Reuben moved into the manse just a year after he and Jane first met. They wanted to save money for their own flat. A wedding, or at least an engagement, was assumed. He had his own room, of course, it being the manse. My bedroom was between his and Jane’s, so perhaps it was only me who heard the creaking of the floorboards late at night, closely followed, if I listened really hard, by the creaking of Jane’s mattress. I would lie in my own bed and fume. How could our mother not realise what was going on under her sleeping nose? It made me cranky in the mornings.
Sometimes I would meet Reuben on the landing, both of us half-dressed, and my whole body would blush. I’m sure he never noticed, because I would vanish as quickly as possible. The sight of Jane and Reuben ogling each other at mealtimes made me nauseous. I hate the way couples communicate in some weird code: a raise of the eyebrow, a secret smile, a warming of the eye. When the two of them were together, they’d usually be wrapped around each other, and from the shelter of Reuben’s muscular arm, Jane would make some spiked sisterly comment. ‘You’re seriously wearing that to go to the pub?’ Or, ‘You could try smiling once in a while. No wonder you haven’t got a boyfriend!’
Once Reuben broke free and put his arm about me. ‘Don’t be so mean,’ he’d said with a laugh. ‘I like the Lucie scowl. I like a bit of attitude!’ I’d spent days wondering if he’d meant something by that. Was there a hidden message there? Was he having a go at Jane, with all her demureness and her playing by the rules?
The day we were introduced, the way Reuben had looked right into my eyes – I longed for another moment like that. But my natural prickliness bloomed in his presence. I avoided looking at him, my chin dipping miserably and my eyes refusing to flirt. My best selfie pout, the one I practised in the mirror, turned into a lopsided leer in front of Reuben, which was neither sexy nor beguiling. I wanted to be more Jane, relaxed and chatty and open. I told myself that my sister’s boyfriend liked the bits of me that weren’t Jane.
Then came a day when everyone was out. Jane had gone on a hen weekend with her best friend and a gang of probationary teachers. Dad was visiting the sick and needy; Mum had gone shopping for the day in Aberdeen. Reuben had been bed busted and was sitting in the parlour with a few beers.
‘What’s bed busted?’ I’d asked, loitering in the doorway like the shy kid at primary school.
‘Too many guys on the rig and not enough beds. I’ve been stood down for a few days, so I’m making the most of it!’ He raised his beer bottle and grinned. My insides wobbled. ‘Do you want to join me? Or maybe you have other plans?’
Other plans? Me? This was new, this was unfamiliar. An invitation to make a decision. I didn’t realise then that it was a life-altering one. I tilted my chin up and smiled.
‘Yeah. I will join you.’
‘Beer or wine?’
‘You have wine too?’
He kicked a Tesco carrier down by his foot. ‘White. It’s not very chilled.’
‘Neither am I.’ What was I saying? Was I flirting with him? Did that even make sense?
He nodded to my mother’s mahogany display cabinet. ‘Grab yourself a glass.’
I’m not very chilled. I cringed next to him on the couch and let him splash wine into my glass.
I sipped politely. ‘It is pretty warm.’
‘I’ll stick it in the fridge.’ He made to get up and I said, ‘No,’ way too quickly. Our gazes collided. ‘No, don’t get up.’ He clicked the rim of my glass with his beer bottle, his gaze never letting go of mine.
I was lost. I don’t remember what we talked about. We laughed a lot. My faltering encounters with my sister’s boyfriend hadn’t prepared me for how warm and funny he was. He didn’t criticise Jane outright – we hardly mentioned her, to be fair – but he seemed to understand the way she was with me, the put-downs, the snide comments. He made a joke of it all, and the joke was on Jane. As the wine disappeared down my throat I seemed to find a new me – vocal, confident. A flirt.
The kiss, when it came, was not unexpected. We were angled towards each other, heads leaning comfortably against the back of the couch; me cradling my wine glass, he running a finger round the moist rim of his beer bottle. My gaze lingered on his finger and our knees were touching. The sober me would have jerked away; I’d always thought I hated being touched.
