The Missing Years Read online

“Shove up one, Ali, unless you want me to climb over you.” It’s Jamie, trying to squeeze between the wall and the table to settle into an empty chair.

  “Thanks, but I can do without your arse in my face,” Alistair—Ali—grunts, as he moves along one seat. Now he’s facing Ben, and I have my intruder opposite me. This seating plan leaves a lot to be desired. “That your jeep out there, Jamie?”

  “Aye, got her last week.”

  “Nice piece of machinery.” There’s the beginning of a sardonic smile hovering near Ali’s mouth, and I realize he’s caught the attention of a few others. I sense he’s working up to something. “Couldnae help but notice her out there in the car park. Did you park her blindfolded with a ferret down your trousers?” A bark of surprised laughter escapes me to blend with the general hilarity Ali’s words have prompted.

  “Ach, away tae fuck.” There’s no aggression in the words; Jamie doesn’t seem in the least bit riled. He hikes his chair in closer to the table and then looks across at me, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. We have secrets, you and I, he seems to be saying. I look at my wineglass instead. It appears to be empty again. “So, Ailsa, what brings you to the Highlands? Are you just here for a short while or will you be staying?”

  “It’s temporary.” On my left, I feel Ben turning away from the waitress and tuning in to our conversation. “I, um, inherited the Manse when my mum died recently”—I lift a few fingers slightly to acknowledge the murmurs of sympathy—“so I’m just trying to sort that out.”

  “With a view to what? Keeping, selling or renting?” Jamie asks.

  “I’d like to sell. But there are a few legal hurdles . . .” I trail off and shrug.

  “I’d love to talk to you about buying it sometime,” Ben says seriously. Longer exposure to his laid-back drawl has given me no better understanding of his ever-changing accent. “I’ve always loved that place. I figure it could be run as a hunting lodge, under the same franchise as the hotel.”

  “Really? I may well take you up on that.” Could it be this easy? Get the Presumption of Death certificate, sell to Ben? And then what—skip off back to London, leaving Carrie? “You know, my folks wanted to run it as a bed-and-breakfast when they bought it.”

  “When was that?”

  “Just before I was born. My dad had a little bit of money from a relative that died and they blew it all on the Manse. It ought to have been a good investment but my mum was renting it out over the last twenty-odd years, and it never made much.”

  “It’s never rented well,” says Jamie. “I used to work at the estate agency that manages it, you ken. A place like that ought to have been picking up long lets, not just the odd week here and there.”

  Ali speaks up. “Maybe it’s because of its history.”

  My eyes jump to his face involuntarily: does he mean my story? I know he’s seen my reaction. There’s a sly satisfaction to be read in his gleaming eyes, in the smirk of his mouth. “Really? What do you mean?” I ask with studied calm. There’s an odd high-pitched beep that comes from the other side of Ben. I see Fiona glancing at her watch.

  “He means its Internet history,” interjects Jamie. He’s certainly recovered his confidence. “Someone put a bad review on TripAdvisor, saying the place was really strange. Cold drafts, felt like they were being watched, like someone had been through their possessions—that sort of thing.” His dark eyes are on me as he speaks, a hint of a secret smile within them as he adds with faux innocence, “Anything going bump in the night, Ailsa?” I know he means to reference his own midnight visitation, but now I’m wondering if he was wrong about his Manse-obsessed sister: maybe she doesn’t only visit when the property is empty . . . I think of the figure that may or may not have been in the box room, of my own feeling of being observed, and an involuntary shiver runs through me.

  Ben saves me from having to respond. “Rubbish,” he snorts robustly. “Probably one of your lot at the agency trying to get some business from ghost-hunting nutters or something.”

  “I wouldnae put it past them,” Jamie concedes, “but it backfired if so.”

  “I dinnae ken about the TripAdvisor thing,” Ali says. “I was actually talking about the proper history of the place. You ken what Manse means? Good. So then the question is . . . where’s the church?”

  “In the village,” I say, puzzled. “Just down the road from here.”

  “Nope. Well, aye, but that’s not the original church. That one was built in the late eighteen hundreds. Where’s the original kirk?” He glances around and a small smile touches his lips. He’s in his element now that he’s drawn his audience in.

