Anyway, thinks the new cynical Henry, what’s the big deal about dying for other people? People have always sacrificed their lives to save others. It’s one of the better things about the human race. Probably since apes noticed that the occasional selfless act ensured the survival of their group, and the selfish apes over in the next cave were all dying out. Millions of people have died so others could live. So how was Jesus different? Maybe he wasn’t. People always need scapegoats and heroes in equal measure, and maybe Jesus fit both bills, but unwittingly. Accidentally. Not a clue his name would still be revered twenty-one centuries later. Poor bastard, dying so young. High price for fame. He feels sorry for Jesus now.
Henry, considering the possibility of no God, feels sorry for everyone, including himself. What a strange precarious thing, life without God. Lonely. Could he ever get used to it? He feels so old today, incapable of change, and yet. And yet.
Neal parks his car in the snowy car park, prepares to go back to work. Checks his face in the rear-view mirror. He doesn’t feel like himself, and wants proof. Yep, same eye wrinkles and aging neck, same thinning red hair. He tries to imagine Alison somewhere warm and safe. Licking her wounds, as the policeman had said. But licking wounds brings death and the grey fish back into Neal’s mind, all wet and just the kind of thing that happens.
Janet’s Wet Skin
Alice is amazed. Or as amazed as anyone can be who doesn’t have an emotional life whatsoever, whose heart has hollowed out. With almost zero effort she’s imposed a structure on her life again. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Since she’s done nothing to invite a life, would have happily lived in a vacuum, would have happily died in a vacuum, life has gravitated to her. Sucked itself in, filled in the gaps of her unguarded apathy. And for all this structure, she had to look no further than Teddy, nearly the first person she’d talked to in Glasgow.
Has it been luck, or is this something about the world she hadn’t realised? Maybe her amazement is naive, the result of spending her life in her birthplace. Maybe it’s common knowledge that almost every individual can become the door for someone to walk through and create a whole new life. That all you need is that one friendly person. That the universe is pulsating with potential lives. That you can move as far as you want, as quickly as you can – wherever you stop, that is where your life will start to grow again. No particular single life with your name attached to it, waiting for just you. This thought makes her feel a bit stoned, as if a slight wrong turning on her way home from work might slip her into a whole different life yet again. Such a profound change of circumstances should not be so effortless.
She can clearly picture her old life as if it is still there with her in it, just up the A9, intact and unaware. Like an exhibit in a museum. She can even smell it, feel how it felt to be Alison. Chrissie on the phone, nagging her about something stupid. The toast burning again, must bin that toaster. The Thursday lager lunch with the girls from Virgin. Vivien’s orange neck and Shirley’s cigarette dangling while she yackety-yacked. The constant drone of voices, both in the call centre and in her headset. Eight hours of talking about things she didn’t care about, to people she didn’t care about, till her own voice was hoarse. It was white noise, and cut her off from thinking anything at all. She can clearly see her favourite yellow chair in the staff lounge. The butts over-flowing in that tin ashtray, and the clock with the hands that seemed to move so slowly when she was working, so quickly on her breaks. The supervisor glaring if she was one minute late, for Christ sake.
But now all of these things are like a place she visited briefly, two or three times perhaps, in her childhood. She was not so firmly rooted in it after all, and now she is not there at all. She feels nothing, not even a vague affection. Do many people build new lives out of random events? Chance meetings and impulses and accidents? And are such lives less valuable, less legitimate than planned logical lives? It seems likely that what has happened to her is not uncommon. Like a million people, like Alness itself, she has crumpled to nothing, then re-invented herself.
But what to do with this knowledge? Alice would like to know. Then decides it’s probably wisest to just work with what she has, with where she is, with who she has become. What else is there to do, but be quiet and make the best of things? Her new life doesn’t involve a lot of talking, provides a lot of time for thinking. Her tasks are menial, and Monday to Friday amount to roughly twenty-five a day.
7:00: Escort Janet to toilet, help her on and off toilet, wiping bum if necessary.
