If I Touched the Earth

by Cynthia Rogerson

  A Name is a Little Thing

  She sits in The Swan again. Next day, same seat, by the steamed-up window. Weird, how even within a short period, one establishes routines. It’s cheap, too brightly lit and uncomfortable, just what she needs. She has read, at last, the notices in the window, and is talking to Teddy MacDougall, the chef and café owner. He’s about fifty, full-lipped, fat enough to have a bosom, and seemingly hairless. Quite a shiny man, when sitting directly under the fluorescent light, as he is now. He’s smiling and Alison stares at him, transfixed, wondering how ugliness can spill over into beauty, just like that. And is that rouge on his cheeks? It might be, hard to tell.

  She glances round the café again, just to make sure it really is as conventional as it appears. There are no black and white photographs on the wall, no sea-salt grinders, no balsamic vinegar bottles. Probably not rouge. Probably broken capillaries. Or he’s blushing.

  ‘So, down from the Highlands, are you? On what? Some kind of holiday?’ Teddy asks gruffly, straight-faced through his smile, which is how he always greets new people. His café is full of regulars, mostly anti-social types who feel okay near him but uneasy near most other people in this trendy part of Glasgow. Teddy’s regulars are frightened, for instance, of Costa. They read the Sun, love hamburgers, smoke Embassy Regals; in fact, the café stinks of Embassy Regals and hamburgers.

  ‘No. Yes. Not really. I mean, who would come here for fun?’ She lets a small giggle leak out, to signal it’s a joke. She should just shut up.

  ‘Why are you here then?’

  ‘Just trying it out, like.’

  ‘You mean one place is as good as another? Every where’s the same?’ As if he really wants to know.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But maybe. Maybe it is.’

  ‘Hm …’ He squints his eyes, as if he’s considering the concept. Then suddenly the gruff dissolves. He leans forward on his elbows, and in a warm chatty voice, asks, ‘So how did you get here, hen? What are you doing here? Tell me everything.’

  She thinks, What kind of job interview is this? Nosey bugger. I sat on the floor in my dark house eating out of a cereal box with the curtains drawn, ignoring the phone and when people knocked on the door I didn’t open it. Then I drove to the Crematorium to pick up my jar of son, then I parked the car in Safeway’s car park meaning to get some milk and bread but before I got to the door, felt like I shouldn’t be leaving Calum’s ashes on the back seat like that, just didn’t seem right, so I went back and fetched them and then walked to the train station instead of Safeways, ’cause I’d decided to off myself, so perfect! But after five minutes realised jumping in front of speeding trains wasn’t possible in a terminus. So got on a train instead. Didn’t look to see where it was going. Didn’t even have a ticket. Wasn’t asked for one, either. Probably looked too loony to ask.

  ‘I got on a train,’ she says out loud.

  ‘Aye? Then what?’

  ‘Then nothing. I got off the train. I’m here, I like it, thinking of staying. And I’ve been a waitress before,’ she lies. ‘I could start today, if you want.’

  ‘£3.50 an hour. Thirty hours a week,’ he says ominously, as if these are harsh and unusual conditions. ‘The waitress I have is a student. Just wants to do weekends. So you would be Monday to Friday.’

  ‘Aye, that’s just fine.’ A shaky note creeping into her voice – is her courage about to give out already? Traitor voice!

  His eyes fill with a consoling expression. ‘Really? That would be just great. But are you really sure, darling?’

  The darling, which does not sound rote, is a jolt.

  ‘Really,’ she mumbles.

  ‘What’s your name, then?’

  ‘Alison Ross. Well …’ She begins to say something about her lack of work clothes, then closes her mouth and sticks out her hand, which he just looks at. The last waitress had been of the sleazy made-up variety and had eaten her way through most of his cakes every day before leaving with no notice and a chocolate gateau, and Teddy had felt demoralised because he’d liked her.

  He regards Alison’s hand to see if it might belong to another unreliable glutton. But no, it looks surprisingly reliable and un-gluttonous, as does her face. Grief becomes Alison. Fasting and walking have improved her circulation, and enormous amounts of sleep have eradicated her dark circles. She still has her perpetual crease of anxiety, her frown, but now it just makes her look sweetly serious. Eventually he takes her hand into his sweaty paw and shakes it.

