And the Land Lay Still (28 page)

She looked shocked. ‘Especially not then. Why?’

‘There was a man called MacLaren he tellt me aboot.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He died. He was killed by the Japs.’

‘Oh God,’ she said. She took the paper back, stared at it as if it might speak. ‘What does it mean?’

‘I dinna ken. Maybe it disna mean onything. Look,’ he said, ‘I better get hame. I’ll come back efter I’ve seen Liz and maybe take a walk up intae the woods. He’ll probably be here by the time I get back, but that’s what I’ll dae. Will ye be all right?’

She nodded. ‘Thank you very much. Don.’

‘Aye, right,’ he said. ‘Try no tae worry.’ But he felt like a deserter, even though it was nothing to do with him. And something else: being in the house with her on his own – it made him feel treacherous, as if he were there behind Jack’s back, when he was only trying to help.

As he hurried home he thought about what she’d said about Jack and the owls. It didn’t surprise him. Jack had a way with animals. Once, coming back from the Blackthorn, they’d come across a hedgehog in the road. Jack had hunkered down and put a hand out to its snout. Don expected it to curl up in a ball, but it didn’t, it came towards the outstretched hand, and Jack carefully led it off the tarmac and into the long grass, as if he had it on an invisible leash. And sometimes, at the bus stop, a blackbird would land on the wall a few inches away from his head, just stand and wait with its own head cocked as if it too were waiting for the bus. When Don or anybody else went close, it flew off, but it had no fear of Jack. The same bird. You could tell by a white patch on its wing. Jack didn’t speak to it or feed it, he just stood beside it. As if the two of them knew something that nobody else did. And maybe they did.

§

It was after two o’clock when he got in. Billy came running to the door when he heard it open. Don picked him up, roughed his hair, tickled him. ‘All right, wee man?’ He went into the living room. Liz was sitting, splayed out and hot despite the cool day, in her armchair. She said, ‘Where have ye been? There’s some soup in the pan on the stove, but it’ll need heating up.’

He explained about Sarah waiting for Jack at the bus stop. ‘I couldna just leave her there,’ he said. ‘I looked in the pub for Jack and walked her hame. She’s feart for him.’

‘Or frae him,’ Liz said.

‘How are ye?’ he asked, putting Billy down.

‘Sair,’ she said. ‘It’s started at last.’

He clapped his palm to his head. ‘Liz, I’m sorry. Dae ye want the doctor?’

‘God no,’ she said. ‘It’s far too soon for that, he’d come and just have to go away again.’

‘How often are ye getting the pains?’

‘No often enough,’ she said. ‘Aboot one every hauf-oor. Away and get your soup.’

‘Are ye wanting some?’

‘Christ, Don, dae I look like I’m wanting soup?’

He went through to the kitchen. He’d not dared to say anything about going back to Sarah Gordon’s afterwards. How could he, with Liz maybe about to give birth any minute? He ladled the soup straight from the pan into a bowl, found half a loaf in the bread bin and sliced off a hunk, then sat at the table, gulping and cramming and chewing, trying to think what to do.

‘Have ye heated it up?’ Liz called.

‘Aye!’ he shouted between lukewarm mouthfuls. Slow down, he thought, you’ll make yourself sick. But he kept going at the same pace, glancing at the paper as he ate.

For once, Korea was relegated from prime position in the news. The front page was taken up with the drama unfolding at Borlanslogie. Forty hours after the original collapse some ninety men were still underground, unable to progress in any direction and with a diminishing supply of air to sustain them. Rescue teams were trying to dig through to them from adjacent old workings, but it was slow going. Firedamp was everywhere: it had to be driven out with fans, and only hand tools could be used to tunnel through the thick wall of coal and rock to where the men were. Machinery couldn’t be brought in for fear of igniting the gas: even a spark from a chisel could be enough to blow the tunnel and the rescuers to pieces.

He washed and dried the bowl and put it away, then went back through to the other room and stood, hesitant, at the door.

‘Well, what dae ye think?’ he said after a minute.

‘Aboot what?’

‘How long dae ye think ye’ll be?’ It came out wrong, as if he was
asking her to hurry up, and he saw anger flaring in her eyes. Quickly he added, ‘The rain’s stopped. I could take Billy oot for a walk, get him aff your hands and let ye hae a sleep, if ye think it’ll be a while yet?’

Her irritation seemed to pass. She even managed a smile. ‘That’s no a bad idea. He needs some fresh air. I canna see me being ready for a few oors yet. But I might get intae bed. It’s better lying doon.’

