Mr Mac and Me (33 page)

But I’m not floating for long. I’m under the water, tumbling through the roots of a wave, and I think of Mother and the day the gypsies robbed us of our clover. Every summer they’d come into the county. Small, fierce men, with hands like leather, and girls whose hair hung the length of their backs. One night they hired the big room at the inn. They ordered food and drink and Ann, Mary and Mother were busy in the kitchen rolling out pastry for a dozen pies. The music was loud. I stood in the doorway and watched as the men began to dance, and then the women. They danced till nearly midnight, clapping and taking their turns while one played the accordion and another a tin whistle. ‘Away with you,’ Father said when he saw me tucked in behind the door, but there was no reason in going up to bed while that music spiralled through the floorboards. Even Mother was jigging while she served the food, and Father was caught up in the crowd, drinking with the men, hot-faced, laughing.

Then they were gone. Into their caravans and off into the night, with their dogs trailing, and men whistling and children sleeping in their wooden bunks. Father began to clear the tables, unsteady on his feet, and Mother went out to check the hens which I’d forgotten to shut in. ‘Lord!’ I heard her shout. But it wasn’t the hens that had been taken. I could see that from her face. ‘The clover’s gone,’ she said. ‘The clover in the field behind the inn is cut and stolen!’ And she was so stunned she had to sit down on a stool. They’d brought sacks, the gypsies, and must have crept out while the music was so loud, and we were all standing at the door, listening and watching while the women danced. But Mother wasn’t having it. She rose up and brushed herself down and called Ann out from the kitchen where she was scrubbing pans. ‘We’ll go after them,’ she said, and ignoring Father who was stammering and muttering that nothing was his fault, they put Kingdom in the chaise. ‘Let me come along,’ I ran after, and although Mother pushed me away, I grabbed hold of the harness and pulled myself up.

Mother was a good horsewoman, and soon we were trotting towards Blythburgh. But Blythburgh was asleep. Not a sound, not even the ticking of the church clock, and without a word we went on to Westleton. There was a field at Westleton where horses grazed and although there were signs that they had been there, they weren’t there now. Mother left the chaise under a tree and jumped down to wake the constable and while we waited for him to rouse I looked up through the grainy darkness, into the branches above, and imagined I saw an owl look back at me, its orange eyes winking. I took Ann’s arm and pointed and she raised her face, and together as if our eyes were twice as strong I saw the branches weaving up and round the trunk, the patterns of the bark, the leaves flitting like copper in the dark. I could live out here, I thought, right through the balmy summer, sleeping through the waning of the moon, and when Mother came back with the constable, all buttoned into his wool uniform, I was that surprised to see him, I’d forgotten why we were there.

From Westleton we drove to Culvers Green and that’s when we heard their dogs, and saw the caravans of their camp. I could feel my mother shivering as I leant against her back, but when she jumped down and raised her voice I found she’d shaken off her fear. ‘Come on out,’ she shouted to the dark shapes of the vans, ‘and give us what is ours.’ And the constable pushed out his chest and tried to think of anything to add.

We didn’t have the sacks of clover when we set off again, but a handful of coins that Mother gave to Ann to tie into her sleeve. We drove more slowly on the way home, to spare the horse, and to dodge the black shapes of the bats as they flitted overhead. We could smell the sea too, out here, with no distractions, long before we reached the village, and the night was so gentle and so sweet with summer I forgot to even look for the ghost at Dead Man’s Corner or think of how a man was burned there in a blaze of flames. They say his shadow lingers, not that I’ve ever seen it, but if you go too close you can sense a kind of lurking. Something dark that wants to pull you in. But that night we ambled past, full of rejoicing, and I pressed my knees against Mother’s back, so that I could feel her strength. I feel it now as I lose sight of land, my lame foot acting as a paddle, and I wonder why a live body will sink, as I know mine will, and a dead one will float up to the surface. I remember Runnicles telling us that it wasn’t just to make the body easier to find, it was gases that rise up in a person and push them to the surface. Although of course there are always some that are never found. I’m not frightened any more. Not of anything. And as my mouth fills with water, I see events unfurling, not as they are meant to do, from the start, but away into the future. I see Old Mac’s My Margaret jump down from the train and storm into the police station, and I watch her find him there, standing before a magistrate and the captain of a Royal Navy vessel, anchored off the pier. They were thinking of taking him to Lowestoft for further questioning, but Mrs Mackintosh with her flaming hair, and her smart English voice, puts an end to any such idea. ‘Yes,’ she says, grand as can be. ‘I do know about the letters. I’m a German speaker myself. I can translate them for you if that would be of help.’

