Machine Without Horses

by Helen Humphreys

  But she is impressed—not with Graham for telling her the story, or the Duke for catching the twice-hooked fish, but with the salmon itself, who clearly had preferred the Highlander above other flies, and who had died because of this preference.

  “The fish had good taste,” she says. “I like that fly myself.”

  Saturday night, Ruth takes extra time to get ready. It promises to be a special evening. She is to pick Evelyn up in her car and they are driving south to Dornoch for a ceilidh in the castle there. She chooses a relatively clean white shirt, a silk tie with ducks on it, overtop of her usual tweed skirt. Her leather shoes are scuffed and dirty.

  “They need some spit and polish,” she says to Socks, fetching the shoe cleaning rag and paste from the cupboard under the sink.

  Evelyn is waiting on the front stoop when Ruth slams on the brakes in the farmyard, sending up a cloud of dust.

  “Sorry,” she says, leaping out to open the passenger door for Evelyn. “I took the turn too fast up the drive.”

  Evelyn brushes her hands across the front of her dress before getting into the car. “No one could accuse you of being dull,” she says.

  The seaside hotel in Dornoch has recently been requisitioned by the army, so the owners of the castle have offered up their home for the ceilidh. There are candles as big as pillars burning inside the front door, suits of armour standing at attention in the great hall.

  Ruth peers through the visor of one of the helmets.

  “Hot work being a knight,” she says. “And you wouldn’t be able to see a bloody thing from inside there.”

  “Good to be protected by armour then,” says Evelyn.

  The great hall has a fireplace at either end, each one big enough for an entire family to stand inside it. The ceiling beams are blackened with age. Ruth puts her hand up and traces the indentation of an axe strike on the wood just above her head.

  “Don’t skip too vigorously,” she says to Evelyn. “Or you’ll conk yourself one.”

  With the low ceilings and the two fires burning with gusto in the great hall, dancing is sweaty and exhausting. Evelyn pulls Ruth out of the fray after a reel and a jig.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go exploring.”

  The hallways are labyrinthine and barely lit, hung with threadbare tapestries and portraits. They hold hands so as not to lose each other in the gloom.

  “It’s as bad as my cottage at night,” says Ruth, which makes Evelyn laugh, because, of course, the darkness of the hallways is the only thing that Ruth’s modest cottage and the grand castle have in common.

  The hallways are abandoned in favour of the staircase, wide at the bottom like the skirt of a ball gown, tapering up to a waist of a landing.

  “Let’s find the tower,” says Evelyn, pulling Ruth behind her up the next flight of stairs.

  The tower room is through a heavy oak door studded with iron. The door swings open into the room, which is empty except for a four-poster bed. There’s no fire in the grate, no sign of habitation. There are no linens on the bed. They leave the door open to borrow a little of the light that funnels up the staircase and trickles into the tower.

  “Do you think this was where they put the prisoners once?” asks Ruth, going over to the window and peering through the mullioned panes. She can see the distant lights of the village houses, winking like stars in the darkness. She feels impossibly tall.

  “Yes.”

  “They had a good view.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped them any.”

  Evelyn comes and stands beside Ruth and they peer down through the window together.

  “Terrible to be locked up,” Evelyn says. “To be confined to one room for your whole life.”

  Ruth thinks of her work shed, of the hours and hours she spends there, staring out to sea, making her lures from bright bits of feathers and coloured wool, the miles and miles of thread she winds in a single year.

  “I think I might be a prisoner,” she says.

  “No. Not you.” Evelyn puts a hand up to Ruth’s face. “You’re the freest person I know.” She leans in and kisses Ruth lightly on the cheek.

  Back in the great hall, they are in time for refreshments—glasses of sherry and little sandwiches without the crusts, handed round by the owners of the castle themselves. Ruth holds her glass up to the fire to watch the light refract through the crystal.

  “It would be all pomp and ceremony,” she says to Evelyn. “If you lived in a castle. Do you think you would have to change for each meal?”

  “Perhaps not for breakfast,” says Evelyn.

  “Could I come down in my dressing gown?”

  “To a sideboard groaning with covered silver dishes. And a butler to serve you.”

