The Applecross Spell

by Wendy MacIntyre

  He put his head in his hands. Then emerged with an apology. “Forgive me. That was unseemly.”

  Unseemly, Suzanne repeated to herself. What an odd choice of words. As though he spoke to an outsider. Was this a calculated defence then, primed to perfection? In Miranda’s journals, she thought, everything Jeremy said is substantiated. But if I mention the journals, Murdo will blame illness or the medication Miranda was taking. He will say her sickness had made her unbalanced. What does it mean that I am sure he will say this?

  She stood up then, a little shakily, to pour out the tea. She slid a mug over to Murdo, who grasped its base with both hands.

  Suzanne put the mug to her lips, and sipped cautiously, wishing it were some faery brew that bestowed faultless discernment.

  Murdo also drank. “Thank you, my dear.” He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I will be so relieved to get this over with. I do not understand why they must go on tormenting me so. It is only my children who make me feel I am an old man.”

  He paused, as if waiting for her to deny this.

  Suzanne kept silent, only willing the light to come at last.

  “And so,” he continued with a heaving sigh, “to the second of their fabrications. Kirstie’s hang gliding. Their tale is that I encouraged her in this sport. That I was studying her flight – their shoddy reasoning quite defeats me here – to corroborate some theory about gravitation and the curvature of space. It is such nonsense, so terribly absurd, that it would be laughable were it not for the tragedy of Kirstie’s death.”

  “The truth is that I hated her obsession with hang gliding. She would not be dissuaded. I went and watched her because I feared for her. It made me physically ill. My heart was in my mouth all the time she was in the air. But I had this foolish notion that if I always watched her, she would come to no harm.”

  He stopped and bowed his head.

  And the picture, Suzanne wondered. What of the photograph you showed Callum? And then: what if there never were such a photograph?

  Murdo took some very audible deep breaths; then sipped again at his tea. “Nearly done,” he said. “Thank God. I cannot tell you how I detest this. I am sixty-two years old. You would think they might leave me in peace.”

  “Callum,” he said and sat down his mug with a thud. “Callum. Child of my loins though I am hard pressed to admit it. Feckless, disruptive Callum. Who is at the root of all these machinations. For although he is insane, he is cunning. He is the viper in this family, the one who has convinced Clara and Jeremy that I am a monster.”

  Murdo’s face was flushed. Suzanne was doubly on edge, concerned that Murdo might be on the verge of apoplexy, and herself stung by the image of Callum as viper. She had met vipers in her life, men and women both. She could see none of their maliciousness in the young Callum Napier. The eye, she thought. Murdo must mention Callum’s eye.

  “They told you, no doubt,” he began, “that I am responsible for the idiot boy’s blind eye. It is true that I held the hammer that wounded him. But the facts are these. He lunged at me like a mad bull, unthinking, unseeing, as is his wont. It was he who rammed his own bestial little face into the hammer. He had an ungodly strength for a child. Hyperactive, we were told. Hyper-everything, when it comes to Callum. He was the agent of his own blinding. Oh, unwittingly, of course. I do not suppose he was even aware I was holding a hammer.”

  “Callum has always had precious little grasp on reality. And all the drugs simply exacerbated his mania. LSD, MDA, Ecstasy. I lost count of the number of schools he was thrown out of because of drugs and other scrapes. It is a wonder to me that he can still cross a street and not get hit.”

  Suzanne waited for Murdo to qualify, even minimally, this horrendous wrapping up of his son. But nothing came. Murdo’s self-defence was at an end. She understood this by the way he sat back in his chair. Erect. Satisfied. The lion has eaten a good meal. The lion knows his own truth. He has eaten it and finds it good. Quod erat demonstrandum.

  Who is this Callum that Murdo speaks of? Is it a Callum Murdo has made up? Or is it a Callum that Callum himself has made up to torment his father? Is every family its own self-contained theatre? Or its own myth-making machine?

  “Callum told me...” she began. Then winced as Murdo flung his mug to the floor. The china shattered. Tea seeped over the stone.

