The Bass Rock

by Evie Wyld

  ‘This bum’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the park.’ She drains her coffee, yells ‘Hey, baby!’, stands and offers me her hand as if I am a child and she is my mother.

  I take it, because there really is no option not to.

  We barely talk on the way up the hill, moving in single file: I wonder often what I am doing. I have not been fit in about seven years. Maggie strides ahead of me, smoking the whole time, her trouser legs rolled up so I can see the backs of her calves, which are muscled and have a thick covering of dark hair. She skips over the rocks like a mountain goat. I have blisters on my heels and one on my inner thigh, often I fall forwards, though the incline of the hill is such that there is not far to go. Wind whips through the gorse and peels seagulls away to the coast. When we reach the whalebone Maggie turns to me, her face shining, but not sweating. She says, ‘Do you feel it?’

  ‘Feel what?’

  A moment passes and I could swear the colours around us change like the earth is a cuttlefish, the sea in the distance becomes oil black, the trees go from green to blue to green again and the sky flickers yellow. Maggie’s face, her eyes like opals. And then it is gone.

  ‘The burn! The endorphin hit! When you’re broke, you have to rely on your own body to get high.’ She smiles, and the split second of astonishment can only have been my blood settling after the exercise. She pulls out a bag of tobacco, and from it a joint.

  ‘Luckily for us, I am not completely broke just now.’ She lights it, there is no breeze even this high up, and she doesn’t cup her hands around it, just sucks it in and lets the smoke trail out of her mouth slowly, and the smoke goes straight up, white and pointed like a spear.

  There is a moment in the evening when I see a line being drawn. Or is it a fork in the road? Whichever, I am ordering another bottle of wine at the bar, and Maggie is rolling us both cigarettes. I have told her that I don’t really smoke any more, but this is of no interest to her, and she has handed me cigarette after cigarette all day. She takes off one of her shoes and places it on our table to keep it, even though there are just six men in the pub. She limps out into the street to smoke, beckoning me with one finger. I take the glasses and the wine and follow. She lights me a cigarette using hers. We are the only people on the street. It is freezing, Maggie has bare arms and stands with her chest thrust out, relaxed. I am as contracted as a cat’s anus, my hands up my sleeves, my nose tucked into my coat, desperately breathing hot air down myself. The sky is clear and a big moon hangs overhead.

  ‘No one does this any more,’ she says, taking the bottle from me and putting the cigarette into the corner of her mouth while she pours two large glasses. ‘I can’t understand it.’

  ‘Everyone’s healthier now,’ I say, ‘everyone wants to live a long time.’

  She blows a blue cloud of smoke right at me through a smile.

  ‘Smoking has saved my arse a thousand times.’ She takes a long sip of wine, more of a drink for thirst than for pleasure. I don’t ask, because what I have learned is that she doesn’t need me to. She will tell me what she wants to tell me. She doesn’t need conversation in that way – she has stuff to say in response to what you say, but they don’t flit in and out of each other like with other people. It means she sometimes says things I do not like, for example, ‘I don’t really do small talk,’ which offended me and made me think she is not someone I want to be hanging out with, but as the day went on, I understood: she is incapable of doing it, sometimes tries and fails.

  After essentially the same conversation we had in the car the other night, I’m not really paying attention, there’s a mural on the opposite wall, showing a puffin with a beakful of sprats, and it’s making me hungry.

  ‘I could write a list for you of places and situations I’ve got out of because I said I was going for a smoke. I could do you a line-up of men had me hogtied in the boot of their cars in their heads, but when they look for me I’m gone in a puff of smoke.’

  I look away from the sprats.

  ‘You mean you use it as an excuse to leave?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes I use it to blind a guy.’ She smiles, and I assume she means with the smoke, but she holds up her lit end and makes a hissing noise.

  ‘You’ve burnt someone? In the eye?’ I feel I have not understood a joke, but she waves it off.

