Benbecula E-Book

Graeme Macrae Burnet

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Darkland Tales
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 202

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'It is dark now and my window onto the world is a small one. I do not know how much longer I will be here.' On 9 July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a labourer from Liniclate on the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother and aunt. At trial in Inverness he was found to be criminally insane and confined in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison. Some years later, Angus's older brother Malcolm recounts the events leading up to the murders while trying to keep a grip on his own sanity. Malcolm is living in isolation, ostracised by the community and haunted by this gruesome episode in his past. From Graeme Macrae Burnet, the Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project, comes a beguiling psychological novel set on a remote Scottish island. Based on a true story and drawing on the documentary evidence of the time, Burnet constructs a gripping narrative about madness, murder and the uncertain nature of the self. 'Dark, intense and utterly compelling' – Laura Wilson, The Guardian

Leseprobe

BENBECULA

A note on the author

Graeme Macrae Burnet is the author of five novels: the Bookershortlisted His Bloody Project, which has been published in over twenty languages; the Booker-longlisted Case Study (named as one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2022); and the Georges Gorski trilogy, comprising The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, The Accident on the A35 and A Case of Matricide. Graeme was born in Kilmarnock and now lives in Glasgow.

BENBECULA

Graeme Macrae Burnet

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2025 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

1

Copyright © Graeme Macrae Burnet, 2025

The right of Graeme Macrae Burnet to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. This work is reserved from text and data mining (Article 4(3) Directive (EU) 2019/790).

ISBN 978 1 84697 731 2

eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 847 2

Typeset by 3btype, Edinburgh

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A

It is dark now and my window onto the world is a small one. I do not know how much longer I will be here.

My name is Malcolm MacPhee. If you’re wondering why it falls to me to tell this tale, it is for no other reason than this – I am the only one left.

Since the incidents I am to recount, my sister Marion and my brother John have also departed this place. I did not want them to go but nor could I blame them for wishing to leave. There is nothing here for our generation. Our way of life is dying but for the MacPhees of Liniclate it came to a more abrupt end than for most. This for on the ninth day of July 1857 my brother Angus did to death my father, my mother and my aunt, all in the most brutal and purposeful fashion.

There may be some among you who know as little of Benbecula as I do of the great townships of Stornoway or Portree. There is not much to say. We are an island and a small one at that. The land is flat and sodden. I have been a few times to Lochmaddy on the Uist to the north but no further. I know there is more to the world than the stretch of shore between Creagorry and Borve, but this is the world I know. Before the events I am to describe our family grew what crops we could and gathered seaware for kelp. More enterprising folk than us abandoned this trade long before I was expelled from my mother’s womb, and if we persisted in it, it was not for the riches to be earned – there is barely a shilling in it – but because we knew nothing else.

Such acts as my brother committed are not commonplace in our corner of the world and the stench of it lingers as the reek cleaves to the thatch. In a similar way, the madness that afflicted my brother attaches itself to his kin. The potato blight, as folk round here are wont to say, does not affect a single plant. The whole crop is destroyed.

Thus I see few people these days. Mrs MacLeod visits weekly and now and again the priest MacGregor, though I fear he has given up on me as I have given up on him. I have no appetite to till and sow, and the place is going to ruin. Children take the long way round, along the shore path at the foot of the croft. They call this the Murder House and think me a madman, as if it was me rather than my brother who did to death half its occupants. I am sometimes given to wondering if I have in fact become what they think me to be but I believe I remain in possession of my reason.

In happier times our family consisted of myself, my father, my mother, my three siblings and aunt – that is my father’s sister – who lived in a smaller dwelling a few yards behind our own and took most of her meals with us. Though they were not related by blood, my mother and my aunt were of such similar physical type, being likewise squat, big-bosomed and wide in the hip, that they were often taken to be twins. If it had been my father’s intention to seek the image of his sister when he took a wife he could have done no better. The weather in these parts is harsh. Throughout the black months our island is lashed with rain and gales blow continually off the sea. Women of my mother and aunt’s type are as well adapted to this climate here as the black-faced sheep that seem oblivious to the elements. They were ill-natured women and their conversation consisted mainly of plaints about their circumstances and the denigration of our neighbours. My father was taller and lean in the face and body. When not anchored by a cas-chrom or flaughter you might fear the wind would carry him off. And feeble as he was in body he was likewise in character, being placid and biddable. I never heard him raise his voice in anger and he met good and ill fortune with the same apathy. Had he had the opportunity to be informed of his death at the hands of his own son, he would likely have replied, Ach, these things happen.

