‘Kevin shut up!’ Dylan snapped, standing, picking up Deidre’s clothes, the dry and the dripping wet.
‘Well I’m jist askin’ da question. It might be dat she doesnay have da chance to go nudist swimming at Stayne Hoose.’
Deidre’s eyes met Stuart’s. He was very quiet, regarding her with apprehension and embarrassment. There would be questions to be answered. She thought of Mavis, a low inaudible groan escaping from her.
‘Come on,’ Dylan said, pulling at her arm, directing her towards the embankment, striding ahead of her, yanking her along behind him. ‘Where’s your back pack?’ he barked, a hoarse rawness around the edges of his voice. He threw her clothes up onto the bank, turned and looked at her, tautness in his bearing, something wound tight as if the wire was just about to snap.
‘I didn’t bring one.’
‘Where’s the cross?’
‘I got rid of it.’
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Where?’
‘I threw it over the cliff where the stone is.’
Dylan stepped closer to her. She wondered if he could smell remnants of excrement on her and she blushed in humiliation.
He scrutinised her face, his eyes boring into hers. ‘Bull. Shit.’
‘We’ll head off then,’ Malcolm said, stepping past them. Stuart and Kevin followed, clambering up the ridge. Stuart stood at the top of the embankment, looking down on them.
‘Will ye be awright?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Dylan replied shortly, his angry eyes remaining on Deidre.
‘D’ye want me t’take some o’dis stuff?’ Stuart continued, pointing to Deidre’s wet clothes on the ground at his feet.
‘No. She can carry it herself.’
Stuart walked away with a quick glance back before running to catch up with Malcolm and Kevin. Deidre could hear them talking amongst themselves like a pack of old fish wives as they made their way up and across the field towards the Coffin Road.
Dylan stared at her, radiating anger. ‘You said you were going to the croft,’ he started. ‘You said you would be back by seven! I thought we had an agreement on that?’
Deidre shook her head. There’d been no agreement. She thought they’d finished their affair. She thought it was over.
‘Eleven o’clock comes,’ Dylan continued without taking a breath, ‘and you’re still not back. I walk to the croft and I can’t find you anywhere. You said you were going back to the croft,’ he reiterated. ‘But you’re not there! I’m looking all over the place. Did you fall down? Did you have a concussion, a broken leg, did you fall over a cliff, was your body crashing against the rocks? I’ve been in this God forsaken place all night! Where the fuck have you been? Didn’t you hear me calling you?!’
Deidre looked at him feeling the tap tap on her heart. He’d come looking for her, calling her name until his voice had gone hoarse.
‘I go back to Stayne this morning, let Stuart and Malcolm know that you’re missing – again,’ he added pointedly. ‘I rang Kevin to see if he could help out - again. He helped us look for you the first time as well,’ he added shortly. ‘We’ve been here all morning looking for you! All fucking morning, Deidre! These men have jobs to do, farms to run, they can’t spend their days searching for you! And there you are!’ he dropped his voice an octave lower, a few degrees calmer, reigning himself in, ‘taking a swim in a freezing ocean! And you’re naked!’ He said this with stark incredulity, a pause descending between his words. ‘Are you aware of how mad this looks? I mean you, as a sane person, do you appreciate how crazy your actions appear right now? Tell me you can still tell the difference.’
Of course she could tell the difference; she had poor sanitary control, not poor sanity control. Deidre looked at him, at the scowling anxiety on his face, the rancour that still animated him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, reaching out, noticing a small dark bruise above his left eyebrow. ‘I didn’t mean to make you worry.’
He shrugged her hand away. ‘I’m so angry with you right now.’
She was cold, her wet legs freezing, a cold draught blowing up under the jacket. He was dripping wet as well she realised, his boots squelching. She started to shake, her legs trembling. There was a moment’s hesitation before he stepped up to her, wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. Tight. She felt his warmth, his reality. She felt her love for him crack through the veneer and flow through her like spring water. She would never upset him again, would never let him worry again.
