Emotional Geology

by Linda Gillard

  ‘Because it’s there?’

  ‘Exactly. Rather Zen, isn’t it?’

  ‘I preferred Sherpa Tenzing’s comment.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘We’ve done the bugger!’

  I laugh, perhaps more than the remark merits and Calum relaxes a little. ‘You know about climbing, don’t you, Rose?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

  ‘But you’re not a climber?’

  ‘No. I’ve been hill-walking and scrambling, but not serious climbing. How did you know I know?’

  ‘You don’t ask questions. You didn't ask what jumar meant.’

  ‘No need. I've lived and breathed climbing without ever doing it myself. The man I lived with for five years was a serious climber.’

  Calum hesitates. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I say briskly. ‘I threw him out and he never made contact again. I know he was alive for about a year after that. I heard through... another source.’

  ‘Why did he climb?’

  ‘Oh, to escape, I think. He loved the big mountains, the snow, the whiteness, the purity of it all. He said he found it cleansing. It was his penance and his absolution. But it was also a very effective way of avoiding people, family life, commitment - all the messy stuff he couldn’t cope with down here in the real world.’

  ~

  Fuck you, Gavin.

  Fuck you and thousands of others who littered the pure white holy wastes of Everest (and countless other mountains) with your empty oxygen bottles, your abandoned tents, your lost ice-axes, your broken ropes, your unwanted rucksacks, your cameras, your film canisters, bog roll, faeces and the odd unclaimed dead body.

  And for what? What did you achieve? You fucked the mountains - so fucking what! You got off on getting higher, faster, quicker, better than your rivals, than yourselves, high on adrenalin, your risk-charged, pumped-up bodies screaming, throbbing, swelling with oedema, and for what?

  Thrills. Expensive thrills. Deadly thrills. An addiction.

  You messed up the mountains, Gavin, and you messed up me...

  Trails of blood in the snow.

  Snow white.

  Rose red.

  ~

  ‘Why did you throw him out?’

  ‘He was sleeping with another woman and I found out. Usual story. Oh, when you put it like that it sounds so... banal. It wasn't really like that. I mean, I didn’t think he’d been faithful to me all those years - in fact I knew he hadn’t. But, this was... too much. I couldn’t cope. It had to end.’

  Calum is silent for a while. ‘So you’ll be giving climbers a wide berth in future then?’

  His gentle irony pulls me back from tears towards laughter. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For not taking me too seriously. It’s all ancient history. Very painful at the time. But I’m over it now,’ I say brightly.

  In the long silence that follows we both hear the lie.

  ~

  You were the rock I clung to, Gavin, the tree that rooted me to the ground, stopped me from blowing away, floating into the stratosphere, buoyed up by panic and my own hot air and the limitless, terrifying possibilities of my ideas. You contained me, stopped me from shattering into a thousand fragments, tiny, sharp as glass.

  I believed it was possible, it was simply a question of effort, of work, of crystalline honesty, of giving, of openness. For fear and defensiveness can only corrode, corrupt.

  I gave you all myself, Gavin, and that was more, a lot more than you bargained for. And far more than you ever wanted.

  ~

  Calum is watching me. Waiting. My mug is empty but I don’t remember drinking. I dread him asking more questions, know I will have to leave if he does. I don’t want to leave, I want to sit here, cosseted by the cosy fug of the caravan, exposed to this man who is not Gavin, who is nothing like Gavin, who is dragging my mind and my body away from Gavin to another place if only I have the courage to go.

  Eventually he speaks, carefully, after a lot of thought. The incision is gentle, not very deep. ‘Do you mind talking about your work?’ The slight emphasis on the last word tells me he has understood. No doubt my face reflects my relief. Encouraged, he pursues the enquiry. ‘It’s such a different medium. How do you get started? A visual idea presumably, not verbal.’

  ‘Oh, no, it can be both. But I think I translate verbals into visuals automatically. I think I experience everything visually. I feel emotions in terms of colours and textures. I see music - I mean I hear it - like that too. I used to think everybody saw things that way.’

