And the Land Lay Still Read Online Free PDF Page B

astonishing news. It seemed to reveal to Michael something not about Freddy’s brother, not even about Freddy, but about himself.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘You always said he was weird, but weird’s not the same as queer, is it?’
    ‘No.’ He smiled, or scowled, it was hard to tell which because he was so ugly. ‘Maybe he’s just weird.’
    The door opened and somebody came in, a prefect. ‘What are you two doing here?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Freddy said.
    ‘Well go and do it somewhere else.’
    They went, and nothing more was said.
    §
    ‘Did you make any progress with that introduction?’ Murdo asks.
    ‘I read over what I’d already written and then tinkered with it,’ Mike says. ‘Not at all productive.’
    ‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ Murdo says. ‘I’ve not tried to write anything since I was at school.’
    He picks at the window ledge beside his chair, and looks round at the rest of the sun lounge.
    ‘This place needs a coat of paint.’
    ‘I know. Outside and in.’
    ‘More than paint. You’ve let the woodwork go.’
    ‘Do you want to do it?’
    ‘I will if you want me to.’
    ‘I’ll pay you for it.’
    ‘Aye, you will. Used notes only.’
    Murdo can turn his hand to just about anything. His cousin took over the uncle’s building business and Murdo sometimes works for him. He also does painting jobs and other repair and maintenance work for people who either can’t or don’t want to do it themselves. He services his own van and will do other people’s vehicles if they’re not too fussy about them. He does Mike’s car although he says it would be kinder to roll it over the edge of a cliff. His customers pay him in cash and if he doesn’t declare more to the taxman than what he earns from the cousin nobody is blaming him for it. God knows it’s hard enough making an income around here, they say, and one thing about Murdo, he’s no scrounger, you’ll not catch him sitting on his backside claiming benefit like some. Sometimes folk are short of money and they owe him it, or they pay him in kind – a lamb for the freezer, a fill of red diesel from the farm tank. ‘It’s how a real economy works,’ Murdo says. ‘Not that you’d expect economists to understand.’
    ‘How long would it take you?’ Michael asks.
    ‘Two days. Maybe three. It depends on the weather. Also on how much of the wood needs to be replaced.’
    ‘Well, I’m going to have to go to Edinburgh some time soon. To do with the exhibition. You could do it then.’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve arranged the dates.’
    ‘I’m sure we’ll sort something out.’
    They have run out of things to say. This is fine. They sit in companionable silence and the night grows around them. This is absolutely fine.
    §
    By morning the weather has changed back. It’s warmer, but the cloud is low on the hills and there’s a steady downpour. Mike has another look at the introduction, essay, memoir, whatever it is he’s trying to write. That’s the problem, he doesn’t know. But a deadline is looming: it’s March and he has until 1 May to deliver the final text. He should be writing about Angus – the photographer, the father – and has made several stabs at it but it just isn’t happening, he doesn’t seem to be touching him at all. Faced with the blank
computer screen and that deadline, and the memories provoked by those photographs at Dounreay, he is also confronted, and not for the first time, by the possibility that he didn’t really know his father at all. He looks again at the family in the photograph: the tall man, the cold woman, the fragile boy on the tartan rug. Angus is dead, but physically Mike has grown to replace him. Isobel, though so much older, still looks like Isobel. It is the boy who has completely gone. How did we get from there to here, Mike wonders. How did
I
get to here? His fifty-three years, and all that they contain, seem suddenly elusive and intangible.
    Still,