‘I thought it was supposed tae be better standing up, walking aboot.’

‘Well, I’m telling ye, at the moment it’s better lying doon.’

‘Right,’ he said, suddenly certain again. ‘That’s what we’ll dae. Come on, wee man, let’s get your shoes on and we’ll go for a dauner.’

‘Dinna gang far,’ Liz said. Her eyes were closing already.

‘We’ll no,’ he said.

§

‘I’ll hae tae be quick,’ he said. ‘I’ll need tae get back tae Liz.’

Jack had failed to return. Don had jogged round, with Billy on his shoulders. Billy had enjoyed the ride at first but then, finding it too hard, or discerning that his father’s urgency was not about entertaining him, had begun to whine. By the time they got to Sarah’s a full-scale tantrum was threatening, and Don’s plan, which had been to leave him with Sarah and Barbara while he had half an hour up in the woods searching for Jack, was clearly not going to work.

‘I really appreciate this,’ Sarah said.

‘Thing is,’ Don said, ‘if I canna find him, I’m no sure what else tae dae. I mean, he hasna been away for a day yet. The polis’ll no dae onything aboot it till at least the morn’s morn.’

‘There’s something wrong,’ she said. ‘I know it.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘nae point in me standing here. Come on, Billy, let’s go up in the woods.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to leave him with me?’

‘He’ll no settle,’ Don said. ‘I can see the signs.’ Somehow he’d got himself into a position of being dishonest to both women, and duplicity was not one of his strong points. He was regretting not having told Liz they were coming here, but he’d also decided he didn’t want to leave Billy in that house. He felt sorry for Sarah, but he wasn’t confident she was capable of looking after two bairns at
once. And every time he looked at the silent, watchful Barbara, he felt uneasy.

He let Billy walk and run for a while as they headed past the last of the houses and through a kissing gate, which led into the woods. It took longer with Billy walking but Don couldn’t carry him any more. He wondered if Billy’s memory was stirred. They’d pushed him up there in his pram once or twice, lifting him over the gate and bumping him along over tree roots and loose stones, but that was half his lifetime ago. The path led to an old wooden bench, camouflaged in bird droppings and flaky green paint, with a view back over the village and all the way down to Drumkirk. As far as he knew, Liz had never been back since. He hadn’t himself.

On a good day the view was great, you could see right over towards Fife. Borlanslogie lay in that direction, though it was hidden by hills, and in this kind of weather you couldn’t even see the hills. In the other direction, if you kept on through to the other side of the woods, you ended up on the moor. At this time of year there were often parties of shooters out after grouse. They came from the far side of the moor, from the north, Glenallan, a different breed with their tweed breeks, fore-and-afts and whiskery cheeks, rough-hewn ruddy-faced men with thick accents – not the plummy voices of the gentry, but the peatbog tones of their henchmen and farming neighbours. Fierce, some of them could be. And indeed when they reached the bench he heard the faint pop-pop of shotguns, toylike in the distance, and he wondered, not really believing it a possibility, whether Jack might have strayed up on to the moor and got himself mistaken for a grouse and shot.

Billy was happy again, picking up damp twigs and pine cones and collecting them together in a pile beside the bench while Don peered, as if with some definite purpose, into the trees. He called out – ‘Jack! Jack Gordon!’ – and his voice came back from the hill and Billy heard it and they had to spend a few minutes making their voices echo. Nobody shouted back. Then they went deeper in, along sodden, slippery paths, Don in the vague, hopeless hope of spotting something related to Jack. But what? A dropped handkerchief? Jack hanging from a branch? He put the thought from his mind. He was wasting his time. There was no possibility of him searching properly – not with Billy in tow. They should just go home. He had
another bairn on the way, a wife needing attention. What the hell was he thinking of?

What he was thinking of was that if Jack turned up, as he probably would later in the afternoon, he’d no doubt be expecting Don to meet him in the Blackthorn at eight o’clock, same as any other Saturday night. Never mind that he’d worried his wife sick, and obliged Don to engage in this ridiculous half-hearted hunt for him. Well, he’d be in the pub on his own. Don couldn’t go, even if he wanted to, because of Liz. But the truth was, he didn’t want to. He was tired of Jack’s half-baked theories about nationhood and freedom. Jack would have to do without him tonight. But would he find anybody else soft enough to keep him company?

‘Come on, son,’ he said to Billy. ‘Let’s get hame and see how your mother’s daein.’