‘You’re never to come back here,’ he said in her ear. ‘Promise me.’
‘I promise,’ she said without hesitation, and she meant it. She’d done what she had to do. She’d delivered the cross to the rightful owner. Taran could rest in peace now and she could move on. One day she would tell Dylan what had happened, what she’d experienced, real or otherwise. But not today, not yet. She had to digest it first, pick through the bones. ‘Can we go home,’ she said, ‘I’m freezing.’
‘Yeah, my nuts are crawling up inside my pelvis,’ Dylan replied, pulling himself up the embankment, reaching down to give Deidre a hand up. He picked up her clothes. ‘Put these dry clothes on,’ he said, handing over her bra and long sleeved t-shirt to her. She unzipped his jacket and slipped it off, finding herself naked again.
‘Why were you in the water?’ Dylan asked, watching her clothe the top half of her body. She would have to walk back to the car bare arsed.
‘I slipped in some mud,’ she responded, her eyes averted. ‘I was covered in it.’ She slipped her jacket on, shorter than Dylan’s, her naked legs more exposed to the elements as they began the long cold trek back to the car.
‘Where have you been for the past twenty four hours?’ Dylan persisted, his boots squelching with each footstep. ‘I’ve been all over these valleys looking for you. I even went up to Erdiness, hanging over the edge to see if you’d fallen over.’
‘I found a cave,’ she said, walking, eyes on the ground. ‘I went inside and got lost.’
Dylan halted and she stopped and turned to look at him.
‘A cave?’ he repeated. He was scrutinising her face, small creases forming at the corners of his squinting eyes.
‘I couldn’t find my way back out,’ she said, turning away and walking on ahead.
‘Why were you in a cave?’
Deidre continued walking, ignoring his question, making some ground between them.
‘Deidre!’ Dylan called, and she stopped again, turned to look at him. ‘What were you doing in a cave?’
‘I just wanted to have a look.’
Dylan walked towards her, his eyes narrowed, his brows knitted together. ‘A look at what?’
She took a deep breath, adjusted her stance. Her knees were trembling. ‘George had drawn a sketch and I just wanted to have a quick look before I left and was never allowed to come back here again,’ she added pointedly. ‘That was all. But I got lost.’
‘You went into a cave and got lost,’ he confirmed. ‘Where is this cave?’
‘For God’s sake, what is this? An inquisition? It’s over that way,’ she said, her hand waving vaguely out across the landscape, her eyes involuntarily looking to the chamber entrance inconspicuous in the rock strewn expanse of Muddow’s Field. ‘Look, you found me and I’m okay so can we go now? I’m freezing.’ She turned and walked quickly away, Dylan catching up with her. They walked in silence across the rise of Muddow’s Field, the loch and surrounding marsh of Swabbie Bog coming into view.
‘You nearly took one of my eyes out yesterday. Look,’ he said, pointing a finger at his forehead. Deidre stopped, peering at the small dark bruise above his left eye. She had noticed it earlier down by the bay but it hadn’t registered, remembering now how she’d driven out of Stayne’s carpark yesterday at speed, remembered seeing Dylan in her rear view mirror lifting his arms to protect himself against the flying gravel shooting through the air like bullets. She felt awful, she could have really hurt him, blinded him, and she’d just driven away.
‘I’m so sorry, Dylan,’ she said, harrowed by remorse.
Dylan tugged at her arm. ‘Come up this way, it’s all boggy down there.’ He clasped her hand, held it tight, directing her uphill as they circumvented the loch. ‘Maybe now I can finish what I was going to say before you charged off yesterday,’ he said glancing sideways at her as they walked. ‘I think it might be a good idea for you to get away from here,’ he continued, ‘so I think you should come back to Dublin with me for a while.’ There was a pause in the flow of his words. ‘Stay at my place, see how you feel. You don’t have to stay with me, I’m just offering, stay in a hotel if you want. We won’t make any definite plans, just see how we go.’
