My Life as a Man (18 page)

‘August won’t be long,’ Beate said.

‘We should be here when he gets back,’ Eileen said.

She was gentle and reasonable and immovable. She kept repeating how good it was of August to take the motor to his friend – ‘A friend,’ he’d said, shrugging, when Eileen
explained we might not have enough money.

Beate wiped her hands on a towel, leaned back against the sink and didn’t even pretend not to be listening. In the end, I scowled at both of them and went out.

I didn’t take the path to the pool. Needing to be free of the place, I went out on to the road and turned left, away from the junction with the sign that had directed us here. I assumed
that the junction would be on the way to the nearest town with a garage. The last thing I wanted was to meet August returning.

In the dimly lit kitchen, enclosed by its thick stone walls, I hadn’t realised how hot the day had turned. In half a mile, my shirt was sticking to my back. Mountains folded one behind the
other in the distance. Fields, dipping and rising, spread on both sides of the narrow road. Trees lined against the sky on top of a rise, all leaning the same way. Gradually the landscape and
silence imposed an unexpected peace. I had no names for the mountains. I didn’t know one tree from another. I knew nothing about farm beasts or about birds or the wild things in the grass. I
had no idea of how people lived in such places, what was natural, what men had made, what any of it meant. I had only impressions: big curves of blue or green as if slashed on to a painting from a
loaded brush. The wonderful thing was to be alone, no one looking at me, the world mine. I spun slowly till the empty world tilted about me.

As the world wound down, from out of nowhere came the uproar of a big American voice, accompanied by a band – drums thumping, trumpets blaring – bawling from full lungs: ‘If
ever the devil was born without a pair of horns, it was you, Jezebel, it was you. If ever an angel fell, Jezebel, it was you, Jezebel, it was you. If ever a pair of eyes promised paradise,
deceiving me, grieving me, leavin’ me blue, Jezebel . . .’

Round a turn in the road, I came on a man at the edge of the field, crouched over a sheep on its back with its legs waving in the air. At the instant I stopped to watch, with a heave he threw it
on to its feet. It exploded out of his grip and bolted off, and he straightened up and studied me.

‘If ever the devil’s plan was made to torment man, it was you, Jezebel, it . . .’

A thickset man, at a guess in his late fifties, though he could have been anything from fifty to eighty. Faded blue shirt without a collar. Square, weather-beaten face. One eye-socket blank
flesh; out of the other a single small blue eye, flat and without depth, stared at me as if speculating which side I’d have been on at Culloden.

‘Like a demon, love possessed me, you obsessed me constantly. What an evil star is mine, that my fate’s design should be Je . . . ze . . . be . . . el!’

‘Isn’t that a hellish noise?’ I said.

He considered, head to one side as if listening, then said, ‘It’s cheery when you’re working. And the wife likes it.’

He nodded over his shoulder and I saw on the crown of the hill a low stone building not unlike the one I’d come from.

‘She’s all for the gramophone,’ he said. ‘In the navy I liked the wireless.
Workers’ Playtime
with Vic Oliver, yon was a great programme.’

‘He’s married to Churchill’s daughter.’

‘Do you tell me that?’ The single eye regarded me sceptically. ‘I thought he was a Jewboy.’

‘No idea. I read somewhere he’s married to the daughter.’

‘That’s remarkable. Good for her.’ He tucked his chin into his shoulder and sawed at an imaginary fiddle. ‘He used to say, “Do you know why I shut my eyes when
I’m playing? It’s because I don’t like to watch folk suffering.”’ After a pause, he lowered his hands. ‘That always made me laugh.’

It was too late even to smile. Another test failed.

After I left him, the road swung left by a field with half a dozen cows, shaggy brown beasts with long horns which went back in a curving lilt. Past them, it inclined so steeply that I began to
pant for every breath of warm air. To my surprise, at the top the narrow road disappeared into the yard of the house I’d seen from below. In the conviction that the farmer should have warned
me about a dead end, a kind of indignation carried me forward. As I came to the other end of the farmyard, I looked down a grassy slope to where a rowing boat lay pulled up on the bank of an open
stretch of water. It was so quiet that I could hear a lorry, maybe a mile distant, trundling along what had to be a road on the other side of the loch.

