To my relief we didn’t dawdle at Glasgow Central. It was straight out of the station to the car in which Helen’s mother Sarah was sitting at the wheel, smoking. Because she had double-parked we set off immediately, and introductions were done as she drove us west out of Glasgow. She was a poet, Helen had told me on the train, as light relief from our other discussions, which we’d agreed to postpone until we had more privacy. I told her that everyone thought they were a poet. No, said Helen, she was published and well reviewed. Sarah was an attractive-looking woman—more so in some ways than Helen. She had her hair much longer, but it had gone completely grey and looked as though she hadn’t combed or washed it for several days, giving her a wild look. She caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and smiled. The warmth of it dissipated my pent-up anxiety of the last few days, as if I’d been given permission to feel tired. I wondered why Helen’s father would leave such a woman.
We drove west for an hour, until we reached the shore, and stopped at a small ferry terminal. Out on the loch (“It’s not called a lake, Michel”) I could see the ferry, a small blob that appeared to grow bigger while remaining in the same spot. The Scots pronounced the “ch” in loch as Arabs pronounced the “kh” in Khoury. I left Helen and Sarah chatting, and stretched my legs while checking for people from the train and memorizing car models and number plates and faces; anyone following us would have to catch the same ferry.
Looking at the mountains on the other side of the loch reminded me that I had never been in the countryside before. I had always left one city only to land in another, spending the distance in between airborne. From Beirut to Nicosia, from Nicosia to Berlin, both East and West. From Berlin to Moscow, then back to Berlin. From Berlin to London, with trips to Paris, Geneva, Milan, Oslo, Athens and other cities in Europe, sometimes not even leaving the airport. I had been to Beeskow outside Berlin to learn how to defend myself with my bare hands, but except for that I had never been outside a major urban setting. I had never been on a boat either. Helen and I went to the front “It’s called the bow, Michel”), although this bow was flat and the water had a hard time pushing past the steel face that when let down became a car ramp. We tentatively held hands, both feeling our way.
“The bow is usually pointy, Michel.”
Irritated, I told her that I had seen boats before, and came from a seafaring people.
She laughed and squeezed my hand. It was the first time she had laughed since we had left London, and it was good to hear. On the other side of the loch Sarah drove until we passed just trees and rock. The road rose and became narrow and steep and we had to stop to let the occasional car coming the other way pass by. Obviously, I was going to be reliant on Helen and her mother to get around since I couldn’t drive. The only public transport, according to Helen, was a daily bus to and from the nearest town, which itself was several kilometers from their house. Thirty minutes later we were going down instead of up, and I could see incredible views of the water through the gaps in the trees. Then we were on narrow roads again and it was getting dark. Helen and Sarah had gone quiet, Sarah occasionally opening her window to smoke. I dozed in the back.
When we stopped, I learned that nighttime in the country is not like nighttime in the city; it is completely dark. It would have been impossible to see at all if not for the light given off by the stars. And the sky was full of stars, too many for me to take in at once. I craned my neck to see them, and the more I looked the more were revealed. I heard a rhythmic roar in the background; it came and went, like someone repeatedly dragging something over gravel.
“Michel,” it was Sarah’s low, cigarette-damaged voice, “help me with this shopping. Helen’s fallen asleep.”
Inside the house, I helped unload groceries in the small kitchen. Sarah put a large pan of water on the stove.
“Put some lights on, Michel.”
I obeyed, going into the front room and putting on a floor lamp. There were no harsh overhead lights, everything was indirectly and softly lit, every bulb subdued with a dark shade. It smelled both of stale cigarette smoke and the inside of a Greek Orthodox church. It was like a bigger version of Helen’s room in Tufnell Park. Throws and cushions were everywhere. One wall was covered in a mess of books. French windows opened onto a wooden deck—I unlocked them and stepped outside for some clean air. And what air it was. I was hit by the salty smell of the sea. The source of the roaring became apparent; the house was practically on the beach. Although I couldn’t see it clearly, the sea was ebbing and flowing in the distance, and I could just make out the white line where the water kept breaking on the shore. Sarah joined me on the deck, holding two big glasses of red wine. She gave me one and I took it, not wanting to break the spell. We stood together, listening to the water, looking out over the dark beach. She had put a shawl around her shoulders, and she stood close enough for it to touch my arm.
