The Last Exchange, page 16
“That was old man McDougal’s farm. Had two really beautiful daughters who wanted nothing to do with me.” Another curve. Another mile. Another point. “Hamish MacGregor. Best footballer in all of Scotland. Played on a few World Cup teams.” Two more miles rolled by. “The widow Smythe lived up there. Husband owned a distillery. She used to give us samples.”
Joe laughed, relishing the fact that Pockets was driving her through his childhood. Dirt road changed to hard top and an old courthouse and town square came into view. “That’s the garage where I built my first car, which, in fact, was a tractor. Got my first haircut in that barbershop. Kissed a girl in that field. Got in my first fistfight in that same field. Same night.”
“Sounds like a story there.”
“Didn’t know she had a boyfriend.” A chuckle. “I lost.” Followed by a shrug. “Which is what happens in most fights.” They wound through old brick streets and ancient stone buildings dotted with fat, cooing pigeons. “I pulled eggs at that chicken house, worked that farm cutting hay and wheat, and mowed these lawns to buy diesel for the tractor.” The road turned to dirt again and wound through rolling fields and long stone fences. In the distance, castle ruins stood silhouetted against the coastline. Pockets pointed. “Tenth century.”
Finally, he slowed and turned down a smaller dirt path. More lane than road. After a half mile, an old farmhouse came into view. Then a church and cemetery. Followed by a barn. Off to one side stood the remains of a giant windmill. Beyond that, a dilapidated chicken coop and small fenced pasture. A spring-fed pond spread out below them. “Learned to swim down there. Albeit cold.” He pointed to a scar above his eye, then to a big walnut tree next to the water. “Used to be a rope swing on that limb. Back when I thought I wanted to be an astronaut.”
Pockets parked the car, and they got out to walk. The breeze blew in from the sea and smelled of salt. Before them, the pasture disappeared into a rocky and rolling coastline. Standing on a cliff overlooking the sea, he pointed to the pools of rocks that filled and emptied with every rising and falling tide. “Caught cod down there. Shot rabbits with my bow up there.” A shrug. “Trying to be Robin Hood.” The gravel crunched beneath their feet. “Worked my mum’s garden over there. Fell out of that tree. Broke this arm when I got thrown from a mule over there. Raised a stag in that pen. Grew a county-fair-winning sheep down there. Kissed a girl in that barn. Twice.”
Joe smiled but didn’t interrupt him.
“Drank my first beer over there. Got my first whupping in that barn. Distilled spirits in that shed.”
“You owned a still?”
“With my dad.” A chuckle. “Bought my tractor with spirit money.”
Joe smiled at the sound of Pockets’s pronunciation of the r in “tractor” and “spirit.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re trilling your r’s again.”
He shook his head once. “Tough habit to break.”
She closed her eyes. “I swear, the Brits are just smarter than the rest of us. Even the way you talk sounds more intelligent.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Scots, mum. Scots.”
She laughed and punched him gently in the bicep. “Just testing you.”
The breeze filtered through the barley in waves. Staring into the misting rain, he spoke softly. “I became me here.”
Realizing he had driven her down memory lane, she let him talk. Not interrupting. An hour later, she would realize the gift. Her mind was not racing. Her thoughts were here. And she was here. She was present. He spread a picnic in an abandoned barn sitting high on a cliff. To their left sat the sea. Disappearing into the deep blue horizon. To their right stood the smooth stone church and cemetery.
He handed her a baguette prepared with brie, tomato, arugula, basil, smoked salmon, and a thin layer of butter.
She accepted it. “Okay, this is better than fish and chips.”
Not feeling the need to fill the air with noise, they ate in silence. Comfortable in their own skin and each other’s presence. He poured her a cup of coffee from a thermos and handed it to her. Black.
She accepted, shaking her lead. “Syd thinks I like my coffee with cream. And it’s not even good cream. It’s the powdered kind. How is it that you know I take it black and after several years of marriage, he has no clue?”
