by Andrew Greig
The flush went to his ears. He looked down and his elongated bare head gleamed in the snowlight.
Ta, he said. But Annie shouldna have shown you them. He looked up. So you’re needing a lift with your gear to the bus?
No, she said. I’m not leaving just yet. But if you tell me what I need to know, I might well be.
He put his hand up to the door frame and waited, his eyes winter-bright.
It’s about the caravan, she said. Jinny and Patrick’s caravan. He looked past her so intently she turned to glance but there was nothing there. Where the affair started, she added.
His head swivelled fluid as a hawk’s then he grinned through his beak.
I suppose if she was your ma, you’d be entitled.
No suppose about it, she said. She paused. It’s my father I want to be sure about.
He blinked once, then reached down and lifted his shotgun from the shadow of the porch. She stood firm on the briggiestane. I can always ask David, she said quickly.
Again that little snapping grin as he stuffed his feet into wellies.
The laddie kens nothing, Tat said. Though I’m minded he has doubts he can’t admit to.
I can ask Elliot. Or go to the city and get the full transcripts …
Let’s take a daunder, he said. I need to check on the pheasants.
He shrugged on his jacket, pockets weighted down with cartridges, then stepped past her into the thin snow and sniffed the air.
Fine day, Miss Lauder, he said. There’s no doubt about it. I’ll tell you what I can about Elliot and your father, and you’ll see there’s nae doubt at all.
*
Sim Elliot goes down the tower stair carrying his boots. In the passageway he can hear Annie and his son and the fiancée, but he turns away and opens the big door very quietly, puts his boots on then out the back door.
Today is white all around, the snow squeaks under his boot heels. The willow branches are stiff as spears as he heads down through the garden then across the wee bridge. He puts one hand on the fence post and loups over, into the lower paddock. For a moment he’s almost young again, in full vigour, whole-hearted. He dreamed Jinny last night, she seemed happy and excited, and though he sets no store by it that always makes him feel better. She’s not gone, not entirely gone. Within him she is fresh and green as these grasses cased in icicles. When he dies, she truly will be gone and there will be some peace.
He stomps past the snow-dusted remains of the caravan with scarcely a glance.
*
I’m very late, Jinny said. I don’t know why I took risks. Sim, I’ve never been this late.
They were down at the bottom end of the woods, half-hidden from the road by spindly trees. It was winter, a first snow was running off in sunshine. There was brightness everywhere, he had to bend close to hear her she was speaking that quiet.
It’s ten days now. She raised her gloved hand to his cheek. Hey, you make the snow look grey.
They stood in the flat grass with meltwater running over their shoes. Through the water the grass was sharp and clear, each blade.
It’ll all come out if I have the baby, she said. I don’t know if I can bear that. Or if I can bear not to have it. Or lie to Pat.
No, he said. I doubt if I could bear it either. He was amazed his voice still worked when his heart had stopped. Would Patrick know it’s not his?
Her face coloured as she looked away to the road then flinched as a car went past.
Maybe, she said. He’s been mostly away or drunk, and we’ve scarcely … Maybe once or twice. Even I’m not sure …
He didn’t want to think about that, nor why he’d always accepted her call on the condom. Our biology is working to betray us, he thought. It knows what we want.
It could be a false alarm?
Yes, she said. But it’s made me see everything differently. We thought it was beautiful and it was, but it’s all so sordid. The better it is, the worse I feel.
Another car, and they both swayed back into the trees.
I ken, he said, whispering now. This is the best and worst thing I’ve ever done. So what do we do?
Hold me, she said. I had to tell you, I probably shouldn’t have.
He held her head to his chest, felt the warm splash on his wrists. He looked back up the fields, checking no one was coming. If this came out, they’d have to leave. Leave all this, leave with nothing.
She put her hands to his chest and pushed.
I must be getting back, she said. Just wait and let me think what’s for best.
