I took the diary around with me more often, as a kind of guide. I had noticed that entries after the murder were longer; Lennoxlove wrote about a woman who was a rider in a local hunt. He didn’t describe what she looked like, only that she was ‘spirited, clever, compassionate, well-educated, the best of all in all disciplines they put a hand to’ and ‘unwed by the terms of local conditions, but nevertheless unable to be mine.’ He referred to this woman as F. I got stuck on this section, puzzling. It was, after a third look, written a little differently, less thick with waving corn and the sound of feet on gravel than earlier parts, more on abstract feelings, but with urgency. More like the writer was running out of time, or running off on an obsession that did not allow them to look elsewhere. I didn’t like to stay at the Minto house to read it, because Daniel, still obsessed himself with finding it, might drop in at any moment and ask if I had seen the book, which would be embarrassing so I took it out to a coffee shop with me at lunchtime or after work. I found a place that stayed open later than anywhere, a real greasy-spoon place near a theatre, that could do me a mug of tea for cheap and a plate of just a bit of sandwich meat chicken or ham if I wanted it served up without any judgement but a tired friendly smile. I drank tea, ate meat and read the diary through, one entry at a time, sometimes coming before work too, gnawing on the diary like it was my main meal.
Through it all, Órla was cool. She didn’t ask me where I’d been, except once when she was staying over and I’d gone out for the night and gone off to work without answering any of her texts. We sorted that out. Even though I was a bit screwed up over the Daniel situation, I knew that I shouldn’t rush through anything – I needed to sort my head out, the time would come when it came, that sort of thing. Most of all I didn’t want her to feel any discomfort or discover my thoughts, so I was better after that. I got her flowers and chocolates. I asked her about her day and listened to the answer as much as I could. I began blinking and seeing black spots, which made it difficult to keep a straight face. I feigned a lot of extra work – stress from that could really cause all that had happened to me – so she accepted it like anyone would. She started asking if I was looking for another career. I told her I was built for media PR, that even if I didn’t like this job, I was going to start my own company one day soon and really learn to thrive. I just had to push myself a bit here. All nonsense. Don’t get down the road of lies next time, I told myself. It only makes it harder. Because of my lies I had to agree to go to the party at Mark’s place – Daniel knew Mark from childhood and it would be a ‘great networking opportunity’, Órla said. She would have been right, too. And I liked Mark – guiltily liked, knowing what I did, I was almost his employee, his gumshoe – and I liked old Mr MacAshfall, weird as he was.
Gifted
I finished reading the diary for the fourth time – there’s no point not savouring things, especially if you’re trying to understand them – in the greasy spoon café. I closed the back cover and it gave a satisfying creak. I finished strong, with the last sip of my tea, which wasn’t too cold either. But as soon as I’d done that, put the book down firmly on the table, I felt something slap me on the side of my head. I looked around – I looked down. There was a narrow, wrinkled leather thing at my feet. I picked it up – it was a shoe, but not like any kind of shoe I’d ever seen. It looked almost like a ballet shoe, but black and with a thicker sole. I thought it must be handmade for a man from the brogue-like design. For a man with smaller than average feet. Someone had thrown an antique shoe at me. I ran my hands over it – it was clean, and the leather wasn’t old. I looked around again, no likely culprits. Just the shoe. I wish I could hand it to you, that shoe, so that you could hold it in your hand, feel that it existed. I sighed, put it in my pocket, paid up and left.