She felt the warm grip of his hand guiding her through this cold bleak landscape. Yes. Yes, she would go to Dublin with him. She would go anywhere with him.
He shrugged, looked at her as they walked. ‘What do you think? I think we could make a go of it. I think we’ve got something together I think is worth pursuing.’ He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it and she could feel the warmth of his breath against her icy cold fingers. ‘I’m not putting pressure on you or anything, I just think it would be a good idea for you to get away from here.’
His gaze lingered on her, gracing her with a limp smile.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’ll come to Dublin with you… and we’ll see what happens.’
They walked on in silence.
‘Everyone’s talking about you,’ Dylan announced breaking into her thoughts. ‘They’re calling you That Crazy Hart Girl. They’re saying you’ve got the curse.’ She could hear that he was trying to make light of it but it didn’t carry in his voice.
‘Started by Mavis no doubt,’ she said.
Dylan shook his head. ‘No, started by you. And now this, this morning, will just confirm it to them. This is a small community; gossip is their way of life. As you can see there’s not much else to do around here,’ he said, his arm sweeping out in a curve encompassing the empty landscape.
Dylan
He couldn’t feel his legs, wrapped in wet denim, the lower half of his body numbed by the wind. This was his second round trip along this track in less than twenty-four hours. He glared at the back of Deidre’s hooded head as she traversed the Coffin Road ahead of him. Other than responding sparsely to his questions, she’d barely said a word the entire length of the walk, head bent forward, focussed on the ground in front of her. Although, he hadn’t had much to say either, lost in his own thoughts, his fatigue making it difficult to walk and talk simultaneously.
He stumbled, his numbed feet tripping over the uneven ground.
‘Fuck!’ he cursed, his temper flaring. Deidre didn’t miss a step, he noticed, didn’t slow, didn’t turn around to check on him. He was beginning to doubt that she was aware of his presence at all. His irritation from exhaustion and his anger at Deidre were two separate emotions he realised, his eyes travelling the length of her bare legs, arcs of her bum cheeks flashing just below the hem of her jacket with each step.
She must be freezing, he thought, followed by the callous belief that she deserved it. That’s what she gets, he heard himself think, that’s what she gets for acting crazy, for going into freezing cold water, naked, for coming out here, for staying out here, for making him worry, for making him come out here to search for her, twice! He could stumble and tumble down the side of this hill and she wouldn’t even notice, he thought. She didn’t care. Did she care? Did he care?
Yes.
Yes, he cared very, very much. Something had happened to him in these past couple of weeks. Something he hadn’t expected, something he hadn’t gone looking for, something that had come right up to him and slapped him in the face and knocked him off his feet. He was in love with her, and all his worry and all his fear over the past twenty four hours had crystallised this emotion into pure unadulterated fact. He was in love with this half naked woman walking in front of him, this woman he barely knew at all, this woman who appeared to be walking a tightrope above an abyss of craziness.
Had she always been crazy but had managed to hide it from him even in their most intimate moments?
Crazy or cursed? Crazy and cursed?
Cursed... He thought about that word, about the beliefs of the inhabitants of this isle, the stories and the history of this place on this desolate, abandoned side of Ayres Kame. This was the twenty first century; this wasn’t the age of superstitions and folklore.
So did he believe in curses? Yes, yes he did.
His grandmother on his mother’s side had the sight, that extra sense. No one ever really spoke about it, it was just a fact, the way some people had bright red hair, you might see it blazoning in the sunlight one day and comment on it, but that would be about it. It wasn’t something that came up in everyday conversation, it was merely an accepted detail, part of that person’s makeup. Everyone knew Aida Smyth had clairvoyant capabilities.
As a boy growing up, when Aida was still alive, it had been a game of his mother’s to drop by on Aida unexpectedly with the two boys. He could still remember standing on his grandmother’s doorstep, his mother’s hand poised, ready to knock, a conspiratorial smile on her face as she looked down on Dylan and Colin. And every time, every time they entered that house they were greeted with the sound of the kettle’s high pitched whistle, and the aroma of fresh baked cakes or scones or biscuits scenting the air. She always knew they were coming and they’d never been able to catch her out.
