by Andrew Greig
He almost smiled as he swung one leg out of bed. A spiked fist squeezed his heart then released it. He lay panting. Not yet, please God, not yet. I’m not ready. He saw again Marnie’s bottomless eyes fixed on him. Worst, he heard her last whisper in his ear the night before. Justice, Elliot.
Justice she would surely have. He cautiously rolled out of bed, set both feet on the cold cold floor. He knew now what had to be done.
He swallowed his pills and began to dress. Then the Land-Rover snorted into the courtyard. He stood at the side of the window and watched the fiancée jump out, head averted. Then Davy, slow and stiff-legged.
So. So. He watched them cross the yard. No sign of last night’s high spirits. Not a word atween them. David swung the keys from the disc, Elliot wished he wouldn’t do that, but when he’d given the stone on the laddie’s twenty-first he couldn’t explain what it meant for him or the boy would have flung it back in his face.
As David stood back and let Jo pass into the house, Elliot studied his face and saw everything he needed to know there. He’d sensed it the night before in the raised, hectic feeling round the table. Had half known they wouldn’t be back that night. It didn’t really matter exactly what had happened at the cottage, though he could make a guess. The boy wasn’t entirely cool-blooded. David stared where Jo had gone, and looking down at his son’s frozen, despairing face, Elliot felt another hot wire across his chest.
He left the window and dressed in the city clothes he’d worn last night. Then he took a small suitcase from under the bed and began to pack the few things he’d need, the clothes, the documents, registering the silence from downstairs that spread through the house like the chill of the tomb.
*
The cold in here is my hangover and the chill left by departed lovers. I put on another sweater and take out at last the note Tat slipped into my hand as we left for the village last night. Yellowed lined paper, torn from a wee notebook I’d say. Written in green biro, faded but legible. I’m suddenly tearful, knowing Jinny’s hand moved over this paper. Her mind must have been biding. Certainly her writing is a hurried scrawl.
Matches, candles
Aspirin
Tatties. Beans (green)
Milk, butter. Domestos
Library? Brew shop. P.O. (cash)
Tampax
Well, yes, a shopping list. Innocuous enough. The important part is on the other side, surely. Turn it over, heart thumping, a sense of presence hovering over me. I glance up and for a moment almost see her clear.
No, she does not appear for me. But Spook has brought me here to unravel this. So put assumptions and sentiment aside, be open and empty like Tat’s eyes and look at what’s in front of you.
Dearest – you seemed so stuck when we first met, far too old too soon. I wanted to tell you it wasn’t so bad, life isn’t disappointing and we mustn’t let it be. And now I wonder if it would have been better if we’d left each other alone.
I can’t quite believe that. Everything we felt was real and lovely and in my heart still. You’re part of me, always.
But I feel such a shit towards Pat. I’m coming to hate myself. When I’m not exstatically (sp?) happy, I’m miserable. You too, Sim. And now this situation … I said I’d think for both of us and I have. This is the only way it can be – please if you love me don’t try to persuade or ask any more, whatever happens. Please. It’s been very hard but this is the only course of action I can live with and is right.
Love – J.
ps I was going to chicken out and just leave you this note, but now I’ve just seen you crossing the top field I know that’s wrong. I have to tell you to your face – but I want you to have this anyway.
I’m still sitting here, open and waiting. Odd that the note itself looks less rushed than the shopping list on the other side. Only the postscript is the most scrawly of the lot, as though that were added at the last minute, even as Simon Elliot approached the caravan … But according to Tat, Elliot had confided in his cups that she was washing her knickers when he came in. She must have finished the note then jumped to the washing. Isn’t that a bit strange? Or was she just nervous, or wanting to appear occupied when he entered. Or?
Don’t hurry. Circle high above it, look at both sides once again. Picture what this piece of paper asks us – asks Sim Elliot – to believe.
