Adam's Peak

by Heather Burt

  Clare smiled and wondered anxiously if Patrick had put two and two together and figured out who she was. If his biological fatherhood had, like some sixth sense, recognized her as his lassie. She wondered what he might possibly do about such a thing. Take her in his arms and vow to make up for lost time? Make sure she had no awkward intentions—matters of inheritance and whatnot? Offer to exchange Christmas cards and leave it at that? As he led the way back through the living room, chattering about Ben Nevis and calling to Anne to look for the hiking guide, it seemed unlikely that he suspected anything at all. But when they stepped outside and Patrick dug his hands in his trouser pockets and pronounced the name “Isobel McGuigan,” as if he were calling forth a witness in court or summoning a ghost from the afterlife, Clare’s hands clenched. She said nothing, waiting instead for Patrick to elaborate.

  At the front gate, he went on: “I admired her, bolting off to Canada like she did. Aye, it was Isobel who inspired me to get off my own backside and see the world.”

  He turned toward the dead end of Farrell Road, where a narrow path cut into the field. They took the path, Patrick in the lead, and Clare wished she’d worn sturdier shoes. Through her flimsy sandals she felt all the lumps and stones underfoot. But if Patrick planned to introduce extra discomforts along the way, he was in no hurry to do so.

  “I had my sights set on more exotic places than Canada,” he said, “but I hadn’t done anything about it, you see. I was just marking time, havering about my big plans, waiting for something to happen on its own. But when Isobel left, I thought to myself, there you are, you big windbag; there’s somebody actually doing something.” He paused. “So what did your mother do after Canada?” It was the first question he’d asked her.

  “After Canada? I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Patrick pointed across the rolling, grassy field to a clump of trees on a hill a few hundred yards away. “That’s the pond over there. I mean did she travel? Work abroad? Anything like that?”

  “No. She and my father pretty much settled down.”

  “Right away? House, kiddies, the whole lot?”

  She wondered if he were testing her out, confirming his suspicions.

  “More or less. There were no other kids, besides me. But they bought the house right after they arrived. And I was born soon after that.” She held her breath and waited. If he were going to confront her, now would be the time. When he didn’t, her hands relaxed. “My mother’s a pretty traditional housewife. She worked at my dad’s store sometimes, and she’s started doing some accounting from home. But that’s about it.” There was a comfort in these certainties.

  “No travelling then?”

  “Not the kind you’ve done. She and my dad went to New York a few times.”

  The path had widened, allowing them to walk side by side. Patrick rubbed his stubbled chin.

  “I have to say, it’s not what I expected. Isobel leading the quiet, domestic life like that. She was such a fiery, get-up-and-go lass. All sorts of dreams. I thought she’d travel all over America at least.”

  Clare shot a glance sideways. He was confronting her after all, it seemed.

  “I don’t think that’s what Mum had in mind,” she said, aware, even as she spoke, that her claim was hollow.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Patrick mused.

  Clare frowned. She marched on in silence, then, without meaning to, she stepped on a smooth, fist-sized rock, turned her ankle, and pitched forward. Patrick caught her by the arm. With a firm, gentle tug, he pulled her up straight.

  “Are you all right?”

  She clenched her teeth and nodded. The injury wasn’t serious, but the sharp shock of pain stirred up her irritation, and she looked at the ground, avoiding Patrick’s eyes.

  His hand remained on her elbow as she circled her foot slowly in the air.

  “Is it sprained, do you think? Can you walk on it?”

  She took a cautious step, considering again what he’d said. “It’ll be fine. Let’s keep going.”

  “You’re sure? We can turn back.”

  “No, it’s fine. Really. I’d like to see the pond.”

  She walked on, slowly at first, and for a few steps Patrick kept his hand just behind her. He was quiet. But his words echoed in Clare’s head.

  A fiery, get-up-and-go lass. All sorts of dreams. A young woman who’d gone out with her father’s apprentice and exposed herself to all the wonder and terror, the pain and nervous ecstasy and slimy wetness of sex. And who then covered it all up, covered herself up, with a smooth domestic mask. A conscientious suburban housewife who would cringe at stories of what goes on in the alleyways of Bombay.