He pushed the hair back from my face. His fingers were damp and smelled of booze. When he kissed me, it was the most natural thing in the world. He tasted of alcohol and burgers, but the taste was just right. There was no shyness, no awkwardness, and I never thought about Jane once.
A blackbird lands heavily in front of me, jerking me away from the very thing I’d sworn not to think about. The birds have been doing a lot of squabbling in the ivy, and I guess this one’s been kicked out. He looks scared, too; I can see the feathers rippling over his heart. He shoots me a knowing look, and I tell him to piss off.
Suddenly, some unholy sound starts up, a dull rumbling that comes up through my borrowed wellies, throbbing through the wooden bench. It starts off like a burst of thunder, but continues, finding a rhythm I can feel in the bones of my backside. The rhythm is punctuated by the splash of water, and then I know what it is.
Someone has started the mill.
I grind out the cigarette and get to my feet. The blackbird dodges away to a safer part of the garden, and curiosity leads me to the front of the house. Who on earth has set the thing going at this hour? And why? Some part of me doesn’t want to see the mill come to life. It’s the noise. That banging, creaking rumble has dislodged something in me, wormed its way into the lost place. It’s unsettling, discordant.
Behind me, in the dimness of the cottage, Reuben is still asleep. Suddenly, painfully, I know what I have to do.
Mac
In the gloomy basement, the small square window is covered in bluebottles, drawn to the light, all jockeying for position. I can hear their frantic buzzing over the groan and rumble of the gears. I can hear Arthur calling me too, from the front door. I know I should respond, but down here, down in this basement, my shoes turn to glue. I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here, watching the bluebottles.
This is where the flour ends up, trickling through a wooden chute into a jute sack. This is the end of the process. Dust to dust. There is an array of machinery down here: sieves and fans and things that judder and hop; a rough timber partition, which screens off the business end of the mill; gears and cogs, levers and pulleys and steel shafts as thick as a man’s arm; the mechanism that links water to wheel to horsepower.
The unstoppable might of it vibrates the timber partition. I don’t have to see it to know what it can do.
That moment, five years ago, is seared on my senses. I can still smell a ghost in the machine. Blood and oil and friction. Something clogging up the works. I can hear an imbalance, a wrongness in the grinding of the gears. If I look at the floor, to the left of the partition, I can see Jim’s serviceable, dusty work boot. I am running to pick it up, as if that will make things all right, as if I can cancel out the horror by the neat ordering of things. His foot is still inside.
‘Ma? What are you doing?’ Legs appear on the steep staircase, a torso. Arthur bends double to peer into the gloom. He won’t come down here now. ‘Ma, come on up. I’m going to shut off the water.’
He disappears. I want to tell him about the bluebottles, but I can’t move. Not until the water stops can I bear to move. I hear him shoving the lever upstairs, and everything goes into slow motion. Life comes back painfully into my legs, my hips. I rub my arms. I have an aching cold spot between my shoulder blades, as if I’ve been stabbed in the back. The water has been diverted, and outside the wheel will dither to a halt like some abandoned fairground ride. Down here, the mechanism judders to a full stop. All is silent, save for the buzzing of the flies.
Arthur is waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He’s angry. He doesn’t like me being here, and his mouth turns down when I tell him about the bluebot
tles.
‘Ugh. A dead rat under the floor boards, most likely. I’ll get some fly spray.’
He’ll buy some fly spray, but he won’t go down there with it.
‘We’ll get Lucie to do it,’ I say.
‘You can’t do that,’ he objects. ‘You can’t ask her to do all your dirty jobs. And anyway, she’s got company. Key.’ He holds out his large hand and I surrender the key. If Arthur had his way, he’d chuck the key into the pond.
‘Since when?’ I look at him sharply. ‘She never mentioned she was expecting company.’
‘Since yesterday.’ We emerge into bright, cold sunshine and Arthur struggles with the lock. ‘And I don’t think he was expected.’
I suck in a sharp lungful of fresh air. Dust is clogging up my nostrils and my eyes are stinging. ‘What? She never mentioned a boyfriend to me. She’d better not be burning bloody scented candles.’
