by Jessica Fox
Outside, we made our way across the street to the red van. Our gang had snowballed into a motley crew of five – Euan, Eve, Laura, Thomas and me.
“You’re very quiet,” Euan said as we headed to the car.
Though I didn’t feel like it, I smiled. “Really? I’m fine.”
Before sliding into the driver’s seat, Euan looked at me. “Don’t worry.” He squeezed my hand. Again it felt strong and warm. “There’s loads of time before you leave.”
My heart fluttered. My thoughts about him were like a tennis ball, flipping back and forth between two sides. I couldn’t deny that I was growing fond of him. He was playful, generous, incredibly kind, and increasingly there was a connection between us. I could feel it. Then again, sometimes there wasn’t. Sometimes he felt distant, and from what I observed I thought perhaps he was in romantic overload, the women in his life creating a prism for his affections and emotions. It would be too complicated to add myself to the mix.
I buckled myself into the van, sandwiched between Eve and Laura, with both my legs over Thomas. What a place to have an emotional epiphany – but it struck me that I didn’t have to decide what my feelings were because there was one point on which I would not compromise: though relationships are never clear, the next man I would be with had to be clear, above all else, in his desire to be with me.
It was a grey, windy day in Monreith. One of the prettiest spots in Galloway, Monreith’s sandy beach stretched in both directions, with steep cliffs of rocks and coves behind.
I was the first to head for the water. I wanted to look fearless, to impress my new friends, and ran overly zealously at the towering waves. Now only a couple of inches in, I regretted every hubristic second. The waves today were dramatic, frothing with peaks and foam. The water pulled forcefully under my feet and swelled around my ankles. It was so cold it burned.
After a couple of seconds, goosebumps stood ridged like armour all over my skin and I couldn’t feel the wind any more. I was numb and shaking all over. My brain wouldn’t stop thinking about leaving, like a jukebox running compulsively over and over the same song. Heart pounding, I closed my eyes and took a step deeper into the ocean. A blast of cold shot up my legs. I wanted to scream. My body was as rigid as a board. “Enjoy this moment, Jessica,” I whispered. “You are in Scotland, in the most beautiful place on Earth, with your Bookshop owner and kindred spirits. I’m lucky, I’m so lucky.” I turned to see Laura, Thomas and Euan running towards me.
Eve was missing. I scanned the shoreline to find her sitting wrapped in everyone’s jackets, waving. Was this not the woman who had got us all out here? God, she’s good. And what was I doing out here? I wasn’t even in a bathing suit, but my underwear. I hated the cold. I tried to wave back but my hands were stubbornly tucked under my arms.
Euan, as smooth as a sea lion, dived into an oncoming wave. I was in awe. He resurfaced, his head bobbing up and down, wearing a big grin. Thomas, with the same determination, ran past me, diving into the foamy water. Laura slowly walked by me, yelling over the wind, “Come on,” and disappeared deeper into the sea.
I was frozen, watching all of them in amazement. This was a challenge I just didn’t think I could meet. Jumping onto a plane, travelling across the world to live in the middle of nowhere with strangers, no problem. Here, thigh-deep in icy water, I had found my limit. Thomas cocked his head, shouting, “Come on NASA girl, live a little!”
I was uncomfortable and started to turn around. How many times did we really go to where was uncomfortable? I had with Grant, and look how that had turned out. But – actually – how had that turned out? At the time it was horrific, but now I was living my dream. This was a paradox. I turned to face the crashing waves.
“Let’s go, Jessica!” Euan yelled. I told myself this would be a palegenetic baptism.
I took a deep breath. Stretching my arms towards the grey, swelling sea, without another thought, I plunged into the ice-cold water.
Chapter 17
“We are all filled with a longing for the wild… No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes, WOMEN WHO RUN WITH WOLVES: Psychology section, third shelf from the bottom all the way to the right.
