If I Touched the Earth

by Cynthia Rogerson

‘Aye. I know,’ he says calmly, though his heart has just broken like the most delicate china cup on a concrete floor. To smithereens. Only splinters left.

  ‘I was a little crazy that night. I used you, Neal,’ she whispers, tears running now.

  A small cloud of unrequited I love you starts to drifts from Neal’s chest, over Neal’s shoulder, over his neighbourhood rooftops, not unlike the chill wind that rushed over Evanton when Calum died (only not chill). It has no other place to go. And yes, it must go somewhere. Love is a substance, a measurable entity with specific attributes. It emits electricity, fills hearts, defies gravity.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Neal.’

  ‘Shush. I know. It’s alright.’

  They continue standing, holding on to each other in silence, while nearby, various residents experience inexplicable happiness. (When Calum died, a woman in nearby Evanton slumped inside, dropped some salad cream into her shopping basket, even though it wasn’t a brand she liked. Remember?) Now, the woman next door to Neal’s house begins to dance in her kitchen for no reason at all.

  ‘Still friends, then?’ she whispers.

  ‘Of course. Friends.’

  But they don’t let go. Alison cannot let go. In fact, she is paralysed. As if falling in love is an anaesthetic before some life-saving surgery. And because Alison has never fallen in love with a nice man before, she thinks she’s ill. Needs to hold on to keep upright. If she saw a flying saucer, she couldn’t be more shocked.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ Neal says soothingly.

  All year long, she’s been noticing things she never noticed before. And now she notices that Neal’s voice is like a sensuous blanket around her shoulders. Everything suddenly feels simpler. Lots of things simply slide away. There they go! Her mental shopping list for dinner, Solas’s nappy rash, the pile of un-opened bills, that permanent panic, the edginess she’d given up trying to shake.

  Four minutes pass. Outwardly, they look the same, but Alison is melting into Neal now, and that cloud of I Love You is being sucked back into Neal’s heart. Whoosh! It is intelligent, very, and returns the second it senses an echo. Then it pours from his heart into Alison’s, filling it like a warm liquid. (And the dancing kitchen woman, well, she is still dancing anyway because all she needed was a kick-start.)

  Neal wants to talk about this shift, to kiss Alison, to dance and shout it from the rooftops. But Alison still cannot move, so he can’t either. So there they stand, while clouds disperse, reform, shuttle across the sky, and the sparrow nearby has time to build half a nest in the cherry tree.

  Then, just as Neal decides enough is enough, and if no one else is going to take charge of this moment it must be him, Solas wakes with a small girly yawn and squeals.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ asks Neal.

  Road Trip

  So cold, Neal has to scrape yesterday’s inhalations off the inside of the car window. Heating on full blast, he heads south. Glances at Fyrish Hill, edging over Evanton in a protective curve. That is where Calum loved to run, and that is where his ashes were finally spilled one misty Sunday morning. Just the three of them, and a flask of whisky-laced coffee. Neal is taking time off work, is on his way to Skegness to visit his father and Myrtle at last. In the back, Solas is strapped in her car seat, already nodding off.

  He glances at the A9 memorial to Calum. If he didn’t know exactly where to look, he wouldn’t notice anything. Hard to tell, this time of year, what the true potential of things is. He doesn’t sense Calum here or anywhere. For Neal, there is no afterlife. The world is grown from what has been, but the dead themselves are simply gone. Just the way Calum’s car, that old Vauxhall, is no longer recognisably a car. The salvageable bits have joined other cars, and the rest is rusting into the earth. All still there, every bit, tossed back into the mix.

  Alison has kissed Neal and Solas a sleepy coffee-smelling goodbye, then headed back to bed. Well, she half-kissed Neal. Marginally still in her sulk, and her heart hadn’t been in it. He knows her well enough for that particular nuance. Neal looks in his rear-view mirror at Solas. Her hair is still baby fine, and on the red side of blond. Like spun gold gone fiery. Her daddy, who knows without a doubt that he really is her daddy, turns off the music. This wakes her, and she says very clearly, ‘Daddy, did you remember my purple teddy with ribbons on? Did you? Did you?’

