Infidelities

by Kirsty Gunn

  So quietly we got up, Ailsa and I. She held my hand and went ahead into the dark that was not dark but was quiet and full of shadows and that darkest green. It was like Ailsa was the big sister and I was just the one who would follow. Even so, through we went to Aunt Pam and Uncle Robbie’s old room where they used to sleep together once, maybe, in the big old bed that belonged to Uncle Robbie’s mother and then she gave it to Aunt Pam as a present on her wedding day. There in the room it was, that same great big bed, with the matching set around it, the chest of drawers and the cabinet and the big old wardrobe in the corner and the door of it a bit open. And it moved.

  Ailsa gripped my hand. ‘There!’ she whispered, and pointed. The door seemed to open a bit more, creaked, and inside the wardrobe, sure enough, I saw a man’s form, the old tweed shape of a man called Uncle Robbie. He was standing there with his back to us and murmuring something, he was speaking the low words a ghost has to say.

  The light was deepening in the room, from green to grey as though the room itself may as well have been a coffin, with the window darkening and only open the tiniest bit to let in some air, but everything dusty and closed in and silent – apart from that creaking wardrobe door moving just a bit and the thing inside it talking to itself, Uncle Robbie’s tweed suit that he was wearing.

  ‘Shhh,’ Ailsa said to it. ‘Shhh. We’re not here to hurt you.’

  The suit may have been his favourite suit. It might have been the suit he wore on those days when he was still a father, those days that I could not remember. When he’d been a husband and he had a farm and he lived there with his wife, my mother’s sister, and her little boy. Before he went off on his own and before he went off and left them for good, driving himself off over the edge of the cliff at the bottom of the paddock and everyone knew he did it himself, on purpose, that was the story that was true … Before any of that, there was the suit that Uncle Robbie used to wear on sale days or when he went out with the other men, the farmers, to go to the Agricultural Fair and the Highland Show, the thick tweed suit he was wearing now to come back and visit us all.

  ‘That’s him,’ Ailsa whispered, and just then I remember the feeling exactly – it was like a spell that was cracked. That’s him. In the second of those words I took a step towards the wardrobe so I could see … Him.

  And not Uncle Robbie at all. Not who he was. Just his suit hanging, that’s what was there. Just hanging cloth and thick and tweed and warm but no body in it to wear it. No man. No ghost. I went closer, and closer, right up to it, to touch it. To put my arms through. And as Ailsa stayed behind at the edge of the room – even as I touched the suit, for I did touch him, what was left of my uncle – I felt for myself how thin he was and not there, how there was nothing there.

  Yet still the murmuring sound went on. Though I had by now my arms among the empty arms, the jacket against me like a chest that was collapsed and flapping, that had never had a body or a heart inside … Still I could hear a murmuring on. Secrets. Stories. What I thought had been the ghost’s quiet talking to itself, my uncle telling all his secrets out, about why he’d left his family in the way he did, his own child … All his secrets … All his talking quietly in the grey, darkening room, just a low hum, of talking, murmuring, just the sound of him was all that was left of him, of Uncle Robbie, of his awful, lying ghost …

  I knew then that it was coming from my cousin’s room. The voice was there. Bill in there, in his own bed with his dad’s old jersey that he’d taken in with him like he did every night since he was a little boy, to sleep with him. And it was Bill talking to his dad I could hear – making up the stories he would tell Ailsa and me the next day, and fill the air with them, fill the day. ‘My dad said’ and ‘My dad and I’ and ‘My dad told me’ and ‘My dad is going to’ … All of the words to fill the space, to make the stories real, whispering them out on his own in the night that by now was going green no more and into grey but into dark.

  ‘See?’ Ailsa whispered to me now, as I went over to her, where she stood at the doorway, but I was a big sister again, taking her hand and leading her back to our room. Passing the closed door of Bill’s bedroom and hearing his low voice coming from behind it.

  ‘See?’ Ailsa said again, as we passed his door, and her hand tightened on mine.