It’s meant to look like she wrote the shopping list first. Maybe she did, though why then give it away? Because it was an old list, a piece of paper she happened to have around. But why is it written in such a hurry, at least as scrawly as the postscript? Because she’s writing the ps even as Elliot jumps the last fence and approaches the caravan through the snow. Then she crosses to the sink and starts washing …
I still myself, then my mind folds its wings and drops.
The shopping list is part of the message, perhaps even a half-conscious clue. If you love me don’t try to persuade or ask any more, whatever happens. What happens is Jinny gets pregnant, almost as if she knows she will.
I’m not shivering any more though my breath raises clouds. I turn away from the note and look a long time at the penultimate plate. The ambushes, deceptions, betrayals there. Then look at my notes, the order of events, the information I screwed out of Tat. The tryst by the river among the snowmelt, Jinny’s late period. Elliot visits the caravan. Jinny washing out bloody knickers as he comes in the door.
Think it through. Lean again over the table, the note, the plates. And then the day stirs, the corbies raise hell in the high trees, and at last I see it clear.
Oh men, men, masters of ambush and plot, so gullible when it comes to a lover’s sleight of hand.
*
Tat hesitated in the hall with the phone dead in his hand. Annie had called from the big house, her voice sharp with excitement. So it had come to that, and so quickly.
He went slowly up the stairs, hearing still the women’s cries, the hawk and the weasel. Only one would win that fight, and she had. He crossed to his work-bench, picked up the new hobgoblin, part human part creature of the mind part force of nature. He checked the blind empty eye-sockets. But does she even ken what she’s about? he wondered. He looked down at the two tiny rubies that would let the netsuke see, then felt something rustle across his mind like someone had crinkled paper at his ear. He crossed to the window and looked through the scope, trained on the cottage door.
And there she was, standing in the doorway looking directly his way. Her arms came up slowly over her head, slewed down then waved back up again like a dark bird in flight. And again. He felt damp deep in his bowels, and knew she was waving him her way.
*
She met him by the rickety gate and almost dragged him into the kitchen.
The note Jinny gave Elliot! she said. Her colour was high in her cheeks but mirky under her eyes. The shopping list isn’t an accident, Tat. It’s part of the message. Elliot was meant to read it.
What – she had tae tell him she was getting beans and tatties? Dinna be daft.
No, you donnert wee bugger! Tat blushed. She took his hand and prodded his finger down on one item. Tampax.
This is the only item that matters, she said. That’s what the list was written for. Just another wee clincher. One too many! Elliot was meant to come in and see her washing. And you told me he told you how Jinny pushed him away, but only once he’d felt the pad under her knickers.
She cupped her hands like she was holding a world in miniature and stared at Tat. He felt himself take a redder. She was too oncoming to let him think straight.
Come on, Tat! Isn’t it all a little heavy-handed, a bit too pat? Wasn’t Jinny supposed to have bought tampons? And then the real pregnancy … Oh can’t you see!
He saw she was vibrating like a dark struck bell. But he looked and blinked once, emptied his mind and then he saw. Oh he could see well enough.
It was all set up, she said. Elliot had to be convinced Jinny’s period had come. That’s why all the business with the washin
g, the shopping list, the pad she let him feel. That’s why she wouldn’t let him come closer – because then he’d know she’d never stopped being pregnant. The baby was supposedly a bit premature, right? Wasn’t she?
Tat looked past her out the window at the moor, the clouds coming apart. The woman’s possessed, he thought. She’s gripped by a notion she’ll no let go.
I’ve nae idea, he said. I swear on it. That’s women’s stuff and I was but a laddie, and there wasn’t so much frank talk back then. She went away to her folks for the baby.
Yes, the family she’d cut off all connection with! Doesn’t that strike you as convenient? And then she comes back, what, a couple of months later?
Tat closes his eyes and plays again coming in the cottage door with Elliot and Fiona, Patrick standing dead proud and Jinny, Jinny sitting in the chair holding the bairn and her eyes flicking over them before her head came down.