  “Go on,” says Ben. “You know you’re dying to tell us.”

  Ali throws him a grin. There seems to be genuine affection there. “Aye, well, it’s actually a sad story. I would imagine Sassenachs such as yourselves”—he gestures at Carrie and me, and even that small motion is somehow patronizing—“dinnae ken much about the Jacobite rebellion—”

  “1745!” calls out Carrie. “English oppression. Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, raised an army that was defeated at the Battle of Culloden.” She catches my eye with a smirk. I raise my glass to her, surprised and impressed in equal measure.

  “Top of the class,” says Ali, inclining his head toward her, clearly rather impressed too. “So, after the battle, Charlie goes into hiding and eventually escapes—”

  “To Skye, right? Hence ‘The Skye Boat Song’?” asks Ben. He begins to sing in a surprisingly good baritone. “Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing—” Fiona joins her voice to his, and Carrie, too, in her wondrous alto; Ben starts to conduct with enthusiastic theatricality and now half the table has joined in, including me. “—onward the sailors cry. Carry the lad that’s born to be king, over the sea to Skye.”

  “Give it a rest; this isn’t The X Factor,” the beanpole bartender yells over.

  The song peters out but we are all giggling now, buoyed up by the togetherness of the singing. Ali waits a few moments until he has garnered sufficient attention again. “Aye, Bonnie Prince Charlie did indeed speed off to Skye, and then ultimately to France. But the Scotland he left behind was never the same. The Highland clan system was effectively outlawed, and a law was passed making it illegal to own a sword, wear a kilt or in fact wear any tartan at all. Even speaking in Gaelic was forbidden. And those laws were enforced, with gusto: the English were not taking any chances. Even the slightest whiff of rebellion about a man would result in death. Now”—his voice has dropped a little, forcing his audience to lean in—“legend has it that there was a pocket of strong Jacobite resistance right here. The village was smaller then, maybe only a dozen houses, and clustered much nearer the Manse than where it lies the now. When the English soldiers came to wipe it out, all the women and children went into hiding within the kirk—the church, you ken,” he adds for Carrie’s benefit. “The minister, though, was a sniveling, cowardly man. He’d thrown his lot in with the English early on and had been repeatedly preaching to his congregation that they owed obedience to the occupiers. When the soldiers came, the menfolk told them that the women and children had run into the woods to hide, but the minister revealed their true hiding place. For that, they spared him his life and his house. Then the soldiers went to the kirk and demanded that all the sons were sent out to be slaughtered along with their fathers, but the women refused. So the soldiers barred the doors and set light to the kirk.” He looks around his audience. His jerky gaze has calmed, as if the act of storytelling has peeled him back to a quiet strength beneath. “It burned for three days, so unnaturally hot and fierce that nobody could put it out. By the time the fire died out, even the masonry had been reduced to mere rubble.” I’m aware of the background murmur of the bar, but it’s at a distance, as if we are in a bubble, where the only noise that matters is the despairing, terrified screams mixed with the cracking and roaring of the blisteringly h
ot fire that will not be appeased. “So the minister lived out the rest of his days at the Manse, without a kirk to preach in, for no one would rebuild it. But the spirits of those women and children never forgave him. He was haunted and tormented for the rest of his years. And even after he died, the Manse has continued to be haunted by the women and children who were lost in that fire.”

  There’s a silence that sits over us all, despite the hubbub from the rest of the room. The laughter and the warmth of singing “The Skye Boat Song” might as well have happened years ago. “How is it that I’ve lived here for fifteen years and never heard that story before?” The question comes from someone farther down the table; I’m not sure who exactly.

  “I ken it,” says Fiona.

  “And?” asks Ben. “Is there any truth to it?”

  She nods. “There’s something to it. Ali hasnae quite got it right, though.” She sounds thoughtful. “The minister didnae betray his congregation. He saved some of the bairns—I dinnae ken how, but he put them out of reach.” Ali doesn’t dispute her. Somehow Fiona seems to have the authority on this.

