think, “Bugger me; must be a geezer with the long flowing white beard after all.”’
‘I didn’t say -’
‘What about your Aunt Kay?’ Kenneth said. ‘Your mum’s friend; she did believe; must be a God; prayed every night, went to church, practically claimed she had a vision once, and then she gets married, her husband dies of cancer within a year and the baby just stops breathing in its cot one night. So she stops believing. Told me that herself; said she couldn’t believe in a God that would do that! What sort of faith is that? What sort of blinkered outlook on the world is it? Didn’t she believe anybody ever died “tragically” before? Didn’t she ever read her precious fucking Bible with its catalogue of atrocities? Didn’t she believe the Holocaust had happened, the death camps ever existed? Or did none of that matter because it had all happened to somebody else?’
‘That’s all you can do, isn’t it?’ Prentice shouted back. ‘Shout people down; skim a few useful anecdotes and bite-sized facts and always find something different to what they’ve said!’
‘Oh I’m sorry! I thought it was called argument.’
‘No, it’s called being over-bearing!’
‘Okay!’ Kenneth spread his arms out wide. ‘Okay.’ He sat still for a time, while Prentice remained hunched and tense-looking in the bows. When Prentice didn’t say anything, Kenneth sighed. ‘Prentice; you have to make up your own mind about these things. I ... both your mother and I have always tried to bring you up to think for yourself. I admit it pains me to think you ... you might be contemplating letting other people, or some ... some doctrine start thinking for you, even for comfort’s sake, because -’
‘Dad,’ Prentice said loudly, looking up at the grey clouds.‘! just don’t want to talk about it, okay?’
‘I’m just trying -’
‘Well, stop!’ Prentice whirled round, and Kenneth could have wept to see the expression on the face of his son: pained and desperate and close to tears if he wasn’t crying already; the rain made it hard to tell. ‘Just leave me alone!’
Kenneth looked down, massaged the sides of his nose with his fingers, then took a deep breath. Prentice turned away from him again.
Kenneth stowed the fishing rod, looked round the flat, rain-battered waters of the small loch, and remembered that hot, calm day, thirty years earlier, on another fishing trip that had ended quite differently.
He took up the oars. ‘Let’s head back in, all right?’
Prentice didn’t say anything.
‘Fergus, darling! You’re soaked! Oh; you’ve brought some little friends with you, have you?’
‘Yes, mother.’
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Urvill.’
‘Oh, it’s young Kenneth McHoan. Didn’t see you under that hood. Well, jolly good; come in. Take off your coats. Fergus, darling; close that door.’
Fergus closed the door. ‘This is Lachlan Watt. His dad works in our factory.’
‘Oh, really? Yes. Well ... You’ve all been out playing, have you?’
Mrs Urvill took their coats, handling Lachy’s tattered and greasy-looking jacket with some distaste. She hung the dripping garments up on hooks. The rear porch of the Urvill’s rambling house, at the foot of Barsloisnoch hill, beyond the north-west limits of Gallanach, smelled somehow cosy and damp at the same time.
‘Now, I dare say you young men could do with some tea, am I right?’
Mrs Urvill was a tall, aristocratic-looking lady Kenneth always remembered as wearing a head-scarf. She wasn’t that day; she wore a tweed skirt, sweater, and a pearl necklace which she kept fingering.
She made them tea, accompanied by some slices of bread and bramble jelly. This was served at a small table in Fergus’s room, on the first floor.
Fergus had one slice of bread, and Kenneth managed two before Lachy wolfed all the rest. The war was only over a few months, and rationing was still in force. Lachy sat back, belched. ‘That was rerr,’ he said. He wiped his mouth on the frayed sleeve of his jumper. ‘See the breed in our hoose; it’s green, so it is.’
‘What?’ said Kenneth.
‘What rot,’ Fergus said, sipping his tea.
‘Aye it is,’ Lachy said, pointing one grubby finger at Fergus.
‘Green bread?’ Kenneth said, grinning.
‘Aye, an’ ah’ll tell ye why, tae, but ye’ve goat tae promise no tae tell anybudy.’
‘Okay,’ Kenneth said, sitting forwards, head in hands.
‘Hmm, I suppose so,’ Fergus agreed unenthusiastically.
Lachy glanced from side to side. ‘It’s the petrol,’ he said, voice low.
‘The petrol?’ Kenneth didn’t understand.
‘Load of absolute rot, if you ask me,’ Fergus sneered.
‘Na; it’s true,’ Lachlan said. ‘See the Navy boys, oot oan the flyin boat base?’