The bairn was big, he said slowly, I’ll grant ye that.
Well! Big and premature? Come on!
It’s no impossible, Tat said stubbornly. My Laura was that-aways.
Huh! She ran her fingers over the topmost Corbie Plate. If I hadn’t assumed Jinny was hundred per cent honest, I’d have worked it out sooner. She said she’d think for both of them, and she did. Oh she did that. No wonder she said it was hard.
She turned away and stood at the window, hands jammed in the pockets of her jeans. He looked and felt the force of her, and aching knew it wouldn’t come his way again.
It’s possible, I’ll grant ye that, he said eventually. No likely, but possible. You spend too much time alane with these plates, they’ll turn your brain. Jinny never took them out much and she was richt.
Man, the truth’s in them staring at you! The baby was Elliot’s and he doesn’t even know it.
For a moment he looked straight back into her eyes. It minded him of looking down into his shotgun barrels, so round and black, and he turned away thinking her not well.
If you want to be sure of the faither, you can do yon DNA, he said.
She went over to the window and stared out. She began to chew on her thumbnail, seemed so lost in thought she’d forgotten he was there. He looked at her, wondering, while he let his brain cast around.
So is it the estate you’re after?
Her hand rose up as she turned, and for a moment he thought she was going to clout him.
You daft gowk! she shouted. Don’t you know anything? She went to the door and pulled it open, pointed for him to go out into the world. I want Simon Elliot and I want justice. I want you to send him here.
Tat stood with his back to the table, not moving.
I canna do that, he said.
You’d damn well better if you want our wee secret to stay that way.
He shook his head slowly from side to side, like it was a worn clapper tolling out the wickedness of the world.
Old Elliot’s awa – left this morn. Annie phoned and tellt me when she got to the big hoose.
She was absolutely still, bordered by light as she stood dark in the doorway. He felt something streak across the room like a comet, frozen and fiery and full of dark space.
So, she said. So. The old man’s done a runner. When’s he coming back?
He didna say to Annie.
Her hiss carried the length of the kitchen.
So where’s he gone, Tat? Where can I find him?
Tat put his head down, thinking about her last gesture the night before: the thumb and crooked pinkie touching, three fingers out stiff. Revenge hot trod: don’t impede me.
Nae idea, he said calmly. Could be the city. Whiles he takes aff and goes on the ran-dan there, then comes back all douce. He never says where he goes and he could be weeks and that’s the truth.
She advanced on him across the kitchen, seemed bigger with every step. A fighter, he thought, but more than that. This one can’t stop.
You don’t know? She stood in front of him, right hand on the shaft of the gutting knife where it lay on the table, but there was no need to threaten. Swear you don’t know where Elliot’s gone.
He gave her his thoughtless look. He reached back and put his right hand on the seventh plate.
I don’t know where Elliot is, he said formally, staring back into her eyes. He left no word. Speir with Annie, she’ll tell you the same.
She stared into his soul, such as it was. His fingers quivered on the plate as he stared her back.
I will that, she said softly. I’m going to the big house to see what Davy knows.
He’s gone and all. He’s taking young Jo to the station, she’s offski. You’re no having much luck the day. Tat’s breath reishled through his teeth. Nor is the fiancée lass, pair thing. According to Annie, she looked knackered and he was distractit. Looks like you’ve done for them.
Her shoulders came down, the force in her burned out and she seemed to him a very tired young quine.
So it’s happened, she said quietly. Maybe it’s for the best.
Aye, best for you.
Me? She seemed genuinely astonished. You still don’t know what I’m here for, do you? You’ve no idea at all.
He took his hand off the plate, rubbed his damp fingertips together. Forgive me, Jinny, he thought. I hope I’ve done right.
She caught up with him at the gate. She gripped him by the arm as she looked down to the distant Border, the blue-green hills riding through the haze, then round at the ridges that enclosed the dale, and he felt her longing to be gone.
