My Life as a Man (23 page)

I was cramming the porridge in, but the bowl was full to overflowing and it took time. Swallowing in a gulp, I mumbled, ‘He wouldn’t have minded.’

She put her head to one side regarding me thoughtfully. When she walked, she stooped a little, trying perhaps to make herself smaller, and that went with a certain clumsiness in the way she
walked. Sitting there, however, busy with her own thoughts, she was unselfconsciously erect and graceful. Sitting in half-profile, too, her round features, which could look placid, even stupid at
times, sharpened and took on character so that she seemed almost handsome. Normally pale, she had a spot of red on each cheek.

‘He sounds nice, your father. Is he?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

I didn’t feel like explaining that he was dead.

‘He’s all right,’ I said.

‘So he’s still alive?’

‘Yes!’ The single word came out more abruptly than I’d intended. I was afraid and tired, and there was a repressed excitement about her which disturbed me.

If I had spoken sharply, she seemed to pay no attention. ‘What about your mother?’ she asked. When I hesitated, she went on, ‘Your real one, I mean.’

Of course, that deception was over.

‘She’s alive,’ I said.

I had to pull up my feet to avoid brushing against her as I swung my legs out from under the blanket. As I put the empty bowl on the table, Beate lifted the pillow and began to fold the blanket,
patting the heavy folds. I put on my trousers, not turning away from her, since I didn’t feel like a boy any more, modest or not.

‘Give me a minute,’ she said, ‘and I’ll get your egg.’

‘No, don’t bother.’

‘It isn’t any bother.’

‘But I’m not fussed. If it’s all right, I could cut myself some bread and cheese. I’d prefer that, honestly.’

‘Oh, well, if you won’t let me spoil you. That’s what my father called it, “spoiling”. Sometimes August spoils me. But don’t say I told you. He wouldn’t
be pleased.’

Eileen came down, dressed and carrying her tray, as I was eating at the table.

‘How are you feeling?’ Beate asked.

‘I’m all right. I’m not ill any more. You really shouldn’t have bothered.’

‘It isn’t any bother,’ she said again. ‘I wish I could make the two of you believe that. I’m happy to do things for you.’ The spots of red glowed on her
cheeks. ‘After the excitement, a little spoiling does no harm. I gave this one his porridge in bed, but he wouldn’t stay for the rest. You know what men are like.’ She sounded
almost skittish, not heavy or grave as she had before. She was turning into someone different, but then what did I know about who she really was?

Eileen avoided my eye as she put the tray on the table, and went out without another word.

‘Oh, dear,’ Beate said, looking after her. ‘That’s the first morning she hasn’t offered to help with the washing up. Perhaps she isn’t as well as she
thinks.’

‘I’ll do it.’

I began to lift the cup, plate and cutlery from the tray.

‘No.’ She stopped me. ‘Go and talk to her. I’m sure you must want to.’

I found Eileen just inside the gate to the road, looking with folded arms in the direction the brothers would have taken to begin their homeward journey the previous evening. Though the gate was
open, I had the odd impression of her being held behind an obstruction that barred her way. She gave no sign as I came to her side.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘After the excitement, you mean?’ She stared out at the road. ‘Isn’t that what that awful woman called it?’

Inanely I said, ‘I thought you liked her.’

‘Can’t you see she’s laughing at us?’

I started to answer but stopped, unsure of the truth.

‘I opened my eyes and she was looking down at me. I’m sure she hadn’t knocked, just walked in. All I wanted was a chance to be quiet and think. The last thing I wanted was
breakfast.’

‘She did that to me, too,’ I said. ‘But I was awake. I couldn’t sleep all night.’

We stood together, penned behind the invisible barrier.

‘What was in the case?’ she asked.

I told her.

‘A lot of money?’

‘A fortune.’