  ‘You’ve gotta have a lot of methods, because they’re sometimes expecting one or two. You just have to be aware of all of the weaponry you’ve got on you, especially in a place like this where you can’t carry a firearm. They’re expecting the keys in your fist, because they’ve read the same articles you have. They know you’re going to go for the nuts or gouge the eyes – if someone’s planning something, they research it.’

  ‘Huh,’ I say. My mouth is dry and I think now that the last cigarette was not a good idea. Or the three coffees or the three bottles of wine. Somewhere in the day we ate, but I have trouble remembering what we had. I may have to sit down.

  ‘You got a different experience that tells you otherwise, hen?’ she asks. I swallow, get my composure back, but I’m not ready with an answer. She is rifling through her bag. She has a fold-out map of East Lothian. There are small crosses in different-coloured biro on it.

  ‘See this?’ she asks. ‘This year, starting from January. All of these are women.’ I look again at the map. It makes no further sense to me. ‘Dead women,’ she clarifies. ‘Murdered. In the same way.’

  I look again at the crosses. ‘A serial killer?’

  ‘Yes – you have to do three to be a serial killer. There are twelve crosses on this map.’

  ‘I didn’t know—’

  She has already begun to answer my question before I’ve asked it. ‘The reason you haven’t heard of this is because each murder gets called “an isolated event with no wider threat to the public”.’ I blink, unsure what to say next.

  Maggie shakes the paper, points to a red cross in Dunbar. ‘This one, thirty-five-year-old woman executed with a knife by her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day, described by the papers as a crime of passion. Whatever the fuck. Here –’ she points to another cross – ‘sex worker bound and executed by suffocation – plastic bag over her head – here –’ she points again—

  ‘Wait.’

  Maggie looks up. It’s as if she’s forgotten I’m here.

  ‘So it’s different people? It’s totally different people using different methods? That’s not a serial killer then.’ The silence is thick.

  ‘Listen to what you are saying.’ She speaks slowly. ‘Listen to how you’re using the words they have given you.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The police say the murders are isolated events with no wider threat to the public,’ she says again.

  ‘Yes, but surely if – but surely if that woman was killed by her boyfriend, they have the boyfriend and he’s in jail and that crime was related entirely to their particular situation?’

  Maggie looks at me. ‘The situation being: she was a woman and he is a man.’

  ‘But a serial killer – that’s one person working alone and killing lots of people.’

  ‘Not true. What about Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas? What about the Moors murderers? What about the Wests? Fuckin’ – Yorkshire Ripper killed women with a hammer while his pals looked on, wondering what all the fuss was about. What about fuckin’ Manson? It’s one big black hole when you look into it.’

  ‘Look into what?’

  ‘Life. Our lives. Our deaths.’

  There is a long pause. I could very probably vomit.

  ‘Do you know the age range of women most often killed by men?’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Thirty-six to forty-five. Know why that is?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  She moves close to my face; I can smell her breath, even past the wine and the smoke, something else, soured and old. ‘They’ve finished breeding with us, but we are still fuckable.’ She sits back again and watches for my r
eaction. I try not to give one. ‘Know what people mean by unfuckable? They mean disposable. They mean incineratable.’

  ‘Look, I have to go,’ I tell her, ‘I have to be up early in the morning.’

  ‘Sure,’ she says, no sign of offence taken, ‘let me get my shoe.’ And she is gone before I can tell her I wasn’t asking her to come with me.

  When she appears again, both shoes on, I say, ‘You really don’t have to walk me back.’

  ‘Fuckit,’ she says, ‘I’ve just told you you’re likely to get murdered, I can at least get you back to your house.’

  She walks a couple of steps behind me all the way, talking, not waiting for me to respond. It sobers me up listening to her. She sounds mad. She is rolling.