  Yes, Solas is two and a half now. A bit bossy and quite a good talker for her age. In fact, hardly ever shuts up.

  ‘Yes,’ says Neal. ‘Course I did, darling. Mummy put it in the car last night so we wouldn’t forget.’

  ‘Clever Mummy. I love Mummy.’

  Perfect Mummy! Stupid Daddy!

  Alison had shouted at him last night, tired and red-faced. Called him paranoid because he’d locked the door again even though he knew she never remembered to take her keys, and why did he never put the new loo roll on, just leave the empty one on? He’d called her senile for always forgetting her keys, and why couldn’t she put the CDs back on the shelf in alphabetical order? Was she having a go at him, or was she just thick? They’d not spoken again, but then sometime after midnight, their bodies had drawn together, so that by the time they awoke, the tension had almost dissipated.

  Thinking back on it, Neal wonders if they are normal. To be so angry with each other sometimes, and come back again and again to this careless tenderness. Sally had never shouted such unfair, emotionally charged accusations, and neither had he. Politeness had reigned in his first marriage, had promised to reign again with Suzie, and now he’s on an unruly rollercoaster. He has no choice. Getting what you want is always tricky.

  Moving in with Alison had been like moving to a favourite summer holiday resort, but in the middle of winter and not just for a fortnight. Alison is not who he thought she was. Sometimes he finds himself saying: before we met, and he means before that kiss. These days she talks less than she used to, is more prone to detached silences. And her laughter is different. That old raucousness is gone, and when she occasionally giggles, the sound surprises even herself, and her eyebrows lift. A giddy laughter which initially alarmed Neal but now disarms him. It is too rare. Where she used to skim the surface with her quick movements and confidence, now she is slower, more tentative. There is a solemnity to her quietness, even when she is sulking about something stupid, which makes it difficult for Neal to remain angry. Sure, she still swears, but with much less gusto. She is both warmer and more ferocious, kinder and more critical than he’d thought possible in a single human being. Not solid and steady at all, and Neal has to be a different person. A more definite person, more alert, active. Sally had never needed him, and Alison does. Right now, he’s worrying that she’ll forget to turn the immersion off, or that dentist appointment Monday, or she’ll have discovered that mess in the closet he promised to tidy up before he left. Oh, they argue so much! Is it too much? But the worrying itself consumes time and in any case, alters nothing.

  He thinks back to that day of the first kiss. How he’d thought to himself: This is the end of the story. Us, together, forever. And in a way, it was. But then another story had started up, almost immediately. And this story is deeper, more complicated, bleaker, more maddening and more wonderful than any story he could have imagined. He feels like his life is hurtling forward into the future, almost out of his control, and some days it trails unsavoury tendrils from his past. Of missing Sally, of regrets and uncertainties. It is not as he thought it would be, this ongoing story. It is this, instead. Alison with her silences, him with this frightening responsibility, and between them, strawberry-blond Solas, fan of purple teddies. Some days he has to hang on to his life for dear life. Knuckles white, teeth clenched. And as far as he can see, there’s no ending in sight.

  Like the road unfolding before him. God, it feels good to get a break. Driving south feels like driving downhill to Neal. As if they are literally falling down the globe, and he relaxes into it.

  Solas falls asleep again as they slide by Inverness, Carrbridge, Aviemore, K
ingussie. All those towns clustered along the A9 like un-matching pearls on a tarmac necklace. He hasn’t gone anywhere in years, and travelling feels new. Ahead the Cairngorms are just visible, still snow-peaked and mysterious. And beyond that, all the places he has never seen, and all those people he has not met yet. Even Skegness and his father’s Myrtle acquire an exotic sheen. The whole shebang, just waiting. Neal’s heart expands and lifts just thinking about all the unknowns. As if the world is a huge unopened Christmas present, and it is Christmas Eve right now. Why has he never considered the world this way? Always yesterday, never tomorrow.

  Within seconds a small puff of excitement enters the car, like a discreet fart. Both occupants breathe a little quicker, each heart beats a little stronger. Solas dreams of chasing wild waves at Rosemarkie beach, though Rosemarkie has the calmest bay imaginable. She twitches her feet with excitement.

