“Don’t talk like that. There’s always–”
“Hope? Don’t make me laugh. Ye’ve seen fit I’m like, fit I’ve bin turned inta, that empty mindless shell in the chair, a limbless useless lump of burned flesh being fed by a tube up its nose, another up its dick to piss inta. Wearing nappies ta crap inta like a baby. It’s never gain ta get any better, Grace. I’m no gain ta get any better. The only time that body is gain ta leave that place is feet first … only it doesn’t have any–!” He pulls his mouth into a thin line beneath which his chin trembles. “Don’t talk to me aboot hope.”
His eyes shine with tears. Too proud to shed them, he dashes them away with the back of his hand and marches away, swearing. “Why the fuck couldn’t I have bin blown to pieces like the others?”
Grace gapes after him, speechless. When she recovers her voice, it is angry and she has forgotten everything the books and Dr Mal told her.
Don’t be critical or negative, cast no blame. Always try to be positive…
She chases after Colin and grabs him again. “How dare you say such things! How DARE you give up like that? And stop referring to yourself as an it. You’re not an it, and like it or not, you are still alive.”
“No’ any more I’m no’. What I am now is a statistic. A casualty. Deid but no deid. A number, a tick in a Government box–”
“Bloody rubbish! You are a living breathing human being, in a poor state at the moment, granted, but that could change with a little work. You have to make the most of what you still have. You can still see, hear, think, speak, you have both your arms and hands, and fully functioning innards. Yes, some pieces are missing, some damaged, but not the parts that count. This–” She touches a finger to his forehead. “And this.” She lays her hand on his chest, at his heart. “As long as you’ve still got those, everything else we can deal with. Nothing is impossible.”
Silence.
“Colin?”
He’s not looking at her, choosing to focus his eyes somewhere over her head and away to the middle distance instead, where her words cannot reach.
“You’re not even listening to me, are you? Fine. Okay. If you want to cripple yourself with self pity as well as your injuries, which I have to say, are not as serious as some I’ve seen, you go ahead and choose not to live. I’ve seen pictures of some poor buggers who are in a far worse state than you. Young men who have been blown limb from limb, blinded, disfigured, burned down to the bone, but they–” She pokes him sharply in the chest. “They HAVE NOT given up–” Poke. “They’ve fought back and made an effort to make the most of their lives. They have families–” Poke. “–children–” Poke. “–made fresh starts.” Poke. “Fought back against tremendous odds, and you can too. You’ve got off lightly all things considered. A lot of your problems are of your own creation. Hiding away here and absenting yourself from reality is a coward’s way out and it’s not doing you any favours at all, in fact, it’s probably making matters a whole heap worse.”
Colin maintains his distant stare, but from the barely discernible twitching of his tense jaw she thinks something might be getting through, and even though tears of frustration are close and her voice is shaking, she presses home her point.
“If you can’t make the smallest effort to try and come to terms with what’s happened to you, to face up to how you feel instead of running here to hide and hoping it will go away in the meantime, why should anyone else? You have to acknowledge your problems, not deny them. Nobody else is going to do it for you. The first step towards recovery from anything, drug addiction, alcoholism, being disabled, is acceptance, and only you can take that step. All you have to do is say two little words, Colin. Help. Me. Once you have, you’ll have all you need to help you move on.”
Silence.
“Right, I’ve said my piece and now I’m going home to feed my cat.” She turns, takes two steps, then comes right back. “But before I go, I have just one more thing to say. Look at me–”
She grabs the front of his sweater and gives it a shake. “Look - at - me - Colin.”
His eyes shift focus onto her.
“I might be a miserable, selfish, suicidal, manic depressive plagued with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks,” she says. “But I don’t make an issue of it. I’m dealing with my problems and doing okay thank you very much. It’s been hard going, it’s going to be hard for a long time to come. That’s why I come here, to help me deal with things. I don’t come to wallow in self pity or look for sympathy. I don’t need either, but if it’s what you’re after, tough, don’t look to me for it. Get a dictionary instead. You’ll find it between shit and syphilis, where it belongs. So until you’ve decided what it is you do want, I’ll bid you goodbye, Captain McLeod.”
