A Kind of Grief (46 page)

McAllister left a message for Sandy Marshall. Then, last, he wrote a letter to the chairman of the board of the
Gazette
, again stating his articles might stir up controversy but that he was doing his job as an investigative journalist believing it would increase the standing, and the circulation, of the
Highland Gazette
.

He had alerted all the people he could think of and felt better.
So if I should disappear or be knocked over by a car, someone will check.

The police constable tried Calum Mackenzie's lodgings.

“He came back yesterday, and he's at work, as far as I know,” the landlady said.

Next, he tried the
Gazette.

“Aye, Calum was in first thing this morning. Haven't seen him since.” Don didn't add that he'd told Calum to leave and only come back when he had an article worth publishing. “Chase a cat up a tree, then call the fire brigade if you have to!” he'd shouted at Calum.

“I believe his fiancée works at the hospital,” the policeman said.

“Aye, so I heard. Anything I can help you with?”

“No thanks Mr. McLeod, it's personal.”

When the constable left, Don lit up. He knew that look of panic-stricken dread; cadet reporters experienced it when doorstepping the newly bereaved. People of the first half of the war-torn twentieth century knew it from a knock on the door, a uniform, a telegram. Don knew that the young constable's face would burn, words scorching his throat, how he would wake up in the night, reliving that part of his job he would never become cynical about, breaking the news to the oblivious wife, husband, children, family. He knew it only became easier to bear if, or most likely when, the policeman or the reporter lost his humanity. Or took to drink.

Whatever it is Calum lad, I'm sorry I was so hard on you.
He groaned. He picked up the phone and called Joanne on the off chance Calum was there. Engaged. Ten minutes later, the telephone still engaged, he decided to walk over for a cup of tea. Maybe check up on Joanne whilst there; not that he'd tell her that—Joanne became pretty feisty if she thought she was being protected.

Joanne recognized the shape through the glass. “Hold on, Sandy, Don's at the door.”

She put a hand over the mouthpiece and called out, “Come on in. Won't be a sec.”

Don went to the kitchen and put on the kettle.

She returned to her phone call. “Really, Sandy, that man's got the hide of a rhinoceros.”

“I know. But at least one mystery is solved. He and Miss Ramsay knew each other at the College of Art.”

“Was that the name she went by? Alice Ramsay?”

“I don't know. Why?”

“You need McAllister to explain.”

“Aye, well. I also checked up on Hennessey. He is with the Foreign Office, though which department is impossible to know.” Sandy was aware his line might be tapped in spite of the laws and safeguards that prohibited tapping a newspaper telephone.

“I don't want to think about those men,” she said. “But thanks for letting me know about Forsythe.”

“Buy tomorrow's newspaper. Dougald Forsythe blows his own trumpet so well he should take up politics.”

“Heaven forfend.”

Don was reading yesterday's
Scotsman
when Joanne joined him, saying, “That was Sandy Marshall. He was telling me about Mr. Forsythe. He's donated the Leonardo drawing to the School of Art as an example of a master forgery. He says he knew all along and only wanted to show up the art establishment. According to Sandy, he's making out that he's an all-round great guy and only— What's wrong? Is it McAllister?” She dropped to the chair.

“I left McAllister punching the life out of his typewriter. No, nothing's wrong, I'm only here for a cup of tea.”

The doorbell rang. The front door opened. Whoever was there was not a stranger. “Joanne? Hello?”

“In the kitchen.”

Elaine was in her uniform. She was a mess of hair escaping her nurse's cap, pink-rimmed eyes, and a smear of snot on the collar of the blue dress. She would not look out of place in a portrait of Highlanders fleeing Culloden. “I can't find Calum. I've no idea where he went. How am I going to tell him? He'll never cope.”

“What is it?” Don asked. Remembering the policeman who'd been to the office looking for Calum, he knew he'd been right to be uneasy.

“Excuse me a moment.” Elaine went to the sink, wetted a hankie, wiped her eyes, then began. “Sister called me into her office. Told me to call my mum.” She'd been terrified that the bad news concerned her family.

The telling was secondhand, but in her mind's eye Elaine was there, in the hotel she'd worked in as part-time receptionist, housemaid, and waitress on Saturdays from when she was fourteen until she'd left school. She'd known everyone at the gathering since she was a baby. As she repeated the story to Joanne and Don, she did the voices, the gestures. Perhaps not word-for-word accurate but certainly sentiment-perfect, Elaine spoke the picture, word-painted the scene.

“Last night at the hotel, it was a going-away do for Mrs. Byrne, the chiropodist. She's flitting to Aberdeen as her husband has a new job. Mum was there with my auntie and a bunch of friends. No one asked
her
to the do, because no one wanted her there. The excuse was that she needs a wheelchair.”

Joanne and Don didn't need to be told who
her
was.

“They never saw her come in. She tells Calum she can't walk much, but last night she was mobile enough to get herself to the hotel and scream and shout and carry on.”

“Poor Calum.”

“Aye, poor Mrs. Galloway an' all.” Elaine began to cry again. “I still don't understand how it could have happened.”

The doorbell rang. Don said, “I'll get it.” He came back with Calum.

“What are you doing here?” Calum was staring at his fiancée, could see something was badly wrong, but daren't ask.

“Sit down, lad.” Don gestured to the chair next to Elaine.

