Orkney

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by Amy Sackville


  The first time I took her to dinner, she ate lobster. She pulled it apart with her hands and licked my fingers.

  I took her to a favourite bistro of mine, to which I’d always longed to bring a lover. A romantic spot in its old-fashioned way, I’d found it tucked away down a narrow lane fifteen years before and somehow never thought anyone quite suitable to join me at my lone table by the window. It had been my little treat, to take myself out for a solo supper upon finding the cupboard bare on a weekday evening; a book, a bottle, the satisfaction of public solitude, of looking the part. But here, at last, was my opportunity to play the suitor. How carefully casual the invitation had been – the library was closing, and since we were in town, perhaps we’d have a bite at a little place I knew …? And now it seemed ridiculous, the white cloth on the table and a red rose between us, sitting opposite this extraordinary girl I couldn’t possibly have a right to, wondering if I was making a fool of myself, if I had misunderstood her entirely. We’d barely touched, then; we had not transgressed any boundary. A brush of a kiss in greeting, a hand on an arm. This was only perhaps a month ago, as the cautious summer drew to a close. It seems now a long-distant agony, it seems unimaginable, that uncertainty, like recalling an affliction when one is well again, and one cannot remember the moment it was over, the last ebb of sickness or pain.

  Am I now so very sure of her? I think so. I turn the stone in my hand, and look for her form on the saturated beach; it takes me a moment to find her, a smear on the glass, but still, there she stands, staring out.

  The headwaiter, a consummate professional, came to attend on us personally. He drew her chair out for her, elegantly masked the inevitable double-take when she turned her face to thank him; snapped the crisp white napkin out and let it float down upon her lap like settling snow, and over her head, caught my eye and signalled with the subtlest moue his pleasure – the professor at last did not dine alone. I fear I blushed.

  I ordered steak – ‘your usual, monsieur? L’entrecote, bleu?’ said the maître d’, whom I have never believed is French. She pulled bread from the crust, spreading crumbs over the menu that was pinned under her elbows, surveying it behind the curtain of her hair with head bowed; looked up, looked lost, shrugged sweetly. He suggested, of course, that she try l’homard. I, feeling magnanimous, feeling manly, urged her to do so. It was set before her bright-boiled red and butter-gleaming, a beast of a thing, but she set to undaunted with pliers and prongs, shell cracking in her strong hands, and she sucked the meat from its pincers, and even offered me an appendage from her fingers before licking them clean, shamelessly, grinning. She is doing her best to learn, she has told me, how to eat in ‘fancy places’. To set down her knife and fork, and take a sip of wine, and make conversation. She wasn’t raised that way, she says. She remains evasive on the details of which way she was. But I could happily have sat in silence and watched as she devoured one chunk and claw after another, until the plate was cleared and the broken, empty carcass piled into the bowl beside her. She’s said since that she was nervous, but seemed at ease; although I do remember now that she drank half a glass of wine in one draught. I re member watching as the colour came into her cheeks, as red as the rose between us, as if she had been in need of a transfusion. Her eyes gleaming silver.

  How I relished the studious not-staring of the other diners as she put her hand on mine and blushed deeper! She did not wither or fade under scrutiny. She twisted at my fingers almost distractedly, like a curious child, twisting and twisting in that way she has, in that way I now know she has; but this was the first time she twisted, my guts knotting about her knuckles, twisting a rope down to the root of my groin until I could bear it no longer and grasped her fingers tightly, squeezing them still in my fist. And then, and then, she pulled my hand towards her and kissed the end of my index finger and then – extraordinary girl! – took the tip into her mouth and sucked it for a second, just as she had sucked the butter from her own, her lips still oily with it, her virgin lips. And then drew back, smiling, blushing, my hand trembling where she’d left it suspended and faintly glistening, and she said, ‘It’s rude to point, my mother told me.’ Your mother! I said, struggling to keep my voice even and pull myself together. And what would your mother say if she could see you here with me, with your erudite but undeniably aging mentor, sucking on his learned fingers?

