‘It’s just five o’clock,’ she said. ‘I suppose I should go and get Robbie.’
They walked along the esplanade together, their bodies about a foot apart, their arms dangling close to each other.
They spoke little. He left her near the snooker hall and walked back along the esplanade towards the bus stop. He went into an amusement arcade and was asked by the proprietor if he could prove his age.
‘I’m just past eighteen,’ he protested.
‘Well, you don’t look it, son. If you don’t have any means of proving your age then you’ll have to go.’
‘But I got served at the Harbour Tavern!’
He found himself astonished and back on the pavement. Seagulls laughed overhead. He glared at them as they swerved high in their inviolable space. He would build wings and swoop up beside them, grabbing with nimble hands and throttling them into his sack. Nobody would laugh at him then.
Colin, Clark and Mark were unmistakable, even against the low and orange sun. They were coming down from the High Street like spent gunslingers. Sandy walked towards them.
‘Hello, Sandy. What was the film like?’ asked Colin before Sandy could ask him the same question. ‘Did you get in?’ It took a second for the truth to dawn on Sandy.
‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘Where were you lot?’
‘We didn’t get in. Not old enough,’ said Colin, while Mark and Clark asked Sandy for details. The four young boys, nearly men but not quite accepted as such, walked with hands in pockets towards a revving bus, Sandy lying to his friends gloriously about a film he had just not seen.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary. She was sobbing. Her blouse was disarranged. She plucked fibres of wool out of the travel-rug. Andy rubbed his hair, scratching at the scalp. He sighed.
‘No, I’m sorry, Mary,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t even have tried. I apologise. I don’t know... the wine and everything. I just felt, well, I’m sorry.’
Mary’s sobbing increased. She shook her head violently.
‘No, no, no,’ she said, ‘it’s not you. It’s me. Me. I’m to blame. But you’ve got to listen to me, Andy. I don’t want to talk about it, but you must listen.’
Andy lay back. The sun was low over the hills. They seemed so very far away from everyone and everything. Yet it had not happened. He had planned it all to perfection, but Mary had not allowed it to happen. He felt embarrassment more than anything else. He had timed everything so well. The second bottle of wine had been finished. Mary had been lying on her back with her eyes closed. A light breeze had curled around the rock, wafting over her face, drawing fine strands of silver hair across her eyes. Andy had bent low over her and kissed her neck, then her chin, then her ready mouth. He had slid down beside her and held her in his arms. Finally, and a long time later it was, she had panicked and pushed him away, gasping. She had sat upright and rigid. She had begun to weep.
Now she summoned up the courage to speak.
‘Andy,’ she said, ‘I’ve not slept with a man for over sixteen years.’ She was still pulling fibres out of the travel-rug. Andy watched her fingers as they slashed at the wool. ‘In fact, since the night... the night Sandy was... was conceived. I’ve slept with no man since that night.’ She looked up at him. Her eyes were difficult to interpret, melting yet defiant. ‘I’m frightened, that’s all. I need time. Please give me time.’ These words were evenly spaced by slight pauses, as if she were rehearsing a speech. Andy’s eyes were on hers as she spoke, but she closed her eyes suddenly as if fatigued. A single tear pushed from her eye like a chick escaping from its shell and wriggled its way down her cheek.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked softly. She shook her head. He wanted to press the point, but could not. She lay in his arms and slumbered until the sun fell away from the earth and the evening grew too cool for human sleep. It was time to return home.
9
The elderly man, hands dumped in his pockets as if stitched to the material, spat on to his favourite spot of pavement and watched the boy through slanted eyes. He had just left the bookmaker’s, having lost a couple of crucial pounds, and was now, in his eternal bitterness, confronted by the memory of his only son’s tragic death. He watched closely as the boy jauntily walked down from the direction of Cardell towards him. He curved his hands into taut fists. He was old perhaps, but there was strength in his heart for hatred, and hatred was what he felt for the boy and the whore of a witch who was his mother.
Sandy came to the low wall around one of the elderly persons’ bungalows. He hoisted himself on to it and, dangling his legs, thought about Rian and her cryptic words to him. Could he believe her? And if he did, what more was she hiding from him?
The sun was shining again, and there was even sceptical talk in the town of a drought. Sandy looked across the road to where the fruit shop sat. He had no money today for fruit. A small foreign car slowed as it near him. It stopped. The window was rolled down slowly and a voice called him over to the car. A bearded but young man craned his head out of the window as far as his seat-belt would allow. His blue eyes glistened. Sandy could not meet their intensity. He looked casually off into the distance as he crouched beside the yellow car. He saw an old man’s figure hunched outside the betting shop. He knew who that man was. His eyes found their only shelter on the mottled tarmac of the pavement.
‘Sorry,’ the man was saying, ‘but I’m trying to find St Cuthbert’s Parish Church. I think these instructions must be wrong.’ He rustled a piece of paper on which were drawn several black lines. His voice was Scottish, but never Fife. He was certainly educated. He sounded like a television presenter. ‘I’ve been there before, but I’m afraid my sense of direction must be hopeless.’ Sandy nodded and creased his brow.
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘you’ve got to go back the way you just came, but then turn left over the bridge.’ The man nodded. He had come from the right, from central Fife, from further afield, from Edinburgh perhaps.
‘Thank you very much,’ the man said. ‘I’m to be the new minister here, God and the people willing. Can I expect to see you and your parents at church some day?’
Sandy stared at him. The cheek of the man! He was grinning through his beard, and Sandy creased his own mouth wryly.
‘Some day,’ he said. ‘Some day.’ The minister laughed. It was a great big open natural sound. Sandy liked the new minister so far. The window was rolled up. The car drew away, did a quick three-point turn, and, with a toot of its horn, a toot Sandy acknowledged with a casual wave, made off. Sandy had decided to ignore the old man. Let him stare. He had as much right to be here as anyone.
Matt Duncan spat again. He had been in this town for sixty years. Was he not the man to ask directions off? But no, someone had stopped and asked the dirty black little upstart. Well let them, and let everyone forget about his son Matty. Let the town forget that tragedy; the wickedness of the witch. He would never forget. He forged horseshoes made of fire in his heart. There could be no forgetting. His son had died by fire. Now fire burned within the father. Let them all forget. But before he, Matt Duncan, died, there would be a reckoning. He screwed up his eyes until only a thin sliver of vision remained. In this sliver, the boy, seated again on his wall, became a blurred thing, a crouched goblin, the spawn of a witch, something insignificant which Matt Duncan would have squashed with a hardened and unfeeling palm as if eradicating a sin.