The Testament of Gideon Mack Read online

  The Testament of Gideon Mack

  JAMES ROBERTSON

  HAMISH HAMILTON

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  HAMISH HAMILTON

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  First published 2006

  1

  Copyright © James Robertson, 2006

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  eISBN: 978–0–141–90228–9

  The poem ‘Black Rock of Kiltearn’ by Andrew Young is reproduced from his

  Selected Poems (1998) by kind permission of Carcanet Ltd

  For Marianne,

  with love and thanks

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  The Testament of Gideon Mack I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  Epilogue

  Footnotes Prologue page 11

  page 18

  IV page 36

  XI page 89

  XVI page 124

  XVIII page 137

  page 139

  XIX page 151

  XXIII page 169

  XXIV page 175

  XXVI page 189

  XXVII page 196

  XXXVI page 290

  page 319

  XLIV page 355

  The Testament of Gideon Mack

  BLACK ROCK OF KILTEARN

  They named it Aultgraat – Ugly Burn,

  This water through the crevice hurled

  Scouring the entrails of the world –

  Not ugly in the rising smoke

  That clothes it with a rainbow cloak.

  But slip a foot on frost-spiked stone

  Above this rock-lipped Phlegethon

  And you shall have

  The Black Rock of Kiltearn

  For tombstone, grave

  And trumpet of your resurrection.

  Andrew Young

  Prologue

  In presenting to the world the following strange narrative, I find it necessary to offer a word of explanation as to its provenance. Being a firm believer in the principle of the division of labour, I do not usually divert myself from the business of publishing books in order to write prologues to them. However, Mr Harry Caithness having declined to provide an introduction – on the grounds, he says, that he has more than cancelled any debt he owed me by (a) sending me a copy of the original manuscript in the first place and (b) submitting the report which forms the bulk of the epilogue – I am left with no option but to write this myself.

  Sir Walter Scott, with whose work, as you will read, the Reverend Gideon Mack was intimately familiar, once described publishing as ‘the most ticklish and unsafe and hazardous of all professions scarcely with the exception of horse-jockeyship’. I have this salutary warning typed up on a three-by-five-inch card taped to the wall beside my desk. Whenever I fall to wondering why I persist in trying to make a living in this profession, and whether some other form of gambling might not offer a greater return for less effort, I read those words of Sir Walter – penned long before he himself fell so heavily at the high fence of publishing – to remind myself that it was ever thus. Then I take a deep breath and carry on.

  So it is with this book. One voice in my head tells me that it is a mere passing curiosity in which few will have any interest; a waste of my time, the printer’s ink and the forests of Finland. Another whispers that it is outlandish enough to attract a cult readership, if only that readership can be identified. A third – the voice, perhaps, of my conscience – deplores the exploitation, for commercial gain, of the outpourings of a ruined man. A fourth loudly protests at this: the man is dead and therefore cannot be exploited, and the book, though some may dismiss it as a tissue of lies or the fantasy of a damaged mind, is a genuine document with its own relevance for our times. All these and other arguments have jostled in my brain when I have pondered Gideon Mack’s story. In the end, what has persuaded me to publish it is its very peculiarity: in twenty years, I have come across nothing like it. It is not a fiction, for Gideon Mack undoubtedly existed; yet nor, surely, can it be treated as fact. What, then, is it? It is because I am unable to answer this question that I consider it worthy of the public’s attention, so that others can make up their own minds. But first I must recount how it came into my hands.

  One Monday morning at the start of October 2004, I received a phone call out of the blue from my old friend Harry Caithness. I was sitting at my desk sipping my third coffee of the day, turning the pages of the latest edition of our Scotch whisky guide, A Dram in Your Pocket, newly back from the printers. It looked very handsome, all the more so for being a reliable mover, and I anticipated some healthy sales in the run-up to Christmas.

  I had not heard from Harry for a while, but I recognised his gravelly voice at once. He is a freelance journalist, based in Inverness but roaming from there east along the Moray Firth, and to Fort William and all points north and west. He picks up stories of every kind and sells them to the highest bidder. He is what one might call – and I hope he will take this as a compliment – one of the old school. He smokes, drinks too much, eats unhealthy food at unhealthy hours and doesn’t respond well to sunlight. But he is a first-class reporter, hard-headed enough not to let go of a good story yet sensitive enough to deal with people in such a
way as to secure it. He has also written a book, Crimes and Mysteries of the Scottish Highlands, which I published. It has done very well over the years. I paid Harry a decent advance for it, and twice a year he still receives a royalty cheque, which, as he says, would pay for a week’s holiday if he ever took one. To me it is business, but Harry used to say, when we spoke on the phone, that he owed me something. He doesn’t say this any longer.