“Should we wake Helen?” I asked.
“You’ll like it here, it’s my refuge from reality,” she said, ignoring my question. She lit a cigarette. “I hope you’ll be able to rest for a few days; there are very few people around so you’ll get plenty of privacy.” I wondered how much Helen had told her. We stood for a while, the glass growing heavy in my hand. I could smell the tannins coming off the wine. I was acutely aware of Sarah beside me. I felt safe. Then Helen’s sleepy voice called from inside the house.
“There you are,” Helen said, stepping onto the deck. I felt guilty and stepped away from Sarah, as if I had been caught doing something improper. “Mother, we haven’t been here two minutes and you’re already corrupting him.” They both laughed at some private joke, and Helen took the wine glass from me. “I told you, he doesn’t drink.” I gave them a stupid grin.
We ate pasta by candlelight in the small kitchen. Helen and her mother finished the bottle of wine between them and opened a second. I observed the similarities in the two women’s facial expressions, the way they pushed back their hair, how they favored one side of their mouth for smiling. I detected an edginess between them, a tension apparent in the comments passed off as jokes and in the forced jollity of Helen’s tone—her face had set in a permanent grin. I assumed this was to do with their shared history. It came to me as I watched them that Helen’s father could have been driven away rather than pulled away. Sarah appeared to be such a strong woman, and that didn’t sit well with some men. I caught her once or twice studying me over the candles as Helen talked of her thesis and her trip to Turkey, and the lambency of the light and her unkempt grey hair made her look like a white witch. When I came back into the kitchen after using the toilet they were having a whispered argument which stopped as soon as they saw me.
“Mother and daughter stuff, Michel, terribly boring,” Sarah said, getting up and clearing the plates. I hoped that Helen wasn’t confiding too much in her mother, but I gained no clues from either of their expressions.
After dinner Helen and I went out onto the deck and down some wooden steps onto the beach. She took her sandals off and flung them back onto the deck.
“The tide is out,” she said, and ran off ahead of me into the darkness.
“Helen,” I whispered, inexplicably worried about shouting in the dark wilderness. I ran after her until her footprints were no longer visible. I could only see a few meters ahead of me. I had moved away from the sea and was rising onto softer sand mixed with grass. It grew in clumps with spiky tips and I lost her trail. I caught a glimpse of white ahead. I headed towards it, cursing the grass, wondering how she had come through here barefoot, not realizing that it was easier than in shoes.
I came across her lying spread-eagled on the sand, looking up at the sky. She was naked.
“I’m glad it’s you,” she said. “For a second I thought it might be that well-hung brute of a butcher’s son again—he wanders about these dunes at night and it’s difficult to fight him off.”
“Again?” I looked around, as if he might be hiding in the grass. She laughed, but it wasn’t her usual l
augh.
“You’re so easy to tease, ma belle. Come here and get naked.”
I sat near her on the sand. “You’re drunk,” I said.
“I think I might be entitled, don’t you? My boyfriend could be a terrorist.”
“I’m not a terrorist,” I said, but I was pleased with the term “boyfriend.”
“But that’s exactly what you’d say if you were one.” She moved her arms and legs in arcs, making smoothed segments of sand underneath them and a ridge of it between her thighs. “Do you want to fuck under the stars?”
I would never get used to her crudeness. I shook my head, I needed to sleep; and besides, I could never do it out here.
“It’s my mother, isn’t it?” She looked up at the stars. “You’d prefer it if she was out here.” I kept my mouth shut and stood up. I knew better than to argue with a drunk woman, especially about her mother. “I bet you like older women—all that sagging flesh. You Mediterranean boys are all attached to your mothers.” I thought of Mama and worked my jaw. Then I thought of Zorba, old enough to be Helen’s father. I wanted to say something hurtful about his sagging flesh, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Maybe if I drank I could—alcohol seemed to make hurting other people much easier.
