I slip the note inside the sleeping bag, swing my pack over my shoulder and walk out toward the road.
XXVIII
A soft breeze drives me along the road, and water from the recent rain splatters up onto my legs, peppering my skin with muddy brown spots. I’ve been on the bike every day the last two weeks, exploring farm tracks and paths I never knew existed, pushing up and over the Moorfoots or the Lammermuirs or following the East Lothian coast, speeding past patchworks of red poppies, oilseed rape, coarse tan barley, brave stands of oak and ash and Scotch pine, stubbly rows of tatties, wind turbines, sheep, rusted-out cars, old pit workings and lime kilns, refurbished cottages and derelict ones, defunct railways and disembodied brick chimneys on heathery hillsides: a rural landscape where there used to be industry.
The country around my home is beautiful in a way I’ve never noticed before, and I begin to believe that if green things can survive the black wounds of coal mining then a man can live with war in his blood.
It’s been three weeks since I came home from Fort William with a line of tidy black stitches in my left hand. The scar curves down from the base of my index finger to the middle of my palm, dangerously close to the artery I’d first aimed for. One more whisky, a second’s less hesitation, it would have been mission accomplished. I could tell the doc who stitched me up at Belford Hospital had second thoughts about letting me go. It still aches a little, and the healing skin itches: reminders of a place I never want to be again. I find myself curling my fingers protectively or hiding my hand in my pocket so that I don’t have to answer questions.
The GP who removed my stitches back at Eskbridge Health Centre agreed to sign me off for a few more weeks and suggested a prescription for Prozac, which I refused. However silent she may be, Mum’s ghost still hangs about me, shrivelled and toxic. I do this clean or not at all.
As soon as the stitches were out, I wheeled my bike out of Janet’s shed and headed out of town. It helps to get moving again. Every day I go a little further. Every day the vice loosens its grip just a little and the road unfolds like pages of the map that were previously hidden. I start to look ahead, anticipating crossroads, wondering which way I might go.
This morning I’m not going very far: only to the end of the road past Cauldhill Farm. With a jangle of nerves I clatter over the cattle grid and push up the hill, swing off the bike and leave it against the wall of Duncan’s cottage. I bang on the door and after a minute, it creaks open. He stands there, wavering slightly, regarding me silently with bloodshot eyes. The long straight bridge of his nose is flattened and puffy, and the bruises on his cheeks and under his eyes have not yet faded completely. The skin of his face is pallid and yellowish and the contours of his skull are clearly visible underneath. He looks like a re-animated corpse and smells about the same but seems lucid, if only temporarily.
Then he laughs in my face, so hard I actually flinch.
‘Dinnae tell me ye’ve come tae apologise.’
And bang goes any contrition that might have motivated me to come out here. Actually I don’t know why I’ve come here, beyond some probably childish desire to close a wound. You’d think maybe I’d have learnt better by now.
‘No, you know what? Fuck you. That’s what I came to say. For what you did to my mum and me. Fuck you, Duncan.’
He softens. ‘That’s mair like it. I dare say, I deserve it.’
‘Aye, you do.’ I begin to back away. ‘I won’t bother you again. We pass each other in the road, we don’t know each other.’
‘Nae argument there. But seein’ as yer here, would ye gie a message tae yer sister. Tell her thanks but nae thanks.’
‘What for?’
‘The hoose. She’s tryin’ tae get me shifted. I’ve nae plan tae end ma days in a poxy bedsit in the toon somewhere, in a stair fu’ o junkies? Nae danger.’
‘You’d rather stay here?’
‘Aye. I’ve got mates, much as ye may find that hard tae believe. They look aifter me. In a few months, maybe a year, yis can cairry ma corpse off the hill and dae whit yis like wi’ the place.’ He hawks and spits onto the ground beside my feet. ‘Is that all ye wis wantin?’
‘Aye.’ I shrug. ‘Suit yourself. I’ll see you later then.’
‘I doubt that,’ he replies. For a moment, his eyes meet mine and we understand each other clearly. Questions hang between us like over-inflated soap bubbles, and burst into nothing.
I step back without a further word, and he pushes the door shut with an anticlimactic click. I swallow hard, then turn away, grab the bike and cycle away from the house. Then I stop, swill water around my mouth and spit it into the dirt. I can’t decide whether I’m relieved, disappointed or maybe just incapable of figuring it out by myself. Some things, it seems, the brain just isn’t programmed for.
Instead of heading down the hill again, I go up the way, standing on the pedals and grinding over the rutted track as fast as my lungs and thighs will allow. A half mile or so beyond Duncan’s cottage, the track reaches a saddle and begins to descend into an area of forest plantation. I leave it behind and turn onto the little path that leads more steeply uphill to my right. Barely more than a sheep trail, it follows a line of wire fencing toward the brow of the hills. The path becomes narrower and more difficult as I ascend: rocky and criss-crossed by heather and little rivulets of water. Eventually it becomes too boggy and I have to dismount, sling the bike over my right shoulder and continue on foot to the top of the hill.
