More Than Us

by Dawn Barker

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ he said.

  ‘It is gorgeous,’ I agreed. ‘Don’t you think, Tilly? It’s so different to Australia.’

  ‘And the air,’ Paul said. ‘You can smell how clean it is, you can imagine that we were living here all those years ago when William Wallace was here.’

  ‘And got hung, drawn and quartered and his head put on a stick,’ Tilly said, glaring at him.

  ‘How about Bonnie Prince Charlie then?’

  ‘What did he eat?’ mumbled Cameron as he scraped the last few pieces of rice from the melamine bowl.

  ‘Well, this afternoon, we’re going to try again to catch some fish. They were great the other night, weren’t they? If it was spring, we’d plant vegetables, potatoes, carrots.’

  ‘They’d need months to grow, Dad. And sun,’ said Tilly.

  I was glad that at least she was talking about food; perhaps this meant she was feeling hungry, wanting to eat. She still hadn’t eaten much, but then again, none of us had. I knew I had lost weight this week, but I had no way to weigh Tilly out here.

  ‘Maybe we could catch rabbits too. Or venison. Yum!’ I knew I was talking in a voice that I’d only ever used when the children were toddlers, while I arranged their slices of carrot and tomato into a smiley face on their plates when we both knew that they were going to spit it out. I’m not sure who I was trying to convince. How would we catch a deer? We didn’t have a gun. It was only an hour or two’s walk back to the village and I decided that I’d go there tomorrow, just for some vegetables, maybe some sausages. And a bar of chocolate.

  I glanced at Paul, in his faded jeans and hiking boots, his fleece, his hands and face red with cold, dirt under his fingernails, his hair sticking up at his double crown. I blinked back my tears. ‘Come on, Tilly, let’s go find some firewood and let the boys catch our dinner.’

  * * *

  The next morning, the children insisted on coming into the village with me, despite me warning them that it would take us all day to walk there and back again. Paul refused, saying he had work to do. I knew he was disappointed in us going to get more provisions, but what choice did we have? And besides, we all needed a change of scenery. After more than a week of talking only to each other, I needed to see other humans, to reassure me that normal life was still going on.

  The children were quiet as we walked. I was worried about the energy it must be using up in Tilly. Did she look thinner? I didn’t trust my own opinion any more. I’d let them buy whatever they wanted once we got to the village, and if she ate that, I’d be reassured.

  It didn’t seem to take as long to reach the village as it had a week ago when we had started out for the bothy. We didn’t have our packs on to slow us down. I had taken one rucksack with us, empty except from our water bottles, so that I could carry the shopping back. We were all more eager too. With every step we took, the life at the bothy seemed like a game.

  The small shop also served as the post office and newsagent. I pushed open the door, and a bell above it rang. The three of us entered the shop and greeted the elderly lady who popped her head out from a door behind the counter. The shop sold groceries, but also magazines, tourist trinkets, basic camping gear, and even had a pie warmer on the counter. My mouth watered at the thought of hot meat.

  ‘Mum,’ Cameron shouted. ‘Can I have one of these rods?’

  ‘Hasn’t Dad got some?’

  ‘No, just those hand lines. They’re annoying.’

  I walked over to him. Surely a rod would be easier, and more likely to catch fish if we could throw the line out further? ‘You’d have to carry it all the way back,’ I warned.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Without complaining?’ I laughed and ruffled his hair. That reminded me: we needed shampoo. Our hair was disgusting. He picked two rods, then started looking at the lures and bait. I left him to it. Tilly was looking at magazines.

  ‘Come and help me choose some food,’ I said. ‘You can have anything you want. We can have a mini feast for lunch before we go back and see Dad.’ I raised my eyebrows and she smiled faintly. ‘Come on,’ I said, and she followed me.

  We filled a basket with bread, potatoes, carrots, a couple of turnips, pasta, jars of bolognaise sauce, some mince. I saw Tilly looking at the biscuits. Thank God.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Get a few packets.’

  Tilly hesitated, then picked up some chocolate digestives; they used to be her favourite but I realised that I hadn’t seen her eat a biscuit in months. I picked up another packet, then two packets of shortbread. The basket was full, and heavy. I had to carry it all back. We had enough for now; we could come back in a few days if we had to.

