by Andrew Greig
His dark head is turned away, pressed to the horse’s flank. He hasn’t yet seen the woman standing behind him, her hand on the gate leading into the yard. She carries something glinting in her other hand. Her hair is ringleted, her long skirt is green. Bend closer now and see her feet are bare. You catch your breath for you know now who she is, and what bare feet signify.
Something about the way she hesitates suggests they haven’t kissed yet, nor even know that they want to. You sit back, close your eyes a moment, still feeling that long forearm wrapped round the horse’s neck. You run on four and a half centuries from the story in the plates, then skip back twenty-plus years, and you could be there to see it begin.
Simon Elliot bends in green overalls over the Land-Rover engine, working on loosening the starter motor with a spanner. The angle of his back and his elbows as he reaches for another spanner to lock against the first says to the world I don’t want to be doing this but seeing I am … She closes the gate and crosses the yard quietly, not sure why.
His shoulders tense. Something slips, a clang, a curse Oh fuckin hell, and he’s nursing his knuckles in under his armpit. He bends silently over his pain, squeezing it in to himself. She sees him nod to himself, feels the breath forced back into his belly. Then he slowly reaches for the dropped spanner and in that gesture she sees everything about him that matters. She sees the pain and his acceptance of it, sees his patience and his disappointment – in himself, the resistant nuts, the uninspiring world, man’s estate. As he wipes blood from his knuckles onto the overall, she sees his temper followed by his acceptance of the way things are, and the sadness in that, the lack of consolation. Above all she knows before the thought has even arrived, the way lightning arrives before thunder, she knows that he has not ceased to be alone. He has never been comforted and yearns to be and does not expect to be. Though he has a child, his life hasn’t really started and may never. This is what he’s struggling with.
He settles again over the engine. The sunlight is yellow in the yard, the day hot and still. The shadow cast by the barn falls across her feet, her shadow falls across his arms. His head turns.
Do you need a hand, Simon?
Jinny! He smiles, his dark eyes radiant. Heh, right now I need a mechanic of genius.
Whatever they say now is just grit on a threaded bolt. It will only delay the giving way, the unlocking. She takes his hand, the bloody oily one, shaking slightly with pain or something. She looks at it more closely. The skin’s scraped back and when she wipes away blood there’s a deep notch at the side of his ring knuckle.
When did you last have a tetanus jab?
When I took over the estate.
She nods. That was wise. Better clean this up though.
And because the way she says it is not bossy or reproachful like Fiona but just a simple concern, he nods, puts down the other spanner, reclaims his hand and speaks.
If you’re looking for Fi, she’s in town.
She shakes her head. Patrick’s away at the tree-planting so I’ve been busy about the caravan, she says. Thought you might like this. Elderflower. She holds out a cloudy bottle. It’s still a bit young, but it’s got a fizz to it.
Simon Elliot puts his head on one side and grins. So let’s have a go at it afore it gets any older.
As they cross the yard together she seems so at home he understands better that she belongs with something like this too. The way she sidesteps horse-shit, rests her hand on the pile of fertiliser sacks as they turn the corner, looks up instinctively for the martins’ nests in the eaves of the barn. This is her world, for all that she was brought up in the suburbs of the South. The big house and the estate have been as long in her family as his. They have already talked about this and their families’ history of feud. She has already warned him not to stand in front of her on Lauder Brig in case her ancestors take her over. And he has informed her – on the lawn, as Fiona passed the sandwiches and Patrick muttered that property wasn’t just theft it was also boring – that her people had taken the Elliot lands by treachery so she should stay away from high places …
She looks up at him, sparking flecks in her eyes, pupils wide and black despite the brilliance of the day. It would be so natural, so human to drop his hand onto the curve of her hip-bone under the long green cotton skirt. But he isn’t human, he is a position and a place. He is Sir Simon Elliot, a married man and father and minor landowner, and what he wants doesn’t come into it. He has been told that all his life and he believes it. Without that he fears what he would be.
