If I Touched the Earth

by Cynthia Rogerson

  Pictures Calum.

  He’s driving down the A9 in that icy mid-day, and he’s thinking, No traffic, brilliant. And the low winter sun makes it one of those in and out days, light-dark-light-dark, driving by trees and buildings. Maybe he’s trying to find his sunglasses in the glove compartment, but no. His fingers can’t feel them, and he can’t look, going too fast now. Fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, seventy. Bloody fine cars, Vauxhalls. No matter what anyone says, and Calum always defends his car.

  Probably he’s not thinking of anything but this: The low glaring sun. The empty road. Herself, of course. And what she said the night before. Still hurts. To hell with her!

  His mobile phone rings, he reaches over to answer it because it must be her – none of his pals have mobiles yet. Himself and Zara, trendsetters with their matching blue Nokia phones. What a laugh they had in the shop, choosing ring tones and styles! He’ll be thinking she’s ringing to admit she was wrong. His hands turn the wheel ever so slightly, so he can reach the phone and her apology, and when he tries to correct the angle, keep on the road, it’s too late. He’s over the verge lip. Again and again, close where she is sitting right now in the dark. It’s possible Calum notices there are some empty bottles in the grass, and for a second scans the labels – Carlsberg Special – and suddenly the bottles sparkle like torpedo-shaped stars. A dozen crows fly off the telegraph wire. No, there’s fourteen crows. They pause, frozen in mid-wing beat, and maybe Calum notices each of their wings, their hard sharp feathers, their hard shiny eyes.

  Once he explained to her: Sometimes when I run, it’s like the world has … stopped, and everything I see is really amazing and weird and … completely still. Like I’m the only thing alive in a frozen world. Running is like stopping time.

  His car slides over the verge lip and he hears his own voice say Zara! He notices he sounds quite urgent. No, not enough time to notice that. Just time to say the two syllables of her name.

  Zara blows her nose hard and gets back in her car and drives home. Thinks briefly of her mobile phone. It sits uncharged in her sock drawer. Been there since her last unanswered call to him. I’ll bin it, she decides again. Just bin it.

  Approaching Evanton this time of night and in this state of mind, the yellow streetlamps make her think of her mum, of Christmas trees, guardian angels, soft duvets. Some days there really is, she thinks, no place like home. And later, as her head hits the pillow, she thinks about Calum running, about how he’d seen so many strange and beautiful things in his life already. This helps, and she falls asleep trying to imagine all the things Calum has seen. A lullaby of movie stills.

  Part Three

  Last Days of January to Valentine’s Day 1996

  Alison is a Wee Trout in a Big Loch

  She’s in Glasgow. A little scrap of Alness adrift in the big city. No matter that she doesn’t know anyone here and she doesn’t even like big cities. No matter that it was mainly Glaswegians who’d colonised Alness. Who seduced young country girls like herself, and didn’t bother with condoms (yes, she is feeling a little sorry for herself). That before they came, the sight of a woman walking down the High Street with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth was proof of the devil. That doors were unlocked, car keys left in ignitions, house prices were low, police were decorative, accents undiluted, neighbours were people you knew the whole history of, drugs were a thing you read about in News of the World.

  Alison sits in one of the last non-cappuccino cafés, The Swan, just off West Regent Street. Unpretentious, certainly, but also terrible coffee. She can’t get warm, and she feels Glasgow all around her. The room itself is padded with their quick, gravelly voices, their sudden barks of laughter and phlegm-coughs.