  “Did my mother talk to you about her plans?” she said at length. “I mean, what she wanted to do with her life?”

  “Ah, well ...” Patrick stalled.

  In the strange silence, she looked out over the rolling landscape and struggled to call up an authentic image of her mother. An expression of delight, or confusion, or regret. But nothing came. She could picture the person, the unchanging basics of eye colour and nose shape, but the rest was out of reach. It was more than a passing sentiment d’étrangeté, a quirky moment of turning to a loved one and being suddenly struck by that person’s absolute otherness. This feeling was more banal, but more difficult to shake. It was the realization that something possible had been missed out on. She glanced at Patrick, scratching the back of his head. It was a version of herself that had been lost. Clare Fraser, the daughter of a fiery get-upand-go lass with a hippy friend and a loquacious lover, had never come to be. She fixed her eyes on the treacherous path and limped ahead. More than the loss of her blood tie to Alastair, more than the fact that she’d come into the world unbidden, this realization orphaned her.

  Again she looked to Patrick, hungry now for his reply.

  “What were my mother’s dreams?”

  But Patrick, at the end of his silence, only waved his hand dismissively. “Ach, I should quit my blethering, is what. I only knew her for a wee while. I remember the two of us planning all sorts of fantastic escapes from the Scottish doldrums, but it’s probably my own plans I’m remembering.” He chuckled. “I tend to talk a lot, you see.”

  Clare took a breath and forced a smile. “I noticed that,” she said.

  THE POND THEY FINALY CAME UPON hardly justified the trip. It was cloudy and tangled with weeds. Small too. With a running start, any athletic young man could have jumped across it. A youthful Patrick Locke, for instance. Still, they’d come a fair distance from the town, gently climbing most of the way, and the view from the clearing where they now stood was impressive.

  Patrick was talking about ports: how it used to annoy him that he rarely saw the middles of countries, the heart and guts so to speak, until he discovered the advantages of port cities.

  “Folk in a port city are more cosmopolitan, more tolerant,” he said. “They understand that civilization doesn’t stop at the border between their country and the next, you see.” He nodded his head toward the town. “There’s folk out there never been as far as Glasgow their entire life. They think the universe begins and ends in Stanwick.”

  Clare, crouching to massage her ankle, pictured the map on page seventy-two of her father’s atlas. Colombo was a port city, she recalled. A boldface dot on a pale green blob.

  “Have you ever been to Sri Lanka?” she said.

  “What’s that?” Patrick was distracted, looking back at the pond.

  “Sri Lanka. Colombo. Have you ever been there?”

  He turned slowly and rubbed his chin. “Ceylon? Aye.”

  It was the pond. In a sudden, perfect tableau, Clare saw them, Patrick and Isobel, sitting next to the water, fantasizing about the places they would go. Perhaps Patrick had done all the talking, but Isobel had paid attention; she’d remembered. Clearly enough that in the years that followed she’d gone, over and over, to page seventy-two of her husband’s atlas, so that the book came to open naturally at that
place. Clare eyed the thick, long grass that surrounded the murky pond, inviting as a soft bed, and for an instant felt a tingle of connection.

  Still crouching, she met Patrick’s eyes and saw that he knew. He knew in the way she herself had known for so long, perhaps always. Knowing without knowing. He was trying to transform her in the way she’d attempted to transform herself, and it wasn’t working. She lowered her gaze to the flat, dark surface of the pond, the thick bed of grass. With sparkling clarity, she pictured the young lovers—Isobel’s hair long and fiery, her face anxious; Patrick waxing lyrical. She watched them fall back into the grass, slowly, floatingly. Laughing at some private joke. She tossed a pebble into the water. Then she let them fade. Their thoughts, their lovemaking, their very existence.

  “What was it like?” she said, standing. “Ceylon.”

  Patrick scratched his head helplessly. Clare picked up another pebble and tossed it.

  “I was just wondering,” she said. “My neighbours back home are Sri Lankan. I think it’d be an interesting place to visit.”

  Patrick smiled faintly and pointed toward the field beyond the pond. “Look. We have visitors.”

  Two shaggy Highland cows, an adult and a calf, were watching them through a wire fence.

