The Applecross Spell

by Wendy MacIntyre

  He reached out as though to touch her arm; then apparently reconsidered. He sat back again, resuming the silent regal pose.

  Suzanne was perplexed, and still a little stunned by his sweeping dismissal of his first two wives. And what of memories, she was about to ask him. What of the persistence of their images in your mind? But in this mood, she speculated, he might well simply quibble; perhaps ask: “But what is mind, my dear Suzanne? Are you certain that mind exists?”

  As she wondered, Murdo gestured to the peacock, which still displayed himself in full.

  “They are a family tradition, yes. My great-great-grandfather purchased a pair for reasons I cannot fathom. One learns to ignore them after a time. I do find them rather messy, noisy, bad-tempered creatures. Quite loathsome, actually.”

  “Murdo,” she persisted. “You must tell me some time about Kirstie and Miranda. How are we to be close if I know so little of that part of your life?”

  He pushed his chair farther still from the table, and folded his arms against his chest. She saw this gesture for what he intended: a protective barrier to keep off her plundering. Perhaps he thought too, as she now did, of that male rib plucked out in Eden.

  What did she see on his face? Anger? The beginning of a childish sulk? Or had she only imagined these reactions, for as he began to speak, his features were perfectly composed.

  “My dear, let us regard my first marriage, and indeed my second, as equations that are complete in themselves. Life is not a continuous manifold but a series of quite discrete states. You and I – together – constitute just such a new state of being. All that existed previously has fallen away, like a snake shedding its skin, if you will.”

  She did not at all care for this image. “Murdo, I don’t believe you can abstract yourself from your past with such facility. Your first two marriages are surely as much a part of you as are your children.”

  “Indeed,” he snapped. “What exactly is it you want of me? To eat what you believe to be my soul? To dig out my very marrow with a metaphorical spoon that you call love? I will not have it, do you hear? I will not have it.”

  He got up so abruptly that his chair toppled on the stone floor.

  Suzanne sat alone for some minutes, staring at the fallen chair. It looked like an insect flipped on its back, she thought, legs waving piteously in the air. She had failed in her resolve, just that piteously. As Murdo too, had failed.

  In bed, she tossed a long time. When she did sleep, Suzanne dreamt of Gemma at work in the refuge. A long line of clients queued at the door. She thought she spied herself among them. But as the dream zoomed closer, she saw that there was only a superficial resemblance. The woman in the queue was tall and dark. Her chin-length hair swung in an immaculate arc as she looked down at the baby in her arms. But her face was not Suzanne’s.

  The line of waiting women dissolved. Now she lay on sun-warmed grass, a breeze with the delicacy of lace playing about her bare shoulders. The breeze sought out the tender skin of her inner wrists, her palms, the crooks of her elbows.

  She woke to his scent and his heat, to the light touch of Murdo’s fingertips on her flesh. She woke to Murdo, saying: “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. I have been overwrought. Years ago, you see, I did lose a student. A dear, brave, brilliant young man.”

  “Like you, my sweet. Dear and brave and brilliant.” His heat worked its habitual miracle, fusing their separateness. She understood that she had come home, and that her body, which underwent such indescribable pleasure with this man, could never lie. She knew her own name only because he breathed it softly over and over into her ear.

  11

  The Children

  Suzanne woke and stretched, catlike, willing every muscle to relive the pleasure of the night before. She felt elated, as though she had been running at the edge of the sea, the salt tang making a fire in her blood. She saw that Murdo’s side of the bed was empty, but this did not at all surprise her as he often rose before six a.m.

  She reached out blindly for the alarm clock on the bedside table, and winced as something stabbed her thumb. Sitting up, she saw a red rose lying on top of a note with a few lines of Murdo’s script. She sucked at the tiny puncture the thorn had made, and squinted to make out the minuscule letters.

  “My dear – Gone to Edinburgh for an Astronomical Society meeting. Back late. Don’t wait up. – M.”

