Mr Mac and Me (32 page)

The moon is filling up with light as I walk towards the harbour. ‘Pa?’ I try. ‘Father?’ Even, ‘William?’ But there is nothing. I pass two soldiers coming from the Bell, and I search their faces, but there is no news there. I stand by the ferry and look out. Where would he have gone? I’m looking in the wrong places, that must be it, and I turn away and traipse across the green and down along Lea Lane, glancing into ditches, poking a stick I’ve found into the marsh. ‘Father?’ I try again, but I’m stopped short by the figure of a policeman standing by the Lea House gate. My first thought is to go to him. But he’s so still, it chills me, his eyes towards the sea.

Where’s Mac? I wonder then. And I think how I never found the right words to warn him. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ I mutter, and before the policeman turns and catches me, I crouch down among the sedge and hold my breath.

The moon is silver now, the air still light. And there is no wind to ripple through the reeds which are as dry and dusty as thatch. I hold my hand against my face to stop from sneezing and I wonder how long I’ll have to wait. I try and move, my foot is rammed against a ditch, my body twisted, but when I look up again there is our own old Mac, striding down the lane. He has a frond of honeysuckle hanging from his pocket – I catch a draught of it as he goes by – and his stick is tapping on the path. ‘Mr Mac,’ I hiss to him, but he is gone.

‘Evening?’ I hear the question in his voice, and the policeman dips his head as he addresses him. They talk, in tones that I do not catch, and then they turn together and unclasp the gate.

I slip from my hiding place and I run after them. The rabbits have already vanished, and I have the shadows and the hil­locks to myself. The door is open. A shaft of light falls through, and hoping to block it with my body, I stand up on the step. There must have been other men, policemen, waiting inside, for now I hear a rabble of raised voices, Mac’s the loudest, the fiercest, his accent thickening in anger so that I strain to understand. I inch my way inside, pulling the door closed after me. The men have walked into the living room, taking their lamp with them, and so I limp through the dimness of the hall and make a place for myself against the door jamb. There are three policemen, four, including the constable that shot Danky in the leg, and they are leafing through Mac’s books, his magazines. One man has the blue folio, and he points to the words on the front.
Deen Wettbewerb für ein Herrschaftliches Wohnhaus eines Kunst-Freundes
. I squint as I read it for him. And then another puts his hands into the open desk drawer and brings out the Mackintoshes’ letters. ‘These correspondents,’ he has a sneering voice, ‘seem to be entirely foreign. Turin. Berlin. Budapest. Do you not have any acquaintances from our own shores?’

‘
Meine Liebe Frau und Herr
 . . .’ The constable reads, and Mac strikes out at him. He no longer has his stick, but the policemen aren’t expecting it and they scatter, the letters flying out over the floor. ‘These are my private belongings,’ Mac shouts. ‘They concern my business, my work. These men are my colleagues. Architects and artists. They may be from an enemy nation but just last year they were all our friends.’

‘Vienna, Frankfurt, Rotterdam.’ The first policeman is still sneering as he lifts letters from the floor. ‘And finally, a missive from within the British Isles.’ He frowns as he reads it. ‘I have found your three words, hidden as they are . . .’ His eyebrows rise. ‘Thank you. I hope that in this letter you’ll find mine.’

Mac lunges at him, but the men are ready for him this time, and they hold him tightly by the arms. ‘I ask you to leave these things alone,’ he is spitting. ‘These letters are private and are not for your eyes.’

The constable stands in front of him. ‘Mr Charles Rennie Mackintosh.’ He is as straight and stiff as a toy. ‘We are arresting you on suspicion of espionage on behalf of the enemy. Anything you say will be taken in evidence against you.’

And when Mac’s protests have spluttered to a stop, ‘Men,’ the constable says, ‘let’s take him away.’

I follow, as far as I can, but once on the green they force him into the back seat of a car, and drive out of the village. I stand and watch him go. Imagine him, restless fellow that he is, shut up in the cells below the courthouse. And I hope that he has, secreted about his body, a sheet of paper and a pencil.

The moon is bright now. It lights my path to the Blue Anchor. I don’t want to go home, but there’s nowhere else for me. I push open the back door, hoping to creep through unnoticed, but Mother is sitting alone in the main bar. ‘I always thought it was your father losing business,’ she says. ‘But it seems when he’s not here, no one comes at all.’