  She’s not thinking about Calum. She’s giving that a wee break, because otherwise she will disintegrate. She’s thinking mean things about Glaswegians instead. Oh yes, Glaswegians had ruined her life. Corrupted all of Alness … or had they? In any case, the incomers were also from the Western Isles, from Livingston and Clydebank and Lothian and Manchester. They were from lots of places, and they didn’t corrupt everyone. Alison’s sister hadn’t been corrupted. Her parents hadn’t. Some of her school pals hadn’t – in fact, they’d sneered at the urban incomers, thought them above themselves, loud, garish. Tacky. They’d snubbed the incomers because they believed they were being snubbed. A pre-emptive snub. Let’s face it, she thinks, it was me. I was drawn to their city ways, their hippie ways, because I was bored, and it was fun flirting with the boys, and it felt like I was joining the big world when I listened to Woodstock for the first time, smoking some Moroccan. She was not in Kansas anymore, but to be honest, hadn’t she wanted to leave Alness with all her heart anyway? Moving in with Neal and making friends with all those non-Highlanders had felt like joining another tribe, the tribe having more fun, but she hadn’t anticipated abandoning her own. And she was not forgiven, not really. Chrissie was the only one who never let go of her. In the end, Alison didn’t really belong to either tribe. She had become too unlike her fellow Alnessians, but banned in some essential way from the incomers too. Though she was rewarded for her loyalty, included in their incomer parties, their friendships and confidences, she never felt one of them. She knew there was an inner circle, and she knew she would never see it. No, she was on the outside, no mistake about that. She was neither one thing nor the other, and the only people like her were other outsiders. She hated this, still does. Hates it! So avoids other outsiders like the plague. Mocks them. What about Neal, then? Where does he come into this?

  She swallows the last of her coffee quickly. She can’t think about Neal right now. A young waitress catches her eye, and Alison signals by lifting her cup. The waitress nods, brings her another coffee.

  ‘And can I have a toastie, please? Cheese and ham.’

  ‘Yep, no problem. Five minutes.’

  Imagine being a waitress, she thinks. Quite alright, I bet.

  Then she looks backwards again. Thinks. Quite easy to do, this far from home.

  She sees her life split in two by Nigg wickedness. Don’t forget Nigg is an actual place too, her mum used to scold her. Nay just about them oil workers and their money and their drugs. She used to take Alison and her sister there for beach picnics, before North Sea oil, before she was dead. So, there was pre-Nigg and post-Nigg. Time weirdness: Alness in the early seventies was stuck in the fifties, then suddenly catapulted into the swinging sixties. From thinking The Beatles had shockingly long hair, to overnight fancying boys with hair down to their shoulders. It was like having dual nationality, belonging to two different pasts. A weird place and time to grow up, alright. Though she hadn’t thought about it much at the time.

  ‘You alright, hen?’ asks a bald man dressed like the chef.

  ‘Aye, fine.’

  ‘More coffee?’

  ‘Better not. Oh, go on then. Ta.’

  It’s not that strong anyway. And it’s good and hot. She has trouble getting warm. No matter what she does, she is cold. Her fake tan has faded and her freckles stand out, accentuating her pallor. She has a jumper on, but she’s chilled and dizzy. She glances around and notices that no one is taking notice of her. Good, she thinks. She must still look normal. This is amazing to her. It makes her wonder how many other people feel as hollow and frightened as herself. If everybody is just faking it, and if everyone is so equally desperate, what’s the point? Who are they fooling? I should just go and ask someone, she thinks. Ask that old geezer over there, sitting with his Daily Mail and ham roll. ‘Excuse me,’ I’ll say, ‘but are you really reading that paper? Are you sure you’re not just pretending to be curious about the state of the world? We could both just howl together, instead. Want to?’

  But Alison is not that daft yet. She finishes her coffee. Charade or not, the day has to be lived through, and she can only sit so long without the chill reclaiming her. A brisk walk down Buchanan Street among strangers, that’s what she needs. No familiar eyes to meet, no polite conversati
on to make. No sympathy, just the bracing effect of all those posh shops. The newness of this place is a tonic, or as much a tonic as she is able to absorb. Maybe a liquid tonic is what she needs, a real drink somewhere, but where? She’s not up to any of the places she walked by earlier, full of laughing attractive people. She pays for her coffee and pulls her good coat on, long black wool. Wraps a red tartan scarf, which matches her shoes, around her head and neck. The only flesh that’s exposed is the middle part of her face. Even her hands are inside thermal gloves.

  She drinks in the air. She swallows exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke and the wintry exhalations of thousands of Glaswegians. She’s tried smoking, but hasn’t been able to get through a whole pack, they made her nauseous. But this polluted city air is perfect. She breathes deeply. She walks and keeps breathing. But after a few minutes her walk is less brisk. She’s heavy again, sluggish, as if her heart is reluctant to pump. It thuds and does the minimum it must. The weight of Calum’s absence seems to travel in her blood. And nowhere in her blood or mind or heart is Neal, not even one little wisp of him. Only the shadowy memory of sitting sticky-thighed in the back seat of a dawn taxi. The way Alness had looked in that early light, as if it too needed a good wash.