She steps sideways, picks up a rusty bolt from the dust, bowls it overarm into the long grass then comes back to him again. He glances at her and sees through her skitteryness and almost frantic light-heartedness. He sees she is an untethered balloon. She is looking for something binding and weighty, and Patrick isn’t it. Patrick just goes along with her. She’s still alone.
Then she passes her hand over his and gently rubs away the blood again.
That must hurt, she says. Let me fix it.
If he had said something, the moment might have been disarmed. Some kind of repartee, or a politeness appropriate to his class, even a flirtation would have unmade it. But he was speechless and she said nothing either as he opened the back door to her and they ducked out of the glare into the cool dim scullery.
*
The images and voices follow each other like one gust of wind pushed aside by another. You lie open, dreaming, and feel them blow through you. You see Sim Elliot turn in his morning bed and reach for his secret journal. You feel the pulse in his wrists, sense the quickening of his heart as he journeys to meet Jinny again. It is as though you and he have become porous to each other, the way lovers do in their brief season, till you do not know what’s his and what is yours.
You look up quickly and in the blinking almost see Jinny standing at the kitchen sink. Her long hennaed hair – only a man could think that copper-red natural – her calm wide eyes as she holds her hands out either side, palm up as though she was balancing something not visible to you. You shake your head and she’s gone, her hair becomes the red dish towel at the window’s edge, and you are puzzled because she did not seem angry. She was demanding nothing. She seemed content at the way things are developing.
You shrug and return to your story, for you are used to these flickers at the edge of your eyes and mind – some foolish, some murderous, some obscene. You assume this happens to most people but we choose not to mention it, and rightly, for it’s best not to dwell on them.
Lay yourself open again to the voices of the lovers’ season. Whatever direction they come from, they are all one wind coming from the same place blowing over the same land, and each raises the hair from your skull.
It happens whiles at the netsuke, when my blade speirs out what manner of man or beast is emerging before it’s clear to me. I blink a few times then let my hands carry on and only later do I see what’s shaping here. So it was the first time I clapped eyes on Elliot and Jinny together.
I was lying up in the hay-byre ahint the big house, nursing a bottle of skoosh Fiona had put my way afore she went off in the car with wee Davy for the shopping. The last thing I saw was the bairn’s anxious blue een as the car rounded the house and was away.
Like a pup-dog to its master that summer I liked to keep Elliot in eye-shot wherever I stravaiged. I went to find him in the yard, hoping he might have time to work with me on the tree-house, or come down to the river to spy out the trout or even take a dook in the Ruickle pool for the day was that hot. But he looked up from the Land-Rover and said he’d promised Fi he’d get it sorted that morn. But we’d go onto the muir and count the whaups’ nests in the afternoon.
So I climbed up among the bales where I could see him, dug a nest and opened the fizz. The day was flat calm but buzzing a summer silence. A cushie-doo was moaning in the sauchs down by, and up through the roof-slats a laverock was burbling like a leaky spigot. Elliot had been learning me the right names of the bir
ds, beasts and fish thereabouts. He spoke more stiff and proper in those days, and he aye looked surprised when the Scots word came from his mouth, like he’d turned on a tap and it had run not water but rust and blood.
I footered about some in the scratchy hay. Hidden up there I had some magazines with photos of lassies’ bubbies, but in truth they were beginning to deave and bore me. I got more het shinning up the poles of the byre and feeling the rub atween my legs. I needed to see it for real. The week afore – and it makes me black-ashamed yet to mind it – I’d crept along the passage to keek through the bathroom keyhole and see Aunt Fiona strip for her bath. Yon was a let-down, just a swift keek as she turned away, and I was more affrontit than aroused. I needed to see the real whole hough-magandie. I had to see Elliot go in.