They stopped briefly at the Gordons’ house and Don reported to Sarah that he’d had no luck and suggested that if Jack still hadn’t turned up by early evening she should think about contacting the police. He couldn’t help her any more – not, at least, till Liz had had the baby. Everything he said seemed to wound Sarah. She looked like a woman utterly alone – which, he thought as he hurried back home with Billy on his shoulders again, she doubtless was, Jack or no Jack.

They’d been away two hours, more. When he opened the door Liz was coming down the passage towards him from the kitchen, brisker and slimmer than she’d been for months. ‘Where have ye been?’ she said, just as she had earlier. But it wasn’t Liz, it was Joan Drummond. She said, ‘Ye’ve tae get doon tae the hospital quick as ye can. Bill took her in aboot forty minutes ago. Billy’ll be fine wi us.’

There was another woman in the house, emerging from the kitchen now. There was a lot of steam behind her, and Don could see what looked like sheets draped over the side of the Belfast sink. It was Betty, the next-door neighbour. ‘Don,’ Betty said.

‘What’s gaun on?’ Don said. ‘Why does she need tae go tae the hospital?’

‘She came on a lot quicker than she expected,’ Joan said.

‘But she said she wouldna be ready for oors,’ Don said. ‘I would never have gone oot if I’d thought ony different. And why’s she at the hospital?’

‘She got frightened,’ Betty said. ‘She started bleeding. She sent me roond for Dr Logan but he’s away oot fishing. Mrs Logan said tae get an ambulance but it was quicker tae get Bill. Luckily he and Joan were at hame,’ she added reproachfully.

‘Liz said tae say sorry tae ye, but she couldna wait,’ Joan said. ‘Though what she needs tae say sorry for beats me.’

Don didn’t know Joan that well. He’d never heard her nippy like that and felt a momentary twinge of sympathy for Bulldog. But none of that was important.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m away.’

‘If ye run,’ Betty said, ‘ye’ll catch the bus on the half-oor.’

Don ran.

§

Things get jumbled in your head. Not at the time of their happening perhaps, but afterwards, when you try to tease out the strands, recall the order in which they occurred. When what you are facing is triumph or disaster, one or the other, everything has definition, force, threat. It demands a response. The nearest thing in peacetime to being under enemy fire. It’s later that the confusion sets in, the overlapping, the fuzziness of detail. At the time you deal with it, you cope. Later you wonder how you did.

It was raining again. Don was intimidated by the hospital, a blackened pile with turrets and dripping rones. Inside, some of the decor had been modernised, but the whole place still had an air of gloomy Victorian philanthropy. It was part of the National Health Service now, but only at some abstract political level did he think of it as belonging to him in any way. Physically, emotionally, what he felt mostly was that he was an inconvenience to the people who worked there; that his presence somehow detracted from the efficiency or purpose of the building as staff came and went through the entrance hall; that he was taking the shine off the polished linoleum by stepping on it.

He approached the reception desk and asked about Liz. ‘She’s aboot tae hae a bairn. There was an emergency, she was bleeding. A neighbour brought her in his motor.’ The man at the desk frowned when he spoke of the bleeding, as if it were neither necessary nor appropriate to mention it. He asked Don to wait while somebody
was contacted. He pointed out a bench near the door where he could sit. An orderly appeared, was given instructions and went away again. There was a big clock on the wall behind the desk. Twenty minutes passed. Half an hour. Don, struggling to contain himself, was on his feet every time a nurse or doctor came by. He went back to the desk.

‘I really need tae find oot what’s gaun on. If ye tell me which ward she’s in I’ll go masel.’

‘Oh ye canna dae that,’ the man said. ‘Somebody will be with ye in a minute. Just take a seat.’

A minute. Another. Ten, eleven, twelve of them. More clip-clopping shoes, uniformed nurses. There were three sets of double doors leading off in different directions from the hall, and one set in particular was forever swinging to the passage of nurses, porters, cleaners. A few lost-looking men and women came in and approached the man behind the desk, who seemed to relish the power he exerted over them, either directing them to some other part of the building or sending them away altogether. It was the visiting half-hour, six till half-past. Don should be part of this vague disruption to the hospital’s routine, surely? He stood up again, but the man at the desk caught his eye at once and shook his head, sending him back to the bench. He wondered where Bulldog had got to. He’d kept an eye out for the Austin on the way in but hadn’t seen it. Bulldog must have gone home.