The Gloaming

by Kirsty Logan

  Signe carried a tray back into the silent room. A cafetière of dark roast espresso, a jug of warm milk, and three bone china cups so fine you could see through them when you held them up to the light. Mara always hated those cups, the way they were thin as fingernails.

  ‘It’s so nice to see you,’ said Signe. She drank her coffee black and unsweetened, as ever.

  ‘We came to help you with the house, Mum. Getting it finished. You’ve worked so hard on it, we thought it must be almost ready.’

  ‘We’ll just help with a few finishing touches,’ said Pearl, ‘to get it ready for –’ She put her cup down in the saucer too hard, and both shattered. Coffee pooled across the table. ‘Oh shit, I’m sorry! And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say shit. I’ll get a cloth.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Signe’s voice was calm. She sipped her coffee, her back straight, her head high. ‘A cloth won’t fix my grandmother’s china, now will it? A cloth won’t make it so that the ghosts can use it.’

  ‘The what?’ Mara, assuming Signe was joking, laughed.

  ‘The guests.’ Signe’s smile was as tight as string. ‘The guests who will stay here. They will have to have their coffee in something sturdier.’

  For the first time since they’d come to the house, Pearl and Mara looked at one another. Mara didn’t want to laugh now. She wanted to cry. She wanted to shout. She wanted to run upstairs to her bedroom and leave a grown-up to deal with this. Her mother was confused, and she was confused about what she should do with that.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Pearl. ‘To get a cloth.’ She picked up the biggest shards of china and carried them out of the room, gentle and slow though they were already broken.

  ‘Don’t use the sink in there,’ called Signe.

  ‘Is the tap broken?’ Pearl’s voice came back from the kitchen. ‘That’s okay, I’ll just get the toolbox. I can fix it for you.’

  ‘Leave it, please. It’s not the tap, it’s the water.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the water?’ asked Mara.

  ‘It’s just salt,’ said Signe.

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘Sorry again. I’ll replace the cup.’ Pearl reappeared in the doorway with a damp cloth. She knelt by the table and dabbed at the spilled coffee, the needles of broken china.

  ‘The water from the taps,’ said Signe, ‘is seawater. It’s the pipes. A crack somewhere. It’s fine, we’ll get it fixed. But for now you must use the outside sink for fresh water.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Mara, ‘what’s that noise?’

  Signe sipped at her coffee, watching Pearl clean up over the rim of her cup. ‘It’s the generator. It kicks in every now and then.’

  ‘For what? For electricity?’

  ‘It’s fine, Mara. Don’t fuss. It’s just that some seawater got into the cables, and sometimes it shorts out. It’s not dangerous.’

  ‘How do you know? Did you get an electrician out?’

  ‘It’s fine. Electricians are expensive and we don’t need one. When the power has a hiccup, I start the generator. It’s fine.’

  Pearl stood up, cradling the wet cloth so she wouldn’t jag her hands on the broken shards. She looked at Mara, tried to catch her eye, tried to speak in silence over the burr of the generator. Mara did not catch Pearl’s eye. She did not say anything, in words or in silence. She reached for the coffee pot and refilled Signe’s cup.

  Haver

  ISLAY HATED DAYTIME shifts. The pub slouched. Everything was grey and brown. She wiped non-existent fluff off the optics and slid into her seat behind the bar, resting her head on her hands.

  She could only have the chair when Ida wasn’t there to take it away. It was all part of the new regime: best behaviour at all times, not like the lazy old days of flipping through books behind the bar. When Islay was on shift she wasn’t to drink or read or sit. She just had to be ready. Islay cast an eye around the pub. Regulars sat in clusters, talking in murmurs, turning pints round and round, tearing beer mats into layers. Oh yes, it was a hotbed of activity. Good thing she was on high alert. Good thing she could be ready while also sitting.

  When she was travelling, she’d loved to talk about the island. It seemed so glamorous then, at a distance. She held court in tropical beachside bars and city-street coffee shops and the post-club living rooms of friends-of-friends. They loved the stories, or at least they listened enough to make Islay think they did. The bright blue lobster creels, the nodding daisies, the suck and crash of the sea, the sprint of storm clouds across a summer sky. What a perfect childhood. What an exotic life. She’d never wondered what they said about her back on the island. What did she care? She wasn’t there.

