by Freya North
‘I don’t know,’ William sighed, flopping down into the sand and resting his arms lightly on bent knees, ‘I go there to visit and he has no idea who I am. There seems to be no purpose to my going. A waste of time. Exhausting. Upsetting. Really upsetting. Very little point.’ He pulled his finger along the sand, spelt his name and then doodled.
‘There is a point,’ began Mac almost sternly, ‘but you’ll probably not see it for some while. Probably not till after you’ve buried him.’
William frowned at him but let it lie.
‘It was odd,’ he said lightly, changing the subject, ‘he had this book and in the back was this pattern, over and over again.’ William approximated it in the sand. Mac said nothing.
‘Strange,’ continued William, drawing it again, ‘because I’m sure I know it.’
Though Mac remained standing to save his arthritic knees, he could see the pattern quite clearly. Not that William had even needed to draw it.
‘It’s a popular design,’ suggested Mac, ‘probably used for Liberty prints and the like.’
‘Yes, probably,’ conceded William. Then he raised a finger and cocked his head, frowning slightly. ‘Hang on a tick: when I visited him in the early spring, I doodled on the condensation on the window-pane – you know, my initials, tracery at Tintern – and also this pattern which I’d just come across in the form of a brooch on my way to the Home.’
Mac did not comment.
‘Maybe it’s like the ability autistics have,’ pondered William, ‘you know, to draw from memory perfectly a building seen only once, or to solve great mathematical equations?’
‘Maybe,’ said Mac, nodding.
‘So strange,’ rued William, ‘that he can seem so incapacitated and yet have drawn an intricate pattern having seen it only the once.’
‘Only the once!’ Mac exclaimed.
‘Hey?’ said William.
‘Did he react when you drew it?’ Mac asked.
‘React!’ scoffed William. ‘Dad!’ he chuckled cruelly. ‘Only if you can call a chorus of je je je-ing a reaction!’
William stood up and walked slowly along the beach. Mac meandered over to the sea and gazed across it.
‘Je je je for Jocelyn,’ he said to himself sadly.
THIRTY-TWO
‘Jasper? Jasper!’
‘In the garden, darling!’
‘Scottish epistle!’
‘Ho! I’m coming in!’
Jocelyn had left her beloved garden in the best of hands and, though it nagged his back, Jasper spent most afternoons primping and tidying and annihilating imaginary weeds. The white Himalayan geranium had come out overnight but not even its gossamer petals threaded delicately with crimson could keep him away from a long overdue letter from Chloë.
‘What does our wee lassie say?’ he asked as he loped into the kitchen, a little out of breath and with soil clinging to his hair. ‘Any Highland flings? And does she mention how Ireland ended?’
Peregrine scanned the letter.
‘Yes she does,’ he acknowledged. ‘Could you not have told me about Gus and Jocelyn? she asks, ah, and provides the answer immediately: No, I understand perfectly why you could not. Anyway, I now feel a certain fondness for Gus – gratitude too – as if he afforded me a glimpse of a Jocelyn previously unseen. Bless the girl!’
‘What about the sculptor chappie?’ asked Jasper, shaking his head over the sink and watching a centipede circumnavigate the plughole before delving down, past the point of no return. ‘Conan or whatever!’
‘Gracious me!’ announced Peregrine, feigning abject horror. ‘It says here: Ronan did unmentionable things to me over a clump of Kilkenny limestone!’
‘The Barbarian! Can’t have been comfortable,’ rued Jasper shaking his head and causing more soil to spatter over yesterday’s Times.
‘Well, my dear, we wouldn’t know now, would we? But Chloë assures us the rock was warmer and more comfortable than one would have thought. Good Lord! It appears the cad then carved the stone into a homage to her body! She says she was horrified and humiliated at first but now, her residing feeling is one of pride. Gracious! I hope she doesn’t have any distinguishing birthmarks. Well, it seems they parted on good terms. What’s this?’
‘What’s what?’ said Jasper, quite content to forgo a direct recounting of the gory details of Chloë’s sex life.
‘The girl was in Ireland too long, that’s what – says she saw a giant who was no taller than her shoulder!’
‘Indeed?’
‘Indeed,’ said Peregrine, muttering ‘Bloody paddies’ under his breath.
‘Where is she in Scotland? With Celia Lomax on Mull?’