In the course of the next six days I received, from the anonymous thrower: a second shoe; a pair of balled woollen socks; a long pair of patched brown breeches; a worn but clean white shirt and a malt-coloured tweedish jacket with a sagging collar. All came to me in various public places – all with no evident person behind their delivery – unwitnessed by anyone else. On the seventh day, a small knife with a bone hilt slid itself across the table of the café at me. I had returned to this particular spot in the hope of gaining more things. I felt wired, jolted awake. At the same time I didn’t feel like I should show the clothing to anyone I knew or mention them at all in any kind of context, even hypothetical. Did I think they didn’t exist? Did I know I was waiting for the whole set before I would act? Well, here it all was, with the final piece being the knife – I rubbed the grain of the bone handle with my finger and thumb while across the room, the same woman I always paid the bill to plunged a metal basket of battered fish into hot oil. I knew instinctively this was the last thing I would get. The knife blade was silver – I could tell from the fact it had tarnished. And I wondered about the significance of a silver knife, and I wondered if I was supposed to fend something off with it – or if none of this was real, if I could fend off madness with it. An imaginary knife is not nothing, I thought, putting it on the skin of my finger, poking it in and giving it a flick – gave me a small pain I sucked on – a real enough taste of my own blood against my tongue. Then I panicked a bit, thinking it was probably a filthy knife, come from I didn’t know where. I went and washed my hands. When I came back to my seat, the bill was in a little dish with three hard white mints, sitting right beside the blade of the knife. Nothing was settled, though, I thought, looking at my finger, a divot out of the flesh.
Alight Here
It was dark when I drove by the station and dark as I doubled back to it, several hours later. I had been driving around for hours this time and in some ways there was nothing else to do with these hours – dark was a larger than ever part of my day and my senses were too – not in a bad way, necessarily. Just life – changing. The question of what to do with the clothing, real or unreal, remained with me. My runs in response, or simply due to a new cycle, were being replaced with driving around at night, hours spent pushing up into the countryside, northwards each time. The clothes sat in my kit-bag on the passenger seat. If I had wanted to dress up, I couldn’t have done. Whoever had owned them, they were about half my build, with tiny feet. They stayed with me. I took them where I felt I had to go. Prowling up the A9, crossing deep into inky mountainous places that must look good in the daytime – I recognised some of the names and looked others up after – but for me in those hours were only a curve of the road lit up, the occasional skirting of tiny roadkill or, once, a deer.
The station had a kind of bunkhouse near it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of going inside and being turned away from a room – there was bound to be none for me, in such a small place. So I parked and I went walking into the nothing that is the damp autumnal Scottish countryside – hearing my shoes skiff on the rough surface of the road where the lights of cars circled the hill roads but never seemed to reach me. I am being dramatic; I wasn’t there for long. Just long enough to look at the sky where the stars were out and the high wind was under the stars and I could hear a river, rushing, down on the other side of the station line. Or perhaps I am conflating two moments, one where I stopped at a train station with a bunkhouse, another where I stopped in a passing place and went to a river. The darkness made both seem to happen in the same place at the same time. Dreamily I stepped off the road into the slippery, sheep-eaten grass and went downwards. Did I cross tracks? I might have had to scale a fence, I don’t remember. I had my bag slipped over my shoulders.
Seen
I meant to go to the river and look at it, but when I got there – whichever dark river it was driving itself loudly through this empty country – I thought perhaps I was coming there for some kind of assignation. And pretty swiftly I saw a path on the other side of the river that seemed likely for me. It was a hiking trail. I crossed the river – it was not deep for all that noise. It bit icily into my shoes and made my life miserable, but was no risk. There on
the path – ahead – was the figure. I’d never seen him looking like this. He was almost naked, his body glowed in the little light from the moon. I walked up to him – he didn’t disappear. He looked at me shivering. He was small.
‘Here, you must be freezing,’ I said, and I unzipped my coat and threw it around him. He looked up. I still couldn’t see his face clearly. The cloud came over the moon and it was hard to make him out. But I knew it was not a lie; I knew he was really there, and that we had been meant to meet. It was an inevitability that felt like a hand in a hand.
‘Come with me, back to my car,’ I said.
He said nothing. He might not have been there I thought, in a moment of panic. But I could see his outline, I could hear him breathing. His hair unmoving in the wind, though it was pretty long and wild.
