And the Land Lay Still (27 page)

‘She’s gien ye a bonnie wee dochter,’ he said, trying to spark some slight glow of appreciation. ‘But she looked tired this efternoon. Maybe she misses her faimly.’

‘We are her family,’ Jack said. ‘Barbara and me. I appreciate your concern, Don, but she’s fine. We’re all fine.’

§

In the first week of September the news reported heavy fighting all around Pusan, with the Americans punching their way out of their corner, beginning to drive the North Koreans back. Don and Liz sat by the wireless night after night, getting used to the strange names of towns and rivers. He thought of how he’d driven lorries full of equipment up through Italy in ’43, the dust on the dry roads, the mud and slog when it rained, the constant waiting while mines were cleared, roads repaired, Bailey bridges built across slow, brown rivers, the almost total absence of engagement with the enemy because the Germans had withdrawn to embed themselves in a defensive line south of Rome. He thought of the early months of ’44, when that unreal advance against minimal resistance had come to a grinding
halt at Monte Cassino. He suspected that what was going on around Pusan bore more resemblance to the carnage there than to the breezy drive north from Sicily.

Liz was due any time. She’d had a long labour with Billy but no complications so they anticipated the birth happening at home, as Billy’s had. They had two plans. If she went into labour while he was at work she was to get their neighbour Betty Mair to go for Dr Logan, or leave a message for him if he was out. If there was anything wrong Betty was to go to the telephone box outside the post office and phone Byres Brothers to let Don know. ‘But only if necessary,’ Liz said. ‘Nae point in spending fourpence if we dinna need tae.’ Betty would look after Billy till the birth was over. Don didn’t like leaving Liz alone when it could happen any time but what else could he do? He was just the man. ‘Ye gied her the bairn but ye canna cure her o it,’ his mother said. Deep down he knew Liz would be all right. She was sensible, a good woman. Strong and sound physically, too. He couldn’t ask for a better wife.

If she started in the evening or at night, Don would go for the doctor himself. If anything seemed untoward Bill Drummond, a few doors away, had made them promise to call round for him, whatever hour it was. Bill had a motor car. He’d been in the Royal Army Service Corps supply branch for the last year of the war, and somehow had persuaded the army to sell him a deep green Austin 10HP, an ex-staff car, for a knockdown price when he was demobbed. He’d stripped it down and built it back up, repainted and polished it, and loved to take people for rides to show off his driving skills. It was all worked out if an emergency arose and they couldn’t rouse the doctor or he was on a call: Don would run round to alert Bill while Liz got herself ready; then when Bill arrived they’d all climb in, Liz in the front-passenger seat, Don carrying Billy in the back, and drive back to leave Billy with Bill’s wife, Joan, who was five months gone herself. Then it would be down the road to the hospital in Drumkirk. They could call an ambulance from the phone box, but it would take more time. Anyway, Liz would be all right. She might need Bill Drummond’s car but she’d not need an ambulance.

Bill was a journalist on one of the local papers, the
Drumkirk Gazette
. He was all right, but he fancied himself like mad. Although his war service had consisted, Don had worked out, mainly of shifting
ordnance from one depot to another, from the way he went on you’d think he’d been in the Commandos. He slaistered his hair with Brylcreem and, given his surname and Ronald Colman moustache, he’d gained the mildly mocking nickname ‘Bulldog’, which he took as a compliment. He appeared in the Blackthorn on an occasional Saturday, dropping hints about something afoot in local politics or business that he was keeping his eye on, a big story about to break. But Don reckoned the biggest story on Bill’s horizon was the one he would tell about racing a pregnant woman to hospital beneath the moon and stars. You could tell he secretly hoped it would happen and that it would be the dead of night when Don chapped the door. And if it wasn’t Liz you could guarantee his own wife, Joan, was going to need a hurl into town – in the depths of winter that would be, and with luck there’d be snow about and a good chance of a skid or two on the way.

