In The Garden Of Stones

by Lucy Pepperdine

  Still cold, she stands at the French window, wrapped in the throw from the settee and clutching her cat in her arms. It oozes warmth like a furry hot water bottle.

  She gazes out toward the abandoned and neglected walled garden she knows is beyond the houses across the way. Idly she strokes the cat’s fur and the creature closes its jade green eyes and commences to purr, rumbling and vibrating from deep within its throat, the quivering against her arm making her think about Colin and the way he shook and shivered under her hand as she tried to comfort him.

  “It was only a crack of thunder, but he was scared to death of it,” she says. “I’ve never seen anyone in such a state. If it was something he was afraid of, he wouldn’t allow it into his world would he, no more than I would allow in a big hairy spider? So where did it come from?”

  Grace takes a closer look at the townscape, at roof slates slick with wet, at the standing puddles in the gutter swirling with iridescent oil residue from the tarmac, noticing how the leaves on the trees have taken on that strange yellow green, post rainstorm fluorescence, and it all becomes clear.

  “Colin didn’t do it at all, it was me. The thunderstorm happened here, and my subconscious picked it up and recreated it where we were.” She sags and groans. “Thunder and lightning, huge noise, flash of light, just like an explosion. Colin was talking about a bomb. If the storm came through me and gave him some kind of flashback, then that makes me responsible.” She nuzzles the cat’s ears, feeling guilt-ridden and dreadful. “Oh God, what have I done?” Sigh. “Somehow, Pickles, I don’t think an apology will be anywhere near enough this time.”

  Chapter 16

  Grace rolls the brown bottle between her hands, back and forth, back and forth.

  “Ye look like ye’ve got something on yer mind,” says Colin. “Want ta talk about it?”

  She takes a long slow sip of her beer. “I owe you an apology,” she says. “Actually two.”

  “Fit fer?”

  “First off, for kicking you in the nuts. I hope I didn’t do too much damage to your … prospects.”

  Colin shifts in his seat and winces, hand dropping beneath the table to offer some comfort to his battered balls.

  “Brought a tear to ma eye and I’ll no be able to sit down without a cushion for a week or two,” he says. “But I ken ye didna do it on purpose, so give me time and an icepack and I’ll consider forgiving ye.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Ye said two apologies.”

  “Yeah.” Another sip. This time the beer tastes like diesel in her mouth. “What happened here yesterday,” she says. “The storm, the thunder and lightning, what it did to you … I did it. Not on purpose, but I am responsible.”

  “Pish. Naeb’dy’s responsible for the weather.”

  “Not outside, no, but here, in this case–”

  “In this case what? Nothing happened.”

  “Yes it did. You–”

  “Nothing - happened.”

  “I know what I saw,” she says. “And I appreciate you’re probably a bit embarrassed and it’s a sensitive subject you’d rather not talk about, but I think you should–”

  “For the last time, get it through yer thick heid, there’s nothing ta talk about so drop it will ye? Swear ta God, I’ve never kenned anyone talk mair bollocks than you.”

  “There’s no cause to be vulgar.”

  “Oh aye.” Colin puts his bottle to his lips. “Newsflash fer ye, darlin’, its fit I am.” He takes a gulp of beer, sucks at his teeth, and lets out a derogatory snort. “I’m no really an officer and a gentleman, ye ken. That’s all flash and manners, part o’ ma job, a show fer the masses, fer you. The real me is as vulgar and offensive, as common and dirty as the next man. Swearin’ an’ spittin’ an’ scratchin’ ma arse in public. I fart in bed, piss in doorways and puke in the gutter.” Sniff. “Don’t like it, tough … ga’way.” He takes a drink and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Now if ye don’t mind–”

  He’s halfway out of his chair when Grace reaches over the table, clamps her hand around his wrist and holds on tight. He looks first to her hand and then to her.

  “You want ta let go?”

  Grace’s eyes shine with indignation. “No.” She tightens her grip. “Sit-down.”

  Her hand may be small and his wrist broad, but her hold is solid. He has a choice. Lose some skin, or sit down again. He sits.