‘You’ve came,’ he said. ‘I’m glad.’ He sounded faint. I got one arm over my own and dragged him back to my car, where he stood faint and stupid after I opened the door awkwardly guiding him into the back seat, one hand gripping his arm – wiry thin – the other pushing his head down, crushing his messy hair. Oily residue – I wiped that hand on the back of my jeans hoping it wouldn’t leave a mark. I turned on the engine and fired up the heat. In the overhead light, small as a candle, I saw him clearly, though he kept turning away, all skittish. I sat silently waiting. I coughed. He finally faced me, in the mirror anyway. His resemblance to Daniel was uncanny. I almost cried out his name. But I only stared. Slowly his face became distinctive – his own – as his mannerisms shifted it. A certain lowering of the chin. His eyes softer and more intent at once, like someone after a day of destructive bad news who hasn’t slept since, who has understood his situation is changed forever and accepted it, but never let his body recover. It’s not so hard to recognise, when you see it. He, under my questioning stare, looked around himself with a smile on his face – bemused, polite, pleased, I thought, but not wanting to seem so.
‘You’ve some things of mine,’ he said, almost so quietly I had to process the words before I understood them.
I unzipped the bag and pulled out handfuls of the clothes, ‘This?’
He nodded and took them. He removed my coat, covering himself a little for privacy.
‘Why did you throw your stuff at me? That was you, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ve been getting nearer you,’ he said, ‘sir. It took a long time to get so close as to be – in my own flesh again, or something like my own, I don’t know whether it is or not.’
I stopped, and thought.
‘How did you get nearer?’ I asked.
He nodded his head at the bag. I pulled out the book.
‘You’re James?’ I asked
‘One James of many, yes I am,’ he answered. ‘And so are you in your way. The better side of any James.’
‘I’m not sure I’m really getting you.’ I said. Now I was warm – I had kicked off my shoes and torn off my socks and stuck my feet on the dashboard, nearest the heat – I thought I was getting sleepy. This was more and more a dream. My eyes were flickering over. I had seen his face in a painting, or I had seen it through an open window while passing. I didn’t remember who it belonged to.
‘Do you dream of his deeds? Your hand on the knife holding his neck and all?’ he was saying. Soothing voice, sweet voice. I woke up at a knock on my window.
‘Are you all right?’ said a woman standing there, in weak white daylight. She had a parka on; a torch in her hand. She looked alarmed. My bare feet were still up on the dashboard. I wound down the window. She was a policewoman.
‘You can die of hypothermia you know. With wet hair too, goodness me.’
‘Yes, fine, I’ll be off,’ I said, wiping my face. ‘Sorry to have scared you, just pulled over for some rest and fell asleep.’
Fed
I came home – evening again, like I had been just out at work, hadn’t been gone the whole day. Órla was there waiting with Daniel. I waved at them. All I wanted was to crash into my bed, to not have to think any longer. But they were there, wanted to talk. I sat down at the kitchen table – the book was on it. Had I taken it in with me or had it always been there?
‘Hi guys,’ I said. Then, ‘I’m off to bed I think. Wow, long day. Lots going on at the office. We’ve got this big – big client – project in. Breathing down our necks. All the time.’
‘Tom, do you remember what happened last night?’ Órla said.
‘Yeah, of course I do!’ I said, ‘I had some trouble sleeping, and you woke up and got out of bed. And you got Daniel.’
As soon as the words were out, I knew they were true. But I also knew that my drive into the mountains was true – that I had met someone who had Daniel’s face, who I’d given the clothes I’d found – back – because they were his clothes. My head started to itch. The skull behind the forehead. I couldn’t dig down to it – I had to work hard to keep a calm look on my face. Some things are true and not true at once and it’s just sorting out what point in time they are true and actually happened, what day of the week you had what for dinner, for example. Or if something is yet to happen, or will happen in a different form. We can calculate trends, you know. We can foresee any number of possible outcomes.
‘Do you want some coffee?’ said Daniel, ‘I’m just putting the kettle on. Having a fry-up, too.’
There’s a feeling children get when they know their carers are hiding something or lying, but also know that they are lying out of kindness, and so decide not to press or uncover the lie – helpless white grubs on the underside of rocks, squirming – but can’t quite work out why they don’t – why they go along with it, like a game – like a game is better than not having a game, I suppose. It happens loads in adult relationships because we want to be both carer and child to each other. Or I should say: we want to move our pieces around and have them accepted by the people we are playing for.