Arthur’s mouth twists. He walks off with the key and I pointedly hold out a hand for it. Now I see it: a strange blue car, parked a little way off to the side. Behind the car, the ground drops steeply away from the cottage, and the slope has been turned into a rockery – by some long-forgotten miller, no doubt, using the biggest sea boulders he could find on the beach. In summer, it’s very pretty, all sea pinks and lavender and pale, crystalline lumps of stone. Today it is adrift with snowdrops. The blue car looks like it’s lurking. I make a disapproving sound in my nose, dislodging flour and dust.
‘He came into the cafe looking for her. Ordered a cappuccino.’
‘A cappuccino? Father, brother?’
Arthur shakes his head. ‘Definitely a boyfriend.’
As we walk past the cottage, heading for the track, I catch a glimpse of Lucie at the far corner of the building. She’s a distance away, but appears to be wearing a dressing gown and wellies. Another figure emerges from inside. A man, fully dressed. There is some tense exchange between them and Arthur grabs my elbow and hurries me along, as if we’ve stumbled on some ruffians in a dimly lit part of town.
‘It’s her business, Ma. Don’t interfere.’
I shake off his hand but keep on walking. ‘She’s a closed book. No good ever came of a closed book.’
Lucie
I’d told Reuben to go. Not to get in touch with me again. He could see the pain in my eyes, and he nodded to it. Just that. A nod; an acknowledgement.
‘You know I love you, right?’
‘How can you say that? How can you love me and be with her?’
‘You want me to choose you and rip your family apart? Is that what you want, Lucie?’
‘No! No.’ I’d turned away then, holding my face in my hands. My skin was burning up. ‘I don’t know any more. I’m tired. I’m tired of this. Nothing is ever going to change, so just go.’
‘Fine. I’m going.’
I’d gone back inside, listening to the sounds of his anger from a safe distance: the slam of his car door, the gunning of the engine.
I stood for a long time, clutching the edge of the table. The oilcloth sweated beneath my palms; the cherries began to run together as the tears formed. I refused to let them fall, but they welled up anyway. I felt like my insides had collapsed, and Reuben had driven his car straight through me for good measure. The sound of his car engine, as he’d roared away down the lane, had stayed with me for a long time.
I have to get out of the house. The hurt inside cannot be contained and I need to move, to walk it off. The millpond seems the obvious destination, even though I have an uneasy relationship with water. I’ve always fought it. My old swimming instructor pops into mind: an Agatha Trunchbull in a tracksuit. She’s assuring me I’ll be able to float. Everyone can float! Really? The water is pressing into my chest, squeezing the breath out of me, and the chlorine stings my eyes, the back of my throat. As I lunge towards the rail, the water closes over my head. Not everyone can float.
I will never be able to swim. Back then, I resorted to feigning illness. I’d tell my mother I had a verruca, or my period. I don’t think she ever clicked that I had the world’s most stubborn verruca, and the longest period. I never learned to swim. And now I am drowning.
I follow the lade-side path to the millpond. Mac has explained to me the logistics of the water, and I think, if humans are so smart that they can design all this, that they can use the natural fall of the land to service their technical needs, why are we constantly struggling upstream?
I find a cold timber bench overlooking the pond and sink down onto it. All the action is behind me, a thin strip of shrubs screening my back from where the burn flows down in the hollow by the mill. I tune in to the soft white noise of its endless rushing. In front of me, the pond is too calm to reflect my mood. The water level has dropped, leaving a tidemark of reddish mud all around it. I can see the sluice at the far end, where the pond feeds the mill lade. In my mind’s eye, I follow the lade as it trickles beside the path, all the way down to the now-silent mill.
The trees on the far bank trail their broken limbs in the water. They look like old women’s arms, grey and sinewy, up to their elbows in dirty dishwater. Their reflections are motionless in the thin morning light. Everything is stagnant, suspended, and I feel the same way myself, now that the first raw pain has passed.
