Strangers at the Gate

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘I can’t believe he didn’t leave Simmerton,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t see me for dust.’

  ‘Lovatt?’ Shannon said. ‘It’s not even that he didn’t leave. He came back. He didn’t work here when it happened. He was in a great big practice in Edinburgh. And they had a posh flat in the New Town. Jerusalem was just for weekends and holidays. It was only after his wife and kids died that he started his one-man show down here and moved into Widdershins.’

  ‘That is seriously weird,’ I said. ‘Why would he come back?’

  ‘Maybe it was because everyone here knows his story. Maybe that makes it easier. He doesn’t keep meeting new people who ask him the same painful questions over and over again.’

  ‘Could be,’ I agreed.

  ‘Or maybe it’s just that they’re buried in the graveyard here,’ Shannon said. ‘The three of them. Maybe it’s that.’

  ‘Sonsie covered a lot of ground,’ I said. I was thinking maybe Robert Waugh had a point about her gossiping.

  ‘Is it morbid of him, if that’s what it is?’ Shannon said.

  ‘Only natural,’ I said. I felt my stomach move. The spray she had been using to clean the tables was some kind of summer-meadow scent, sweet and thick. It made me think of the air freshener they used in the chapel of rest at the undertaker’s, so heavy and yet never quite managing to mask what lay beneath it.

  ‘What does the Church say?’ Shannon was asking. ‘Is it wrong to want to stay near the earthly remains? Is it you lot who’ve got all the rules about what to do with bodies?’

  I could feel my vision start to soften at the edges. The bright shafts of sunlight beating in at the high windows were turning grey.

  ‘“You lot”?’ I said, forcing a laugh out of myself. ‘“Us lot”, you mean. You’re one of us now, Shannon. Oh, it starts with a committee and a couple of hours in the caff, and before you know where you are you’ll end up with your collar on backwards.’

  ‘Is that what happened to you?’

  ‘Worse!’ I said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘I was a customer. Got a lot of help from a deacon in a parish in Sighthill when I was at a low ebb and that was that.’ I seemed to be letting the Canada story go, I noticed. ‘I’d never really had any plans before. Not after being a princess and an astronaut anyway.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll end up being a minister?’ Shannon said.

  ‘Nah, too much hassle. Do you think you’ll always be a … What would you say you are?’

  ‘White witch,’ Shannon said. ‘No, it’s just a stopgap. I’m on a mission. No pun intended.’

  ‘What sort of mission?’ I said. ‘Anything I can help with?’

  ‘You my neighbour or you the deacon?’ she asked.

  ‘Me a friend, I was thinking really.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ I said. ‘It’s nearly lunchtime and I need the fresh air. Tell me.’

  Chapter 13

  But when we got out into the foyer, Shannon headed for the door into the church instead of the front door to the street.

  ‘This air’s fresher,’ she said.

  ‘That spray cleaner is bogging right enough,’ I agreed.

  ‘How soon do you think a brand-new volunteer can offer to make up some nice lemon and lavender without looking pushy?’

  I said nothing. Mr Sloan at the cottages still resented Tuft after twenty-five years. Unless he was one of those who’d turn on a sixpence now she was dead and make out he was her best friend.

  In here, it was easier to push away the thought of Tuft, dead. The cool dark of the church soothed me. I should have thought of it sooner. I sat down in one of the pews halfway back and bent my head. Guide my hand, Lord. Help me see the way forward from here. Help me see if I have lost my way.

  Ten years I had been a member of the Church of Scotland. No mess, no fuss, as my dad said. Throwing it all away, was how my mum put it. ‘Oh, Finnie!’ she’d said. ‘How could you?’

  ‘It’s different now, Mammy,’ I’d told her. ‘It’s not us against them any more. It’s all of us together against the void.’

  ‘What void?’ she’d said. ‘And if we’re all the same, why bother changing?’

  There was no point trying to explain when I didn’t understand myself. And Edinburgh was the wrong place to claim it was all over anyway. Hearts and Hibs fans still knocked lumps out of each other on derby days, apart from anything.