  “Callum told you,” he hissed. “So, the idiot speaks now? No babble for you, I gather. And what did Callum tell you?”

  Never had she imagined that Murdo would appear ugly to her. Yet now he did. A ranting, florid, horrid old man.

  “Calm yourself, Murdo, please. Let us simply leave it for now.”

  “Oh, I am calm, Suzanne. Deadly calm, in fact. Just tell me what that aberrant creature has invented now.”

  She felt she had no choice but to go on. “He told me you made him look at a photograph of Kirstie after she had fallen.”

  Murdo looked genuinely aghast. “My God, do you mean a photograph of her when she... No,” he said. “I do not believe even he...”

  He shook his head again and again, as if to fling the thought far away. “And do you really think I would do something so vilely sadistic? Or that I am so sick I would keep a picture of my beloved Kirstie, all... No, no. It is too much to bear. The boy is truly foul. Foul.”

  He put his head down on the table. His shoulders were trembling.

  She regretted having spoken. She had not wanted to torture him in this way. Callum had lied to her about the photograph, then. Or perhaps he had a hallucination on drugs, which afterwards he took to be real. Murdo could not be feigning this distress. She had not meant to torture him.

  She went to him and tentatively touched the back of his neck. He flung his arms about her hips and laid his head on her belly. She was surprised to feel no wetness. She presumed he had been crying.

  She kept her hand on his shoulder until at last he unlocked his grasp.

  I cannot hug him back, she realized. I am still far too wary. Something more has to happen. The clarity must come.

  And so it did.

  “I have come up with a plan,” she heard Murdo say in his habitually composed tones. “And perhaps now is the most opportune time to speak of it. I have confessed to you my fault. I admit I was a poor father. But you, dear Suzanne, can give me the chance to make up for my past omissions.”

  Oh no, she thought. Not this. Surely not.

  “I know, my dear,” he went on with an indulgent smile, “that you lied to me when you said you cannot have children. I know you better than you think. Procreation is a realm we two must share. So, let us do this, Suzanne. You can guide me, help me to be the father I should have been.”

  I must speak rationally, she thought, although he is being most irrational. “Murdo, I am not at all sure I want to be a mother. To be frank, I had never even considered this when we...”

  “Well, my dear, consider it now. And for your sake. You are thirty-four. There is the very real factor of the biological clock. And motherhood is surely an experience every woman must have.”

  “Why, Murdo? Why must every woman have this experience? If I choose not to have children, then it is indeed my prerogative. You are being presumptuous.”

  “Let us not quarrel, Suzanne. There has been enough stress for today, has there not? I think you will find your instinct will override your intellect eventually.”

  He paused. She seethed, more at herself than at Murdo; that she had not perceived this opacity in him.

  “Is it a question of vanity, perhaps?” he persisted. “The stretch marks? Fear of drooping breasts?”

  “What! Oh, do shut up, Murdo.” Had he always read her so wrongly? His misapprehension would be laughable, were it not so sad.

  Murdo is sad. The light had come at last. Murdo is a sad human being. He really does not see. Perhaps he really is as the children describe him. The ardent puppet master. The controller. He wants me pregnant, heavy with child. He does not really want a child. He wants me s
haped to his will.

  Murdo was speaking. Suzanne had to wrench herself back in order to listen. She was not at all sure she wanted to listen. Was this really Murdo speaking? Or some other voice from centuries ago?

  “I understand women’s vanity,” Murdo was saying. “Miranda and Kirstie were just the same. But today’s cosmetic surgery can completely eradicate any physical blight childbirth leaves on the body. Stretch marks all smoothed away. Breasts made firm. You could even have that nasty little mole on your back removed. You are probably yourself unaware of it. I don’t mean to upset you, but I do find it off-putting. These little protuberances are vestigial nipples, you know. From our earlier mammalian days. Rather horribly bestial, when you think of it.”

  “I do not think of it, Murdo. I do not think of it at all. And I certainly will not go under the knife in order to satisfy your obsession with unmarked flesh.”

  I will tell him now. I will tell him I am leaving.

  “Women are so terribly impulsive,” Murdo said. In his face she read the manufactured indulgence one assumes with an unruly child.