  “You finished?” she says. “Feel better for that little outburst?”

  Piqued silence.

  “Now let me tell you something, Captain,” she says, her voice low and tight. “You might get away with using that kind of filthy talk on your men, but it won’t wash with me. Slipping into the vernacular, using profanity, putting on a show of lewdness hoping I’ll walk out in disgust and never darken your door again, it’s all a waste of time theatricals played to the wrong audience. Believe me I know a defensive front when I see one, and yours might be ten feet high and lit up like Blackpool promenade at the illuminations, but it’s made of glass and I can see right through it to you hiding behind it.” She leans toward him. “Ye-ken?”

  He glares at her, mouth pulled into an angry cat’s bum pout, swallows, but says nothing. She holds onto his wrist for a couple of beats more as they stare at each other across the table, then she lets go, gets up and slopes outside.

  After a while Colin follows, to find her sitting hunched on a low grave slab at the path, poking at the gravel with her toe. He sits beside her.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know where that came from. It was gey rude. Unforgivable. Ye were right. It was all a show, and a pretty shoddy one at that. You touched a nerve, a pretty raw one, and being rude and boorish was just me being defensive, lashing out because I’d been humiliated by ye seein’ ma skelped arse exposed ta the world. I didn’t know what else ta dae. I’m sorry for what I said, fer being so offensive. You didn’t deserve it.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Still friends?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You have every right to be outraged.” He rubs his wrist. “Quite a grip ye’ve got there for a wee one by the way.”

  Silence.

  “Tell me yer theory, about what ye think happened yesterday,” he says.

  “So you are admitting something did happen?”

  “Aye, there’s no denying it. So tell me. I’ll keep quiet. No rudeness, I promise. Scouts’ honour.” He pops up his right hand, three fingers extended, little finger and thumb touching across the palm. “Dib dib dob and all that.”

  Grace gives him a withering look. “Idiot.”

  He drops the salute, clears his throat and tucks his hands into his armpits, out of harm’s way.

  She shifts the chuckies about some more, rolls her head back, eyes closed, and sighs.

  “Yesterday, at the same time I was here with you, there was a storm out where I live,” she says. “It was pretty localised, thunder and lightning, a really heavy downpour, flash flooding, the works, although having other things on my mind I wasn’t really aware of it. My theory is that it made its way here via my subconscious. If I hadn’t been here–”

  “Pure conjecture. A coincidence.”

  “No it’s not. It’s conclusive proof that what happens outside can affect things here. Think about it. It stands to reason. If everything here is formed from our own experiences, our memories, our thoughts, desires, needs and wants, and we can make nice things like beer and strawberries, then it makes sense that not so nice outside influences can creep in and have an effect. Things like a thunderstorm…or the pain you are in.”

  He flattens the disturbed gravel with the sole of his boot. “It was just a bit of rain. Nae bother.”

  “This isn’t just about the rain though is it, Colin. It’s about you falling to the ground screaming with terror, shaking like a jelly and crying and wailing in the mud, scared shitless by a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning, which if it hadn’t been for me, wou
ld never have been here.” Grace lays her hand on Colin’s leg. “It reminded you of the bomb, didn’t it? Brought it all back? And now I think I know what’s wrong with you. You have post traumatic stress disorder, don’t you Colin?”

  His shoulder and head shrug and tic in unison as she strikes the metaphorical nail squarely on its head.

  “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” she says. “You made this place for somewhere quiet and calm to come, to get away from all the stress and the noise, all the things that cause you pain and upset, and I turn up and drag them all in here with me and … corrupt all your hard work, contaminate your paradise of peace. Shit, Colin, I–”

  “You’re sorry. Aye, I know. Forget it, eh?”

  He gets up, pulls a pruning knife from his pocket, slides off its protective sheath, and uses its curved blade to snib off a dead head from a nearby rose bush.

  “I can’t forget it,” says Grace. “Just like you can’t.”

  Snib.

  “Yesterday, before we got wet, you started to tell me about what happened to you, to your friends,” she says.