  ‘Shhh.’ I was the one who told her now. Not wanting her to speak. For enough of speaking. Enough of words. Of stories and of lies. Of saying someone was a hero when he’d killed himself, not died at all those other ways, like in a film, but did it himself, because that’s what he most wanted, what he chose, to plan it for himself to be that way, leave his family, be alone. Leave them without him on their own.

  ‘Shhh,’ I said again – but not to quieten her. Because in a way Ailsa had not made it up at all, about Uncle Robbie and what she had seen. It was true. What she’d thought. What she knew. That he was like a ghost exactly in that house, that man. The clothes still hanging there but empty. Only the jersey, like a body brought down, in a little boy’s bed.

  *

  The Caravan

  Was parked up. Right there on a lay-by off the old north–south highway, the far western side of the country. And O but it was cold there. The seas were big. Turquoise in colour in winter – with the eleven days of this story taking place in winter and this was the eleventh day.

  And the caravan not so old but it looked abandoned. By which I mean: ‘Quite broken’. Rusted, well, not rusted, maybe, but with an appearance of rust. A semblance. All that salt water, you might say. All that cold weather coming in off the sea. The window had been knocked through by a stone and the door banged half on and off its hinge whenever the wind blew, and yes, the wind blew. Inside the caravan it was dark and wrecked and damp with cold. There was broken glass, a bit of sodden cloth on the table, some playing cards. This was, remember, the eleventh day.

  *

  On the tenth day the caravan stood next to a calm sea. There on the lay-by, beneath a pale blue winter sky. The gravel upon which it was sited was wet, gutted in places with puddles. The caravan on its blocks as though it had been there for years, for years it looked like. Years? Yes, as I say, it looked like that. A semblance of years, for sure. A ‘permanent fixture on the landscape’ one might describe it – one who lived in this part of the country, who knew its lonely roads and the beaches no one visited and the sea in which no one swam. ‘That caravan has been there for as long as I can remember,’ that person might say. O really? O yes. For as long as I can know.

  For the caravan – it has no wheels, only those four cinder blocks – so it’s not going anywhere. A holiday home then, once it had been. A place to go to beside the sea. White, with a crimson strip – but it wasn’t new. The unexpected sun shone on the chrome of its broken window, the surround of its flimsy door. That was on the tenth day.

  *

  The day before had seen a large storm. O large! Terrifying! O the waves were like walls! For there is nothing like them, those storms they get over there on the west, those old west coast storms! O nothing!

  And the caravan just shuddered, had to. Just bore the storm out. Bore the weather, remember? Coming in through the window? In through the half-open door? It was as though years passed. While the rain came down. While the wind battered at the roof. The playing cards blew about crazily, crazily inside. The Jack of Spades. Ace. A Red Seven. They flipped and turned. On the ninth day.

  *

  The eighth day was also windy. But not the same as the day before, for this day it was as though the wind were only practising, turning. It was only getting started. The boulders sat on the beach, they sat there. And the great logs that had been washed in from who-knows-where, how faraway … They lay there too, like waiting, while on the beach the wind practised, whistled up and down the pebble shore.

  Wheee! Like the sound of all the years passing.

  Not that there was anyone to hear it, remember. O no. Just the caravan. On the eighth day. With something inside it, rattling.


  *

  Because on the seventh day an animal had got in. Through the broken window, or it came through the door when the door had been pulled wide open in a sudden gust. It ran across the floor and up the front of a cupboard. Some food had been scattered on the floor, on the bench, by the weather, by the wind, quite scattered. And maybe that had been what brought the animal in, had got it started. And O you wouldn’t have believed it – the brand names of that food! On the packets! Quite fancy? O yes! Tiny delicatessen crackers and pre-packed cheeses. Some silvery foreign tins. All this removed from a cardboard box in a small old fashioned caravan. On a lay-by, remember. In a place you can barely imagine in your mind less go out on a real road and see it. Cry: Look! As though you might cry. For this is an abandoned caravan and yet here are wrappers saying Fortnum & Mason, Zabar’s, Ladurree. Be careful the papers don’t blow outside, get airborne and come to float on that cold enormous sea.