  Well, M, she mused, how thoughtful of you to leave me a rose, and how careless to forget the thorn. She was quite irked. He had made no mention the day before of a meeting in Edinburgh. But of course their conversation at dinner had been barely civil. Only their lovemaking had succeeded in combing out the raggedness of the day; that silky slide of flesh into flesh, that sacrament in silence.

  Recalling her pleasure, she felt ready to forgive him yet another abrupt departure. She was more and more confident that his silence would eventually yield to her.

  She dressed hurriedly, determined to start work on a project to help her feel more at home with the rambling house and grounds. She would create a herbal garden, planting just a few of her mother’s staples. It was not yet too late in the year and she had seen a herbalist’s shop in Edinburgh where she was sure she could find the seeds she needed. For today, she would simply dig the patch, not over the ruined apothecary’s garden, which was best, she thought, left as it was. But in the clearing near the creaturely outbuilding. For despite the scene with Murdo, Suzanne felt drawn to the structure’s rough-hewn stone face, its hard-packed earthen floor, its living roof. She liked too, the fairy tale allure of its two identical doors, only feet apart and yet opening into the same space. Or did they? Did it really matter by which door one chose to enter?

  Suzanne believed it did. Every choice mattered, the most apparently superficial having often the greatest portent. Would she wear shoes this morning, for example, or would she not?

  She opted to go barefoot. And so it was that when she entered the kitchen, she did not disturb the lean grey-haired man who stood with his back to her, peering into the refrigerator. She was surprised but certainly not afraid. He did not have the aspect of a thief. There was something about his stance that declared he was in some sense, at home. And the rope-like spareness of his body, the prominent blue veins in his forearm, were all consistent with Murdo’s description of Jeremy. The ascetic son. He who wears the hair shirt.

  When Jeremy turned, the gaunt beauty of his face took her aback. He had the look of a fasting saint, the flesh quite scooped away at his temples and under his cheekbones. His high forehead was accentuated by his receding hairline and he wore his greying hair in a long queue as if to compensate. The long hair dramatized his natural severity and Suzanne saw he was not without vanity.

  He looked her directly in the eye, a regard she read as at once calm and arrogant. He showed not the least other reaction to her presence, as if he had been all the time aware that she was there. She was uncertain whether this was indeed the case, or simply his habitual consummate self-control. For she could easily imagine his lean form ducking and diving through a rain of sniper fire, one hand grasping a small tape recorder, a steno pad in the back pocket of his jeans. She saw there was a thin white scar on his chin, in the shape of a down-turned half-circle.

  She was about to speak when he addressed her in the cultivated tones so much favoured by BBC news readers. “The third Mrs. Murdo Napier, I presume.” He clicked his heels together, made a stiff bow from the waist, so that she could be in no doubt she was being mocked.

  “And you must be Jeremy,” she responded, smiling, willing all the warmth she could into her voice. But all her attempt at conciliation garnered was a distinct glare. For Christ’s sake, she wondered, whatever is wrong with the man? Is he afraid I will try to mother him, or steal his inheritance? She realized it had never occurred to her that there might even be an inheritance.

  She sat down at the kitchen table, removed a crisp red apple from the fruit bowl and bit into it. To hell with him, she thought. What mo
st disconcerted her was how attractive she would have found this Jeremy under other circumstances. He looked the kind of man who would go to the grave holding fast to his leftist principles, who exposed evils of all kinds at great risk to his own personal safety. The kind of man who was acutely aware of the inequities women suffered and who would probably contort himself so as to be sensitive and fair. Although he was apparently most disinclined to be so with her. So perhaps his resemblance to some exemplary Man of Principle was merely artificial. Perhaps, she thought with smug satisfaction, he was simply a prick.

  Jeremy put out his arm and Suzanne, thinking he had softened and wanted to shake hands, extended hers across the table. But he merely grimaced and reached behind her to the china cupboard to take down a small bowl. Then he hunted noisily in the cutlery drawer for a spoon. He turned back to the refrigerator, and took out her tub of Balkan yogurt, which he spooned into the bowl.

