500 Miles from You Page 17

  “Who’s going to shout at you?” said Cormac, drying his stubble. “And even if they do, you won’t hear them up there, you’re about nine feet tall in those.”

  “Catwalk,” said Kim-Ange sagely. “Come on, we’ll go up to Tate Modern. They’re all arty up there. I shall be appreciated.”

  She smiled at him.

  “Well done for this morning. Risky, but you pulled it off.”

  Cormac didn’t feel much better, though.

  Although once they got outside, into what Cormac considered to be a terrifying heat wave and everyone else thought was a perfectly normal day, he felt that something had changed. At first when he’d gone into clothes shops or walked through Soho, marveling at the looks, the fashion, the different types of people—male, female, and everything in between—he’d found it embarrassing. Why would anyone dress like that? Why would people want to stand out and have everyone stare at them, giggling and pointing?

  Now, as he started to get more used to the ins and outs of the inner city, he’d realized something that would have completely surprised him: he liked it.

  He liked the individuality of people’s dressing. He liked the effort that went into having silver hair, or wearing a wig or something incredibly uncomfortable, just so that everyone else didn’t have to look at the same boring jeans and fleeces all day.

  He also had a theory: In Scotland, the colors and the world around you changed daily, hourly even. The pink of the blossom bursting, the gold of the daffodils, the deep greens of the grass after the rain, and the soft lavender of the heather on the hillsides. Bright yellow fields of rapeseed; fresh white lambs dotting the place like clouds; sunsets that stretched uninterrupted for miles.

  Here it was gray pavement, gray buildings, gray pavement, brown buildings, everywhere you went. Always the same, never changing. Harsh electric lights burning yellow, over and over again. You could barely see the sky from the street, couldn’t see anything bursting into life and color, changing day by day. Nothing changed. Everything was at the same temperature, everything was built upon, and anything that wasn’t had a crane sitting on top of it.

  So people dressing colorfully, wearing yellow spectacles or bright turquoise suits or pointy red shoes, they were all adding to the brick urban landscape, giving you something beautiful and interesting to look at, because, in Cormac’s mind, they were so unlucky as to be trapped somewhere they couldn’t look at the sea, and the trees, and the sky.

  They walked along the embankment of the vast sludge-covered river. It being the weekend, the sidewalks were absolutely thronged with people: families; people on bicycles and scooters, mostly ridiculous grown men with funny beards; brightly colored groups of young Italians with large rucksacks; self-satisfied people stepping out of the curious Globe Theatre. There were just so many people. How, thought Cormac, did you ever get used to it? He understood completely now why you couldn’t say hello to passersby, couldn’t even make eye contact. It would be impossible, exhausting. Except, as he got carried along by the throng, he found himself thinking, You know, if anyone was looking at me, they wouldn’t necessarily think that I came from a tiny village, that I’d never spent time in the city before. They would see me walk and not think anything of it, think I’d lived like this all my life. And he found, to his surprise, that he rather liked that sensation.

  “We’re going to look at some art,” announced Kim-Ange.

  “I don’t know anything about art,” said Cormac.

  “You doodle all day long!”

  “That’s different. And modern art is weird. It looks like a kid did it.”

  “What an original and valuable insight,” said Kim-Ange. “You’re in the middle of one of the best centers for art in the world and all you want to do is sit in steak house windows in Leicester Square.”

  Cormac wished he’d never told her that. “Shut up.”

  “No, you shut up! You might learn something!”

  Cormac trailed after her like a reluctant child as they entered a huge factory building with high brown chimneys right on the riverbank. There was a low, wide set of glass doors along the back end, and small children with scooters and tricycles were gleefully careering about the open space.

  Inside, away from the sunlight, it was gloomy and cool. The sloping concrete floor opened onto a vast underground chamber filled with odd shapes and sizes. Cormac folded his arms and announced that he couldn’t tell a piece of sculpture from the sign for the toilets, but Kim-Ange oohed and aahed. Cormac nodded patiently and wondered whether there was a fast-food restaurant nearby, because in Kirrinfief the closest McDonald’s was fifty miles away, and he found it something of a treat; it reminded him of birthdays when he was a child, when the entire family would make a special trip, and Jake had been bugging him to find out what KFC tasted like.