  “Do be reasonable, Suzanne. I certainly have no obsession with unmarked flesh, as you rather crudely put it. We have got off the point, haven’t we? I mistook your hesitation, then. I apologize. The issue is obviously not vanity.”

  “I blame the children,” he went on. “I do. We have not quarrelled before. They sow disaffection and mistrust. We must transcend their machinations. It would be best, I think, if we return to London tomorrow. They have infected this house for you, I believe.”

  The house is already infected, she thought.

  “What do you say, Suzanne? Shall we set off tomorrow? I need a day to rest and then we shall leave. Leave their poison quite behind us.”

  “Murdo, I must go off on my own for a while. I need time to think.”

  She could smell his fear. He threw his arms about her waist, clung like a limpet. She willed herself not to struggle.

  “Don’t leave me, Suzanne. Don’t leave me. I need you. With you, I can see the night skies again as I did when I was a young man. Through you, I can feel and see again. Don’t leave me.”

  She felt she was choking. The room seemed to her to be full of smoke. I must get away. I must get away from this burning touch of his flesh.

  She pushed him from her.

  He sat back. The look on his face was stunned and disbelieving. Then anger seized him, so swiftly that Suzanne was not ready – not ready at all – when Murdo sprang to his feet, grabbed her upper arms, and wrenched her out of her chair. She winced, raised her hands to undo his grip on her. He grasped her tighter.

  “What is it you damned women want?” His face was hideous in his rage. His teeth were bared. In their brightness, she thought of animals transfixed by car headlights. She was judging his exact distance from her, plotting her next move, when his hands moved suddenly to her shoulders, digging painfully into her collarbone. She knew with a terrible certainty that his fingers would shortly lock around her throat.

  She kneed him sharply in the testicles. Murdo collapsed to the floor, winded, clutching his crotch.

  She ran from the kitchen and shut the door behind her. She took the piece of paper from her pocket as she sped to the telephone in the front hallway. She prayed his pain would last long enough for her to make the call. Five digits. Her fingers shook as she punched the buttons.

  It was a woman who answered. “Is Callum there, please?” She was amazed she managed to get the words out without stuttering. This is how Callum lost his ability to articulate, she thought. Murdo’s brutishness foiled his tongue. She thought she heard Murdo groan.

  “Suzanne?” The sound of Callum’s voice was anodyne. Ada’s pearl.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to call. How bad is it? No, don’t tell me. There’s probably no time. Just get out of the house. Wait for me on the main road. And don’t look back, Suzanne. I’ll be less than twenty minutes.”

  As she put down the receiver, she heard Murdo push open the kitchen door. “Suzanne!”Yes, the cry was plaintive. He was gulping. He was still winded. She was not at all sorry.

  She bounded up the stairs, two at a time, and grabbed her knapsack and sweater. On the way back down, she almost slipped in her haste. It is quite all right, she told herself. And of course, I can move faster. He must still catch his breath, find his car keys...

  Halfway down the gravelled driveway, she did look back. He was standing in the front doorway, his arms flung outward, his hands clutching at the doorframe as if to keep his drooping body erect. His head was bowed. Then he looked up and saw her. He put an arm out to her, imploring.

  She ran. She did not look back again.

  She was still running when she heard the roar of the bike, that black beast and its rider who were the medium of her deliverance.

  18

  Defying Gravity

  The sign at the start of the mountain pass is chillingly admonitory. “Do not attempt this road in rain or fog, particularly on motorbike. It is for experienced drivers only.”

  Callum has stopped the Triumph so that they can stretch their legs and look up at the mountains where the bike will shortly carry them over 2,000 feet. He has prepared her well. This is Bealach na Bà, the highest road in Scotland. Once a mountain pass for cattle. The narrow road zigzags. There are hairpin turns. The maximum gradient is one in four. At times, they will travel a slender ledge, above a drop of several hundred feet. She must inhabit her fear, wear it like armour. On this road, there will be no way to escape fear. The terror is a necessary part of the wonder.

