If I Touched the Earth

by Cynthia Rogerson

  ‘No!’ The cheese drops to the floor. ‘No!’ But he can tell by her face he’s just failed the first test.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I can explain, Sally. It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Oh?’ In a tone both insinuating and cynical. Not her style, but she is surprisingly good at it.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask how I know?’

  A pause.

  ‘Okay, Christ, what well-meaning friend decided you should know such rubbish?’

  ‘Why should I tell you? You don’t tell me much. But as you asked, it was friends plural, not singular. First of all, Isobel.’

  ‘Isobel?’ He keeps his tone of voice natural, though the room is very unnaturally spinning.

  ‘Isobel who cuts my hair.’

  ‘Izzy?’ Saying the word Izzy makes him dizzy.

  ‘Izzy, who cuts my hair, asked how I liked Golspie.’

  ‘Golspie?’

  ‘Yes, fucking Golspie. Now bloody shut up and listen to me!’

  ‘Sally!’ Her swearing shocks him almost as much as her accusation. Sally has always been curiously demure in her language. The world is dangling at an unprecedented angle. Wait, he wants to say. It’s not too late to stop this, rewind this conversation, go back to safety. But Sally is a nice, principled woman, so he has to listen.

  ‘Isobel’s wee sister is a cleaner in the Golspie Arms. She saw you leave that morning. And, naturally, assumed I was there too. Told her sister.’

  ‘Your hairdresser, Izzy, told you all this?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t mean to stir it up. In fact she got quite flustered when she realised I hadn’t been there. Even Rebecca heard.’

  ‘The postie?’

  ‘Aye, well, you never expected to keep a secret in a place like this, did you? She uses Belinda, the hairdresser who uses the chair next to Isobel. Anyway, I acted like I knew and it wasn’t a big deal. Told her that Izzy misheard and I’d actually been staying at the hotel too, and we left separately. I mean, she’d love to see me made a fool of. She’s never respected me.’

  Her tears begin to fall now, and Neal hates himself. He also feels embarrassed. Self-hatred and humiliation struggle for supremacy. Oh dear, oh dear.

  ‘No, not a fool, Sally. Sally, sit down sweetie.’

  ‘Don’t sweetie me, you, you, you fuck!’ Her voice cracks with the effort of choosing the right swear word, and Neal has to add fear to self-hatred and embarrassment. Layers and layers of un pleasantness. A small pain above his left eye, like a pocket of blood, has begun to pound. Gut still aching away.

  ‘Ah, Sally, we didn’t, like, do anything. She was just that sad, and well, we used to have this thing where we’d just cuddle up in bed and sleep. Nothing else.’

  ‘Who are you talking about? Your slapper?’

  Neal’s face says it.

  ‘That woman? It was the boy’s mother? Alison?’

  Oh yes, by now over 250 people within a hundred-mile radius know that Alison and Neal spent that night together, but they have not told his wife. Sally’s informer Izzy was not at the funeral and only knew he’d been at a hotel. If she’d known the truth, she would not have told Sally. Izzy feels awful right now, just awful. Ross-shire gossips, that’s to say all Ross-shire residents, have their standards, and betrayed spouses are always shielded.

  ‘Oh my god, Neal! How could she? How could you! Oh! Oh! The very night of the funeral, not dead a week, and oh dear Jesus.’ These last three words are uttered from her guts, low and full of gravel.

  ‘But Sally,’ says Neal, genuinely terrified by her Exorcist voice. ‘You’re not listening, nothing happened, we just held, I mean, lay and nothing happened. It wasn’t planned.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Neal Munro.’ She stops crying, but her voice is all over the kitchen, and she blows her nose loud. Neal moves to her, arms out.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Listen, Sally. Let me explain.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to know any more!’

  ‘Alright. Fine.’

  ‘Just go away.’

  ‘Fine.’ He walks towards the stairs.

  ‘No! Come back! Tell me everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ Over his shoulder.

  ‘Everything. I want to know the worst.’

  Neal pauses, frowns. ‘What’s the worst?’

  ‘Did you, in fact, well, did you? You know.’ She sniffs.

  Neal comes back into the room fully.

  ‘Have sex? No. Not sex. I told you.’

  ‘No? No sex? The truth, Neal.’