  I asked him how he was, and he said he was fine. We might at this juncture have exchanged further pleasantries along these lines, but Harry doesn’t do pleasantries. Instead, he came straight to the point. He had something for me, he said. It was somewhat sensitive, but he thought it would be of interest. Had I ever come across a character called Gideon Mack?

  The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it, and I said so.

  ‘He was a minister,’ Harry said. ‘Church, not state. He went missing earlier this year.’

  He reminded me of what had happened. There had been quite a bit in the papers at the time, and as Harry talked I recalled some of it. The Reverend Gideon Mack had vanished from his Church of Scotland manse one day in January, and nothing had been heard or seen of him since. Before his disappearance Mack had gone spectacularly off the rails, causing something of a stir in Church circles and in Monimaskit, the small town on the east coast which was his charge. I suspected that Harry was going to tell me that he had turned up and wanted to sell me his life-story – a prospect, I confess, that did not fill me with eager anticipation – but I was wrong. Mack was still missing, but something of his had turned up, and Harry said he thought it had my name on it. When I asked him what he meant, he said, ‘Well, it’s something he’s written. A kind of memoir, or a confession, I suppose you’d call it. I think you should take a look. I read it over the weekend. I’m going to stick it in the post to you.’

  I asked him how he had got hold of it, and what exactly Mack had confessed to. ‘Quite a lot, for a minister,’ Harry said. ‘Adultery, for example, and meeting the Devil.’ This second item also rang a bell. I asked Harry again how he had come by the thing.

  ‘One of my contacts in the Northern Constabulary photocopied it for me,’ he said.

  ‘That was decent of them,’ I said drily. ‘Why did they do that?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ Harry said. ‘I’m a journalist. I have to protect my sources.’

  I remonstrated at this, and he relented and told me that he happened to have been at police headquarters in Inverness, chatting to some of his acquaintances there, and the Mack missing person case had come up in the conversation. ‘Your man’s memoir, autobiography, confession, whatever you want to call it, was sitting on a desk,’ Harry said. ‘There was a photo of him too. Now I’d actually seen him once before, in the flesh, years ago. He ran a marathon up here, in Elgin, back in about 1990, and raised a lot of money for charity. I saw him crossing the finishing-line. So we were talking about all that and they let me have a look at the manuscript, and I hinted I’d like to read it at my leisure. They’d made several photocopies, so it was almost in the public domain anyway. I took it home to read, and it was so strange I thought of you straight away.’

  ‘Thanks, Harry,’ I said.

  ‘No problem,’ he replied. And then he told me the rest of the story.

  A few days earlier, a Mrs Nora MacLean, who took in guests for bed and breakfast at her cottage in the village of Dalwhinnie, some fifty miles south of Inverness, had appeared at the local police station in a state of agitation, and had handed in a hold-all containing a man’s clothing and a heavy padded envelope. No identifying marks were on the clothes, which consisted of a pair of carpet slippers, some socks and underwear, a tee-shirt and a handkerchief. The envelope contained a bulky manuscript. The bag had been left by a gentleman who had stayed with Mrs MacLean back in January. She described him as quite tall, very thin and slightly stooped, aged about fifty, with long, unruly hair in need of a good trim, and a pronounced limp in his right leg. He had stayed for two nights, the 15th and 16th to be precise. He had given his name as Mr Robert Kirk.

  Mrs MacLean was a simple soul, it seems. She feared some official or officious connection between the Northern Constabulary and the Inland Revenue and was therefore embarrassed to admit that, although she had written Mr Kirk’s name on the calendar when he had phoned about the room, she had not asked him to fill in her visitors’ book and thus had no record of his address. He had not booked in advance, but, on the afternoon of the 15th, had phoned from the shop in the village where she kept a card in the window. He said he had come by train from Perth. He was wearing stout boots in good condition and outdoor clothing suitable for walking in the hills. His weatherproof jacket was light blue in colour. Mrs MacLean frequently had walkers and climbers to stay, so none of this was remarkable, although that week the weather was wet and misty, far from ideal for those activities. She did wonder how able a walker Mr Kirk could be, considering the limp, but felt it was not her business to inquire on this subject.

