Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

Whalsay, even for a short while.
    The wind blew his hair across Sandy’s eyes. He’d driven up the island to Skaw because he needed to get away from Utra for a while. A little way inland was the most northerly golf course in the British Isles, green and manicured despite its exposure to the weather. He came occasionally with Joseph to play and his father was pretty good, though they never took the game too seriously. Now he wished Davy had asked him to go out on the boat too. He wasn’t much of a sailor but it would be worth a few hours of discomfort to get away from his family and the discussion of the funeral.
    He wanted his grandmother to have a good send-off, of course he did, but she wouldn’t have wanted all this fuss. She’d have been happy just to know all her friends were there in the kirk. The place she’d been married. The kirk was on a spit of land to the west of Whalsay known as the Houb. It was surrounded on three sides by the sea, and Mima always said that being there made her think of her sailor husband: it was a bit like being in a ship. She’d have wanted lusty singing during the hymns and a bit of a party afterwards. Nothing else would have mattered to her. Now his mother was wound up about getting rooms ready for Michael, Amelia and the baby, planning the food as if she was preparing for a thirty-day siege, working herself into a state about who else they should invite.
    He relived the scene at breakfast. His mother had been at the kitchen table, drinking her second cup of tea, surrounded by lists. Lists of food and drink and people who should be told. Joseph had had the sense to make himself scarce and was already out on the croft, checking the ewes.
    ‘Do you think Paul Berglund would want to come?’ His mother’s question had come out of the blue, sharp, underlaid by a barely controlled hysteria.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Sandy thought it unlikely. Why would someone with a life want to go to the funeral of an old lady he barely knew?
    ‘He’s a professor,’ Evelyn said.
    ‘What has that to do with the price of fish?’
    ‘I was thinking Michael might get on with him.’
    ‘Michael will get on just fine with Ronald and the rest of the lads.’ But was that true? The last time Michael had been home it was like he was a different man.
    Sandy sat on the grass and watched the boat come in against a stiff south-easterly breeze. It was one of those bright and gusty days: one minute there was sunshine and the next a bit of a squall would come up. At least the fog had cleared. He wished his mother could relax more. When she was relaxed she was a lovely woman. He’d thought with his father working at home and both of the boys gone she’d be able to enjoy herself, become less tense. He didn’t know what to do to help her. Once, confiscating cannabis from a couple of German students who’d been camping on Fetlar. he’d wondered flippantly if that might provide an answer. Chill her out a bit. Years ago he’d gone to visit Michael at Edinburgh University and someone had made hash cakes. He laughed at the thought of slipping some dope into his mother’s baking, wondered what Michael would say about the idea. Once he’d have laughed too, but now Sandy wasn’t so sure. That evening when they’d sat round with his friends in the student house, candles lit, music in the background, was probably the last time they’d really talked.
    Maybe he should suggest to his mother that she should see a doctor. His understanding about women’s health was sketchy, but perhaps this anxiety, these swings in her mood were to do with her age. Wasn’t there a pill she could take? Like the cannabis but legal? He knew he’d never bring up the subject with her though, partly because he would be too embarrassed and partly because he was scared of what her response might be. It was pathetic, but she could still terrify him when she was angry.
    Something positive had come out of the discussion over breakfast: he was going to move into Setter when Michael and Amelia came up from the south. His mother had agreed as soon as he’d suggested it. Sandy knew she was worried he’d show himself up in front of Michael’s smart wife, though she made out it was because they needed his room for the baby. It occurred to him that she might like Joseph to move out too, in case Amelia got upset by his drinking, his table manners and his limited conversation. He hoped so. He and his father would get on fine together