‘No, with Fraser Buchanan,’ corrected Peregrine.
‘But he’s two months dead!’ gasped Jasper.
‘Due-nyar!’ Peregrine stressed.
Jasper tapped his head and raised his eyebrows at himself.
‘It seems they’re both having a jolly time of it,’ Peregrine continued: ‘Neither of us have the foggiest what we want to do, what our purpose in life is to be, she explains. Fraser had been teaching in a Glasgow comprehensive which he found utterly soul-destroying. The kids taunted him too – he’s one of us, remember. We are both lucky enough to have some money enabling us “time out” for a little while, and for this we are deeply indebted to our benefactors. So frustrating that we can’t say so directly! Fraser senior sounded lovely and I wish I’d met him – do you remember him? Do we! A sporran to bring tears to the eyes!’
Jasper’s eyes watered. Peregrine flounced him a silk handkerchief.
‘Enough!’ Jasper chided. ‘We’re far too old to be so incorrigible. What is she doing with her time in Scottish Land?’
‘It seems they’ve spent the month touring around the Highlands – Crianlarich, Bridge of Orchy, Spean Bridge; across to Oban, up to Fort William, over to watch salmon jumping at Pitlochry, a stroll through the estate at Blair Athol. What unites this land, she says here, is this great dignity emanating over all. The beautiful hues of heather and bracken, the reflections cast and continually changing from all this inland water; the very lie of the land – the way the mountains simultaneously rise up from the lochs and seem to slip so gracefully, deep into them; the sweep of the glens extending over the land as a pianist’s fingers over a keyboard – certainly Scotland is filled with music, from the song of the waterfalls to the lament of the bagpipes, and that Mendelssohn overture that I have stuck in my mind. The girl really should use more full stops. Here she goes: I hear, too, the plaintive mew of buzzards which seems to stretch to the horizon and I’ve also seen eagles for the first time in my life – nothing prepares you for their majesty; they ride the air with such consummate mastery, hovering effortlessly before tilting a feather tip and hurtling across the sky to spiral upwards, ever upwards, before plummeting like a bullet; their presence in the landscape imposing and yet so complementary too. See how out of breath her sentences make me?’
‘Scotland,’ qualified Jasper, ‘seems to be taking her breath away more!’
Fraser had swiftly become Chloë’s confidante and she his. They were the siblings their parents had never given them; Fraser, because his mother had died when he was three and his father never remarried; Chloë, because Torica and Owen quickly discovered at her birth a supreme deficit of parental proclivity. Chloë found she had indeed a brother; Fraser, a sister. Both now had a best friend for whom they could show unconditional and easily platonic love.
Scotland suited Chloë very well and though she was not Scottish, she would have been proud to be so. Indeed, many presumed that she was, and she did not correct them. At last she felt utterly at ease with her luscious auburn hair. It no longer seemed out of place and people did not comment as they were prone to do in other countries: ‘Look at that hair! Is it a bind? Are you Scottish?’ Despite Fraser’s initial anxiety, the small community around them warmed to Chloë immediately and those who had previously blanked Fraser now granted him a degree
of cordiality, albeit at a safe distance. Some easily persuaded themselves that och, the lad had found a lass and all is well again. Whatever their reasoning, nods were now given when passing the pair and pleasantries exchanged when newspapers, or pints of milk or bitter, were bought.
Fraser and Chloë became steadfast house-mates and Chloë soon confided to Mrs Andrews that she could even envisage Braer becoming her home.
‘Rather ramshackle, dear,’ Mrs Andrews had said, trying not to wrinkle her nose.
‘Bit cut off – and rather grave, all that granite,’ agreed Mr Andrews. ‘Anyway, you’ve England next on the agenda.’
‘Braer’s not ramshackle,’ protested Chloë, wondering if Jocelyn’s itinerary was really set in stone, ‘it just rambles in a somewhat unkempt way.’
‘I.e. ramshackle,’ Mrs Andrews declared, rolling her ‘r’ triumphantly.
‘Look,’ Chloë said, ‘we can’t all have acres of parkland in Suffolk. Indeed, we don’t all want that! Anyway, I like everything a little out of sync. I loved the antiques in the tack room at Skirrid End and the horse rugs on the bed – and I felt rather clumsy amongst all the order and control at Ballygorm, remember. Just because half the rooms here are empty, and the others are filled with incongruous items of furniture doesn’t make Braer less of a home than yours. I feel at home here, that’s what counts. And anyway, Fraser and I take it in turns to hoover and dust. And we wash up immediately after every meal.’
