Scrap Metal (28 page)

“Cam too.” It was very important to me that everyone knew Cam was good. “Cameron tried.”

“Yes. You should both know that Harry was probably dead before he hit the water. Most likely he had a massive heart attack at the wheel of his tractor. An autopsy would confirm it, but as I say, we want to avoid that if we can.”

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. I pressed my fingers to my lips for a moment, then I looked up. “The appointments you had with him, the times when you saw him… Was he very dressed up?”

“Oh, you know Harry. He was one of the old school—treated doctors like they were someone special. Yes, he was always very smart when he came here—always in his good tweed coat.”

Rain, wind and ghosts. That was what we had up at Seacliff Farm. When the yards were empty and the house doors closed, those were our harvests.

Everything was just the same. Sergeant Maguire dropped me off at the top of the track, and I walked down through the greening corridor of elder and honeysuckle, early summer foliage whispering around me. My arm ached now from Ferguson’s jab, and I was beginning to feel the strained muscles in my back. I took it slowly. Each view and perspective on the house opened up to me just as it had always done. The gate answered my push with its usual creak. Harry’s Toyota was parked by the barn where he’d left it. His dogs were sitting by it in a row. They regarded me implacably as I approached. Pity like broken glass moved in my heart—I should do something for them, feed them or take them indoors. I held out a hand to Vixen, who growled at me, and then all three turned and crawled under the truck’s chassis, ears lowered, tails tucked tight between their legs.

I couldn’t comfort them. There was sod all they could do for me. If there had been a moment for me to break down and cry, that was it, but the cold bitter pain in my chest pitched and passed. I let myself into the house and stood in the hallway.

I would have given anything for Cam to have been waiting for me on the stairs. He’d been terrified, gutted by his ordeal. He’d loved Harry just as much as I did, pouring out on him the affection I was now sure he’d once given his own grandfather. I could imagine the kind of life he might have had. An absentee father, maybe, and a mother too busy working to pay him much attention, or taken away from him by something else, maybe by drink or drugs. Grandparents often stepped in for kids like that, came to mean more to them than their mams and dads. I didn’t blame Cam for bailing on me, not at all. But he’d had time to calm down a bit now. I’d thought he would be there.

I climbed the stairs stiffly. I could tell without trying the door that his room was still locked.

“Cam,” I whispered. But that was no good, and with a surge of painful love that burned me as it rose, I steadied my voice and said, loud enough for him to hear, “Cameron Seacliff.”

Silence. Maybe he was asleep. Then a fear took me, so vast and terrible it wiped out all the previous horrors of my day in one knife-blade sweep. I banged my fists on the door. “Cam, do you remember how I said I’d knock your door in if you didn’t tell me you were all right?” I left it ten seconds, counting off the beats of my heart. “You’ve no’ told me you’re all right.”

The old doors were tough. So was I. Harry’s build and bull-like strength were waiting in me. I could dance around and dress it up in little designer shirts as much as I liked, but I was bone of his bone, with my mother’s bright blood coursing hot through my veins. I took two steps back, got my balance and drove my foot against the lock.

He was curled up in the shabby old armchair by the window. He flinched when the door flew wide, so I knew he was alive, and for a second that was enough for me. His face was hidden. I stood looking down on him, breath catching in my throat. “Cam. Why didn’t you answer?”

He was still in his wet clothes from earlier. They had dried on him a bit in places but otherwise were as soaked as when he’d crawled out of the loch. He must have sat like this since I left. His mute rigidity was an effort not to shake with fever. As I watched, the desperate self-discipline broke and he curled up tighter, moaning.

“Jesus!” I darted to his side. He tried to cringe from me, but I unceremoniously pulled his head up—unless he could find a truck to crawl under, he would just have to put up with me—and felt his brow. “You bloody idiot. You’re burning.”

“Leave me alone.”

His voice was raw, as if he’d wept for hours. I’d never cried over any stage of my family’s extermination. There’d always been something more urgent to do. There certainly was something now.

“Get up,” I ordered him. When he didn’t respond, I leaned over him and half lifted, half dragged him out of the chair. “Come on, love. Got to get you out of these clothes.” I waited until his feet were under him then tried to let him go, but he suddenly animated and seized me in a bruising grip, as if he’d just recognised me.