  “Ah, but then why would the Manse be haunted?” Jamie asks, winking at me to show his tongue is firmly in cheek.

  “Is it really, though?” says Fiona in a musing tone. It sounds like she’s taking the question seriously. I glance across at her in surprise, but she’s partially hidden by Ben’s lean bulk. All I can see are her fingers playing with the wax drippings at the base of a candlestick. Sturdy fingers, with the nails filed short. Despite my own flights of fancy, I know that if the Manse is haunted at all, it’s by the non-ethereal, fully corporeal woman sitting to Ben’s left. It doesn’t seem any more comforting as a prospect than ghosts.

  “Having spent two perfectly lovely nights in it, I can assure you the Manse is not in fact haunted,” says Carrie pragmatically.

  “Unless you’re prepared to count a dodgy boiler as a manifestation of paranormal activity,” I add.

  Ben laughs, and suddenly the bubble bursts and the rest of the world rushes in, with its music and chatter, the clink of glasses and bursts of laughter. But I notice that Ali’s looking at me again, in a return of that jerky gaze which makes me feel like I’m watching a movie shot in the handheld camera style where the frame never quite stays still. I pick up my wineglass. Somehow it’s full again. I need to be careful—I can already feel the effects of the alcohol, how it loosens the way I hold myself together.

  “All okay?” asks Ben quietly in words meant just for me. There’s an intimacy in that, and in the heat that crosses the tiny divide between his thigh and mine, but a careless intimacy; I suspect he just can’t help himself.

  “Yes, all good,” I answer with deliberate brightness, though Ali’s story is still a fog around me, and Fiona’s presence has become a dark, throbbing pressure in my mind. I look for an innocuous topic. “You know, I’ve been wondering. You don’t exactly sound like you spent the rest of your childhood here.” There’s another digital beep and Fiona glances at her watch again. I glance at my own: a minute after ten.

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t. My folks got divorced when I was twelve and I went to live with Mum in Sydney, but I came back here every summer—every Aussie summer, that is, so over the Christmas holidays—so I kept up with all my Scottish mates. But yeah, the accent does kind of roam.” I can see him as a teenager, moving effortlessly between worlds, his friendly, unruffled demeanor never faltering. Hail fellow well met: I always thought of that phrase as describing a particular type of bumblingly oblivious Englishman, but it fits Ben perfectly and he is neither bumbling nor oblivious. Nor, indeed, English—or Scottish, really. A mongrel.

  “Sydney: gorgeous weather and beaches.” I wonder if he surfs. He would be utterly at home on a beach; he has that air about him. Though he was not out of place in the hotel, and nor is he in this bar. But nonetheless, my mind is spinning out a scene of a younger, golden Ben horsing around in the water with friends, playing touch rugby on the beach, cycling to school with sand still dusting those tanned forearms. “Versus Scotland: rain and midges.” I pretend to balance them, judging their weight with one in either hand, then I shake my head. “Nope, not following the logic here.”

  He smiles. The stillness of his gaze is in direct contrast to the constant movement of Ali’s sharp, hooded eyes, which from time to time I can still feel upon me. “I think you’re underselling the Highlands. I love it here. It’s so . . . Actually, I’m not sure there’s a word to describe the scenery, the air, all of this . . .” He waves a hand as if to pull the outside in. “And the people are great, really down-to-earth, plus my dad is here . . . So yeah, I’ve lived in a lot of places—I spent a ton of time studying and working in the States, too—but the Highlands kick them all into touch. It’s so . . . raw.” He’s completely unpretentious in his quiet passion; it’s infectious. I incline my head, accepting his points. I know what he means by raw, but it’s not quite the right word. It doesn’t convey the implacability of the landscape.

  Suddenly there’s a chorus of hellos as a tall, thin man with a lean, intelligent face appears behind Ben. “Piotr!” Ben says, standing to give him a greeting that lies somewhere between an arm wrestle and a hug.

  “Sorry,” Piotr says, in a marked Eastern European accent. “Accident on the main road, happened right in front of me. I had to wait for the police as a witness.”

  “Should have listened to Fi . . .”

  “I always listen to Fi. I just didn’t see the message until afterward.” He reaches over to shake my hand. “Hi, Piotr.”