  A very long minute passes, sucking all the oxygen as it goes.

  ‘No sex … as such,’ he finishes in a desperate whisper.

  Sally wails, her first proper adult wail. Lifts her face and wails like a banshee.

  ‘Sally, it was once. That’s all. Just the once.’ No point in telling her about that second time, was there?

  ‘So, you did do it,’ she sobs. ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘I’m not smiling. It was just the once, Sally.’ Neal manages to defeat the nervous snigger that keeps wanting to leap out. God, what is wrong with him? He wants to fall on the floor and giggle hysterically. That wail was just so funny!

  ‘I can’t believe it. You lied about it just now. Even now, you still lie.’

  ‘How does it help anything, to know about something upsetting you can’t change? I didn’t want to upset you.’

  She wails again.

  ‘Any more than you are already, Sally. We never did it before or since. Honest. The first time I’ve ever done it with someone else. All these years I’ve been faithful.’

  ‘How am I supposed to believe that, now, just after you admit you lie to avoid upsetting me? How can I believe anything you say?’

  ‘Sally, calm down.’

  They are still in the kitchen, the cheese is still on the floor.

  ‘I don’t love you anymore,’ she says in between spasms of dry speechlessness. ‘How can I ever trust you again? It’s all over, after all these years, it’s over. Oh, oh, oh! You’ve killed our marriage. You’re a cheat and a liar. Oh, oh, oh!’

  He can’t help noticing his wife, while weeping, is quite un attractive. He feels repulsed, which is a relief after fear, embarrassment, giddiness and self-loathing. And he stoops to pick up the cheese, feeling a sudden need for some semblance of caring about things like food on the floor. Puts the cheese back in the fridge.

  ‘Listen, Sally. We’ll have a cup of tea.’

  Her sobs subside, and they finally move from the kitchen into the sitting room. It’s like a choreography of self-consciousness, both of them stiff-limbed, awkward. She sits. He sits. Both cross their legs at the same time, in the same direction.

  ‘I’m still leaving you, Neal.’

  ‘But it’s your house, Sally.’

  ‘You’re right. You should go. Will you leave, then?’

  ‘No. Are you crazy? No! We should both stay and figure this out. Fix it.’

  ‘I’m leaving you.’

  ‘Please don’t even talk like that, Sally.’

  ‘How can I ever trust you again?’

  ‘Just calm down for a few minutes. What a fright you’re giving me.’

  He springs up, darts to the kitchen. While he fills the kettle, drops the bags into the pot, arranges the two mugs, his mind frantically works out a defence.

  ‘There are worse things, you know, Sally,’ he calls through the open door.

  ‘Worse things? Worse than what?’

  ‘Worse things than a one-night stand after seventeen years of marriage.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Are you saying this is now my fault, because I am making a mountain out of a molehill?’ Neal studies his hands, which are holding the milk and sugar.

  ‘Christ, Neal, if it was such an accident, so innocent, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Shit, Sally. I told you why. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you. You see? We’re kin
d to each other. That’s something. We’re a nice couple, us. Everyone thinks so. We have a fine marriage.’

  ‘No. No, Neal. I’d say lots of folk think we used to have a fine marriage. You screwed around, then lied about it. Two major chuck-able offences. I don’t even know you. You’re a stranger.’ She looks at him fearfully, as if to demonstrate his strangeness.

  Neal pours the tea, brings their cups through.

  ‘Sally, I can’t believe you’d walk away. Where would you go?’

  ‘Oh, not far. My life is here, even if my marriage isn’t. To Dingwall. I’ll stay at Emma’s for a bit. She’s away in London for the week anyway.’

  ‘She knows?’

  ‘Aye, she knows a bit. I called her this afternoon, told her I’m needing a wee change, that we’re not getting on. That’s all.’

  ‘She’ll never believe it. I mean Christ, Sally, we never even argue. She’s never heard us so much as disagree with each other.’

  ‘Yes. Well. I expect she’s heard the gossip too. There was a noticeable lack of surprise when I told her.’

  Neal notices neither of them touch their cups of tea. Feels himself sweat, a sour, panicky sweat that makes him uncomfortable in his own skin. His mouth and stomach, obviously behind the times, tell him it’s teatime and he’s hungry.