  “Fit ‘boot it.”

  “Will you finish the tale?”

  Yet another faded bloom falls. “Why?”

  “It might help you to talk about it?”

  “Trust me, it won’t.”

  “Then do it for me. Help me understand what it was like, what you went through, what you’re going through now?”

  A brittle laugh. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”

  “I’m not your enemy, Colin. I want to be your friend.”

  He clips off another dying flower, and another, re-sheaths the knife and puts it back in his pocket. He gestures for her to come and stand in front of him.

  “I dinna think I can tell ye,” he says, scrunching up one side of his face. “Words canna do it justice, but … I think I can show ye. Hold out yer hands.”

  She wipes her sweaty palms down her trousers and holds out her hands for him to take.

  With a suddenness that knocks her dizzy, she is ripped out of the cool garden and into a furnace.

  It is searingly hot under the Kevlar helmet. The body armour, rifle and ammunition clips are heavy, but this is considered a relatively safe area where the soldiers meet and greet the locals, drink tea and crack jokes, and so he is in shirt sleeve order and spared the full 70lb kit.

  They have been on foot patrol for nearly three hours and it’s almost time to return to base. Out in the narrow street the wind whips up a whirling dervish of sand and dust and the air smells of sewage, wood smoke, and something spicy. On the shady side, outside a rough stone box which could be his home, a small boy in a dirty grey robe tethers a donkey laden with wood, sees the patrol, waves to them, and then gives them the finger before laughing and running inside and slamming the door behind him.

  Cheeky wee bugger.

  The street is now deserted save for a scabby cur scavenging for scraps, the weary looking ass and the small knot of soldiers.

  Too hot for any other sane person to venture out.

  Mad dogs and Englishmen.

  Dan McInnes walking next to him suggests they cross the street and into the shade.

  It is no cooler on this side, just darker. A tree of sweat has already grown on his back, darkening his shirt and sticking it to his skin. Another trickle runs down his face. He wipes it away as he takes a glug of water from his water pack. He grimaces. It is like drinking stale tea; tepid and bitter.

  Jimmy Buchan, to his left and slightly behind him, cracks a joke about how he would be better off drinking the donkey’s piss. He laughs, thinks of a pithy comeback, but before he can cast his pearl of wit, his world turns over as he is lifted off his feet by a wave of pressure and heat hitting him full in the back and flipping him over in a complete somersault, before slamming him face first into the dust.

  He can’t breathe, can’t see. Something wet and sticky clings to his face, and his head is ringing, a bubble of silence blocking his ears.

  There is pressure on his legs and pounding on his back, and his mouth is filled with the salty taste of hot copper and dust, his nostrils sting with the smell of burning kerosene, scorched fabric and the sweetly acrid stench of cooking meat.

  With a pop, the bubbles blocking his ears are pricked and sound rushes in from everywhere and nowhere at once and he is assaulted by frantic yelling; a woman shrieking, the barking of orders and the sound of gunfire. A man nearby is calling for support, calling for the medics, calling for anyone who is listening to help them, his words rattled out staccato yet controlled.

  And then comes the searing pain in his legs and buttocks, up his back and his shoulders, flaring through him from his toes to his neck as if he had been dipped feet first into molten metal.

  Fire! He’s on fire! He has to get up, get away from the flames, but he can’t move. The pressure and pounding on his legs and back is a firm weight holding him down.

  “Stay still, Sir. You’ve taken a knock, but you’re going to be fine. Help is on the way!”

  Someone is screaming and sobbing, wailing at the top of their lungs, swearing, praying for the throat tearing agony to go away. Only at the last moment, before darkness and silence enfold him, does he realise who it is.

  Released from the vision, Grace finds herself back in the cemetery, nose filled with the heady smells of lavender and rosemary, ears with the fluting song of the blackbird, eyes bathed in the golden light of sunset.

  Disorientated and confused, she reels. Colin grabs her and holds her to him as she gasps for air, tears flowing down her face, and he lets her sob against his chest until she has recovered her shattered wits. He hands her a clean white handkerchief from the pocket of his pants.

