Chapter 16: Going Home

While I sat in Jerome Mason’s car filling in insurance papers, I was pondering on the questions posed by Ali and the lady in the twinset: who had I been crying for? Detective Constable Forsyth and the girls had gone to sit in my car with the engine switched on since the afternoon had become decidedly chilly. The wonderfully clear weather of Christmas Day had persisted throughout Boxing Day, and it was still bright and sunny when we set out from Coulport that morning. During the day, however, cloud had thickened from the west.

There had been just enough heat in the mid-winter sun to cause tendrils of mist to form, clinging to the bare branches of the sodden trees, as the air cooled. The time was a little after four in the afternoon and it was already dark with only haloed street lighting to relieve the gloom. The moon had ended its fourth quarter and there was not a single star showing through the clouds. I knew they were still up there, reminding me how small a thing humanity truly is.

Jerry took pains to explain the documents he presented for signature, but I tuned him out while I considered what I should say to Ali. The one thing I was sure of was that she would persist in asking why I had been so upset in the Children’s Ward. It took less than five minutes for me to sign and take my leave of Jerry; I got into the passenger seat of my Audi beside Con, feeling only partly prepared for an interrogation.

There was no interrogation. It took several minutes for me to realise what had happened, but my heart sang when I finally caught the mood. There may or may not be love at first sight but there is certainly a desire to know more of someone from the instant we meet him or her. It slowly dawned on me that Kate and Con had concluded, while I was with Jerry, that they had business with each other. I felt a renewal of hope at this example of the indomitable human spirit; the Universe may swamp us, but it can never subdue us.

Despite all that had happened to her, Kate was ready, when the fleeting moment offered, to open her heart to the possibility of love. We knew very little about the young detective, but my own instincts were that he could prove a worthy match for my latest daughter. I was certainly prepared to watch from the side-lines while they began the ageless rituals of courtship.

We were, I suppose, about fifteen miles on the road home before I reached my conclusions, and I wondered if Ali would have picked-up on what was happening right under her nose. She is, after all, only seventeen; perhaps she will be jealous of Con barging into the newly established bond between the two victims of the abduction. We had travelled another dozen miles before I understood that Ali was not only aware but was actually orchestrating the mating ritual.

She and Kate were acting like a well-rehearsed team; Kate was demure, often referring to Con as ‘Detective Forsyth’; Ali was bluntly quizzing the poor devil on his taste in women and his experience of the sex. At his age, I am sure I would have been bemused but modern youth is more aware than I was. Con seemed to be totally willing to subject himself to the lie-detector examination by Alison, although he was clearly uncomfortable.

I listened for long enough to learn that the rhythm and lyrics of the mating game had changed very little in forty years; perhaps it was a little pacier, a touch more strident, but essentially plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. It was also borne in on me that my baby daughter was a fairly accomplished practitioner; her teasing questions were cleverly designed to allow both Kate and Con to display themselves. It was as formal as a court ball, a gavotte or a galliard, so I tuned out the words and lost myself in the timelessness of the tone. All right, have it your own way: I dozed off.

Ali brought me back to full consciousness as we were passing through Helensburgh.

“Tell Con he has to stay the night with us, Daddy.”

My first reaction was alarm that they seemed to have taken the preliminaries of a long courtship much further than I anticipated. Ali was not, as I first concluded, suggesting that Con and Kate share a bed but simply drawing attention to the fact that he had no means of getting to his own home from the car park in Coulport.

“Detective Forsyth will make up his own mind, I’m sure,” Kate remarked, trying to sound as if she did not care either way.

“Drive the car home, Con. I’ve no plans for using it tomorrow. Bring it back when you can spare the time.”

“I’ve a day’s leave tomorrow, Mr Galbraith;” his eagerness was almost pathetic.

I had turned to the two girls, leaning through the gap in the front seats with their heads close together.

“He can come for lunch, can’t he daddy?” Ali pleaded.

Kate had been looking eager but there was just the tiniest frown in response to Ali’s suggestion.

“Why not make it breakfast?” I suggested. “I don’t suppose we’ll be doing very much anyway.”

My reward was a warm smile from Kate, confirming that I had guessed right.

