Bitterhall

by Helen McClory

  Repeat

  In the kitchen at Tom’s house there appeared a toy on the top of the fridge. It caught my eye because of how ugly it was – a white and neon Eeyore with pervert’s eyes. We were making dinner. It was one of the few times I was outside of his room those early days, though right enough I was sore, sawing into a loaf for garlic bread. Standing stirring an orange stew Tom was talking away, and music was playing on speakers, the kind of thing that can stand to be ignored.

  ‘What the fuck is that thing?’ I said.

  ‘The song?’

  ‘No that,’ I pointed with the knife. The beast sat icy white, flopped over on one side.

  ‘Funny story,’ Tom said.

  ‘Is it.’

  ‘Actually, yes. That, babe, is a clone.’

  I looked at the thing again, got up close, ‘I don’t like it, it’s looking at me. A clone?’

  ‘Daniel made it. At his lab.’

  ‘Christ almighty, kill it.’ I had it by the throat and pretended to stab at it in the belly. ‘It’s heavier than it looks. Deeply suspicious.’

  He left his stew and took the thing from me. I noted a look of fondness in his eyes.

  ‘Ah but it took a lot to make this one.’

  ‘What happened to the original if this is the clone?’

  ‘We burned it,’ Tom said, and in his voice a distinct pride, and a smiling, abashed look, which he covered up with a quick tonal shift. ‘The original was a thing from work. A promo thing. It had spyware in it. For a vodka company.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘I came back and Daniel said, “Look we can do something with this.” And he wanted to show me where he worked anyway.’

  I resumed my bread duties. ‘What’s it like then, his work?’

  ‘What’s he told you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, which was a strange lie to give. ‘I can’t remember that he’d mentioned much at all beyond saying he worked in archives. But here it’s clones? 3D printing then. That would be for copying rare objects, mm? For museums and stuff?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it’ said Tom. ‘We went over there and he unlocked the lab and fired out a copy of the original promo thing.’

  I saw two shadows entering a deserted building, walking downstairs, their faces swept clean of any feeling. I got back to sawing the bread a while. Broke the silence at last to say, ‘So then you came back and you burnt the original. Where, outside?’

  ‘It took ages to make the copy. We had coffee. It hailed on the way back.’

  ‘But where did you burn it?’ I said. I was suddenly keen to move us on to the actual burning which was, it seemed, a kind of ceremonial act. Something itched at me, let it be said. His look. He was still holding the beast.

  ‘Must have smoked a lot with the electronics.’

  ‘Oh, it did,’ Tom said.

  ‘And does this—’ I moved closer to him to take it, ‘does this have bits in it? Is it watching us. Seems like it could be.’

  ‘No,’ he said. He hadn’t let it go. He took a little breath and shifted it. There was a small sound of objects moving. ‘It’s solid inside, mostly solid, see.’ He pinched it, and the fabric moved around. ‘The machine couldn’t scan inside, so it just filled it with little bearings, I think. Anyway, I like it. This one.’

  ‘You like the copy? You seem like the kind of person who’d only like the real thing.’ I said, for something to say. I was standing close to him, but he wasn’t standing close to me. He took a breath in.

  ‘Who’s to say it isn’t real? I’m holding it, it’s real to me.’ He said. Then with a funny look on his face he went by me to put it back on the fridge. Devotional site. I returned a second time to the bread, and found myself mashing butter into it with my fingers, pushing yellow into the gaps I had driven into the loaf, seeing only the yellow, inhaling it, smelling it on myself afterwards for hours. I thought to myself, how strange. It was just a stupid toy. You never know what’ll bother you always, what can turn a relationship off on tilt.

  Invitation

  When I wasn’t at the university either in the library looking at scans of marginalia in codicology databases and taking notes or playing hunt-the-supervisor or drinking coffee, I was at work. Work then was a frozen yoghurt and bubble tea shop a street over from the main part of the campus, a small street-front room with white moulded seating, unhinged pink mural and toppings with the look of inedible plastic.