So I was full of fizz and fidget that day, feeling keisty as I rolled on my belly and saw Jinny Lauder come in the gate. Elliot hadn’t seen her, being bent over the engine, but I saw how she paused there, one hand on the gate and the hot breeze stirring her skirt about her shins. I saw how she saw him, the man entire. The virr and the sorrow, gentleness and the sonsie humour that peeked out once in a while from the laird’s part he was born to. Her red head dipped then came up like a chaffie’s down by the linn, and she came silently across the yard towards him.
I learned early how to watch well, and the trick isn’t in the eyes. It’s in the mind which needs be blank and open, without opinion. Then you can see under the surface, then you hear behind the clash and babble. I learned that in the city among the family I never wanted to go back to, and dodged many a beating that way. So I watched the angles of her arms by his, the way his head turned, the shift of his hurdies and in response her small neat arse back off then sway forward again.
I kent fine who Jinny was. I’d spied out her and her man’s caravan in the trees. She’d waved to me across the river and I’d taken a redder and run off. Her and Patrick had been twice to the big house and I’d kept hid. The second time they’d all sat out on the grass with Davy toddling about. There was laughter and some crack, and she had taken off her shoes and chased after the laddie bare-foot.
I’d watched like my life hung by it. I saw the stiffness in Aunt Fi but also that she was glad of company. I saw the black-avised near-silence of Patrick as Jinny skittered about like a midge. I saw for the first time Sir Simon with a cigarette at his lips and how Fiona keeked at him then. I saw Jinny’s hand go down to David and him hesitate then grip her fingers tight. For a moment I’d seen strings run between them all, crossed and looping, like a skeelie spider was at work.
Now her man was away at the tree-planting and she was in our yard. I could hear the laughter but not the words. He leaned back against the bonnet and fankled up his sleeve, keeked sideways at her then away as she came closer to look at his bloody hand. Then the two of them crossed the yard through bits of straw like splintered sunlight, the stoor kicking up from their feet. He was about to go first through the open scullery door then paused and stood aside for her. He said something and she went in first and his arm came up behind her, and though there was no touch or music it was like at the dancing as he followed her on.
I gave them a few minutes as I pondered the matter. I looked round at the dale, the river, the road, the high riding of the Border hills that clasped us fast and siccur. I never wanted to go home. I wanted to bide on here, close to Sim Elliot, the only man who had ever given me time and tenderness. Now this new lassie, this hippie Auntie Fi cried her, had brought some new business. It was the top of summer, soon I’d be sent home to the city, back to the old battlefield. There must be a way to make them keep me here.
I slid from the barn and came in very douce. Truth is, I kent before the kenning. I kent afore they did.
They were laughing over a pile of records. Square, she said, you’re so square. And he looked gey pleased though he pretended not to be, and then together they moved apart as they saw me.
Tat, this is Jinny. She’s staying in the caravan across the river.
*
The tall man, the lively woman, the sweating youth, stand in the sitting room of wood panel and sun-worn chintz covers. She is shaking the boy’s hand but they’re both looking to the man standing at the wide-open window as though something were now up to him.
Half-way to his mouth, his glass has stalled. Life has ceased to be something that just happens to him. The hot breeze spreads elderflower through the room, sweet and perishable, and Sim Elliot feels as though he is standing at the top of a great drop with untried wings strapped to his back.
*
Long skirt ragged and stoorie at the hem, her hair shivering and springy as she held out her hand to me though I was just a laddie. I feel yet her fingers slide into my sweating palm and run along my life-line. I see her eyes light on me and open wider as though I was yet another welcome by-blow of the day, as though I would bring her only good. Now in my long dwams at the work-bench I smell above the acrid scorch of solder a calming whiff of lavender, or the earthy patchouli that folks used then to hide the guff of hashish beneath a harmless imitation, in the way we might hide growing love beneath jokes and easy friendliness, and for all that I smile yet.
I ken, I said. Are you a gypsy woman? Are you staying?
That depends on his Lordship, she said. Elliot grunted but didn’t disagree. Then she prised my fingers open and asked for a keek at my hand. If she’d asked me to stick it in the oven I’d have done it.