Mr and Mrs Andrews regarded each other with a small shrug of the shoulders before taking their leave of Chloë. They had ordered a mahogany library table by Gillows of Lancaster and it was due to arrive that morning, as were two dozen quails for a small dinner party they were having that evening.
Chloë and Fraser did not eat quail but they cooked together and concocted great stews and substantial soups over which they congratulated themselves heartily. They kept house and shared a home; having heart-to-hearts, reading quietly, laughing frequently or nattering into the small hours.
‘Come blether with your brother,’ Fraser would invite, patting the sofa, or drawing up a chair in the kitchen, or holding out his hand as they strolled along the Orchy. Whilst they were delighted to share, they also gave each other space and silence instinctively. If Chloë’s door was shut, Fraser would stroll past it and then call to her later from the bottom of the stairs. Chloë seemed to know, too, when to chat and when to let him be, gazing out of windows or immersed in book or thought.
Her room was far more cosy than the Victorian austerity at Braer initially suggested. On her first morning, Fraser had busied himself making sure the room was ready and decorous. He glossed the window-sills and gave a lick to the single bed with the remaining paint. He took down the frayed blind whose sides curled like a stale sandwich, and disappeared into the attic to emerge some time later with a pair of lined curtains in maroon and gold Madras check.
‘Jocelyn made these,’ he told Chloë, ‘she came to stay directly after a long trip to India where she bought the fabric. A “thinking trip” she called it, for some reason!’
Chloë was delighted and took the curtains from Fraser, hugging them close to her and burying her nose deep. Musty, not Mitsuko. But heavenly.
‘Jocelyn must have known that I’d find these,’ she announced to Fraser, ‘that they’d keep me safe and snug. Made for the Buchanans and now made use of by me.’
‘She liked it here,’ Fraser assured her. Chloë nodded vigorously and wrapped her arms about Fraser, embracing him fully but gently.
‘This house and its inhabitants meant something – much – to her,’ she said, ‘and thereby all the more to me.’
Once Fraser had extricated himself from Chloë’s arms which were obviously quite happy to stay put all day, he set a little terracotta amphora over a saucer on the bedside table and added a few drops of lily-of-the-valley essence. Then he bunched together a clutch of flowers and interesting twigs from the garden and placed them in a jug on the chair by the window.
‘The sills aren’t dry,’ he explained when he finally presented the room to Chloë, ‘but you can move the flowers there later.’
‘Actually,’ said Chloë, ‘I rather like them there, on the chair.’
‘Then I’ll fetch another,’ Fraser said.
‘No, no,’ protested Chloë, already quite overwhelmed, ‘it’s fine!’
But Fraser brought in an old loom chair that had a quicksand effect and was dangerously comfortable. Everything was. And Chloë refused to heed Mr Andrews’s warning that she would have to pack up and go once the bracken had turned and the hills were shot through with deep violet and brown. At the moment the hills were green and gold and blushed with pink; a whole spectrum away.
Neither Chloë nor Fraser knew what they wanted to do in the long term, so it seemed a very sound idea to spend the meantime pondering such matters at length against the conducive backdrop of the Highlands. For perhaps the first time, Chloë found true purpose in Jocelyn’s stratagem. She believed her godmother knew this country as well as she knew her god-daughter, that she had prophesied the impact of the place and trusted the clarity of light to filter right through to Chloë’s soul and sense.
Scotland itself will tell me what to do. Where to go. What to be.
Yes?
Do you still not believe that you can fathom it for yourself, all by yourself?
No?
Not just yet?
‘What do you want to be when you’re big?’ asks Fraser at Mallaig as they gaze over the Sound of Sleat to Skye. Chloë hums ‘Speed Bonny Boat’ all the way through, twice, while she racks her brains.
‘When I grow up,’ she labours, until she bumps her mind against the dark wall of no idea, ‘er, I shall be a princess! And you?’ She stands up and pulls Fraser to his feet. They face the water and close their eyes while the warmth of the sun licks their faces and the breeze blesses their lungs.