  Alison shivers and walks on. She walks slowly down Buchanan Street, then along Argyle Street. She lets the Calum thoughts in again, in a controlled way. Like a vaccine, small doses to prevent the landslide. Repeats to herself, Nope! Calum is not here, he is not anywhere now.The trouble is, she cannot turn off her radar for him, it keeps forgetting and reaching out. It has a mind of its own. She sees running shoes on sale in the window of a sports shop, thinks without thinking – Calum! – just a little careless thought of him, and it goes nowhere, it runs into a wall, it’s sucked into the ether. When he was here and she thought – Calum! – the thought had somewhere to go, some conversation waiting to be resumed, some argument, their evening meal in front of the telly. He could be ticked off the list. The whole thing used to take three seconds, about a half dozen times a day. Back in the old days, when life did not feel like an emergency every minute. Now the unspoken Calum thoughts are damming up in her chest.

  Where are his ashes? The wee box of him, the collecting of which was her last act in the Highlands, is in the B&B she parked herself in for tonight. On top of the telly, which only has two channels. She’ll take a train back to Inverness tomorrow, and carry the box in the same carrier bag she brought it down in, a Tesco carrier bag. She can’t stay long, she’s brought nothing but the box with her. She’s no idea what she’ll eventually do with the box. It isn’t really a box, it’s a dark brown plastic container, the shape of a catering-size Nescafé. Body-shaped, in fact. Alison has no interest in ashes. And yet, she felt too passive to refuse them, she’s paid for them, and now she seems to be stuck with them. In the train earlier today, she tried to leave them on the seat, but a young man picked up the bag and came running after her.

  ‘You forgot your bag!’ he said, puffing.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘This is your bag, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, so it is.’

  The ashes are a nuisance, and worse, they bear no relation to Calum. Calum is gone, gone, gone, and she’s not told him so many things. Can she tell him now? As if he can hear? And forgive? Comforting thought, lovely image. A forgiving angel, a warm sad glow. But Alison is not a believer and so Calum cannot be an angel; he cannot hear. He isn’t anywhere, and there are things she’s not told him.

  Neal is Here

  26th January 1916: EIGHTY YEARS AGO TODAY

  • For a good wash, use Coal Tar soap, 3d at Fraser’s.

  • Wanted: Smart messenger boy for grocers, £35 per annum.

  • Rationing notice – Register with your butcher by 30th Jan.

  • Lost: Would the party who accidentally took the pair of fur gloves from the Conon Public Hall on New Year’s eve, please return them to Miss McKenzie, Killen.

  • Needed: Volunteers to do the teas at Dingwall Station for the floods of thirsty servicemen.

  • Men, are you feeling old at forty? New Oysterix tonic tablets contain general invigorators and raw oyster stimulants. 1s/9d a bottle. Instant results!

  • The Canadians arrive! After lustily singing ‘Tipperary’ and ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, the Canadian soldiers marched ashore at the west coast port, the second battalion of Canadians to arrive. Note: All ranks on leave may wear civvies.

  • Missing in Action: Joseph Munro, of Jamestown, aged 18 Theo McPhee, of Dingwall, aged 18

  • Killed in Action in France: Tommy Henderson, of Delny, aged 19

  While Alison negotiates the big city, Neal types names no one will ever read, and this makes him sad in a pleasant, familiar way. It is 11:55am. His life, incredibly, has swallowed the Calum tragedy. He’s cheated on his wife for the first and possibly last time. Guilt has been denied, accepted, analysed, digested, rationalised and finally expelled. The momentum of normality, lumbering indifferent beast that it is, has stream-rolled over everything, and he’s preoccupied with trivial things again, with the addition of constant but quite manageable Alison thoughts murmuring under everything. That night-time walk a week ago, when he felt he might expire if he couldn’t see, no, not just see her, but make passionate love to her for at least four and a half hours – well, he’s relegated that longing to certain parts of his day when he can feel private. Addicting as it is, it does not interfere with his life. He does not indulge in wanton Alison thoughts wantonly.

