‘And?’
‘He sent his address and said he would be happy to talk to us this evening at his home.’
THIRTY-ONE
Afternoon sunlight leaked in all around drawn curtains that breathed in and out in the breeze from the open window beyond them. The noise of passing traffic came with it, distant and unreal, along with the sound of falling water from the weir in the Water of Leith below.
Their room was up in the roof, with views across the river and the Dean Village. But Fin had drawn the curtain on it as soon as they entered the room. They needed the dark to find themselves.
There had been no discussion, no plan. The hotel was directly across the road from the gallery, and they required a place for the night. Fin was not quite sure why neither of them had corrected the receptionist’s mistaken notion that they were a couple looking for a double room. There had been ample opportunity.
They had ascended to the top floor in a tiny elevator without a word passing between them, Fin’s stomach alive with butterflies in collision. Neither had met the other’s eye.
It had been easier, somehow, to undress in the dark, although there was a time when they had known each other’s bodies intimately. Every curve, every surface, every softness.
And now, with the cool of the sheets on their skin, they rediscovered that intimacy. How bizarrely comfortable it was suddenly, and familiar, as if no time had passed at all since the last time. Fin found the same passion deep inside as she had aroused in him that very first time. Fierce, trembling, all-consuming desire. He found her face with his hands, all its well-known contours. Her neck, her shoulders, the gentle swell of her breasts, the curve of her buttocks.
Their lips were like old friends rediscovering each other after so many years, searching, exploring, as if not quite believing that nothing had really changed.
Their bodies rose and fell as one, breath coming in gasps, involuntary vocal punctuation. No words. No control. Lust, passion, hunger, greed. Generating heat, sweat, total immersion. Fin felt the blood of his island heritage pulsing in every stroke. The endless windswept moors, the fury of the ocean as it smashed itself upon the shore. The Gaelic voices of his ancestors raised in tribal chant.
And suddenly it was over. Like the first time. Sluice gates opened, water released, after years of constraint behind emotional dams built from anger and misunderstanding. All of it gone, in a moment, washing away every last wasted minute of their lives.
They lay afterwards, wrapped in each other, lost in their thoughts. And in a while Fin became aware that Marsaili’s breathing had slowed, grown shallow, her head heavier on his chest, and he wondered where in God’s name they went from here.
THIRTY-TWO
Tommy Jack lived in a two-bedroomed tenement flat above a wine shop and a newsagent’s in Broughton Street. The taxi dropped Fin and Marsaili in York Place and they walked slowly down the hill in the soft evening light, breathing in the strange smells of the city. Exhaust fumes, malt bins, curry. Nothing could have been further from the island experience. Fin had spent fifteen years of his life in this town, but just a matter of days back among the islands and already it seemed alien, impossibly claustrophobic. And dirty. Discarded chewing gum blackening the pavements, litter blowing in the gutters.
The entrance to the close was in Albany Street Lane, and as they turned into it Fin saw a van driving past up the hill. It was a vehicle belonging to Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, and carried the logo,
Tommy was a short man with a round, shining face beneath a smooth, shiny head. His shirt collar was frayed. He wore a grey pullover with egg stains down the front, tucked into trousers a size too big that were held up high around his stomach by a belt tightened one notch too many. There were holes worn in the toes of his carpet slippers.
He ushered them into a narrow hallway with dark wallpaper, and a front room which probably trapped the sun during the day, but which was dingy now in the dying evening light. A smell of stale cooking fat permeated the flat, along with the faintly unpleasant perfume of body odour.
But Tommy was a man of cheerful disposition, with sharp dark eyes that shone at them through frameless glasses. Fin figured that he was probably in his mid to late late sixties. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘That would be nice,’ Marsaili said, and he talked to them through the open door of the tiny kitchen scullery as he boiled a kettle and brought out cups and saucers and teabags.
‘I’m on my own these days, ever since my missus died about eight years ago. More than thirty years we were married. Still can’t get used to being without her.’
And Fin thought that there was a certain tragic irony in both starting and finishing life all alone.
Marsaili said, ‘No children?’
He appeared at the door, smiling. But it was a smile laden with regret. ‘Afraid not. One of the big disappointments of my life. Never having children, and being able to give them the kind of childhood I would have wanted for myself.’ He turned back into the scullery. ‘Not that I could have given them that much on a bank clerk’s salary.’ He chuckled. ‘Imagine, a lifetime spent counting money, and all of it belonging to someone else.’
He brought their tea through in china cups, and they perched on the threadbare fabric of ancient armchairs dressed with grubby white antimacassars. A black-and-white framed photograph of Tommy and what had to be his wife stood on the mantelpiece above a tiled fireplace where a gas fire glowed dully in the gloom. The photographer had captured the mutual affection in their eyes, and Fin was moved to think that Tommy had, at least, found some happiness in his life. ‘When were you at The Dean, Tommy?’
He shook his head. ‘Couldn’t give you exact dates. But I was there for a few years in the fifties. It was run by a brute of a man, then. Anderson, his name was. For someone in charge of a home supposed to provide comfort and refuge for orphans, he didn’t like children very much. A foul temper, he had. I remember one time he took all our things and burned them in the central heating furnace. Retribution for having fun.’ He chuckled at the memory.
From somewhere he was able to find humour in the story, and Fin marvelled at the human capacity for making light of the worst that life could throw at you. An endless resilience. It was all about survival, he supposed. If you gave in, even for a moment, you would be dragged down into the dark.
‘Of course, I wasn’t only at The Dean. You got moved around quite a bit. It was hard to keep friends, so you just stopped making them. And you never let yourself hope there might be an end to it. Even when the grown-ups came to look at us, and pick out one or two for adoption.’ He laughed. ‘They wouldn’t do it now, but in those days they used to give us a good scrubbing, get us all dressed up in our best togs, and stand us in a line while ladies smelling of French perfume and men that reeked of cigars came and examined us, like sheep at a market. Of course, it was always the girls they picked. Wee boys like me had no chance.’ He leaned forward. ‘Can I refill your cups?’
‘No thanks.’ Marsaili put a hand over her still half-full cup. Fin shook his head.
Tommy stood. ‘I’ll have another one myself. If I have to get up in the night, I might as well have something in the tank to empty.’ He returned to the scullery to bring the kettle back to the boil. He raised his voice to be heard above it. ‘There was one place I was in that got visited by Roy Rogers. Remember him? Famous cowboy he was, in films and TV. Came touring round Scotland with his horse, Trigger. Stopped off at our orphanage and picked out one of the lassies. Adopted her and took her back to America. Imagine! One minute you’re a poor wee orphan lassie in a home in Scotland, the next you’re a rich man’s daughter in the wealthiest country in the world.’ He came back out with a fresh cup in his hand. ‘Of such things are dreams made, eh?’ He sat down, then suddenly stood again. ‘What am I thinking? I never even offered you a biscuit.’
