by Andrew Greig
Simon Elliot lies back on his pillows. He knows the rest by heart. He hears again her murmur in his ear as he turns another page and looks out blankly over the garden where the winter is being blown away: I regret everything except this hour and anything that comes hereafter.
Jinny Lauder is dead and not gone. She lies wrecked on the low dunes by the firth wrapped around her lover who rests his head on her sweating shoulder. For she has leapt into him and will never leave as long as he lives and breathes.
*
Peace for minutes on end. A dog barked above their heads, she wriggled back into her dress as the unseen walker scrunched by.
They dug the hole with their hands on the beach, slow at first then faster and deeper, saying nothing. At first the hole was dry, then water seeped up and the sides began collapsing. They scooped the water out but always it filled up again. The deeper they dug the quicker it filled. Aye, that’s life, he said. Shore is, she replied.
She sat back on her heels and laughed till she put her hands up to his face and began to weep into his chest.
*
That’s how she lives still, he thinks as he turns the page. We dug down to a level where there’s no separation. She’ll seep into the mind of anyone who goes down far enough.
He closes his journal and lies out again on his bed. No matter how often he scoops these memories out, she always comes back. Now someone is living in Crawhill Cottage again. She has the plates, the photo, Tat has seen the clasp with the silver coin at the centre. So it must be Marnie. He’s long hoped this day would come when he could see Jinny’s only living remnant, and now it’s here he’s weak and black afraid.
Laughter in the garden comes clear through the open window. He’s on his feet at the window to see a woman coming through the bamboo grove towards the house. She stops and stands where Jinny stood but she is not Jinny. She turns and holds her hand out to the man coming up behind her. The man who stops and glares up at the window isn’t Patrick but David. He hears a light accented voice.
Hey, you didn’t tell me you were loaded!
We’re not, his son replies.
So let’s go meet the ogre.
It’s the first time he’s set eyes on his prospective daughter-in-law. She stands hands on hips of her jeans. Thin, too thin, he thinks, for that mouth. Short spiky blonde hair, red-rimmed glasses. He can see the angle of her cheeks and hip-bones. As she looks up he sees her angular hause-banes rise either side of her neck and he shivers.
He moves back from the window, he doesn’t need to see any more. She’s the wrong woman and he cannot go downstairs yet to greet her for he cannot empty himself of the sand dunes and Jinny’s hips rising, the threat of rain and the flat pearly light, her parting lips and shattered eyes and the light over the firth where yellow reeds bustled to wind’s change.
As they walk through these woods or lie in the bracken under the wall, give the lovers their season, carried yet in the breeze sifting through the windlestrae. As they drop from sight into the heather like shot grouse, let them breathe in the hollows where the need to be wanted wars with the want to be needless. Let them have their time, for somewhere it lies hoarded yet, and you may run it through your fingers like coins unearthed, tumbling into your heated lap.
The moor was right hot, baked and shrunken that afternoon they first met above the dyke. A shimmer of heat and bugs drummed over the heather-heads, there was a background hum in the earth and air. She wore her husband’s jeans, cut ragged above her knees, cinched tight around the waist with a black leather belt. A faded check shirt knotted up. He was trying not to look at her belly-button or the bright coin winking in her buckle as he stumbled, put out his hand and skinned his knuckles on the dyke.
Accident-prone, my Lord Elliot, she murmured.
You know I hate that Sir nonsense, he said.
So why keep the title?
It’s not exactly something you can get rid of. He sucked his knuckle and the sun was crushed in his ruby ring by the corner of his mouth.
They didn’t touch. Nothing irreversible had happened between them yet. One way was back down to the settled lands, grazed and ordered, what folk mean when they call the Borders pretty, though creepy had always been the word, far as Sim was concerned. Or on their side of the dyke, the open humped moorland, the unaccountable standing stone and the burnt mounds drowning under heather, the wild lands shawled in peat.
I was going for a swim in a lochan on the moor, he said. Fiona’s off with Davy to her county pals.