‘So that’s what it was about.’ She was quiet for a moment, lost in thought, and then she astonished me. ‘Mr Gas: isn’t that what Bernard called you? That’s
what he’s like. Once I told him our neighbour was going to be sixty, and next day I heard him say, “I hear you’re having a birthday? Fifty, is it?” And he smiled when the
man didn’t deny it. He probes for weakness. Even with me. Right from the beginning. Even when he loved me.’

As she said that, it was suddenly clear to me how little I believed the money was what Bernard cared about.

‘Perhaps he still does,’ I said on an impulse I regretted at once.

She looked at me with a kind of dismay that turned to anger.

‘There comes a time when that doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Even a woman can learn that love doesn’t excuse everything.’ And then, while I hesitated, she asked,
‘And if he does, why didn’t he come back?’

I took her by the arm. ‘We could go right now. Just go out on to the road and start walking.’

She shook her head. ‘I feel drained of energy. But if you want to walk, why don’t you go by yourself?’

‘I don’t mean for a walk. I mean, leave – get away from here.’

‘Could we?’ She spoke as if the breath had been driven from her body. ‘We’re miles from anywhere.’

Before I could put into words what I had lived with, shapeless and horrible, like an unfocused shadow on the edge of thought, August called my name. From no direction, it seemed to come from the
air. For the first time in my life, I felt my heart beat so strangely it felt it might shake itself from my chest.

He was in shadow between the open doors of the barn. ‘It’s a job that takes two,’ he said. He wanted me to help him cut out and replace rotted beams. ‘The new wood came
when you were away. It’s needed fixing for a long time.’

We worked together all morning, as we had done several times before. It was heavy work and my shoulders ached after an hour of it, but he seemed tireless and pride or fear kept me going,
matching him hour after hour. Several times it struck me how carefully, even regretfully, he lifted aside the birds’ nests that were tucked into the angles of the old beams. Towards the end,
with the pace he set and my tiredness, I had to keep wiping sweat from my eyes. When at last he stopped and went out, I sat with my back against one of the stalls, drawing in breaths thick enough
to chew of the still, heavy air.

All too soon he was back, carrying a jug of tea and sandwiches. ‘No point in stopping too long. It’ll take us the rest of the day, maybe tomorrow as well.’ Most of the morning
he’d said nothing, now he offered occasional sentences, thrown out like scraps of the food he was masticating. ‘If I was ever able to travel, this place would need to be in shape for
selling.’

He shook the last of the tea on to the ground and went out again. I stood in the doorway and watched him cross the yard. As soon as I saw him go into the outside toilet on the end wall of the
house, I realised that was where I needed to go, too. After ten minutes, the need was so urgent that I went over and waited for him to be finished.

When August opened the door at last, though, he didn’t come out but stood blocking the entrance.

He smiled at me and said, ‘I was thinking while I was sitting in there about the priest on Barra. It must have been the smell of shit that put him in my head. This child I was fond of
– she was like a sister to me – wasn’t well. It was his belief that he had the power to cast out evil spirits. According to him, there was nothing for it but an exorcism. Her
parents had too much of the peasant in them to argue with a priest. But I hid myself and watched, wanting to take care of her. Do you know anything about such things? Not many people do. I read up
on it, but that was when I had the chance and it was years later. As far as I remember, he went through the whole rigmarole, but there were no turds, not even a wet fart, in fact. And she
didn’t speak in tongues, not a word. It is possible, of course, that the Devil wasn’t in her, after all. Would you think that might be it? Oh, I have to tell you it was a
disappointment. Between you and me, I’d put great hopes in it. And will I tell you what was the worst thing? The wee man had a pimple on the side of his nose, and looking in the window it
surprised me to see the pimple still there. I wondered afterwards if it was me seeing the pimple meant the girl was left in the power of the Devil.’

When he stood aside, I went in at a rush and sat down and braced my foot against the door – there was no lock. But at once I stood again, as if pushed up by the stink from the bowl.
Through a crack in the planks, I watched August cross the yard and go into the byre, and when he was out of sight I opened the door and simply walked out of the gate and kept going.