I sit with her.

‘He’s not a bad man,’ she says. She reaches for my hand. ‘Just scared of what can happen to a man. And frightened most particularly for you.’

‘For me?’

‘That’s why he did it.’ She looks down at my foot.

‘Did what?’ I feel my hand go cold in hers.

‘If there’s ever another war,’ she’s hurting me, she’s pressing my fingers so tight, ‘this boy will not be asked to fight, will not be taken halfway across the world to be beaten and mistreated. That’s what he promised me. That’s what he promised himself.’

‘What other war?’ I ask. ‘Father never fought in any war.’

‘He did,’ she says, ‘he made me swear I’d never say. It scarred him. The Boer War. Not that I knew him before. But I could see it in his face. The first day he turned and smiled at me. I saw that he’d been hurt.’

I look down at my foot. The ankle twisted to the side. He did that to me. And I cover my mouth for fear I’ll be sick.

‘What about the others?’ I see their bird selves hopping bold across the grave, chatting and scrapping as they fight over a worm.

‘No,’ Mother shakes her head. ‘Not them. He never harmed a single one. But when we got you, and it was clear from the start that you were strong, he said he couldn’t bear to ever let you go.’

You’ll be staying here.
His fearful face comes back to me as he forces himself aboard Danky’s boat. And I turn away, for through my sickness there’s pity stabbing at me, to think he had a plan.

I write the telegram that night. And send it to the last address in my head. To Mr William Davidson of Glasgow.
Tell Mrs M Mackintosh to come. Urgent. CRM arrested.

I take it to Mrs Lusher at first light, and wait while she sends it through. ‘Anything else?’ she asks. ‘I have some aniseed. Awdacious good.’ But I’m on my way out.

I let the chickens free and throw the bucket down the well. It lands with a thud and fails to fill. I pull it up and try again. ‘What’s with it?’ I peer down. I see nothing but a pale glint of sky. ‘Mother,’ I shout, ‘the well’s dried up, or something’s stopping it.’ I run up to my room, and crawling under the bed beside the chamberpot I find Mac’s spyglasses and bring them down.

I put them to my eyes and stare down into blackness. There’s nothing. Black made blacker. And then I see the curve of a shadow. The moon, reflected. Although there is no moon. I adjust the glasses. And lean in further. And something shifts into the frame. The pale arc of a face.

‘Ma!’ I shout. I’m doubled over. ‘Ma.’ And I lurch into the house.

I must have fainted. Or lost hold of time. For when I can think again Mrs Horrod is beside me, and she has a bottle of something sharp under my nose. Mother is at the stove, her hair tied tight into its bun, her pinny on, and she is humming.

‘There are men on their way,’ Mrs Horrod tells me, ‘with a pulley and a dray. They’ll not be long.’

I stand up and look around me. ‘Was there no fight then?’ I ask. ‘No battle on the green?’ And I lift my left shoulder, win­cing as I ease it down, just as Father has done all the years of my life.

Mother nods. She knows what I mean. ‘Not on the green, no,’ she says. ‘Not there. Or if there was, your father wasn’t in it.’

Mrs Horrod stands before me. She’s as small as I am, or maybe I’ve grown, and she looks straight into my eyes. ‘He must have fallen,’ her voice is even. ‘It’s not the first time someone’s been unlucky. And it’ll not be the last.’

‘He always was afraid of water,’ I tell her. Although till now I’d only thought of the sea. And I think of Grace, the last publican’s daughter, and how she climbed into the water butt and held herself under till she drowned. My stomach heaves. I turn away, and all I can hear is the sighing and the creaking of the well shaft, the noise of apples tumbling through my dream. ‘I thought it was a ghost,’ I say. ‘The night of the wedding.’ And that’s when I seize the tablecloth, with its small stitched flowers, and I take the spade and I dig a hole and I throw it in.

Mother doesn’t come outside to see her husband brought up. Buck is there with his dray, a horse as quiet and surly as himself, and George Allard with a pulley, stronger than the one we have. He has a length of rope coiled over his shoulder. ‘This is the twine you spun for me,’ he says, ‘the day you walked out backwards through the gate.’ He runs his fingers over the gold twist and I remember Betty flicking it as she walked by.