  One day Daniel walked by the shop and saw me, came on in.

  ‘What’ll it be?’ I said, pretending I didn’t know him. He blinked, played along.

  ‘Uhm. What – is it?’ he asked, pointing at the big board.

  ‘You’ve never seen this before? Well – we’ve a treat for you. It’s a kind of tea, I mean, you know that. Says it right there. You can have it hot or cold. The milk teas we have are plain, taro, matcha latte, caramel latte, chocolate, coconut, honey. The others are black tea, peach tea, jasmine tea, raspberry tea, nettle, white tea, green tea, lemon and green tea and blackberry tea. It comes with tapioca balls or jelly. The jelly comes in lychee, grass, pineapple, apple, banana – disgusting – aloe, strawberry, peach and winter melon.’

  ‘What about the tapioca?’

  ‘It comes in tapioca flavour.’

  ‘Will I die of the sugar?’ he said, smiling shyly.

  ‘Yes. Definitely yes.’

  ‘Order for me. Your favourite.’

  ‘Okay. A cold taro milk tea with tapioca. Li’l bit less ice so you get your money’s worth. Normal sweetness.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  I turned and began the process. Daniel stood at the counter. I could feel him there, exploring the shop with diffuse grace and a few twitches of his hands and shoulders. I hadn’t seen him since we’d first met and that had been weeks. Perhaps he thought I had forgotten him – a twinge of pity, then. I was in the blissful honeymoon of me and Tom, Tom and me. My flatmates were sick of hearing about it. But the girls at work only knew of the relationship slightly. From the afterglow when I ran in late.

  ‘Are you Tom?’ Jen asked him, smirking, ‘Órla said you were handsome. Is he handsome, d’ya think, Anj?’

  ‘I dunno, I dunno,’ said Anj in her gruff voice.

  Kids. Daniel was dying.

  ‘Leave him be,’ I said. I handed him the drink, ‘On the house. In case you die.’

  He took it and hesitated.

  ‘Haven’t seen you about.’

  ‘Shh. Loose lips sink ships,’ I said. The girls giggled as they pretended to clean up. I went round the counter and we sat in the window watching people queuing at the bus stop pretending to be in control of their lives.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, playfully.

  ‘I’m easily missed for all that.’

  ‘Oh yes. Climbing out the bedroom window before the house awakes, lest we accuse you of living there. I wouldn’t mind you around more, you know. Badr wouldn’t notice, he’s out most of the time.’

  ‘And old Minto?’

  ‘I’ve heard a rumour Minto has left the house on important business in Nicaragua,’ he said.

  ‘A drug deal, eh?’

  ‘Oh definitely.’

  ‘Funny that I’ve never seen you by here before now.’

  ‘My routes don’t take me this way much. I’m in George Square, most of the time. Or in the house.’

  ‘So you came here on purpose. Did Tom tell you where I worked?’

  ‘I think you’ve put a spell on Tom. Or maybe he was always that way.’

  And that was how it began. Of course Daniel spoke about it first. For all his elusiveness he had things gripped between his two hands, he could talk his way around to the pertinent parts.

  ‘Oh?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll go into it later. For now – listen. Mark, you remember I told you about Mark, well, he’s having a Hallowe’en party. He has one every year. It’s lavish, costumes, booze flowing, at that house I told you about. I wanted to invite you. You a
nd Tom, but I didn’t want you thinking I think of you as a set.’

  ‘So far as you know that’s what we are.’

  He stared at me a moment, ‘I hoped – never mind.’

  ‘Never mind it.’ I said. Feelings inhabited me, too slippery and confused to speak on. I looked at him as he turned and sucked on the giant purple bubble tea straw. No one ever looks anything but cute doing that. Even harsh ugly people are given a wisp of adorability. Not that Daniel was ugly. It’s this glimpse into their childhood selves. I grabbed the cup from him and took a long sook myself. Lips over where his hand been. The balls rolled up the straw and into my mouth, black, and I chewed against my back teeth. Swallowed them, down my throat they went, into the pit of me, feelings, acids, sugar, thoughts, cells, all.