  At the counter, we also ordered three steak pies and chips. I wondered if I should get one for Paul. It would be cold by the time we got back to the bothy. Would he eat it? I bought an extra three. If he didn’t want them, we would eat them.

  I put the basket on the counter as the woman used tongs to put the pies in white paper bags, and Cameron lay down the fishing gear he had chosen. We took the pies, and the woman began lifting things out of the basket and pressing buttons on the till.

  ‘Div ye hae a licence?’ she asked in her soft Scottish lilt as she looked for the price ticket on a packet of bait.

  ‘A licence?’

  She nodded towards the rods and lures. ‘The laird owns the river.’

  ‘I don’t know. My husband might have one I suppose.’

  ‘Did he buy it fae me?’

  ‘Um.’ The kids were looking at me. Paul hadn’t been into the shop without me. He clearly hadn’t. ‘I don’t know. Probably not, I’m sorry. Can I buy a licence too then?’ I said.

  ‘Fit stretch ye fishin’?’

  ‘We’re staying at the bothy. So, they’ll be fishing in the river near there.’

  ‘Fit ye catching?’

  I frowned at the woman. She wore an olive-green Barbour jacket, her greying hair curled close to her hair though her skin was pale and far smoother than any Australian women would be that age. Her hands looked soft, the knuckles swollen and red. ‘What is there? Salmon? Trout?’

  ‘Canna fish on Sundays.’

  I closed my eyes for a moment. ‘That’s fine. We won’t fish on Sundays.’

  She went through more rules about where we were allowed to fish, what I could catch, where I could scale the fish, and that we absolutely must put back any fish that we weren’t going to eat.

  ‘That’s the plan,’ I said.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘The winter’ll be here soon though. There’ll be sna’ before lang.’

  Snow. I saw the kids look at each other and grimace.

  ‘Yes, I know that.’ I forced myself to smile. ‘I grew up here. Anyway, we’ll be long gone before then.’

  She nodded slowly and I knew she didn’t consider me a local. I pushed the things on the counter towards her a bit. ‘Anyway, we’d better get going, it’s a bit of a walk back there.’

  ‘The rain’s forecast. Watch the streams dinna go into spate. You’ll get cut off.’

  ‘Yes. I know. Thank you.’ My cheeks were aching from forced cheer.

  ‘And here’s yer fishing licence,’ she said, sliding a slip of paper across the desk. She totalled up the purchases then took my cash and gave me change.

  I thanked her, put the remaining groceries into my rucksack, then handed out the pies and chips to the children and walked towards the door, the little cardboard tags dangling from the new rods that Cameron held over his shoulder as we left the shop.

  We walked away from the buildings to a small patch of grass across the road and sat at a faded wooden picnic table. I ripped open my paper bag and lay it flat on the table, then shook out some chips from the box. Tilly and Cameron did the same. We ate in silence. I was ravenous. I glanced at Tilly and let myself relax as she bit into her pie too, then ate her chips. Relief and happiness flooded me. There was something to be said for Paul’s ideas: Tilly was eating. I reached down
and undid the top of my rucksack and pulled out a large bag of crisps. ‘We’ll buy another packet if we can face that woman in the shop again!’

  The kids laughed and devoured the salty crisps too. This trip had done us good; I could see that.

  ‘I’m going to the toilet, Mum,’ Cameron said, pointing towards the wooden building near the picnic area.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. I rummaged in the bag and found the shampoo and shower gel I’d bought. ‘Do your best at washing your filthy hair in the sink in there before we have to go back to living in the wild with no running water.’ I smiled.

  As he walked off, I kept smiling as I looked at Tilly. ‘It’s so good to see you’ve got your appetite back,’ I said.

  She froze.

  ‘Sweetie, I just mean that when we were back in Sydney, we were all a bit worried that you hadn’t been eating enough.’

  ‘I had been.’

  ‘Tilly, don’t get defensive, darling. Remember the GP said you’d gotten quite thin, but I know it was because you’d been so busy and active, and maybe a little stressed with everything that was going on at home? Anyway, I’m so glad you’re feeling better.’