  ‘No, they don’t, but folk who do tend to agree on how they see things - what colour the key of C major is, and so on.’

  ‘Really? How amazing! But verbal or visual, it's all much the same to me. But the traffic is one way. I suppose if the traffic is going the other way you’re a poet?’

  ‘Aye, I suppose so. The brain must be wired up differently. Tell me about your creative process. I’m fascinated. Do you start with a grand design?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. I’ve never had the time or the space to work big - or even think big.’

  ‘Or the confidence? I'm thinking of how women’s art has always been sidelined. Still is.’

  ‘That’s true. I’ve always worked in small chunks, pieces that can be put together to make something bigger. I started with patchwork quilts when my daughter was born, traditional stuff that developed my love of textiles and then I moved on from there. But it was always ‘portable’ art, something I could pick up and run with if the house caught fire - baby on one arm, work on the other. It also had to be concealable. I didn’t really want to make a statement about what I was doing, I wanted people to think it was nothing serious, just a hobby.’

  ‘Like Jane Austen writing novels in a corner of the drawing room, hiding pages under her blotter.’

  ‘Exactly! Nothing I had to say was important enough to be said loud. Or large.’

  He nods. ‘My ex-wife was an art teacher, did I tell you? She used to give her pupils huge pieces of paper to draw on. She said if you gave them a piece of A4 cartridge they'd do a careful, matchbox-sized drawing in the centre of the paper. If you gave them a giant sheet of coloured sugar paper and a stick of charcoal they’d loosen up and let go. They didn’t believe in their drawings until it was ‘play’ and the quality supposedly didn't matter. It’s the same getting kids to write poetry. They’re all writers at primary school, they know what they think and how they want to say it, but gradually all that shrivels up and dies. It’s really sad. And it’s bloody difficult trying to resurrect that confidence, that belief in what they want to say and their ability to say it.’

  ‘But you manage to do it?’

  ‘Aye, sometimes. It's a question of building up their confidence, so I use Alison’s trick. I give them big pieces of coloured paper and felt-tips and get them to work in groups, make word collections, then write a group poem. No problem. You can’t hear yourself think for the arguments! After that experience, they mostly want to write their own poems because they’re fed up with having to write by committee.’

  ‘And what are their poems like?’

  His eyes are alight, excited. I watch his mouth, want his mouth, know what he is going to say.

  ‘Pure dead brilliant!’

  ~

  The rain is horizontal and the caravan strains at its guy ropes occasionally, threatening to topple the columns of books on the floor. While Calum washes up I re-read some of his poems. They are short and dense, as if each word stands for many more. I have to read them slowly so that I can absorb them, bit by bit.

  I’ve never read poetry written by anyone I know. It’s a strangely intense and intimate experience. I feel as if I have seen Calum naked, but in an unerotic context. He makes toast and Marmite and we picnic on the floor by the stove. The windows weep with the condensation that was our words, our breath, the warmth of our bodies.

  Calum waves his piece of toast. �
�So when you’re working, do you have a blueprint in your head?’

  ‘No, not really. I don’t need to know how it will all end, I only have to be able to begin, to see an opening. It might not amount to anything or it might become huge and important, it doesn’t matter a great deal. It’s the detail that matters to me as much as the overall concept. More than the overall concept. There is only detail really, if you look properly. The beach is made up of shells, pebbles and grains of sand, bits of driftwood, rubbish. It’s only when you stand back that you see a coastline. Stay uninvolved, uncommitted - that’s a climbing term isn’t it? With the same sort of meaning?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But I can’t stand back from my work. If I do, it disappears. I have to be right in there with it... You’ll see me peeping out from behind a scrap, some threads, a smudge of colour - I’m in there! I’m not sure I exist anywhere else, apart from inside the work.’

  ‘And you’ve come here to find out.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ My breathing is too rapid and I detect a familiar metallic taste in my mouth that has nothing to do with the Marmite. I should leave. Peace of mind is sitting, forgotten, in a bottle on my bathroom shelf.