  Maybe if Paddy and I had had a wedding mass. But how could we, when I worked for the opposition? So there we were, in my parish, with my boss at the altar and my granny and aunties scoffing under their breath in the front pews – Well, if that’s it, that’s it. Like getting a dog licence.

  It rolled off me that day and most other days. I had no regrets. I even had a WWJD ‒ What Would Jesus Do ‒ tattoo. But I would have given anything to send up a Hail Mary for the souls of Lovatt and Tuft this morning. I shook the thought out of my head.

  Shannon was up on the altar, having a look round. ‘Do they actually use this big huge Bible? Or is it just for show?’

  ‘I don’t use the big one,’ I said. ‘It’s usually a bequest and it feels cheeky to stick Post-it notes in it. I’ve got my own wee one that falls open at the good bits.’

  She laughed and came back down to sit beside me. We were quiet for a minute. I think our breathing even got into sync. At least, I could see her sleeve rising and falling in time with mine. The air was dusty, like church air always is, motes in the coloured shafts shining through the stained glass.

  ‘Can I ask a shit-ton of cheeky questions?’ Shannon said, after another minute.

  I nodded.

  ‘Can I say “shit-ton” in a church?’

  ‘Too late,’ I said, laughing. ‘Ask your cheeky questions.’

  ‘Have you read it? The Bible, I mean. Cover to cover?’

  ‘Once,’ I said. ‘It’s like those budget box-sets you get in Asda. There’s some great stuff and then there’s stuff that you’d never actually choose if it didn’t come free with the rest of it.’

  ‘And you – stupid question, I suppose – you believe it all?’

  ‘It’s not really like that. I believe in gravity and evolution and climate change. Shoogle me awake at three in the morning and ask me about them, you’ll always get the same answer. Faith is more like … moments. Glimpses, you know.’

  ‘So you don’t believe in, like, the burning bush and the virgin birth and all that?’

  ‘I believe the stories help,’ I said. ‘Maybe those two wouldn’t make the top ten.’

  ‘And what do you think happens after you die?’ Her voice had changed. This was the question she really wanted an answer for. Not a clever answer, or a cool answer that might change what she thought about ‘churchy’ people. She deserved the truth on this one.

  ‘I think after we die we decompose.’

  I heard her take in a breath so sharp it was almost a gasp.

  ‘So what’s the point of it all?’ she said. ‘If this is all there is?’

  ‘This isn’t so bad, is it?’ I said, leaning over to the side and nudging her. ‘Sitting here in this nice church in the quiet, having a bit ofa chat. This’ll do me. Family, sunsets, chocolate.’

  ‘And then’ – she snapped her fingers – ‘gone?’

  ‘Not as long as people remember you,’ I said. ‘That’s what I think life after death really is. Other people’s memories. So that’s why you live a good life. So a good load of people have got warm memories of you.’

  ‘What about Heaven?’

  ‘That’s how we think of people who’re dead,’ I said. ‘It harms no one.’

  She said nothing for a while and I turned to see what was going on. Her white face couldn’t have got any paler than it was already, and someone who wore contact lenses would always work quite hard not to cry, but she was definitely in some kind of turmoil.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘if someone’s just dropped out of sight – if no one’s grieved, or pictu
red them sitting on a cloud, if no one knows they’re dead, that’s like keeping them out of Heaven?’

  I held my breath, while my heart thumped in the silence. ‘I suppose so,’ I said at last. ‘Who is it you mean?’

  She shook herself, as if coming out of a dream. ‘Just generally. If someone’s lost. And you don’t know if they’re alive or dead. So you can’t picture them anywhere? Heaven or Hell or anywhere?’

  ‘Now then, Hell,’ I said. ‘Hell’s another whole deal altogether.’

  She managed a short laugh to reward the joke. ‘What about Purgatory? And Limbo?’