I got fed-up with making wine and it’s too good a day to get stoned, she replied. Patrick’s at the pub again.
In those days whenever they opened their mouths they said more than they were saying. He tasted his blood, the sun was crushed in her belt-buckle. She told him the silver coin set there was Roman, an ancestor had dug up a number of them up on the moor in the days when they still cut peats. The others had disappeared with Lauder when Elliot’s henchmen had pushed him off the brig.
Nonsense, he said. The man was a notorious drunk and womaniser. He was on his way to see a lassie with some money for her, and he fell because he was pished as usual.
Your lot got our estate by sooking up to Dacre after Flodden.
Aye, and how many did you kill to get it back?
That was marriage not murder, though sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, she said and laughed. Anyway, we lost it again.
It was an old flyting they’d carried on since that first day he’d come down the stairs after watching her from the window, walked blinking into the light knowing he was supposed to get rid of her, and she’d stood in front of him barefoot with Patrick, Fiona holding wee Davy off at the side, held out her hand and said bold as anything I’m Jinny Lauder, I believe you own my estate – can we park our caravan? Even Fi had smiled at her nerve, and they all had tea out on the grass, and the caravan was still in the corner of the field with nettles and dockens growing tall about its wheels.
I wonder if there’s more treasure up there, he said. I should get one of those metal-detectors.
I heard great-granddad Lauder had a by-blow daughter by an Elliot girl and that’s who the coins were for …
They were talking about anything as their feet turned them up onto the moorland.
*
High up there, beyond the grey salmon-pouted lip of Shankheid Pass, past where the heather peters out and moorland studded with the moraine of retreating glaciers becomes so barren even sheep are few, there are no ruins, no habitation visible in any direction. This is the trackless moor.
The man and woman who veer over the horizon seem to be tacking on hot invisible winds. They are still talking. Sweat runs down the fine gingery hairs on her bare arms, his eyes sting with salt. He is trying to explain that life is not a game, that he accepts his responsibilities as husband, father, the owner of the estate. In a few years, unless she chooses to drift on and be a waster, she will know what he means. There comes a time to grow up. That means turning our backs on all the doors we haven’t gone through and never will. To make that decision and live with it, he says, takes courage. And courage and sacrifice move him more than anything else.
She rubs her palm over her belly and tacks away from him.
But surely we’re born for joy? she says. Otherwise what’s all this sacrifice for?
The slope falls away and they come together again in a hollow. Joy? He admits the whole Sixties thing passed him by. Perhaps ten years ago her words made sense. Perhaps he had dreams but he knows now it was fantasy. Now he is an adult, or trying to be. He has put childish things aside. As we must.
He stops then, looks down at his feet as though seeing them for the first time in years, and he doesn’t intend the words that come now.
But whatever happened to the things that mattered?
The words leap from a cage he didn’t know existed and he is suddenly quite close to tears. She glances at him and for all his size she sees the unconsoled child he once was.
They’re still in reach, Sim, she says. If you’ve the nerve to grasp them.
He explains he is very ordinary. He could never drop out like her. He must accept that nothing extraordinary will happen in his life, unlike his passionate, bloody, devious, reckless ancestors. Sometimes he wishes those times would come again. Something, anything … But those times are past, yes? And it’s as well they are.
You don’t sound very sure.
Don’t you ever get scared, Jinny? Are you always brave?
She laughs. Only when I’ve no alternative. I couldn’t bear college or my family. Visions of years of the straight life ahead. So I grabbed Patrick, told him we had to marry and cut loose, drift till we found the right place. She stops, looks at him. And this is the right place, she says. I don’t want to leave now.
They are climbing the far side of the hollow. From up here the breeze tugs a few faded grasses and that is all. Heather is stunted, the peat worn to sandy earth and bedrock. They look back but all signs of that old life have disappeared. Even their names are wearing away as they veer onward. She is beginning to tell him about her mother’s death, how it left her beyond fear yet wanting so much … Her voice trails away, her feet hesitate then stumble. He sees himself wrap his arms round her small body to keep her from hurt, but of course he does not.