  “Come look at this,” said Kim-Ange, recognizing a bored person when she saw it. “These are cool. It’s a guy who went mad. And he painted pictures of his madness. And they’re the best insights into trauma I think we have.”

  Cormac was expecting something weird and surreal—melting clocks maybe. He wasn’t expecting what he saw. The upper galleries were dimly lit, practically dark, and he found himself in a small room, shaped like a pentagon, with large canvases hanging on each felt-covered wall. The effect was close and claustrophobic.

  The first thing he noticed was there was nothing on them: no shapes, no drawings of anything at all, just great blocks of pure color looming above him. What on earth was this? What a complete waste of his time. He didn’t understand modern art, and that was that. Kim-Ange, meanwhile, was off to the side, staring, utterly rapt.

  He peered closer, then took a step back, so he could take in the whole of a canvas at one go. It was three blocks of color, but it could—did, in fact—look like the ground, the sea, and the sky. The sky section was a deep rust color, like dried blood or the warning of something ominous; the blue section below was battered and rough, as if the sky was upsetting the sea, because something terrible was coming; and the earth was brown and dry, as if everything was hopeless and everything had need; it was unutterably bleak, extraordinarily beautiful. How? Cormac thought. It’s just some paint on a wall. But it filled him with deep and heavy emotions.

  “Oh my God,” he said finally.

  “I know,” said Kim-Ange, who had a look of fervent reverence on her face, as if having a religious experience. “Aren’t they amazing?”

  Cormac looked at another one. Here there was a diseased yellow, the color itself, the very pigment, like a howl of disgust and misery. It had the ability to spear his mood, get right to the heart of him; he felt the artist was crying out, personally, for help, straight to him.

  “Who is this artist?”

  “Mark,” said Kim-Ange, respectfully. “Mark Rothko.”

  “Is he still alive? What happened to him?”

  Kim-Ange looked at Cormac and he immediately knew the answer.

  “Suicide,” he said. “It’s written there.”

  “Plain as day,” said Kim-Ange, with an uncharacteristically grim tone.

  Suddenly Cormac found himself thinking: of Robbie, yes, but also of Lissa. Is this how she had felt? Why she’d had to move?

  “Amazing,” he said, gazing at the paintings.

  They passed through halls and rooms of modernism, of the world sliced up and twisted around.

  “Why did they start doing this?” he said.

  “Why do you think?” said Kim-Ange, pointing out a Braques. “Look when it all started, a hundred years ago.”

  Cormac blinked. “After the First World War.”

  “After the war”—Kim-Ange nodded—“when the world got ripped apart. After Hiroshima, it got torn up again. You couldn’t look at life the way people had looked at it before.”

  Now Cormac couldn’t see enough of it. He wandered through the galleries of Picassos, Dalís, mouth open.

  “They’re all soldiers.”

  “We’re all soldiers
,” observed Kim-Ange, eventually pulling him away. “Art is amazing,” she added perkily. “And you get a slice of cake at the end of it. Shall we?”

  And Cormac was just about to enthusiastically agree, and concede that, okay, London maybe did have a bit more to offer than he’d originally thought . . . but his phone buzzed, and he took it out and stared at it, disconsolately, reading a message.

  “Oh, bugger,” he said.

  Chapter 42

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he almost yelled down the phone.

  “It’s just a broken wrist,” said his mother, equally crossly. “I called a taxi. Honestly, don’t worry about it.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I was on the trapeze.”

  “Mu-um.”

  “My stupid bicycle. How’s London?”

  “So who set it for you?”

  “Some nine-year-old up at the hospital.”

  “I’ll pop up,” said Cormac.

  “You won’t ‘pop up,’” said Bridie. “I am perfectly fine and Yasmeena is coming over.”

  Yasmeena lived in Inverness with Lewis, the middle son.

  Cormac sighed. “I can get a flight.”