  “Bacon and eggs? Fried bread? My usual grilled tomato?”

  “And kippers,” says Evelyn.

  “Please, no fish.” Ruth is decisive.

  The music starts up again and the next dance is to be Machine without Horses.

  “Let’s have a go at this one,” says Ruth. “It’s my absolute favourite.”

  Afterwards, they walk across the lawn to the car, the grass springy underfoot and the scent of rosemary wafting through the air from a giant clay urn on the terrace.

  “Everything’s oversize at the castle,” says Ruth. She opens the car door for Evelyn. “Milady,” she says, and Evelyn giggles.

  The road is empty. The moon polishes the fields to a shine on either side of them. When Ruth takes a corner too quickly, Evelyn falls against her and stays there, her head resting on Ruth’s shoulder.

  “It’s lovely where we live, isn’t it,” Evelyn says.

  “My father used to say there was no more perfect place on earth.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “That there’s no more perfect place on earth.”

  Ruth slows the car when she enters the driveway to the farm, but arrival is impossible to prevent.

  They inch up into the yard.

  “That’s funny,” says Evelyn. “All the lights are on.” She still has her head resting on Ruth’s shoulder, even after Ruth has brought the car to a standstill.

  The windows are ablaze in Evelyn’s farmhouse, and the curtains aren’t pulled in the front room. Ruth watches as a man leans against the glass, peers out at her car in the yard.

  Evelyn jerks upright. “Oh Lord, that’s Dan,” she says. “He’s home.”

  With Dan returned from the war, Ruth doesn’t see Evelyn in the mornings anymore when she comes to fetch the horse and cart. There is no shunting the milk canisters from the barn on the child’s wagon. Now, the cans are already loaded on the cart when Ruth rides up on her bicycle. When she returns, at the end of the milk run, one of the field hands takes Ned from her. Sometimes she sees Evelyn watching her from the window of the front room. Ruth waves, but Evelyn has only once waved back.

  At the dances, Ruth has other partners now. Evelyn doesn’t show.

  “Her husband’s back,” says Harriet, the butcher’s wife. “She can’t be gallivanting about anymore.”

  Still, Ruth waits for Evelyn’s return, looks hopefully towards the sound of the doors creaking open at the village hall, or the latch of her cottage gate lifting with a squeak in the rain.

  And finally, one morning, when Ruth is just climbing up onto the loaded cart at the farm, Evelyn rushes from the house towards her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, grabbing onto Ruth’s arm with both of her hands. “Dan has had great need of me these past weeks. And he’s sent my mother home, so I always have Ava now.”

  “It must be good to have him back again. I’m happy for you.” Ruth reaches into the breast pocket of her jacket. “I’ve been carrying this around for ages. I made it weeks ago.” She passes the salmon fly to Evelyn. “It’s a Highlander. To remind you of the dancing. And the castle.” She shifts from one foot to the other. “And to remind you of me.”

  Evelyn looks down at the lure in her palm. “It’s beautiful,” sh
e says. There are tears in her eyes as she slowly closes her hand around the fly.

  Wilkinson

  RUTH GOES FOR A PROPER DATE WITH Graham, on a picnic to the scenic Glen of the Fairies. She drives them because Graham doesn’t have a car. He seems unused to being driven, clutching the strap that hangs down from the roof and making phantom braking motions with his feet whenever Ruth goes hard round a bend.

  “You took that last one rather fast,” he says as Ruth grimly speeds up. She usually enjoys driving, but there is no joy in it today and she just wants to get there as quickly as possible to escape Graham’s nervous twitches and constant cautions.

  It’s better when they are out of the car, walking over the uneven ground, the hills rising softly before them. Graham carries the picnic basket and blanket, and Socks runs ahead after a pheasant. Ruth unclenches her hands, stretches her fingers to feel the wind spool between them.

  “Would this be a good spot, do you think?” Graham has stopped in front of a grassy hollow surrounded by a semicircle of large stones.

  “It looks nice.” Ruth watches as Graham unrolls the blanket and weights the corners down with rocks. She opens the picnic hamper and takes out the plates and cutlery, the potted meat sandwiches and bottles of beer.