  A little frown occluded her eyes then; but she dispelled it just as quickly and said, ‘I’d imagine she’d tell you it’s rude to point,’ folding away my finger, ‘and besides, you’re only sixty.’

  Only sixty, she said. Still vigorous, still lusty. Tall and trim. Yet in latter years I have noticed, though I don’t care to admit it, how quickly I grow weary when I exert myself; and these last few days and nights, I have found that certain activities call for far greater exertion than they once did.

  Last night I lay in bed waiting for her, listening to her in the bathroom, peeing quietly with the tap running, scrubbing her face, cleaning her teeth. She crept into the room, drew back the blankets – we sleep under three heavy, scratchy woollen tartans – exposing me head to foot to the lamplight, and lifted her nightgown to her hips and clambered aboard, at once shameless and utterly coy; and rocked herself upon me, as patient and steady as the wash of waves on the shore, watching intently, and the surge of the tide grew stronger until I gripped her hips and she cried out silently, a moment of arrest that seemed unending.

  At last she took one huge breath and let it out shakily and clambered off again, pulling her gown back down to her ankles and the blankets up over both of us and sighing softly beside me, leaving me awed, spent, my heartbeat alarming, slowing slowly to the rhythm of the ocean.

  She falls asleep instantly; these few nights I have spent with her, she has swum deep before I have even steadied my breath. And as she dreams her submarine dreams I lie beside her, a whale’s carcass, a wrecked ship, a vast ribcage in the dark blue deep; and she is a tiny luminescent silver fish, picking me clean, in and out of all that’s left of me, bare bones long since freed of flesh or rigging.

  Our wedding night, four nights ago: the brittle excitement of the afternoon quieting as we came into my bedroom and I closed the door behind us. I had made up the bed with new white sheets, still creased and smelling of the plastic packing; it seemed wrong to lay her down on old bedding when she was herself unused. I turned on the bedside lamp, closed the curtains, while she stood in the middle of the room, watching me, not moving. I could see her breathing. As I moved towards her, unsure how to approach, she slipped from her white silk as if it were another skin, to reveal the white silk of her own; pale pink areolae, green veins coursing just below the surface; her long spine, a kiss for each bone-tip; a violet mole like a fishtail by her hip-bone, an arrowhead pointing to the fine-spun untamed bright white floss of her pubis. She put her arms about my neck and swung her legs about my waist and clung there, little limpet; her anxious eagerness, a gasp, biting her lip, biting my skin and clinging …

  Enough, enough. I must let her alone, and go out.

  *

  The island has a shop, fifteen minutes’ walk from our cottage, cutting across the narrow middle to a long, wide bay on the southwest side, where the town, such as it is, clusters. The town consists of a hotel, a fishery, a crafts centre, a squat pebble-dashed new church replacing the old one ruined on the hill, and yes, a shop, singular – and singular indeed it is. An unassuming exterior, a low stone building not unlike our little cottage; the red door, which announces customers with a bright ting of a bell, gives way to a cavern of delights, every corner crammed full; shelves from floor to ceiling, a central bench piled with some rather sorry-looking fresh produce and a mound of turnips, a refrigerated wall at the back stacked with packaged meat and fish, milk, cheese, cans and bottles; bins and buckets full of plastic spades, seashells, umbrellas and optimistic paper parasols … I bought a new notebook; I bought two steaks, a haggis and the smallest turnip I could find; a big crab caught off the
shore of this island and already picked; Hellmann’s mayonnaise, a weighty chewy loaf, salad leaves of a sort, salted peanuts; several bottles, including a dubious, dusty Chianti and a superlative single malt to replenish my flask. Yes, I shop like a bachelor, still. I bought a newspaper – yesterday’s Times the best on offer – and a book of folklore, tales of the trows and faeries and witches and mermaids that it is not hard to imagine still haunt these islands; the book had a stand of its own and was the work, I gathered, of a local author. I thought this purchase a gracious gesture, wishing for some reason to please Mr Begg behind the counter. I’m working on folktales, fairy-tales, myself, I said to him. ‘Oh, aye?’ he said, without betraying any interest or curiosity. In the nineteenth century, I explained. ‘Aye,’ he nodded. Have you read this one? I asked. ‘Aye,’ he answered, a little more warmly perhaps, some enthusiasm kindling in his little marbley eyes, buried deep from years of being screwed against the wind. ‘It’s no bad.’ He took my turnip to the scale to weigh it. It appeared the conversation was over.

