Scrap metal, p.6
Scrap Metal, page 6
I drove carefully. The trip back to the farm took ten minutes, about the same length of time as the walk from the bus stop on the main road. Harry’s Toyota was parked on the drive. I forced myself not to hurry the task of settling the ewe and her sudden family into the pens, despite the horrible visions I was having of Cameron pinned down under one of Harry’s efforts to be friendly. These, with someone new, took the form of half an hour’s intense interrogation. Which village did ye say ye came from? Do you know the Maguires? The Fitzherberts? The McAndrews? What does your father farm—dairy? Beef? Sheep? I shivered in apprehension and quickly checked the gender of the new arrivals, knowing it was the first thing he would ask me. I’d better get inside.
I needn’t have worried. The old man was sitting in solitary state by the Aga, one collie to each side of him and one across his feet. He looked like some ancient god of the forest and hearth, wreathed in his lung-clutching pipe smoke, accompanied by his totem beasts.
I entered cautiously, trying to stay out of his miasma. “All right, Granda?”
“Aye.”
I went to turn the oven up. At some point between mucking out the pens and getting a blow job off Archie Drummond, I’d put together and set a casserole to heat. It had been ticking over all day. The kitchen smelled good for once, less desolate. I’d made more than enough for three. “How was Campbeltown? Did you meet Will McLeish?”
“Aye.”
I rolled my eyes. The monosyllabic answers didn’t mean things had gone badly for him at the mart. Probably the opposite—he just wanted me to come over, sit within his fallout zone and give my full attention to his news. He wouldn’t have been indulging himself with the pipe or the fireside idleness on a bad day.
I washed my hands clear of mud and afterbirth and took the hot seat opposite him. From there I could see down the hall to the open back-porch door and into the yard, though I was losing hope. I set aside the stupid, dull ache in my chest. “What did McLeish have to say, then?”
“The Leodhas agent’s making deals with all the Arran farmers for next season’s wool. He’s no’ dealt with a Seacliff before. We came to terms.”
I could imagine. The family talent for business had skipped past me, but Harry drove a bargain like he rode his quad bike.
“That’s good,” I ventured. I wondered if he’d forgotten we only had one Leodhas ram, and that newborn tup would need a year’s growth before he got interested in providing us with more. That his lambs in turn would need a season or more to come into their fleece. I didn’t want to throw cold water, though. Harry’s satisfactions over the last year had been few. My instinct was to add to them if I could. “That last ewe in the south pasture—one of the ones we thought was barren—dropped triplets this afternoon. Two tups and a female, all healthy.”
“Two males? What number ewe was it?”
“Seventeen.” I’d sprayed it in matching purple on her lambs before leaving the pen.
“Seventeen? Nichol, you idiot, that was the last one we put to the Leodhas stud. That’s three males we’ve got now.”
I tried to smile. When he was this pleased, being called an idiot was almost a caress. And it was a good thing—three rams could start us off a flock with this desirable weaver’s wool. We would still have to wait at least two years for it. I tried to imagine two more years struggling here. Two more winters.
I looked out into the empty yard then back at the old man. Life had felt brighter to me for a few hours today, but who was I trying to kid? If Harry was building air castles, we were in a bad way.
“Granda,” I began, lowering my head into my hands. “I’m not sure we can—”
“Hello?”
I sat up. Gyp, Floss and Vixen sprang to attention too. Before I could move to stop them they were running, a black-and-white torrent, in the direction of that uncertain greeting. I darted after them. They weren’t vicious dogs, but they could overreact in defence of their lord and master, and the sight of them bearing down in a pack would scare the daylights out of a stranger…
Out of Cameron. He was standing by the gate, one hand still on its latch. In the other he held several carrier bags from the Blackwater farm-supply store. His face was a picture. The dogs had surrounded him and dropped to the ground, muzzles low, haunches tensed to spring.
“Hi,” he said with fragile calm when he saw me. “Any thoughts or advice?”