She lets go of his sweater, turns and walks away from him, gravel crunching under her shoes, willing with every step for him to call her back.
Colin doesn’t see her go. He can’t. His eyes are so full of tears that everything is blurred and out of focus.
When he realises she’s not there any more, it’s too late. He puts his hand to his chest where she poked him, a dull knife cutting into his heart, and deep within him something hot stirs.
It writhes and squirms in him, tendrils of rage reaching out to take in fear and fury and wrath, and his breathing becomes ragged and laboured as heat builds within him.
And then the hot thing inside him grows claws and drives them deep within his reason, tearing at it, shredding it, forcing his hands to snatch up his scythe from where it rests against a rowan sapling, and with a roar like a wounded beast, swing it and decapitate his first victim.
Grace knows she’s in the wrong and feels terribly guilty about what she said to Colin, ripping into him and lecturing him like she did, but it had to be said, even though it went against all the advice she’s been given, and handed to him on a plate every cause he would need to never want to see or talk to her again.
Her relationship with Colin McLeod is over and it’s all her fault.
“I won’t see or hear from him again, won’t be going back to the garden of stones. Something else in my life I’ve well and truly buggered up.”
Why then does she jump every time the phone in her hip pocket buzzes against her like an angry wasp, slumping with despair to see it’s only a text from Orange telling her she hasn’t set up her magic numbers yet?
She is sitting on the kitchen floor now staring at the device she has in one hand while the other clutches onto the neck of a wine bottle.
“I am such a fecking idiot. Even if Colin did forgive me for what I said, and there’s no reason why he should, it would take a blasted miracle worthy of Jesus Christ himself for him to be able to pick up a phone and tell me so. And even if he could, he wouldn’t do it. Too damned proud for his own good.” She swallows the last of the wine straight from the bottle. “He doesn’t have my number for a start.”
It takes two attempts to get to her feet. On elastic legs that don’t want to hold her she stumbles into her bedroom to fall fully dressed onto the bed, spread-eagled on the quilt like a drunken starfish.
Chapter 31
“Mmmnnnnffffffffff.”
Four in the morning and Grace staggers into her tiny bathroom. Eyes screwed up against the light, she rummages in the cabinet, looking for the paracetamol tablets she knows are in there.
Pounding head, feeling sick - the downside of drowning one’s sorrows in cabernet sauvignon. Maybe finishing that last bottle wasn’t such a good idea after all.
She finds the pills, swallows two down with a glass of water, and traipses back to bed. Snuggled under her quilt she closes her eyes and is already slipping back toward sleep when, without warning, a feeling of confused desolation throws itself at her, making her shudder, gasp and sit up.
“Colin!”
She finds herself standing in middle of the rose garden, or what’s left of it.
“What the bloody hell happened here? It looks like a hurricane’s blown
through.”
She cannot believe her eyes. As far as she can see, all is devastation. The garden is in ruins. Flower heads are smashed, separated from their stalks, their beautiful fragrant petals scattered like confetti. Plants and shrubs have been hacked down or crushed flat as if huge heavy boots have stamped on them. The once neat lawn resembles a roughly ploughed field, so many are the deep gouges scoured into it.
In the centre of the gravel circle, the cherub fountain has lost both its head and the stone seashell it carried on its back. Water gurgles up from the pipe in its neck and trickles down its chubby body into the reservoir.
She follows the trail of destruction to the greenhouse and what she sees stops her dead in her tracks.
“Holy mother of God!”
Most of the panes are broken, shards of glass blasted from the inside into the vegetable beds more than ten feet away. Others hang precariously from their frames like deadly icicles.