I told myself it was a warm day, but reasonably or not it bothered me that there was no smoke from the chimneys. As I got closer, I couldn’t hear any voices or stir of movement. Unlike
where I’d come from, the area in front of the house was a kind of junkyard littered with old pieces of equipment. A dark stain of oil showed where a car had been parked, but the space was
empty. With a sinking heart, I knocked, then banged, on the door. I turned the handle and it opened, but I knew that meant nothing. If they were away on an errand, it wouldn’t occur to them
to lock up before they left. It was the same layout as August’s place. The kitchen was dark and crammed with ancient furniture. A faint smell of stale cooking hung on the air. I called up the
stairs and, met by silence, tried again more loudly. I had no heart for a third time.

Between one moment and the next, the suppressed desire to shit reasserted itself. I searched for the toilet with the urgency of a fire engine in an emergency. By the time I found it, tucked away
at the far end of the house, lights were spinning and the siren was wailing. It was only with the luxury of relief that it occurred to me how embarrassing it would have been if the old folk had, in
fact, been around. To make sure, I walked out of the yard on the side opposite the road. Luckily there were no horned cattle in that field, and I walked down the slope to the edge of the water. It
stretched out of sight to the left, but wasn’t all that wide ahead of me, not more than a mile across.

I watched the progress of a pair of swans across the middle of the little loch. On the near side, brown birds I took to be ducks took turns tipping upside down to stick their heads underwater.
The bank dropped to a cuticle of sand on which a boat was drawn up out of the water. Two oars lay tidily in the bottom. On impulse, I stepped in and sat down. Just as I did, an engine sounded
across the quiet water. Like a man on a desert island, I jumped up at once and waved my arms, but the car passed left to right along the far side and vanished.

I sat in the boat for a long time and left it reluctantly. It was strange. When I’d run off before, I’d had no hesitation in going to find the Morton brothers and returning with
them. It had never occurred to me not to come back, and that was before I was in love with Eileen, or at least knew I was. Now, despite knowing, there was a terrible temptation to push the boat
into the water and escape. The difference between then and now was a measure of the change I had come to feel in the presence of August. I had no protection now of doubt or scepticism. It would
have been easy to give in to my desire for escape. What stopped me from pushing the boat into the water was not my love for Eileen but the extraordinary fact of her love for me.

I couldn’t face going back to the road. Instead, I turned my back on the loch and walked to where the field ended in bushes and a line of trees. I wound through them till I was stopped by
a languid stream, too dark to be shallow and too wide to jump. There came a place, though, where after winding back and forward the water gathered pace to cut a narrower channel, and just after
this rocks acted as stepping stones to the other side. The footing was wet, slimy in parts, and when the last rock wobbled under my weight it took an awkward lunge to make the bank. The tangle of
bushes came close to the water’s edge, but there was the faint trace of an almost overgrown path and I made reasonable speed until a fallen tree blocked my way. If there had been any choice,
I would have turned back but I put my arms across my face and scrambled through a mass of branches and then inched through, bent double, where the fallen trunk rested on the broken base. As soon as
I was on the other side the path was wider, and another dozen steps took me to a place I recognised. It was the pool where Eileen and I had eaten Beate’s picnic; in another life, it
seemed.

Despite the rocks scattered around, it was a pleasant place to sit. There were no trees in the corner of the field on the other side; and the sun, lower in the sky, slanted across on to the
grass. Anyway, most of the rocks by the pool were small. There weren’t more than half a dozen larger ones. I went from one to the other and turned them over. The biggest one I left to the
end. It took two hands and bent knees to tip it over. There was no hole underneath, nor traces of earth removed to make a hiding place for a case full of money. I sat down beside it and stared
across the water, my head so full of my own thoughts that it was some time before I noticed the marks.