That’s when I changed my name back from Nixon to Lauder, she tells him. My mother’s people.
And I suppose you want the estate back?
She laughs. I’m no bread-head. Just a bit will do.
How big a bit?
She stops, looks him up and down as if measuring him. Then she flicks her head aside, her tongue peeks over her lower lip as she smiles, and in that moment he knows his life will be wasted if he doesn’t kiss her once in it. And he knows he won’t so he walks on ahead of her. Her laughter and lightness both he and Fiona have enjoyed, but now he knows she also aches and has sorrows no one can put right, that knowledge runs him through like a lance.
He is walking away but not fast enough. She is level with him now, chewing a dry grass. They seem to be slowing up. The words are running out. She has been haivering something about insects.
Are butterflies insects? she asks. She drops a black caterpillar onto his palm, he feels the crawling tickle travel inside. Or are they related to birds?
He stands back from her, swaying slightly as something rises in his chest. He swallows and it stays down. She looks at him with something like concern. They are standing at the edge of a black tarn that has appeared out of nowhere, one he’ll never find again. The bubble expands like marsh gas behind his ribs as her lower lip swells in his sight. He truly believes he might faint.
Don’t you know?
I know … The bubble rises and burbles like blood over his lips. I know if you don’t kiss me my life will be unlived.
She grins. Sure, she says.
Jinny, I mean it.
I said sure, you big daft gowk.
She takes a step forward then tilts up her head to him. He sees it all slow as he lowers his head.
She kisses him. A slow brush of her lips. That was all he wanted, just to have felt her once. But she doesn’t step back like she should. Instead he feels the flat of her hands press hard on his back, and her lips begin to suck on his.
They stand swaying at the edge of black water. Then they are kneeling, her small hands working at his belt. He tugs at hers and the coin flies from the buckle. Minutes, slow-time minutes later, after the touching and learning her mouth, his hands down her man’s jeans, the soft crackle of her sweating bush, he waits for her to tell him to stop. Surely she will stop this.
Wait a minute, she says. Her fingers grip the head of his cock through his trousers. Her other hand goes into the back pocket of her jeans. Put this on.
He gawps at her. She looks down a moment.
I may be faithless but I’m no daft or donnert.
He blinks at her language then he is passive as she unrolls the condom and settles onto him, her face frowning and intent as she starts to rock.
Close up her eyes have tiny tobacco-coloured threads radiating out. His dark eyes were like the tarn, she said later, mild and bottomless. Somewhere between sky and land her warbling cry ascends in stages like the unseen laverock, higher and higher.
*
He opens his eyes. She is lying across him, her red hair sticking damp on his shoulder. Her head shifts, her eyes open and look into his. There is no holding anywhere, nothing to be said. Then she reaches down and slowly pulls him out. He notices the scratchy heather on his back, the ant tickling across his leg. Normal service is being resumed. She sits up and looks around.
Gosh, she says. Golly.
What happened to the tarn?
You saw it too? And the burnt grass?
They are lying on the barest moor. There is no water, no black grass. They look at each other, something crawls across his chest and it can’t be flicked away.
Spooky, she says. We both saw it.
Must have been the heat – blood running from our heads to … other parts. Some kind of hallucination. There’s a scientific explanation.
She laughs and coughs, he feels the shake of her inside his ribs. As she speaks the vibrations move in his own throat.
Is that what you call it?
You were speaking Scots. I didn’t know you could.
Nor did I. By the way, what’s a laverock?
A lark, he says vaguely.
She puts both hands on his chest and pushes down hard to lever herself up. It hurts, feeling her go. She pauses as she hides her breasts away inside her husband’s shirt.
I can feel other words coming on.
Wheesht, Jinny.
She grabs the finger he’s put up to her lips. She grabs it in both hands and twists as her head comes down. He lets the pain go through him then slowly pulls her down to him again.
