1932

He has all his ducks sitting in a row. All his pride and all his honour and bound together like comrades fighting for another lost cause.

- I knew your father of course, he says whilst over-polishing at the glass in front of him. – Strange sort of feller he was. Very tall. Very polite too, of course. We all knew that. Didn’t you say that you came round here too with him?

I turn my face away from him for a second. The summer reeds came and went and blew and flew along with the rest of them. I never came to terms with that degree of loss. That is my loss and my sense of pity. My face smarts and dims.

- He used to tell me about you and the times you’d climb up the Craggan and what you found when you got up there. Cold, he said it was. Cold and dead.

I turn back to him and let my eyes dart about the room. The time ticks off and away. The whole mucky stillness and energy about us is filling me with a creeping sense of anxiety. The Sapphic shape by the door leans and looks about nonchalantly. The smoke itches at me, like lifting the silver off the face of a dreary old forgotten clock.

- He left me with a few impressions, he continues. He still keeps talking. I try and look somewhere newly distracting. I settle on the face of a long-dead goat whose head is mounted on a plate on the wall. Buckshot reminders of the carrion fields.

The rattling behind us speeds up and then stops. The voices continue underneath, but they will suspect nothing. This is not that kind of a place.

- The one thing he taught me and that I will pass on is this – he may not think himself as a good man…but try and live up to his expectations and standards, that’s all.

The rattling resumes far away. The window pane sounds from the faint spray of rain. The light goes out.