When I get there, I sit in the waving grass, gather my knees to my chest and look down across fields and hills, straight lines of tarmac, farm houses, villages and towns, shimmery water. I can see Cauldhill Farm, and the silver glimmer of Molly’s car in the drive. I can see the old coal bings and our little humble housing estate at the edge of Eskbridge. Across the Forth, the Lomond Hills, the Ochils and the Trossachs are in clear view. Beyond them, shadowy lines between land and sky, hazy patches of brightness which could be cloud or could be snow.
I try my luck, and whisper, ‘Mitch?’
He doesn’t answer.
I close my eyes and try to picture him. I imagine him waking up in my sleeping bag in the stone circle where I left it, reading my note and slipping it into his pocket. He stands up on two whole, undamaged legs, steps out of the sleeping bag and begins to walk. I see him walk uphill, toward the snow still lying on the high tops. His stride has purpose and he knows his destination, even if I don’t.
‘I miss you, bud.’
A skylark twitters an answer, and I smile. Then I get up, strap my helmet back onto my head, put on my sunglasses and climb onto the bike. I look back down the path and a thrill of fear courses through me; the hill looks even steeper from the top. Another man would drink himself blind; this is my version. If go flying arse over tit and break something, the only person who might conceivably come to my rescue anytime soon is Duncan. Dear old Dad. Wiping out is not an option.
‘Mind where you go this time, Nic,’ I say, and swallow heavily. Then I release the brake and begin to roll downhill.
Adrenaline hammers through me like a hit of Dexedrine. I skid to a halt outside our back fence, open the gate and roll along the path. I peel my fingers off the handlebars and shake life back into them, leave the bike out to wash down later, and flop onto the soft, dry lawn, pull off my helmet, shoes and socks. My pulse is rushing in my ears, my shirt is soaked in sweat and I am splattered with mud from my ankles to my face.
I feel almost dizzy, so I lie back in the grass and stare up at the cloudless sky. Immediately I am caught in a riptide of memory and panic. My mouth fills with the taste of blood and I have such an intense sensation of falling that my fingers scrabble for handfuls of earth to hang onto. They scrape Afghan dust.
The flashback goes as quickly as it came, but leaves my heart skittering around my chest like a trapped hare. My instinct is to turn onto my belly and crawl for cover, but since that would only confirm to Brenda Fairbairn and any other curtain-twitching neig
hbours that I am completely cracked, I don’t do it. Janet would be mortified.
It takes all of my will to lie still and look up at that view. I breathe in for a count of ten and out again, unwind my fingers from the grass and wait for my pulse to slow.
‘I’m here,’ I say aloud just to reassure myself, and take another deep breath.
I close my eyes for a few moments, then open them again. The sky is still blue overhead, but the appearance of a little wispy cloud is immeasurably comforting. I am in Scotland, where a blue sky never lasts all that long.
Ten or fifteen minutes pass by and I’m still lying here. Nothing has fallen on me or blown up under me. The sun is hot on my skin. The gate opens and I lift my head from the grass to see Paula, pushing Eva in her pram.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ she says, and laughs at the sight of me. ‘I was helping Mum in the garden and I saw you go by on the bike. I wondered if maybe you’d like to come down to the beach with us?’
‘I might. It’s a beach kind of day.’ I drop my head back down again. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘Sean . . .’
‘What?’
‘Why are you lying on the ground?’
‘I’m looking at the sky.’
‘Right . . .’ She parks Eva and drops down onto the lawn beside me, stretches out and looks up. ‘Why?’
‘No reason.’ I should tell her. One day I will.
‘It’s very blue today,’ she says after a few seconds.
‘Yes it is.’
She turns her head and looks at me, brushes my fingertips with her own.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Mmm. I think so.’
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Mitch. Just . . . something he said to me one time. It kind of stuck with me.’
She brushes a lock of hair away from her lips and looks curious. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘These American Marines had got their vehicle stuck in the mud trying to cross the Helmand River, and we got called in to help them dig it out. Inevitably we came under fire like fish in a barrel, and it was just about the most ridiculous situation I think I’ve ever been in. I remember lying on my stomach, trying to shelter behind a rut in the mud or some bloody thing, and I asked Mitch how the hell we got there. And he said to me, there’s only two fixed points on this map, Nic. You can’t go back to the first and you sure as hell can’t avoid the second. Everything else is up for grabs.’
‘So . . . what does that mean?’
‘I guess it means that there’s no master plan. You can only take the direction you think is right at the time. Sometimes it leads you into the shit, and sometimes it leads you out.’
She props herself up on an elbow and runs her finger along the inside of my left hand, tracing the lines that have been interrupted by the knife scar. I think briefly of my evening with Laura at Kingshouse, and wonder if maybe she really did know how to read palms after all.
Paula sighs, then laughs softly. ‘And how do you know which is which?’
The grass tickles the back of my neck as I shake my head. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
Blast Radius Page 24