  “You can do nothing of the sort! You’ve got a job to do. I am totally fine.”

  Cormac took stock. After his father had died, his mother’s default was “totally fine,” and she took any insinuation to the contrary as a total insult.

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, at least there’ll be someone to check it for you. I wouldn’t have been allowed.”

  “It’s fine!”

  “I mean, I would anyway . . .”

  “It’s fine! I’m busy anyway.”

  “Which wrist is it?”

  “My right,” admitted Bridie.

  “Mum!” Cormac tsked. “It’s okay, I’m going to get the new girl who’s standing in for me to pop in.”

  “I’ve seen her,” said Bridie. “She has hair all over the place.”

  “So I hear,” said Cormac.

  “And she’s a bit standoffish.”

  “You think everyone who doesn’t come from Kirrinfief is standoffish! Remember what you said about that woman with the book bus?”

  “Aye, she’s all right, Nina.”

  “She is!” said Cormac. “So is Alyssa. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Mm-hmm,” said Bridie.

  Which is how Cormac found himself writing a note on Monday morning asking, as politely as he knew how, if Lissa could possibly go and visit his mother.

  LISSA WAS CURIOUS, she couldn’t help it. Cormac sent her stupid little pictures, but he didn’t give that much away. Not that she’d been thinking about him, but given she was living in his house, she couldn’t help but wonder, couldn’t help being slightly aware of the smell of someone else’s aftershave, shampoo, pillowcases. She hadn’t snooped. But she’d considered it.

  She picked up the notes from Joan, although there was nothing in them—a sixty-four-year-old woman in absolutely tremendous health with a snapped wrist from falling off her bicycle—and went around, faintly nervous.

  The woman didn’t answer the bell of the small neat Victorian stone house with its arched porch and pretty pathway, and Lissa eventually found herself pootling down the little close at the side until she got into the immaculate back garden, filled with neat rows of daffodils, bluebells, and rhododendron bushes and grass so perfect it looked like someone had trimmed it with nail scissors. The woman was trying to weed with one hand, the other in a sling, and it looked like she would topple over at any moment.

  “Um, hello?” said Lissa, trying not to startle her.

  Mrs. MacPherson stood up with a start. “Hello?”

  “I’m Lissa Westcott . . . the nurse liaison? I just came to check up on you.”

  The short woman with steel-gray hair cut close to her head—no room for vanity here—looked at her beadily. “Yes, I know who you are. You’re doing my son’s job. Why are you here?”

  “Well . . . because it’s procedure?”

  “It’s a broken wrist! Have you come round to give me a lollipop?”

  “No. Although if you’d like one . . .”

  “Or perhaps I count as geriatric now, and you’re here to move me into a home where you can’t have a hot bath for health and safety reasons?”

  Lissa shook her head. “Cormac asked me to come take a look,” she said honestly. “He’s just worried about you.”

  “So he sent a spy?”

  Nonetheless Bridie bustled inside through a small set of French doors built into the back of the house. After a moment or two, Lissa started to follow her.

  “Beautiful garden,” said Lissa.

  “Is this truly the best use of NHS resources?” grumbled Bridie.

  Lissa could see it was an effort for her to fill the kettle. Once that was on she looked around. There were pictures of little boys everywhere—she hadn’t known he had brothers. It was impossible to tell which one was Cormac from the three sandy heads and toothless grins, and Lissa was suddenly too shy to ask. She did feel like she was spying—but not on Bridie.

  “So can you wiggle your fingers for me?” she said, taking Bridie’s hand, once she’d made them both tea. “And put some pressure on my hand here . . . and here . . . good, good.”

  She moved her head closer, performing the embarrassing bit where she had to sniff the bandage for evidence of rot or bad skin healing without looking like that was what she was doing.

  “Are you sniffing me?” said Bridie rather crossly.

  “So is Cormac enjoying himself in London, then?” asked Lissa quickly.

  Bridie shrugged. “I dinnae ken. Is he staying in your hoose?”

  “Well, my digs,” said Lissa. “It’s a nurses’ home really. Nothing like as nice as his place.”