The second weekend in September came but still no sign of the bairn. That Saturday Jack wasn’t on the bus into work, and when Don got on the bus to come home at midday Jack’s usual seat was empty again. The sky was grey and there was an autumnal chill in the air. It had been raining all day. It had been raining all week, in fact. All the talk at work had been of a mining accident at Borlanslogie, twenty miles the other side of Drumkirk. On Thursday night there’d been a collapse on the surface, due to the ground being saturated. The land had just given way, and thousands of tons of mud now blocked the roadways of the mine workings below. There were men trapped down there, scores of them. Peering through the streaked, dribbling glass at the countryside, summer just beginning to go brown at the edges, Don thought about that. Another kind of hell. He could never have worked down a pit.

Sarah Gordon was waiting at the bus stop. She was holding Barbara high on her chest, hoisting her up as passengers got off so that she could see their faces. It was obvious from Sarah’s expression that something was wrong.

‘Mr Lennie,’ she said as he reached them. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. Have you seen my husband?’

‘Jack? No. He wasna on the bus this morning. Did he get a different one?’

‘I don’t think he went to work,’ she said. ‘He left the house before
I was awake, but I know he wasn’t wearing his work clothes. They’re hanging in the cupboard. I remembered you’d be on this bus. I thought I’d come down and check, in case.’

He looked blankly at her.

‘In case you’d seen him,’ she said imploringly. He realised that she was not just worried, she was frightened.

‘No, I’m sorry. If he didna go tae his work, dae ye ken where he might have gone insteid?’

She shook her head. Then she said, ‘I wondered if you’d see if he was in the pub.’

Don glanced at his watch. ‘What for would he be in the pub at this hour?’

‘He might have gone for a drink,’ she said. It was such an obvious response he nearly laughed, but the fear in her face stopped the laugh coming. Barbara was frowning at him too, as if she dimly remembered him from somewhere.

‘Ye’ve no had a keek in yersel?’ he said.

‘I don’t like to,’ she said.

‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and hae a look.’ He reached out for Barbara. ‘Come on, darling, let’s gie your mother a rest.’ But she squirmed back from him, gripping Sarah’s arm and shoulder with sudden ferocity.

‘She won’t go with anybody else,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Never mind,’ Don said. ‘It’s just ye look a wee bit wabbit. Tired,’ he added, seeing she didn’t understand. ‘Exhausted.’

‘I suppose I am a little,’ she said.

They walked up the brae together. He thought, we might almost be a family. As if she’d read his mind, she said, ‘How’s Mrs Lennie?’

‘Liz,’ he said. ‘And please call me Don, no Mr Lennie. Naebody calls me that, no even at my work. She’s fine, but she’s due ony time noo. Overdue in fact.’

‘Then you need to go home,’ she said.

But he felt an overwhelming pity for her, a need to help. Liz would be all right about it, he thought. She would understand.

‘The bairn’ll be born when it’s born,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we canna find Jack first, eh?’

He wasn’t in the Blackthorn, nor had he been. Don asked, while Sarah and Barbara waited outside the door. They continued on, past
the end of his own street, back to the Gordons’ bungalow. She had to put Barbara down while she found her key and unlocked the door. Don glanced away, slightly embarrassed. There was a key for their own house, in a bowl on a table in the lobby, but he couldn’t remember the last time they’d used it. He wondered if Jack carried a key too, if he and Sarah came and went, locking their house against the world and each other. What if he’d gone out keyless that morning and come back in the last half-hour to find the door shut against him? The idea of that happening to Don himself was inconceivable.

They went in and through to the kitchen. She filled the kettle and put it on the electric ring. Barbara, back in familiar surroundings, let go of her mother at last, although she still steered a wide path around Don. She left the kitchen but returned a minute later carrying a teddy bear. Sarah helped her up on to a stool and she sat there rocking the bear and watching the two adults talking.

‘What now, then?’ Don asked. When Sarah turned to face him she looked disappointed, and he realised she’d been hoping he would have a plan.

‘Think now,’ he said. ‘Where else might he be? Has he gone off afore?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘But not like this.’

He screwed his face up, puzzled but relieved. ‘Well, then. Surely he’s just gone a bit further than usual? Maybe he’s decided tae go climbing hills, like he did afore the war, and he left early and didna want tae wake ye.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand. He doesn’t
go
anywhere. He’s just not
here
. Like that time you all came round. Didn’t you find it hard to speak to him out in the garden?’

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘but …’ He stopped, not sure of his ground. ‘But does he never go away? I mean, physically go away, for a lang walk or something. He can be quite solitary, I would think.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. The kettle was coming to the boil. ‘Do you want some tea?’