  Now that she spent half of her time answering questions about what Mara was up to these days, she felt for her sister. Had Mara spent all Islay’s travelling years answering questions about her? Islay had been someone about whom stories were told. A cautionary tale, a dream of escape. While she was away, the island hadn’t felt real; just a charming first chapter for her life story. And now she was back, nothing else was real.

  Sunbeams caught golden motes. Islay breathed deep to pull the glint inside her.

  After her shift, Islay went up to the cliff to visit Peter. She lay on her back at his feet, knees bent, hands resting on her belly, toying with the collection of tiny petals she’d tugged from nearby flowers. She closed her eyes, heavy beneath the hot sun. Sea breezes lifted strands of her hair and let them tickle her cheeks. The grass was soft, the ground held her steady.

  ‘Mara’s visiting,’ she said. ‘She’s due today, I think. She’ll be there when I get back to the house.’ Peter couldn’t hear her, and wouldn’t say anything back. Islay wished she’d said things to him more before he turned to stone. But it was easier to talk like this: to the sky, the grass, a distant stone ear.

  On Islay’s first few visits to Peter, she hadn’t said anything. She could barely approach him. His pose was so embarrassing. Palms raised to the sky, facing the sea, right at the edge of the cliff as if he might topple over. Why couldn’t he be standing properly like the others? But she kept coming, and soon familiarity dampened her emotions. Soon she realised that Peter didn’t look embarrassing. He didn’t look anything; he just was. That’s when she crept closer. That’s when she spoke.

  ‘I guess,’ she said, ‘if Mara’s back, that means she can look after Mum and I can go …’

  Back to Paris or Chicago or Sydney. Or somewhere new, if she wanted. Cape Town. Reykjavik. Tokyo. Or all of them – why not? She had time. She could pack up and go anywhere, everywhere. She thought about how it would feel to leave. She tried taking the first step: lifting her feet, just to see how it felt. But her legs were so heavy, and the sun was so warm, and the grass soothed with tickles. Would the breeze stroke her skin any more softly in Tokyo? Was the ground any steadier in Reykjavik?

  She leaned over and tugged free a dandelion without looking, plucking its bright petals and adding them to the pile on her stomach. She’d been lying still for so long that her elbow creaked with the movement. A tiny forest of dandelions and daisies had sprouted all around Peter’s feet; no matter how many Islay plucked, on her next visit there were more.

  ‘I can’t wait,’ she said. Pressed against the grass, her body felt as warm and as steady as the ground. Her hair stroked her cheek, soft as grass. She licked her lips and tasted salt. ‘I can’t wait to come up here for real.’

  Coorie

  THE ISLAND WAS sleeping, the night closing velvet around them. Mara crept through the moonless dark and into Pearl’s room. She slid under the covers and felt Pearl’s warmth, the hidden curves of her. She breathed in deep to fill her lungs with the scent of Pearl’s skin: salt and spice and home.

  ‘I missed you,’ she said.

  ‘I missed you too. You know I can’t sleep without you.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ said Mara, ‘I’ll just have to creep in here every night and sing you lullabies, won’t I?’

  ‘Or we could share a bed
room like grown-ups.’

  Mara hadn’t argued when they found that Signe had made up a spare bedroom for Pearl. She felt exhausted at the thought of the conversations still to come.

  ‘Let’s not fight. Please, Pearl.’

  The house creaked and sighed like a seagoing ship. Mara curled close to Pearl, wrapping her arm around Pearl’s waist, tucking her knees into the curve of Pearl’s knees. Everything was okay now. As long as she could stay here, everything was okay.

  ‘What happened earlier? That conversation over coffee.’

  ‘With the cup? Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. Mum will get over it.’

  ‘Not the cup. What’s going on with the house? I thought it would be almost ready by now. You’ve been sending money home, haven’t you?’

  ‘You know I have.’