Insert Janet’s teeth. Slippery, yellow things attached to pink plastic.
Escort Janet back to bedroom, turn on radio for her. Radio 4.
Kitchen: Boil eggs, make white toast and weak tea.
Bedroom again: Help Janet dress.
Comb her hair, check room temperature.
Small talk, shouted, about the weather. About two minutes worth.
Follow Janet slowly into kitchen, arrange chair (where she’ll spend most of the day) so she can reach the remote and telly guide.
Witness the sliding of the egg and toast into prune-wrinkly mouth, listen to mastication and swallowing.
Clean crumbs and egg yolk off Janet’s cardigan.
Have two-minute goodbye conversation. Yes, I have to go now. Yes, Teddy is fine, not sick. Yes, he’s a good man, you raised him well. Yes, I am coming back. No my name is not Elisabeth, I am Alice. Yes, the remote is here, and the heating is not broken, it is working and it is on.
11:30: walk five minutes to work.
Wait on tables at The Swan.
Talk to customers about weather.
Say thank you at least fifty-three times. Remember not to shout, as is her habit at home (home?!), Janet being a bit deaf.
Talk to Teddy, wash dishes, set tables, fill saltshakers and sugar bowls.
Lunch break at 2:30, read papers left by customers.
Eat anything. Whatever Teddy put in front of her. Whatever is not selling much that day. Yesterday’s donuts.
Work till 4:00, home to escort Janet to toilet again.
Heat tins of stew for Janet, followed by weak tea and a Mr Kipling cake. Bakewell tart, usually.
Sponge-bathe parts of Janet’s body – torso and feet on alternate days, face and hands every day.
Put Janet’s nightie on her.
9:00: Escort Janet to her bedroom, settle her in bed.
Read Agatha Christie or Maeve Binchy loudly till she falls asleep, her old lady breath wafting her moustache hairs in a hypnotic fashion. Hypnotic to Alice, anyway. She sits some evenings and just watches the old face.
Brush her own teeth, undress, climb into bed. Sleep, a while.
She has twice gone out on Saturday nights, after Janet is in bed. Gone to neighbourhood pubs and ordered a pint. But weirdly, the stuff tastes vile to her each time and she cannot finish it. More proof of utter alteration of her character. Alison loved nothing more than a pint or two, but Alice is a teetotaller. What the fuck? Or, in Alice-language: Goodness me, what on earth is happening?
Mostly she spends her weekends in her room, or downstairs with Janet, watching television. Janet always naps in her chair half way through watching a late morning show about cooking, and Alison takes charge of the remote then. Mutes the commercials about haemorrhoid cream, chairs that tip arthritic grandfathers out, life insurance for pensioners. Watches old movies, and sometimes she falls asleep in her chair too. She is so sleepy these days, all the time.
‘Here, are you married?’ asks Janet one evening, while having her chest and back sponged by Alice. They are in Janet’s bedroom because it’s warmer than the bathroom tonight, and towels are on the floor around her. Janet keeps her eyes closed for the sponging, and often talks. She feels less naked, eyes closed. Such a nuisance, the way her joints won’t even allow her to wash her own body. But the gas fire is lit, and a sensual pleasure comes from the soft wetness of the sponge, and its circular movements. Her skin feels thirsty.
‘Married? No
,’ says Alice, wringing out the sponge. ‘Were you ever married?’
‘Ha! Course I was, long enough to get Teddy started. Three whole months. Couldn’t abide it.’
Alice laughs for the first time in weeks. Other people’s maladjustments to life had always pleased Alison. Moments like these, she feels her old self – that happily grumpy rather shallow hedonistic person – so near her heart lunges as if an old friend has unexpectedly walked in the room. But no, it’s gone already, just a flicker that was all, and she is back in her new strange self.