Of we four siblings Marion was the eldest and best, and it is her removal from this place that pains me most. She herited not from my mother’s side but my father’s, being slender and long-faced. She was strong and never one to shirk labour more fitted to men but there was a solemnity about her. Laughter did not come readily to her lips and she appeared to take more satisfaction in the service of others than in her own pleasure. Of John, the youngest, there is little to be said. He was my father’s replica in character but more simple-minded. He was not work-shy but required constant supervision and praise. We were none of us MacPhees greatly educated but John was incapable of learning anything. If he one day dropped a stone on his foot, he would the next day drop another stone on his foot and treat the pain he experienced with the same idiotic surprise. He was neither melancholy nor cheerful, and if there was ever a gathering of some sort it was difficult to recall if he had been present or not. Unless John takes it upon himself to procreate – and I fear he has not the wherewithal – I will be the last of the MacPhees of Liniclate. That is no bad thing. It is a poisoned lineage and no one round here shall lament our extinction.

Which brings us to the individual this narrative most concerns and who bears responsibility for my solitary existence. Angus was from the beginning quite singular. From the moment he could walk, he was never still. He would tear around the house upsetting whatever objects were set upon the table, unmoved by our mother’s reprimands. She often grabbed and slapped him mercilessly but this had no effect. Outside he would chase after livestock which greatly antagonised our neighbours. I do not think he intended any harm to the beasts he chased. Rather I think he was simply in thrall to his own impact on the world. As a child he continually indulged in pranks and would laugh uncontrollably if someone tripped on a wire he had set or was soaked by a pail of water he had balanced above a door. The beatings such transgressions earned him were no deterrent. Angus was never cowed by authority, whether that of the priest, his teachers or the ground officers who were on his account frequent visitors to our house. Despite this, there was something endearing about him. His laughter infected people even as they chastised him and he had a way of looking contrite and then casting up his eyes and smiling that disarmed even those who sought his punishment. On account of the five years which separated us we were not close. I did not enjoy the attention he attracted and would take myself as far from him as possible. As a result I acquired a reputation of being truculent and aloof and it may be true that I was what people supposed me to be. It was only when Angus reached the age at which certain changes visit the body that he became properly troublesome. Certain traits that may be excused in a child are less easily forgiven in a man. From the moment he grew hair on his balls Angus had a shameless fascination for those parts of his body and their functions that decency normally dictates are kept private. Perhaps on account of his degenerate habits, he ceased to grow beyond the age of fourteen or so. He was squat like our mother, but barrel-chested and powerful. When he moved across the landscape, he seemed to do so with preternatural speed. There was also something hideous in his demeanour. He had no nameable deformity, yet even those encountering him for the first spurned him. By this time I would be gathering seaware, hard at work on the rig or sometimes labouring for a few shillings on the dykes and tracks of the parish. Through this industry, I sought to differentiate myself from Angus, yet I was haunted by the sense that I was not his opposite but his mirror image.

Some weeks prior to the murders, Angus was sent to labour at the house of Lachlan MacPherson at Lochdhar across the sound on the Uist to the south. I had previously been in service to MacPherson and found him to be a high-handed and pernickety individual. He is a shoemaker, and by virtue of this profession and the fine house in which he dwells he thought himself superior to me and to the others in his employ. He would frequently find fault with the execution of the most menial chores and would set myself and others to useless tasks for no other purpose than to lord it over his minions. He could not bear to see a person idle. Once when he discovered me in the crime of pausing for a smoke at the back of an outhouse he confronted me with the words, Is it for the smoking of a pipe that I am paying you, MacPhee? I made no response as the answer to his question was self-evident. He was standing closer to me than was necessary and we each of us looked into the eyes of the other. I continued to suck on my pipe and it was my impression that he was contemplating what action he might take. I fully expected him to take the pipe from my mouth and dash it to the ground, and indeed I saw him do so in my mind’s eye and had begun to contemplate in turn what my response would be to this action of his. He did not do so however and instead muttered that I should get on with my work and that he had his eye on me. There is no place for Sloth at Lochdhar, he said, nor for those who practise it. That evening when the servants sat down to eat, I was served a bowl of sowens while the others had mutton. None of them dared to give a share of their meal to me. I would have done no differently in their place but the discrepancy in our fare shamed us all and the meal was passed in silence. There were other similarly vexatious incidents and I took my leave before the expiration of my term of employment, telling MacPherson that I would send my brother in my stead, this on account of the fact that our family could not afford to forfeit any income no matter how irksome the means of earning it. I confess this act contained a grain of mischief on my part as there was not a fellow in the entirety of Benbecula more dedicated to the practice of Sloth than Angus.