  ‘Nice to meet you, eh … Alice? Alice Roswell, did you say? Lovely name, dear.’

  She does not correct him. A name is such a little thing, and yet. Lets the Alice Roswell hang in the air. Alice, a subtly different person from Alison, materialises suddenly, faintly, just out of the corner of her eye. Alice is simple, pure, feminine but never sexy. Alice does not swear. Her sense of humour is non-existent. People protect Alice. And Roswell is so much less common than Ross. People respect a Roswell, surely. Alice Roswell it is, then.

  ‘Why don’t you write down your phone number and address, and I’ll show you the routine.’

  ‘Ah.’ She extricates her hand. ‘Now. I was also wanting to apply for the live-in companion job.’ His face looks blank, so she elucidates. ‘For the elderly woman. Your mother, perhaps?’ His face still looks full of dumb awe, wide-eyed, mouth open. It begins to make her uneasy, but surely that’s a spark of intelligence in his dark lashed eyes? Yes, of course, he’s faking it. Like a flirting girl. Dumb bald.

  ‘Now how did you know about my mum, you clever girl?’

  Alison/Alice smiles warily. ‘Your notice. In the window. Below the help wanted notice.’ She wants to take his pudgy hand and lead him to the notices.

  ‘Oh! Right you are! I forgot I put that bit up as well. Been up for ages, that, I’d given up. I mean, who’d want to look after an old lady for fifty quid a week?’

  ‘Fifty quid?’

  ‘That’s right, lovey. You’d get a roof over your head, like, and use of the house. It’s in a nice quiet lane. But only fifty pounds a week. Can’t afford more.’

  ‘Well, I’ve no place to live yet, so it’d suit me fine meantime.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Have I got the job, then?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Both jobs?’

  ‘Aye. Why not?’ He smiles broadly, revealing shiny teeth which match his shiny hairless head. He’s almost blinding, and she pauses for a minute, letting all this light wash over her.

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘I’ve been seeing to her twice a day for years now. Get her up, make her a cuppa. Get her some supper, help her to bed. She does most things on her own, but could use help with dressing sometimes. And cooking, washing dishes. Laundry. Bit of cleaning.’

  ‘Okay.’ She would be daunted, if she had any daunt in her.

  ‘She’s old, you know,’ he warns. ‘Pretty decrepit, in fact. I’ve been on the verge of checking her into an oldie’s home, only I’m pretty sure she’d arrange for some hit man to take me out. Some guy called Jimmy, probably.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yeah. She’s crabbit, and if you boil her egg too long, she’ll throw it at you.’

  ‘Oh, I think I can cope with that.’

  ‘She’s got a mean pitching arm.’

  ‘I think I’ll manage. I’m a great catcher of eggs.’

  ‘Well, Alice. If you like catching eggs, you’ll love my mum. Go fetch your luggage, darling, and I’ll take you over and introduce you.’

  Alison, upon hearing herself called Alice for the second time, moves her shoulders as if she’s shrugging something on, or off. She shakes his hand and leaves, promising to be back in an hour. Wanders in a daze for thirty minutes, then finds a charity shop and buys a suitcase for 80p – a beige plastic one. Pops the Nescafé of Calum into the suitcase, clicks it shut, and heads back to Teddy. Cannot believe she began yesterday in her own bed i
n Alness. Seems years ago. Right now, she couldn’t tell you the colour of her bedroom walls.

  ‘So, Alice, this all your wordly possessions then?’

  ‘Aye. I travel light.’

  ‘Good for you, sweetie. Let me take that for you.’

  ‘No, that’s okay, I’ll carry it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, I’ll carry it. Time to close now, anyway. I’ll just lock the door and we’ll go and meet my mum. She lives about five minutes away.’

  ‘I want to carry it, Teddy, honestly, thank you anyway.’

  He lifts the case. Calum audibly slides from one end to another.

  ‘What’ve you got in here, then Alice?’

  ‘Stuff,’ she says, blushing.

  A quite long pause. Then: ‘Right you are, none of my business anyway.’

