Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
I hear the door open and turn to see a woman standing there. She seems familiar, but I can’t quite place her. Until she speaks.
“Oh, Tormod . . .”
Of course. It’s Mary. I’d know her voice anywhere. I wonder why she looks so sad. And something else. Something that turns down the corners of her mouth. Something like disgust. I know she used to love me, although I’m not sure that I ever loved her.
“What is it, Mary?”
“You’ve soiled the bed again.”
And then I smell it, too. Suddenly. Almost overpoweringly. Why didn’t I notice it before?
“Couldn’t you have got up? Couldn’t you?”
I don’t know why she’s blaming me. I didn’t do it on purpose. I never do it on purpose. The smell is worse as she pulls back the covers, and she puts a hand over her mouth.
“Get up,” she says. “I’ll have to strip the bed. Go and put your pyjamas in the bath and take a shower.”
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and wait for her to help me to my feet. It never used to be like this. I was always the strong one. I remember the time she twisted her ankle up by the old sheep fank when we were gathering the beasts for the shearing. She couldn’t walk, and I had to carry her home. Almost two miles, with arms aching, and never one word of complaint. Why does she never remember that?
Can’t she see how humiliating this is? I turn my head away so that she won’t see the tears gathering in my eyes, and I can feel myself blinking them furiously away. I draw a deep breath. “Donald Duck.”
“Donald Duck?”
I glance at her and almost shrink from the anger I see in her eyes. Is that what I said? Donald Duck? That can’t have been what I meant. But I can’t think now what I did mean to say. So I say again, firmly, “Aye, Donald Duck.”
She pulls me to my feet, almost roughly, and pushes me towards the door. “Get out of my sight!”
Why is she so angry?
I waddle through to the bathroom and slip out of my pyjamas. Where did she say I was to put them? I drop them on the floor and look in the mirror. An old man with a scribble of thin white hair and the palest of blue eyes stares back at me. I wonder for a moment who he is, then turn and look from the window out across the machair towards the shore. I can see the wind ruffling the heavy winter coats of the sheep grazing on the sweet, salty grass, but I can’t hear it. Neither can I hear the ocean where it breaks upon the shore. Lovely white foaming seawater full of sand and fury.