“I’m going to bed,” I said.
“I think I’ll wait for the butcher boy and his sausage.” She giggled. I moved into the darkness, hopefully in the direction I’d come from.
“Michel! Wait, please,” she said, sounding less brash. I stopped and looked around. She was struggling into her dress, pulling it down over her head, and I felt a surge of desire that I hadn’t felt when she was lying with her legs apart on the sand. She tugged the dress over her hips and walked up to me, stuffing her white panties into my pocket. We walked along for a bit before she put her arm through mine.
Forty-Two
When I woke I was on my own, and it took me a moment to remember where I was. Then I heard the sea sucking at the sand and shingle. The open window opposite the bed framed a uniformly blue sky. I could also hear swooping bird cries, and the distant shrieking and shouting of children. The other single bed was unmade but empty. Helen and I were sleeping in this room and her mother was in the double bedroom next door, although I hadn’t seen Helen last night, having left them talking when we’d got back from the beach. It was eleven o’clock.
I went to the source of all this light and sound and looked out over a crescent-shaped sandy beach. Judging from a map I’d looked at last night, I was looking at it from the southern tip of the crescent, and a rocky slope rose gradually at the other, some two kilometers away. I could see no other houses, but a dozen people were on the beach, far enough away that I could only make out their sex by their swimwear. A group of smaller figures huddled over the sand, the source of the shouts and laughter. I could roughly work out from the deck below me where Helen and I had ended up last night. I got dressed and went downstairs. Helen had left a note on the kitchen table: “Have taken Mum to Glasgow. She’s going to London. Back this afternoon. Love Helen.” I was surprised that Sarah was leaving so soon, particularly since she’d driven all the way into Glasgow the day before to pick us up. Did something happen between them last night?
After I had fried some eggs, wandered around the house (two rooms and a kitchen downstairs, two and a bathroom upstairs), lain on Helen’s mother’s bed, looked in all the drawers and cupboards, examined the books (mostly poetry) and found an attic hatch behind which to hide my documents and money (keeping the envelope on me), I stepped onto the deck with some old binoculars I found and sat in a faded deckchair.
I could watch the beach from here, the binoculars brought everyone into detailed focus. I looked for individual men or couples fully dressed, people with radios or headphones or binoculars of their own. I scoured the dunes, then went upstairs and scoured them from the window before going back outside. I could see two middle-aged men sitting at the north end of the beach in shorts and T-shirts and sunglasses. I didn’t know if it was the usual thing in Scotland for men of this age to go to the beach on their own. But then two women emerged from the dunes carrying baskets and a beach umbrella, joining the men and gesticulating, perhaps protesting at having to carry everything. The men laughed and one of them got up and put up the umbrella. Otherwise there were three families and a teenage couple, further down the beach, entwined around each other. It was the two couples together I decided to keep an eye on.
I would have expected more people to be on the beach in this weather but Sarah had mentioned that it was difficult to get to; you couldn’t park nearby, which put most people off.
I removed my shoes and socks, spread my toes. This end of the beach, where the house was built, was more rocky and shingly, unlike the widest middle part and northern tip, which were yellow with sand. Across the water was a large landmass that rose high into the clouds from the water. I alternately watched some boats and the foursome with the binoculars until my eyes grew tired and I put the binoculars down.
When I woke the sun was low and Helen was sitting in a chair beside me. She was holding a perspiring glass of white wine, half empty. On the small table between us was my codeine sulphate. Not a single packet, but all six packs that I had rescued from my safety deposit box. I glanced at her, but she was looking out at the beach, now empty apart from a family who were packing up. I must have taken the codeine out of my bag in the bathroom before I’d hidden the documents and money in the attic and forgotten to put it back. One pack I might have explained away, but not six.
“I see you’ve managed to take your shoes off—that’s progress, Michel, it really is.” I wasn’t sure what she meant.