We had called ahead so Eddie was waiting for us in the all-terrain vehicle. There were no unseemly embraces when we parted but the handshake between Con and Kate lasted just a little longer than convention required and could easily have been mistaken for a caress. Her contented sigh as she settled onto her seat in the truck made Ali and me grin at each other. Kate remained a little detached from the rest of us during dinner and she smilingly declined to join Jon and Doh when they took up their guitars after we had eaten. Ali had the floor to herself in describing the visit to the Children’s Ward, while her new sister gazed dreamily into space.

My outburst at the hospital had relaxed me and I spent the evening, saying very little but enjoying the return to near normal life. Our new cooks would not eat with us at dinner, but they were happy enough to pull up chairs and join us for coffee. I made the first brew, but I was pleased to hand over the duty of preparing a second cup to Dandy. I excused myself shortly after ten; I wanted to check emails in my office, I told the company, but the truth was that I was excited at the thought of spending a second night with my ex-wife.

Perhaps if I had actually checked my incoming mail, I would not have fallen asleep before Rachel came up stairs. I made no special effort to stay awake, arrogantly assuming that she would be happy to wake me. My male ego led me to assume that she must have enjoyed the previous night at least as much as I did. Even when I woke in the middle of the night and found I was alone in bed, I turned over and went back to sleep confident that she had left me on my own out of consideration.

It was about seven in the morning of the Twenty-eighth that I woke up to the reality. Rachel came into my room from the bathroom wearing a voluminous robe left behind by Phil, over her granny-nightgown. She smilingly asked if I had slept well.

“What time is it, Rachel?” I grumbled. “Come back to bed for another half hour.”

“No more bed sharing, Gus my darling.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, trapping me under the covers and forced me to face the only possible future. She began by telling me how much she had enjoyed our night together, assuring me that she did not regret a single word or shared caress.

“It changes nothing, Gus. I love you now as I always have but I was right to leave you when Donnie was a baby. Living with you was exciting but I could not match your adventurous spirit. I needed the security that Bill offered.

“You truly love me, but you do not worship me; Bill worships me but I don’t think he knows what love is – not the love we share, at any rate.”

I knew from her first words that it would be futile to argue. I cared for my family by turning my back on them to protect them from the world, whereas Bill spent his life watching over them. Bill would never have crossed the moor to rescue Ali but perhaps she would not have been snatched in the first place if he had been around. While he watches them, my attention would have been on potential threats from outside. Perhaps I need space to grow and so I provide space for those around me. Rachel wanted the comfort of a man without any other ambition than to keep her safe.

“When you sold the business,” she continued, “I briefly thought that we could get back together. You had achieved your goals in life and need never work again. I dreamed that we could go forward together; I hoped that age had cooled your desire for adventure and that you would have the patience to give me time to adapt to the changes you would propose. I fantasised that you would slow your pace so I could keep up without the breathlessness I always feel when we’re together.

“Then you found this place. At first, I was lulled by the name: the Retreat sounded like a backwater where we could grow old gracefully. For you it was never a Retreat, more of a brazen trumpet, sounding the advance. I understand the attraction of Jon and Kate with all the problems they have that you could solve, but I feared that I would be left behind yet again.

“I was still in two minds about us after the October holiday but then you went out and bought three hundred pregnant sheep and I knew I was beaten – outnumbered, you might say.”

She had already decided what to say before I left for Perth the previous morning. I had almost forgotten about the small single bedroom that shared the bathroom with my master suite; it had a door onto the corridor opposite the door into the office. Rachel and Heather had spent the day cleaning the room.

“Heather told me bluntly that I was nuts to give you up,” Rachel laughed, getting off the bed.

“I’m glad someone is on my side!” I grumbled.

“Come off it, Gus! If you had really wanted me, you’d have wooed me but you’ve been holding off wondering whether to pick me or Jenny. The truth is, that Anya is more the kind of woman you need.”

She went into the bathroom, pushing the door closed behind her but without properly closing and locking it. I got up in my borrowed pyjamas and stood at the window watching the light slowly reveal the miserably wet and dark morning. I will admit that there was an element of relief in my thoughts: Rachel had made the decision, so I was saved from getting things wrong. She and I could continue as loving friends without the complications of living together. That just left Jenny now and I found myself thinking that the best thing I could do would be to back away from an entanglement with her, at least until I can devise a viable plan for my future.