  He sat down opposite her and began to eat, fastidiously and slowly as if each spoonful had an intrinsic mysterious weight that only he could reckon. Suzanne had finished her apple, and sat watching him eat, hoping her close scrutiny would disconcert him a little. Half-way through his meal, he spoke again.

  “Yours?” he asked, waving the yogurt-laded spoon in the air. “I somehow can’t imagine Murdo partaking of a substance that might actually do him some good. Surely he is still enamoured of good old British beef?”

  Suzanne automatically pictured Murdo standing beside his strikingly gaunt son. By contrast, he seemed florid, barrel-chested. Certainly over-indulged. She was uncomfortably aware that this was the second time this morning she had mentally slighted Murdo, so that when she spoke, her anger at Jeremy was more evident than she had intended.

  “Why are you being so rude?”

  He raised his eyebrows in a pantomime display of surprise, which made his long face even more censorious.

  “Well, what do you expect of me?” he challenged. “Did you think I would hug you nicely and say, ’Welcome, dear step-mama’? Do you not see that would be a trifle ridiculous?”

  “Is it my age?” she asked, determined to get at the pith of what irked him. “Do you find the age difference between me and Murdo offensive?”

  “Oh, please.” He pushed his chair back as if anxious to set his body at an angle away from hers. Then he pushed at the edge of the table with the flat of his hands so that she had the impression he had made his entire body an inverted bow. It seemed he must shoot at her.

  Suzanne strove to ride and contain her mounting anger. She breathed deeply, but not so audibly that Jeremy would be aware of her efforts at self-control, “You didn’t answer,” she persisted. “Is it the age difference that irks you?”

  “Oh, really.” The look he gave her was so supercilious, he might have been carved from a block of ice. “As you Americans say – I could care less.”

  “I am a Canadian.”

  “Ah, really.” He nodded with a mock sageness.

  “Forgive me,” he continued. “Of course, I should have realized. The Canadian style is so very distinctive.” He ran the tip of his tongue over his upper lip. He almost smiled. In that ghostly warmth that played about his lips, she thought she caught a glimpse of what it might be like to have this man as a friend.

  “Is this something to do with your mother?” She had been unsure how to phrase this question. Best, she thought, just to blurt it out. It was hardly as if Jeremy were being terribly subtle.

  She was absolutely unprepared for the forcefulness of his reaction. He struck the table with his fist, leapt up abruptly and crossed to the window. He leant in toward it, pressing his pale forehead against the glass. He grasped the wood frame on both sides and she saw that tips of his fingers were quite white. When he turned round, his face was absolutely contorted, whether by hatred or anger she could not tell. She was heartily sorry that she had probed such a rawness in him. She half stood, uncertain whether to cross the room and put her hand on his shoulder.

  He raised his hand to gesture her away. She could see the outline of his ribs rising and falling under his T-shirt.

  “What do you know of my mother?” His tone made this an accusation, rather than a question. He began to pace between the sink and the window, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his back a little bent, as if he might suddenly cave in on himself.

  “I know very little of your mother,” she responded, whether he wished an answer or not. She had sat down again, unwilling to leave him alone, despite his abrasiveness with her. She saw him flinch every so often, a slight tremor pass through his shoulders. She wondered if he might very recently have been under fire. Bosnia, she remembered Murdo saying, although he had seemed then to be merely speculating.

  He raised his head to look at her and stopped pacing. She saw his spine stiffen, as if some core of memory were rising in him, hardening him. His eyes narrowed, turned the perturbed grey of a rain-laden sky.

  “Did you know that he plucked her from the convent, that she was just eighteen, about to take her vows? That way, you see, he was ensured a virgin. He had some cockeyed theory that the female virgin was a living manifestation of pure number. But no doubt he has confided all his cherished little notions to you?” He grimaced, twisted his bony hands together.