I believe it was a Saturday that Angus returned from Lochdhar as on this day there tended to be larger numbers of folk fording the sound. There had been no communication during the time that he had been away, but as the fortnight for which he had been engaged had passed we were expecting his return. The channel between our island and that to the south is fordable only at low tide and on the day in question this occurred towards the end of the forenoon. John, Marion and I were at work on the shore. My father was pottering on the rig. From the shore one can see a mile or so in the direction of Creagorry. Even at that distance it was clear as soon as Angus made his appearance that some-thing was awry. He was not alone, but among a small crowd of people. In itself this was not unusual due to the dependence on the tide but there was something curious about the cluster of people who made their way towards Liniclate. Rather than spreading out and moving at their own pace, the crowd was gathered around a single individual. This individual was Angus, recognisable due to his stocky build and unruly hair. Even as a child he had a strong aversion to having his hair cut and would struggle violently whenever our mother attempted to do so. As the throng grew nearer, I could see that he was moving with an awkward gait, lurching from side to side and flapping his arms as if trying to fend off some unseen predator. Sometimes a child would break from the loose circle and dash towards him as if provoking an injured animal. This caused Angus to gesticulate more wildly and rush at the child in question who would take refuge behind the skirts of its mother. Without discussion my siblings and I laid down our tools and set off along the shore path. As we approached the multitude, it became clear that Angus was in a violent temper and the game the children were playing with him was not in jest. The taunting of our brother ceased as we grew nearer, and once at a distance of a few yards all present came to a halt. It fell to me to take charge of the situation. It did not seem prudent to scold the crowd for ill-using him so I thought it best to make light of the situation.

Have they been filling you with whisky at Lochdhar, Brother?

Though his gaze was trained in my direction, Angus did not seem to recognise me and made no response.

It’s a bit early in the day to be so full of whisky, I said.

I stepped towards him and grasped him by the elbow and said that we had best be getting him home. There was no smell of whisky on him.

He shook me off. Not expecting this, I took a step or two backwards. John looked to me for some instruction. If Angus had always been ungovernable, John was too much his opposite. The boy would not do up his bootlaces unless directed to do so. It was instead Marion who stepped between us.

You’ll be ready for a bowl of soup, Angus, she said in a soothing voice.

I am not wanting any soup, he replied. Then he turned to me and grasped the lapel of my jacket. Give me some tobacco, he said. I’ve not had a scrap of tobacco these last days.

I told him he could have a smoke when we were back at the house.

Are you keeping your tobacco up your arse now? he said, and as he did so he grabbed my hair with his free hand and wrenched my head downwards. There had always been some rough and tumble between us, as is customary between brothers, but this was of a different nature. There was a violence in his actions that I had not known before. I was thrown off balance and found myself on my knees. Angus fell upon me and started to lay blows into my midriff, all the time making a dreadful snorting noise. There was some laughter from the onlookers. Marion took it upon herself to free me, clambering onto Angus’s back. He then caught her a heavy blow across the mouth with his elbow and she was propelled some yards back onto her behind. I took the opportunity to wrest myself free of Angus’s grip and threw myself upon him. At this point the laughter around us subsided and our neighbours MacSween and Munro came to my assistance. The three of us sat on Angus for some minutes. When he seemed to have been subdued we loosed our grip but he immediately started to flail his limbs and howl like a lunatic and it was decided that it would be necessary to tie him. I sent my brother John, who had thus far done no more than stand witness to the unfolding spectacle, to fetch some rope.