  I quickly rearrange my face from confusion to a smile. “Ailsa. And this is Carrie.”

  “She inherited the Manse,” puts in Ben.

  “The Manse? Isn’t that where—”

  “Sit down, Piotr. We’re all famished waiting on you,” Fiona interrupts. “There’s a seat down the other end.”

  Piotr lifts a hand then moves off to find his seat. I stare after him, confused, then turn to Ben. “What was all that about the message and the accident?”

  But Ben is settling himself down again, and either doesn’t hear me or chooses not to answer. “Where were we?” he says. “What about you? Where have you been calling home for the last twenty-five-plus years?”

  “Oh.” I take in his deliberately bland expression and yield. It is his birthday after all; he should be able to talk about whatever he wants to talk about. Or not talk about. “God, everywhere. Nowhere. Literally.” His eyebrows quirk upward inquiringly. “We moved around a lot for the first five years or so, then my mum settled in Surrey.” He looks like he’s about to say something about that, but I don’t want to talk about my mother. I rush on. “Carrie is my half sister.” I see Carrie turn her head and regard me coolly for a moment before she turns back to answer a question from the person on her right. It’s the briefest of moments, but I register the complete lack of expression on her face, and at a stroke, the sense of connection from earlier is severed. I pick up my glass again, then put it down without drinking anything.

  “And now?” Ben asks.

  It’s a struggle to regain the thread of the conversation. “Well, I’ve been traveling a lot with work since I left uni; it’s hard to say what counts as home.”

  “No plans to make it the Manse?” He’s smiling, and I smile back as I shake my head, but it hasn’t escaped me that he, like Jamie, like Ali, has returned again to the same topic, and the leaden unease creeps back into my stomach. Even on a night away from it, meeting new friends, I can’t escape the Manse.

  My father runs a beach bar in Vietnam. It’s a ramshackle place, but popular with the tourists, of which there are more and more as the off-the-beaten tracks become ever more beaten. He hardly ever travels; after all, where do you go on holiday when life’s already a beach? Though the more accurate reason would be that he’s fairly sure his false passport would no longer pass muster. He has a wife a
nd a child—everything he walked away from, in fact—and the odd furtive hookup with a tourist to keep things interesting, and this time round he’s happier. Whether it’s the place or the timing or a change in himself that’s made the difference, he couldn’t say.

  NINE

  Somehow it’s past 1 A.M. and we are spilling into the breathless cold of the dark night. Carrie and I are losing an argument with Ben over the fact that he has picked up the tab for everyone, but won’t hear of us paying him back. People are milling around in the car park, sorting out lifts, wishing Ben a happy birthday as they leave. If this is an average Friday night for the Quaich, the management must be very happy with the business.

  “Everyone—at least, everyone who’s left—is coming back to my place for a drink or two,” says Ben to Carrie and me. But mainly to Carrie. “I think the single malt Ali has just given me might be the main attraction.” He holds up an expensive-looking bottle in a presentation case. In the dim lighting of the car park, I can’t see the brand, but it wouldn’t matter to me anyway. I’m trying to work out who’s left in the much whittled-down group, but I’m hampered by the darkness. There’s Carrie and Ben and me, obviously, and Ali and Jamie—the latter smoking a cigarette at the bonnet of a jeep which, to be fair to Ali, does look like it was abandoned rather than parked—and Piotr, who I remember thinking at dinner looked more than a little enamored with Carrie. And Fiona. Still Fiona. I wish her gone, and the intensity of that feeling disturbs me. Though of course, this is her space, her homeland, her circle of friends. It’s Carrie and I who should be leaving.

  “So,” prompts Ben. “A drink?”

  I look at Carrie, who is looking at me. “Ugh,” I say. “I’m really not a whisky fan.”

  “Aye, I figured.” This is Ali.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The words slip out before I can stop them. I add a laugh, but it fails to soften the bite. I should have known he would consider my alcohol preferences as just another nail in the coffin of my belonging here. I can only imagine his disgust if he found out I also wouldn’t vote for independence and I’m not comfortable in Glasgow.