‘Yes, please,’ I said. I pulled back from the table – loud scraping chair legs, just horrid – to look at the soles of my shoes. I was wearing shoes, but they were clean. It was damp, though, I remembered. Any muck might have washed off in the river. I wondered where my bag was – not here – but Órla was talking to me, so I didn’t get up.
‘Yes, I’m fine, did you get back to sleep?’ I was saying. There was hot food in front of me and I ate it like a beast. Like a man. Bacon and eggs and fried toast and mushrooms – even though I hate mushrooms, I always eat them when they are put in front of me, flinching but firm with myself – and beans, soupy cheap tinned beans. This was Daniel’s food. He couldn’t afford to get the good stuff on his salary. I think it also did not occur to him to buy himself nice food.
‘I’ll pay you back for this,’ I said.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it. You can make dinner some time,’ he said.
Then he and Órla were gone, and I was sitting in an empty room. The dishes looked like they had been washed.
Bedding
I showered and staggered into bed; into the bed where I had – had I slept there? – I couldn’t remember. I was ruined with tiredness. I pulled covers over me – a small cry, a small, shifting weight: the cat.
‘Are you looking out for me?’ I asked her. ‘Do you know if I went? Did you know I’d gone?’ I had my eyes closed. She settled and began kneading on my chest. ‘Who was here, while I was away?’ I said, or I thought. I imagined Daniel and Órla, lying together all pale, like a long-married couple waiting for death – I thought that was the best thing, a miracle, to hold together that long – I saw them doing it – I saw their whole lives up until they were old, spent there in bed, still as glass. And at that I dropped into the pit that’s in all of us, and I waited for some other part of me to wake me up.
In Bitterhall
I began to have all these dreams. I don’t remember if they were one after another or over the course of a few days. Or before the clothes, for that matter. They seemed long, like films. Like BBC mini-series of existence. I remember it only now. I can see
out the window the sea is disappearing. No, you’re right. The ocean. The ocean is disappearing, and I’m still, somehow, alive.
James Lennoxlove is writing at his desk. A servant comes in; not a servant for the house; he has dirty boots and an uncompromising look. He says, ‘Come out, master, the light’s dancing in the sky, strangely. Will you not come?’ And Lennoxlove, startled, says yes he will. And they stand together in the field between the stables and the ghillie’s house. ‘Dear James,’ says James, ‘thank you for telling me about this.’ And the second man is so glad he sighs. And James is both me, and you. There’s a look of the green and red northern lights running over our clothes. It’s like if you set fire to wire wool – ever done that? It burns in a rolling way, in an epic way, though small. James must go back inside; James must go to the stables. I don’t know these men. I am both of them, in their sweat-stiffened clothes.
Flatmates
When I woke it was dark again and I began crying; not that I meant to, not that my heart was broken or my mind or anything – just some switch got flipped between unconscious and conscious and the tears bubbled up wet and quick and without any reason. Night tears going down my fingers, going into the corners of my mouth. Had I dreamed of anything – had I gone anywhere again? But I was wearing only the boxers I had gone to sleep in. I pulled on my pyjamas and shoes and walked out of my room, expecting – chaos. Expecting overturned chairs. I had the realisation, slowly, that someone was at home where I was at home as nowhere else – in my own body. This new person; do you get me? Am I making sense? You could say I was pushed aside from myself in that home, and that anything might happen. You could say anything. You, you, a plurality of others. I stood between the table and the doorway of the kitchen and I touched my face and a sob came out. The shock of that led me to start crying again. Great abandoned sobs and tears going through my fingers. But I wasn’t sad – I wasn’t hurt. I’ve never really cried, not at anything. My grandmother would get upset with me for not crying. But I never could, until I cried like something was crying through me and I followed the instruction then, of my body, or whatever else it was, as I would with any kind of arduous process – knowing it would be over soonish, and by the sounds of it no one was in the house.
Bitterhall Page 20