The festival ended not with a bang but with a whimper. Everyone disappeared one by one, like Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, until there were none. There were many heartfelt goodbyes: Eve made me promise to visit her in Ireland, Thomas pressed a leather journal into my hands and insisted that I keep up with my writing and Laura whispered in my ear that they would all be devastated when I left. She had looked at me without a trace of her signature sarcasm when she added, “Especially Euan.”
By Sunday evening, all was calm and Wigtown had begun to return to its normal state, though Euan’s house still looked like a scene from the aftermath of a revolution. There were more cups to clean, more tables to clear and we, including Hannah and Eliot who stayed on to help, were still all running on no sleep. Euan and I hardly said a word to each other. In fact, the whole house was silent. There was a shared solemnity to the end of the festival, and the atmosphere in the sitting room, which had recently been sparkling and vibrant with the guests’ energy, now hung heavy and empty.
On Euan’s insistence, I spent the next couple of days in Edinburgh with his sister and her boyfriend. I was reluctant to leave Wigtown – and Euan – in my last week, but he had encouraged me to see more of Scotland before I left.
“It is time,” he said, “to see something outside Wigtown.” He was right.
Euan’s sister and her boyfriend welcomed me into their home with the same generosity that seemed to permeate through the whole family. In addition to sleeping (I hadn’t realised how exhausted I was from the festival madness), I explored the wonderful city.
Walking around Edinburgh was like entering a classical painting, especially in Old Town. I couldn’t get enough of the stone passageways, crumbling buildings, green cliffs and bicycles. To me, bicycles were a yard-stick of happiness for a city and in Edinburgh bicycles were everywhere. My heart leapt when I saw a young woman, her long brown coat billowing in the wind, cycling past old buildings and along a path of trees, whose leaves were raining down in a shower of oranges and browns. Autumn. I suddenly ached to be living in a place with seasons, and among old buildings, a place with deep roots and history.
After living like a settled resident in Wigtown, here I suddenly became a tourist. I went to the castle and museums and bought a warm blueberry scone from a market, letting the delicious buttery cake melt in my mouth as I wandered through the city’s gardens. I climbed up to the park with its half-colosseum and breathtaking views, and stared at Arthur’s Seat, a steep, dramatic cliff, jutting out completely naked into the sky. Looking at it, I felt a familiar childhood longing: a deeply intimate craving for something wild.
On the train back from Edinburgh, I stared out of the window, lost in thought, as the familiar green fields and stone cottages greeted me, and a glimmer of a new idea began to ignite. Perhaps the thrill of the unexpected was more intense and satisfying than the thrill of planning and executing something new. Stephen Hawking writes in A Brief History of Time that “it seems the uncertainty principle is a fundamental feature of the universe we live in”. Perhaps this was my way of adding an uncertainty principal to my grand unifying theory. All the best parts of this adventure, after all – Euan, Eve, Deirdre, Edinburgh and all that I adored about Wigtown – had been outside the possibilities of my imagination.
I got off the train at Glasgow where Euan had promised to be waiting. My eyes darted over the handful of people on the platform. He was there in his brown jacket, tall and slim, his familiar curls bobbing above the crowds. I noticed he had dressed in his casual best to pick me up. I smiled and without thinking, I ran up to him and gave him a hug. At first he seemed surprised but slowly he returned the gesture. His familiar cologne surrounded me and I felt instantly at home again. I pulled away, trying t
o act relaxed.
“So, did you miss me?” I asked as he took my bags, realising how much I had missed him.
“Not at all,” Euan said. I smacked him and he moved away laughing. “Stop dawdling, Fox, I have something to show you.”
As we drove along in the red van in contented silence, Euan pointed out of the window at the most extraordinary cows. They were like Oreo cookies, black in front, black at the back, with one white stripe in the middle.
“Belted Galloways,” Euan said, scanning my delighted expression.
They were all over the landscape, even sweet-looking Beltie calfs. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed them before. A horrible pang pierced my heart. There was still so much to discover. I couldn’t leave yet.
