Murray shrugged.
‘I decided it was pointless.’
Christie snorted.
‘Everything is, but we have to find some way of passing the time.’ She sighed. ‘How much do you know about MS?’
He had been ready to open the door and leave. But now that Christie had mentioned her illness, he couldn’t muster the strength to be callous.
‘It’s a slow wasting disease that works on the nerves.’
‘That’s pretty much it. Except that it works on the sheaths that protect the nerves, and it’s not always so slow. If you’re lucky, you can get away with years of remission where nothing much happens. If you’re not, you can find yourself deteriorating rapidly to the point where you need a wheelchair. Or worse.’
Murray didn’t want to know what worse consisted of. He gripped the door handle and said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope yours stays in remission.’
‘It isn’t in remission.’ Murray looked at Christie and she gave a small nod. ‘So if you decide you don’t want to talk to me, make sure you’re certain. I don’t have time to grant second chances.’
He opened the car door and got out.
‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘I’ll leave a light on. Tonight or not at all.’
Murray shut the door. He pulled his hood up and began the walk down towards the bothy. Halfway along the road he looked back, making sure Christie had managed to turn the car without getting bogged down in the mud again. She was gone. All that remained was the rain, beating down on the crossroads.
Chapter Twenty-Six
MURRAY PUSHED OPEN the door to the bothy. The last leg of his journey had worn him out, and his teeth had begun to chatter in a way he’d thought only happened in cartoons. He peeled his jacket from him, registering that something was wrong.
The Calor gas heater glowed warmly from the centre of the room, though he had been careful to turn it off before he left. Murray picked up the heavy torch Pete had gifted him and tiptoed towards the cottage’s second room just as the door started to creak open.
The intruder took a quick step backwards into the shadows. He raised his left hand to protect his face and his right came forward, knocking the torch away. It tumbled from Murray’s grip and skidded across the floor.
‘Good God, Murray.’ Professor Fergus Baine looked like he had dressed for his very first country house shoot. His Barbour jacket gleamed newly and his tweed cap was set at a rakish angle. He dusted some invisible spot from his lapel, staring at Murray as if unsure of what he was seeing. ‘Are you okay?’
Murray pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. He was too tired to do anything except rest his elbows on the table and set his head in his hands.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop by.’
‘There isn’t a neighbourhood.’
Murray started to laugh, but the chill had him in its grip now. A shiver that could have doubled as a spasm clutched at him and the laugh turned to a cough. Murray pulled off his hat, dragged his jumper over his head and started to rub his chest dry with his T-shirt. University of North Alabama. God, that had been a while ago, back when everything seemed possible.
‘So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, there never was a knight like the young Lochinvar.’ Fergus’s voice was slick with sarcasm. He lifted the kettle from the Primus stove, felt the weight of water in it and lit the gas. ‘You need to wash yourself in warm water.’ He went through to the bedroom and returned with a blanket. ‘Here, wrap yourself in this while we wait for it to boil.’
Murray draped the blanket round his shoulders, pulled his boots and socks off then stripped away his sodden trousers and underpants. The mud had penetrated his clothing and specks of it clung to his skin. Fergus Baine shook his head.
‘What did my wife see in you? You look like Bobby Sands towards the end.’ The kettle started to howl. The professor emptied it into a bowl, then filled a cup from the rain butt outside and cooled the boiling water with it. He put the steaming bowl and a cloth on the table in front of Murray. ‘Here.’
Murray took the bottle of malt from the table and started to fumble with its cap.
‘You don’t need that.’ Fergus plucked the whisky from Murray’s grip. He took the empty kettle, refilled it and set it back on the stove. ‘Spirits lower the body’s temperature. A hot drink’s always better.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
Murray started to sponge himself. The water turned brackish. He supposed he should freshen it if he really wanted to get clean, but carried on dipping the unfamiliar cloth into the water, wiping himself down the half-hearted way a man might clean an old but necessary piece of equipment that was going to be replaced soon.
Fergus had been rummaging around in the boxes of supplies Pete had set in the corner and found a jar of instant coffee and a tin of powdered milk. He spilled generous measures into two mugs and added water.
‘It’s none of my business, but why are you camping in this hovel in the middle of nowhere?’
‘The archaeology department requisitioned all the good rooms.’
Fergus set a mug of strong coffee on the table and stood cradling his own.
‘You do realise that archaeology has much lower RAE scores than us? They’re way behind on student numbers too.’
Murray’s laugh held an edge of hysteria.
‘These things don’t count for much out here.’ He took the blanket and started to wipe himself dry with it. ‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘I asked at the shop. Always the hub of island life.’
‘No, I meant how did you know I was on the island?’
‘Rab Purvis told me.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t look so crestfallen, it hardly makes him a quisling. I was coming over to see Christie and had an idea you might be around so I asked Purvis. He didn’t know I was going to look you up.’
‘Pastoral care?’
‘Something like that.’
The two men looked at each other. Murray was the first to break eye contact. He’d wrapped himself back in the damp blanket; now he went through to the other room, found a jumper and a cleanish pair of jeans and put them on. When he returned he said, ‘You told me you’d only met Archie once.’
Fergus gave a nod that conceded his lie.
‘I suppose I hoped the less fuel on the fire, the sooner it would burn out.’
Murray sat back at the table and cradled the coffee mug in his hand, taking comfort from its warmth. He thought about rescuing the whisky from the shelf where Fergus had placed it and found he couldn’t be bothered.
‘Why are you so against Archie getting his due?’
The older man had taken his cap off, but still wore his heavy jacket. The haggard paleness of his face gave him the air of a distinguished thespian.
‘There was something about Lunan, a core of Romanticism perhaps, that’s dangerous for your type of approach. Sailing when a storm was coming in was stupid egotism. It was typical of Archie.’ Fergus steepled his hands together and rested his forehead on them for a moment as if the strain of memories threatened to loosen his composure. He massaged his temples then looked at Murray. The bright spark of energy that had seemed his defining feature was dulled, but it was still there, a small pilot light in the gleam of his eyes. ‘Ultimately I thought you’d reduce a complex life to a simplistic narrative. Naïve but talented young man comes to the city, falls into decadent ways and is punished for his carelessness by an early death. I didn’t think it would do either of you justice.’