  And Neal instantly wishes Alison was with him. It’s no good, feeling this way alone. He wants her here, next to him in the car, sulks and all. Alison, and the absence of Calum that accompanies her everywhere. A family of four. That’s what he keeps forgetting; that’s what he must remember.

  Alison’s dreams are curiously impersonal, as if she is stuck in someone else’s dream world. They have that nightmarish quality of an over-long, very bad movie in a cinema which is too crowded and quiet to simply get up and leave. She wakes for the second time, feeling un-rested. Rises and showers. Considers the child-free, husband-free week ahead. Film later today with Chrissie. Gut the house. Maybe visit Kate in Gairloch tomorrow? Phone Teddy, thank him for that birthday present. Better yet, email him on the computer they finally bought last weekend. Saves time, all this emailing and texting. Teddy’s such a blether, on the phone. And ring Neal, apologise properly for last night. But he is so irritating sometimes!

  It helps that they moved to Evanton after they got married. It’s between Strathpeffer and Alness, geographically and socially. Like Goldilocks finally settling into Baby Bear’s bed, Evanton is just the right place for them. A sweet two-bed-roomed mid-terraced house on Hermitage Street, built in 1860. Roses in the garden, a tiny fireplace in the living room. The only problems are minor, for instance there’s very poor mobile phone reception. Evantonians are always outside their houses, waving their phones in the air. And the buses are less frequent than in Alness. But in Evanton, Solas is not so obviously stepping in the footsteps of her brother. Not the same playschool, the same bedroom, the same corner shop and bus shelter and post office.

  It was the right move, but living with someone, well, Alison is still not used to it, and maybe it will always be this way. Maybe not being used to it will eventually be something she gets used to. Aside from Calum, Neal is the only man she’s ever lived with, and though there is an air of familiarity about some of his little habits – he always had a thing about alphabetical order – it is still hard some days. She has her own way of doing things, and he seems to forget that she managed just fine before him. He always wants to do things for her, to help her. They are both messy, but in quite different ways. He likes organising things into logical heaps of clutter, and she prefers shoving mess into drawers and cupboards willy-nilly. Clearing the decks. She loses the remote controls, doesn’t know how to use them; he finds them, uses them slowly but effectively. There they sit right now, neatly on the table. A population explosion of remote controls, and proof of his recent presence. His possessions are blending in with hers now, but it still annoys her when he leaves stuff on the kitchen table for days on end, and acts hurt when she finally removes it.

  Then she has to remind herself how grateful she is, how lonely she’d be without him. How only he can make Solas chuckle so hard she pees herself. And oh yes, how wonderful, how delicious his kisses still are. And how she cries less now. A lot less. All these good things about Neal, so her irritation – that spiky, energetic, righteous bully – retreats back under her ribs, ashamed. She loves this man, body and soul. It’s a wave, warm and salty, that rises and falls, rises and falls and rises again. Each time it rises, it saves her.

  She combs her hair, and today she doesn’t consciously notice Calum’s Fyrish Hill race photo on the wall by the mirror. She gets in her car and drives to Inverness. She has driven past the A9 shrine to her son often. Almost every day, on her way to work, to the childminders, to Tesco. She sees it so often it no longer has the power to hurt. In fact today, she kind of likes it. Proof that her gawky unemployed son had stolen more than just her own heart.

  These days, for her, the state of possessing a beating heart or not is the only difference between people that really matters. The dead, Calum among them, are just as present as the living, but they are unchanging, whereas everyone else is still jigging about the place. Getting older, crankier, messier, happier or not.

  No, Alison has not found God, nor has she sought out mediums or been visited by angels. But increasingly, it feels like Calum is still somewhere. It’s just that no one knows anything at all about that other place. How does she know it’s there? Because it must be. Inconceivable, life amounting to nothing in the end. All those to do lists and bills paid and lessons learned and weeds pulled and cars washed and pledges of love and appointments kept and French learned and ovens cleaned and teeth filled and birthdays remembered and gifts wrapped and guitars practised and hangovers cured and clothes mended and New Year’s resolutions kept and saying please and thank you and I’m sorry and kissing to make up and secret midnight prayers and holiday photographs and giddy laughter and salty tears and waves of salty warm love rising and falling and rising again – how could nothing come of all that? All that … trying, gone to waste.