“Yes. Just keep still.”
“Is this normal?”
“No, actually. I can’t think what they’re playing at.” I glanced behind me. Harry had appeared in the doorway. His shoulders were quivering oddly. God, I hoped I hadn’t upset him. “Granda, do you want to call off your hounds?”
“Aye, in a minute.”
“Now would be better, if you could. What the hell are they doing?”
“They’re…” He lapsed to wheezing silence. I swung to face him. Slowly it dawned on me that the old sod was shaking with laughter. “They’re after rounding yon lad up.”
I had another look. He was right. This was what the dogs did when a sheep had detached itself from the flock. Apparently it was the funniest thing Harry had seen in some time. I couldn’t remember when he’d last laughed like this. It was quiet, and he was almost expressionless, but tears were beginning to run down his cheeks.
“Well,” I said, as repressively as I could, “there’s no need. He’ll come quietly. Won’t you, Cameron?”
“Given the chance, I’d be happy to.”
Harry pulled himself together. He uttered one of his weird, coded whistles, the ones I could imitate but never make work for me, and the collies leapt up as if pulled by invisible strings and loped back to his side. He jerked his head curtly at Cameron. “Where’s yon lad been?”
He seemed to be having trouble with the name. I knew that was how some forms of senility started. Then, he also just sounded like his curmudgeonly self.
“Cameron,” I said patiently, “has been to Blackwaterfoot to get some things he needed. Is that all right with you?”
“Aye, today. Work shifts start tomorrow, though. Bring him in to dinner, Nichol. He’ll want some meat glued on those runt-pup bones if he means to survive around here.”
He turned and trudged into the house. I was alone in the sunshine, the coppery westering light, with Cameron. I didn’t quite know what to do. Left to impulse only, I’d have gone up and hugged him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sublimating the urge into an awkward folding of my arms. “He’s so blisteringly bloody rude.”
“I think I quite like him.”
“You came back.”
“Yes. I’d have been here sooner, but I got off at the wrong stop. Had to walk a mile or so down the road.”
“Oh.” I overcame my paralysis enough to go and take some of the bags out of his hands. “The driver would’ve told you where to get off if you’d asked.”
“I didn’t want to look like a stranger.”
We set off together across the yard. We were shoulder to shoulder. I didn’t know why that seemed to take the edge off the twilight wind and drive to far distance my conviction that I couldn’t live on or work this land anymore. “Did you get kitted up, then?”
“I think so. I bought the things you said. Can I pull this off, though? He’s already seen I don’t know one end of a sheep from the other.”
“So he won’t have high expectations. And remember, you’re free, so he’ll get what he’s paying for.”
Cameron chuckled. “Aye. He’ll certainly get that much.”
“And I’ll be around. I’ll keep you straight.”
He gave me a sidelong look. The wind was blowing his black hair across his eyes. I wanted to brush it back, to get a better view of the burnished lights the sunset was calling from their violet.
“Thanks,” he said softly. “But I think straight is the last thing you’ll be…” He winced and came to a halt. “Ouch.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Think I burst a blister.”
I looked at his feet. He’d dispensed with his trainers and was wearing a pair of new green wellingtons.
“Did you walk down from the bus in those?”
“Yeah. Like I said, I didn’t want to stand out. So I took off my city-boy shoes, and I put on these. I thought they’d be comfortable.”
“So they are, with two layers of thick socks.”
“Oh. No, I’m barefoot.”
I hissed in sympathy. “You’ll be cut to shreds. Come on in. We’ll get some plasters on you and some antiseptic, and—”
“Nichol, no. At least…not while your granddad’s around.”
“He’s all right. He won’t eat you.”
“Okay, but I just don’t want to look like an arse in front of him. Any worse of an arse, anyway. I’ll patch myself up later.”
I nodded. I let go the steadying grasp I hadn’t realised I’d fastened on his arm, and he hobbled on, visibly swallowing the pain to make a decent stride of it. I didn’t quite get his anxiety about the old man, though Harry was enough to make anyone nervous. Then I could only think about the sight of him from behind, skinny but head held high, nice firm backside making the borrowed sweatpants look good.