  “Delicious,” says Graham, already biting into one of the sandwiches.

  “Glad you like them.” Ruth didn’t actually make the sandwiches. She’s not much of a cook and it made her nervous to think of what she might get wrong in even something so simple as the assembly of a sandwich. Her friend Millie made the food.

  “You’ll have to learn to cook properly if you’re to marry him,” said Millie, but she did Ruth’s bidding and prepared the picnic for her.

  Ruth nibbles around the edge of her sandwich. When she was a child, she would have pretended to be a mouse. Now she has to pretend to be interested in Graham.

  Socks returns with muddy paws and plops himself down in the middle of the blanket.

  “Off!” says Graham, kicking at the dog with his boot. Socks inches back towards Ruth and she puts a hand on his head and scratches him through his thick fur. It is clear that Graham has never had a dog, or he wouldn’t be so irritated by Socks.

  The beer makes everything more tolerable. Ruth has to make an effort not to down her bottle in one swallow, and then has to make an effort not to belch.

  The sun comes out from behind the clouds and they take off their shoes, lean back against the stones after they have eaten. Ruth thinks that Graham might try to hold her hand, but he doesn’t. He closes his eyes and dozes. Socks has wandered off again. Ruth watches a line of ants ferry a breadcrumb from the blanket to a small hole near the rocks. She pokes at the ground with a twig and flexes her toes inside her stockings.

  When the rain starts, they wait for it to pass, and when it doesn’t, they stuff the picnic gear back into the basket, grab the blanket and hightail it for the car. There’s a moment of laughter as they cram everything into the boot, but then Socks comes hurling towards them and Ruth lets him into the back seat.

  “That dog stinks,” says Graham when they are all in the car and Ruth has started the engine.

  Ruth unwinds her window a little, in an attempt to staunch the potent smell of wet dog, but it doesn’t do much good.

  Graham suddenly launches himself at Ruth over the gearshift, pinning her against her door, his lips cold and wet from the rain, his tongue muscling into her open mouth. She fights back, then realizes that he is kissing her and tries to relax. After a few moments, he pulls himself off her and settles back into his seat, and she puts the stick into reverse and backs out of the parking space.

  The rain continues. The road darkens with it, and the sky seals shut with clouds.

  “There will be good fishing tomorrow,” says Graham. “If this keeps up. I have two gents from London, up for the week.”

  “Are they staying with you?” Graham often rents out the empty rooms in his cottage to visiting fishermen, as a way to make a little extra money.

  “No. At the hotel. You should join us there for a drink one evening. They’ve heard of you, asked if I knew you.”

  It seems extraordinary to Ruth that her slow production, one fly at a time, has resulted in gaining her a reputation among salmon fishers, has granted her a small measure of fame.

  “Come in for a cup of tea,” says Graham when they get to his cottage, and Ruth does because she can’t think of a polite way to refuse.

  While the kettle is boiling, she goes upstairs to use the loo, the indoor water closet a recent addition to the cottage. When she lived there with her parents and sisters, they used an old earth closet behind the house, which had a door that was too short. The snow blew under it in the winter and burned her legs.

  She pulls the chain, watches the water sluice lazily around the toilet bowl. On the window ledge is a mug of shaving soap and a razor. Ruth picks up the razor and examines the tiny hairs along the blade. Graham’s face hadn’t felt that smooth when he’d pressed it against her in the car. The razor and its wedge-shaped blade is a Wilkinson, which is the same name as one of the salmon flies she ties. One bears no resemblance to the other.

  Downstairs, Graham has made the tea and it’s stewing under its knitted cozy on the kitchen table. He’s put out a plate of digestives beside it, the good kind, with one side covered in milk chocolate.

  “Meet with your approval?” he asks, but Ruth isn’t sure if he means the spread or the cottage or the new upstairs loo, so she doesn’t reply.

  The rain lashes against the windows. Graham didn’t want Socks in the house and Ruth hopes that he’s found Shep’s old doghouse and is sheltering there. She should have just left him in the back seat of the car, but he is hard to keep contained if he thinks there is exploring to be done.