“What happened to your mother?” I asked, to buy myself time.
“She went home, that’s what happened.” A follow-up question would be a waste of time.
“What happens now?” I asked. She took a long breath through flared nostrils and picked up a packet of the codeine, shaking it gently. I was just grateful that she hadn’t flushed it down the toilet. I was starting to sweat, and it wasn’t the Scottish summer.
“Codeine sulphate is a painkiller, I’ve looked it up,” she stated. I nodded. She looked at me and I looked at the beach. “You can only get it on prescription.” I nodded again. “You must be in a lot of pain to need so much,” she said, without irony. I was trying to tell whether the tide was going out. “Do you take it all the time?”
“Only when I can’t sleep,” I said.
“Can you get to sleep without it?”
“Yes of course. Sometimes I get headaches, that’s all.”
She tossed the codeine back onto the table but it slid onto the deck. She sipped her wine. I had to restrain myself from picking the packet up. “Sorry, I thought we’d moved on from lying,” she said.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds then turned to look at her. “OK then. I take it every night because I cannot sleep without it. I’ve been taking it for several years. It clears my head of…well, everything.”
“In that case maybe I should try it. I could really do with clearing my head,” she said. There was a time when I would have liked nothing better, but that was when the morphine was running through my brain, not when I was clear-headed.
“It’s not a good idea,” I said. “Especially not with alcohol…”
“No, not now, later, when you usually take it, before we go to bed. I want to know what it does for you.” She leaned forward and flung the rest of her wine out of the glass onto the sand. Then she stood up and stretched. “First, though, we must clean the beach.”
* * *
Cleaning the beach meant walking the length of it with a large plastic bag and a long-handled grabber that allowed Helen to pick things up without bending down. It was for the detritus of the day-trippers: empty Coke cans, dirty tissues, chocolate bar wrappers, plastic bags, even a used condom (no doubt from the teenage couple I’d seen earlier).
“They have no respect for this place,” said Helen. “They thin
k they can just leave their shit everywhere.” I walked barefoot on the sand, picking up things weathered by the sea and left by the tide. Flotsam and jetsam, according to Helen, rubbish thrown overboard, sometimes floating all the way in from the Atlantic. My favorite things were bits of wood worn smooth and bleached by years of exposure. I collected an armful of these and carried them back to the house.
“Can I make a fire?” I asked.
She laughed, and it was good to hear the spontaneous, unaffected nature of it. “Yes, you can make a fire. I’ll make some supper.”
We ate in front of the small fireplace in the living room—you cannot be outside in Scotland at dusk because of the little insects that eat you alive. Helen didn’t drink any alcohol.
“Does the codeine make you horny?” she asked, when we were done eating.
“No, it just makes you feel warm and fuzzy.”
“Then let’s fuck before we go upstairs, I think there are some scarves somewhere.”
“No scarves,” I said. “Let’s just make love.” So we made love, with the curtains open to the night, in front of my small fire, without scarves or other aids, and it was like that first time in Tufnell Park, after the jazz club. We had overlap, and we finished in the same place at the same time.
Afterwards, we watched the fire until it died and it started to get cold; we were still naked. She went upstairs to get a blanket.
“Do you still need the tablets, even after what we have just done?”
I nodded, embarrassed, but tired of lying. She prepared a tray with two glasses of water, the packet of codeine and some incense, then put it on the bottom of the stairs. She came over and pulled me up. She pulled the blanket off me onto the floor and took my hands.
“If I do this with you, then it will be the last time we do it. We do it together, but from tomorrow you start to wean yourself off. I’ll do it with you, one tablet less each day until you don’t need them anymore.” She shook my hands violently as if to shake off my torpor. “Do we have a deal? We’ll get rid of the pain some other way.” I wasn’t sure I could do it. I felt exposed, not just naked. I fidgeted and looked around the room, anywhere but into her eyes or at her body. “You have to promise me, otherwise you can take the tray and go to bed on your own—tonight, tomorrow and every night.” I looked down at the space between our bare feet.
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