  ‘I’m there,’ I said. ‘Consider me there.’

  ‘I’ll send you the theme later.’ He said. We stood. He hugged me, gave a surprised look, then was gone.

  Skin

  A book of religious poems is made; it begins with skin. In the meadow a thousand years ago, a herd of nine red yearlings are drawn away from their mothers by a man in a smock, calling, bearing an armful of sweet hay. Tails beat the air as they trot. It’s raining lightly on another island; the rain will be on this one soon. The drover lures his nine red cows over the meadow to a low stone-ringed field. His youngest, a girl, slaps their flanks – dusty with pollen, the soft red fur quivers – through the gate one by one, towards the cutting stone. His eldest boy looks up, just a moment, from sharpening the knife on a long black strop. The clouds come in. His sister wipes her wet hands on her own sides, and looks about for how to begin.

  The vellum is cured at the hands of skilled workers on the sacred island from the raw calf skin, which is of high quality, and soft. The book is one made to order, Old English text copied from Old English text, illustrations chosen by the buyer and inserted as miniatures, ornate with pleasing details of flowers or fruits common to this area of the world. It takes a team of scribes and illustrators working together for months to make it as perfect as they are, in their effort, able to. One side of the vellum was the outer-facing part, where the hairs grew on the body of the calf. The other side faced inwards, against the flesh of an animal that once fed and walked, lived. It is high quality; nevertheless there are imperfections, raised veins, a stippledness on a few parts. They write on this skin, dead skin, the scribes and illustrators, the edges of their hands rest on it, skin against skin, the points of their tools mark where the borders within which the writing or pictures must lie. They tire; they rub their faces and touch this dead skin, which doesn’t feel them back. The penmanship is beautiful, showing only small variations between the characters of the men who write it, their moods for the day, the light they had to see by, the temperature that cramped a finger or caused a momentary distraction in the line. Behind the flyleaf are hidden little ink marks made by one writer or another, testing out a new quill, writing their initials or a corded flower on a stem. Such small things to last so long in secret. The flyleaf is sealed away against the leather binding, until such time as the method of sealing fails.

  The book is finished and the buyer takes it home. The buyer’s family cherish it, then, over generations, slowly forget it. A candle burning too closely to a library shelf smokes a line across the cover. Its spine crackles like a fire when opened. Fashions change; the buyer’s entire family are killed on the wrong side of a war. There are innumerable wars, it is a miracle it has stayed so long in the one family, until now. The book goes to a soldier’s house. The soldier’s son practices his letters under the image of the Virgin, piety towards her belonging to the old religion. He draws a horse shitting and a portrait of himself as a soldier. His brother draws a boat. The soldier’s grandson, hard up, sells the book. The buyer sells it on. The buyer sells it on. The buyer dies and his estate sells it on. The book is lost, recovered, sold on. No one has opened the book to read its poems with the devotional attention for which it was made in five hundred years, though by now the book is much older than that.

  The book does not remember how old it is and no one is asking it to tell. A small private museum holds the book in a box in its storage area, until a university buys the book, and takes it to where other books are, to cherish what the book is, what great vessel it has become. It begins to be read in a new way. New hands gently touch its skin, its dead skin, try to understand the marks left on it by the hands that made them, now lying much reduced in vanished graves in graveyards full of their narrow like, once living, cautious, skilled, near what once were tall, steady collections of buildings, hubs where beautiful books were written for export or to be stored in libraries, places where page lay open next to page on huge tables in the light, text to text, illustration to illustration, scribe to scribe, on islands tiny, now out-of-theway places of half-fallen stones and blackberry vines. The graves of the calves that made the pages that make up this book are not known, and neither are those of the drover and his family, nor the people who made the vellum that made the pages, nor the grasses that the calves ate, nor the flowers.

