If I Touched the Earth

by Cynthia Rogerson

  When he wakes, his first thought is this: Must find Alison. Must find her. Over breakfast, he listens to Sally talk on and on about her new haircut, which she is unhappy about, and he is intensely annoyed, intensely annoyed, she is not Alison.

  He phones Chrissie when he gets to work, but no one answers.

  Chrissie reaches for the phone, but the line is dead. Typical! She is slow these days, but then praying takes up so much time. She had no idea. No sooner does she start to visualise the people she wants God to look after then she goes off in a daydream. Gets nostalgic. Worse than looking through old photo albums. So she is slower now in general, but also more refreshed. Ever since that snowy day she’d reported Ali as missing and later stopped in the church. The old minister had irritated her and she’d left, but on the walk home she’d felt lighter somehow, despite the ten pieces of bacon and dozen pancakes and syrup.

  And as she’d approached her own home, just out of curiosity, she recited the only prayer she knew by heart, The Lord’s Prayer, to the beat of her own footsteps. Said it three times, and during that time did not fret about Ali or want to cry about Calum. Prayer as a displacement activity. Imagine Heaven, she orders herself, and up it flashes, all warm and cosy. Calum running over a green hill towards a rainbow. She doesn’t care if it’s true or not. It’s legal, doesn’t cost anything and it works.

  But it’s her secret, her new faith, and she guards it as if she’s having an affair with a married man. She knows well enough what her daughters, what her pals, would say if they knew. Poor old Chrissie, off her head! Must have been losing her nephew, that did it. Must have been the shock. But she’ll come to her senses, just wait. You know Chrissie, always going overboard, then hating herself. A binge kind of woman. Shame on her, but bless. As if Calum’s death and Ali’s disappearance were infectious viruses that lowered her immune system, allowing some toxic belief to creep under her defences. As if all she needed now was a good dose of antibiotics.

  They would never get it, but as far as Chrissie’s concerned, right now God is ace. Immortal souls! Who wouldn’t want one? It’s a win-win. If eternal life is true, then life is less heart-breaking. If it is not true, then at least she’ll have got through these sad days with less pain, less depression. It’s like discovering her Tesco Club Card points entitle her to free shopping forever if she’ll only use them on the right days, in the right sequence, while doing a tap dance and eating a banana with the peel on. Distracting, even silly and embarrassing, but hey – what’s she got to lose?

  As for Jesus. Well, he was hot, obviously. She visualises brown eyes, medium height, broad shoulders, scruffy sandals, hippie hair. About twenty-four. Soothing voice, not a fussy eater, moderate drinker. Fatally attractive to women without trying, without caring. Serious magician, a proper miracle worker, Daddy’s right-hand man. But fun, too. A man’s man, lots of pals. Extremely popular kind of guy. Never boring, so a sense of humour, obviously. Self-mocking probably. Peter and Paul teasing him about the girls, like Magdalene. Feet-washing and loaf-multiplying were probably in-jokes. Dude, cover your feet, probably meant: Danger! Female groupie approaching. Basically, George Clooney with a beard and without a libido.

  She replaces the phone with a sigh, closes her eyes and silently recommences her praying. Out loud, since she is alone in the house. Her husky voice whispers, ‘… on Earth as it is in Heaven; give us this day our daily wishes, I mean bread … this is what she looks like, God.’ She squints her closed eyes, visualising her sister. Needing to talk to Ali is what she mostly uses God for. ‘Her neck is probably not that orange anymore. Hair probably longer. Please look after her, if she’s alive, and get her back to me. Tell her I’m worried sick, but tell her I’m not pissed off anymore. Tell the silly bitch to ring me right now! Sorry, sorry. Not angry, really.’

  Pause. Sigh.

  ‘If she’s croaked, then still look after her, and tell her I’m asking for her anyway even if she is dead. Tell her I’ve lent her car to one of her nieces, as her own car needs too much done for the MOT, but she promises to look after it. Oh, and please do not tell her I am praying to you, right? Under no circumstances can Ali know I believe in you. I am serious. Stop defending yourself, you’re not really getting it. No offence, God, but she’ll think I’m taking a day off my senses. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen.’