  On the seventh day.

  ‘Be careful’

  Is what she might have said to him, when he suggested they go there again.

  ‘Be careful we might end up there,’ she might have said. Parked up for ever by the cold and frozen sea. ‘Be careful that if we go there,’ she might have whispered, ‘to our caravan, we might never leave.’

  *

  And now it’s the sixth day and in the middle of the night the rain started, it fell. And the cloth, remember? On the table? It collected water like a bandage collects water. The tablecloth drawing water to it so that other parts might be dry.

  O! O! O! the woman might have said, if she had seen it. ‘My tablecloth! Spoilt!’ And all for nothing – for damp is in the place, nevertheless. Nevertheless. And it’s wet and it’s cold here. And it’s midnight. And there is no moon. And the sound of the rain on the gravel, on the caravan roof … It falls. It continues to fall.

  *

  The day before was the fifth day and another of the almighty storms, wind now, all wind. The poor curtain fluttered at the window, ripped. There was nothing anyone could do. The cards were lifted from their places on the table. One here, lifted. One there. A whole pack of cards but nevertheless all of them are scattered. Fluttering in numbers upon the floor across the bench, the table. Ace. Jack. Red.

  That was the day the door came off its hinge and wouldn’t sit square again to close. And O the noise it might make! Banging! Screeching! That thin, thin tin!

  *

  When the wind stopped, the day before, a seagull came to rest on the roof of the caravan. It seemed blown on to the roof of the caravan from across the sea. The sunlight played across its white feathers, caught the gold in its eye.

  They used to enjoy looking at birds, the man and the woman. It was something they used to do, together sitting at the small table. Hearing a great screeching through the window of the caravan as great packs of gulls wheeled and landed on the beach and on the water.

  O! O!

  Making sounds that were like crying.

  Calling to each other, over and over, through the cold air.

  Now there was only one bird. Looking out to the sea to where it had come from. Perhaps. Hoping to catch a glimpse of another. Perhaps. That it might call to it as the others had called.

  That it might be heard.

  *

  And the third day was a day for crying. The day the boys came, put a stone through the glass. When they forced the door of the caravan and went right in. Unpacking the food from the boxes, exclaiming at the fancy papers of the packets of food.

  Not a day at all but late on the night of the third day, this. After drinking in the pub in town. There was beer and then tequila and then getting in the car and driving fast, with broken lights, down that lonely road beside the sea. The youngest boy, perhaps, the one who saw the caravan as they flew straight past, who noticed it, caught sight, and said to the others, ‘Stop! Go back!’ and they did: Backing up hard into the lay-by and piling out of the car. Approaching the caravan. Breaking the glass. Reaching in to take the lock off, push through, force open the little door. O yeah! They say. O wow! O check this out! They push and press against the little walls. One unwraps a pretty chocolate, eats it. One pisses in the corner before leaving.

  *

  Yet on the second day all had been so tidy in the little home. Complete. The curtains drawn. The door shut firm and locked against – against … All kinds of unpredicted weather. Snow on the mountains inland. Cold off the southern sea.

  O be safe, little house. Be firm.

  Sitting there, bright, in the frost, in the early morning. Of the second day.

  Like you may sit there for ever.

  Waiting for them to come back to you again.

  *

  For that is what they loved to do, the man and the woman whose caravan it was. They loved, more than anything, used to love, to return to that place. Return. Re-enter together the little door. And wasn’t that first day just the kind of day that was perfect to come back to? The reason people keep caravans in the first place, keep little cabins by the sea? So to have a window on to all that sky? So to have a high winter sun, and enough heat in it, in the middle of the day, to remember summer?

  ‘O yes …’ he’d said to her smiling, drawing her gently out of the passenger seat of the car and into the wide air. ‘O yes, you see? You remember, what it’s like here? What it’s like for us to be here?’

