Red Bones - Ann Cleeves [119]
‘He’s in the lounge. We’re having one of the bedrooms decorated and I’ve asked him to clear out some junk. He’s found some photos and thought you might be interested. Go on through.’
Andrew was sitting in one of the big armchairs with his back to the view. There was a pile of photograph albums on the coffee table in front of him. He looked up when he heard Sandy come into the room and smiled. He didn’t speak. Sandy found it hard to imagine him as a boy, scrapping with Joseph in the school playground. He had fought with words too, Sandy thought. Like the women battling in the kitchen over a baby barely a month old.
‘You remember Jerry,’ Sandy said. ‘My grandfather, Jerry Wilson.’
Andrew screwed up his face in concentration. ‘I don’t remember so much these days.’ The words came out as a series of stutters.
Sandy looked at him. He thought the lack of memory could be kind of convenient. ‘But you told me the story about him. About him killing the Norwegian man during the war.’
Andrew frowned and nodded.
‘How did he die?’ He’d asked Joseph the same question but had no real answer.
‘He was killed in an accident at sea. He was out fishing with my father. There was a storm. A freak wave that turned the boat over. He was drowned.’
‘But your father was saved.’
‘He was a stronger swimmer and he got hold of the upturned boat. He tried to hold on to Jerry Wilson, but he lost his grip.’
‘Are you sure that’s true? It wasn’t just another of the island stories? You know how that happens. People make things up. Like the stories you told about my grandfather being a murderer.’
There was a moment while they stared at each other. Sandy could hear the gulls on the roof and the sheep on the grass by the shore.
‘This isn’t a made-up story,’ Andrew said. ‘I was there when your grandfather died.’
‘You would have been a child!’
‘I was ten years old. Old enough to go fishing with my father. We just had the small boat then.’
‘How did you survive when my grandfather didn’t?’
‘Don’t you see?’ Andrew fixed him with his blue, staring eyes. ‘My father couldn’t save the both of us. He chose to save me. You can’t blame him for that.’
And Sandy supposed that was true. A man was always going to save his son ahead of his friend.
‘Was Jerry’s body ever washed up?’
‘Not here. Not that I heard.’
‘I wondered if his remains had been buried at Setter.’ Sandy had been thinking about that in the night. It was one explanation for his father’s reluctance to let the place go.
Andrew looked up at him. ‘No, I never heard anything like that.’
‘Shall we look at these photos then?’
‘Aye, why not?’
But Sandy was still haunted by thoughts of the past, of buried secrets. ‘Did you ever hear what they did with the dead Norwegian?’
Andrew didn’t respond.
‘The Norwegian who came over with the Bus,’ Sandy said. He found himself becoming frustrated again by Andrew’s slowness. He wondered how Jackie and Ronald managed to keep so patient. ‘Mima’s lover. What happened to him?’
Andrew said nothing. Sandy remembered the sort of man he’d once been, big and loud, easy to rouse to anger. Mima had once said; ‘Andrew Clouston has a tempestuous nature. Like a storm at sea.’ Sometimes she came out with things like that. There was no sign of Andrew’s tempestuousness now. Sandy thought he was more like a boat with a bust engine, becalmed and useless.
‘Let’s look at the photos,’ Sandy said, giving up the struggle to force an answer.
He opened the album and recognized the first picture straight away. It was the one from the wall in Mima’s bedroom with the women who were carrying peat and knitting at the same time.
‘Do you know them, Andrew? Who are they?’
For the first time since he’d come into the room, Andrew seemed aware of what was happening. He pointed to the woman on the left. ‘I know her. That’s your grandmother.’
‘Not Mima! She was never a