“Nichol. My Nicky.”

“That’s right. Now, for God’s sake, let me get you undressed.” I pulled up his T-shirt and dragged it over his head, completing his dishevelment. If I looked too hard at his heat-flushed face, his tousled hair, I would shatter with pity or desire. In the circumstances, I couldn’t understand at all the latter, except I knew that young soldiers had turned to one another in the trenches. And I wasn’t alone—as I undid his jeans, he reached for me, trying for a kiss.

“Not now, hot stuff. Just take those off—these nice wet undercrackers too, the whole lot. Okay…” I snaked out an arm and grabbed his dressing gown from its hook. I was still having to fend him off, and I couldn’t blame him—the last time I’d been in this room, parting him from his clothes, the scene had been wildly different, ending five minutes later in a short, spectacular throw down over the dressing table. “That’s a boy. Put this on. Right, now bed for you.” I looked critically at his narrow divan. “My room, not here. I can make you more comfortable there.”

“I don’t need bed. I’m fine, I just…” He grated to a halt and stopped trying to unfasten my shirt. He rested his brow on my shoulder. “Oh, God. My head’s killing me.”

“I know. What else hurts?”

“Throat’s sore. And I’m too hot… Don’t bundle me up in this bloody dressing gown.”

I bundled him tighter. I put a hand into the hair at his nape and stood holding him, rocking him lightly. God, I’d been in and out of the sea and the lochs around this place all my life. I was achy, but that was from my exertions, and I knew I wouldn’t take any further harm from my dip. The city lad from Glasgow, though… “You’ve got a fever. What Harry would call a
teasach
, a chill to your kidneys. We’ve got to keep you warm, and the doc at the hospital gave me some pills in case you’ve picked up anything worse.”

“Harry… Ah, Nichol, let me go!” He tried to head off, back to his chair or maybe out the window, from the anguish on his face.

I blocked him. “All right. The hard way, then.”

I could probably have slung the lad who had arrived here five months ago across my shoulder. He was a more difficult prospect now, but my room was just along the corridor. He grunted in astonishment as I picked him up. I had his surprise to thank for his lack of objection—like Clover, on the rare occasions I affronted her by daring to scoop her off the ground—and I made the most of it, hefting him into my arms and moving fast. I carried him up the couple of steps that divided the two levels of the landing, shouldered open my bedroom door. “There you go.” He’d fastened a reflexive hold on me and I undid it reluctantly, setting him down on the bed. “Hang on there a second while I turn the quilt down.”

“No. Stop it. I don’t—”

“Be quiet.” I didn’t want to hear it. There was no guilt, no sense of undeserving, I wasn’t feeling too. His grief pressed on mine like stones on a bruise. I was bewildered—I’d thought we would be such a comfort to one another. What if it had only been Harry he’d loved? Sick with that thought, I spoke roughly. “You’re sick. I’ve got to get you sorted out. I can’t cope with much more today, so…please, just get into bed.”

He did as he was told, his movements stiff. He curled up on his side as if his stomach hurt, and I pulled the quilt up over him then added two blankets from the trunk for good measure. “Just stay there.”

I ran downstairs. We had an array of hot-water bottles, relics of various winters, and I chose the three newest and put the kettle on. While it boiled I phoned the hospital, getting through to Dr. Ferguson on the number he’d given me. He sounded grim. I told him Cam’s symptoms, and he listened with concern but advised me to get the tablets into him and keep him where he was if I could cope, two coaches having smashed into one another head-on just outside Brodick, throwing the tiny hospital to the limit of its resources. I thanked him and hung up.

Already my local disaster was receding, taking its place in the weave, which my ma had warned me could be dark as Black Watch tartan, hard to understand, and like any other happy little kid I hadn’t listened. I put the water bottles and a glass of milk onto a big tray. I remembered what the doc had said about food and added a rudimentary sandwich, placing a dash of pickle on the cheese the way my patient liked, and I carefully balanced the whole lot upstairs.

I was sorry for my morbid reaction. If Cam was shattered by this, it was for me to be strong. I knew nothing of the roots of his pain, and the poor bastard had nearly drowned himself trying to save Harry.