  No, he does not. He is not obsessed.

  Not most of the time, anyway. He is becoming used to being a complicated, contradictory person, like most other middle-aged men in turn of the twentieth-century Scotland. He wonders if his sparkplugs need replacing, if he’s losing more hair, if his penis is big enough, if he should buy those more expensive comfortable shoes next time, if he will ever sleep with Alison again, if his father is getting more sex then he is, if the pork chop he chewed last night was too tough or are his teeth getting old, if he will ever stop being in love with Alison, if the dandruff that flakes off his wife’s scalp is something she’d like to know about, if she will ever agree to anal or even oral sex, if he really wants her to anymore, if the garden needs attention yet, if his own birthday has come round again too quickly. Oh yes, Neal has had another birthday, and is now forty-four. A big deal? But this too has been gobbled up and is gone. The days flicker past in their predictability and their passing is not painful. What can time not obliterate? His love for Alison, of course, but it does not scream in his head every second of every day. He’s too old for that kind of intensity, which is one of the reasons he can give serious thought to things like the toughness of pork chops.

  His work is done for the morning and as he leaves the office to buy a roll and coffee, the sun comes out. So what, you might think, but this is Dingwall in late January and sun is an event. His hair lightens, a glint of red gold. And the air is a freezing bright elixir. He’s inhaling iced coffee. Neal shades his eyes, feels a loosening deep inside, and decides to eat his roll on one of the seats outside Donati’s. It’s bird-shit covered from the pigeons who roost on it most nights, but this does not concern him.

  He eats his roll slowly and reflects on his wife’s good qualities, the way she makes her own Christmas cards every year, rarely resorting to glitter. The way she keeps their kitchen cupboards tidy, even the cutlery drawer, and he always knows where things will be. The way she tucks his pairs of socks into each other, neat little parcels. The way everyone seems to like her; in fact, now he thinks about it, everyone seems to like her a lot. All the social arrangements are made via her. They are referred to as Sally and Neal. Never, never, as Neal and Sally. He doesn’t mind, of course he doesn’t, but he notes this inequality in their popularity. It’s interesting.

  Yesterday there was another postcard from his father in Skegness. Hey, wish you were here, son. Don’t leave it too long. I know it’s cliché but life really is hellishly short. Love from Dad (
and Myrtle). No word from his Buddhist mother in a long time. A celibate un-materialistic woman always on retreat. Somehow, she just doesn’t count anymore, not in a maternal way. Things like Christmas presents and birthday cakes are long gone. Just the annual card, informing him that she’s donated to some charity in his name. Did his dad’s affair have to drive her to that? Well, at least someone benefits.

  For a minute after eating, he lifts his face to the sun and closes his eyes. He feels blessed suddenly, and perhaps this is the first time since he turned forty-four he’s aware of simply being above ground, not in it. A forgettable fact, being alive, but it is something, and he remembers now to give it its due. He pictures all the time he has left to live, as if it fills a container with a one-way valve. A clear Perspex rectangle.

  He glances at his watch. Four more minutes left of lunch hour, then he’ll have to rise, walk back up the High Street. Then one minute, thirty seconds left. Then he is rising, and walking. He can almost hear the hiss of time seeping away, and looks extra hard at the shop windows, in case he misses some little thing that turns out to be important.

  He passes two boys who look familiar. One tall, one short. Early twenties. Arguing? But quietly so it’s hard to tell. Certainly emotional. Their two voices are overlapping, low but fast and hard.

  ‘Finn! Stop a second, man.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘What’s your problem, eh?’

  ‘What you talking about?’

  ‘You never answer my texts.’

  ‘What texts?’

  ‘And you totally saw me Saturday, and just walked away.’

  ‘You’re off your head, William. Paranoid.’

  Then Neal is past them and doesn’t hear them anymore. His heart pounds, and without being aware of it, he automatically applies his old remedy. Thinks about the earth revolving and himself planted vertically on it. And about what used to be right here, on this street. Instantly feels happier. This is where horses used to be tethered while folk did their banking. That’s where the original cattle market was. Down this lane is where Mary Queen of Scots hid, en route to a safer place. Whew! Much better. You know where you are, with history. Like a mantra, he silently says the names of places and people that are no longer here.