‘Well,’ Fraser proclaims in a childish voice, ‘I’d like to be a lustman, I mean a dustman!’ Chloë digs him in the ribs. ‘Or maybe,’ he laughs, ‘Spiderman!’ and he chases Chloë to the water’s edge, contorting his fingers in arachnoid approximation.
‘Perhaps I’ll be a salmon farmer,’ he mused as he and Chloë played Pooh-sticks over an unstable bridge at Pitlochry. But they spoke no more of it because it was too tempting to see who could spot the most salmon jumping instead. Chloë won; she saw fourteen. She had never seen fish leaping before. Oh, to catch one. Make a wish.
‘I’ll bet you were a brilliant teacher,’ Chloë announced on waking from a doze in the heather in a glen near Oban. Fraser accepted her compliment silently and then mulled over it.
‘Only if the children wanted to learn,’ he clarified. ‘I could teach them, aye, until the answers were right every time. But if they did not want to learn, my purpose and enjoyment were nothing.’
‘Did they really tease you,’ Chloë asked tentatively, ‘did they really know?’ She scoured Fraser’s face and was relieved to see no hurt traverse its prettiness. He smirked.
‘I neither denied nor confirmed – and I never gave them aught, of that I was right careful. Och, but the gossip! “Ho mo! I’ve left my homo-work behind!”’ he mimicked in falsetto, ‘“and my pencil’s bent, sir!”’
‘I need to go to the sickbay, I feel queer!’ Chloë interrupted merrily in plausible Glaswegian. ‘I think it was the faggots at lunch-time, sir.’
‘“It’s such a gay day, Mr Buchanan, can we not pick us some pansies?”’ cried Fraser, enjoying the last laugh.
They take a day-trip over to Mull and Chloë spends the ferry crossing explaining to Fraser the pointless intricacies of working with students at an inner-city college.
‘Sorry, have I been bending your ear?’ she asks when he interrupts to point out Duart Castle on the headland of the isle.
‘Och, I wouldn’t fret,’ he assures her, ‘it was bent already!’
Taking photos of Fraser by the candy-coloured buildings of Tobermory h
arbour with a disposable camera, Chloë knows she will never return to that job, or to one remotely similar. As Fraser photographs her on the return crossing, the light still more than adequate though it is nearing ten o’clock, she knows too that she will never return to the city. Any city. She knows now what she does not want; but realizes as well that she still has no idea what it is that she actually does want to do. Jocelyn’s money will not last forever. And it occurs to Chloë now, that she would not have wanted it to anyway.
Fraser and Chloë walked through Glencoe but it was far too awesome for anything but reverential silence and the occasional stunned gasp at the sheer beauty and enduring melancholy that permeated.
‘What do you want?’ Chloë asks Fraser as they sit in the kitchen scalding their tongues on piping hot flapjacks. ‘Fraser?’
‘A blob of ice-cream?’ he suggests. Chloë pulls a face at him that says ‘No! but really?’ Fraser goes to the freezer and returns with a tub of vanilla ice-cream. It is very yellow and glistens with tiny shards of ice. It is also frozen solid. Fraser hammers a spoon down into it but it takes a stance like Excalibur. Dejected, he takes the tub by the spoon over to the stove.
‘I don’t know, my Chlo,’ he says with honesty, ‘a good life, a loving partner?’
‘Has there ever been one?’ she asks. ‘Someone?’
Fraser returns to the table and munches on a now pleasingly chewy flapjack.
‘Only lust,’ he bemoans, contorting his lips to dislodge oat flakes from his gums, ‘and a fair bit of it,’ he sighs and seems to chide himself, ‘I always initially mistake it for the love that it invariably never turns into!’
Chloë understands without actually being able to share the sentiment or predicament. They chew on.
‘But no,’ Fraser rues, ‘never a someone.’
‘Not yet,’ Chloë says warmly. Fraser nods. ‘But that’s what you’d like,’ she clarifies. Fraser nods.
‘You?’ he demands.
‘Me?’ Chloë responds.
‘Aye,’ he says sternly, ‘and you?’
‘Well,’ Chloë starts while her finger is in her mouth, searching out clogs of flapjack from her molars, ‘there was Brett who was a selfish, sexist pig but it took me an age and a half, and Jocelyn’s death, to realize! And then, in Wales, there was this darling boy called Carl.’