  The conversation they had on his arrival, as far as she could recall, and which she related to the police officer who took her statement, went like this:

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘You’ll be here for the hills, I suppose.’

  MR KIRK: ‘Yes, I hope to do some walking in the hills.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘It’s not really the weather for it, but it can change so quickly.’

  MR KIRK: ‘Yes. I’ll just hope for the best.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘There’s an electric fire in your bedroom and a chair and table. You’re welcome to stay in the house if the weather doesn’t improve. There are some books in the sitting room if you want something to read. There isn’t a television in your room but there’s one in the sitting room, and you can use that if you want; the reception isn’t always that good, though.’

  MR KIRK: ‘Thank you, but I won’t bother. I have some work to do if I can’t go out.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘Oh, well, make yourself at home, and just ask if you want anything. What time would you like your breakfast?’

  MR KIRK: ‘About eight o’clock or half-past?’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘Half-past eight is fine. Do you like porridge and a cooked breakfast?’

  MR KIRK: ‘Porridge would be fine, but no cooked breakfast, thank you.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘Oh, but if you’re going hill-walking you’ll want a good breakfast to keep you going.’

  MR KIRK: ‘No, thank you, just some porridge.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘I can make you up some sandwiches if you go out. And a flask of hot soup.’

  MR KIRK: ‘That won’t be necessary. I may not go out at all.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘Well, I see you don’t have a rucksack. You would need a rucksack if you were taking sandwiches with you.’

  MR KIRK: ‘I don’t think I’ll need a rucksack.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘I don’t do an evening meal, but you can get something to eat at the hotel or the café along the road.’

  MR KIRK: ‘Yes, thank you.’

  MRS MACLEAN: ‘If there’s anything else you want, just you ask.’

  MR KIRK: ‘I will. I really don’t want anything except a bed for two nights. I have some work to complete. If you don’t mind, I’ll just go to my room now and have a rest. I’m a wee bit tired.’

  According to Harry, the policeman must have thought this was all potentially useful information, because he had written it down verbatim – it was in the report that Harry had also managed to get a copy of, which he was reading to me down the phone (and which he later sent to me).

  I couldn’t see the point of all this, and I said so, but Harry told me to be patient, so I was.

  That exchange was the longest that took place between Mrs MacLean and her guest during the two days of his stay. She served him black coffee and porridge for breakfast on both mornings, and tried to engage him in further conversation, but while perfectly polite he made it clear that he preferred to communicate only as far as was required for the transaction of business betw
een them. This, Mrs MacLean said, ‘put her neither up nor down’. She was quite used to some people being less friendly than others, and he was probably shy.

  Mrs MacLean had no other guests staying at this time and, being a widow, as she told the police, lived alone. Although Mr Kirk was rather withdrawn, there did not appear to her anything especially strange or unusual about him, apart perhaps from the limp and his unkempt hair. She was not in any way afraid or distrustful of him. Indeed, on the second night of his stay she went out to visit a friend, leaving him alone in the house. Apart from going out for a newspaper on the morning of the 16th, and for a short walk that afternoon, he never left his room except for breakfast and to use the bathroom. Once, when she took him a cup of tea – which he accepted, she thought, more to make her go away than because he really wanted it – she found him reading from a large pile of handwritten sheets of paper, apparently making additions and corrections to them. She thought at the time that he might be a writer working on a book, a deduction which, as it turned out, was not so very wide of the mark.

  On the day of his departure Kirk paid for his accommodation in cash. The bill was thirty-six pounds. He produced two twenty-pound notes and refused the change. When Mrs MacLean tried to insist, he suggested she give the four pounds’ difference to her favourite charity. He then returned to his room in order, she assumed, to pack his belongings.

  Mrs MacLean was busy in the kitchen, and it was some time, perhaps half an hour, before it occurred to her that he must still be in his room. She wanted to change the sheets on his bed, so went and knocked on the door. There being no reply, she knocked louder and called out, ‘Are you all right, Mr Kirk?’ After a further silence, she opened the door. The room was empty. She went to the front door of the cottage and opened it. It was brighter that morning, with patches of blue sky among the clouds, and she could see the whole length of the road, but there was no sign of her guest. It seems that he must have slipped out while she was in the kitchen. She never set eyes on him again.