  “I’m okay,” she says, wiping her eyes on the pristine cotton square. “Just give me a minute.”

  She treads her way unsteadily along the path, through the arch in the hedge to the soft grass of the lawn, and eases herself down onto it. Colin gives her the minute she needs before sitting beside her, sweeping his hand over the fine cut blades.

  “How did you do that?” she says.

  He shakes his head, worrying the grass some more. “I have no idea,” he says, his voice low and tender, his Scots accent reduced to a gentle burr. “I knew I didn’t have the words to tell you properly, so showing you was all I could do.”

  She dabs her eyes again. “It was so horrible. It hurt so much and the … smell and the noise. It was truly awful. Terrifying. Oh Colin, how can you bear it? You’ve been through hell.”

  “Still there,” he says tightly, and picks at the grass.

  Grace hands him back the handkerchief with quiet thanks, and he stuffs it into his pocket.

  “What can I do to for you, Colin?” she says. “To make things better for you, or at least a little easier. Tell me what I can do.”

  “There’s nothing to be done. It is what it is.”

  “There’s always something, even something tiny … like this.” She takes hold of his hand, enclosing it in both hers. “The journey is hardest for those who travel alone,” she says. “Let me help you on your journey … just like you are helping me on mine.”

  Colin turns his rich brown eyes to her, and for the first time their eye contact is long and meaningful. He looks as if he wants to say something, but instead puts his arm around her shoulder, pulls her to him and kisses her temple.

  “What does fit mean anyway,” Grace says, retaking her seat at the rough hewn table in the hut. “I hear it about town all the time, along with a lot of other words I can’t get my head around.”

  “What,” says Colin, taking two bottles of beer from the bucket of cold water he is using to keep them cool.

  “I said–?”

  “It means what.” he says.

  “Fit means what?”

  “Aye.”

  “So why don’t you just say what?”

  “It’s how I talk, ala’s have, and if a man canna speak his ain mither tong
ue in his ain haim, where can he?”

  “Even if nobody can understand you? What about your men, you being officer and all, don’t you have to keep a couple of plums in your mouth so that all your orders are crisp and clear and unambiguous, or do they all talk like they are shagging a set of bagpipes?”

  The corners of his mouth twitch. “I can be as hoity toity as I need ta be.” He switches accents, putting on a pure cut glass English drone, chiselling the edges off every word.

  “I can speak the proper hoy noy broyn coy if called upon to do so. I say, Chivers, how utterly spiffing. More cucumber sandwiches, vicar? Anyone for a spot of tennis on the lawn after tiffin, eh, what?” Sniff. “How’s that?”

  Grace laughs and grimaces at the same time. “Urgh! That’s bloody awful. Too far the other way. Too…Bertie Wooster.”

  Colin’s response is a garbled mess of noise, pure lingua Scotia, an expulsion of nasal Doric incomprehensible to all but the local sheep. At the sight of Grace’s expression of utter befuddlement, Colin throws back his head and laughs until he runs out of air, his face the colour of newly fired brick. Gradually the laughter subsides into sporadic hiccups and his normal colour returns.

  “Oh dearie me,” he says, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “Yoor face. Oooh!” He presses a hand to his side and flinches. “I think I’ve ruptured something inside. Oh aye. Ow, ma ribs.”

  Grace just stares at him in censuring silence, arms folded, head cocked to one side, chin jutted, face deadpan. “Serves you right.”

  Colin clears his throat loudly, banishing the laughter, and points at her bottle. “Ye want me to open that fer ye?”

  She hands it over.

  “What ye said, about fit ye hear around the toon,” he says, fitting the cap of the bottle snugly against the table’s edge. “The Doric is fair local ta Aiberdeen, and yoo talk like a Sassenach. So how come ye–” He slams his hand hard down. The bottle’s top pops off, releasing a crown of yeasty bubbles from the neck, and a curse from the man. “Aya bastard!”

  “Would it surprise you to learn that I’m as Scottish as you are?” Grace says.

  Colin looks over at her, sucking at his bruised hand. “Seriously?”