Jinny –
No, she said. Please say nothing more. She stepped away from him. Let me sort this out, she said. I’ll call you.
You don’t have a phone, he said foolishly.
Since when have we needed one? I’ll think to you – but to be on the safe side, I’ll also hang out washing when you should come down.
Then she was gone, heading up straight across the fields. She looked great, going away, head down across the winter field, so strong and forlorn, leaving him with the melt running over his shoes, terribly cold and clear.
*
Here walking by a river, his hand straying out towards her. Or here, lying among heather, looking up, her hair tangled into his. Or sneaking from a barn in the gloaming, faces averted from each other. So much secrecy, so much pleasure, so many eager ambushes, the lovers setting out on different trails by night or day, by moon or sun or through the heavy slanting rain, along secret paths that twist and turn to finally deliver them to each other.
I saw them trysting, couried as I was high in the craw’s nest of the Scots pine. I saw Jinny greit, Elliot’s arms round her as they stood in the melt like they’d gone simple. They hadn’t come for the usual. This wasn’t the haybarn, the Land-Rover, the moor nor the caravan, all the places I’d seen them at it. They’d never gone back to Creagan’s Knowe since she seen me that one time. Never a mention made of that, though we’d both taken a redder when we clapped eyes on each other again. I loved her for that, and she’d been douce and gentle with me like I was sickly.
Then Jinny pulled free, said something to him and hurried awa up the brae through the snow-wreath, hand over her face and head down. I waited on, looking down at the top of Elliot’s big shaggy head as he hunkered by the burn for a long age, scooping handfuls of snow out into the water and watching them grey and be gone. I saw him walk by under my very tree, muttering, shaking his head, chuckling. Laughter and greiting, I didn’t get it.
When he was gone, I slipped down out of the tree and stood picking needles and crud off myself, watching the corbies rebuilding in the scraggy birch. School and home were worse than ever, even I couldn’t dodge all that was coming to me. I’d do near anything not to be sent back again at the end of these holidays.
I set on after Elliot. It was an unchancy time but it could tip my way yet.
*
Sim Elliot kicked the snow off his boots and left them dripping in the scullery. Flesh of her flesh, he thought. Jinny’s bairn. The last living piece of her. What have I to be feared of?
He came whistling into the steamy kitchen. The fiancée was pouring David coffee.
Grand morning! Got enough there for me?
David looked incredulous, the lassie smiled uncertainly but poured him some. Then he sat at the table by them, warming his hands round the mug.
Sorry about the other night, he said. I was ill-mouthed and rude.
You were pissed and disgusting, David said.
Aye, well I was. Truth is, son – he looked up into the boy’s blue Fiona eyes – I was jealous. He glanced at the girl. Jealous of your happiness. Take it with both hands. He lifted the mug to his lips in the silence. It doesn’t last that long, he added. Least, mine never did. I wish you better.
The girl Jo put her thin-boned hand on his arm, slid it down to his wrist and squeezed. He hadn’t been touched like that in a while.
Thank you, she said. We needed so much to hear that.
Silence from the boy but he nodded. Outside the window water was running from the eaves, steam hung over the fields like they were breathing.
Thinking of visiting the lassie in Crawhill? he said.
Not really, David muttered.
Jo glanced at him and adjusted her glasses.
She sounds interesting. I might like to meet her.
Not many kindred spirits round here for you young ones, Elliot said. She must be perishing up there.
Well, she survived the night, David said. Annie saw her walking in the low field by the burn. Didn’t you see her?
Elliot reached for another biscuit with a hand that scarcely shook. He was better the day.
Too busy thinking about … other things. Anyway, if you do call in at Crawhill anytime, give the lassie my regards. He hesitated, crunched the biscuit and coughed the crumbs. Tell her to call by for tea if she wants.
*
Now Tat can lie as easy as me, but this time I think he was speaking true, or at least true as he knows, as we walked among the corn bins in the snow and on under the trees.
