‘Of course,’ said Mrs Macdonald, ‘as I understand it, the Catholic Church removed his status as a saint about forty years ago, but it still belongs to a very Catholic tradition. What your father was doing with it is beyond me.’
Fin reached out to take it from Marsaili. ‘Could we borrow this, Mrs Macdonald? It might be interesting to see if it stimulates any memories.’
Mrs Macdonald waved a dismissive hand. ‘Of course. Take it. Keep it. Throw it away if you like. It’s of no use to me.’
Fin dropped a reluctant Marsaili off at the bungalow. He had persuaded her it might be better if she let him talk to Tormod on his own first. The old man would have so many memories associated with Marsaili that it might cloud his recollection. He didn’t tell her that he had other business he wanted to attend to en route.
His car was barely out of sight of the cottage when he turned off the road, and up the narrow asphalt track and over the cattle grid to the sprawling car park in front of Crobost Church. It was a bleak, uncompromising building. No carved stonework or religious friezes, no stained-glass windows, no bell in the bell tower. This was God without distraction. A God who regarded entertainment as sin, art as religious effigy. There was no organ or piano inside. Only the plaintive chanting of the faithful rang around its rafters on the Sabbath.
He parked at the foot of the steps leading to the manse, and climbed to the front door. Sunlight was still washing across the patchwork green and brown of the machair, bog cotton ducking and diving among the scars left by the peat-cutters. It was exposed up here, closer to God, Fin supposed, a constant trial of faith against the elements.
It was almost a full minute after he had rung the bell that the door opened, and Donna’s pale, bloodless face peered out at him from the darkness. He was as shocked now as he had been the first time he set eyes on her. Then, she hadn’t looked old enough to be three months pregnant. She looked no older in motherhood. Her father’s thick sandy hair was drawn back from a narrow face devoid of make-up. She seemed frail and tiny, like a child. Painfully thin in skin-tight jeans and a white T-shirt. But she looked at him with old eyes. Knowing, somehow, beyond her years.
For a moment she said nothing. Then, ‘Hello, Mr Macleod.’
‘Hello Donna. Is your father in?’
A momentary disappointment flickered across her face. ‘Oh. I thought you might have come to see the baby.’
And immediately he felt guilty. Of course, it would have been expected of him. But he felt, in a strange way, disconnected. Unemotional. ‘Another time.’
Resignation settled like dust on her child’s features. ‘My dad’s in the church. Fixing a hole in the roof.’
Fin was several steps down when he stopped and looked back to find her still watching him. ‘Do they know?’ he said.
She shook her head.
He heard the hammering as he entered the vestibule, but it wasn’t until he walked into the church itself that he found its source. Donald Murray was at the top of a ladder up on the balcony, perched precariously among the rafters, nailing replacement planking along the east elevation of the roof. He wore blue workman’s overalls. His sandy hair was greyer, and thinning more rapidly now, it seemed. So concentrated was he on the job in hand that he didn’t notice Fin standing among the pews watching him from below, and as Fin stood there looking up, a whole history spooled through his mind. Of adventures on bonfire night, parties on the beach, riding down the west coast on a fine summer’s day in a red car with the roof down.
There was a pause in the hammering as Donald searched for more nails. ‘It seems you spend more time working as an odd-job man in this church than you do preaching the word of God,’ Fin called to him.
Donald was so startled he almost fell off his ladder, and had to steady himself with a hand on the nearest rafter. He looked down, but it was a moment before recognition came. ‘God’s work takes many forms, Fin,’ he said when finally he realized who it was.
‘I’ve heard it said that God makes work for idle hands, Donald. Perhaps he blew that hole in your roof to keep you out of mischief.’
Donald couldn’t resist a smile. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite as cynical as you, Fin Macleod.’
‘And I’ve never met anyone quite as pig-headed as you, Donald Murray.’
‘Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment.’
Fin found himself grinning. ‘You should. I could think of much worse things to say.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ Donald gazed down on his visitor with clear appraisal in his eyes. ‘Is this a personal visit or a professional one?’
‘I don’t have a profession any more. So I suppose it’s personal.’
Donald frowned, but didn’t ask. He hung his hammer from a loop on his belt and started carefully down the ladder. By the time he had descended into the church Fin noticed that he was a little breathless. The lean figure of the once athletic young man, sportsman, rebel, and darling of all the girls, was beginning to go to seed. He looked older, too, around the eyes, where his flesh had lost its tautness and was shot through with lines like fine scars. He shook Fin’s outstretched hand. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Your father married Marsaili’s mum and dad.’ Fin could see the surprise in his face. Whatever he might have been expecting it wasn’t that.
‘I’ll take your word for it. He probably married half the folk in Ness.’
‘What kind of proof of identity would he have required?’
Donald looked at him for several long seconds. ‘This sounds more professional than personal to me, Fin.’
‘Believe me, it’s personal. I’m no longer in the force.’
Donald nodded. ‘Okay. Let me show you.’ And he headed off up the aisle to the far end of the church and opened the door into the vestry. Fin followed him in and watched as he unlocked and opened a drawer in the desk there. He took out a printed form and waved it at Fin. ‘A marriage schedule. This one’s for a couple I’m marrying next Saturday. It’s provided by the registrar only after the couple have provided all the necessary documentation.’
‘Which is?
‘You’re married, aren’t you?’
‘Was.’
Donald’s pause to absorb this information was almost imperceptible. He carried on as if he hadn’t heard. ‘You should know, then.’
‘We had a quickie marriage in a registry office nearly seventeen years ago, Donald. To be honest, I remember very little about it.’
‘Okay, well you would have had to provide birth certificates for both of you, a decree absolute of divorce if you’d been married before, or the death certificate of your former spouse if you were a widower. The registrar won’t issue the schedule unless all documentation has been provided and all forms completed. All the minister does is sign on the dotted line once the ceremony is over. Along with the happy couple and their witnesses.’
‘So your dad would have had no reason to doubt the identity of the people he was marrying.’
Donald’s eyes creased in bewilderment. ‘What’s this about, Fin?’
But Fin just shook his head. ‘It’s about nothing, Donald. A silly idea. Forget I ever asked.’
Donald slipped the marriage schedule back into the drawer and locked it. He turned to face to Fin again. ‘Are you and Marsaili back together, then?’
Fin smiled. ‘Jealous?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘No, we’re not. I’m back to restore my parents’ crofthouse. Pitched a tent on the croft, and roughing it till I get a roof on and some basic plumbing installed.’
‘So this
Fin gave him a long look, trying to subdue the flames of anger his own emotions were fanning somewhere deep inside him. He had not meant to embark on this. But it was an unequal struggle. ‘You know, Donald, I think you’re a damned hypocrite.’
Donald reacted as if he had been slapped in the face. He almost recoiled in shock. ‘What are you talking about?’