Calum looked at her.

Reaching into her sleeve for the already sodden hankie, she was unable to look back at him.

“Mum! Is she aa' right?” Calum felt Elaine's hand cover his. He saw Mrs. McAllister looking down at the tablecloth. He felt every second of the
tick-tock
from the clock in the hallway. “Tell me.”

Elaine accepted that part of a nurse's duties was breaking bad news. Doctors were hopeless at it, Matron told them. Men were hopeless at it, was Elaine's opinion.

Speaking quietly, with a calm and wisdom of the wise woman she would surely become, she said, “My mum was at a party in the hotel with Mrs. Galloway and about eight or nine others. Your mum wasn't invited, but she came anyway. She was furious she was left out.”
Even though she would have refused the invitation
, Elaine and Calum knew. “There was a scene, and your mother accused Mrs. Galloway of running her over.”

“She doesn't mean it. Sorry, Elaine, but Mum sometimes makes things up.” He told her this as though it were news.

“I know, Calum. I've always known.” She continued, hand over his. “Your mum was hysterical, saying over and over that Muriel was driving the big black car that ran her over and tried to kill her.”

That it was checking up on the same car that Calum had lost his job over Elaine did not know.

“There's more.” Heads almost touching, they formed a universe of Calum and Elaine; no one else existed. “Your dad heard the commotion. He came in, and when he understood he said to your mother, ‘It was me. I was driving the car. I was the one who tried to kill you. I'm only sorry I didn't do a proper job.' ”

Elaine paused to let the information sink in. She was wondering if her own relationship would withstand the disaster, and decided it would.

Elaine—via her mother—now knew how they had talked, planned, decided; at last, they were to be together. Now this—Mrs. Galloway's dear wee man would be put on trial and jailed for attempted murder. She was certain Mrs. Mackenzie would report her husband to the police, if only to devastate Muriel. And everyone in the hotel in Sutherland and in the McAllisters' kitchen knew it too.

Calum was bouncing. His knees were uncontrollable; his eyes moved here and there, fixing nowhere. “Dad's just saying that to shut Mum up. He'd never ever harm anyone.”

“Your dad said he borrowed the big black car. It was in for a service. He waited for your mum to lock up. Then he drove at her from behind, with the lights out. He knocked her over, didn't check if she was alive but hoped she was dead.”

Elaine's mother told her that when he said that, Mrs. Mackenzie fainted.
Or pretended to faint—you never know what's real with that woman
.

“He put the car back in the garage, then went back to the golf clubhouse. It all took only twenty minutes, so your dad said, and no one noticed him gone, as it was a right busy night there.”

“Where is Dad now? Have the police charged him or what?”

“No. No one's said anything to the police about your dad's confession.”

Don knew that in small communities, an unspoken code of silence could descend. The police would know but be unable to prove anything.

“Early this morning, still dark, apparently, your dad took his car and left the hotel. Mrs. Galloway said he was driving down here to speak to you.”

Elaine left out her conversation with Mrs. Galloway.
He wanted to tell Calum himself. Wanted to speak to him before thon witch poisoned her son against his dad.
The rest of the conversation had consisted of wailing and crying and sobbing. Elaine was hearing the pain even now.

“Calum, there was an accident. Black ice, the police said. The car went off the road at thon steep stretch before Bonar Bridge.”

“He's dead.” Calum's voice was flat.

“He is.”

Joanne rose. Feeling like an intruder, she went to the sitting room, leaving the couple to themselves.

Don joined her. “Bad do,” he said.

Joanne was sitting in her husband's chair. She needed the scent of him. No comment was necessary.

Five minutes later, Elaine came in. “There's a train at ten past the hour. We need to go home.”

“I'll give you a lift to the station,” Don said.

Elaine telephoned her ward sister to explain. With Calum holding her hand, unable to speak, they left for the station.

In the kitchen with the undrunk cups of tea and the residue of heartbreak, Joanne understood she needed release. She went into the sitting room, opened the piano, and began to play. At first, she played a Liszt sonata. Then she began to hum. Without any intention, the music changed. It flowed through her fingers, and she began to half-sing, half-hum. It was half a minute or so before she recognized the song.

“Westlin Winds” was perhaps her favorite Burns song, an autumn song, although now it was winter. She knew most of the words, but the fourth and fifth verses she struggled to remember correctly, and in struggling she was distracted. But some lines of the last verse she knew. Spoken, she'd call them soppy or maudlin. Sung, they were tender and true.

We'll gently walk and sweetly talk

Till the silent moon shines clearly,

I'll grasp thy waist and, fondly pressed,

Swear how I love thee dearly

McAllister could hear the piano from the garden gate. Closing the front door quietly, he stood in the hallway and felt the notes and the lyrics penetrate his skin. And his heart. He knew then that all would be well with his Joanne.

I
didn't want the responsibility of a dog. But he found his own way up here, so he can find his own way back. The hens I can always set loose. They'll survive for a time—as long as a fox doesn't find them.

I'll need to climb into the barn rafters for the emergency rucksack. One spare set of clothes and extra passports, that's all I need. I'll take the small folding painting box I had custom-made in London. It fits the cover of eccentric lady artist. I'll be sorry to leave the camera, though. It has an excellent lens. I remember clearly the day I bought it in that small shop near Potszdamer Platz in Berlin.