“Where are we going?” I asked Euan, trying to distract myself.
“My old school.”
“Is it a castle?”
“No,” Euan laughed, “but it’s a beautiful building. I thought you’d like to see it, and it’s on the way home.”
We pulled up a long drive, overgrown with rhododendron bushes. I had no idea they could grow so big, almost into trees. Euan had taught me you could tell how well established an estate was by the size of the rhododendrons because they took so long to grow. In the house I grew up in in Lexington, we had rhododendron bushes outside but they were barely as tall as I was.
As we approached a large, dreary-looking Victorian building, Euan stopped the car. “It looks abandoned now,” he said, “but it used to be quite a nice building.”
A lone, and slightly deranged, orange cat sat on the front courtyard, now covered with grass and weeds. Despite the cat’s unfriendly hiss, I walked a bit closer and stared up at the building’s high stone walls and dark windows.
“You went to school here?” The place felt cold and sad, more like an institution than the colourful, sticker-filled elementary school I was used to.
Euan nodded. “I started boarding here when I was seven.”
In the silence that followed, Euan quickly turned on his heels. As he headed back to the van, I felt like I was seeing a lost little boy. I ran after him.
“Seven? Weren’t you lonely?”
“You’re so American, Fox.” Euan handed me a now half-empty bag of “maltese balls”. “Always wanting to talk about feelings.”
We headed back down the drive in silence, leaving the orange cat blinking back at us.
Chapter 18
“All things are one thing and that one thing is all things – plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning of the planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time.” – John Steinbeck & Edward F. Ricketts, SEA OF CORTEZ: A LEISURELY JOURNAL OF TRAVEL AND RESEARCH: Biography section, across from the fireplace, under S.
When we pulled into Wigtown, the buildings were dipping into shadow as the sun disappeared behind the hills. Euan got out of the van and went inside, but I lingered outside, struck by an exquisite sense of pre-emptive homesickness.
In the few days that I had been gone, I had longed for the town’s soft beauty, the quirky square filled with stone houses, the vast expanse of fields and sky that encircled it, the marsh and the sea. It inspired not a restless sense of adventure in me, like Edinburgh had, but a deep sense of rightness and calm. It reminded me of the story of the Buddha, who found his immovable spot underneath the Bodhi tree and once settled there, didn’t want to leave.
I had only spent a month here out of my 25 years but already, mysteriously, it had come to feel like home. My analytical brain whirred with “how is this possible?” but the truth of the answer was, it just was. Perhaps my atoms had once resided in the sea salt of Wigtown Bay. Or perhaps hundreds of years ago the elements that now made up my arms and legs had once formed a bee, buzzing and collecting pollen from the bluebells in the Galloway forests. Or perhaps it was not a literal connection at all but, as Freud would suggest, the landscape of my interior world matched the landscape of Wigtown.
Herman Melville tapped on the glass behind me and I whirled around, surprised to see him sitting comfortably in the van. He rolled down the window, sticking his head out and pressing his hat firmly to his head.
“It’s none of those things,” he declared. “This place called to you and you to it for reasons neither of you completely understood.” Satisfied, he rolled the window back up and leaned into the van’s seat, settling in for a nap.
*
My feet pounded hard against the paved main road. I was running – fast – down the hill, past the church and graveyard. I shot past Devorguilla’s old stone house and glanced quickly over the wall to see my favourite view of the marshlands. My legs wouldn’t slow down. My breath was erratic, gasping for oxygen while by body was alight with adrenaline. I found myself rounding the corner onto the path for the Martyr’s Stake.
This was my favourite spot in Galloway. A small track, surrounded by grasslands and dappled with pools of water, led you out into open marshland with views extending in all directions. Beside me in the distance, Wigtown’s soft green-brown coastline fell gently into the blue bay, which sparkled with flashes of brilliant, bright light. A wetlands bird sanctuary also resided there and the cacophony of chirps travelled across the open space through the crystal-clean air. Far in front of me, there was a range of mountains. The largest and closest was Cairnsmore, which I was told shone like a green emerald in summer but browned in winter, and was often topped white with snow.
