Again, I wondered if that was why I’d never returned to Scotland. Often, over the years, whenever I’d tried to envisage myself as I was when I last saw Duncairn, it was like remembering a character from a book I’d read a long time ago.
It was almost eight o’clock and I thought of going downstairs for dinner, but suddenly I felt drained of all energy. It wasn’t so much the physical miles I’d travelled in the last two days, but the much vaster journey backwards in my mind that seemed to have exhausted me. I undressed, got into the cool bed, and within minutes was fast asleep.
I WAS UP THE NEXT morning around seven-thirty, hungry. I went downstairs to the dining room with its old-fashioned checkeredcloth-covered tables. The bacon and eggs were good and I ate with relish.
Afterwards, as I passed through the lobby, the Englishwoman was back at the desk doing some paperwork. She asked me how I’d slept and we chatted for a while. She seemed to welcome the opportunity to talk to a stranger.
She was, in fact, the owner of the inn: she’d inherited it fifteen years before from her uncle. Around that same time, the town’s decline had begun when the coal seam in the mine started to peter out, making the extraction process lengthy and unprofitable. The English owners of the mine (one of them was the uncle who’d left her the inn) decided to shut the operation down.
From that moment, according to the Englishwoman, the townspeople began to leave. Within a few years Duncairn became more or less deserted, the inn being used mainly as a base for visiting fishermen and grouse shooters. Occasionally, though, her guests were old townspeople who’d come back to visit the cemetery, or just to look over what was left of the place where they’d been born and brought up.
“They’re very sentimental about Duncairn, and I appreciate their business,” said the Englishwoman. “But I’m not sentimental. If there’s any charm in the ruins of things that were once useful, I haven’t noticed. I’d sell the inn at the drop of a hat if anyone would buy it.”
I confessed to her that I myself had once lived in the town a very short time: I’d been hired to teach here, but the job didn’t work out. I wondered about the school.
“Ah, the school,” she said. “Well it’s gone now too. It closed around the same time as the mine, and the school building’s been demolished. The principal carried on living in Duncairn for years afterwards, though. He’d often drop in for a glass of beer.” She frowned, remembering. “Sam Mackay was his name, a very nice man. He’s dead now. His wife died five or six years ago, too.”
I didn’t show how shocked I was to hear this.
“Yes,” she said. “I saw her quite a few times, but I didn’t really know her. She was buried beside him in the graveyard. Most of the townspeople had already moved out of Duncairn by then, so not many attended either of their funerals. You can still see their big house up in the moors. No one lives there anymore, so I’m sure it must be quite rundown by now.”
BACK IN MY ROOM, I sat for a while trying to absorb what I’d heard. Over recent years, I’d considered the possibility that Miriam might be dead. But I hadn’t considered it often or seriously. Rarely had a day passed, in fact, when I hadn’t thought about her and hoped she might be thinking fondly of me. Now the shock of hearing about her death made me feel empty to the core. I suppose in many ways she’d always been central to my entire sense of who I was.
Now I would never know for certain why she’d rejected me. But she had gone ahead and married Sam, just as he’d told me she would.
Ah, well. Knowing she was dead, there wasn’t much reason for me to prolong my stay in Duncairn. I made up my mind to leave the very next morning. For today, I’d walk the hills one last time and visit the house up in the moors.
And, of course, her grave.
2
I was glad of my winter coat when I set out across the moors into an eye-watering wind that morning. The natural landscape was unchanged from thirty years ago, as — no doubt — it wasn’t much changed since the last great geological upheaval of planet Earth. Mine were the only human footprints in the snow, but in sheltered areas I could see the delicate tracks of hares and rabbits and birds as well as various other moor creatures. Their patterns were so elaborate they might have spelled out some message, if only I had the wisdom to interpret it.
After I’d walked for a while, one of those black moorbirds darted past me, bringing to mind how Miriam and I had met, how she’d climbed the rock to warn me against their rather gruesome taste for human eyeballs.
And the rock! Yes, there it was, away to the west, a dark outline against the snow. It looked smaller now and the hills behind it less impressive. But at least they still existed, whereas Miriam was dead and her face was now only a ghostly image in my mind. Surely that, too, was one of the saddest things: how time and distance become a frosted window through which we can barely make out the features of those we love.
IN THIS MELANCHOLY state of mind, after a half hour of walking I reached the house.
At first glance, it too looked smaller, though perhaps it was just that the windbreak of evergreens had grown bigger. The oak tree on the front lawn was taller, but skeletal, with only a few leaves clinging to the branches, pretending winter hadn’t come yet.
The house, close up, looked neglected. A coat of moss made the name Duncairn Manor on the lintel only half legible. The paint on the door was peeling away. The thin layer of snow on the roof didn’t conceal the fact that some of the tiles were broken or missing. One of the chimney pots was cracked and another had fallen over. The downstairs windows were unbroken but had been shrouded with white cloths, so nothing inside was visible.
I knocked on the door just in case, then I tried turning the knob. The door squealed open and I stepped inside.
THE SMELL WAS the first thing I noticed — the damp smell of mould and abandonment. It might have been my imagination, but there seemed to be a hint of sweetness in it, too, as though a residue of the old man’s opium had lingered all this time.
Enough light came through the white cloths over the windows for me to see that the floor was dusty and swaths of faded wallpaper were in the process of detaching themselves. In the living room, chairs and couches and other furniture had been draped in dark blue cloths and looked like oddly shaped monsters asleep. Even the pictures on the walls were hung with these cloths.
The door of the library was ajar. Remembering that night long ago when I’d first seen Miriam’s father on the sofa before the blazing fire, I went over cautiously and looked in.
The room was deserted. The furniture was covered with cloths, the books were all gone from the shelves, and the grate was cold. From the window, there was a buzzing sound. I drew back the cloth just a little. Lying on its back on the sill was a huge bluebottle that must have somehow got into the house during the last days of summer and managed to survive. As I watched it trying to right itself, the wind suddenly whipped up outside. The tips of the evergreens bent over a little and the house groaned.
That was enough of this sad place for me. I began to make my way out.
All at once I remembered something and went into the living room again. Above the mantelpiece was a covered picture. I carefully lifted the cloth away.