I cling fast to a piece of floating timber, and I watch as Mac is handed into her care. I see her face, the courage that she shows, as they go together into the chaos of their home, and begin to sort through the letters and the books, the precious blue folio, its leaves scattered across the floor.
Zimmer
,
Dekorative
,
Musik
,
Vogel
. I can read anything now. And it takes her most of the night, as Mac sits stunned on a chair, to put things to rights.

‘Toshie?’ she comes to him when she is done. ‘My dear?’ she strokes his greying hair. ‘We’ll go away from here, you’ll see, we’ll find somewhere else. Somewhere safe where you can work.’ But Old Mac doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. And so with a soft kiss, My Margaret arranges the piles of magazines so that their edges run in a straight line.

It’s harder to watch Mother, lying, her face to the wall, while Mrs Horrod tends to her. And Ann and Jimmy Kerridge, having only been gone a matter of days, returning to take up their places as the new licensees of the Blue Anchor. So instead I follow Mac as he goes up before the magistrates again. I see their old heads bent together, and hear how eager they are to condemn him as a spy. But they are prevented from doing so by an acquaintance of My Margaret, a woman with a title, who impresses upon them the extent of Mr Mackintosh’s patriotism, and how, unwittingly, they are holding one of the most influential architects in Europe. ‘A man to be honoured,’ she says. ‘One of our own of whom we should be proud. Of whom, one day, we will be.’

The magistrates are suitably impressed. They put their heads together again. Surely the fact that no spyglasses were found in his possession counts for something? And maybe it does, for they dismiss the case. Although with one condition. That Mr Charles Rennie Mackintosh remove himself from East Anglia, and never again enter the counties of Essex, Suffolk or Norfolk.

I’m halfway to Holland, my foot still flapping, thinking of Betty and what she’d say if she knew that I could swim, when the Royal Navy catches sight of me. They think they’ve spied a slip of cargo, or one of the seals drifted off course, but when they haul in their ropes they find that it’s a boy. They try pouring spirits down my throat but I spit and kick for all I’m worth, so they leave me on deck, the water dribbling out of me. A sea creature after all. But I keep watching. Even after I’m fit enough to be put to work. Even after three months of sleeping in a hammock when the ship tilting to the side is all that I know. And I’m still watching when Mr Mac defies his ban and comes back into the county. It’s the end of the summer and he arrives by train and walks across the common. He takes my old room with the outshot window. There is no other available, for Ann and Jimmy have the good room now. And I see him stumble up the ladder, late at night, and slump into the bed. He’s been drinking, half pints of beer, chased down by whisky, and he’s run from the Blue Anchor to the Bell, just as he used to do. But he’s up in the morning, standing outside the inn with his watercolours and his board, when Betty comes by, and he stoops to listen to her, as she whispers in his ear. ‘We don’t know,’ he tells her. ‘The boy always did have a yearning to see the world. So for all we know he’s out there.’ He tells her to wait. And he goes back up the ladder. And when he comes down he has something for her. It is wrapped in cloth. ‘Keep it safe for him,’ he says. And Betty presses her lips together. She doesn’t cry. Not then. Although later, back in Vic’s old room, which will forever be called Vic’s, even though they know now he’s never coming back, when she unwraps the gift and sees it is the picture of my boat – the
Thomas
– she kisses it. And one salty tear runs down her freckled cheek. She places it in her trunk.
Kist
, I remember. And she sits beside it and she says a prayer, and then she takes up the
cutag
, and she runs down the street, past the Blue Anchor, towards the ferry.