  ‘Does it matter to you what the whole looks like, in the end?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but it doesn’t really matter until the end, until you stand back and see what you’ve made. It’s the making that's important to me. Process, I suppose. Sounds a bit posey.’

  ‘No, I know what you mean. For me it’s a question of imposing order on my thoughts, selecting particular words out of thousands, to make a poem. I’d like folk to read it, for sure, but it doesn’t really matter if they don’t. The poem exists. I've made it exist. That’s the main thing.’

  ‘And the meaning of the poem?’

  ‘Well, that’s not for me to say. It means whatever you want it to mean. My meaning won't be the same as yours and mine is no more valid. Once I've written it, a poem has a life of its own, I have to let it go, like a child... What about your work? What does Dunes, Luskentyre mean?’

  ‘Do you mean what does the title mean or what does the work itself mean?’

  He smiles. ‘Chinese boxes! It’s harder for visual artists isn’t it? I hadn’t realised. The encumbrance of words...’

  Something bursts, pierced by his words; a stream of images gushes into my brain and out of my mouth and I speak, not looking at him. ‘What a brilliant title for a poem! Or a series of poems... An exhibition even - of textiles and poems!’ My hands flutter in the air trying to channel my thoughts into words. ‘The textiles could have poems to explain them and the poems could have pictures to explain them. Except that they wouldn't explain exactly - they would just be sign-posts, clues... or maybe just translations into another medium, another language, you know, like those captions you get for tourists, in French and Italian and Japanese... The Encumbrance of Words... The poems and the textiles could be chained together in some way - linked! Oh, God what an awful pun... But each link could be made of a word and so the chains themselves could be poems. It could be interactive maybe! There could be a textile-poem at the end, lots of different pieces of fabric with a word on them, you know, like fridge poetry and people who came to the exhibition could make up their own poem and hang it up on the wall!’ I clutch at Calum’s hand, his bony fingers, his knuckles cool and smooth, like pebbles in my palm. ‘We could do it together, Calum, at the Arts Centre in Lochmaddy, it could be a joint exhibition called The Encumbrance of Words... What do you think?’

  When I finally stop speaking, his face comes into focus and I think at first that he is giving me a blank stare but then I notice that he is scarcely breathing, that he is thinking, considering. He narrows his eyes. Brown skin folds into tiny, delicate pleats as he looks into an imaginary distance.

  I let go of his hand. ‘You think it’s a stupid idea.’

  ‘No! I think it’s... fantastic! It would be beautiful. Colours and pictures and textures and text!’

  ‘Textures and text! Oh— oh— I can see something using calligraphy there. No - words carved on tombstones! But the stones are eroded and encrusted with lichen.’

  Calum shakes his head, laughing. ‘I’m never going to be able to keep up with you - my mind’s on overload already!’

  My heart is thudding now, my throat tight. ‘You think we could do it?’ He nods. ‘Do you think we should?’

  ‘I think we must!’

  Curled up, hugging my knees, rocking back and forth, my mind still racing, I cannot contain the excitement. It escapes as a kind of groan: ‘Oh, this is better than sex!’

  The words tumble into a gulf of silence. Calum appears to be studying the laces of his trainers. When he looks up he isn’t smiling any more.

  I gabble. ‘That’s just something I used to say to my girlfriends. We used to list all the things we thought were better than sex. You know, hot chocolate fudge cake with ice-cream, buying hardback books, breast-feeding, Mahler’s Tenth. You know...’ I am laughing. He isn’t.

  ‘I’m not sure I do. Sounds to me like you and your friends were having sex with the wrong men.’

  ‘We were. Our husbands mostly. Occasionally each other’s.’

  ‘Ah.’ Calum is thoughtful. ‘I don’t see it as an either/or proposition, necessarily.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You seem to think working together, our exhibition, would be better than sex. The two are not mutually exclusive.’

  ‘Oh, that was just a manner of speaking. It was a silly thing to say. I’m sorry.'

  ‘So that would be a “no”?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, you don’t want to go to bed with me.’