I ran to get the door for him. “Well, you know two agricultural secrets now,” I said, ushering him in. “Where to find the Quick Start for the lambs, and not to go commando in your wellies.”
He gave me a luminous smile, and I thought about adding a third—that Harry’s sheepdogs only cornered a beast like that if they wanted to bring it safe home—then decided not to push my luck.
We had a peaceful meal. Harry confined himself to extracting a short genealogy from Cameron, who responded with what I thought might be mostly the truth—that he was town born and bred, and a Beale of the Larkhall Beales, who’d never distinguished themselves in any way he knew of. To my surprise, the old man at that point gave him a look of something near approval—I barely recognised it—and told him he could be the first, if he carried on his studies and settled himself on a farm. Something better for your own bairns, laddie. I bit back a groan, but Cameron didn’t seem fazed by him. We sat around the rickety table even after the casserole was eaten and the remains of it wiped up with bread. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d hung around for one second longer than we had to.
Cameron thanked me nicely for the food, and I shot him a smiling glance. He’d certainly done a quietly passionate justice to it. Already he looked a bit more solid.
“Can I get you any more?”
“Better not. I’m meant to work for my keep, remember?”
“Yes, but—”
“The lad’s right. Take him out on your late rounds, Nichol. If you set off now, you can check the cliff-top fences before dark.”
I looked up. Harry was scanning both of us with a kind of grim satisfaction, probably at the idea of packing me out into the cold night. Something more to it than that, though. I tried to read it. His eyes were glittering oddly. Maybe it was even more fun to have a weary, underweight town boy to kick around.
My temper stirred. “Is it all right with you,” I said, “if I show him to where he’ll be sleeping first?”
“B’e sin a’chuirt, mas e gura bi fàg mise ’am aonar.”
I care not, as long as thou art gone. I raised my eyebrows. Almost impossible to translate the old language into bright modern English, particularly when it came to Harry’s thunderous pronouncements.
“Fior mhath,” I responded involuntarily. Very well. As it pleases you.
I got up, Cameron rising with me. Suddenly we were an ancient tribal clan, receiving orders from our chief in the ancestral shieling. I gestured Cameron ahead of me towards the door. One day there’d have to be a reckoning, if the old man kept playing it Highlander like this. All right, he’d lost his beloved heir, but I wasn’t one of his sheepdogs to be ordered about, and I wouldn’t have him snarling—even in a foreign language—at a guest…
“Wait a bit.”
I stopped dead. That was the trouble. He was my lifetime’s voice of authority. I’d developed habits of obedience long before my free adult will had kicked in.
“Which room will you give to yon lad?”
“Granda. His name is Cameron. Not student or boy or yon—”
“In fact it’s just Cam.”
We both looked round. He’d spoken gently, as if shy of breaking our confrontation, which I supposed from the outside did sound as if it might get settled with claymores. “At least…that’s what everyone calls me. So…”
An awkward silence fell. Harry chewed on the stem of his pipe, glaring at us from under his eyebrows. Then he sat up and set the pipe aside. “Give yon lad the room opposite yours.”
“What? That room’s—”
“I know damn well which room it is. The rest are barely furnished. Do as you’re bidden, leanabh. Go now.”
The weird light was still in his eyes, a kind of blank sheen. I couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps he’d taken to lycanthropy in his old age. I wouldn’t put it past him, and the moon was almost full… Quickly I scooped up Cameron’s shopping bags and half pushed him out of the room. I really didn’t want to know.
Out in the hallway, Cameron glanced at me uneasily, taking a couple of the bags from my hand. “I didn’t mean to cause a fight.”