They ate and drank in silence for several minutes. Pockets spoke first. “I wasn’t entirely honest when I said there was no story.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When we met the Queen.”
“I was wondering when you were going to come clean on that little omission.”
He spoke, staring at the church. “My dad was the parson here.”
“You’re a preacher’s kid?”
A nod. “He had what you might call a small theological problem with the Church of Scotland, so they relegated him to a dead church”—a point—“and forgot about him.”
“What was the disagreement?”
“My dad believed. They didn’t.”
“Yeah, I can see how that might upset them.”
“For years my dad held Sunday service for one or two people. Sometimes none. Didn’t matter to him. He’d stand up there and preach to me and my mom. Or an empty room. Got so cold sometimes in that church, we’d huddle around the fireplace.” A pause. “The church paid Dad by allowing him to live in the parsonage, so Dad supplemented his income with farming. We grew barley and rye for the local distilleries. Including our own. We also raised sheep for the wool and had a small herd of Scottish hairy cows. I loved farm life. I was up early, working before school, and spent a lot of afternoons on a tractor. I also learned to tend our still. Along about the age of twelve, we had a Sunday morning visitor. Dad met her at the door, about my size but maybe a year older than me, and he led her to the front row and sat her between me and Mom. Then he returned to the altar. ‘Shall we begin?’ That’s when I noticed the two men in dark suits standing in the rear and two more standing outside. Turns out the daughter of the Queen was a believer too.”
“The princess?”
Pockets nodded. “She would have been fourteen at the time. Her family—”
“By ‘family’ you mean the royal family?”
“Yes mum.”
“You are killing me, Pockets.”
Pockets continued, “Her family owned a coastal home on property contiguous to ours. Real hush-hush, and she came here often, enjoying the solitude and quiet of country life. No hustle and bustle. No pretension. Every now and then the Queen would accompany. They’d walk through their field, cross that fence, and walk up that road and into the chapel. I remember sitting there on a bench. Me, Mom, the Queen, and her daughter, Catherine.” A chuckle. “And about a half dozen men, armed to the hilt, scattered around us.”
“The Queen of England came to your dad’s church?”
“Dad never told a soul. None of us did.” Pockets continued eating, letting the memory bubble up slowly. “Maybe a year later, I was working one evening when a storm rolled in, so I sought shelter in this barn to wait out the rain. Turns out Catherine had too. She’d been walking the coastline when the lightning scared her. I built a fire, and we huddled up close to the heat. Just two kids drying out. I kept looking for the Royal Guard, but none appeared. I told her, ‘We better get you home. They’ll be looking for you.’ She nodded, and that’s about the time three men entered the barn.”
Pockets paused. “Drunks from the pub. No good. Beset with bad intention. I was not as big as I am now, but farm life had toughened me up maybe more than some. And given my taste for rabbit, I was pretty good with a longbow at short distance, so I nocked an arrow and sent it into the groin of the first man. The second came at me pretty fast, so I knocked out several of his teeth with a shovel handle. I was turning my attention to the third one when I felt the lightning bolt shoot through my shoulder. The bullet ripped through me, knocked me to the ground, and he was dragging Catherine kicking and screaming out the barn when I got to my feet and broke his arm with the poker and put a pretty good gash in his face. The second man stood, spitting teeth, and lunged for me, so I swung the poker and shattered his jaw. The two of them crawled out the barn into the mud while the first idiot screamed for his momma.
“I was bleeding out when the Royal Guard appeared. They found me lying on the ground and Catherine applying pressure to the holes. Next thing I knew, I heard the sound of a helicopter and then felt the sensation of being lifted. Weird. When I woke, the Queen was sitting on one side of my bed, holding my hand, while my mom and dad sat on the other. She had called in her surgeon and told him not to leave that operating room until he’d saved my life. In the coming months, she deeded this land to my folks and paid to put me through school just up the road at St. Andrews. Same school where she sent her own children. I was a fish out of water, and given that we were not wealthy, I got picked on a good bit. But I was tough, word spread, and the opportunities were many. At graduation, she—”
“And by ‘she,’ you still mean the Queen of England?”
