If I Touched the Earth
Page 21
Black car jerks back into Neal’s lane, and one second later a northbound Tesco lorry thunders past, buffeting his car.
Neal glances at it in his rear-view mirror, imagining the almost-crash. Then black car pulls out again with a roar and within seconds is out of sight.
A9
Every day, almost a thousand vehicles travel north and south on this stretch of the A9, following the coast and the green North Sea. A route for escape or return. For nuns and thugs, buyers and vendors, tourists and locals, ambulances and fish lorries, combine harvesters and Land Rovers, Yamaha motorcycles and skinny-wheeled road bikes. Some people find they talk easier, listen more carefully, while driving. Some like to be in motion for its own sake, feel their lives suspended temporarily. Some find resonance with the rhythm of the road, a particular musical beat, a lullaby. Some people like to drive when they’re angry because going fast feels good. But mostly the A9 is a place to combine necessary transport with daydreaming. It’s been over three years since the accident. So far 1,095,255 cars have passed Calum’s memorial, and hardly anyone notices it anymore.
Zara last tended the shrine half a year ago. Winter again, it’s hardly visible now. The single pine is green. Everything else she planted is black and dead looking. But it won’t look dead for long. The bulbs lurking under three inches of decaying leaves and soil have already begun sending up green shoots, and the birch leaves are furled fists of yellow and green. Get tae fuck, Winter, they all say in their Weegie-Alness accent.
Zara and her young man pass the memorial on their way to Orkney for a holiday. He is in love and she is not, and ever since Calum she’s been terrified of this very situation. If she dumps him, she may regret it forever. If she surrenders, she may end up marrying him. He’s a gardener, and her parents already like him. It’s possible she’ll fall in love with him in a few years or decades, right? Not being in love no longer seems a good enough reason to say goodbye.
She nods to the memorial. Says, Hey, Calum, silently.
Hey, Calum.
She imagines Calum shifting up a gear again, squinting in the winter light, on his way to the scrappy to see if they have any exhaust spares. Hears his phone ring and hopes it’s herself, saying sorry. He’s speeding. Is a bit sleepy, a bit careless, a bit reckless on the road because he’s a young man and young men never believe they will die. Reaches for the phone, tells himself it’s her. This makes him happy, and he’s very beautiful just now. Less than three inches of the rubber on his tyres are touching the A9, and as he stretches that little bit more to reach his phone, his right foot presses down marginally more on the accelerator, and even less of the tyres are holding on to the cold road.
Calum is fifty-four seconds from dying and wondering if his favourite blue shirt is clean enough to wear tonight. And when he shouts Mum! this time, Zara wonders if it’s not because he needs saving. It’s too late for that. Maybe it’s simply that he doesn’t want to die alone.
She frowns a little. Sighs. Takes a quick look at her boyfriend, and his intentness touches her. She thinks he is too serious sometimes, but very intelligent, very thoughtful.
‘Hey, what do you think happens after we die?’ she asks, and he glances at her, startled.
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘I have no idea, Zara.’
‘Me neither.’
‘But I’m working on the assumption this is it. For better or worse. What you see is what you get.’
‘Me too,’ she says softly after a minute.
She puts her hand on his thigh, leaves it there because that’s where it wants to stay. Then suddenly, from her side window she sees a whole sky-full of geese. Coming back, going away? Zara can’t tell. A few geese leading, more geese following in the traditional V shape, and quite a few just straggling in the general vicinity, looking like they’re not too sure what’s happening but they don’t want to miss the action. As she watches, the leading geese start veering away from each other, and some of the geese from one V decide to join the other V, and vice versa. It looks like none of them quite understand their roles. Amateur attempts at being geese. Even their racket sounds more like a rowdy rehearsal than a performance. Are they arguing about asking for directions, or geese hierarchies, or more essentially, the point of migration? All of this pleases Zara, though she couldn’t say why.
She suggests they stop for coffee at Tomich, even though they’ve just started. Tells him about the scones with ginger, apricots and cinnamon. No hurry, is there? They could just sit a while, maybe. Drink strong coffee and watch the cars whoosh past on the A9. Look at the map of Orkney they bought yesterday, talk about little things that worry them. His expiring MOT, her lost library books, his father’s ulcer. The way, one way or another, most things come right in the end.
Copyright
First published 2012
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2012
ISBN: 978 1 84502 443 7 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 445 1 in Mobipocket format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 442 0 in paperback format
Copyright © Cynthia Rogerson 2012
The right of Cynthia Rogerson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This novel is a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it
are of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
“Clown in the Moon” by Dylan Thomas, from the book
The Collected Poems published by Orion, is reproduced with kind
permission of David Higham Associates.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by Refine Catch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk