Naming the Bones (31 page)

‘No, I don’t mind the dark.’

‘I’ll be home tonight. Why don’t you walk over after dinner and you can tell me what it’s all about?’

Murray felt like the marrow had been sucked from his bones.

‘It was about Archie Lunan.’

‘I know.’

It was what he had come for, but too late.

‘I’ve reassessed my project. It’ll focus on Archie’s work rather than his life.’

They had reached the crossroads now. Christie stopped the car and pulled the handbrake on, but kept the engine running. The wipers continued to sweep the rain from the windscreen. She turned awkwardly towards Murray. Now he could see that some of the lines on her face were from pain, and the tiredness it had brought, but her voice belied any suffering. It was mild and unsurprised, the kind of tone he used when trying to guide a slow student into realising an obvious point.

‘Why do you men always give in so easily?’ Christie switched off the engine. The wipers stalled mid-swipe and the rain began to melt into sheets, warping the view of grey sky and green scrub. ‘You went to the trouble of contacting me and then came over here to hunt me down, even though I said I wouldn’t speak to you. Now that I’m willing, you’ve changed your mind. What happened?’

Murray shrugged.

‘I decided it was pointless.’

Christie snorted.

‘Everything is, but we have to find some way of passing the time.’ She sighed. ‘How much do you know about MS?’

He had been ready to open the door and leave. But now that Christie had mentioned her illness, he couldn’t muster the strength to be callous.

‘It’s a slow wasting disease that works on the nerves.’

‘That’s pretty much it. Except that it works on the sheaths that protect the nerves, and it’s not always so slow. If you’re lucky, you can get away with years of remission where nothing much happens. If you’re not, you can find yourself deteriorating rapidly to the point where you need a wheelchair. Or worse.’

Murray didn’t want to know what worse consisted of. He gripped the door handle and said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope yours stays in remission.’

‘It isn’t in remission.’ Murray looked at Christie and she gave a small nod. ‘So if you decide you don’t want to talk to me, make sure you’re certain. I don’t have time to grant second chances.’

He opened the car door and got out.

‘Thanks for the lift.’

‘I’ll leave a light on. Tonight or not at all.’

Murray shut the door. He pulled his hood up and began the walk down towards the bothy. Halfway along the road he looked back, making sure Christie had managed to turn the car without getting bogged down in the mud again. She was gone. All that remained was the rain, beating down on the crossroads.

Chapter Twenty-Six

MURRAY PUSHED OPEN
the door to the bothy. The last leg of his journey had worn him out, and his teeth had begun to chatter in a way he’d thought only happened in cartoons. He peeled his jacket from him, registering that something was wrong.

The Calor gas heater glowed warmly from the centre of the room, though he had been careful to turn it off before he left. Murray picked up the heavy torch Pete had gifted him and tiptoed towards the cottage’s second room just as the door started to creak open.

The intruder took a quick step backwards into the shadows. He raised his left hand to protect his face and his right came forward, knocking the torch away. It tumbled from Murray’s grip and skidded across the floor.

‘Good God, Murray.’ Professor Fergus Baine looked like he had dressed for his very first country house shoot. His Barbour jacket gleamed newly and his tweed cap was set at a rakish angle. He dusted some invisible spot from his lapel, staring at Murray as if unsure of what he was seeing. ‘Are you okay?’

Murray pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. He was too tired to do anything except rest his elbows on the table and set his head in his hands.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop by.’

‘There isn’t a neighbourhood.’

Murray started to laugh, but the chill had him in its grip now. A shiver that could have doubled as a spasm clutched at him and the laugh turned to a cough. Murray pulled off his hat, dragged his jumper over his head and started to rub his chest dry with his T-shirt.
University of North Alabama
. God, that had been a while ago, back when everything seemed possible.

‘So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, there never was a knight like the young Lochinvar.’ Fergus’s voice was slick with sarcasm. He lifted the kettle from the Primus stove, felt the weight of water in it and lit the gas. ‘You need to wash yourself in warm water.’ He went through to the bedroom and returned with a blanket. ‘Here, wrap yourself in this while we wait for it to boil.’

Murray draped the blanket round his shoulders, pulled his boots and socks off then stripped away his sodden trousers and underpants. The mud had penetrated his clothing and specks of it clung to his skin. Fergus Baine shook his head.

‘What did my wife see in you? You look like Bobby Sands towards the end.’ The kettle started to howl. The professor emptied it into a bowl, then filled a cup from the rain butt outside and cooled the boiling water with it. He put the steaming bowl and a cloth on the table in front of Murray. ‘Here.’

Murray took the bottle of malt from the table and started to fumble with its cap.

‘You don’t need that.’ Fergus plucked the whisky from Murray’s grip. He took the empty kettle, refilled it and set it back on the stove. ‘Spirits lower the body’s temperature. A hot drink’s always better.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

Murray started to sponge himself. The water turned brackish. He supposed he should freshen it if he really wanted to get clean, but carried on dipping the unfamiliar cloth into the water, wiping himself down the half-hearted way a man might clean an old but necessary piece of equipment that was going to be replaced soon.

Fergus had been rummaging around in the boxes of supplies Pete had set in the corner and found a jar of instant coffee and a tin of powdered milk. He spilled generous measures into two mugs and added water.

‘It’s none of my business, but why are you camping in this hovel in the middle of nowhere?’

‘The archaeology department requisitioned all the good rooms.’

Fergus set a mug of strong coffee on the table and stood cradling his own.

‘You do realise that archaeology has much lower RAE scores than us? They’re way behind on student numbers too.’

Murray’s laugh held an edge of hysteria.

‘These things don’t count for much out here.’ He took the blanket and started to wipe himself dry with it. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘I asked at the shop. Always the hub of island life.’

‘No, I meant how did you know I was on the island?’

‘Rab Purvis told me.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t look so crestfallen, it hardly makes him a quisling. I was coming over to see Christie and had an idea you might be around so I asked Purvis. He didn’t know I was going to look you up.’

‘Pastoral care?’

‘Something like that.’

The two men looked at each other. Murray was the first to break eye contact. He’d wrapped himself back in the damp blanket; now he went through to the other room, found a jumper and a cleanish pair of jeans and put them on. When he returned he said, ‘You told me you’d only met Archie once.’

Fergus gave a nod that conceded his lie.

‘I suppose I hoped the less fuel on the fire, the sooner it would burn out.’

Murray sat back at the table and cradled the coffee mug in his hand, taking comfort from its warmth. He thought about rescuing the whisky from the shelf where Fergus had placed it and found he couldn’t be bothered.

‘Why are you so against Archie getting his due?’

The older man had taken his cap off, but still wore his heavy jacket. The haggard paleness of his face gave him the air of a distinguished thespian.

‘There was something about Lunan, a core of Romanticism perhaps, that’s dangerous for your type of approach. Sailing when a storm was coming in was stupid egotism. It was typical of Archie.’ Fergus steepled his hands together and rested his forehead on them for a moment as if the strain of memories threatened to loosen his composure. He massaged his temples then looked at Murray. The bright spark of energy that had seemed his defining feature was dulled, but it was still there, a small pilot light in the gleam of his eyes. ‘Ultimately I thought you’d reduce a complex life to a simplistic narrative. Naïve but talented young man comes to the city, falls into decadent ways and is punished for his carelessness by an early death. I didn’t think it would do either of you justice.’

‘You came all this way to say my work’s crap and have the balls to tell me it’s for my own protection?’

Fergus gave the upside-down smile that meant he knew he had scored a hit.

‘I came to see Christie. Her mobility’s reduced to the point where living here’s no longer feasible. The time has come for her to make a decision about where she wants to go.’

‘And you’re here to help her decide?’

Fergus bowed his head in a slight nod.

‘Sometimes it helps to talk things over with old friends.’

‘Was Christie’s illness part of the reason you discouraged me from investigating Archie Lunan?’

‘No, I told you. I thought it a genuinely poor proposal.’

Murray sipped his coffee. It tasted harsh, but it was hot and he took a second swallow. He shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the professor was still there, staring at him, his expression as alert as an inner-city fox. Murray said, ‘I met her this morning, on the ridge above the limekilns.’

Fergus’s voice was free of concern.

‘I’m surprised she can make it that far.’

‘Her car had got stuck in the mud. I helped get it out.’

‘She was lucky you came along. Weather like this, who knows how long she might sit there? Something like that could kill her.’

‘She wants me to come and see her, to talk about Lunan.’

‘When?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not going.’

The same downturned smile twitched Fergus’s lips.

‘It’s the opportunity you were waiting for.’

It was typical of the man to want to rub his victory home.

Murray kept his voice steady and said, ‘I’ll be on tomorrow’s ferry.’

Fergus picked up his cap and set it on his head at a jaunty angle.

‘I think you’ve made the right decision. Confine yourself to the poems. I’ll make sure you get every support from the department.’ He slapped the table with his open palm. ‘Perhaps I should write an introduction for you? I could include a short reminiscence of Archie. It might help set his work in context of the time.’

The urge to punch him ran through Murray like an electric current.

‘I don’t know that I’ll still be a member of the department.’

Fergus had half risen, now he sat back down and gave Murray his kingly look, a wise old lion giving counsel to a talking ape.

‘There will be no awkwardness between us. Rachel and I are going to Italy at the end of next week, but she’ll telephone when we’re back and you’ll come round for dinner. This will be in the past.’ He got to his feet. ‘If you can get your luggage up to the crossroads, I’ll give you a lift to the pier tomorrow afternoon.’

He might have been a father offering to do a favour for a teenage son.

‘There’s a long way round, slightly more civilised than the route Christie takes in that souped-up jeep of hers, and I brought the Saab over. Its suspension is famous.’

Murray had never been that interested in cars. It had been Jack who’d sat in deep communion with packs of Top Trumps cards, memorising makes and models, comparing maximum speeds and fantasising about what he would drive when he grew up. But Murray should have recognised the black Saab parked outside Christie’s cottage. The car was stamped on his memory. The smooth swiftness as it overtook Rachel’s BMW by the reservoir on the way home from their country park tryst. He remembered Rachel clambering onto his knee, unbuttoning her blouse, his shock as she flicked on the car’s interior light, the brilliant shine of white lace before he clicked it off, the dark shadow of the other car.

He said, ‘Don’t you mind? Sharing her with strangers?’

The professor’s voice was compassionate.

‘With strangers, no. It’s part of what binds us together.’

Murray nodded, as if he understood.

‘Did you email me the photographs?’

Fergus’s smile was saintly, a gentle shepherd caring for one of his flock.

‘I thought they might help you get over her, and I knew I could rely on your discretion.’

Murray raised his eyes towards the sloped roof. He saw a trickle of water trailing down the stone wall, following the uneven surface of the rock, forging its path along the lines of least resistance. He said, ‘I’ll get Pete Preston to give me a lift in his tractor.’

‘As you wish. Make sure you get back to Glasgow, where you can be safe and dry. The islands can be unhealthy for us city-dwellers.’

‘Was Lismore unhealthy for Archie?’

‘He died here. I thought you knew that.’

It was a bad joke, all of it. He’d thought all his curiosity was gone, but Murray found himself asking, ‘Fergus, what was Archie like when you knew him?’

The older man paused by the door and looked at the room as if wanting to commit its details to memory. He hesitated. For a moment Murray thought he was going to refuse to answer, but then he started to speak and his voice was low and measured.

‘Archie was scruffy, with a poor sense of hygiene and a tendency to drunkenness. He was slow to anger when he was sober and fast with his fists when he was in his cups, which, as I said, was much of the time. He liked women, but even after he met Christie he was convinced they didn’t like him.’ Fergus paused as if considering what he was going to say next, then went on, ‘But there was no real edge to Archie Lunan, never any sense of suspicion. If he liked you, he liked you, no judgement attached. He’s the only person I ever met to whom I’d apply the phrase, “too good for this world”. He would have made a wonderful father, if he’d managed to turn his back on alcohol.’ Fergus levelled his gaze to Murray’s. ‘Do you know what the main problem with Archie was?’