Pockets laughed. “She asked me what I wanted to do, and I told her I’d like to join the Royal Guard.”
Joe shook her head. “You’re a member of the Royal-freaking-Guard?”
Pockets laughed. “I spent a few tours on foreign soil. Partnered up with American and British special forces. Then came home and, given some events that happened while serving in the foreign theater, I was decorated. When the Queen hung that medal around my neck, she said, ‘Well, Pockets, what’ll it be this time?’ I’d suffered some injuries and needed some extended time to heal up, so she put me on family detail.”
Joe’s jaw opened slightly. “You guarded the royal family?”
A nod. Followed by a pause. “Finished up my twenty years working a detail in Israel. Was flying back here, wondering what was next, when I met your producer on the plane. He asked me to give him my opinion, and with no one expecting me here, I agreed. Couple months later, you called.” He shrugged. “Here we are.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this before.”
“You never asked.” He laughed. “Truth is, I wouldn’t have known who you are, were it not for Catherine. She’s a huge fan. So is her mum. They used to make me watch your movies. I’ve seen most of them several times.”
Joe shook her head. “I cannot believe we are having this conversation.”
Pockets stood. “Can I show you something?”
“You have more surprises? I don’t know if I can handle any more. Do you have a keycard to Area 51? King Tut’s tomb?”
Pockets led her to a small door, unlocked it, and turned on a light, which shone on two flights of stone stairs leading down. Landing on a stone floor and surrounded by stone walls. They headed down and Pockets explained, “Built long before refrigeration.” He motioned to the stone. “This room is eight hundred to a thousand years old. Was once part of a larger castle of which the chapel is the only remaining structure.” The air was cool and smelled of earth. “Stays constant in the midfifties year-round, no matter what’s going on upstairs.”
Joe turned in a circle, surrounded by large wooden whiskey barrels stacked in neat rows. Each barrel was date-stamped. “Dad and I turned it into a distillery in my teens. The money we made got us through the winters. That barrel over there will be thirty years old this year. These are in their twenties. That’s last year.”
“Last year?”
Pockets nodded. “Most years I spend my vacation time down here. Distill a few barrels. Then put them up.” He chuckled. “My retirement plan.”
“May I?”
He lifted a bottle from a shelf, removed a cork, and handed her a small glass. “A wee dram.”
The trilling of the r was not lost on her. Joe sipped and nodded.
“You got time for one more story?”
“Are you telling it?” she asked with a smile.
Pockets led her outside, where the sky had turned dark and a storm threatened. The path had been worn at one time, but now the brush and grass had grown waist-high. It led toward the coastline and a stone wall, maybe eight feet high. Pockets pushed open the iron gate, revealing an ancient cemetery. Many of the names were worn smooth by the constant coastal winds. Pockets peeled off his coat and offered it to Joe, who draped it over her shoulders. He pointed. “Le Morte d’Arthur was one of Dad’s favorites. He found a two-book edition and used to read it to me at night, then walk me through here and tell me how several of the Knights of the Round Table were buried here. Lancelot. Gawain. Percival. Did wonders for my imagination.”
He stopped at a newer headstone. Plain. Modest. Recently swept. Two names. “Dad died a few months after the mess in the barn. He made a house call to a sick widow and contracted something. Got in his lungs. My ma would come down here at night, a blanket, two wee drams, sit right there, and talk to him. Some nights I’d come with her. She followed him four years later. Doctors said it was broken heart syndrome. I didn’t know it at the time because it was all I knew, but my folks lived a beautiful love affair. Kind of stuff they write stories about. We knew laughter, dancing. They were tender even when we didn’t have two coins to rub together. Which was most of the time.”