  Then she combs her hair, puts on some lippy and goes to the minister’s house, which is right next door to the church, a short walk away. She wants to ask him a prayer-related question. A bit like going to Citizen’s Advice, that same expectant, slightly impatient urge to pick an expert’s brain. No time for chitchat, just tell me. Knocks briskly on his door and waits. Knocks again, and once more.

  By the time Henry opens it, Chrissie has gone. He stands there on the empty doorstep, looking vague, distracted. Not praying takes up so much time, and he is slow these days, slower than ever before. He thinks too much, and too hard.

  This morning he’s thinking about his father, a man he has not thought about for decades. His father’s shoes, the way they were so shiny and black, and the sound they made when he entered the house every night. Heralding the end of the female-dominated phase of the day. He doesn’t often think of his father, because he was only five when his father died. He remembers odd things, like the shiny shoes, and the tobacco smell of him. Old Holborn, he’s since decided. There are black and white photographs of course, and these are what he was looking at when Chrissie first knocked. Dad in army uniform, with two other soldiers, standing in front of a pub. A cocky look on all their faces. The wedding photos, the bride and groom sweetly serious, looking older than their twenty years. His parents, his sister and himself, on a picnic at Rosemarkie beach the summer he died. His father holding an infant awkwardly, with his own name and birth date in pencil on the back. His mother’s young handwriting.

  He can’t recall the death itself, but he remembers a red tractor and a toy farm they were given by Auntie Phyllis about that time, and now he thinks it might have been a treat to console them. Toys to distract the children while the adults got on with the wake, the funeral arrangements, the whole packing away of a life.

  But it’s not those perfect little cows and sheep or the tractor with a steering wheel that turned that he’s thinking about now. For the first time, he’s not thinking about his own age at the time, but about the age of his father. He’d never asked, and never worked it out from his birth year – always felt his father was his father, and therefore a grown-up man. But now he sees his father was a boy. He was twenty-five, the year the flu epidemic swept over the Black Isle. Apparently Henry had it first, but recovered. He doesn’t remember. Maybe he gave it to his father? No, no point in thinking like that. It was an epidemic, for heaven’s sake.

  He stares at his own self in the photographs as if he’s a stranger he’d like to get to know. Looking for clues, willing to be sympathetic to any evidence of kindness, any hint of the way his life was going to unroll. He wants to like this boy, forgive him for not understanding the enormity of his loss. For quickly accepting his father’s absence, for being distracted by the new red tractor. Now he thinks of it, he’s sure a tiny plastic man came with the tractor. Yes, in a blue boiler suit, with a red hat. But his dad, what were the colour of his eyes? Only twenty-five, same age as Calum. A kid! With all the things every life has – a particular set of habits and quirks and dreams and memories and plans and moods. A favourite jumper, a dislike of tinned peas. A unique shape, just like every life has a unique shape, and its own particular momentum.

  His father would have woken in the mornings of the week before he caught the flu, thinking about his day ahead, and maybe vestiges of any dreams he’d had. He’d have risen from bed, and perhaps think about leaving off shaving for a week, see how a moustache would look. His wife, Henry’s mother, might have shouted at him again to hurry up, his eggs were getting cold, and he would have entered the cold morning kitchen scratching his face, and there they’d be: his
young wife, her hair still in curlers; his baby daughter crawling on the floor; and his son, Henry, looking up from his boiled egg and soldiers of toast, a smile in his eyes. He’d have felt loved, but it would be such an ordinary feeling he wouldn’t take note, just sit and spread marmalade on his toast. Just another day, no thoughts of death in it, and a week later he’d wake up with a fever, and a throat that wouldn’t swallow. And now, a blink of time later, no living person remembers the colour of his eyes. His mother would know, but she’s dead and the dead don’t count anymore.

  It is definitely lonelier without God and immortality, definitely harder work to be alive such a short time. Atheism puts more responsibility on the living to treasure lives, to remember them.

  Henry closes the front door and slowly returns to the kitchen table, where the box of photos is spilled out.

  ‘Who was it?’