She gently washes then pats dry Janet’s papery skin. It doesn’t repulse her because, unlike Alison, Alice is not squeamish in the least. In fact, she likes to touch Janet’s skin, and in her new contemplative way, to think about all the Janets still encased somewhere inside. The infant Janet, and the schoolgirl, the young mother, the middle-aged woman. A historical monument, this old woman. Janet is the only person she touches now, and some days she looks forward to this evening bathing session. Alice sprinkles some talc, then slips a clean cotton nightgown over Janet’s head. What cannot be put right by a good warm bath and talc and clean cotton bedclothes? Well, aside from the sudden death of an offspring.
‘And why was that? Why didn’t you like your husband suddenly?’
‘Oh, it was his voice,’ says Janet, after a moment. ‘I’m fussy about things like that. Voices and laughs. Didn’t realise it at the time, of course, just married the bugger, didn’t I. Then wham bam, three days later I hear him laugh. Hadn’t properly noticed it before. His laugh was so sudden! So barking! I went off him right there and then. Once I get like that, there’s no shifting it, it’s a case of irreversible disgust.’ She rolls her r’s so hard, she spits a little. ‘So I cut my losses and sent him packing.’
‘Quite right, quite right,’ agrees Alice. ‘Who could live with a horrible laugh?’
She settles Janet into bed, tucks her in. The fire sputters conversationally, and the rain hammering against the window makes the room seem even cosier.
‘So, did you ever fancy someone longer than three months?’ asks Alice, but Janet has dropped into one of her sudden sleeps and Alice tidies up the bedroom and then the kitchen. She moves slowly, washes the dinner dishes, dries them and puts them away.
Later she stands at the dark window in the kitchen and leans her forehead against the glass. Lets it cool her. Then hears an extraordinary sound. It can’t be what it sounds like. She looks out onto the wet dark street, and there he is. There’s no traffic, there’s suddenly no rain or wind, and in the middle of the street there’s a boy, about ten, who is bouncing a ball down the street. It makes a hollow rubbery noise, and the bouncing is so steady she finds herself tapping her fingers on the glass to the rhythm. The streetlamps cast a yellow light – depressing, unflattering to every object but the boy. The boy is lovely. Especially it is lovely the way his walk is so light hearted, despite the dark and the lateness, the dangers of being in the middle of the road. Alice begins to open the window, to shout to him, Get out of the road! Shouldn’t you be home? Must be near your bedtime!
Three young women, stiletto-heeled and scantily clad, turn the corner, strut their stuff past the boy. Shrieking and giggling, drunk. At first the boy just grabs his ball and freezes, then as they pass, he turns too, facing Alice. And then he mimics their strut and swagger, with his skinny ten- year-old body. Lifts his heels off the ground and becomes, for a second, a parody of a twenty-one-year-old girl on the pull, his shoulders swinging, his head tossing non-existent hair. It is so surprising, Alice stops breathing. The top of her head feels agitated, as if a breeze has lifted up her scalp and tickled her grey matter. And suddenly everything, not just this boy and the giggling girls, but everything inside this house and outside this window seems a slow parade of beauty and sorrow. Beautiful sorrow, sad beauty, back and forth, beginning and ending, all at the same time. The unbearable is borne every minute, and the loveliness of life is borne too. In most cases, secretly, because how can anyone really know what another person is feeling? (Alison would never have thought about this.)
She watches the boy till he steps onto the safety of the pavement, and turns the corner at the end of the street. The second he’s gone, the rain returns, and the wind. The air howls with it, the house complains back loudly with whistles and groans. She opens the window and drinks in the wild night. Ah! Out of the sludge of her days, this moment. She feels time rush around her, like this wind, and the wind is everything that has happened and is happening. Here I am, looking out this window and remembering Calum, and that boy, those girls, the sound of that ball bouncing, and maybe the main truth about life is that it’s temporary. Maybe that is the beauty. Nothing lasts. Not even love, despite what the songs and poems say. If it did last, it wouldn’t be so precious. (Alison would never have thought about this either. If this were a television programme, she would immediately switch channels. Find a soap, or a reality show.)