  There are two rows of big glass jars behind the counter. For the sake of nostalgia, I asked for a bag of aniseed balls. God knows how long these little cochineal orbs have been rattling around there; how sad that those jars of jewels lose their dazzle when one is old and rich enough to fill sacks full, how sad that the child with only tenpence will never fulfil that dream, which will have tarnished by the time he can attain it. If, indeed, there are any children here; it could be that they’ve all long since grown old, on this aging island. I watched him fetch down the jar, weigh them with a timeless clatter on the metal scale, pour them into their little paper bag and pinch it closed with neat, thick fingers the colour of uncooked veal; unmistakably a Scotsman’s hands, with red-blond hairs at wrist and knuckle.

  I might also have bought a hoe, a screwdriver, a mallet; sticking plasters, painkillers, tampons, nappies; fuse wire, a sewing kit, a tape measure, scissors, batteries, decorative painted rocks … I doubt I could think of a thing I needed, or would never need, that was not hidden away in there. I might also have bought a waterproof poncho from the small pile helpfully, hintingly displayed by the till, but regrettably, did not.

  I left with a nod and an inscrutable smirk from Mr Begg. (I believe he thought I’d bought the sweeties, as he called them, for my ‘peedie lass’ – he asked after her. She has not to my knowledge set foot in the shop since our arrival. I suppose she has been seen on the beach. News, unlike newspapers, travels fast here it seems.) I emerged under a blackening sky, the air already condensing into sheer water; as I came over the ridge to descend to our side of the island, I saw a cloud over the sea blood-purple like an omen, staining the water black, and spreading through it to the shore as if the Kraken had been slaughtered in my absence; the island to the west of ours had vanished in the air. I could not see her on the beach. Within ten yards the heavens, if such they are in these parts, had opened above me and there was barely a gap of air to breathe in through the downpour. I began to run, awkwardly, the bags heavy, wine clanking, the turnip bashing against my knee like a primitive football; I held both bags in one hand so that I could cover my head with my precious newspaper, and jogged home at a painful, limping gait, arriving soaked through, gulping for breath, my right shoulder and forearm and bicep on fire, one palm throbbing and tingling as the blood returned to the swollen white ridges left behind by the plastic handles, and the other stained by a handful of useless, inky pulp. I shook out the pages, the letters running irretrievably, I swiped the water from my wax-jacket sleeves, I ruffled and shook my hair like a drenched dog. I called for her, my shout drowned by the rain on the roof, on the windows, the little house assailed from every possible angle; I looked into the bedroom, the kitchen as I passed, calling, calling, until I came back to the sitting room, and automatically looked for her out on the beach, but there wasn’t a trace of her left on the wet sand, and I wondered for a moment if she’d been washed away after all before seeing her damp head peep around the back of my chair, a thick wet cord of hair hanging; she was so balled up that no other part of her protruded.

  ‘You’re back!’ she said, ‘Did you get caught in the rain?’ Yes, I said. Yes, I evidently did. I called for you, you didn’t answer … ‘It’s wild out there!’ she said, ignoring me, and her eyes, too, were wild for a moment, her fingers gripping the wing of the chair, peering round the back of it like a goblin. In the dim light she seemed somehow unearthly, touched with the hysteria of the wind, and I wondered how long she had stood out there, soaking to the skin; but then she said, perfectly calmly, ‘I’ll make some tea, would you like some?’ as if she were nothing more than my ordinary young wife. Yes, I would, I said; yes, please. Wait, I’ll make it.