  As for proof, well, if you ask Alison, she’ll talk about the internet, about mobile phones, about radios and television. About electricity. She’ll argue that if voices, movies, written words can travel invisibly through the air yet still be bound by the laws of physical matter, still travel through a bedroom window but not to the downstairs hallway because the wall is too thick, if they can reconstitute the same instant they are sent in one of a trillion possible destinations, from a hill top in Caithness to a kitchen in San Francisco, then is it so very unlikely Calum has some kind of existence still? She will not rule out that possibility. The air is full of things she cannot see or touch. Maybe the dead are like mobile phones just out of reception. Weak signal, and mostly no signal at all. Maybe being dead is like … living in Evanton.

  Everywhere Alison looks, but especially in open places like here on the A9 with the light-filled firth to her left, she visualises them all in their separate place. Somewhere like the Black Isle, with filigree roads linking quiet hearts to ones that beat. Here we are and there they are. And she wonders, If the dead are aware somehow of the life they cannot re-enter, are they jealous? Are they pressed up against some transparent barrier, blinded with light and full of yearning? She hopes that if he is capable of knowing anything, Calum knows that he is loved still.

  Alison talks to Calum about these theories sometimes. Some days he argues with her. Says the traffic jam would be hellish if everyone who ever existed was still loitering.

  That’s sad, Mum. Crazy talk.

  She replies, Glass houses, my boy.

  She also tells him things like:

  I’m never dyeing my hair again, what do you think?

  Solas slept well last night for a change. You’d think, at her age!

  And hey, by the way, the shoes you loved aren’t being made anymore because another style is popular now.

  And when she moans about Neal, he doesn’t sympathise.

  But he’s well good for you, Mum. You suit each other. Couple of old hippies, you two. I’m well chuffed.

  Today she re-tells Calum the story of his own birth. The way he glared at her, red and angry at one minute old. The way the midwives cooed, said he was a wee charmer. How from that minute forward, she’d felt a better person.

  But under all the chatter, and through every silence too, what she is reall
y saying is: I miss you, I miss you, I miss you son. Then she overtakes a car after Tore, because if she’s not quick, she’ll miss the matinee with Chrissie. Her mobile phone rings, and though she’s promised herself a million times to stop talking on her mobile while driving, she glances to see who it’s from. Well, he can wait. It took him long enough to finally buy a mobile phone, then almost as long to learn how to use it. Maybe one day he’ll learn how to text. She wonders if he’s forgotten something. At least he’s remembered his mobile. He’s always accusing her of being forgetful, but the times that man leaves his mobile at home! Then suddenly she thinks Solas. And picks up the phone, pulling over to the slow lane.

  ‘Is everything okay? Solas okay? Where are you?’

  ‘A lay-by near Dunkeld. Solas is sound asleep. Listen, you should have come with us, Ali.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not too late. Get the next train to Glasgow and we’ll meet you there. We can visit Teddy.’

  ‘I thought you wanted some time on your own with your dad?’

  ‘Aye, aye, and I thought you needed some time off Solas. But come.’

  ‘I’m halfway to Inverness right now. Going to meet Chrissie at the cinema.’

  ‘We can do anything we like! Have you ever been to Wales? We could go there first. Or the Lake District. The London Eye! Paris on the Eurotunnel! Get on a train, Ali. Chrissie will understand.’

  ‘You’re off your head. I’ve nothing with me. Not even a proper jacket. And I’m flat broke.’

  But he can hear her smile, even while she’s arguing, and he says, ‘Great. See you there, Ali. I love you. We love you.’

  He shifts up gears and there it is: The A9 rolls out before him like a ribbon of possibilities. Like a personal invitation to adventure for them all. Ah! His speedometer reaches fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, and a black Corsa overtakes him, cuts in front so sharply Neal has to brake, as does the car behind him. Heart pounding, he watches as the black car with its young male driver edges out again. The road ahead is a gradual downhill curve away from them so no one can see what is coming.