Remedy is None by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page A

up the hill, and laid it on the ground while the minister spoke. Charlie remembered what the card given him by the undertaker had said: ‘Please take cord 2.’ They lowered the box, and the minister dropped dirt on to the wood. While the minister spoke for a few moments they stood around awkwardly, each with his own thoughts.
    Charlie heard the minister’s voice taking place far away, listened to rooks in the near-by trees, saw the clouds move together dark, conspiring rain, heard the horns of the traffic which passed, one graveyard away, and it wasn’t enough.
    Nothing here was enough. Something more than sanctimonious mutterings was needed over this grave. It was like a confidence trick to keep his spirit quiet. It would have been more honest to try to summon his ghost from its grave to haunt the actions that lived after it until it was blessed with meaning and had been given justice. Anything would have been better than this hypocrisy.
    Charlie looked round the others at the grave. Their faces were as impassive as masks. What was taking place behind the masks? Did they know what had happened to the corpse that was lying in that coffin? Did they know what he had been and what he had been made into before he filled a box? Were they prepared simply to accept it as the way things were? Their faces showed nothing. They stood in their dark clothes like sentries barring the way to honesty, guardians of indifference and pretence.
    Charlie felt antagonistic to their very presence. They were part of the lie that had destroyed his father. Their impassivity was a denial of what had happened. They thought it was enough to stand for a little while round this grave down which they flushed the refuse of their lives. But there was more to it. Death wasn’t an end in itself. Lives were more than boxes of worm-food or elaborate manure. People mattered, and accounts had to be kept.
    The minister was finished, and two men in overalls startedto fill in the grave. The others began to leave slowly like oxen yoked to an invisible burden. Charlie still stood beside the grave.
    ‘Come on, kid,’ John said to him quietly. ‘It’s finished.’
    ‘It’s no’ finished,’ Charlie said, shaking his head.
    John did not know what he meant. He could see the others moving towards the gate, outside which the cars were drawn up, waiting.
    ‘It’s no’ enough,’ Charlie said simply.
    On a plot of waste ground opposite the cemetery, two boys were calling to their careering dog.
    ‘Sheena, Shee-na, Shee-na!’ They yodelled through cupped hands.
    It ran in crazy circles, cornering into the sound each time they called, tethered to their voices.
    One of the men filling the grave glanced up at Charlie, and John touched his arm.
    ‘Come on, Charlie. Come on.’
    ‘Ah’m tellin’ ye, John,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s no’ enough.’

Chapter 6
    ‘ AYE, MAGGIE GOT A QUICK CALL, TOO,’ HIS FATHER said. ‘Big Tam fairly went doon the brae after that. He used tae be a great case before it. Mind it was him that showed us yon trick wi’ the egg, Charlie?’
    Remembering the scene, Charlie was able to recall it complete, existing as it did bright and separate in his memory, like a room where the same people sat for ever saying and doing the same things. All he had to do was re-enter it and set them into motion. His memory, like a skilful stage director, established time and place, arranged them in their positions, gave them their cue. Saturday night. He had come in after seeing Mary home. In the living-room, his father, Uncle Hughie, and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, reading a magazine with that air of detached concentration as if something else was happening at the same time, like having her hair done. His father and Uncle Hughie sitting at the fire with the coffee table laid between them. They collided intermittently on Saturday nights, about half-a-dozen times a year, as if under some planetary influence, and inevitably finished up here, counteracting