I became conscious of a low, steady hissing, which I eventually recognised as the steady turning of a needle at the end of a gramophone record. It came from one of the open windows, and I
realised that it was from here the American music had thundered across the countryside. No sign, though, of the farmer’s wife. Perhaps that music-lover was making beds; or in hiding under one
of them from the intrusion of a stranger. At that last thought, I beat a retreat.

On my way back, I saw the farmer making his way up the field towards the house, followed by an idle string of cows. At sight of me, he swerved and came across.

‘The road stops at your house,’ I said.

‘Nowhere else for it to go.’

‘I found that out.’

‘So where’s your car?’ The question seemed irrelevant. As I hesitated, he said. ‘You’re just taking a walk?’

‘That’s right.’

‘We don’t get many folk walking here.’

‘I’m staying with your neighbour.’

‘Neighbour?’

‘Down the road.’

‘What brought you there? You know MacLean?’

I shook my head. ‘We stopped, looking for something to eat. My mother began to feel unwell, and they put us up.’ Then the name MacLean registered. ‘I’m talking about the
first house down on the right-hand side.’

‘So am I.’

‘MacLean?’

‘Aye, Angus MacLean and his sister. What man would want that, eh? A man needs a bit of a cuddle now and again. You’ll not get that from a sister.’ He made a face, and went on
before I could react. ‘The man’s in hiding down there. He’d to leave his own island because he was ashamed. He was one of they conchies – he wouldn’t fight for his
King – and on that island a lot of the boys didn’t come home. Just a worthless kind of a man. He worked in the forestry in Argyll with the other conchies for a while. After the war, he
went back to being a schoolmaster again, and then one day the two of them were gone. I was surprised when they turned up here. He must have thought he’d left his past behind him. But
it’s a small world for a creature like that. I smile to think he has no idea that I know about him. They say the real reason he wouldn’t fight was that he favoured yon Hitler
man.’

At the beginning, I almost broke in to say, ‘It’s a mistake – he’s South African.’ By the end, what stopped me was that I could believe in August as a supporter of
the Nazis. But that husband and wife might be brother and sister made no sense to me.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘If he doesn’t know you, how do you know him?’

‘I don’t,’ the man said. He jerked a thumb at the house on the hill above us. ‘But
she
does. Oh, she knows him. Any time our paths cross in the town, she dodges
away so he’ll not see her.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Island girls make the best wives.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘Got a temper, though – goes with the red hair. If she heard me, she’d go her duster, call me a damned old
gossip, but that’s just because he frightens her.’

I offered, ‘He’s a big man,’ not able to keep the question out of my voice, still willing to settle for there being a mistake.

‘By Christ, he doesn’t frighten
me
.’ He poked with his stick at one of the cows that were gathering in a circle round us. ‘Anyway, you’d never be such a fool
as to say anything to him, eh?’

‘I won’t say anything.’

‘That’s all right, then. But why give your money to somebody like that? Now you know the score, you should get out of there.’

‘Today if I can.’

On the off chance he might help, I was ready to tell him about the starting motor, but he struck out again at the cow.

‘That’s the bitch that did it.’ He rubbed a finger in his empty eye-socket. ‘Hooked me in the face when I was on the milking stool. I cry her Jezebel.’

‘But she still has her horns.’ Even a town boy knew you could cut off their horns.

‘Aye,’ he said on a slow outgoing breath, ‘but I keep an eye on her now.’

His laugh followed me back down the road.

‘It can’t be repaired,’ he said.

‘The starting motor?’ I asked stupidly.

He frowned at me. ‘It’s a good garage. If they say it can’t be, it can’t be.’

‘Did you get a new one?’

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than it occurred to me that he’d been told we’d no money to pay for a repair, never mind a replacement. There might be a fortune in the case
in the boot of Eileen’s car, but what use was that if I didn’t dare let on that it was there?