Five minutes, Jinny. Five minutes of peace then we can go back.
We can’t go back. Let’s not think about it yet.
A long silence. Her hair tickles the side of his nose. Her cut-down jeans are still round her ankles. He rolls her over onto her back and has a good look because this won’t happen again. His hand traces where he’s been, the bright open lips, the brown squashed crinkly hair.
So this must be a burnt mound.
Her hand closes round his balls. He feels them shift inside her palm. They seem to move of their own accord, creeping off elsewhere.
This must be man’s estate. Doesn’t amount to much.
I ken, but it’s all yours.
She looks right into his eyes, squeezes gently. His fingers curl inside her. This time there’s no dark circle, no black tarn lapping.
*
Can you find a way back from here?
He looked at her then around at the horizon in all directions. He shook his head.
I’ve never been here before. Never like this, I swear.
Me neither. Closest is the first time I got stoned. Everything was expanded, brighter, sharper.
I’ll start smoking your dream tobacco if that’s what it’s like.
She began to laugh, sort of.
I doubt if Fiona will like that.
I doubt if Patrick would be that keen on this.
Let’s not start, Simon.
Right. He looked round again, thought about the position of the sun. Must be this general direction, he said. Ready?
As I’ll ever be.
Hand in hand they tumbled back across the trackless waste. On the downhills they were running, colliding, and it all felt light and easy, like born again without a history. When the slope turned up they were exhausted, weak-kneed, silent. They came to a lochan he thought he recognised, and they knelt by the bank and washed and sniffed each other and washed again. The sun was low and the hairs on his legs rose and quivered at the cool. They came over the horizon, knew where they were again and they dropped hands.
This can’t happen again, Jinny.
She pressed so close she felt inside his ribs.
This feels like the only true thing I’ve done since I was a boy, he said. He felt very tired and his knees were beginning to give. So why is it the worst?
Then there was no end to the possible saying, so they set off downhill on different old paths, he to the east and she to the west. He stopped for one last look but she was gone into the land, so he hurried on with his mind blue and empty as a blown egg and the coin from her belt-buckle still slippy in his right hand. And when he came finally through the trees behind the house preparing his story for Fiona, trying to concentrate and look ordinary and care-worn instead of ecstatic and exhausted, the sun was splintered low and red in his eyes so everywhere else he looked but at it was dark and vague, washed-out, unreal.
*
Simon Elliot looks up from the pages as he lies in bed, hand coddling his cock for the comfort. There are still threads of grass in the spine, pale sweat stains on the paper where he stored his secret life, the only real one. He puts his nose to the page and imagines he can still smell her. Lavender and patchouli and earthy hashish and the juice of her. He hears laughter faint up the stairs from young love down below as they talk with Annie Tat. Soon he must go down and spend the evening with them, eat and make conversation and not drink too much. But it’s not love just sanctuary Davy and the girl are chasing, and there is no sanctuary in love. He knows that now as the light begins to fade.
*
Surely I’ve no special powers. Seeing Elliot’s torch go by outside last night after I’d imagined him doing just that, it does not bear much thinking of. I cannot have caused it, surely I didn’t foresee it. The event went by the door of my invention as he did, not stopping, on its own course.
I’m just too much alone, though it’s by choice. Now evening silts up the valley below and I’ve spoken to no living person all day. I walk up and down and talk aloud to remind myself who I am.
I don’t believe in the supernatural. I’ve never met a ghost. But Spook, I do believe in that. It’s hidden science, the connections we can’t quite grasp that tilt our lives one way rather than another. It’s the huge web in the corner of the window, glimpsed for a moment when the sun is low. Science and Spook agree: everything is fated, everything is connected, nothing truly disappears, everything bears the address of everything else. So when a small woman in an airport bookshop abruptly thrust a map into my hand, into my head there slid an image of a place I’d always known about. A place where all events are moved by the same force. A place, a destiny, a role at last. At the very least, a free lodging. A place of silence and voices. Crawhill Cottage on the Elliot estate.