My next thought was that my ex-wife was wrong about Anya. It is true that her past has been adventurous and her recent performance in guiding me through the wilderness to the cave where the girls were held captive showed that her spirit was still intact. But she had withdrawn from the world when I first met her and her response to re-joining the human race had been to pick Jerome Mason, another man like Bill, to marry. Just like Rachel, Anya had chosen security over adventure when she chose a mate; she too wanted to be worshipped rather than loved.

I was dressed and opening my emails when Dandy came in to ask if I needed anything from Kilcreggan. Con Forsyth had called at the crack of dawn, so Dandy was taking the truck down to the car park instead of walking down to inspect the sheep as he normally did. I began to tell him there was nothing I needed when it occurred to me that I would like to be somewhere else for the next few hours.

There was no doubt in my mind that Rachel’s analysis of our relationship was fair and accurate but that would not make it any easier to face her and the others. I hoped that most of them would sympathise with my plight, but I rather despised myself for failing to keep my woman. Any kindness I was shown would look too much like pity for my peace of mind.

“I’ll come with you, Dandy. Just go downstairs and give a whistle when I can get to the kitchen without meeting any of the others.”

He gave me a knowing grin: “Heather will make you a bacon roll.”

The all-terrain vehicle is not ideal for holding conversations, especially at the speed Dandy drove, so I had ten minutes or so to construct a defence before we pulled into the car park beside Con, who was brightening the day with his happy smile. Dandy said nothing when I told the young policeman to drive the truck while we walked back inspecting the flock of sheep.

“They’re a lot like women,” Dandy philosophised, once the noise of the truck had died away. “Sheep, I mean,” he added, after a pause.

“Take my sister Heather, for example. She was running about with her flock of lassies at sixteen, fancying themselves grown up. Half envying their mothers, because they had known what it was like to be tupped, and half despising them for being old.”

It was a familiar enough story Dandy told. The girls prepared for matrimony by considering and discarding boys, mostly without going further than a few kisses. Heather would probably have gone the same way if her father had not violently objected to one of her passing fancies; she dug in her heels and finished up marrying a complete waster.

“Just like a sheep you see. They’re biddable creatures for the most part, anxious to please, but they can be right stubborn if you handle them badly.”

Dandy had fallen out with his father before all this blew up and he still felt guilty that he had not been there for his sister when she needed him. Heather was working two jobs while her husband sat at home waiting for the right opportunity, which he prepared for by drinking beer and betting on televised horse races. She and Dandy began phoning and texting once she had moved out of the family home. When he told her that he was coming to Coulport for about six months she decided that enough was enough, so she begged Dandy to take her with him.

“She looked a mess when she got into the car with nothing but her chef’s uniform and a plastic bag with the few clothes she had been able to smuggle past her nearest and dearest.”

Heather is a big girl, perhaps ten pounds overweight but she is always immaculately turned out and always smiling. I must have shown my surprise at hearing her described as ‘looking a mess’.

“She’s changed,” Dandy grinned, sensing my confusion. “It’s all down to Eddie, of course.”

Dandy’s description of his sister’s trials and tribulations had distracted me from my own troubles. We walked across the heather to a sheep that looked as if it might be distressed but which turned out to be in a sort of ovine blue study. Despite a reputation as very indifferent thinkers, sheep often forget to browse while they stare abstractedly at the scenery. A similar tendency in pigs has led to the belief that they can see the wind. We struggled back to the track before Dandy spoke again:

“He loves Heather because he loved me, you know. The problem is that he’s stubbornly heterosexual so he couldn’t love me as I want, and he transferred it to my sister. Sometimes it’s miserable being gay.”

We walked on almost to the ridge before the track swooped down to the Retreat.

“I don’t blame him. He can’t help his sexual orientation. I used to beg him: ‘you play with your own willie so why can’t you play with mine?’ It did no good.”

Then he gave a great laugh: “I hope you don’t mind me having a wee wallow, Fergus. I could see you were feeling sorry for yourself, and I thought I’d join you.”