Mid-story he waved me still, then walked on so silent and light I was surprised to see footprints. He stopped by a holly bush, bent down and picked up a stone from the snow and lobbed it into the bush. A rustle, a flicker, a shotgun blast. I was impressed as much as sickened as he dragged the mink out from the bush, and he didn’t seem too happy either, just stood with his head bowed looking at the blood drip into the snow.
We’ve pine martens in the wood, he said, and that was all the explanation I got or needed.
My boots were leaking as I trod beside him, his head turning, turning, not missing a thing. And I think he told me it as best he knew from what he’d seen and heard and what Elliot had confided later. He gave me something of the order of events, when it started, where they went. I asked few questions, it was more important to listen and let it sink deep. It’s easy to obscure it takes two to have an affair, and I winced every time he showed me Jinny’s part in it. His eyes jumped on that.
Are ye wanting to hear this, lassie? Is this what you’re wantin?
And I swallowed and said it was the truth I was wanting.
And you’ll leave when ye hae it?
Put it this way, Tat – I’ll not leave till I do.
Where the trees thinned out near the road he stopped, put his hand on the rough scaled bark of a Scots pine and told me how he’d sat up there watching Elliot and Jinny have a different kind of meeting, and I thought I saw what was coming next but I was wrong. There was another turn to it yet, and it’s left me sure of nothing.
And now I trail home across the fields from the village with my shopping. The sky is darkening, the low moon’s shredded through the bracken. My feet are freezing, cold burns my fingertips and scrunches up my lung-sacs like empty crisp packets. I shift my shopping bags to the other hand and put my fingers to my cheek. It’s like wood touching wood, no feeling at all.
An owl slides by over my head, silent as conscience as it enters the wood. I turn away and walk on through the moonlight towards the cottage, knowing this will hurt like hell when the numbness wears off.
*
In his study in the peel tower as evening comes on, Sim Elliot locks the door and takes out his old journal. He glances out the window: a white world now as it was then. He flicks the pages, lingering awhile over some of the records of their love-making. He wrote down most everything then, certain it would never come again. Even now he feels the heat of it, or perhaps he is blushing. So many times, so much surrender and in each surrender a life regained. Nothing in his class, his background, the frozen nursery of his childhood, the beating-rooms of boarding school, nor the fumblings of sex that lead to marriage, had prepared him for that joy.
But he’s not here for arousal. It’s Marnie in Crawhill that’s on his mind. Odd he didn’t see her by the river this morning. Maybe he can’t see her. That’s an old tradition, eh?
He turns more pages till he gets to the part that matters: the child. He hugs his knees and looks down at the white space.
*
All my life has added up to this, he thought as he crossed the wee brig over the burn, went through the willows stiff and white with rime, across the rough grazing where the frozen tussocks exploded like meringues under his feet. Come now, come now still in his head, and her blanket hung up on the lines strung by the caravan. I’ve borrowed against my life – the estate, wife, child, everything – and gambled it all on black.
His breath was short and stiff, white clouds going back over his shoulder as he put his fist on the fence and jumped over. Three days now since they’d talked, a long weekend made exhausting by the effort to concentrate on anything but waiting for Jinny to come and say she wasn’t pregnant. Or that she was. His life had come down to this: the red or the black. She was or she wasn’t.
He stopped abruptly in the middle of the field with a clap of corbies over his head. Let it be so, he thought. If she is, we’ll have to leave all this. We’ll tell the truth and take the shame and the consequences and the disgust in the eyes of those we care for. Be ruined and free. He pictured a horse-drawn caravan, a dusty road in another country, Jinny and the baby sitting up beside him …
He laughed and swung the bag of tools over his head, once, twice, just for the swish of it. More likely a striplit engineering office in a Portakabin by the docks. Why not? That’s what he’d always wanted, to be out in the world making things, not buried alive in this ancient glen. He felt the readiness gather in behind his ribs. Whatever it took, he could do it. They could do it.