  ‘It’s about forgetting, it’s about a vast and infinite amnesia. We forget the torture, the rape, the tit rippers, the scold’s bridles, the loss one by one of our fingernails, then fingers. The death of our unborn children, the burning and tearing apart of our vulvas. There is no going home, no saving, there is no rest-of-your-life to get over it because what comes next is throttling and consumption by fire, sucked into the air, breathed in, pissed and shat out by men who make the money from our carbonised remains, as time moves on, ridiculed, turned into a holiday treat, a joke, a cute costume, a romcom, something to take the kids to on a bank holiday. A joke or, at best, something to harden the cocks of schoolboys and old nerds – What’s your thing? I like girls with a bit of an edge, you know, with a taste for darkness. But do you want her tattered genitals, her nippleless breasts and her burned and scaled buttocks, her eyeless sockets? No. A push-up bra and black lipstick. A pointed hat and a cat’s eye. You leave it alone until those ashes are not ashes any more, they are just the everyday air we breathe and it’s all so different now, you say, that was barbarism, you say as you clip off our clits, as you burn the flesh from our faces and breasts with acid and maintain a slow, ponderous fuck of ownership up our arseholes and down our throats. Their desire to see their own cocks within us, watch our throats bulge with them, watch our small bellies swell as they go in. Seeing themselves reflected back, seeing how they would look in a woman’s flesh? And if they kiss us afterwards on the mouth it is only to see how they taste.’

  Maggie is trancelike. ‘What would it take?’ she says. ‘What if all the women that have been killed by men through history were visible to us, all at once? If we could see them lying there. What if you could project a hologram of the bodies in the places they were killed?’

  ‘Well – look, we’ve all got to die sometime, isn’t it?’ I fall into step next to her. ‘History is bloody – there were wars, life was different.’ I don’t feel like I am saying what I want to say. Maggie stops and looks at me. The silence grows, my feet twitch in their shoes.

  ‘What is the correct amount of time at which someone’s painful, terrifying death becomes unimportant, cosy? Before it becomes funny? Witches? Jack the Ripper? The wars? 1977?’

  ‘I don’t really understand what you mean.’

  She looks crestfallen in a way I couldn’t have imagined her an hour ago.

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know, I know. I don’t either – I can’t articulate it, it’s just a feeling I have all the time that I’m walking in and out of these deaths and I should at least notice. I should notice because I’m not dead yet, and there’s no difference between these women and me, or you or your mother or the lady in the tea shop. We’re just breezing in and out of the death zone. Wading through the dead. You know how sometimes you can smell it on a man, sometimes you just know – if he got you alone, if he had a rock . . . you know that thing when you feel it? Like your blood knows it. I try and take note, because it’s all I have in my power, to witness it and store it away. To look at the crime-scene photographs and know it happened, and is happening and will happen in the future. The stains, the wounds. Your children.’

  We have arrived at the house and are standing on the dark path leading up to the front door. Maggie rubs her nose hard enough to make me wince. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I might be a wee bit fucked.’ She looks about her, becoming aware suddenly that we have stopped.

  ‘Wait,’ she says. ‘What the fuck – is this the house?’

  ‘It’s just where I’m staying. It’s not mine.’

  She looks up at the dark windows on the top floor and smiles. ‘Does it have a sofa I can sleep on?’

  II

  The day of the winter picnic, four women arrived at the door. They had jumped on Ruth at the Pavilion the week before and offered their services in a way that made it impossible to say no.

  Annabelle, Maura, Jayne and Janet were a full hour earlier than they had said they would be. Janet was their leader and she had brought with her a checklist.

  ‘Please, do have a seat.’ Ruth had shown them into the drawing room where she had the sense they were inspecting the decor. She suspected Maura of straightening the fall of the curtain so that it was more to her liking. She held the tassel on the end of the rope that secured the curtains as though she were weighing it to determine its value. Once they were all seated, handbags primly on laps, toes together and to the side, heavily expectant faces, Ruth escaped to the kitchen, wary of overhearing whatever it was they might be saying about her and the house. Betty was already constructing a tray, the girl Bernadette was at the sink rinsing cutlery, and they exchanged smiles. She would have to put some time aside to get to know the girl a little – so far Betty had kept her so busy she hadn’t seen her with an idle moment.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Betty, I’m sorry, I didn’t expect them quite so early.’

  Betty smiled grimly and laid napkins next to the shortbread rounds that were newly out of the oven.