Joe sat, pulled her knees up into her chest, and wrapped herself in Pockets’s jacket.
“Mum”—he pointed over his shoulder toward the adjacent royal compound—“watched over me. Made sure I had opportunity. Chance for advancement. As a result, I’ve seen much of this world. Met kings and important people few ever will.” He stared at the stone. “The life I’ve lived is not suitable for marriage. Not fair. Too much travel. Too little time at the dinner table when your knees are touching.” He chose his words. “Mom told me Dad’s love for her was like moonlight on stone. No matter what—cold, heat, drought, or a storm raging offshore—he was there, shining down.” He brushed the stone with his hand. “Guarded by all these ancient knights and their stones.”
Joe wiped her eyes. Her voice a whisper. “It’s beautiful.”
Both were staring across the North Sea when Pockets broke the silence. “I’ve been places. Seen things. Things that trouble me when I try to sleep. But”—he pointed at the gate—“they don’t get in here.”
Moments passed. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper. “I used to dream that something like this existed. But somewhere in my childhood, that dream died. I swore I would never let myself dream about that place again. And I swore I’d never have kids, just to protect them from the possibility of the pain I’d known. Then I got married and . . .” A shake of her head. “It’s difficult.” A pause. “Syd wants kids one day. Not the next. He’s a moving target. So I decided maybe if I could give him a child, give love, maybe . . .” She trailed off. “Maybe it’d fill this big, giant hole in the center of my chest.”
“What does Syd say when you say all this?”
“I haven’t told him.” She looked at him. The admission either painful or purging, he wasn’t sure. A single shake of her head. “Syd doesn’t understand”—she shot him a sideways glance—“me.”
“Tried couples therapy?”
“Tried? No. Asked for? Yes.”
“Why do you stay married?”
The storm had moved in and brought with it sheets of salty mist. They stared into it while it misted their faces. “Grow up like me and you discover there are two kinds of kids. Those who quit and give up hope, and those who hold on for dear life. Clinging till your knuckles bleed. I’ve never quit on anything and I don’t plan to start with Syd.”
“What if he quits on you?”
“I don’t know.” A pause. She pointed to the royal family’s property. “Whatever happened with you and . . . ?”
“The reason they trusted me then, and trust me now, is because I never used what happened as leverage to become something I’m not. Never acted as though they owed me something. I stayed in my place. I maintained the line.”
She raised an eyebrow. “The line?”
He nodded. “That invisible barrier that exists between them and us. It’s an acknowledgment that while I stand on the perimeter of their lives, even defending their lives, they are entitled to live their lives without me stepping into their circle. It’s an unspoken understanding that I have no right to insert myself into that. Not even if they invite me. And it’s up to me to never cross it. Be seen but not heard. Because the moment I do cross the line, the moment I take a casual seat at the table and act as though I exist on a level equal to them, they lose all faith in my ability to protect them.” He shook his head. “And in this line of work, that’s unacceptable.”
“Sounds harsh.”
“It’s the job.”
“But back at the castle, when the Queen walked me to the car, she stepped inside your line. Touched your face.”
“That’s her prerogative. Not mine. She may cross it at will. I may not.”
“Seems unfair.”
“We don’t do this job because it’s fair. It’s not a question of fair.”
“What then?”
“It’s deeper than fairness. You know it when you do it.”
“Do what?”
He shrugged. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do to get pregnant?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
She considered this. “I don’t know that I can answer that.”
He nodded. “It’s something like that.”
“When do you ever think about you?”
He chuckled. “Not very often.”
“Seems like an un-fun way to live.”
“I don’t know if this will make sense to you, but a life laid down is better than one picked up.”
She studied him. “It only makes sense because I know you.”
He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got a bit of a drive.”
He held the door while she climbed in, and she touched his arm, slipping inside his circle. “Pockets?”