  ‘So why is the house in worse shape than when we left? Haven’t your mum and Islay been working on it?’

  Mara thought of Signe’s stiff hips, her heavy steps. Her silvery hair, the colour of stone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But, look, it doesn’t matter. We just need to get the house sorted, and then we can take Mum and leave.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Pearl, though she didn’t think it was okay at all. Mara seemed to think they’d get everything fixed up quick-smart and be back on a boat before they could blink. Or did she think that, really? Pearl knew the lure of the island, its desire to make people stay. She had felt its tarry magic too.

  ‘We left because that’s what you wanted,’ she said. ‘We came back because that’s what you wanted.’

  ‘I –’ Mara sighed, stroking a lock of Pearl’s hair behind her ear. ‘I know that. It’s just – being home. It’s hard to see things clearly here. It all looks so different. So much the same. You said once, about homesickness, remember? The soldiers in the American Civil War. The way you kept coming back to the island – I thought you understood.’

  ‘I don’t get homesick any more, Mara. You are my home.’ Pearl pulled Mara close. They lay slotted like spoons.

  In Mara’s bed it had been far too cold, her feet numb, the sheets so chilled they felt damp; now, the heat of another body made it too hot. Mara put her arm outside the covers. The tartan blanket was scratchy under her armpit, the wool as thick as a door, heavy and waxen with age. She didn’t like to think of the blanket touching Pearl. It was too rough, too real for Pearl’s cool coppery skin.

  From outside, the generator throbbed to life. Mara was sure she could feel it vibrating the house, juddering her bones. The cobwebs in the corners breathed. Somewhere in the chimney was the fidgeting of mice.

  ‘I don’t care what we do,’ said Pearl, ‘as long as we can leave. We’ll sort your mum, get her settled somewhere more manageable. A house for one person, not fifty. And then we can find our own place.’

  ‘How can we? We’ll never be able to settle – being the Dreamings means travelling.’

  ‘It’s easy if you want it to be,’ said Pearl. ‘Work isn’t everything. We’ll figure it out.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be a mermaid any more?’

  ‘It’s not the only job in the world. The Dreamings – we made them up, and we can unmake them just as easily. I can do something else. A swimming instructor. An underwater welder. A pearl diver. Wouldn’t people love that, a pearl diver called Pearl? Maybe it’s okay to grow up, you know? A house and a dog. A baby one day.’

  There was a lump in Mara’s throat, a threatening twinge at the corners of her eyes. ‘What will we call it?’

  ‘We’ll call him Cal.’

  ‘Callum or Calvin?’

  ‘You’re asking the wrong question,’ said Pearl, turning in Mara’s arms to press a smiling kiss to her lips. ‘You didn’t ask whether Cal was the dog or the baby.’

  Mara remembered the drag of her father’s heavy steps. The weight of his hands on her shoulders as she eased socks over his unyielding toes. His cold-meat flesh against the graze of her knuckles. She couldn’t live that life again. She’d fought for this new life, and she would not let it slip away.

  Shoogle

  EARLY EVENING, AND Pearl was cooking dinner. Mara was meant to be helping, but every time she picked up a peeler or a wooden spoon Pearl shooed her away, saying she had a system and Mara would only mess it up, and she should just pour some wine and sit at the table and relax and keep her company.

  ‘Tell me a story or something,’ said Pearl. ‘One I haven’t heard.’

  ‘You already know all my stories,’ said Mara. ‘Two years together, all day together, all night together. I don’t think there’s much left that you don’t know.’ This wasn’t true. Every couple has secrets, even when they say they don’t. We can’t ever really know ourselves – so how can we expect to really know another person? Mara knew it was a tiny lie, and Pearl knew it was a tiny lie, but they still let it sit there between them.

  ‘I have to tell you something,’ said Pearl, putting down her knife and fixing Mara with a serious look. ‘This might come as a surprise. There are these marvellous new things called books. They’ve got stories inside them – hundreds, thousands of stories. I can’t believe you haven’t heard of them. You’ll love them!’

  These last few words had to be said louder, as Mara had already left the room, sticking out her tongue and holding two fingers up at Pearl as she left. She returned with a leather-bound book, its cover soft as fingertips, its bronze letters almost worn away.

