Red Bones - Ann Cleeves [19]
There was a newborn lamb in a cardboard box next to the Rayburn. ‘An orphan,’ Evelyn said. ‘We’re hand-rearing her. No one else would bother, but Joseph’s a soft old thing.’
Now that the tea was brewing she turned back into the room. ‘What can I get you to eat? We’ve got some of our own bacon and Mima gave me a dozen eggs yesterday, so I have plenty to spare. Will that do you?’
Sandy found himself remembering the day his father had killed the pig. Because it was for the family’s own use there’d been no need to send it out to the abattoir, but it was a horrible job. The pig always made a dreadful noise before the throat was cut. He’d seemed to sense what was about to happen to him. Sandy had been on the island that day, but he’d not been a lot of use. He’d stood watching along with Anna. His father had been the strong one, finishing off the job with Ronald’s help, and Evelyn had caught the blood in a bowl.
‘It sounds brilliant, Mrs Wilson,’ Perez said. He’d made himself at home already. His shoes were left in the porch and he’d taken the chair by the table where Sandy’s father usually sat. She beamed, took down a heavy frying pan from the wall, opened the Rayburn hotplate.
‘Mrs Wilson, indeed! No one’s called me that in this house since that politician from the SNP came canvassing at the last election.’
It was warm in the kitchen and Sandy felt himself nodding off, heard the conversation between Perez and his mother as though from a long distance.
‘What time did you last see Mima?’ Perez asked.
‘About two o’clock. I called round to have a chat about the dig. The two lasses from the university were there. What nice wee girls they are, though I think that Hattie could do with a bit of feeding up. She’s a skinny little thing. All eyes and bone.’ She paused to take breath.
Sandy knew his mother had hoped he’d take up with one of the ‘nice wee girls’. She thought he should settle down and give her grandchildren. Michael, after all, had obliged by marrying an Edinburgh lawyer and producing a daughter who was already attending private nursery. But that wasn’t like having a grandchild close at hand to meddle with. Jackie scored now on that too. Sandy had liked the students well enough. Not Hattie so much, who was intense and far too clever for him, but Sophie, who was more laid-back. She liked a few beers and a bit of a laugh, she was kind of flirty. Posh, but friendly all the same. The boys teased him because he always had a different woman on the go, but he was starting to think it was time for him to settle down. It was tiring chasing after the lasses and there were more single men in Shetland than there were women. But would he really want to be like Ronald, married to a woman who nagged and bossed? It would be like living at home again.
‘The dig is so exciting!’ Evelyn was distracted from Mima’s death by her passion of the moment. ‘Hattie thinks there’s a merchant’s house there. It was built at the time when the Hanseatic League was starting to collapse and folk were told they couldn’t trade through Bergen any more. I found a skull, you know. Part of a skull. Hattie thinks it might belong to the merchant who built the house. It’s been sent away for carbon dating. They’ve been exploring the same trench and Sophie found more bone. Part of a rib and maybe the pelvis. Imagine what a tourist attraction it would be, if we excavate the site properly. I’d like to build a house, just as it would have been. We could run workshops, family days. We have to look to the future if we’re going to provide work for our young people.’
Sandy stifled a yawn, thought again that Evelyn had a lot in common with Anna. He couldn’t get worked up about the island’s future. He’d left Whalsay for Lerwick as soon as he could escape from his mother and felt more at home in town now. ‘That bacon’s not burning, is it, Mother?