I didn’t plan it like this, she said at last. And I’m not after the estate, so you and Annie can set your minds at rest.
What are you after?
He saw her fingers move unconsciously into that gesture and was right glad he hadn’t told her about the city flat. He still owed Elliot that much.
So, she said after a long pause for a question unanswered, you know about last night. Did it turn you on?
Tat’s giggle as he freed his arm.
Not as much as it turned you on, I’m thinking.
She made no reply but kept looking down the valley, so hungry and lost. Then she shrugged and turned back to the cottage.
She stopped at the door.
Goodbye, Tat, she said. Thanks for saving our skins at the pub.
What will you dae? he called, but she had gone inside and closed the door. He felt like a smoky room that had been fugged up for years till she’d cam by, smashed the window and entered and gone again, leaving him clear and bereft.
*
Once at a circus you saw the man in the costume of the clown of Fate, spinning plates on top of long bendy wands, hurrying from stick to stick to keep the plates whirling. You think of him now as the story spins towards an end, the end you cannot bring yourself to foresee or enact.
Here’s the dark powerful man sitting in a coach, hand before his face. He could be shouting, or keeping the dust of the roads from his eyes. Where is he going, Sim Elliot, where has he gone? He has gone off the map, taken fright. You should never have whispered those words in his ear but you got carried away by this passion play. You’ve been carried away further and further from whoever you once were.
So the old man is gone. As is the lady fair. Now only the son and heir remains. Before you lean in closer to study the last panels, glance round this familiar room and know your time here is almost done, and hear behind the wind the lovely song again.
Farewell, farewell, to you who hear,
You lonely travellers all,
The cold north wind will blow again,
The winding road does call …
Tat held a ruby in the tweezer’s jaw and twisted it gently in the socket. Removed it, picked up a tiny riffler and worked deeper into the bone. His conscience was clear, he’d owed Sim Elliot that lie. Sure as Fate the old man was off to the city flat, and Tat minded the plates well enough, minded the last plate and a panel there of a man dead in a room with spires and tenements out beyond the window. The Marnie woman meant Ellio
t harm, but that didna sit with her obsession that Sim’s her father. Same went for Davy – if she believed him her half-brother, she’d surely neither harm nor mate with him.
The eye fitted tight. Tat dabbed a fleck of superglue and screwed the ruby in. There you go, my bonnie wee mannie-beastie. But he was uneasy still, can’t settle. Something didna fit right. He closed his eyes and saw again Marnie shrug and turn away as though who her father was suddenly wasn’t so pressing to her. As though it was only an interesting puzzle. He glanced up again through the binocs, still no movement at Crawhill. That Goodbye had sounded more than casual. As he picked up the other ruby eye, the phone skirled in the corner.
Tat, David’s back.
Without the lassie?
Of course. Annie sounded impatient. He’s been sitting here all white and moping and fidgeting and looking like he’s about to greit. But now he’s just put his boots on and is on the path for Crawhill.
Tat felt his breath puff from his lips like Jinny’s last breath at the bottom of Creagan’s Knowe. This must be stopped. He can’t stop Marnie, but perhaps he can turn Davy aside, whatever the boy has in mind.
He checked through the binocs, still no movement up at the cottage, then he was out the house, hurrying with the sun in his eyes towards the Liddie Woods.
*
Annie Tat put down the phone, sat and took Elliot’s note from her slacks. Marnie Lauder written big on the outside, just above the wax seal imprinted with Elliot’s ring. No one uses wax these days, she thought, someone ought to tell him. Doesn’t he trust me?
She frowned, held the note up to the light but could read nothing. She knew from experience it wasn’t possible to peel off the wax without breaking it. She also knew it was possible, with care, to remelt the broken wax. Give this to Marnie soonest, he’d said on his way out the door, the taxi waiting.