  He startles, as if his wife hasn’t been in the kitchen all the time. She’s quite deaf, so never heard Chrissie knocking.

  ‘No one. No one was there.’

  ‘That’s funny. Never mind. Henry, I was thinking of going to Tesco today, we’re out of milk. We’re out of lots of things, in fact.’

  She can still drive, unlike Henry, whose sight is too poor now. Luckily their frailties do not overlap yet, a fact that tickles them both. If they time it right, by the end they’ll be a single competent (but very wrinkly) person.

  ‘Alright, dear.’

  ‘Do you want to come? Might do you good to get out.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Well, there’s a bit of ham from last night in the fridge. For your lunch.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t feel very hungry, but I might have it.’

  ‘Henry. You never eat these days!’

  ‘Alright! I’ll eat it! Stop fussing!’

  ‘Fine!’

  So off she goes, bundled into her pink quilted coat, and her heart lifts as she heads down the A9. He’s been worrying her a lot these last few months. So distant and polite, and tossing and turning all night.

  She decides to treat herself to lunch in the Courtyard Café, and afterwards maybe buy that expensive red velveteen dressing gown she spotted in Cormacks last week. She loves her dear old Henry, of course she does, but my goodness, marriage is a long haul and she could use a day off some days.

  Alice Has a Haircut

  It’s her day off. Alice is in her bedroom, her new bedroom that has nothing of her old life in it. The brown plastic container of ashes purporting to be Calum sits on the table by the window. The Calum Jar, as she refers to it. Calumjar. Caljar. One day, it’ll be caja, small c. One day it will be forgotten somewhere, spilled heedlessly, mistaken for strange desert sand, for the sweepings from a cold fire, for anything but an accident-prone boy who hated talking and loved to run even on windy days.

  She’s cutting her fingernails, and then her toe nails. Clip clip clip, the brittle dead bits of herself flick onto the carpet. Along with long nails, facial hair also seems to be surfacing as taboo, no matter how deep her despair, how broken her heart. This morning she shaved her moustache and chin hair with a cheap disposable razor and wondered why on earth she’d messed about with creams and tweezers all those years.

  She’s sitting on her bed, on the candlewick cover – possibly the last bed in Scotland without a duvet. There’s a wavy mirror above the chest of drawers opposite her. The chest of drawers is dark varnished wood, but not solid wood like oak – it’s thin nasty veneer, and the varnish is flaking in places. It’s the kind of furniture that is tossed daily on skips everywhere, along with hulking wardrobes and Danish coffee tables. Furniture that has had its day, and deserves to have had its day. Actually, very like the furniture in that ugly hotel room in Golspie, now she thinks of it. But it suits Alice.

  Alice is a little tawdry too. Her clothes conceal anything attractive about her figure, her hair is lank and her face often looks blank. She is sweet but she has no taste, has Alice. She has had her day.

  When she finishes her nails, she gets down on the floor and begins to pick up some of the bigger bits of fingernails, the dingy half-moons that might hurt her bare feet. Under the bed she notices her cheap suitcase and for no reason except it might be more fun than picking up fingernails, she decides to open it again. Have another look at one of her acquisitions. She’d not really looked at it properly that first day. Inside are two side pockets, and when she slips her hand into the first one, she finds a ring. This is the kind of event that has begun to seem normal to her, and her heart does not skip a beat. She’s immune to surprise. The band is thin with wear. The stone is a small blue one, probably glass, she thinks. Yes, definitely a bit of cheap jewellery, but worn for many years. She holds it in her hand and thinks of the hall wallpaper, the faded daffodils and tartan. She puts the ring on and stands up. Imagine getting married. Imagine being married!

  Her eyes graze her reflection in the mirror. Then return to study it. She frowns at her freckles, which now her fake tan has disappeared are more startling than ever. Skin like a speckled white egg. Then she notices her hair. Oh dear. Her blond shoulder-length hair is not only unwashed looking again, but it has an inch of dark roots. She badly needs a touch-up, and remembers suddenly she had an appointment for the seventeenth of January. She thinks for a second of Belinda, her hairdresser. How no matter what was happening, she always felt better after Belinda’s ministrations. Belinda would’ve taken all this in hand, and not just the hair. Actually, so would her sister Chrissie. Chrissie! Help me, Chrissie!