  ‘No bother at all, madam,’ she said. ‘I’ve encountered these women before.’

  Once the tea arrived, things softened. It was easier to navigate social difficulties if silences could be explained by full mouths and if it was possible to compliment something neutral, like the shortbread.

  ‘I’ve always said that Betty makes the best shortbread in North Berwick,’ said Annabelle. ‘I’m sure her cooking is half the reason Reverend Jon Brown insists on the winter picnic being on your beach.’

  There was an awkward moment that Ruth couldn’t ascertain the reason behind, until Jayne cleared it up for her. ‘Annabelle hosted last year, and it just didn’t come together in the same way, did it?’

  Annabelle put down her cup on her saucer gently.

  ‘Anyway,’ Janet said, producing the checklist from her handbag. ‘Shall we get started? We’ll do savouries first. Now, I understand Betty has organised sandwiches – fish paste and cucumber . . .’ She looked up at Ruth and Ruth nodded. ‘If you could say yes, dearie, that’ll save me looking up after every item, thank you. Now, pork and egg pies?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ruth felt sternly reprimanded.

  ‘Black bun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oatcakes and cheese.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. And for sweet: gingerbread loaf, treacle tart.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Janet ticked enthusiastically at her paper.

  ‘Now, costume, Ruth dearie.’

  ‘Costume?’

  ‘I see nobody informed you.’

  ‘Yes, did nobody say?’ asked Jayne.

  ‘The women dress up,’ said Annabelle.

  ‘It’s all part and parcel of the game of hide-and-seek – such fun,’ said Maura.

  ‘Oh, no I didn’t know about that. Well, never mind, I’ll know for next year.’

  Janet stood on a large inhale of breath. ‘Not to worry, I have spare items, let’s dress in your room shall we? Ladies, why don’t you change in the ballroom, provided that suits our host?’

  ‘Of course, but—’

  ‘Not to worry, they have their uniforms on underneath – nothing to scare the horses.’

  Annabelle, Maura and Jayne all looked a little put out by this comment.

  Janet
moved to the door and Ruth put down her cup of tea. ‘Come along,’ said Janet, and Ruth found herself obeying.

  ‘I suppose you don’t need showing where the ballroom is?’ she asked the women who sat happily around their tray of biscuits.

  ‘Ladies,’ said Janet firmly, ‘don’t just sit there and fill yourselves.’ The women stood immediately and filed out and down the hall to the ballroom. ‘Honestly.’ Janet rolled her eyes and tutted for Ruth’s benefit.

  Ruth went quickly ahead up to her bedroom, because she did not want to be led there by Janet. The staircase creaked under them.

  ‘Oh, look!’ Janet said, stopping at the landing window. ‘You can see Reverend Brown and his boys have already set up the bonfire. How dear! They are working so hard!’

  The bonfire was quite extraordinary, even unlit. It wasn’t what Ruth had imagined when the reverend had talked of ‘bonfire potatoes’. It was high, like a beacon.

  ‘It’s certainly impressive,’ she said, ‘they must’ve been working on it for hours, I should have sent the boys down to help.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, they did,’ Janet said. ‘Reverend Brown came and got them just before dawn.’

  Janet carried on up the final set of steps and Ruth stayed on the landing with a very unpleasant feeling in her chest.

  ‘I didn’t know that. Nobody asked me about that.’ Since the week before when the boys had returned from school, she had felt a peculiar anxiousness about them, as though they had to start their relationships over again. She felt every small change in their personalities like a personal failure of hers – they were being shaped by someone or something else.

  ‘Ah well, there’s been a lot to organise.’ Janet was at the bedroom door and moving her head to beckon Ruth to hurry, and then she helped herself to the room, walked in with no sense at all that it wasn’t hers to walk into. Ruth had a sudden horror that Peter might still be in bed, and she clambered the stairs three at a time, but he must have been already in his study, because by the time she got there, Janet was fussily making the bed. Ruth’s rage was mitigated by a feeling of being lost. So lost that she wondered if she ought to feel grateful for Janet taking charge.