  I am about to try another evasion but he skewers me with unsmiling blue eyes. Behind his cool, clever words lies need. ‘No, Calum, that would be a “yes”.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes, I do want to go to bed with you. But I’m not going to. Not yet anyway. But I’m terribly flattered that you’ve asked.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I shouldn't have asked, but it just seemed a natural thing to say. Talking like this, about poetry and climbing, laughing so easily with you. It really turns me on, all this bouncing ideas off each other. I’ve hardly ever experienced that... Well, with climbing pals maybe, but never with a woman.’ He answers the question I would not dream of asking. ‘Alison was a lovely woman, a gifted teacher, and she knew her stuff but... I suppose we didn’t talk a great deal.’

  ‘I don’t think you do if the sex is good. You think you don’t need to. Sex with Gavin was amazing, Wagnerian - God, that man was fit - but he couldn’t hold a conversation. Attention span of a fractious two year old. On the ground anyway. I suppose it must have been different in the mountains otherwise he’d be dead, wouldn’t he? Maybe he is dead by now. Although I somehow think I would know.’ Calum is watching me intently. ‘Oh dear - this is awful! I’ve said I want to go to bed with you and here I am reminiscing about an ex-lover. I’m sorry, Calum.’ He is laughing again. ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘You are a piece of work, Rose! I don’t know what it is about you - you seem so vulnerable but at the same time you are totally your own woman. There’s no front to you. You’re so... exposed.’

  ‘Skinless.’

  ‘Aye, that’s it!’

  ‘People like me, they say we have one less skin than other people. It means we are more open and honest perhaps - I could have pretended I didn’t want you - but it also means we are... more easily hurt.’

  ‘Which is why you’re saying no?’

  ‘At this point in time, Calum, I don’t know why I’m saying no.’ His face brightens and he opens his mouth to speak. I lift my hand to his face, spread my fingers and lay them on his lips, silencing him. ‘I just know it’s the right thing to say. Right for me.’ He opens his mouth wider and closes his lips around my fingertips. His hot, wet mouth shocks me. I withdraw my fingers and resort to cliché. ‘After all, I hardly know you.’

 
‘You know my poetry.’

  ‘Well, you don’t know me, then.’

  ‘I know enough to know that I want you and that making love to you would be the natural extension of all the things we’ve talked about. It would be another way of getting to know each other.’

  ‘You make it all sound so uncomplicated!’

  ‘Do I? I don’t mean to, because I know it isn’t, especially for you, Rose. Och, maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree and you’re just too polite to tell me where to get off!’ The smile is sardonic, but his eyes betray him.

  I lift one hand to his head, cup his ear and bury my fingers in the tangle of dark curls. ‘Calum, don’t move. Please.’ I lean forward and press my lips gently against his, then slide my other hand along his thigh, registering the sudden, involuntary clench of muscle and on into his lap. There I cradle the mound in his bulging jeans.

  ‘Christ, Rose!’ As his mouth moves my lips are grazed by stubble and I inhale his breath. I feel him tense, about to move in response, then he remembers. He mumbles something in Gaelic.

  After a long moment in which we are both quite still, I release him and lean back. ‘Thank you for not jumping me.’

  ‘It’s me,’ he says faintly, ‘who should be thanking you.’

  ‘Well, I think I made my point. I’m not saying no because I’m not attracted to you. I wanted to feel you... taste you... ’

  ‘Please - any time,’ he says in a hoarse whisper. ‘Don’t bother to ask.’

  ‘It’s been a long time, you see. There’s been no one for five years. Not since Gavin. I’ve spent five years murdering what I felt for him, starving my need for him, purging my memory. But somehow it still feels... too soon. They say time heals, but—’

  ‘They lied,’ he says simply, then shrugs. ‘Geological time, maybe.’

  ‘You wrote a poem about that, didn’t you? The slow healing process?’

  ‘Aye.’ Calum looks uneasy.

  ‘Stalactite?’

  He nods. ‘You’ve done your homework... Tell me why you came to Uist of all places. I’m curious.’