He nodded. ‘Just milk, thanks,’ he said.

She said, ‘Sometimes he doesn’t speak for days. But he’s never disappeared like this.’

‘Did ye hae an argument or something?’ he said, feeling clumsy
and intrusive. ‘He can be a wee bit touchy, I’ve noticed. I tried telling him he was late wi his tatties but he didna want tae hear it.’

‘The soil’s not good enough,’ Sarah said.

‘Not at all. It’s braw. I never saw soil like it.’

‘He doesn’t think so. Do you know how long he’s been preparing that patch?’

‘Since aboot April, frae the look o it,’ Don said, trying to lighten her mood.

‘Three years,’ Sarah said. ‘Ever since we moved in. He keeps digging it and weeding it and raking it, but he’s never satisfied. I don’t believe he’s ever going to grow anything in it. He says the soil’s too poor.’

Don hardly ever swore. Occasionally at work, if he hit his hand against something or a tool broke. Even in the army, when other men couldn’t utter a sentence without cursing, he’d kept his language clean. He prided himself on not using even mild swear words in front of a woman. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said now. ‘Three years? That’s crazy.’

He’d said it before he could stop himself. But she looked at him with relief, as if she no longer needed to pretend.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s crazy. That’s the word.’

Neither of them spoke for a minute. Barbara stared. Maybe the silence, the child’s eerie witness, weren’t so unusual for Sarah, but they unnerved Don, forcing him to say something.

‘Dae ye think he could hae just jumped on a bus and headed aff for the hills? He sometimes talks aboot Glen Coe and places, miles away, where he went climbing. Maybe that’s where he’s gone. Mind you, it’s no exactly the weather for tramping aboot the hills.’

‘Weather wouldn’t stop him,’ Sarah said, ‘if that’s what he decided to do. I think he gets hemmed in sometimes. It’s like he can’t breathe properly in the house, or even in the garden or the street. And he just has to go.’

‘So he does go off? Where?’

‘Up into the woods behind the village. That’s the direction he heads in anyway. Up the hill. It’s the nearest place where there’s not likely to be anybody about. It’s usually only for an hour or so, but sometimes it’s much longer. But never in the middle of the night. Oh no, that’s not true. A couple of times he’s got up and gone there at night. He says he likes to watch the owls hunting. But he doesn’t call them owls. He has another word for them.’

‘Hoolets,’ Don said.

‘Yes, that’s it. Hoolets.’

‘Well,’ Don said, ‘maybe that’s where he’s gone this time. All we can dae is wait, I suppose. I mean, ye dinna want tae tell the polis or onything, dae ye?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just want him to come back. I want him safe. I want all of us to be safe.’

‘I ken,’ he said. ‘Well, we’ll no get the polis yet.’ There would be something defeated, shameful almost, about involving them. ‘Is there onything that might have set him aff? Onything unusual that’s happened? If I had a clue where tae start, I’d go and look for him.’

She shook her head. Don caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and spotted Barbara shaking her head, and making the bear do it too. Bloody hell, he said again, into himself.

‘Do you know anybody called MacLaren?’ Sarah said suddenly.

‘In the village, ye mean?’

‘Not sure. In the pub? Somebody that might have upset him.’

She went out of the room. Barbara, twisting on the stool, followed her anxiously with her eyes but Sarah was back in a few seconds, holding a piece of paper, a lined sheet from a notebook. ‘Maybe it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t look like nothing, does it?’

Don took the sheet from her: the name M
AC
L
AREN
appeared three times on each line, neatly inscribed in block capitals, the M and L slightly bigger than the other letters: a perfect line-up of – he counted the lines – a hundred and twenty MacLarens on parade. A certain extra pressure had been exerted occasionally, so that the nib had pierced the paper at the apexes of some of the As or the ends of the Cs. Don thought, once he’d written the first one he’d have to match it with another, then he’d have to balance the paper up with a third, then he’d have to balance the line with a second line, then he’d have to fill the page. He could picture Jack working away at it obsessively.

‘Has he ever talked tae ye aboot the camps?’ he said. ‘During the war?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Never.’

‘No even when ye met him, when he was recovering?’