He loved his Gran, he still missed her, still thought about her. She’d advised him on many things, guided him as best she could through his adolescent years.
‘What should I do Gran, should I do this or do that? Should I take Woodwork or Art? Should I go out with Sandra or Cathy? Should I buy this bike or that bike?’ She always had the right answer.
But the one thing that stuck out in his mind, and still did, the one thing that convinced him above all else, was her special attention to Colin. It wasn’t until he was older, grown up, after Colin had died that he’d understood why she always gave Colin the biggest slice of cake or the penny she’d found at the back of the drawer. He’d always thought it was favouritism, that his Gran liked his older brother better than him.
He remembered the last time he saw Aida Smyth. It had been Easter Sunday dinner at his parents. Colin had come over from Shetland with Katy for the weekend, her belly expanding daily. It had irked him all day the way Granny Smyth had paid a lot of undue attention to Colin, sitting beside him, involved in long conversations with him, just him, watching him with a wistfully sad expression on her face. Dylan had supposed that it was because he now lived in Shetland and wasn’t around as much.
The day had come to a close and it was time for Aida to leave, his father chauffeuring her the twenty minute drive home. Dylan remembered an especially tight and long embrace Aida had given Colin before she left, remembered the jealousy he’d felt as her hand reached out and stroked Colin’s cheek, her eyes lingering on his face.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ she’d said before walking out the door.
Granny Smyth died two weeks later, Colin following her less than a month after that.
Yes, he believed in the things that couldn’t be explained, he believed in folklore and superstitions. He believed in curses and he was now convinced this half naked woman walking ahead of him, oblivious to his presence, was now under the odious spell of this cursed place.
Sunday, Baltasound - Dylan’s Place
They reached the cars and Deidre followed Dylan’s truck back to his house. He was there before her, waiting by the open front door.
Deidre parked the car, Dylan’s truck preventing her from parking closer to the door and she glanced at him standing in the doorway, wondering if it had been a deliberate ploy.
She got out, draping her sopping jeans over her arm to conceal her bare legs and scampered around the truck to the front door, her jacket scarcely covering her bare arse.
Her boots c
lunked on the floorboards of Dylan’s small house. It was cold inside, the fireplace grey with dead ashes. A dark leather couch dominated the living room, the skin worn and cracked, heavy mismatched curtains hanging from the windows. Dylan disappeared into the bedroom returning moments later dressed in track pants and a heavy woollen jumper, his wet clothes in one hand, dry folded garments in the other.
‘Put these on,’ he said, pushing the dry pile at Deidre in exchange for her wet ones. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ he asked, his words clipped and short. He headed across to a door at the side of the kitchen and threw the pile of wet clothes in. Deidre heard them land on the floor with a flat wet squelch.
‘No,’ she replied ruefully. She was starving.
He clicked the kettle on without comment and began moving around the kitchen with the fast, unpredictable actions of a contestant in a cooking competition.
He’s still angry, Deidre thought, standing awkwardly in the living room. ‘Can I have a shower?’ she asked tentatively, sure she could still catch wafting scents of shit in the air around her, desperate for hot soapy water to scrub all evidence of her embarrassing indiscretion from her pores.
‘Of course,’ Dylan replied quietly over his shoulder, something sizzling as it hit the hot frying pan. Deidre took his underpants and a pair of his soft woollen long johns, headed for the bathroom and closed the door silently behind her.
The water pressure appeared to work on nothing more than sheer gravity but the temperature was hot. That was enough, lathering herself into a thick, soapy aromatic coating. She returned more confident, warmer, although the fireplace remained a cold hole in the wall, Dylan, his back to her, still busy in the kitchen.
‘Do you want me to light the fire?’ she asked. Dylan turned around, spatula in hand, looking at her quizzically.
The Stone Dweller's Curse: A Story of Curses, Madness, Obsession and Love Page 18