  She looked down at the paper bag in front of her, then grabbed it and crumped it up, and walked over to the rubbish bins. I sighed, and gathered up my own stuff. I shouldn’t have said anything to her. As I passed by her, I took her hand; she pulled away. ‘Tilly!’ I said. ‘I was trying to be nice. I love you.’

  She paused. ‘I love you too,’ she murmured. I sighed.

  Just then, Cameron came out of the bathrooms, his hair dripping wet. I laughed, and even Tilly smiled. ‘I need a towel, Mum!’

  ‘I haven’t got a towel! Aren’t there paper towels in there?’

  ‘No, they’re all finished.’

  ‘Here,’ I took the long-sleeved top from around my waist. ‘Use this. I don’t need it and it’ll dry soon enough.’

  He rubbed at his hair.

  ‘Your turn,’ I said to Tilly. ‘Take this shirt to dry it off with, or stick your head under the hand drier.’

  When she had gone, I turned to Cameron. ‘I’m glad Dad didn’t come today, it’s been nice to hang out with you and Tilly on your own. How are you finding everything?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘How’s your head?’ I reached up to touch where the yellow tint of the bruise on his forehead was still visible in the daylight.

  ‘It’s fine. Doesn’t hurt.’

  ‘You seem happy. Are you having a good time?’

  He shrugged again. ‘I guess.’

  I bit back my frustration. ‘Are you worried about anything?’

  ‘I’m worried about missing school. I’ll be really behind when we get back.’

  I was too, but I couldn’t tell him that. ‘No, you’ve only missed the last couple of weeks of term. It’s still school holidays.’

  ‘Yeah but it goes back next week.’

  I sighed and nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘When are we going back?’

  ‘Soon, I promise.’

  Tilly came back out. ‘I’m not washing my hair in there. It’s gross. I’ll do it in the stream back at the bothy.’

  I sighed. ‘Fair enough. If you don’t mind rinsing it with sandy water. Anyway, I was just saying to Cameron that I’ll talk to Dad and we can make a plan for when to leave. School starts in a week, and I don’t want you missing any more than the first few days of that. How about I’ll tell Dad that he’s got us for another week, then we’re out of here? Can you put up with it until then, for Dad?’

  ‘Okay,’ they both sighed.

  I had a sudden pang of fear that maybe they wouldn’t want to come with me. ‘You do want to go home, with me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ they both agreed.

  ‘I love you both very much.’ I hugged them, then we packed up and prepared for the long trudge back to the bothy.

  * * *

  I didn’t get a chance to talk to Paul alone that night. It was ironic: there was so much space around us, and not another soul for miles, yet none of us moved far out of the vicinity of the others. The next night, as the sky darkened, the four of us huddled around the fire eating baked potatoes and carrots roasted over the fire in tin foil.

  Paul’s voice rose above the crackling of the fire and the rustle of the foil. ‘The nights are drawing in. We’ll need to stockpile food.’

  I forced myself to laugh as the children both snapped their head to look at me with wide eyes. ‘I don’t think we can do this over the winter, Paul. Doesn’t it snow? What do you reckon, kids?’

  Tilly glanced at me with a nervous smile on her face. ‘It’s pretty cold now.’

  ‘Lots of people have done it before us,’ he said

  ‘And many people have frozen to death out here too, Paul. Your dad used to talk about it all the time.’ I turned to the kids. ‘Your granddad used to volunteer to rescue people on the mountains. He would get really angry with the tourists who came here to Scotland with only a flask of soup and a pair of running shoes.’

  ‘We’re not tourists and they weren’t prepared.’

  ‘Neither are we, Dad,’ Tilly said.

  I reached over and rubbed her knee. It felt like I was touching bare bone. ‘Don’t worry, Tilly. We’re not staying here over winter. We’ll be going home soon.’

  ‘Dad,’ Cameron said. ‘When are we going home? We’ve been here for ages.’

  Paul’s face glowed red in the shadows from the fire. ‘It hasn’t even been two weeks, everyone. We can’t give up as soon as we’re a bit uncomfortable. This is what it’s all about. Can you imagine how proud we’ll be to make it through a winter? In the meantime, there’s fish and rabbits.’