  She’s shown her new room, the bathroom, how to work the heating, light the fire, pay the milkman, jiggle the television antenna for good reception. She feels blank, but is convincingly responsive. Lets the newness fill her. She notices the wallpaper in the hallway. It is very old, possibly as old as the house, a pre-war tenement. A pattern of small faded daffodils repeated on a blue and green tartan. She wants to stare at it; it seems to want to be stared at. What has it witnessed? Alice promises herself and it that she’ll stare at it later. Strange, because Alison never gave a damn about the history of things.

  ‘Lovely to meet you,’ she tells Janet, who holds her hand far longer than necessary.

  ‘Likewise, my dear. Likewise. Is my tea ready yet?’

  The next day Alice walks to the More store and buys a pastel nylon nightie for £2.99, one that Alison would have hated. She buys knickers and socks in value packs of six, and two blouses, the first blouses she’s ever bought. She also buys an unflattering skirt with an elastic waist. It has a floral pattern on a black background. She buys a toothbrush to cure her furry teeth, and then notices her purse is finally empty. Her bank account with its £1,367 is inaccessible; her bank card lies on the sideboard at home, along with her cheque book. The second morning in her new bed, still dark outside, she is woken by Calum’s voice.

  Mum!

  In just his impatient demanding tone, age six or ten or twenty. She lays in bed and listens, with a queer alert feeling, to the echo of his voice. Since he could talk, his summoning Mum! has broken her dreams. Both his real voice, and his voice in her dreams. Hard to tell the difference some days. But now he’s gone, his voice is so precious.

  She makes her voice as normal as possible when she answers: What? Hoping to trick him back somehow. Then rolls over and tries to slip back into that particular dream.

  ‘Married?’ asks Teddy later, while laying out strips of bacon on the grill.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No kids?’

  ‘No.’ Pause. ‘Well, I used to.’ Teddy raises his eyebrows.

  ‘A son, but he died. Does that count as having kids?’ It’s like learning a new language.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Yes, of course he counts,’ says Teddy.

  ‘Well, okay.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Calum,’ she mumbles, coughs, looks at the oven behind Teddy. In a louder voice: ‘His name was Calum, okay?’

  ‘You must miss him terribly. Can’t imagine how you feel.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I ask how he died?’

  ‘Car crash.’ She puts the fork down and leans over to untie, then re-tie her shoelace.

  Teddy makes a squeamish noise, then exhales audibly. ‘Was it a drunk driver? Black ice?’

  ‘Uh, no. No. Not exactly sure how it happened.’

  ‘That must be worse. And when? When was this terrible event?’

  ‘About three weeks ago. The fifth of January.’

  Silence, bacon frozen mid-turn.

  ‘Fuck, Alice. Excuse my language, but fuck.’

  ‘Yes. Well, will I do the pans now? The sink’s full.’

  Alice splashes greasy water over her skirt. She’s never been good at languages. She has a terrible memory for new meanings of words, new sequences of words, but she remembers her son well enough. And pretty much all the time.

  Neal Remembers Calum

  Events take a long time to sift down inside Neal. They settle down, then they flurry up a bit, then they settle down again. His mind is not exactly like a junk drawer, but pretty close. He mislays emotions. He sits at his desk with a cup of coffee, and in between answering the phone and writing down ad details, he remembers Calum. It’s like being visited by him. A surging wave, the office floats away, and the old days are exposed on the beach in all their flawed loveliness.

  He remembers not just the Ribena smell and his scabby knees, this time he remembers the sound of Calum’s voice, calling him Dad. The way he never stopped even when he was corrected, sometimes sharply. He thinks of the way Calum’s eyes always lit up when he saw him, and one spring morning in particular when he smiled with peanut butter all over his mouth. He remembers wrapping a large bandage around Calum’s knee, after another fall off his skateboard; the way Calum didn’t cry but seemed proud of his injury. They’d felt close, united in their … their what? They’d both hated the series of men in Alison’s life. Those men who smiled so often, but rarely looked them straight in the eyes. Loud drunken laughter behind her closed bedroom door, used to send Neal and Calum out of the house. Or they’d hole up in the sitting room, with the telly volume up high. Never a point in remembering their names; not likely they’d still be around next month.

