmas Day loomed, a day like any other, and he recognised what a mistake he’d made coming home at this time of year. And vowed never to do so again.

Uncle Jack – Peggy Bond’s younger brother – was special. Set apart. Probably the family wouldn’t have had much to do with him, but blood’s thicker than water, Hugh said.
Special
was one word for him, Jimmy’s word, but the ones he heard his parents use were
odd
,
strange
,
cracked
,
damaged
. And
mad
. They didn’t say
mad
often but Jimmy liked it best because it was way off the scale of normality, and so he thought of him as Mad Uncle Jack although he was careful never to say it out loud.

He must have been nearly six when he first met him, back from the war, with Sarah, his new English wife. It was the war that made those words fit Uncle Jack. Being captured by the Japs and made to work on their hellish railway for four years. Hugh sucked in his cheeks and shook his head at the rotten shame of it. No, Jack was never going to be right again. Not that he could ever be
completely
right, Peggy said, and Jimmy understood from this that the war wasn’t to be held entirely responsible. And there was that other weird, embarrassing thing about Jack: he was a Scottish Nationalist. Hugh and Peggy were Unionists but a number of their friends were Labour and they even knew a couple who voted for the Liberals, but the only Scottish Nationalist in their circle was Uncle Jack, if you could call it a circle and if you could pretend that he was in it. Hugh was only able to say
Scottish Nationalist
out of the side of his mouth, and usually raised his eyebrows in a meaningful way when he did. Jimmy wondered why the two words went so insistently and inseparably together. Uncle Jack wasn’t going to be an English or a French Nationalist, was he? Jimmy filed this riddle away for further consideration.

He saw Uncle Jack only once or twice a year at most. So maybe he was in his company eight or nine times before The Disappearance. Feels like it should have been more: Uncle Jack looms larger than that. But just before Jimmy turned eleven, Jack was gone.

Jimmy’s grandparents on that side, the Gordon side, both died during the war and never saw Jack come home, but they left him all their money. Jimmy’s mother never complained about that, she said she’d nothing to complain about, she was provided for and anyway there wasn’t that much. Enough for him to put down the deposit on a bungalow in Wharryburn, though, and he and Sarah settled down there and a while later Barbara was born. A bought hoose, Hugh used to say, weel, weel. There wasn’t much communication between the two families, but from time to time a reluctant sense of duty, and sympathy for Sarah, got the better of Jimmy’s parents and the Bonds boarded the bus to Wharryburn and descended on the Gordons en masse.

Jimmy would have detested these visits but for the brooding presence of Uncle Jack. The way he managed not to participate in conversations, or the way he dropped in a remark that reduced the other grown-ups to silence, was a marvel to Jimmy. His sisters didn’t like Uncle Jack, they found him intimidating, but Jimmy was fascinated. He admitted it once, on the bus home, one of the occasions he learned it was better not to speak at all. I really like Uncle Jack, he said. His mother turned in her seat and gave him a hard stare. Liking him’s fine, she said. Just don’t grow up to
be
like
him. How no? he asked. Why not, she corrected. Because you’re enough like him already, that’s why not. He started to say something else but his father, sitting next to him, said, That’ll do, Jimmy.

How was he like him? He didn’t think he looked like him but then he didn’t think he looked like his father either, or his mother. He didn’t say much, and Uncle Jack didn’t say much, maybe that was it. The way you could say a lot by saying very little.

There was this one time they were at Wharryburn, a Sunday in March just a day or two before The Disappearance. Elspeth and Etta were cooing over Barbara in the living room and Barbara was just about tolerating them, Peggy was putting a brave face on being with Sarah in the kitchen, and the men – his father and Uncle Jack and himself – had stepped out of the back door and were standing in manly silence with their coats on. Well, Uncle Jack was standing in silence, staring at the grass that was not yet ready to be cut or at the neat, empty beds or maybe not staring at anything, and Hugh stamped his feet and got out his pipe and lit it and made a comment about the cold and when there was no answer grumbled about family life and wondered when Barbara might be getting a wee brother or sister to keep her company, and still Jack said nothing but Hugh just kept on and on, what it was like having a house full of bairns, Jack would never have a minute’s peace if
his
experience was anything to go by, not that he resented his own flesh and blood, he wasn’t saying that but that was the truth of the matter,
not a minute’s peace
, and Jimmy thought if his Uncle Jack was thinking anything it was exactly that and he just wished his father would shut up. There was something intense and dignified about the way Uncle Jack didn’t respond, didn’t even look at Hugh. But eventually the insistent prattle must have triggered something inside him.

I think I’ll take a stroll up the hill, he said, still staring ahead. Get some fresh air.

Oh, Hugh said. I think it’s pretty fresh oot here masel, he said, through a cloud of pipe smoke.

Not for me, Uncle Jack said. And then he said a truly wonderful thing: Are you coming, Jimmy? And in a concession to Hugh that was also a very definite indicator that he wasn’t invited, he added,
If that’s all right with you, Hugh? It’s time Jimmy and I were better acquainted.

Jimmy glanced at his father who, wrong-footed, suddenly seemed to him more childish than he was himself. He didn’t think of himself as a child anyway. Weel, I dinna ken, Hugh said, flustered, I mean it’s three o’clock noo, how lang dae ye think ye might be? We’ll hae tae catch the bus hame soon enough. Jack said, calm as anything, Och, the bus doesn’t go till five. We’ll just take a walk up to the woods and back, we’ll be no more than an hour, and Hugh looked out of breath at the very thought and conceded defeat with a nod. It’ll be the five-o’clock bus for us then, Jimmy, mind that, he said, and Jimmy felt a thrill that his uncle, Mad Uncle Jack, had asked him to go with him, alone, but he kept it off his face, held it down inside him, smiled reassuringly at his worried-looking father and then he and Jack set off round the house and away up the street past the last of the bungalows to where the tarmac gave out and the track into the woods began.

The first Jimmy knew about The Disappearance was three or four days later, back in Slaemill. Peter doesn’t remember the exact sequence of events but he has a definite memory of his father taking him through into the front room one evening, where they hardly ever went, and in a very serious voice telling him to sit on the sofa. Opposite him, in one of the armchairs, was a big, blue-jawed policeman in a blue uniform, with his hat in his lap and a notebook and pencil resting on top of it.

This is Sergeant Ritchie, Hugh said. Now Jimmy, it’s aboot your Uncle Jack so I want ye tae think carefully and tell us everything ye ken.

No need tae be afraid, son, Ritchie said. Just tell us aboot last Sunday.

What aboot last Sunday?

Was there anything your Uncle Jack said that was odd, when you went for that walk wi him? Anything at all.

How, what’s happened?

It’s all right, son, ye’re no in any trouble, Ritchie said.

Your uncle’s gone missing, Hugh said, and the police are trying tae find him.