  One dark November day a year ago, she came into my seminar room drenched with the rain, and while the other students shook out their umbrellas and pulled off sodden hats and coats, she just took her seat, her clothes clinging as if she’d just walked out of the ocean, her hair long and waterlogged and droplets running down the ropes of it, and dripped on her desk. She seemed on the point of dissolution, as if the whole of her was pouring away, and yet quite unaware. She sneezed, once, and sniffed throughout the session. You’ll catch your death, I nearly said, and felt compelled even then to fold her into my coat, to take her home and unpeel her and wrap her in blankets, but didn’t. One of the other girls whispered something to her friend, and they sniggered, and I could have torn their throats out.

  She has no memory of this day. I’m not sure she noticed the rain, at the time, at all.

  She brought a towel from the bathroom, rubbing at her head and then mine, and sat by my feet and we sipped our tea and watched the sky changing, watched the rain slacken; and I could not stop myself asking, Why did we come to this grey place? ‘Are you sad, Richard?’ she said. ‘It’s not just grey.’ And pointing out to where the sea met the sky, which seemed for now to have slaked itself, her eyes following her own finger as it traced the fine gradations up to the apex, or the limits of the window frame: ‘See? Silver. Pewter. Old bronze. Oyster shell.’ Graphite, dove’s wing, goosedown, I said. ‘Lead.’ Cigar smoke. ‘Ash.’ Sere. Slate. Cinereal. This especially pleased her. And on we went, this favourite diversion that already seems part of a half-forgotten past, like an old couple playing an old game; on we went naming the grey until it seemed that a rainbow spectrum was a common, gaudy and frivolous thing next to this muted subtlety of shades.

  And then all at once, a crack appeared in the cloud, the sun at one corner of it like a god’s eye, casting a piercing lancet across the sky; and then one after another, rods of silver broke through to announce his presence. Like some awful ruthless salvation, the sun burned the edge of the cloud-bank magnesium white, and shone brilliant on the still-tender, cleansed world; the rock pools transformed into blinding mirrors and the sea, so lately needled to fury, was lulled and banded with whispering silver as it approached the shore, and there was the terrible argent fire of the cloud’s lining after the storm; and … ‘Let’s go out!’ she said. ‘In the sunshine …’ As if extinction had not threatened only an hour before. ‘Let’s explore,’ she said. And I was so glad to be asked, to be required, that I couldn’t refuse her, so we put on sweaters and hats and stepped out, both still a little damp within our clothes, a little shivery, emerging into the rawness of the new world and the air stripped clean. She put an arm through mine, cosily, and sighed. ‘I’m glad we came here,’ she said. ‘Thank you for seeing me safe over the sea.’

  Climbing up from the beach, we took the little path that leads up to the old kirk, on its lonely mound overlooking the bay. Sunk in the centre of the churchyard, the old grey mossy chapel. Broken steps led down to the deep rectangle of the paved floor. A hollow place, the sanctuary quiet sheared by the cries of the gulls and the hush of the ocean. Through the empty, glassless arch of the window, the sea paling into the horizon, and a glimpse of the little harbour on the other side of the bay. Standing looking up through the long-
fallen roof, the nerves in my neck pressed, I felt dizzied by the scutter and race of the clouds, the sky washed thin, pressure lifted too high. Birds spiralling, shredding the silence after the squall, screaming. I looked down and reached for her blindly, blood flowing back up to my eyes in a dark whirlpool; I found her hand, thin, cold, and remembered clasping it when we were married, so few days ago, an age ago. How cold it was in that sparse office with its meagre flowers on the desk, white spray and pink roses browning at the edges; her own bouquet, three white calla lilies I had picked out for her, she clutched to her chest. The registrar looking from one to the other as if it were a practical joke, expecting the groom to arrive at any moment and take her off my hands. I’m not here to give her away, if that’s what you’re thinking, I said. Nothing could persuade me to do that. He smiled, polite, professional, turned the book for us to sign. I took it upon myself to kiss my bride.

 

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