He stood, letting revelation sift through him as his toes went numb. Let it happen. Let it all come out. Once he’d spoken wildly of what he’d do to keep it secret, and it really had felt important enough to kill for. Suddenly that seemed nonsense. If it was fated, it was right.
Lose the estate, of course. Fiona wasn’t forgiving and why should she be? And Patrick had been looking funny at him of late, scowling and muttering under his breath. Tat knew something, Jinny had hinted as much and for sure the laddie was getting cocky. Lose wee Davy. He’d cheated the boy, his heart had been elsewhere no matter how often he picked him up. These days his son squirmed to get away. Somehow he knew.
I’ve never loved like this, he thought. I want that baby. David just happened. If she wants to, we can do it. I hope to God she’s pregnant and the bairn is mine
He looked up across the river, the white Border hills. He’d have to leave here, go south and start again and that would be the end of the Lauders and Elliots in this corner of the Borders.
The craws criss-crossed the fence and into the trees, carrying twigs, and for minutes in this life he saw everything perfectly clear.
*
We’ve done wrong, he thought, now let some good come of it. He didn’t look up at the caravan side-window as he went by, she’d have seen him coming, she always did.
He pushed open the door, felt the paraffiny fug. She was standing at the sink washing something. Her face turned but her body didn’t. He dropped the tools and stood behind her, waiting for her to fold back into him. He put his arms round her waist, smoothed his hands over her belly. She held up a dripping clot of white and pink and began to scrunch it between her fists.
It came last night, she said. I was just late. A relief, eh?
He couldn’t speak, still clinging to a vision of that gypsy caravan as it dwindled down an empty road. She picked up a brush and scrubbed at her knickers.
No one need ever know, Sim.
Her pale neck had flushed red. Still she wouldn’t turn round, nor her body soften against him.
There’s Tat.
He won’t tell Fiona. He adores you, he likes me. She hesitated then wrung out her knickers, knuckles rising white. Still there may be a price for his loyalty. I’d suggest you pay it.
She swilled the water out, shook in some powder, added a kettle of hot water. As she moved he was forced to back off. He sat down to be out of
the way, helped himself to one of her roll-ups. The harshness felt right, he sucked it past his tonsils right down into his chest and for once didn’t cough. He was starting to get the habit.
What’s going on, Jinny?
She bent over the sink, scrubbing wildly. Held up the white material, stain nearly gone.
This whole alarm – this false alarm – has made me think. About what we’re doing. She glanced at him, he saw the flush move up the side of her neck, her eyes brighten. He knew what came next.
No, stay there, she said. Please, Sim. She wiped the back of her hand over her eyes. You know it, I know it.
Jinny, I love you like crazy.
She nodded, sniffed. Crazy is the word. If I had been pregnant, with your child, it would have destroyed your world and ruined two other lives. Three, counting David. You’ve touched me deeper than anyone since my mum …
Now she was crying openly and he was on his feet holding her into him.
I can’t do that, she said.
He put his thumb gently to her eye, wiped it and looked at her looking back at him.
I don’t want us to stop, Jinny.
Her mouth opened so he kissed her. Her lips were salty and gave inward. He was near shaking with relief he hadn’t lost her. Her hips moved into him as they had a dozen times, he could remember every one of them. His hand under her skirt. She let him feel the soft pad under her knickers then her hand closed round his.
Don’t, she said. Please. I really am too bloody. Anyway …
Anyway?
In her pause, red head turning from him like a fox slipping back to cover, he knew fine. Outside the window frost dribbled from the crowns of giant hogweeds. I’ve no idea how far there’s left to fall, he thought.
Her head came up like it was very heavy. Her eyes focused on him and held. He giggled, something he did when he couldn’t cry.
So it’s nevermore, eh?
Her hands came up, clasped the back of his head. She pulled him down past her lips and carefully kissed his forehead.