  The impossibility of Belinda or Chrissie rescuing her makes her feel panicky. Then she reaches for the nail scissors and begins to cut. First shank of hair to fall is nine inches long. She cuts right at the beginning of the blond, close to her scalp. Waits to feel horrified, but no – nothing. Then she smiles, or grimaces. Whispers, ‘Oh dear!’ and hacks away. Twenty minutes later, the floor and bed are covered with blond hair, hiding the fingernail and toenail clippings. It’ll take a Hoover to sort out, too many fine hairs to settle on a brush and dustpan.

  She looks at herself in the mirror. Is rather pleased with her uneven handiwork. She looks, for once, how she feels. Flayed. Hacked at. She rubs her hands roughly over her scalp till her hair stands straight up.

  ‘What do you think, Calum? It’ll do, eh?’

  You look like death, Mum, so you do, answers Calum’s voice, that old smile hidden in it.

  Yes, Alice has started talking to her son again. What’s more, he’s started to talk back. And it is such a relief, after not speaking to him for two months. How on earth had she imagined she could live without talking to him again?

  Alice goes out for a walk, gives her newly exposed scalp an airing. When she returns to her room, anticipating fresh cleanliness and order, a familiar smell catches at the back of her throat. Masculine sweat, fresh and pungent at the same time, as if from some wholesome exertion. She inhales as deeply as she can. It evaporates so quickly maybe she imagined it, but the setting sun has pierced the clouds and her room is momentarily bathed in light.

  The Way the Clock Ticks Upsets Neal

  Neal stands in the kitchen, bathed in the refrigerator light. There’s a vague smile on his face. His guard is down, he’s trundling through the minutes, mind on what to nibble. Thinking back on the column he wrote earlier. The fact that at one time, the Royal Hotel could accommodate three hundred cycles and their riders. How many riders to a bedroom? Were Victorian cyclists so thin they could squeeze three to a bed? Sally enters the room. She’s been upstairs, making thumping noises, but this is the first time he’s seen her since he got home from work about half an hour ago.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, not looking at her, reaching for some cheese.

  ‘Neal. Listen, Neal.’

  ‘What?’ Something in her voice, his blood runs quicker, and he slowly turns.

  ‘I’ve got something to say,’ her voice high and tight. Damn, where has he heard that tone recently? He almost says, because he believes it t
o be true: So do I. I love Alison Ross. Those are the words that are rising even now. But Sally has staked out this moment, and his words remain swallowed.

  ‘Aye? What’s that, then. What’re those bags? Are we going somewhere?’

  ‘I’m leaving you, Neal.’

  Neal laughs. Straightens from the fridge, a chunk of orange cheese forgotten in his left hand. Laughs again, giddily.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You’re joking, right? Leaving me.’ His head feels light. ‘Sit down, Neal, I have something to tell you. I mean, this is a joke, right? Right?’ He feels his face burn.

  ‘No. Not a joke. Now listen, Neal.’

  ‘What would you go and do that for? What’s wrong? We never even argue. I thought we were doing just great. We are doing just great. ’

  ‘Oh come on, Neal, you know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘You know. I know.’ She blushes too. ‘I know.’

  He laughs again. It’s too cliché, too ridiculous. She’s watched too much EastEnders. They have a fine marriage.

  ‘We have a fine marriage, Sally. You’ve been watching too much EastEnders. Our marriage is not perfect, not a, a, a laugh a minute, but what do you expect?’

  ‘Well, I expect my husband to not jump into bed with other women. Actually.’

  Neal opens his mouth, closes it. A pain jumps into his gut, sharp and wicked and offers a surreal distraction to the conversation.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Actually, what really shocks me is that you, Neal Munro, are capable of it. In fact, if I hadn’t proof, I would have bet anything it was a lie.’

  ‘Sally. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Neal, did you or did you not stay at the Golspie Arms the night of that young lad’s funeral?’