  “They look docile,” Patrick said, “but you don’t want to get between the wee one and its mother.” He eyed the cows steadily and silently, then he turned back toward the town. “Aye, it’s a coincidence you should mention Ceylon. I was just thinking about it, when Anne mentioned Ben Nevis. The strangest climb I ever did was up a sacred mountain there, with a Ceylonese lad from the ship. One of the only times I saw the middle of a country.”

  “What was so strange about it?”

  Patrick checked his watch and set off down the path. Clare followed, her limp almost gone.

  “Well, for one thing, we climbed all night,” he began, nestling back into his familiar rhythm. “The idea, you see, was to be up top for sunrise, which was really spectacular. One of the grandest views I’ve ever seen.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, aye. Tea fields and rivers and lakes, as far as the eye could see. Really spectacular.”

  “Is it a hard climb?”

  “Not too bad. The last stretch was a wee bit hairy, but it was mainly just long. Aye, bloody long. The Ceylonese lad and I started climbing just after midnight—the two of us and a few hundred others as well.” He kicked a stone off the path. “That was the other peculiar thing: going for a hike with a whole mob of strangers. Some bits were so crowded we could hardly move. Aye, it was nothing like hiking up Ben Nevis, out in the wilderness. Ach, I couldn’t even see the bloody wilderness.”

  “Why all the people?”

  “It was a full moon festival, or something like that. A few of the lads were just young neds, out for a good time, but the rest were serious, right enough. They had wee shrines set up all along the way. Something Hindu or Buddhist. They’ve got both in the country, you see.”

  “I know,” Clare blurted. “I mean, my neighbour’s told me a little about it.”

  “Aye, well, the whole to-do of climbing up the mountain is a religious custom. I remember when we finally got to the top there were folk lined up to visit a wee temple. I couldn’t have told you what it was all about, but I reckon it didn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, as far as I could see, all the climbing and the praying were just an excuse to bring folk together.”

  Clare gazed across the fields to Stanwick Abbey, solitary and grey. Ignoring Patrick’s voice, for he’d pushed on with his story, she looked down at her sandalled feet navigating the narrow dirt path and was once again struck by the weight of her body and the solid contact between the soles of her shoes and the ground beneath them. She imagined herself sovereign—neither Fraser nor McGuigan, nor Locke. Not even woman, perhaps (though her suitcase contained a well-hidden vibrator, put to use twice since her departure). She concentrated on her perfectly gauged steps, on the insensible energies that activated the whole process, until, the intensity of her self-awareness threatening to paralyze her altogether, she forced herself to think of something else.

  Was there a place in Stanwick to buy hiking boots, she wondered, or would it be necessary to wait until she returned to London? She’d packed running shoes and Birkenstocks, but nothing suitable for climbing. A silly oversight, really, for anywhere she might go there would be scenic hikes. Scotland, France, the north of Spain. And if she were to climb a sacred mountain, she would need decent boots. Her right hand clenched, and she rubbed her index finger with her thumb. It wasn’t such a strange idea; it was something people did: travel to a place for the purpose of climbing a mountain. Unlike Patrick, she would avoid the full moon festival. She would climb alone, in the daytime.

  Patrick again pointed across the fields. “There’s another couple of cows over there. Do you see them?”

  They’d stopped next to a low stone wall. Clare squinted in the direction Patrick was pointing but could make out only a distant smudge of brown.

  “Why did you and Anne come back to Scotland?” she said.

  Patrick looked around, as if to confirm that he was indeed in Scotland. “It’s home,” he said. “We’re not strangers here.”

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON she returned to the abbey and sat in one of the back pews of the main sanctuary. There were a few tourists strolling silently around the periphery, but the cavernous space was otherwise deserted. Leaning against a stone arch, she extracted a stack of postcards and a pen from her bag. A hard-covered New Testament gave her something to write on. She cast her eyes down the empty aisle, down the choir, to the distant altar, admired the afternoon light shining feebly through the dark rose window, then she selected a card—a photo of a living room furnished in the style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh—and began to write.