  For it is a caravan, after all. It’s just the place to sit in. ‘A caravan we’ve always loved. Where we can be at rest, my dear. Remember? How we love it here?’ So taking her, this very gently, by the hand and leading her, leading her … Towards the caravan door.

  And, again, ‘You see, my love?’ he says again. ‘You see? How gentle it can be here? You and I together? This place we love? That you remember? You remember … See?’

  But didn’t see, himself, and could never have predicted it – that the moment his back was turned, after putting her inside, seating her at the table with the pretty cloth that she had once stitched for him, for the caravan itself, its tiny table, and hemmed, and embroidered … Could not have seen it nor predicted … As he went out to the car for the cardboard box of special foods, for the chocolates from Fortnum’s that she loved, or the caviar from Zabar’s that he spread for her on toast – that as he brought the world out for her to that lonely place, she would be gone …

  Run off towards the sea like she’s a swimmer! O! Like it’s summer and she’s running to the sea – O –

  No!

  Like she’s swimming and it’s summer –

  No!

  And this some kind of other, very different sea.

  So he drops the box, and starts towards her, out the caravan and down the empty beach – but she’s run so far away from him by now, in the seconds, moments, that he left her, that it’s like he’ll never catch her, that he’d spend his life in trying – for she’s running into air is what it’s like, that she would be the cold wind herself and all the cold air …

  O!

  O!

  Whistling, empty. Down the pebbly shore. Of the empty sea.

  But he does. He manages to get there. To where she is in the water, wading in so her skirts and her coat is sodden, he pulls her away …

  And the story finishes – or begins – there, with the man and the woman at the edge of the sea, at a beach where no one visits, on the western side of the country … And the sound of the wind – O! – and the draw of the cold waves on the pebbly shore the only other sound … And the man puts his wife back in the car and he drives her away.

  *

  The day before that with nothing in it. Nor the day before. Nor the day before.

  Only, O …

  and the draw of the pebbles on the lonely beach …

  O …

  O …

  O …

  O …

  *

  Foxes

  I was coming down the hill and I saw them, how close they were around me. At first, not seeing them, for there were only tre
es and leaves and paths of shadow, but then making out from amongst the darkening branches small delicate shapes that were moving in between the thickets of elm and oak and ash, taking form and particularity that was animal.

  *

  I look back now, on that moment, of something becoming apparent to me in the gathering darkness and it doesn’t seem to be evening at all but rather a time of growing light. As though, as the colour left the summer sky and as I criss-crossed my way down the hill, lost and confused and unable, I thought, to find my way out of the wood, I was actually coming into some kind of illumination, an understanding. I see … I remember thinking quite clearly as the foxes darted before me on the path and then came to stand, like ghosts or children all around me: I see.

  For sure it was that time of day when anything could happen.

  *

  I’d been up in the park at the top of the hill, the one with the high black and gold railings around it and two ornate gates through which you enter and leave. The grass there is kept clipped close as a carpet, and in the middle of the green is set the beautiful gold bandstand like a crown. We’d been watching an open-air opera, sitting there on the grass with the singers before us slipping in and out of and around the ornate iron pillars like they were creating a sort of dance. One lover passing to the next, the music like ribbons winding around them, binding them to their story of desire and inevitability, their fate: Don Giovanni and his loves. Don Giovanni and his way down to hell. It was a perfect early summer’s evening, high and blue and golden as though it could never get dark, and lovely, I think it was. To be out on the grass with this filigreed piece putting itself together on the stage in front of us – the singers with their brightly painted faces and their feathers, and the tiny silvery orchestra with its flutes and violins playing off to one side. As I say, it was lovely, I think. It looked lovely, I mean. Being there in that park Andrew used to take me to all the time, up above the woods … Sitting on the shining grass with Andrew and his friends, champagne in our long-stemmed glasses … It may have looked like I belonged there. Like I had a place amongst that group of young men and women I seemed to be a part of then. ‘Friends,’ I might have called them, only they were Andrew’s friends – turning to each other and whispering, with a sense of intimacy, collective knowledge, bound together as the singers were bound to the music that wove around them and drew them to the stage …