Stonemouth

‘For Joe’s funeral, aye?’

‘Aye, for the funeral,’ I tell him. ‘Joe asked for me to be there, be here, himself,’ I add, still feeling I need to justify myself, or at least my presence. As soon as I say it I wish I hadn’t; it sounds like I’m pleading. I bite my lip, stop doing that, then feel like I’m starting to blush. Jeez, I tell myself. Make it all obvious, why don’t you?

Powell appears oblivious. ‘Uh-huh. You know the time’s changed?’

‘No.’

‘Still Monday, but it’s been brought forward to eleven.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Aye. Mrs M didn’t want to change the time of her keep-fit class.’

I look at him. He keeps a neutral expression, then just shrugs. He clears his throat and says, ‘Staying at your folks’, aye?’

‘Yes, I am.’ I put my hand on the door handle, then hesitate. ‘Any special time Donnie wants me at the house?’

‘Naw.’ Powell looks at his watch, which is something wide and bling and might have cost more than the Range Rover. ‘Just head on up now if ye want. I’ll no be there; stuff to do, but I’ll phone ahead. See you around, eh?’

‘Aye, see you around.’ I open the door. A few drops of rain swirl in. It looks like the sky is brightening, though that might be just the contrast with the Rangie’s tinted windows. I get out and stand looking in at Powell. ‘Thanks, Pow,’ I tell him.

He looks pleased at this, so it was probably worth the small amount of self-esteem it cost me. He winks again. ‘Say hi to your mum and dad, eh?’ he says.

‘Will do.’

The door closes with a thud so solid I could believe there’s some armour in there. For all I know, there is. Powell’s Range Rover burbles off into the evening while I walk over to my hire car.

The still-on sidelights welcome me, reproachful.

Five minutes later I’m driving into Stonemouth.

2

The quickest road from the bridge to the Murston house doesn’t go through the centre of town. I almost take the slower route anyway, just to see what’s changed over the last five years, but the traffic’s heavy enough coming off the bridge and on all sides of the big roundabout beyond, so I take the Erscliff road and end up going past the old High School. It’s still there: three tall stone storeys and a Community College now; fewer outbuildings and huts than in our time, plus a bit sprucer, and grass where the tarmac playground used to be. We were there for only a year before we were moved to the achingly modern new school at Qualcults, on the other side of town.

I first saw the Murston house from a couple of the higher classrooms in the old school. It nestled in a little hollow between the two curved tops of a small hill a couple of kilometres away, just on the outskirts of town towards the sea. What fascinated me about it then was that it was only from those two or three classrooms on the top floor of the school that you could see the place; from the other classrooms, the playground and all the various routes to school it was effectively invisible. The house sort of peeped out through the greenery crowding around it, half hidden by tall round trees bunched on either side like green eruptions of water. The trees were so dense that even when they unleafed in the autumn you hardly saw any more of the house hiding amongst them.

Sometimes in winter there was snow up there for days before any appeared on the ground in the town and the house seemed like some sort of half-mythical mountain palace. I thought it looked very grand, remote and mysterious; romantic even. A view that met with some incomprehension and even derision amongst my school pals.

‘You sure you’re no gay, Stu?’ and ‘That’s old man Murston’s crib, fuckwit,’ were two of the more informative and useful comments. And of course you could see the house from various other places too: the top deck of the number 42 bus for a start, as it passed along Steindrum Drive, as a couple of people pointed out to me, and from Justin Cutcheon’s mum’s attic window if you stood on a crate.

Callum Murston denying it was his mum and dad’s house when I pointed it out to him from Art Room Two didn’t help demystify it either.

‘Hey, Callum,’ I said, ‘isn’t that your house up there, on the hill?’

Callum squinted, already frowning aggressively, and finally saw where I was pointing. ‘Naw it’s naw,’ he said, sounding angry and looking like he was going to hit me.