I followed the track to the middle of the marsh where a small stone monument stood, sinking into the earth below. Carved into the stone were the words: “This is the site of the Martyr’s stake.” It, and I, would often share the solitary spot in the enormousness of the landscape. The only other visitors there, on most days, were the cows, which grazed on the salt marsh’s rich sea minerals.
In the dusk light, a couple of stars twinkled above and I could still see shadows of birds descending into the tall grasses. There was space here, and softness. Beyond the stone statue, purple hills bled into the sky and my ears filled with the wind, with distant birdcalls and the low rumble of cows. I had to fight the urge to cry. The light was growing dim and I knew it was time to go back. Euan, if he had noticed I was gone by now, would be wondering where I was. I closed my eyes, not to say, but to feel a goodbye, then picked my way back along the track towards Wigtown.
When I entered the kitchen, Euan was busily making dinner. The smell of cooking sausages and warm bread was intoxicating. He bent over the oven and pulled out a tray.
“Have you ever had toad-in-the-hole?” he asked without turning around. He didn’t ask where I had been or why I had disappeared.
“No.” I said. “It smells good though.”
Euan had already eaten, but he told me to sit at the table and placed a plate before me. toad-in-the-hole looked like a doughy popover with a plump sausage in the middle, covered in gravy.
“It’s pretty disgusting. You don’t have to eat it.”
I took a bite. The flavours were salty and rich and the texture was addictive – the juicy sausage burst in my mouth as the batter melted away.
“Oh my God, this is delicious.”
Euan smiled and started cleaning the dishes while I ate. I wished he would sit down and keep me company, but an awkward silence had descended between us again. I wasn’t sure what the dinner meant, whether he was sad I was leaving, or thanking me for helping in the festival, but it was certainly a gesture. toad-in-the-hole had been an undertaking, and I could see evidence of his effort – mixing bowls and pans stacked in the sink.
I was feeling so sad: sad that this was to be my last dinner in the big country kitchen, and sad that Euan seemed so distant. The moment I cleared my plate, Euan said that he wanted to show me something.
We walked in silence out into the dark. Euan brought a flash light, and we made our way behind the stone houses, along Wigtown’s empty streets and up a path. A breeze lightly touched my face. I looked up to se
e bats overhead. They were like elegant dive-bombers, and some got so close that I could feel the air from their wings brush past. Every time that happened I would jump and I could hear Euan’s muffled laugh.
“They have very good sonar,” he said. “Don’t worry, they’ll get close but they won’t touch you.”
We reached the crest of the hill and surveyed the view beyond – of Wigtown, its houses and streetlights twinkling in the dark. Behind the town was the sea, lit only by the half-moon, which hung bright in the sky.
“I love Wigtown,” I said softly. I felt a lump in my throat. “I really love it here. I think it’s the most beautiful place in the world.”
Euan was quiet for a moment. “I’m glad you think so.” He said it in a tone that was deeply sincere.
Another silence descended, and after lingering for a moment, we turned back towards home. My head was now swimming in confusion. Was that as romantic as it felt? It could have easily been Euan just being nice on my last night. He was so kind, to everyone, it was difficult to tell whether he would have treated another person who had come to stay any differently. When we returned, Euan made some excuse that he was going out to the garden, and I didn’t see him for the rest of the evening.
I stayed up much of the night writing thank-you letters. I had bought cards for Eve, Laura, Euan and his parents and found myself facing blank pages, unsure of what to write. I could embrace my inner American and as Euan teased, “talk about my feelings all the time”, or I could write a short, heartfelt thank-you. I decided on something in between, and by 3am, I had finished them all. I still wasn’t tired so I sat looking around the bedroom, blinking slowly, trying to capture an exact mental picture for my memory. I never wanted to forget a single inch of the Bookshop.