“Here,” I said, setting the tray down on the bedside table. “Can you sit up for a second? Got some really massive horse pills for you, and you have to take them with some food.” He emerged from under the quilt and pushed himself up wearily. I reached for the hot-water bottles. “And I know these are the last things you want, but we need to burn this out of you here if we can. There’s been a crash in Brodick, and the hospital’s in chaos.”

“No doctors.”

“We’d be lucky to get you one at the moment anyway, but—”

“No doctors. No police.”

I tucked the bottles under the quilt, frowning. He was pretty out of it. If the antibiotics didn’t make a difference—and if he’d just caught his traditional Highland death from being wet and cold, they wouldn’t—he’d get medical help if I had to airlift him to Glasgow.

“Well, I can’t pretend you flaking out on me like this isn’t a nuisance, but…” I stroked his hair. “It’s not against the law.”

“No police, Nichol.”

“All right. Take your pills like a good lad and I won’t have to call them.”

It was the wrong thing to say and the right one—he shivered as if he had taken me seriously but knocked back the tablets unprotesting. He even managed a bite of the sandwich when I put the plate into his hands then choked faintly and pushed it away. “Sorry. Can’t.”

“Okay. Just try and keep those down, though.” I stood over him until he’d finished most of the milk, then I eased him down onto the pillows.

He soon fell into a light, restive sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him. Looking after him had given me something to do, a shield against thought. His eyelashes flickered, casting pain-filled shadows. What happened next? When I’d come home for Alistair and Ma, it had all been sorted out. Harry had arranged the funerals, keeping me at ferocious arm’s length. We’d just had to wait for the bodies to be flown in from Spain. What did I do for the old man now? The stupid thing was that he was the only person I wanted to ask—him or Cam, now locked away from me in grief and fever dreams. I’d forgotten how it felt to be alone.

A shift in the wind brought sounds of restless bleating up from the south pasture. Another thing I’d forgotten—sheep needed tending, no matter who died. The realisation came as a relief. Jen and Kenzie junior weren’t scheduled to work today, and the whole farm with its daily round of demands was waiting for me, held in stasis since that sunny afternoon moment when I’d looked up from my computer screen and everything had changed.

I brushed strands of damp hair back from Cam’s brow. He didn’t stir. I waited for a while, until his breathing had settled. I’d started keeping a notebook by my bed again, for those mornings when I woke up with brilliant ideas about syntax and semantics dancing round in my head. At least now it served to write him a note. I kissed the hollow of his temple and left.

I was gone for a couple of hours. It was another phase of shock, I knew, but everything felt very numb and normal. I didn’t have to think at all while I went about my tasks, and by the time I finished, an incandescent summer twilight was just beginning, the sun dipping westerly under the rainclouds and blazing them gold and pale green. It was a normal time to knock off work and come home. The dogs wouldn’t come out from under the truck for me, but when I opened up the shed Harry had used for their kennel and took them out some dinner, one by one they crept from their hiding place and loped inside. I dealt with that, even though checking the shed to see they had water and locking the place up meant I found two of Harry’s jackets and a selection of his pipes. This was where he’d come and talk to them in Gaelic when the world was proving difficult for him. They would sit before him in a triangle and listen.

I shouldn’t have left Cam alone. When I went up, I found him much worse. I ran to his side. His breathing was harsh, his eyes open and fixed on some distance way beyond me. As I leaned over him, he grabbed my shoulders and gasped out, “Don’t tell Nichol!”

“Jesus.” I clapped a hand to his brow. He was radiating dry heat. The luminous twilight had got into his eyes and turned into flickering blue-violet fire. “All right, sweetheart. Going to get help for you.”

His grip clamped savagely tight. “No police! Don’t… Don’t tell Nichol…”

I lifted him into my arms. “Okay,” I whispered, pressing kisses to his ear. “I won’t. I’m going for a doctor, not the police.”

“I killed him. I killed the old man.”

Oh, God. That was what this was about. “No. You nearly died trying to save the old man.” I detached his bruising hold on me and pushed him down flat on the bed. More urgent still than getting him medical help was conveying to him this understanding. “You did everything you could. I know you’re sick, love, but try to listen to me—I saw Harry’s doctor today. The old man had a heart condition. He probably died at the wheel of his tractor and crashed into the loch after that. There was nothing you could have done.”