  Neal burns his tongue with scalding coffee, quotes rates for lines, and remembers the exact way he felt when Calum reached for his hand. Honoured. A child liking him. It had meant he was a good person. A warmth pours into him now, as if Calum is still liking him.

  ‘Neal!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, do you want a cup of tea? I asked you twice. Are you alright?’

  ‘Sorry, Margaret. I was just … thinking. Yes please. Just milk, no sugar.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that by now?’

  Yes, Neal’s mind is slow and echoing. Images drop slowly, like soft things, like marshmallows into fire – innocuous, ignorable, but once they hit the flames, sizzling into caramelised nuggets. And now Finding-Alison is shifted from the back burner to the roaring adrenalin-fired front burner. He swallows his tea in gulps, winds up a phone call about an ad for a VW Golf 1600cc with Panasonic CD player and infinity speakers. Hangs up, and before the phone can ring again, quickly dials her number. She’ll answer this time, surely. She must! When she doesn’t, he gets up, grabs his coat and leaves the office without even nodding to smiling Margaret, sitting at her desk and who he’s never failed to smile at. Her unnoticed smile freezes, then fades as she stares at his retreating back.

  ‘Hmph!’ she grunts, secretly of the same opinion as Sally, that middle-aged men are dangerously unstable. She’d hoped Neal would be different – he’d certainly negotiated his thirties like a mature adult, but here he is, with that demented charging ahead look. Selfish, the lot of them!

  Neal gets in his car and heads north on the Old Evanton Back Road and, as always, has a little thought about the road itself and the ghosts he is driving through. This is automatic and only uses a few seconds, but is specific and vivid nevertheless. He passes two horses pulling a carriage, heading for Foulis Castle. Inside is Angus Beaton, who has promised to cure the dying Laird with the leeches he carries in a jar in his sack. Those three aristocratic ladies walking with their maidservants holding parasols are on their way to the Catholic chapel. The cattle on the down slope of the hill to his right, stumbling and panting, are being driven by the Bethune boys with sticks. And oh look, there are those barefooted men with Nordic voices and red beards, charging up from the shore again. And over in those woods, that running woman with a baby tucked into deerskin, slung across her back! Then at the stone bridge at Pealig, a young blond woman driving a silver Polo south pulls into a passing place to give way. Neal briefly waves his thank you as
he passes, and she nods slightly.

  She is not a ghost, she is Zara, the woman who’d loudly wept and ran out of the church at the funeral. The keeper of the A9 Calum memorial. But Neal does not realise this. Only thinks, in a distracted way – nice hair, familiar face, do I know her?

  He turns the radio on, and it’s that song again. I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. He turns up the volume. He doesn’t like most contemporary pop music, but this is the Trogs rehashed by Wet Wet Wet, and just the right side of naff. It’s written on the wind, it’s everywhere I go.

  By the time the song ends, he’s in a soppy mood and parked in front of Alison’s house. When her doorbell is not answered, he rings the three other bells in the terrace. Why hasn’t he done this before? He feels like he’s just woken up, and it might already be too late so he has to hurry. His eyes swivel to Alison’s windows, but the curtains are still drawn. He stares at them. His hands are shaking, he is quaking internally. This is a race! An emergency! Although all of houses have signs of inhabitants, only one door opens.

  ‘Can I help you? Alison Ross? Sure, I know Alison, lives next door,’ says an elderly woman slowly. ‘Lovely girl, Alison, so nice. Terrible about her son, though. Hard to believe. I mind when he was wee, such a handsome lad he was, and always so thoughtful of me as well, like the time he kept these steps sprinkled with grit he got from the yellow bins down the road. Fetched it all by his wee self in carrier bags, so he did, he was that kind. I always kept some Marathon bars, the wee ones, just for him. Say, why don’t you come in out of the cold, the kettle’s just boiled, what did you say your name was? I’m Dorothy.’

  ‘Neal. I can’t come in, sorry, uh, Dorothy. I’m in a bit of a hurry and just need to find her. Alison.’ He points to Alison’s house.