The Pure Land Read Free Page B

moment, keeled over backwards and was gone.
    ‘ YES! ’
    Then the reality of it hit them and they lurched to the parapet, peered down at the river. Only Glover was alert, quickwitted, scrambled down the bank and under the bridge to where Robertson had bobbed downstream, thrashing. Glover waded in, grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him to the side where he lay coughing, grabbing breath. He managed to stand up, soaked through and shivering, water squelching in his boots.
    Glover laughed. ‘Better get you home, Mister Robertson, or you’ll catch your death!’
    *
    Sunday morning in the grim grey kirk, Glover sat upright on the hard wooden pew. His neck felt clamped, but he knew if he moved too abruptly he would set the blood thudding in his head. He turned slowly and carefully, squinted along the row. His sister Martha darted a wee glance at him, half smiled. His mother shifted her bulk in the unforgiving seat, nudged his father whose head kept nodding forward, jerking back.
    Christ!
    He remembered rolling home at God-knows-what time, wet clothes dripping, telling Martha he’d been swimming, and could swim like a fish, and she’d said Aye, and drink like one. She’dbrought him a dry towel and a mug of hot tea. He realised now she had probably stayed up waiting for him, and the thought moved him unexpectedly, the goodness of it, the simple loving kindness. His mother and father had been tightlipped at breakfast.
    The minister, old Naysmith, was a long thin streak of misery, his voice a grinding whine, insistent and numbing.
    The very air felt oppressive, felt stale, cold with the dankness of old stone. He looked round the congregation, saw them as a gallery of grotesques: hard gargoyle faces carved from granite, features exaggerated like caricatures – gaunt thrawn men, hewn and weathered, women grown too quickly old, their pale skin scoured, hands and arms red-raw, gormless loons, gawky and glaikit, expressions that registered nothing.
    Glover felt something akin to panic. He saw their sheer physicality in minute unsettling detail: white sidewhiskers growing on florid cheeks, a great wet mouth, skewed broken teeth, tufts of hair sprouting from ears, from the mole on the end of a hook nose, wee ferret eyes, a slaver of spittle dribbled down a chin.
    The minister’s voice droned on. Now let us pray . Glover closed his eyes. Dear God, please let there be more to life than this. As a child he’d been scared to open his eyes during prayers, feared God would be watching, would strike him down dead. Now he eased them open, looked round. Across the aisle he saw Robertson, face grey, eyes clenched shut. He was shivering, barked out a cough. Glover wanted to laugh but stifled it. In the row behind Robertson sat young Annie George with her father. He willed her to open her eyes and look at him, sweet seventeen, Dear God, tight blonde curls under her bonnet, framing her face, just open her eyes and look, that was all, and she did. She did. She looked right at him, and her mouth opened in a little O of perfect astonishment, matching his own amazement at the moment. The Lord be praised. A quick shy smile then she turned away, closed her eyes again, a slight flush rising to her face.
    Glover turned and found himself grinning at the minister, brows gathered in righteous implacable wrath. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . Glover bent his head, but his heart was light. He had been vouchsafed a vision of saving grace.
    Outside, Annie lagged a little way behind her father, left a gap. Glover caught up.
    ‘Tonight at seven?’ he said, quiet. ‘Brig o’ Balgownie?’
    She blushed, flustered. ‘I’ll try and get away.’
    Her father, a few yards ahead, stopped and turned.
    ‘Annie! Come on, lass!’
    She glanced back over her shoulder, smiled again. Her father met Glover’s eye, gave a curt nod that contrived to be a greeting and a warning, both at once. Glover nodded back. Understood. Then he saw Robertson,