  When they reach the plateau, she will stand closer to the sky than ever before in her life. Beneath her, she will see the North Atlantic and the Isle of Skye as if they were new-made. As she wishes herself to be, by virtue of her contact with this place.

  The English name for this whole fish-tail peninsula is Applecross. Which had reminded her uncomfortably of Eve’s alleged sin and of the cross Murdo will not forego as a life prop. These are the shadow halves of myth, she thinks, that will pull us all down to hell if we embrace them.

  But Callum has given her the old Gaelic name for the peninsula, which is Comeraich, a sanctuary. For centuries, this place was a recognized sanctuary for fugitives of all kinds.

  She recognizes herself as a fugitive. She has run away from the man she married, in company with the son he calls imbecilic, less than human, an aberration. She thinks of Callum as a radiant boy. She is aware of the high price he has paid to keep his innocence. She knows that Murdo would not understand this.

  A few hours ago, when they stopped at a cosy, whitewashed café, she noticed for the first time the needle marks in his forearm. She touched the puncture marks gingerly and looked at him in silent question. “Never again,” he said. She is amazed at what he has managed to accomplish. The slender ledges travelled. The ridgepoles walked. To make himself other than Murdo. Because there has always been the real danger that he might fall.

  The danger presses now for both her and Callum as she mounts the bike behind him, then grips the passenger strap firmly in her right hand and the metal bar of the seat in her left. As they ascend the steep, twisting road through the mountains, she must sit erect, holding fast to the strap and the bar. She must make no sudden movement. She must not at all costs lean forward, so that her face is against his back, or her arms wrapped around his chest. If she lurches in panic, she could send them both to their deaths. She understands that Callum is trusting her with his life; that this risk is reciprocal.

  He revs the bike and they rise so steeply, she fears they will slide backward. The fact is there is no way back. The narrow road allows no turning. They must go forward or perish. The road rises, and then twists, again and again, and again. The bike roars onward, a black beast on a slender ledge rising into the sky. What they are doing defies logic. It is as if gravity itself is a dark pounding heart against which they must pitch themselves.

  She grips the strap. She grips the
bar. And suddenly the armour of her fear is permeable. The wind in her face and the taste in her mouth is tart and sweet. She turns her head carefully and looks behind her. Far, far below, there is a lake, caught in the cleft of blue and amethyst mountains. She sees the rock and the harsh land hug the swift light to themselves. They are transformed even as she looks at them. The rock lives, as Ada said. If it would not mean her death and Callum’s, she would like to stretch out her arm and touch the mountain on her left. It is that close. A sentinel of earth, obdurate yet mysteriously yielding. For the first time in her life, she actually sees how the mass of the world curves space. These mountains and the sky have a mystic and terrifying marriage. She and Callum are caught now in the fierceness of that bond; in the wild and terrible beauty of this place. They are riding a curvature of space, and the sky is so close she believes she inhabits its lilac-tinged clouds.

  Rising and rising. Through mountains stern and solid, soft and young. Or is it she who feels young, so near to this throbbing power, this marriage of earth and sky? And then here is the ledge Callum warned her of. She looks down to the sheer drop below, to a well of glorious space and mesmerizing light. Where death waits, and life as well.

  And now they are past it. She grips the strap and the bar. And they rise. At last the bike levels out and they stop at the gravelled edge of a rocky plateau.

  Her ears are ringing, her legs numb as she gets off the bike. Callum has taken off his helmet. His eyes are bright. His hair is a turbulence of gold in the high wind. She takes off her own helmet. The wind seeks out her mouth and nostrils. She has to fight for breath.

  Then she finds the right rhythm, a way to breathe while the wind batters her body. She walks out on to the plateau in the direction of the light glittering up from the sea. This is the bounty of desolation, for there is only rock and lichen and sky. As she walks toward the edge to look down at the sea, the wind drops a little. Cairns stand all around her, so precariously made, she can hear the wind whisper between the spaces of stone balanced on stone. The cairns are a human presence that is also an absence. She looks back and sees Callum, still standing by his motorbike. Perhaps he is smoking a cigarette. She understands he is deliberately letting her be.