  “It could do with a woman’s touch,” says Graham.

  “What could?”

  “This cottage.”

  “It had a woman’s touch until quite recently,” says Ruth. It’s only been a few years since her mother went down south to be with Eliza and Marjory, and her handiwork in the gillie’s cottage is still very much in evidence.

  Graham reaches across the table and grasps Ruth’s hand in his own. His hand is strong and his skin feels coarse, not unlike the way her father’s hand felt when she held it on their way down to the river when she was a little girl.

  “Ruth,” he says, “I’m trying. Go easy on me.”

  His hand shakes with nerves. Ruth pulls away, cruelly.

  Socks is waiting out the rain under the overhang of the old henhouse, although he is still wet through, shakes all over Ruth when they get back into the car. When they arrive home, she banks a fire in the grate, rubs Socks down with an old bit of towelling.

  She spreads the picnic blanket on the floor in front of the fireplace and eats what’s left of the food straight out of the basket, Socks curled up against her outstretched legs, the sound of the rain hitting the windows almost like music behind them.

  Mar Lodge

  RUTH EXCHANGES HER MILK ROUTE FOR THE volunteer job of being a coastwatcher. It pains her to go to Evelyn’s farm and not see Evelyn, and now that there’s talk of a German invasion, more people are needed to guard the Scottish shoreline. Barbed wire has been placed on all the beaches and there are huts on stilts along the coast so that volunteers can train their spyglasses on the sky and sea, in the hopes of spotting enemy ships or aircraft before they get too close.

  With the new job, Ruth gets a uniform and a motorbike, both of which please her. She likes the smart cut of the jacket and the shiny buttons, the jaunty angle of the hat, and she especially likes the khaki green motorbike, complete with sidecar. Petrol rations have made driving her car difficult, and she only uses it now once or twice a week, so she is grateful to be able to have the motorbike instead, burning the army’s petrol rather than her own.

  She learns to operate the motorbike in a class with other women who are training to be coast wardens. The smalle
r girls have trouble with the kick-start on the BSA, but Ruth is not timid, stomps on it for all she’s worth and never misses firing up the engine. She is also very good at navigating around the pylons that have been set up at the edge of the airfield in Dornoch. She is the first to pass the test and roars off on the bike while the others are still wobbling around the course.

  “You can always go faster than you think,” the training sergeant said to her, and Ruth takes him at his word, rolling on the throttle around every bend in the road.

  As a warden, she reports on the activity in the huts along her section of coast, compiling the reports from a dozen different huts and passing them along to her commanding officer, the British Captain Asher. She also takes a few shifts a week at the coastal hut just up the road from her cottage, which strikes her as a bit ridiculous, as she has a perfectly good view of the sea from her shed and could just as soon watch from there and not miss out on three afternoons of tying flies. She is as busy as ever in that capacity. The war has halted or curtailed many things, but fishing hasn’t been one of them.

  The hut is very basic, a simple square, wooden structure. Inside, it has a single chair, a ledge along the window side that holds the logbook and spyglasses, and Ruth’s lunch, when she remembers to bring it. Socks isn’t allowed into the hut, but he lies right outside the door. On the days that start with rain, Ruth leaves him at home.

  Her system while in the hut is to scan the sea from left to right, and then scan the sky from right to left, moving the spyglasses incrementally across the horizon, each scan taking about two minutes. Then she lets five minutes lapse before repeating, timing this break with the old watch of her father’s that she has worn on her wrist since the day he died. During the five-minute break, she goes outside, if the weather is good, and throws a stick for Socks or walks round and round the hut for a bit of exercise. When it is rainy, she works out fly patterns on a bit of paper inside the hut. Now that she is so expert at tying the traditional patterns, she is trying to invent some new patterns of her own.

  At week’s end, she drives the motorbike down to Dornoch, with Socks in the sidecar, a fact that thrills the children of Brora, who chase after the bike when she roars through the village. Socks even wears his own pair of goggles, which he tolerates without complaint. When Ruth corners too fast, he puts a paw against the lip of the sidecar to steady himself. He appears to enjoy the motorbike as much as Ruth does.