“You didn’t. At least—there’s not much that doesn’t cause us to fight, so don’t worry about it. Go on up those stairs.” I followed him, this time keeping my eyes to myself. I’d been a pretty naïve arrival on the Edinburgh scene, but I’d taught myself to tell a boy I fancied him by looking him in the face, not the arse. “We fight over sheep feed, politics, heating bills and every other thing we talk about.”
“Was he all right? He looked a bit… I don’t know. Not well, maybe.”
“Oh, he’s fine.” A flicker of concern crossed my mind, but I dismissed it. Harry was always fine. I’d never known him ail a day in my life. “Mind, it’s not like him to use the Gaelic without checking you could speak it too. He’d normally think that very rude.”
“And is it?”
“Traditionally, yes. The islanders had a rule—they’d never speak it when an Englishman was by. So as not to make him feel left out. And of course more and more Englishmen came, so…”
“You wiped yourselves out with your courtesy.”
We’d come to a halt on the turn of the stairs. It took me a moment to notice. It was one of the darkest, most melancholy places in the old house, but for once it didn’t oppress me—not the mean, chilly draught stealing in through the cobwebbed windowpanes, not the dead bulb dangling uselessly overhead because only Alistair had dared scramble the full height of the stairwell on our wobbly stepladder to fix it. If Cameron—Cam, he’d said, and it suited him better, pure and direct—wanted to stop here and talk, that was fine by me. “Yes, almost.”
“I’m not an Englishman.”
“No.” No, you’re a flower of the west Glasgow wasteland, a proof I’d almost forgotten that nature is everywhere, astonishing and bountiful. “I’m guessing they didn’t teach it to you in school, though.”
“They barely taught me English.”
“Well, no more did they teach it to me, for all there was meant to be a revival. It’s a dying language. Best they let it go.”
“Where did you learn it, then?”
“I didn’t. At least, Harry tried to drum some into me while I was growing up, but I never really took it in. And neither of us should have been speaking it in front of a stranger, so I’m sorry.”
“Maybe I don’t count.”
He was smiling faintly. I considered his tone. It could just mean that the old man had felt easy enough in his company to forget his manners, a compliment of sorts. It could also mean perhaps I don’t exist.
“Oh, you count,” I told him, not really thinking what I was saying, “or he’d never have offered you Alistair’s room.”
“Alistair? Oh, my God. Not your brother’s.”
“Yeah. You could’ve knocked me down. He hardly mentions Al. I don’t think either of us has even been in there since…”
“Nichol, I can’t possibly.”
“I know. It’s weird that he offered. But in a way I don’t see why not, and he’s right—it’s probably more fit for human habitation than anywhere else in this barrack. Come on, let’s go and have a look at it at least.”
The door wasn’t locked. Cam watched me warily while I pushed it open. He thought me strange, I imagined, for doing so with such a steady hand. My own calm puzzled me. Unconsciously I’d avoided the place for a year, not so much as glancing at it as I went past, and now I simply couldn’t work up any sense of the occasion. After all, it was just Alistair’s room. If we’d stripped it and cleared it I might have felt more, but as things stood—untouched, unchanged—this could have been any one of the hundreds of times when I’d walked in, welcomed as a kid, in our teenage years as often as not shouted at for failing to knock. Nicky, you wee tick! In the unlikely event of you ever finding a girlfriend, I’m gonna do this to you!
I smiled. I had been a classically annoying little brother, hadn’t I—always in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were Al’s football trophies, his collection of posters from rock festivals. He’d had this room all his life, and there were his unsuccessfully hidden traces of childhood—a box of soft toys shoved halfway into the wardrobe, the painted-over Dr. Who wall panels showing themselves in bas-relief, the ghost of a TARDIS travelled on forever now. There was his unmade bed.
I turned away. Cam was planted in the doorway, white as a sheet. “Look,” he whispered. “It’s a grand room. And I’m the last man in the world who should be choosy, but…”
“But you’d rather sleep in the barn. Aye. Me too.” I hustled him gently back out into the corridor and closed the door behind me, turning the latch round tight. “There’s a room just round the corner here. Use that one.”