  Talk to the children, Gemma had advised. And here she was, sitting in a room with Murdo’s son. An angry, brittle, attractive man who quite evidently loathed his father. Suzanne thought of the cruel measurements noted in the pathetic journal, with all its horrific implications that a young mother had been deliberately separated from her baby. She felt sick hearing Jeremy’s substantiation of what she most feared. What if the suffering that had drawn her to Murdo was in fact an abiding guilt? What if he continued to agonize over his treatment of Miranda after she had given birth? What if he had indeed mentally tortured her with the unrealistic demand that she recapture the form of a virgin girl? Could she herself forgive him if all this were true? Even if it were something he had done thirty or more years ago?

  Suzanne longed to question Jeremy directly about Miranda, and about his relationship with Murdo. Yet even had Jeremy not been so obviously resistant, she still felt it would be inappropriate to go behind Murdo’s back. On the other hand, her lingering suspicions might drive out love.

  She was about to speak when Jeremy turned on her again. “The Virgin is one of your own pet topics, I understand. You had some success with a picture book, I believe.”

  You condescending git, she thought. Are you deliberately trying to rile me, or simply get away from the subject of Miranda?

  “Is that what you have against me?” she asked. “Do you find my work specious?”

  “Specious? No. Self-indulgent? Yes. I am frankly amazed at how the feminist book industry manages to proliferate. Your brand of literature is all very well for middle-class women going through minor psychic turbulence. Just plunder the ancient box of archetypes, pull out a picture and try it on. Virgin? Wise old Crone? Whore? Whatever makes you feel better about your already pampered self.”

  “It reminds me,” he continued, and again his tongue traced his upper lip, “of those colourful band-aids one can buy for toddlers, with pictures of storybook animals or wretched Mickey Mouse. Stick it on dear, and you’ll feel ever so much better.”

  “But just tell me. What good does your pseudo-intellectual feminism do for the woman in the Gaza Strip who is haggard and febrile at forty from giving birth to fifteen children? Because her husband demands she be a birth machine. Producing offspring, proving his virility through the medium of his wife’s ravaged body. This is the sole power he can demonstrate to his peers, in a world where everything else has been stripped away from him. He maintains his self-respect by begetting. That poor, suffering creature who is his wife, what do your pretty picture books do for her? Or your book on holy whores? You want to go to Calcutta and see those lovely young girls sold into prostitution by their families. Swallowing little vials of coloured water that they purchase from
charlatans who tell them it will protect them from AIDS. And then these young women confidently lie down, ten to twenty times a day, with the scum of the earth. Where, in the name of heaven, is the holiness in that?”

  “Do you think I am so naive?” she exploded. “Do you think I am blind to the horrors of the world? Or that I am exploitative in the way I make my living? Or that I am...”

  “Self-serving?” he broke in. “Yes. Yes. I do. I believe you are all those things. And most especially self-serving. And please don’t tell me these little nostrums you propagate are going to filter through human consciousness, or through the airwaves, or through the spectra, or whatever it is you people believe.”

  The tip of his tongue darted out again, and she thought how disgustingly reptilian he looked, and how terribly smug. She was furious in part because she could not refute the truth of his accusation. His was an argument that she frequently conducted silently with herself, and aloud with Gemma. What good exactly did her books do? Yet she was certainly not going to expose her doubts to this man in this context. But at least, she could use his tirade to get to the root of the immediate problem.

  “Is this why you dislike me on sight?” she confronted him. “Is it because of my books?”

  “Dislike you! I don’t dislike you. I despise you. Because you have married a monster. And that makes you either as vile as he, or a complete fool.”

  “Jeremy!” The voice had the bracing purity of wind chimes. The sound seemed miraculously to clear the room of its vitriol. Suzanne turned to see a fairy standing in the kitchen doorway. Or such was the image the young woman projected, in part because she had so speedily transformed the atmosphere. She was about five feet tall and ethereally slim in a sleeveless, ankle-length pink cotton shift. She looked as if she had very recently bathed her face with rose petals. Her feet were bare. Her pale gold hair swung across her face as she flung herself into Jeremy’s arms.

  “Clara,” she heard Jeremy murmur from under the muffle of the young woman’s embrace. The top of her head came just under his chin. Then she tipped her head back and put her finger lightly to the scar under his bottom lip.