‘If you’re sure it was Matt Mason,’ I said, ‘why haven’t you done something about it? Like tell the police.’
She gave me a stone look, a rage so still and cold I was transfixed. I realised how volatile she was, living still between extremities of response, trying to find a stance towards what had happened which could hold in balance all the things she felt. The phone rang. I was glad.
It was someone called Gordon. ‘I’m all right, Gordon,’ I heard her saying. ‘I’m all right.’ She responded quietly to whatever he was saying. ‘Not now,’ she said. She put down the phone. She crossed towards the sideboard.
‘Do you want a drink?’ she said.
‘Better not. I’ve got the car there.’
‘Well, I will.’
She poured a large vodka and topped it up with lemonade.
She came and sat back down opposite me.
‘The boys have lunch at school,’ she said.
I had a glimpse of the little deals she must have worked out between the pressure she was under and the demands made on her by her former standards. It would be all right to have a drink late morning if her sons didn’t see her.
‘I don’t usually do this,’ she said. ‘Just sometimes.’
No doubt the way my presence reopened hurts in her had helped to make this one of the sometimes. She sipped her drink. I thought she had forgotten what I said. But she hadn’t.
‘I sometimes think nobody else notices what is happening,’ she said. ‘You ever get that feeling? It’s like the rest of the world is mad. It carries on regardless. Did I tell the police? What planet did you come from? They did a lot for Dan, didn’t they? Anyway, enough people in Thornbank told the police. This village knew what had happened. And this village loved Dan Scoular. I sometimes think they loved him to death. They encouraged him to try and stand for more than one person can stand for. And he died of it. I don’t blame them. They’ve done their best. And they’ll forget. I won’t forget.’
The fixedness of her eyes was hypnotic.
‘You want to know what I did? The more nothing happened, the stiller I became. I became very, very still. Because I understood something. If they could do that to my man, they could do it to my sons.’ She put her finger to her lips. ‘Sh. Don’t move. They’ve been telling you lies. How safe it is out there. It isn’t safe. Bad animals out there. And nobody can control them. They move when they choose. And they do what they want. That’s true.’
She nodded at me confidentially. Some might have thought she was the one who seemed mad. But she wasn’t mad, just too sane to play along with the rest of us. She had wakened from her sleep-walk to recognise the minefield we call normality. She had found a way to admit to herself the prolonged terror of living. Some people never do.
‘So I’ve been here. In this house. And I do the necessary things. I look after my sons. I make the meals. I wash the clothes. But it’s like keeping house on the edge of that cliff Dan went over. That phone-call. That was Gordon. I knew him before Dan died. He’s been wanting to know if he can help. I don’t know if anybody can help. I know I have to go on living. But I haven’t worked out how to do it yet. It’s as if something more has to happen. Or it’ll be like leaving Dan unburied.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘I don’t want another mourner,’ she said. ‘I think I want a champion. Someone who’ll get justice for Dan Scoular.’
‘Well, I don’t know that I qualify. But I can try.’
She almost smiled.
‘That would be something,’ she said.
She took another mouthful of her drink. She was alone. I had become just a looker-on.
‘Is there somewhere in Thornbank I can get a meal?’ I said. ‘Even champions have to eat.’
‘I’m sorry. Not here. Another time it would have been. But not these days. The Red Lion. They do pub lunches. That’s where Dan did his training.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
I stood up.
‘This,’ she said. She held up her glass. ‘It’s all right. This isn’t permanent. It’s just that I know I have to face what’s happened. I can’t hide from it. And this sometimes helps. But it’s only for the time being.’
I believed her. I know I face my own despairs by letting them take place. I don’t deny them with displays of determined nonchalance. They’re too real for that. Deny grief and it becomes a sapper, shallowing your nature. You have to go through sadness as you would go through the Roaring Forties. You batten down and let the bad winds blow. They will bring you to yourself.
‘I believe you,’ I said.
I left her waiting for the weather to clear.
23
I had lunch in the Red Lion. Before eating, I stood at the bar with a tomato juice. I was becoming a connoisseur of soft drinks. The place was fairly dilapidated. There were maybe half-a-dozen people in. The talk seemed to be of imminent closure. The barman, whose name was Alan, had a face like a Christmas tree, every vein a fairy-light. He had decided he would have to sell out to the brewers. He couldn’t understand where all the takings he used to have had gone. I thought he might look in the mirror for a clue. He was drinking doubles. But then again maybe I was just jealous.
He was talking to a man called Wullie Mairshall. I knew because at one point the man said, ‘This isny Simple Simon talkin’. This is Wullie Mairshall.’ The barman said, ‘Thanks for pointin’ that out. Ah wis gettin’ confused there.’
The talk of closure became talk of the mess Thornbank was in, became talk of Dan Scoular. His name was mentioned with a reverence I couldn’t imagine any living person managing to justify. But sainthood is always posthumous. The still breathing Frankie White appeared to be in no danger of canonisation. An outbuilding Dan Scoular had used as a gym was still being preserved as he had left it, it seemed. The barman was adamant that it would stand as a monument to ‘the big man’ as long as he was still owner.
I had ordered beef olives, potatoes and vegetables. When the food came, I sat at a table by a window, taking a glass of exotic soda and lime to wash it down. Wullie Mairshall deputised as a waiter. He brought me condiments and cutlery in a paper napkin, with the suave injunction, ‘Dig in, big yin.’ When I did, I realised the food was very good. Whoever was responsible for the falling-off of trade in the Red Lion, it wasn’t the cook.
I didn’t eat alone. The meal, the menu apart, was my mental version of a Roman banquet. First you eat with them, then you give them the thumbs down. The companions of my mind were Dave Lyons and Matt Mason. They sat with me at table, whether they wanted to or not. I studied them. It was them or me, I had decided. Or rather it was them or what Betty Scoular and Mrs White and Scott stood for. I was just the champion of their cause, as Betty Scoular would have it, since nobody else had bothered to turn up. Let’s make an arena. I would.
I had solved one half of a mystery. I would go the whole way, however I could. I had discovered the surrogate man in the green coat. His name was Dan Scoular. I would find the real one. Do not bet against me. But discovery is not merely knowledge, it is obligation. Matt Mason had killed Dan Scoular. All right, I didn’t know that this was true. But I believed it.
If I had belief in the fact, without proof of the fact, what could I do? I couldn’t plant the evidence that would establish the apparent proof, as some of my less scrupulous colleagues might have been prepared to do. That isn’t what I do. It isn’t what I do because it leads to madness. To pretend that subjective conviction is objective truth, without testing it against the constant daily witness of experience, is to abdicate from living seriously. The mind becomes self-governing and the world is left to chaos. That way, you don’t discover truth, you invent it. The invention of truth, no matter how desperately you wish it to be or how sincerely you believe in the benefits it will bring, is the denial of our nature, the first rule of which is the inevitability of doubt. We must doubt not only others but ourselves.