Well, Tat, I see you’re not going far from here in this life. She tickled her nail along my life-line. Any travelling you do will be inside, and I see loads of it.
Her eyes were the shifting green-grey of hazel twigs at just this time of year, and a wind blew straight through them from her to me.
*
Simon Elliot lies on his side in bed with the sun blinding on the pages of his old secret journal. I regret everything except these hours. He looks up, thinking he has heard Jinny’s voice inside again the way he used to, and the room is faint and silent and insubstantial.
She’s dead for certain, he thinks, but she does not sleep. She stirs red-gold in my mind each time I pass through the trees by the river. She is wide-awake in dreams where I lie sweating. She flutters these mornings between my ribs like a goldfish. Patrick’s long dead and all, but he’s well rotted in the acid soil. No one seems to hear from him and maybe that’s what he wanted by the end: silence. But Jinny was burned and her ashes shaken over the Liddie Falls to drift into the piny woods. Perhaps that’s why she gets about the world more …
Simon Elliot screws his knuckles into his eyes till black spots explode, then turns a page to meet her again in a day long dead and living yet.
*
She stepped quickly from the trees beyond the village and into my car. Warm day, a polka-dot dress, gym shoes, arms brown where her freckles grew that summer. There was a drive, my hands on the wheel and hers on her lap, our hips shifting as we tried not to look or be seen looking as our voices entwined. She was talking about family rows as we drove through the heart of the debatable lands. Some days I regret everything except, perhaps, being born, she said of a sudden, and I had to leave the car to walk in tears up and down by the road. Summer at the roadside with hawthorn-stink thick and sickly as she walked close by me but we still didn’t touch.
For this was the day of being sensible. This was the day we’d agreed we had to stop while stopping was still possible. She recited again the arithmetic: once is a one-off. It’s wrong but excusable, just. The second time is to check the first time wasn’t a fluke. It’s stupid but understandable. But one more time and you’re having an affair, and that’s just sordid and predictable. And destructive. Unforgivable. There could be no one more time. Agreed.
We got back in the car and I drove on through the outlaw country till we came out by the pewtery firth, and called into a wee café and bought sandwiches and walked by the flaming gorse that edged the dunes that gave down to the sea. And I was dazed by the pewter lig
ht that edged her shoulders as she said she’d thought she believed in free love but this wasn’t free. It was costing her everything, including her opinion of herself, and of me. She couldn’t be who she thought she was. She’d never been unfaithful before and she didn’t like it at all.
And I agreed it was miserable and desperate and over, but our words went one way and we went another like the boats out in the firth moving against the breeze. When she turned to me again, Jinny looked filled out as a sail by an invisible power, and I stood waiting with a certainty I’d never known about anything before as she moved towards me and placed her hands flat on my shirt. I looked down and saw her hands lift and fall on my chest, and as I flattened my hands on the small of her back and felt her hips sway in, she said You know, desire isn’t wrong, only very very painful. And when we broke from kissing, she stopped being clever and said only what was needed. Here, now.
Flat radiant light over empty beach, sea beyond the distant trees above the dunes. Turmoil lies down and lifts her dress. Panic turns and unbuckles my belt. It’s my period, do you mind? Are you kidding? I may have said that. I hope I did.
At last my weight on her. Beautiful to us both. Oh help.
Marram grass scraping my legs as her hips rise off the sand. Her face over me becomes plastic, I see her flicker as a child, a girl, a woman. I see how she will look when old, and for pity on us all my head dips to her wee breasts. As I suck her sweetness out and she takes me in, a current fizzes round and round, faster and brighter with each sweep. Her words are panted at my ear. Open your eyes! Look at me! Her mouth opens, we feel the powder-trail fizzing up our spines and can’t speak as something crosses between us like a white diver leaping and I feel my very self go into her. I’ve got you, I’ve got you! she cries. Then Don’t worry, Sim, don’t.
*