  ‘How about one of these?’ Mara lifted the book for Pearl to see. ‘They’re fairy tales. My mum used to read from it. She read from it so much that we all knew the stories by heart.’

  Pearl slid the chopped onions off the board and started on the carrots. ‘What are they about?’

  ‘They’re about …’ Mara thought of the stories that made her childhood. Snow White, beautiful and dead. Rapunzel, waiting in her tower. The swan sister, silent for years, hands swollen and bleeding from knitting her brothers’ nettle shirts. ‘They’re about love,’ she said.

  Pearl glanced at the cover. ‘Oh, I know those sorts of stories. Mermaids and sirens and swan maidens. All sorts of faithless, miserable women. Those stories just exist to soothe men who stole foreign women. The town starts talking about your mysterious wife, her spun-sun hair and lips like coral, salt glistening on her cheeks, her breasts proud as the prow of a ship, blah bloody blah. And of course she leaves, because why would she stay? So you say she was never a real woman anyway, she was always a thing from the sea, and now she’s gone back. Not your fault, right? She could never belong here.’

  ‘It’s not like that! They’re love stories. I always wanted to be like those women. So beautiful. So desired.’

  ‘They’re not love stories,’ said Pearl. ‘Love isn’t about lying and making yourself into something you’re not. Anyway, who wants a woman all wispy and sad? I’d prefer a woman who’s sturdy and happy.’

  ‘Sturdy,’ said Mara, flicking through the book, past illustrations of wispy sad-faced women – but beautiful, so beautiful. ‘Happy,’ she said. ‘What about …?’ She paused. ‘I think I’ve got one.’

  Pearl, head down, chopped, chopped, chopped.

  ‘There was once a handsome young fisherman,’ read Mara, ‘who could not find himself a wife. The island girls were pretty enough, but he felt something missing. Every day he took out his boat and set his lobster pots, and every night he sat alone in his cottage and watched the peat fire rise and fall.’

  Mara couldn’t help stroking the paper as she read. It was strange to read the words from the page when she’d heard them so many times from her mother’s mouth. She could have closed her eyes and recited the story from memory. This story. It was everything she’d thought she wanted. She’d wanted to be the selkie, not the fisherman – and yet here she was with her sea-love. Still, perhaps it didn’t matter. There didn’t have to be a fisherman at all; two selkies could love one another just fine.

  And so she read the story to her mermaid, her selkie, her sea-lov
e. The fisherman seeing the woman, stealing her skin, hiding it away so she would marry him.

  ‘One day,’ said Mara, reading from the last page of the story. ‘One day their youngest son was exploring the house, and found the sealskin under the bed. He brought it to his mother and asked her, what was this strange thing, so soft and smelling of the sea? The boy knew nothing of his mother’s history; he was simply curious. The selkie … The selkie …’

  ‘Mara, what is it?’ Pearl paused in her chopping.

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’

  This story was wrong. At the end, the selkie was meant to stay. Love was enough, and so she stayed. That was the story that Signe had always told them.

  ‘Mara? Can I hear the end of the story?’

  Mara moved her eyes to the next sentence and began to read aloud, her words stumbling, each sentence unfamiliar. ‘The selkie kissed her children goodbye, slid on her true skin, and went home. When the fisherman came back to the cottage, his children were fast asleep and stew bubbled on the fire – but his wife was gone. Fear shivered through him and he threw open the wooden box. It was empty, and with it his heart emptied too. In time he learned to live a good life with his home and his children. But sometimes, late at night, he slid from his bed to gaze out at the water and mourn his lost love.’

  Around Mara the kitchen was noisy with activity. The hum of the cooker hood. The shuffle of Pearl’s feet. The rattle of the glass in the window frame. The chop of the knife. Mara heard none of it.

  ‘She leaves,’ said Mara.

  ‘What?’ Pearl tipped onions into a pan, and their hiss hid Mara’s words.

  ‘The selkie leaves,’ she said. ‘And the fisherman is left alone forever with his empty heart.’