  ‘Let’s go out for dinner, Sally. A nice Indian. Screw the cups of tea.’

  Sally rises, grabs her coat and suitcase.

  ‘Screw you!’ Getting surprisingly natural at swearing in just one hour.

  ‘Where are you going? You have to go to Emma’s right this minute? What’s the hurry? Hey! Where are you going? Come back here, Sal!’

  She doesn’t slam the door, but it feels like she did. The air reverberates, and Neal empties out. His eyes are open but see nothing. He sits on the sofa, his arm resting on the warm indent of his departed wife.

  I have been careless again, thinks Neal. Catastrophically careless.

  Later he gets into bed and notices things he normally does not. Without anyone else breathing nearby, the clock ticking has increased in volume. It’s like an attention-seeking foreign accent. It suddenly occurs to him that he has not apologised to Sally. That’s the one thing he has not done. He is so stupid!

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers into the empty room.

  The ticks are not impressed, and tick on loudly till he gets up, and shoves the clock under the sofa cushions.

  Teddy is Impressed with Alice’s Haircut

  ‘I think it’s lovely,’ says Teddy, sweeping breadcrumbs off the floor of his mother’s kitchen, while Alice opens two tins of beans and pours them into an old pan. The back of her neck is very pale and very slightly in need of a good scrub.

  ‘It is not lovely, my boy,’ says his mother, who is sitting in her special high-backed chair with foot support and two strong arms. ‘It makes her look like a concentration camp survivor. Or one of them chemo folk, you know, with their hair all falling out. You’re a right fright, Alice.’

  ‘No, she’s never. It’s an improvement, look at her.’ Then he speaks to Alice. ‘You look younger now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Alice, stirring the beans with a wooden spoon.

  ‘Are there enough beans for me too? I might as well eat here.’

  Alice pops two slices of white bread into the toaster. ‘I assumed you were staying,’ she says, giving his comment about rejuvenating haircuts one second of thought, and it pleases her. There’s no denying, still a glimmer of vanity.

  ‘Aye, you sit here, my boy,’ says his mum. ‘Alice! Fetch another chair from the sitting room. You sit here next to me, Teddy. Alice can get another chair.’

  In the few seconds it takes Alice to enter the sitting room, which is never used and never heated, her pleasure evaporates, and she’s worse off than before. She plummets past the craggy precipice she’s been clinging on to. Help! Did she really expect a reprieve? Fool.

  But then she hears steady footfalls out on the pavement, loud enough to carry through the stone walls, loud enough to compete with the distant traffic. Someone is running hard. She moves to the window, but the street is empty, save a black taxi, engine idling. The footfalls stop. Something in the night sky flickers and she looks up. A large white bird, maybe an exceedingly healthy seagull, is gliding over the rooftops of the houses over the way. It is unexpected and beautiful. She imagines slicing through the chill night air, yet not moving a muscle of her own. Silently carried on the wind. She stares till it vanishes. The sky is so dark she wonders how she saw it at all.

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘Coming, Janet.’

  She hauls a damp ancient chair out of the room.

  ‘What did you do to these beans, Alice? They’re all runny.’

  ‘Not my fault, Janet. They’re Tesco Value beans.’

  ‘Well, don’t buy them again, my girl.’

  ‘Fine,’ even though she has, in fact, not bought them. She found them in the cupboard.

  ‘And grow your hair out again, will you? You look like a lad, no a lassie.’

  ‘I’m hardly a lassie.’

  ‘Are you no? You look like one to me.’

  ‘That’s because you’re such an old biddy,’ says Teddy. Janet laughs crudely.

  ‘Anyway, you look like a lassie to me too,’ says Teddy loyally. ‘Two against one. You are.’

  ‘Not.’

  Alice runs her hands again through her cropped hair, still not used to it. Then she lightly touches the tips of her hair with her palm – it feels feathery. She likes the way it feels.

  ‘Ah, Alice, I know fine you’re no just a carefree lassie, I know about your trouble,’ says Janet, un-chewed beans visibly rotating in her mouth.

  ‘I told her about Calum,’ says Teddy. Not apologising.

  Alice stops touching her hair, stares at her plate, the watery beans sogging up her toast.