It took MacSween, Munro and myself some minutes to secure my brother’s hands. We then bound his arms tightly to his sides and hauled him to his feet. There is a good weight to him and this was no small task. I prompted Angus to move with the toe of my boot and he allowed his legs to give way beneath him and fell once again to the ground. It was only at this point that I became properly enraged. Until then I had been caught up in the moment but it now struck me that there was something dissembling in my brother’s behaviour. When we were very young Angus had a great dislike of attending school. From the earliest age he was wilful and did not like to be confined whether to the schoolroom or to any task that demanded concentration. It was the custom for the youngest pupils to sit at the front of the class and on one occasion I saw Angus begin to sway back and forth on his stool. He then began to moan like a swarm of bees and this caused the teacher Miss Gilchrist to stop writing on the blackboard and ask what was the matter. Angus did not reply but started to sway more violently. Miss Gilchrist grabbed his arms and rapped his knuckles with her ruler. Angus then got to his feet and spouting some gibberish began to run recklessly round the perimeter of the room. The other children greatly enjoyed this silly performance and began to laugh and clap their hands. Angus reached the front of the class and clambered onto Miss Gilchrist’s desk and commenced to dance a mad jig. The teacher was a young woman not from these parts and had not the wherewithal to bring him down, so it fell to me to drag him from the table before he was thrown out of the room. He thus learned that by acting the buffoon he could get his own way. My parents did not care much for the education of their children. As they could neither read nor write themselves they saw no utility in it. You can’t turn over the soil with a book, my father was wont to say.

Angus’s behaviour now struck me as similarly devious but what purpose he might have, other than to humiliate his family in the eyes of our neighbours, was obscure to me. It was with no small difficulty that we dragged him the half-mile or so to the house and there we tethered him to the bed by his four limbs. After our neighbours had left, he kept up his revolt against the ropes and it was only after some hours that he exhausted himself and fell asleep. I sat through the night with him fearing that he might wake and do some injury to himself. At some point I must also have fallen asleep but I did so fitfully. In the morning Angus seemed calm and in the presence of my mother and father I went to untie his legs whereupon he immediately resumed his violent thrashing. It was only then that I began to think that his behaviour was not some mysterious ploy but that he might be afflicted by some sort of madness.

His condition remained the same for three days. He would not take any food and cursed the lot of us violently. On the fourth day he became less agitated. He spoke more sensibly and took a little porridge fed to him like an infant. When we loosened his tethers he did not writhe or kick out. Once completely untied he hauled himself to a sitting position and looked to all intents like a man waking from a heavy slumber. He behaved as if nothing amiss had occurred. Later that evening I accompanied him outside and we shared a pipe on the bench outside the house. It was a clement evening and the water on the sound was motionless. I asked him what had happened at Lochdhar.

At Lochdhar? he replied, as if the name meant nothing to him.

While you were working at the house of Lachlan MacPherson, I said. Something must have happened as you have been quite tormented since your return.

He looked at me and I saw that either I was wrong in my presumption that some incident must have caused this change in his behaviour or that he had simply no recollection of it.

During these days Marion kept her distance from Angus and refused to minister to him in any way. I could not blame her. The blow he had dealt her had knocked out two of her teeth and left the right side of her face swollen. Even as a girl she had not been blessed with fair looks and being the eldest of us all she had long since given up any hope of marriage. We MacPhees were all of us somewhat wedded to each other. Marion had in any case never been well-disposed towards Angus. She was a hard worker and took on more than her share of the daily round, no doubt to demonstrate that she was the equal or better of any man. Angus on the other hand had always been a shameless hummocker and used any pretext to avoid work. Perhaps wishing to induce some pang of guilt in him, Marion would wordlessly take up any chore he left undone but this only had the effect of convincing Angus that there was no necessity for him to do anything other than suck on his pipe. If I suggested some task to him, his customary reply was, Marion will do it.

Perhaps on account of our proximity in age, Marion and I enjoyed a certain closeness, though not to the extent of lying together. As youngsters we tended to the needs of our younger siblings and in later years this mollycoddling persisted, allowing both Angus and John to remain childlike in their behaviour. I sometimes had cause to wonder if it was me that was responsible for Angus’s indolence. Perhaps if I had administered him a good beating after the incident in the schoolroom he would have changed his ways. Certainly such a beating would never be forthcoming from my father as for some unfathomable reason he had a special affection for his third child. Our mother in contrast could be quite vicious and on occasion engaged in hair-pulling and other acts of petty violence. From a young age however Angus was unnaturally strong and would return whatever blows he received with equal force and after a while she desisted.

A few days after his return from Lochdhar, we allowed Angus to go at large. In the morning I would set him to some task but he would soon let whatever tool he was holding drop from his hand and wander off to the moors behind the house. He would sit gazing towards the water or lie back in the heather so that he was quite hidden, with only the smoke from his pipe betraying his whereabouts. I had neither the time nor inclination to constantly cajole him. It was May. There was always work to be done and less was accomplished if I wasted my time haranguing him. It was easier all round to let him alone.

I