Then the phone rings, the kettle boils, and she tucks this moment, wrapped up in her awareness, into a safe place. Private, but accessible should she need it. Oh, who is she kidding? Of course she’ll need it. Probably tomorrow, in fact.
A9
Roads are not still. They may seem solid, permanent, the only unchanging thing in a world of motion, but that is illusion. If the A9 between Inverness and Scrabster had been recorded on film since it began then viewed at high speed, it would wriggle about on the screen like a worm. Curling through villages, then looping around those same villages. Meandering through inland glens, then suddenly shooting over new bridges instead. Twisty roads becoming straight, dizzy roundabouts popping up like varicose veins. Lay-bys appearing then disappearing, then appearing again a mile further. Single tracks morphing into two lanes.
Roads never stay the same. They are constantly eroding, while at the same time they are constantly in the process of improvement. At least that is the intention. The assumption being that we all want to get somewhere else quicker than we did yesterday.
Zara is late for work, speeding south on the A9. She approaches the memorial and outwardly seems unaware of it. But in her mind, the Calum’s Accident movie begins again. She cannot even think about Calum without it happening. Over and over, always slightly different.
Calum is shutting his car door, in that unnecessarily forceful way young men have. Puts on his seatbelt, starts the ignition, heads down the A9 with that new blue Nokia sliding about on the passenger seat. He checks in the rear-view mirror to see if that spot on his forehead is still there, and it is. He frowns, briefly fingers it. Notices that the road is not icy but is this close to being black ice. He can tell because of the way the steering wheel responds so easily, so quickly. He is intuitive about his car, and the tiniest change registers in his mind. Yep. The road is degrees away from an ice skating rink, but he’s okay. No traffic, no rain to make the road more slippery, the sky is a calming blue. The phone begins to ring and he gropes for it, at first keeping his eyes carefully on the road. It eludes him, and he glances over, stretches his arm further. He hears his own voice shout Zara! No, no. It’s Mum! he’s shouting this time. Mum! He sounds frightened. And also pissed off. Very.
She passes the memorial as the movie finishes. It only takes a few seconds these days.
‘Happy Valentine’s Day, my darling,’ says Zara out loud. ‘Miss that ass. Nicest ass in the universe,’ she adds tearfully. She is alone in the car and can say anything she likes.
The floral tributes are long gone and it is still too early for Zara’s efforts to be noticeable, but people who knew Calum now think of that bit of A9 as the Calum Place. Some prefer not to look as they drive by. Others look fearfully, and each time with that terrible sadness again, and a version of the movie Zara sees. Some nod quickly but solemnly; others slow their driving and look hard, as if expecting to see something.
Some of his friends (but not Finn or William), the pallbearers, meet regularly now. Have a pint, or kick a football around. They like to talk abo
ut it. About Calum, about the funeral, about the A9, about that particular spot.
The ones who drive, drive more carefully. For a while.
Part Four
March, April & May 1996
Neal and Sally Drink Baileys
Neal is putting the dishes and cutlery into the dishwasher, while thinking about Alison and Calum as usual. These thoughts override, ride through at a fast gallop, everything else he thinks about these days. Do people essentially change? He used to think not. Now he wonders.
He avoids the mirror while shaving these days, almost shy. The pornographic daydreams have waned, thank god. They just made him feel squalid. It turns out Neal doesn’t actually enjoy impersonal arousal. In fact, it kind of scares him, and instead of sex, now he remembers grocery shopping with Alison, and Calum’s nine-year-old voice asking, ‘Will ya come play footie in the rain, ’cause it’s cool fun to slide in the mud, innit, Dad?’
Remembers an incident involving a tooth under a pillow and a stoned tooth fairy.
He pictures Alison sleeping as she had that Golspie night, her slack face, her sad odour. The way she’d wanted to be … expunged, somehow. That is the Alison, the damaged desperate Alison, that his love can get its teeth into. In a way, he sees her now more vividly than he had at the time, when he was too distracted by the surprise of her. But then Neal has always been chockfull of delayed reaction.
If I Touched the Earth Page 9