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tough she can be you don’t have to look any further than her future career. She’s going to be a lawyer. She’s right, though. I’ve got to pull the pin on the bevvy. I’ve been going over the score. You don’t believe me? You think I like looking like this? I’ve got heavier on the cigarettes as well. I’m trying to stop smoking. Which is a very hard thing to do. The other night, I did a very stupid thing. I fell asleep with a cigarette in my mouth. I could have set the whole house on fire. I was just lucky, I suppose. I was lying out in the garden path at the time . . . But getting back to the story – money, or lack of it – and me striving to be the man for Rachel that I have always failed to be. So far . . .

5
The housekeeper from Lewis
24 August 2010, 11.15 a.m.
    Murdo walked straight into the Cocktail Bar of the Tartan Pagoda and took a seat on a bar stool facing Morag, vacuum-cleaner at the port. Morag was an ugly little woman in her seventies. She wore a striped overall and a large, hand-printed identity card that read ‘HOUSEKEEPER’. Behind the extremely thick lenses of her spectacles were the mad eyes of a Presbyterian hysteric.
    â€˜Service? What do you mean you’ll give me a servicing twice a year? I’m
Miss
MacIver, and I’ve never been called
Mistress.’
    â€˜You’re telling me you wouldn’t fancy me coming over to tune your engine for you?’
    â€˜Bye, pervert!’
    â€˜The engine in the van.’
    â€˜What van?’
    â€˜The van I’m trying to sell you.’
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous, young man. What would I want a van for?’
    â€˜You could go to church in it on a Sunday.’
    â€˜May the Lord forgive you. I
walk
to church.’
    â€˜But maybe you know someone in your congregation who’s looking for a van.’
    â€˜Quiet, young man, in case the Lord causes a judgement to be visited upon you. Nobody in our church believes in vans, or in cars or in lorries.’
    â€˜Willie the Tailor down our way thought the same as you. Poor man.’
    â€˜Who’s Willie the Tailor and what happened to him?’
    â€˜A holy kind of chap from North Uist who came to a terrible end at Clachan church a year or two back.’
    â€˜How? What happened? What happened?’
    â€˜Well, the service was over about twelve o’clock, and he and a crowd of black Protestants were blethering outside the church right in the middle of the main road. Next thing they see is Calum MacCormack’s lorry thundering flat out towards them. The others scattered but poor Willie stood there and said, “I don’t believe in you”.
Bang!
A wee bit too late. Archie MacPhee refused to box him . . . and the survivors are still going to counselling classes in Liniclate School.’
    â€˜Why are you getting rid of the van?’
    â€˜I need some money.’
    â€˜What did you do with the money you had?’
    â€˜I gave it away.’
    â€˜To whom?’
    â€˜To the Ethiopians. I saw a programme on the television last night where they were dying of starvation over there, and I felt sorry for them.’
    â€˜And you sent them the money straight away. Bless you. May you find your reward in heaven.’
    â€˜And I enclosed a wee note too.’
    â€˜What did you say in the letter?’
    â€˜I gave them some advice.’
    â€˜Advice?’
    â€˜Yes. I told them not to bother trying to plough or sow in the sand over there. Nothing grows in that soil.’
    â€˜What are they supposed to do?’
    â€˜They’ve got to go to where the food is. The best thing they can do is buy a ticket to Glasgow. That town is chock-a-block with McDonald’s and Burger King and Pizza Hut. They must go on a plane to some place where there’s plenty food.’
    â€˜I’d like to go on a plane too.’
    â€˜Where would you go?’
    â€˜I’d go anywhere. I’m sick to