  ‘I would’ve guessed something like that, anyway,’ says Janet. ‘You always look that lost. It’s a terrible terrible thing. Just terrible, so it is.’ She looks at Teddy, as if to reassure herself the terrible thing has not happened to her. ‘To survive your own wean like that – it’s no right. No right at all.’ She wipes up the last bit of bean juice with a bit of bread, shoves it in, chews with her mouth open.

  ‘Mum,’ says Teddy in a warning tone.

  ‘Well, will you be wanting some pudding, then?’ Alice gets up, her beans only played with, her bread massacred.

  ‘Aye, open a tin of pears, and we’ll have the double cream, if it’s no gone off,’ suggests Janet. ‘Do you not have other weans back home? Surely your family will be missing you.’

  ‘Shut up, Mum,’ says Teddy tenderly. ‘You sit, Alice. I’ll make us a cup of tea, eh? Better yet, I think there’s a bottle here somewhere. Mum, where’s that whisky? A drink’s what we need.’

  ‘Top of the cupboard. You do the honours, son.’

  Teddy pours out the drams. ‘Sláinte, girls!’

  Teddy knocks it back in one, Janet slurps it while making little noises of pleasure, and Alice takes one sip and gags.

  ‘I don’t have any,’ she says. ‘Any other kids.’

  ‘Just the one, then. Like me,’ says Janet.

  Alice nods, puts her glass down and leaves it there. Watches Janet’s mouth move, then Teddy’s mouth move. Thinks about that seagull and the way it glided in the dark and then disappeared.

  Melissa Mannerley’s Engagement

  For days, he can’t stop thinking about Sally. Sally this and Sally that. All the wonderful things about Sally. A month passes. Then another, with just brief phone calls and hasty visits to collect things. A maddening series of blurred encounters. He wills her back, phones her, and one evening, summoned, she returns, bag in hand.

  They talk and talk. It’s eerily like the start of their relationship. They’re careful, polite, shy. They laugh at each other’s jokes. He cooks a leg of lamb, watches a video with her, makes love to her, and he thinks good – it’s just been a blip o
f mid-life madness.

  ‘I’ve been so stupid, Sally.’

  ‘True. Foolish too.’

  ‘Aye, foolish.’

  ‘In fact, a complete and utter wanking bastard. ’

  ‘Steady on.’

  ‘Have you missed me?’

  ‘Missed you? Course I missed you, uh … Caroline?’

  But it’s a charade, this bantering. In the middle of the night, he wakes to hear her weeping. A muted whimpering and swallowed sobs. He wakes the next morning to find Sally at the kitchen table, and her bags are packed again.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he says, exasperated. ‘I said I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know. And I’m glad. I believe you. But that doesn’t undo it, Neal.’

  ‘But, Sally, Sally.’ He looks around, and thinks: Sally chose that sofa! And those cushions – wedding presents from her relatives. How can she abandon him, force him to live alone amongst her soft furnishings? Then the sudden lurch.

  ‘Have you met someone else? You have, haven’t you? Who have you met?’

  Then Sally cries so hard – yes, remarkably, self-controlled Sally has become a champion crier – she can’t speak at first.

  ‘I haven’t met anyone.’ But she has, she has! Of course she has. Or at least she has noticed someone. Passion is a virus, it’s contagious, and even before she knew about Neal’s dalliance, his libido had rocked hers.

  ‘Don’t you get it? There’s no one. I haven’t got anybody!’ She cries with heart-breaking regret, because she is certain she will never kiss the man she’s recently noticed in the library, the one who makes her feel dizzy with yearning on a scale she’s never felt before, and it is simply impossible now to settle back with Neal, with his quiet conventional lovemaking. This stranger in the library gives her vertigo whenever he’s in view, just like in a damn novel. An entirely novel sensation.

  ‘Ah. So you’re looking, then.’ He hears his own peevishness, can’t help it.

  A pause, a booming envelope of silence, into which the sound of the washing machine drops like a suddenly noticed, but welcome, guest.

  ‘Not exactly. Just natural, at times like this, to wonder if there’s someone else who might be, well, better for you. Me, I mean.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ And he means this. It has never occurred to him to look for a replacement wife. God knows, it was a bit of a long-winded miracle just getting one wife.