A large jagged hole in the wall of glass marks the exit of the Chinese patterned jardinière she likes, itself in three large fragments. The aspidistra it housed however appears to be undamaged. Not for nothing is it called the cast iron plant.
Grace has to tread carefully if she is to avoid being cut by knife edged glass splinters, or by the scythe blade snapped from its handle at the joint by sheer force of use. Close by is another abandoned weapon of mass destruction, the garden spade.
Inside the ruined glasshouse is a wreck too, the trestle work table where just yesterday Colin had been potting up his seedlings has been overturned, spilled plantlets, compost and broken terracotta pots littering the floor.
Further along the path she finds the water barrel on its side, its contents spilled into the onion bed, forming a lake between the furrows.
She picks her way round the upturned butt. It is then she spies smoke curling up from behind the hedge, and her stomach rushes into her throat.
“Oh my God! The hut! It’s on fire! COLIN!”
Her walk becomes a trot and then a full on run, each stride eating up the distance to the arch leading to the cemetery, any breath not being used to fuel her sprint calling out for Colin.
She skids to a halt in the gravel. The hut is still standing and is intact, not the burned out wreck she expected to see. The bonfire is out too, nothing left there but a pile of white and grey ash and lumps of charred wood. The plume of white smoke she could see is coming from the hut’s stone chimney.
“Oh, thank God!”
She pushes open the rough wood door and barges into the hut. Inside smells of hot metal and burning wood underlaid with the sickly sour scent of damp wool and stale sweat. Flames dance behind the glass door of the stove and a thin tendril of steam curls from the kettle’s spout; both add to the stuffiness of the room. For some reason a blanket is slung over a length of twine strung between two of the hut’s walls, dividing the space in two. There no sign of Colin.
“Where is he?”
A sigh, a groan and a creak from behind the dividing blanket wall. “I’m here?”
He steps out, rubs at his eyes. They look swollen and tired in a face pale, and drawn under smears of dirt and a rough start to a beard. His shoulders are slumped and he seems to be favouring his left leg. His whole body screams exhaustion.
“I saw the smoke. I thought the hut was on fire,” Grace says. “You okay?”
He shrugs.
“You look dreadful. Are you not feeling well?”
He sways, staggers, and drops heavily onto one of the chairs.
“I think that answers that question.” Grace lays her hand on his brow. It is hot and dry. Feverish. “Looks like you’re coming down with something. Your body must be sick. You should be in bed.”
He does not resist as she helps him back to the cot.
“Can I get you something?” she says. “A glass of water?”
“No.”
“You want to lie down?”
“No.”
“Okay. You sit quietly. I’ll go back, call Simon, get him to look in on you.”
Colin shakes his head slowly. “Don’t bother.” It comes out thick and hoarse, like he has a sore throat.
“If he can help–”
“I don’t want his help. I don’t want anyone’s help.”
“Not even mine? Or especially mine?”
No answer.
She sits down beside him on the rumpled bed, making it creak as if its fragile frame might give way under the weight of two bodies, and puts her cool hand against his flushed cheek.
“What happened to the garden, Colin? It looks like a herd of elephants has run riot in it. Was there another storm or something?”
“No.”
“Something must have happened because it’s trashed. All the lovely roses are spoiled.”
“I know.” Pause. “I did it.”
Grace stares at him. “What? Why would you–? You love the garden. Why would you do such a thing?”
Colin lets his head fall back against the wall, scrubs his fingers through his hair, raking at his scalp.
“I didn’t mean ta. It just… I don’t know …” He stares up into the rafters, catches his top lip with his teeth, sucks in a deep breath and blows out a sigh dragged from the very depths of him.