  ‘Rabbits hibernate over winter,’ Tilly said.

  ‘And the river will freeze, won’t it?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said with forced cheer. ‘Dad’s only joking’. He was joking, wasn’t he? I glanced at Tilly and Cameron, trying to reassure them.

  * * *

  The next morning, as usual, Paul rose early, before the sun, and pulled on his fleece and jacket and headed down to the shores of the river with his new rod. Later, once the sun came up and he tired of swatting at the midges, he headed up the slopes of the hill and come back carrying stones with his face set.

  I asked the children to tidy up around the camp, then wandered over to Paul with a flask of black tea in my hand. He had a pile of rocks now, and was trying to stack them on top of each other. I handed him the flask; he nodded and took it from me. His hands were red and cracked.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked lightly.

  ‘I climbed up to that cairn up there, it’s amazing. I thought maybe we could build something down here. I’ve been looking at the drystone walls over past those fields, it’s brilliant really, no cement or mortar. I’m just trying to see if I can do it. Something to leave our mark, you know?’

  ‘Paul, what’s the point?’ I said quietly. ‘We have to go home soon. Very soon.’

  It was as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘I need more stones though, the ones I have won’t fit.’

  I put my hand on his arm; he looked at it. ‘Paul, listen to me. We can’t stay here. The dark’s coming in about 5pm now, it’s getting cold, freezing at night. It’s not safe. I’m worried about Tilly, I need to get her weighed and eating decent food. The kids need to go home.’ I paused. ‘I need to go home.’

  He didn’t look at me.

  ‘Maybe we could relocate to the South of France?’ I tried to joke. ‘Rent an old farmhouse or chateau. We can still grow vegetables and catch fish there.’

  He smiled sadly. ‘You still don’t get it, Emily, this isn’t a holiday, not for me.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us have seen this as a holiday, like lying around a pool in Bali, but we have to go home sometime. Soon. The kids are tired. They need to go back to school. I said there was a family emergency when we left Australia so that got them out of the last two w
eeks of term, but the school holidays are almost done now, and they need to get back. I’ll lose all my clients at work. If I lose my job, and you’re not working, how will we pay the mortgage? We’ll lose the house. If it hasn’t been robbed already. I didn’t even have time to redirect the mail or cancel the papers!’

  He rubbed at his face. ‘You’re still worrying about things that don’t matter.’

  ‘Don’t matter? Our home? Our jobs? The kids’ education doesn’t matter?’

  ‘You’ve never really taken this seriously. I’m not talking about two weeks, I’m talking about changing our lives.’

  ‘Are you honestly saying that we could stay here, what, over winter? Forever?’ I clasped my hand to my mouth. ‘Oh wow. You are, aren’t you? You honestly think that we could live like this? Oh, Paul…’ I stared at him, disbelieving. This wasn’t real life. Maybe a few families, those on documentaries, managed to live on a desert island and grow up in a supposedly idyllic way, but I know that wouldn’t be the whole truth. All sorts of resentments and fears would bubble below the surface of the warm waves lapping on their beach. And the waves here were icy cold and murky. Humans are social creatures, even Cameron. He needed peers; he needed to see how the world worked because that’s the world that he must live in. As must Paul.

  He kicked at the ground then stared at me. ‘Why can’t you understand that I can’t go back to the way things were? I can’t gamble again, I can’t see my kids struggling. I can’t see Damian and let him tell me that I’ve failed again.’

  ‘To hell with Damian, Paul! I don’t care about him!’

  Paul looked away, blinking away the tears that I knew were threatening to fall. I sighed. Nothing had changed. I knew that Paul so desperately wanted this to work, and I knew that his heart was in the right place. He had made this decision, and I had gone along with it. For him, to go home now was to admit failure.

  I spoke more softly, though my voice was tinged with sadness as the realisation that this might be the conversation where it all ends. ‘I do love this way of life, Paul. I do. And I can see how it has been good for the kids. But not forever. Maybe you can do this forever, but I can’t. The children can’t. You know that, don’t you?’