Cloud

Frank was full of questions about my visit to the curator and his research on The Obsidian Cloud. He made me go into detail on every aspect of it, even the characteristics of Scottish quartos— one of them might make a valuable addition to his collection at the Emporium.

So far so good. But now, after I’d brought him fully up to date on the curator’s findings, Frank asked me if I’d managed to visit Duncairn.

I braced myself. It was time to come straight out with the truth, more or less: Frank already knew about my short spell in Duncairn as a young man, but I hadn’t told him that when I was there I’d fallen in love with a girl named Miriam Galt. She’d eventually rejected me, and in despair I’d fled the country. But I’d always been curious to know how things had worked out for her. So I’d taken this opportunity to revisit the town, on the off chance she might actually be there.

Frank looked surprised at hearing all of this for the first time, but he didn’t seem upset, nor did he consider my visit to Duncairn in any way a betrayal of his mother, as I’d feared. He encouraged me to tell him more about the visit.

So I described for him the present decayed state of Duncairn, and how I made the sad discovery that Miriam, my old love, was dead. Then I found out, almost by accident, the reason she’d driven me away all those years ago — she’d been pregnant with our child, a daughter as it turned out. I’d managed to track this daughter of mine down, and met her at a place called Eildon Hall where she worked. Her name was Sarah Mackay.

I was just about to explain that I’d actually known Sam Mackay, Sarah’s proxy father. But Frank, my audience, had progressed from surprise, to incredulity, to delight.

“Do you mean I have a sister — a half-sister? That’s great news!”

I could see he really meant it, and I was very relieved. Gordon must have felt this way about Alicia’s reaction when he revealed she had a half-sister on a remote island in the Pacific.

“Tell me all about Sarah,” Frank said.

So I tried to remember every detail about my visit to her and the impression she’d made on me. He was captivated by all he heard, and we both marvelled for a while about this new member of our family.

“I’d really love to meet her,” he said. “Do you think she’d mind?”

Quite the contrary, I assured him. She’d asked all about him, too, and I knew she’d love to meet him. I’d invite her — along with that fiancé she’d mentioned — to come and pay us a visit so that Frank could get to know her.

The prospect seemed to please him immensely.

IN FACT, I was beginning to think that this making of confessions might be a good thing for me. Wasn’t it time Frank was told, for example, that his grandfather, Gordon, had also fathered a child in a far-off, exotic land? In other words, that his own mother had a half-sister in Oluba who was, therefore, his half-aunt? And that I myself had had more to do with this exotic, tattoo-covered half-sister than I’d been willing to admit to Alicia?

But then I wondered if maybe it wasn’t his mother’s unexpected death that had prevented her from telling Frank about Maratawi. No, maybe even Alicia, with all her fondness for truth, had come to believe that some family secrets were better left untold.

If so, I agreed with her.

I thought back to my midnight fling with Griffin, for example, which still made me shudder. What if I were to confess my part in that little episode to Frank? Wouldn’t that be a good one to get off my chest? I could share it with him, beg for his sympathy on the basis that I didn’t know I was making love to a monster.

But the very idea that a father should try to offload his personal nightmares onto his son seemed unnatural. Indeed, by the time Frank and I had finished our meal at the Library, I’d come to a decision: the confessional path was strewn with a few too many thistles for someone like me.

THE OBSIDIAN CLOUD

1

The next month was a busy one at Smith’s Pumps and I was preoccupied with office matters. I was at my desk early on a Monday morning, assessing upcoming requisitions, when I saw amongst the pile of mail that had just arrived a thick envelope from Curator Soulis.

The address was written in pen and was barely legible. I was amused at the thought of Soulis in his tower, his desk vibrating from the chimes of that great clock above him as he tried to write. Fortunately, the letter inside the envelope was typed and was accompanied by several other pages, which seemed to have been photocopied. I began reading.

Dear Mr. Steen:

Let me begin by saying again what a pleasure it was to meet you, and by reiterating how grateful I am to you for having entrusted The Obsidian Cloud to us here at the National Cultural Centre. This letter is to bring you up to date on the results of our research since we met.

I have some rather exciting news, so I thought I’d communicate the details to you without delay.

As I intimated when you were in Glasgow, the major focus of our research would be to identify the author, Macbane. That task has been much more time-consuming than in many cases we encounter. My new assistant, Jean Murdo, and I had spent many hours poring over old book catalogues, journals, and newspapers but could find no reference to Macbane or to The Obsidian Cloud. We’d even looked up the Rev. K. Macbane in numerous registries of Scottish clergy from throughout the country. As I reported to you on your visit, we had no luck whatever.

Since then, Jean and I checked all available Registers of Birth. You may not be aware that till the middle of the nineteenth century in Scotland, many births went unrecorded. This is a major problem for the researcher. Nonetheless, we were hopeful we might find our author’s name somewhere in one of the many registers, especially Old Parish Registers, which, though they’re by no means comprehensive, are our best resource.

But even these registers present additional, chronic problems for the researcher: the handwriting can often be illegible and the spelling of names tends to be quite haphazard, depending on the whim of the Registrar— spelling in those days was not at all standardized.

Knowing this, we included in our search such variant spellings as Macbeane, Macbayne, Macbyne, MacVaine, and so on. To our chagrin, after we took the diverse spellings into account, we ultimately came across hundreds of possible candidates.

Using all sources at our disposal (census results, military lists, etc.), we were able to eliminate quite a number of them — some had died either at birth or quite young from disease, or as soldiers in various wars, or had emigrated to Australia or Canada where they’d disappeared from the records. As far as most of the others were concerned — farmers, shepherds, carpenters, doctors, etc. — we followed up on them to the extent we were able, but could find no information whatever to indicate they might be authors on the side. Though, of course, any one of them might have been our man.

We were beginning to think we’d exhausted all avenues. Then, by the purest chance, we found what we’d been searching for all along.

Jean Murdo deserves all the credit. She, like myself, had been quite captivated by The Obsidian Cloud and had often talked to her husband about it and about our hunt for the elusive Macbane. Now Jean’s husband happens to be a barrister in a big law firm here in Glasgow, and when he came home from work just a week ago, he had surprising news for her.

Shortly before finishing for the day, he’d been searching for legal precedents regarding some matter his firm was involved in. He’d been obliged to consult the multi-volumed reports of Scottish court cases over the centuries. These books are usually written in such dry legalese that no one else can stomach them, except lawyers.