“I think I must have had some kind of brainstorm,” he says. “It was like a bubble of rage rising up inside, and then something exploded inside ma heid. I must’ve had a blackout or something because the last thing I remember is you giving me a bollocking, the next I’m in here with a headache like the worst hangover I’ve ever had without the aid of a vodka bender, all bloodied and bruised with a throat full of barbed wire. The garden is wrecked and you’re nowhere to be seen.” He holds out his trembling hands, the fronts and backs scratched and grazed, the knuckles swollen and bruised, the nails torn. “I’m just glad ye weren’t here. If ye had been, I might have … God, it doesn’t bear thinking about.” He buries his face in his hands. “I coulda kilt ye and no even known aboot it.”
She runs her hand up and down the soft fabric of his shirt sleeve. “Shhhh. It’s okay. Nobody got hurt. It’s just a few plants and panes of glass. Nothing major. We can put it right again.”
His fingers start to work on the threadbare sheet, plucking and pulling at it. “Why did ye come back if ye think I’m such a coward hiding here like a rat under a bucket? Why aren’t ye gone fer good and be glad ta do so?”
“I didn’t really have a choice. I was… drawn here. And I didn’t call you a coward. I said you were taking a coward’s way out, opting for the easy route instead of fighting back. I’m sorry if it came out wrong, but I was angry and you were being so defeatist, talking about dying when there’s people out there who … who care about you and want to help you. I lost my rag and wasn’t thinking straight. I’m really sorry.”
Pick. Pluck. Sigh. “No. You’re right, I am a coward and I am hiding. I’ve taken refuge in this place, hoping everything out there would simply go away, and then everything will be back the way it was before all this–” He sweeps a hand down himself. “It won’t though, will it, no matter how much I want it to?”
She feels her heart clench and fall into her stomach. “No sweetie, I’m afraid it won’t.”
He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, making himself small and tight, as if trying to stop himself falling apart at the seams.
“I can cope with the physical injuries,” he says. “I can get used to them, adapt, tolerate the pain, but I can’t–” He swallows, tics and shrugs. “It’s what’s going on in here–” He doinks his fingers rapidly off his temple. “That’s what’s killing me … it’s, it’s–”
He is trembling now, a savage quaking that makes his teeth chatter as if he’s frozen to the bone. Fever and chills.
“Show me,” says Grace, taking his tremulous hands in hers. “Like you did before.”
“I-I d-don’t know how I did it b-before. It just s-sort of happened.”
“The
n don’t think too hard about it. Just let it go. Let it flow into me.”
He closes his eyes, frowns, and there comes that dizzying disorientation again as a rush of emotion sluices out of him and into her.
Inside his head is a swirling morass, like oil on water, shifting, changing, writhing as he relives every single moment of the event in horrible graphic detail, over and over again, like a movie on a loop.
He is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting it, tormented by guilt at having been saved when his comrades couldn’t be, being knocked backwards by overwhelming sorrow and grief that come at him without warning, in waves. And then there is the anger, twisting and coiling its way through everything like a thick black snake, a simmering - bubbling rage at the futility and the injustice of it all, at the pure bloody pointless waste.
A lava chamber of fury builds inside him, growing and burning until it’s ready to explode, and it terrifies him that when it does, all his control will be gone, like it was in the garden, and rather than smashing up a few plants and panes of glass, he’ll end up turning his rage on another person with the ultimate result.
And so he tries to shackle it inside, to keep it close, withdrawing from the world and taking it with him, not only to keep everybody else safe, but to save himself.
But he knows it won’t be denied, and all the while he’s holding onto it it is feeding on him like a cancer.
Every day it gets stronger and harder to control, and he gets weaker, until one day the tipping point will be reached when it takes total dominance and he becomes slave to its bidding, and he knows it will make him do some terrible things and he will be powerless to stop it.
He knows that time is close and that’s why he should end it now, before it’s too late and he, or someone he loves, is lost to it.
It has only been a matter of seconds, but now she understands everything. Post traumatic stress disorder. The gift that keeps on giving.
“Oh God, Colin.”
He sucks in a deep juddering breath and closes his eyes, squeezing out two fat tears to slide down his cheek and into the coarse bristles.
In The Garden Of Stones Page 21