"Did you manage?" he asked boldly. "You and Aunt Jan?"
"That is none of your damn business, boy," I told him. "But as a matter of fact we did, although I admit it was more down to her self-control than mine. I'll tell you something else too. It was all the more worth it in the end. Self-control is the second most difficult art for a man to master, but when we do we find that we're in control of more than ourselves."
"What's the most difficult?"
"Sincerity. As Bob Monkhouse said, master that and you've cracked it."
As I spoke we passed out of Pittenweem and I took a right turn. "Where are we going?" Jonny asked. I said nothing, but drove. Not far along the road, a sign pointed right again, to Arncroach; I swung the Lotus into the narrow road.
"Uncle Oz." I could feel the panic rising in him. "Where are we going?" he repeated.
"You know where we're going, Jonny, don't you?" I had to raise my voice above the sound of the engine and the rush of the air. He simply nodded, and then the tears began. His wide, but still bony shoulders started to shake, and he buried his face in his hands. There was an opening ahead, a recessed farm gate that served as a makeshift lay-by.
I slowed and pulled in there.
"Do you love your Granddad that much, son, that you did that for him?"
"I didn't mean to," he whispered.
"You were listening to us, weren't you?" I asked him. "That day in Elie when we were in the pub, talking, and you were outside; you were listening." I could picture it in my mind; our table, an open window.
"I didn't mean to do that either," he sniffed, 'but I thought it was strange you not asking me inside when there was hardly anyone there.
And I could tell there was something wrong with Granddad too; he wasn't acting like himself at all. I thought he must have cancer or something, and I was frightened. I heard it all, Uncle Oz; all that he said about those terrible people threatening him. And I heard how afraid he sounded."
He wiped his eyes. "I hoped you would go and beat them up, make them stop."
"I did, son, I did… only they didn't stop."
"I know. After that I started going to see him as often as I could. I would get on my bike after school and cycle over to Anstruther. We'd talk like we've always done, but I could tell he wasn't right. He was bad-tempered, and once he even hit Colin. I couldn't tell him that I knew, of course. I just had to look at him, sitting there worrying, but having to keep it hidden from everybody. I felt so sorry for him and so angry with them."
"So you called them. You phoned them up, didn't you?"
"Uh-huh." He nodded. "I found their number in the book and I phoned them. He answered. I tried to make myself sound older and I said "It's Mac Blackstone. Okay, I'll pay you, but I don't want to be seen." And I told them both to meet me… to meet Granddad… at the farm. I didn't know whether they believed me or not."
"Obviously they did. How did you know about the farm, son?"
"The farmer's the uncle of a boy I'm at school with. He and I went there one day, on our bikes. I knew there wouldn't be anyone there, not in the evening at least."
"And the gun? Where did you get the shotgun, Jonny?"
"It's my dad's. He bought it and got a permit and everything when he joined that shooting club, and then when we moved to France he took it.
Everyone's got a shotgun there. When we came back, it was packed with our stuff by mistake, in its wrapper, and the shells in their box. I took it in my light golf bag, over my shoulder, on my bike."
I threw my head back, banging it against the seat's restraint. My daft sister. Keeping an unregistered firearm in the house. "Mum was going to give it back to him the first time he came to St. Andrews; but he never has."
No, he hadn't, had he. Allan Sinclair, would-be country sportsman and father of the year.
"I only took it to frighten them, Uncle Oz, honest." Jonathan was wide-eyed; he is also incapable of lying. "They turned up all right, when I said. I was hiding in the sheds, and when they got near I stepped out and I pointed the gun at them. I remember shouting, "You leave my Granddad alone, do you understand, or else." The man just laughed at me. She wasn't so sure, but he just laughed and he came to take the gun away from me. He grabbed the barrel and tried to pull it out of my hand… and it went off!"
As he spoke, his voice had risen, and risen. I put a hand on his shoulder, to calm his hysteria.
"It was awful, Uncle Oz." Jonny was crying again. "There was a huge bang, and he fell down. He rolled about for a bit, but then he was still. Honest, Uncle Oz, I didn't even know the gun was loaded."
"Fuck me," I whispered. Allan Sinclair, would-be country sportsman who was so incredibly stupid as to leave a loaded shotgun in a house with kids in it.
"She started screaming then," Allan's son, my nephew, continued, 'and so did I. The gun had a sort of a pump thing on it; I was frightened so I pulled it, and then the gun just went off again. She was further away and it hit her in the chest and face. Ahh!" The boy screamed again, at the memory. "It was awful. And then she was dead, they were both dead."
I waited for his sobs to subside; it took a while. "So you hid them in the pig troughs?" I asked him, quietly, once I thought he was ready.
He nodded a silent 'yes'. "It was hard, but I did. I was scared stiff, Uncle Oz. I still am. I'll go to prison, won't I?" he asked, his child's eyes big in his young man's face. It appalled me that in a few minutes our conversation had come from the sexual confusion of the average adolescent, to this dark place.
I reached out an arm and hugged him, awkwardly in the confines of the car. "No, son," I told him. "You won't go anywhere. If you'd only spoken to me, though."
He looked at me, sideways. "I was afraid that if I did you might have killed them, and then you'd have got into trouble."
I felt tears well in my own eyes. "Aw, Jonny, love. So you wound up killing them yourself instead." It was a while before I could speak again.
When I could, I told him that I had sent Jay up to get rid of them. I told him that he had found a note in the cottage about the meeting, and I told him that he had made everything all right. I even told him that Jay thought I had done it, and that I wasn't about to advise him otherwise.
"You don't have to worry, son," I promised him. "Ever. That doesn't mean that you forget, though. You will never speak of what happened at that farm again, as long as you live. But you'll remember it always.
It's your own private burden to carry for ever. You've got the strength for it; you may doubt it now, but believe me, you have. Never forget this either, though. Those people were as bad as you could ever imagine, but they were not worth risking your life over."
"But I did it for Granddad," he protested.
"He's not worth it either, nor am I. You are more precious than the two of us put together, and don't you ever forget it. Remember this too.
Don't you ever go tackling trouble alone, not as long as I'm alive."
I let him think about that for a while as I looked at him. Be it by accident, terror-stricken panic or whatever, he'd killed two people, this lad, this gawky boy. And yet he'd been brought to it by the purest motivator of alclass="underline" love.
I don't care how anybody else might look at him. As far as I'm concerned he's a bloody hero.
"Now," I demanded, forcing myself into action and starting the car once more, 'about this gun. Where is it?"
"Back at St. Andrews. I didn't want my Mum to know it was missing, so I put it back."
I drove there as fast as I could, and I made him give it to me. "What about Mum?" he asked. "She'll notice it's gone, eventually."
"When she does, you'll tell her that you told me by accident that she had it, and that I went bananas and made you give it to me. That's the truth, more or less."