  I blew my cheeks out and tried to think about it seriously, instead of getting angry, like I usually do. My mum’s depression had begun with a late miscarriage in her forties. ‘Last shake of the bag,’ my dad had announced to my brothers and me, all of us mortified by this evidence of something we’d rather pretend didn’t happen. It was a girl. It would have been a sister. But it was born dead at twenty-six weeks, my mum alone in the bathroom in the flat while my dad was at work and we were all out, my brother having a kick-about by the garages and me sitting on the wall by Khan’s with my pals, taking turns to go in and buy single ciggies, cans of juice and chocolate snakes, making up more and more outrageous stories about what gorgeous Ijaz Khan had said to each of us. We were hysterical and obnoxious and as happy as clams.

  Then I went up to the house to the toilet, found it locked, and listened to my mum telling me through the door to go and phone my dad at work and ask him to come home. Life before mobiles ‒ it’s hard to imagine now.

  I reckon she could have recovered if she believed the wee mite had gone to Heaven. Or just been snuffed out. It was the Limbo of the infants, on the edge of Hell, that sent her on her downward spiral.

  ‘D’you fancy some real fresh air?’ I said to Shannon. ‘A walk?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That sounds good. Why don’t we walk up the cut and take a look at the house? Unless you’ve already been?’

  It seemed a weird idea to me, to look at the burned-out wreck of a house where three people had died, but, then, it was no different from looking at the ruins of ransacked castles really. Just more recent. ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘No, I haven’t been anywhere. And I need to get oriented.’

  ‘Can you just take off from work, though?’ Shannon said.

  I could have told her she was more in need of pastoral attention than anyone else in sight so going for a walk with her was work. But we were sticking with the cover story of friendship. ‘As long as you drive,’ I said. ‘Or if I’m back by five o’clock to pick up Paddy.’

  ‘I can’t drive. Albino people can’t get driving licences.’

  ‘Yeah? It really is more than pale skin, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just a bit,’ Shannon said.

  ‘Do you suffer from the cold?’ I asked, as we walked back out into the foyer. ‘Like arthritis. Because you could probably get a heating allowance.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘The duvet on your couch,’ I said.

  She flushed, her white face turning so dark it was almost purple. ‘Binging on Netflix,’ she said. ‘Busted!’ Then she frowned at me. ‘Why would we drive on a walk?’

  ‘City girl,’ I said. ‘Drive to the start of the path and change into your mountain boots.’

  ‘And download an app, right?’

  She pulled on a hat and sunglasses as we descended the church steps and set off down the high street. Was it my imagination that a couple of the Simmerton townspeople gave us looks from the sides of their eyes as we passed by? It was a small enough town to make any newcomer stand out on a winter Wednesday morning, but still the memory was hanging round me of how Tuft and Lovatt, then Mr Sloan, had acted as if Shannon and her cottage didn’t exist. Or maybe it was me, a woman in a dog-collar. I pulled my scarf over it and smiled at the next person we passed – a mum with a pushchair – who looked away, tight-faced and unbending.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ I said to Shannon. ‘Is it a nice place for newcomers? Mr Sloan wasn’t exactly friendly but Adam and Sonsie seem okay.’

  We were passing the library now, a grey stone Carnegie job, solid and comforting. Except it looked like a coffee shop close up.

  ‘The real library’s out by the leisure centre,’ Shannon said. ‘Better handicapped access and all that.’ She played a little tune, popping her lips. ‘I’m not the best person to ask about how friendly Simmerton is,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not a good example.’

  She had led me off the main street and up a lane that switched back and forth with little runs of steps where it was too steep even with handrails.

  ‘Which way are we going?’ I said, as the lane petered out into a track. ‘How do you know where you are if you can’t see the sun?’ There were so many steps on this bit of path: maybe it was better to call it a staircase. Either way, I didn’t have enough breath to keep talking until we got to the top where a viewing place was built out on an overhang.

  We weren’t above the treetops but there was light between the trunks in every direction, and we could see down through a gap in the planting to the Simmerton road snaking up the valley on one side and an even narrower valley with a narrower road on the other. A cut, as they called it.

  ‘Is there prejudice?’ I said, once I’d taken a couple of lungfuls of air and let them out again. Once I’d stopped panting. ‘Is that what makes you a bad example?’ I didn’t think I had ever met an albino person before. There was a baddie in some thriller I half remembered.