Father was right. The war is no place for a boy. With a bad foot or not. But I only know that once I’m in it, with the boat I’m on sunk, and the captain lost when it went down. I’m not ready for home, though. I’m sixteen, nearly, not that anyone is asking. And if they notice that I’m limping, there are so many who are worse. I’m sent out on to the battlefields of France, and at night while I lie and listen to the flares, I’m sure I feel the wings of my starlings, soft against my face. Is it them, keeping me alive? For shells are bursting all around, and braver, stronger, luckier men than me are struck down where they stand. But even through the noise and filth and panic, I keep watching out for Mac. I see him in London. A place I’ve never been. Scratching out a living. Working on designs for houses, studios, theatres, none of which are built. And when the war is over, they don’t go back to Glasgow, no, he and Mrs Mac they move to France. It’s cheaper there, and the bright sea air of Port-Vendres is perfect for My Margaret’s heart. The light is good too. And Mac works outside, with his watercolours and his board, challenging himself to avoid green, although it is the colour he loves most. ‘Art is the flower,’ he once said. ‘Life is the green leaf.’ And he smiles when he remembers his old friend Fra Newbery showing him a letter from a colleague. ‘Hang it, Newbery, this man ought to be an artist.’ For now that’s what he is. Although there are precious few that know it.

I don’t go home either. It’s my chance to see the world, and I roam from land to land, marvelling at the skies and seas of it, making small pictures of boats to buy myself a meal. I don’t need much to survive, for there’s no one but myself, although I’m glad to know Mac has his My Margaret to look out for him. She is in charge of finances, and she makes sure they have enough each month after board and lodging, and the tip they give the young boy who works at their hotel, for her husband to have paint. She’s stopped working herself. She doesn’t have the heart for it. Not since news came of her sister’s death. And with it the story that MacNair, in a frenzy of grief, destroyed much of his wife’s work. When they write letters, which they sometimes do, to offer up a picture, to offer it again at a reduced rate, they write close across the page, so they can afford the postage, and when Mac takes a drink, it is the wine that is given with dinner, and he is careful to drink no more than half the bottle.

I’m in Australia when I next hear news. As far across the world as it is possible to get. I’ve worked on boats that have taken me to Newfoundland, South Africa, Japan. And wherever I am I look down into the swell of water, and I think of the browns and greens and silver of the sea where I was born. It’s in Australia that I see it. A small square of black amongst the print of the paper I am reading.
10th December, 1928. The architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh has died
. I close my eyes and I think of how his wife cared for him. Always making sure there was enough money set aside so he could have his tobacco. For Mac’s pipe was not something that he could ever give up. Even after a blister bit into his tongue, burning him, and a bulge formed on his nose, forcing him back to England, where, in a small nursing home, he endured his treatment, paid for by an admiring friend. But the treatment was brutal, and hopeless too, and soon, without ever once having returned to Glasgow, he died. Even before My Margaret, with her weakened heart. Who, I see now, must wait five years to join him.

I did not have to wait so long before Mother found the money that I left her. Ann’s baby was due, and Mary was coming back to stay, and Mother went into my old room to turn the bed. ‘What’s this?’ she says to herself, and she unwraps the packet of coins, and the miniatures that are with them, and she stares into their faraway faces, although the only face she sees is mine, and when she has looked as long as she is able, she holds them hard, just as she once held me, against her heart.

I’ve spun once or even twice around the world, and I’m not so restless as I used to be, when Mac’s fame rises. His work sells at auction, as does his wife’s, for hundreds of thousands of pounds, and almost a full century after it was finished the Glasgow School of Art is voted Britain’s Best Building and men and women from as far away as China stream through its doors.

And then, in the basement of the Vienna Arts and Crafts Museum, a false wall is discovered, and hidden there in crates, they find My Margaret’s
Seven Princesses
. The gesso colours are not sepia, as has long been thought, but kept from the light for all those years, they are as bright as day. The experts use this knowledge when they re-create the panels that make up the
Life of the Rose
for the interior of the
House for an Art Lover
, which has been built on the edge of Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. It takes seven years to build and for the people who do it, it is a labour of love. ‘Would you like to see it?’ my granddaughter asks on the day that it is finished, ‘or do you want to wait until your hundredth birthday, which is, after all, only five years off?’ I tell her I’ve waited long enough, and I’d better not wait a moment longer, and so together with Betty – for the girl is named after her grandmother – we travel down from the Highlands, slow as you like, in her small car.