  Hi Markus. I’m writing this from my parents’ hometown of Stanwick, not too far from Glasgow. The weather has been very Scottish. So far I’ve mainly been visiting, but I’m hoping to get more adventurous in the next few weeks. Don’t think I’ll make it to Germany, but thanks for the recommendations. Tell Peter I’m going through with Plan A after all (after France, that is). He’ll explain. I hope all’s well at the shop. Say hi to everyone for me. All the best, Clare

  She imagined Markus sitting at his desk under the composer calendar, reading her card. For the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, she imagined him happy. She added a smiling face to the bottom of the card and went on to the next one.

  Salut Marielle! J’espère que tout va bien. Je suis en Écosse (non, je n’ai pas encore vu de beaux hommes en kilt, à part ces gars sur les cartes postales!). J’ai hâte de voir la maison en Normandie. Merci encore une fois à tes parents. Le festival de jazz a-t-il été bon? C’est la première fois que je le manque depuis je ne sais pas combien d’années. Bon été! Claire

  Dear Emma, the church on the front of this card is where I’m sitting right now. I have the place pretty much to myself. It’s amazing to think that some of these arches were constructed 400 years before Shakespeare. Some of the lighter coloured stonework is obviously

  She stopped, reread what she’d written, then tossed the card aside. From the remaining ones, she selected a photo of a purple heather shrub and began again.

  I did it, Emma. I found him. Didn’t want to say anything on the phone (it was a little overwhelming, I guess). Anyway, he’s a perfectly decent, interesting person (probably a better match for my mum than Dad was), and we got along fine. I had lunch with him and his wife (no kids). He talks nonstop, which made things easy. Saying goodbye was a little strange. I suddenly realized I might not ever see him again, and I felt kind of weird and out of sorts. He did invite me back, though. So we’ll see. Will write again soon. C.

  Hi Ma. Thought you’d appreciate this scene of the high street as it’s looking these days, video shop and all. I went to Margaret’s church this morning and talked with her for a while a
fter. She got me to play “Blowin’ in the Wind” for her. Remember that? I told her you’d write. And yes, I found Patrick Locke. His wife took a photo of the two of us, which she promised to send. He’s worked on merchant ships most of his life. Says you should look him up next time you’re home. I’m going to spend some time in London before France. Thought I’d check out some other travel possibilities while I’m there. Running out of room; will call soon. Love, Clare

  She shook out her hand and looked around. The tourists had gone, leaving her alone in the massive, magnificent sanctuary. From her place at the back, it was easy to imagine that this abbey had been inspired by God. Except for a few colour variations in the masonry, everything—nave, transept, choir—seemed gloriously unified. But the impression was apparently misleading. The guidebook Clare had picked up at the shop where she bought the postcards treated the abbey’s haphazard evolution as a point of pride. “English invaders, accidental fires, structural failures, zealous Reformers, and equally zealous renovators of every persuasion from High Gothic to Abstract Expressionist have inscribed themselves on the sacred space,” the book boasted, before concluding that the history of Stanwick Abbey was as random and contingent as that of the country itself.

  Leaning against the cool stone arch, tapping her pen lazily against the stack of postcards, Clare attempted to recall Patrick’s recounting of Scotland’s Wars of Independence, of which she’d known absolutely nothing before the topic came up over tea and dessert. Patrick was something of a Scottish nationalist, he’d said. A mess of invasions and vaguely familiar names circled her head, accompanied by a rogue voice—not Patrick’s, strangely—insisting that this was really fascinating stuff. The voice was clear and distinct, yet it took several repetitions before she recognized it as Mr. Vantwest’s. “Fascinating stuff ” he’d said of British history, the afternoon Clare and her mother went for tea.

  Again she looked around. Mr. Vantwest would be in his element here. He would pore over the faded stone inscriptions, make sense of the stained glass battles, populate the cloisters with medieval monks. She picked up the postcard with the photograph of the abbey and wished she hadn’t wasted it. It would have been perfect. There was no obvious reason to send her neighbour either of the remaining cards; still, she selected a Glasgow street scene and wrote “Dear Mr. Vantwest” on the back. The rest was more difficult. She wanted to write; it seemed suddenly important. But the writing needed a pretense. Chewing her pen, she considered the possibilities.