‘No. It’s only a small place,’ he said.

Panic wiped thoughts of money out of my head. ‘But what’s going to happen? We can’t stay here.’

‘They phoned for one while I was there.’ He looked at me for a long moment: I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. At last, he said, ‘What more could they do?’

I couldn’t find an answer. It came over me how much I distrusted him. It was too much of a coincidence that the car should have broken down just when we wanted to leave. For all I knew,
he’d disabled it and there was nothing wrong with the starting motor. If so, he wouldn’t have been near a garage. I couldn’t help glancing at the boot of his car. I’d seen
him put the starting motor in it that morning. Was it still there?

‘Did they say how long it would take?’

‘Tell you what, next time I’m in I’ll ask them.’

‘Could I come with you?’

He rubbed one hand down the length of his chin, studying me, then nodded as if making up his mind to something. ‘I don’t see why not.’

I went to get into the car.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘You said I could come.’

‘Not now. I’m not going back now.’ He made it sound ridiculous.

‘What about tomorrow?’

Waiting for him to answer, I understood it was a question to which there were a dozen ways of saying no.

‘Tomorrow it is.’

‘It’s not too soon? Do they get it from Inverness, or does it have to be Glasgow? It doesn’t have to be from the factory, does it?’ Somewhere in England, I meant.

‘It might even have come by tomorrow.’ When he bared his teeth in a smile, it was unexpected. ‘No harm in hoping.’

He went off then to get on with the work of the day. The errand with the starting motor meant his day was starting late. I expected him to ask me to help, but he didn’t. I should have been
relieved, but it made me more wary. Maybe he felt he didn’t need to keep an eye on me any more. After all, he knew I had been out walking, on my own, no one to stop me. He hadn’t asked
where I’d been. What mattered was that he’d seen me come back: I had nowhere to go.

Frustratingly, when I went into the kitchen Eileen was with Beate, one on either side of the table, talking over a cup of tea. I told them what August had said about the starting motor. When
I’d finished, they drifted back to their conversation. I sipped the tea Beate poured for me, too busy with my thoughts to pay much attention. Eileen was doing most of the talking, and once
something she said made Beate smile. It was like a glimpse of a younger and happier woman. As that happened, it occurred to me that we might turn to her for help. I was conscious of how much at
ease with each other the two women appeared to be. Because of a man, Beate, too, it seemed to me, had been trapped in a poor kind of life. Sharing that experience with Eileen, it was just possible
she might agree to help us. I looked at her as she talked, watched her lips moving, not following the words. Our situation was desperate, and we needed an ally. What made me hesitate was the mad
idea that she might be August’s sister not his wife.

I needed to talk to Eileen.

The day, however, frittered away without an opportunity. All afternoon, August’s chores kept him in the yard, and the house was too small for privacy. When finally Eileen agreed to go
walking, Beate, without an invitation or it even being clear who had made the suggestion, came as well. We straggled round the perimeter of the field and the women talked. When I looked over my
shoulder, August had come to the corner of the byre and was watching us.

Dinner began as a silent meal. I could find nothing to say. The women’s talk had dried up. For once, it was August who broke the silence.

‘Working around today, my mind kept turning to where you would look for help if you had a problem. Say, for example, you have to do something. You might not want to do it, it might be a
hateful thing, but no matter how you try you can only find one answer. There doesn’t seem to be another. I’ve learned more in my life from books than I ever learned at university.
Mostly books I came across on my own.’

‘I was desperate to go to university,’ Eileen said. ‘But my father didn’t believe in that for girls, so I went to Jordanhill College to train to be a teacher. He
wasn’t pleased when I gave it up, and went to be a nurse instead. It got me away from home, though.’

All the time Eileen had been speaking, Beate had been looking across the table at August. Now she asked him, ‘Do you remember that landlady you had?’ It was as if Eileen hadn’t
spoken, which made me feel as if she had been insulted. ‘It was your first term at university. She came up to waken you, and you called from inside that you were just coming. But because you
were only half awake, you didn’t speak in English. She thought you were swearing at her!’