  ‘Nah,’ said Shannon. ‘Not here. Well, a few arseholes. But not really.’

  ‘I wondered if that was why you dyed your hair.’

  ‘Why do you dye yours?’ she said.

  I couldn’t see her eyes behind the black lenses, but she was grinning in my direction. I put a hand up and ran it through my hair, overdue for a wash and needing the roots touched up. ‘Fair point,’ I said.

  ‘Nah,’ she said again. ‘I reckon it’s my businesses. The SAD light’s bad enough. They think it draws attention to Simmerton’s downside.’

  I rolled my eyes. I had only been there a couple of days but up here, in the light, with a wedge of sky above me instead of a sliver, I felt as if I was close to floating.

  ‘Plus it’s making nancies out of everyone, pandering to imaginary problems. You know.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ I said.

  I waited to see if she was going to say more. But she turned away from the view and started down the far side of the hill. This path was just as steep. ‘What’s your other business?’ I said at last. But I had left it too long. She hadn’t heard me.

  Chapter 14

  ‘You coming?’ Shannon shouted, from below me on the path. I went trotting down towards her. Descending was easier. Within minutes we were on the hard surface of a country road, emerging through a latched gate and slithering down a verge of dead nettles and brown bracken.

  ‘This looks exactly the same as…’ I said. ‘Wait, this is our lane.’

  ‘Right,’ said Shannon.

  ‘This is our lane,’ I said again, stupidly.

  ‘What do you think of the shortcut? When I saw your man setting off on a bike I wondered if he knew there was a quicker way on foot.’

  A walk up the cut to look at the house, she had said. She meant the drive from our gate lodge to Widdershins. A walk up the drive was normal enough, surely. But to look at the house? To snoop at the house where our landlord and landlady lived, while they were away on holiday? I wished I could be more sure of why Shannon was thinking about souls in Limbo, stuck between the living and the dead.

  ‘Did I tell you I looked in the windows before?’ she said. ‘I mean, not when there was anything to see.’

  I couldn’t speak. My mouth tasted sour with a sudden rush of adrenalin. We were passing the messy garden full of skateboards, passing the Sloans’ neat patch, all the ash from yesterday’s fire already cleared away. Mr Sloan’s gates were ope
n and the double doors were hooked back to show an empty garage. If they were out, there was no one within a mile of Shannon and me. Our footfall on the damp road was the only sound, as if even the birds had left in search of sunshine. I put my hands deep in my pockets, working my house key into my knuckle, and kept walking.

  ‘Have I shocked you?’ Shannon said. ‘I was sure I had said. And I didn’t mind you looking over the gate at my place.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘You mean my house? Yes, you said you’d had a look at my house. Before we moved in. Like you said. Before there was anything to see.’ I was babbling.

  ‘Did you think I meant the Sloans’?’

  ‘I thought you meant the big house,’ I said. ‘That’s more worth gawping at than anything else.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Shannon said. ‘They’re away, after all. Mind you, you don’t need to press your nose to the window, do you? You and … Paddy, is it? You’ll be invited round. You’ll be on the guest list.’

  ‘You’re not?’ I said. ‘They don’t—’ I’d been going to say, ‘They don’t strike me as the snooty sort,’ and I was even congratulating myself on saying ‘don’t’ instead of ‘didn’t’. Then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know them. I was supposed to be walking up this drive for the first time. I wished I believed Paddy about that noise on Monday night being a deer. I wished I could be sure that this whole walk thing wasn’t a set-up, Shannon nudging me into lie after lie: I hadn’t seen the house; I hadn’t met the Dudgeons. Even the way she’d said the cut, the house struck me as careful and sneaky, like she was trying to wrong-foot me. Either that or my guilt was twisting everything. ‘They don’t still act like Lord and Lady Muck, do they?’ I said. ‘Even though they don’t live in the big big house these days?’

  ‘Maybe they hand out bowls of gruel and sixpences to the Sloans and the Manns,’ said Shannon, ‘but not to me. Although they’ve never threatened to sling me out, even if half of Simmerton thinks I’m on the game.’