  “A nurses’ home. I’m so proud,” said Bridie dryly. Lissa caught sight of a photo of a handsome man wearing a smart army uniform, including an elaborate hat that came over his chin, with a younger Bridie and a stooped man on either side.

  “Is this him?”

  “Naw,” said Bridie, her voice softening a little. “That’s Rawdon.”

  “He’s in the army?”

  “So was Cormac once. Now he’s busy living in a nurses’ home, apparently.” Her voice sounded raw.

  “He didn’t like it?” ventured Lissa.

  “Not everyone can cut the army,” said Bridie sharply. “He’s just like his father. Anyway. Here it is. It’s a broken wrist. Well done. Can you tick your ninety-five file boxes, give me some nonsense survey, and be on your way, lass? I’m busy.”

  She didn’t, to Lissa’s practiced eye, look remotely busy. The house was immaculate.

  “Is anyone helping you out?”

  “Aye,” said Bridie. “This is Kirrinfief. We help each other oot. Dinnae worry about me. I ken you English types don’t really believe in friendship, but we do round these parts.”

  “All right,” said Lissa, knowing when she was beaten. “Okay, I’ll tell Cormac you’re fine.”

  Bridie sniffed. “Well, make sure you don’t interrupt him being too busy in the nurses’ home, filling in all those forms.”

  Lissa blinked. She glanced out the window into Bridie’s spectacular garden, where a pair of starlings was pecking on the lawn. Then she got up.

  “There is nothing wrong with you, you’re healing fine,” she said. “Do you want me to tell Cormac I’m popping in every day and then not come?”

  Bridie smiled. “That would be perfect.”

  IN A FUNNY way, although she had learned nothing about him, Lissa was actually quite happy. It was easy, when you were having a difficult time, to think of everyone else’s lives as absolutely perfect and straightforward. This was why coming off Instagram had been, on balance, a good idea. So although she felt slightly sorry for Cormac having a grumpy mother—her own mother had pretty high expectations of her too—she also felt a little comforted.

  She’s fine, Lissa typed. Big arm
y fan.

  She is, said Cormac, but nothing more.

  Were you in the army for long?

  Eight years.

  That is a long time! Why did you leave?

  Why did you leave A&E?

  How did you know I was in A&E?

  Kim-Ange told me.

  That’s very unfair.

  You went to my mum’s house!

  You asked me to!

  This was straying into the realm of a very personal conversation, and Lissa was worried, suddenly, that she’d gone too far. She was, after all, sitting in his house. It wasn’t really fair; it was just a professional swap.

  How were the Lindells? she typed suddenly, anxious not to offend him.

  Cormac mentally groaned, although at least he was on safer ground. He did feel uncomfortable, wondering what his mother had told Lissa, what she told everyone else in the village. She didn’t know what he’d seen, what it was like out there. Neither did Lissa, neither did Emer. Nobody did.

  He wrenched his memory back to his unpleasant afternoon.

  It was horrible to see.

  I know.

  THE ODDEST THING had been that Cormac had just been thinking how surprised he was by the city, how it wasn’t at all what he’d expected. From the papers you’d think it was all pollution and crime, but instead he found himself daily impressed by the layers of history, from the Roman walls in the City to the mudlarks down by the Thames, searching for ancient coins and treasure from the two thousand years’ worth of boats that had traveled up and down the river. And the contrasts, like where he was now, with the shining modern glass towers and the beautifully preserved old Georgian buildings of weavers and artisans past. Walking to his next appointment, he had passed an ancient building where they made up coats of arms and that housed the great merchant companies of the cities, then, being characteristically early, he had taken a detour to see the extraordinary inns of Chancery, with their fountains and gardens, mysterious shops selling wigs and pens, and signposts to the “Yeoman’s Office.” Cormac had never been academic, but even he was quietly taken aback to walk past the redbrick Middle Temple Hall and read a small plaque modestly mentioning that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was first performed within its walls; he had then passed the famous circular church of the Knights Templars, with its gray stone effigies laid to rest.