Other water-based memories come flooding in, like Jane’s horrible pool party. She’d have been twelve, and me a year older. Like you really want to be seen in public in a swimsuit at the age of thirteen. Of course, mother had insisted I go to the party. ‘Don’t spoil it for her.’ That had always been the mantra in our house. Don’t spoil it. Again, I’d pleaded illness, and spent the entire time slouched in the viewing balcony, dressed in black, eating crisps, as Jane and her mates squealed and cavorted in the pool below me. I didn’t spoil anything, because no one bothered with me, and it became a bit of a pattern, me watching life from the viewing balcony. Until Reuben noticed me, that is.
If I close my eyes I can still be in that first moment of meeting; I can still feel that jolt as we saw each other for the first time. It’s sweet and painful. I can see the curve of Reuben’s smile, his curiosity. Memories pop in my head like sparks. I open my eyes reluctantly and I’m back by the millpond, shivering in my thin jacket, on my cold bench.
Hugging my jacket around me, I get to my feet. My hips are cold and numb. I know I must go back, face the empty house that isn’t my home, begin a new day. Tears spill from me like spring rain. There’s something cleansing about allowing them to fall, un-wiped. They drip onto the ground for me to step on. There are no pitiful sobs, no snuffling. Just a steady stream of hopelessness as I follow the lade all the way back to the cottage. I can imagine this rawness flowing from me unceasingly, like the mill burn down in the hollow, racing on and on.
There’s a carrier bag hanging on my door handle, and Arthur is just leaving.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think you were in.’
‘I’m not.’
His smile wavers. Arthur has a cool, Scandinavian look about him: skin, hair and glasses melding together in shades of gold, his eyes a piercing blue. Sand and sky colours. I wonder if he yearns to work outdoors, rather than being stuck in a hot, sweaty kitchen.
‘I was just leaving you some cake. It’s yesterday’s, but I hate waste.’
‘Look, I really don’t eat cake.’
‘You should. Cake makes people happy.’
‘What are you saying? That I’m not happy? I’m delirious, can’t you tell?’ I push past him, snatch the carrier from the door handle and let myself in. I glance at him briefly, watch the shadow pass over his face.
‘Do you want me to take them away then?’
I feel like a complete shit. My hands are balled up, nails digging into palms. I know I should apologise, but nothing nice will come out.
‘Whatever.’ I hunch my shoulders, stick out a palm. I can see the little red circles my claws have made. ‘Leave them. I’ll eat one tonight.’ There are two cakes in the bag – fudge doughnu
ts. Maybe he’s hoping to share them over a cuppa? No chance.
I close the door with a muttered thanks, stand with my back against it for a full minute. I imagine his round, good-humoured face, marred by the irritation I’d created. This isn’t me, this bitchy person, doling out cheek to well-intentioned bakers. I feel ashamed of myself. Sucking in a shaky breath, I open the door to apologise. Profusely. But there is only empty space. He has gone, taking his poor opinion of me with him.
Mac
Imagine them. Bella is dragging her sister along by the hand. She is taller than is good for a girl, with long limbs and sharp elbows poking out of too-short sleeves. She’s dark, with a sallow complexion, quite unlike Elspeth, a year younger, all rosy and blonde and, according to their father, growing into a heart-stealer. Cook has always said butter wouldn’t melt in little Elspeth’s mouth, but there’s been evidence of stolen jam around it more than once. Only Bella knows that Elspeth is the instigator of all the mischief. She is the first to take her stockings off to paddle in the burn and last into bed every night because her fidget-brain will never cease. She is full of gossip, spies at keyholes and is always where she shouldn’t be.
I spent the morning writing, and as the sun warmed the chilly air I decided to venture out into the garden. This is where Arthur finds me, back again for some reason or other, his second such trip of the day. I suspect he is inventing reasons to pop in and check on me.
‘I should have been there when you interviewed her.’ He scrapes one hand through his hair, and I catch a glimpse of grey at his temples. You tend to forget that it’s not just you who’s ageing.
‘You could take her to the beach,’ I say lightly, and he just gives me that odd little snort, like his father used to do.
Bone Deep Page 4