  This is the book that I, a thousand years after its birth, wanted to know. By touch. By sight of course, but I could see that in the database, online, all scanned in and correct. I wanted to touch it. I did, with my bare hands – the white glove thing is a lie. I had been taken in to see it years before and watched the archivist open the book in its foam cradle, I had listened to it creaking open and smelled the mustiness of its pages. Some sweet note in there, grassy. I had been shown the horse shitting and the boat. I had looked at the drawing of a boy, funny long body and big head, and the sword he seemed to be holding in his big old spiky hand. Later I had copied out a poem from the scan of a page, learning how to read the old language there, in the old hand. This was the book I wanted to write something meaningful on. Cheek of me. It was much older than I was, and surely everything that could be was known about it. I was determined to come right up in my mortal body and lean in, find out the right question to ask of it that it had not been asked before. So that I would have permission to touch it again.

  Some Quiet Hour

  Tom began to be haunted; this was a week or so before the party. It began with a sigh in his sleep late at night or early in the morning. I lay awake with the cat up on my chest vibrating with purrs. Then she stopped purring and I heard him mumble, Not like that. I reached out a hand to stroke his hair. He turned over and curled up into a kind of hunch, muttering louder. No, he said. In the throat. By his tone it was hard to say if he was afraid of the action he was seeing, or instructing on it. I pulled my hand away and he groaned, the cat leapt.

  Some moments let anything in, wonder and fury and the devil, all without much movement at all, breathless and gentle on the surface.

  I got out of bed and went to the dark kitchen for water. I peered back across into his room and saw his big shape on the bed and decided I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t wake him. I’d wake him and he’d have the misfortune of remembering what dream it was. Where if I let him sleep it would pass on by in the next REM cycle into the abyss where dreams go to drain away. The house was quiet. Mrs Boobs came in and mewed at me, and I let her out the back door. Then a creak from upstairs. A series of creaks. Daniel.

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ he whispered from the stair, ‘just came down for something.’ I sat. He was fabulously layered in his dress. The slippers on his feet, in an almost but not quite matching shade to the thick, red terry robe swishing about his knees and letting out glimpses of striped pyjamas. Topping the robe was a long, old kind of dust-grey velvet smoking jacket, and that scarf he was always wearing wrapped double round. His tortoise-shell glasses were on his face crooked. True the heating was never on in this place so he might well have been cold, but he looked too like a Victorian body, sans little sleeping cap. If those were in any place available and the cap slightly less ridiculous in the general fashion he’d have been right on the purchase. His hair was all up as if he’d run his hand
s through it repeatedly, which I was to learn later was a thing sure enough he did when distracted. As he looked about I had the sense he hadn’t been sleeping, that for all the associated garments sleep was the furthest thing from him and so was company and that my presence was unwelcome. He found his way to the table, and put his hands on the chair nearest mine. I could have easily leaned over and righted his glasses on his prickled pinched face. Imagine.

  ‘Ah, right,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t happen to see a book in here, earlier? Clothbound, old? I was reading it.’

  ‘Not sleeping, then?’

  ‘I keep odd hours,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll bet. I see you as a Minto type, you know. In future years you’ll be the owner of this house, a cryptid to the other occupants.’

  ‘Christ,’ he said, rubbing his eye. ‘That’s grim. You haven’t seen it then?’

  ‘A book? No,’ I said. ‘Sorry if I upset you. Wait—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I didn’t expect anyone to be up. I feel a bit underdressed.’

  At this I laughed. He looked hurt a second and then smiled. I made a note not to tease after midnight, unless we were both in the clear mood.

  ‘The book though. I saw it earlier,’ I said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Tom’s room—’

  That clattering intimacy of talking over one another.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘D’you want me to get it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t want to wake him.’