We sat side by side on a rock beside the track while he told me what it meant to him to be working at the Retreat. He felt a sense of contentment that had been missing from his life since before he went to university, and Heather had rediscovered the joy and optimism that she last felt when she was fifteen. He ascribed the changes to the atmosphere around the old farmhouse.

“It stems from you, Fergus,” he insisted. “We all look to you for inspiration. I don’t know why Rachel has dumped you, but I’ll bet the fault is not yours. We all want to be around you and win your approval – maybe Rachel feels that you wouldn’t approve if she stayed here with you.”

Therapy comes in many forms and from many sources; Dandy had managed to lift my spirits.

The low cloud had lifted during our walk but now it came down again and we ran the last few yards to the kitchen door being drenched by the fine rain. Heather was preparing lunch while Eddie sat chatting to her. The slightly subdued atmosphere when we entered soon lifted and I wondered if Dandy was right to suggest that my influence on the people in the Retreat was beneficial.

Rachel, Jenny and Elaine were in the bar next door to the kitchen, and they visibly brightened up when I joined them. The youngsters were upstairs in the spare bedroom that was Jon’s music room; I had no doubt that they would be pleased to see me. In the four months since I discovered this haven, I have become an integral part of their community.

Indeed, six of the people staying here now had followed me here; and I have directly influenced the lives of Jon, Kate and Jenny since my arrival. It occurred to me that I was responsible for them; I would have walked across the moors to save Kate even if Ali had not been with her; I cared that Jenny might have been hurt by Piers; and I was willing to accept Rachel’s misgivings. I also found that I was considering ways to develop the Retreat so that I could offer permanent positions to Heather and Dandy, as I already had to Eddie.

As I sat there in the bar with the three women chatting like old friends, I realised that I was happy with the responsibilities I had acquired since the beginning of September. Far from feeling burdened or inhibited, I feel that I am on the brink of discovering myself. After a lifetime of labour in the sterile atmosphere surrounding digital computers, I am revelling in my close, very personal interaction with real people. I have even developed a soft spot for the sheep.

The ladies left me to my thoughts, probably assuming that I was still brooding on Rachel’s rejection. My mind was, however, straining to grasp a thought inspired by what Dandy had told me of his relationship with Eddie. Despite wanting Kate’s foster brother for himself, Dandy is content to surrender his claim to Heather. He has accepted a less intimate relationship for the sake of people he loves.

I wondered if I was capable of that level of sacrifice. Instead of wondering whether I should choose Rachel or Jenny, or even Anya, what I should do is ignore my own wish for a partnership so that I can love all of them as they need. I am sure that I can control my physical desire, but can I do without a head on the pillow beside me to absorb all my pain and guilt?

The rain persisted throughout the afternoon. Dandy introduced us to Newmarket, a gambling game with playing cards; we bet in thousands with Monopoly money. We behaved like spoilt kids, blatantly cheating and sulking when we lost; we were sore from laughing by the time Heather called us through to the dining room for the evening meal. After we had dined, Jon, Kate and Doh sang and played to us until midnight.

Heather would not join us for the entire meal, but she did agree to sit with us for dessert and coffee. I smiled wryly to myself when I made a mental note to integrate her into the group: she is, after all, one of my people. Con stayed the night, sleeping on a mattress on the floor of Jon’s room. The truck would take him to the car park after breakfast, together with Rachel, Jenny and Elaine, who were taking my car to Glasgow; and Heather, Eddie and Dandy, who hoped that Dandy’s clunker would carry them as far as Helensburgh.

After they left, Jon and Doh adjourned to the music room and we saw nothing of them until Kate, Ali and I prepared lunch. It was dry with the cloud base up above a thousand feet, but it was dark and gloomy even at midday. Kate could barely contain her impatience while we cleared up after breakfast. As soon as the last dish was loaded into the washer, she led the way up the hill and into her secret place; Ali was suitably gratified to be only the second outsider to be admitted to this holy of holies.

After my daughter ‘ooh’-ed and ‘ah’-ed for a minute or two, Kate came straight to the point:

“What happened to Jon when we were kidnapped? No one will tell me anything. Did he disgrace us? I just have to know!”

“There was no disgrace, Kate,” I told her, taking her into my arms. “Like the rest of us he discovered things about himself, and we will all need time to come to terms with that.”