They need someone small, they say, to be lowered down, to attach the rope. They don’t say to the body. And they look towards me, although their eyes lose hope when they reach mine.

A seagull hovers, its large body hanging, waiting for my answer.

‘I’ll do it.’ It’s my punishment for so often wishing him dead. And with a shriek the seagull soars away.

I shiver although the day is hot. ‘Go easy, mind.’ George Allard ties the rope around my waist. And when it is done, he weaves it through the pulley and wraps it round himself. Buck stands by. Waiting. A second rope attached to the yoke of his horse.

I step in backwards, bracing my boots against the soft brick of the rim. I feel it soften as I give it my full weight, a red dust drifting down. ‘We’ve got you,’ Mr Allard is gentle, but I wedge myself in against the tunnel all the same, and let them lower me, step by step into the dark, the other, heavier rope twining down beside me.

How deep is it? I think of the scrap of sky I saw, reflected, when I last looked down. But I don’t look now.

The brick is damp, and smells of the underside of stones, and soon there is a green slime, growing, which creeps against my back. ‘Ahh,’ I cry out. The echo of my voice rises above me. ‘Keep steady,’ Allard calls in answer. ‘We’ve got you. We’ve got you, we’ve got you.’ And I drop lower.

The sides are too slippery to cling to now, and I let myself hang. There’s nothing else to be done. Down, down, I’m lowered into the dark, and just when I’m used to it, my eyes sorting through every shade of grey, my ears awash with the silence at the centre of the earth, one foot splashes against water and I scream. My arms flail, and half sunk, I shout for them to stop.

Even without looking I feel him beside me. A great weight, bobbing in the water. But the rope twists and I’m spun around so that my eyes look into his. They’re white, turned up to the light, and his face is swollen, scragged with stubble, as if his hair may still be growing. I fumble for the strand of the second rope, and when I have its end I stretch my arms around his chest and fasten it tight. I tie it in a slipknot – the first knot Danky showed me – and for a moment I lie pressed against his cold, broad chest, too tired to move. ‘William James Thomas Maggs,’ I whisper. And then I turn away and I give two yanks to let them know we’re ready to come up.

I’m lying where I fell, the rope still round me, a hen pecking fretfully, when they bring him up. But I hear the dray’s hooves scrapping with the effort of that last long heave, and then the thud of the body as it flops on to the ground. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, although he’ll never hear me, and I wonder what is keeping Mother in the house. I close my eyes again. I need to clean myself, is all I can think, need to wash away the dark smell of the well, and with no water in the house, I stand up, and without a nod to anyone, I walk down to the sea.

The tide is out. The beach is silver, and there’s not a breath of wind. I lie myself down in the shallows and let the cold sea run over my arms and legs. I sink further, slide down a sandy drift and, tilting back my head, I feel the water close over my face. I hold my breath and wonder at it, this underwater world. They say it is the easiest way to die. Like sleeping. But then I take a gasp and salt water cuts into my lungs.

When I’ve stopped coughing I crawl from one inlet to the next, following the minnows drifting against sand banks. Water flows through my hair, cleaning it, sifting through my clothes, between my toes. I look back. I can see my boots, so neat, against the shore, the tide lapping at the leather, and I turn back into the sunshine, and there are the two seals from the ferry, their black noses, whiskery, staring at me. ‘Hello,’ I say. And at the sound of my voice they duck down out of sight. I duck down after them. The sand dips away too. And just as I lose ground, I wash up against another island and I’m safe again. I imagine it was an island like this that grounded the Norwegian barque two years before the war, and I remember marvelling at the boys who had the courage to swim out to her and back again with boxes of ship’s biscuits in their arms. I keep paddling. I have the courage now. And then with no warning the sea bed drops away, and before I can stand, the current has taken me and I’m flailing in the open sea. I look up and there’s the lighthouse, sparkling in the distance, and the white light of the sun bounces off the waves and stings my eyes. I strain to find my footing. The island is gone. Although I know it must be there, below the surface, and I fight and kick for all I’m worth to turn myself around. A wave picks me up and pushes me towards it, and then I’m dragged into the swell, and swept back out to sea. For a moment I am floating, look at me, I want to shout. To Father who made so sure I’d never leave. To Mother who turned my face to land.