When the World Was Steady

by Claire Messud

  ‘Nothing else? At all?’

  ‘There’s the chippie,’ said the landlord. He didn’t look convinced. There was a gurgling sound as the fisherman drained one of his three pints.

  ‘I’m sure that would suit us very well. Where’s that?’

  ‘Just up from the pier here, towards the square. ’Tisn’t the finest, but it’ll do.’

  ‘There’s a fish and chip shop, Mother,’ said Virginia, carefully placing their drinks on the cardboard coasters provided. ‘That’ll be OK, won’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely OK.’ Mrs Simpson didn’t look at Virginia. Her overly-bright eyes were taking in the smeared whitewash walls, the sticky plank floor, the fisherman’s broad backside. She brought her drink to her lips without looking at it, like a blind person, and took a very little sip. ‘It’s odd to be here,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really believe we’d make it.’

  ‘Do you suppose it’s changed a lot?’

  ‘Since when?’

  Virginia was silent. Since when, indeed? Her mother had clearly hardly ever been to this place in all her seventy-nine years, and her idea of it was practically fictional. One visit, forty-two years before, with two small children in tow, did not constitute any kind of real knowledge. ‘Is it what you expected, then?’

  ‘It’s more or less what I remembered,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘I don’t think it’s changed too much.’

  ‘Remembered from when?’

  Mrs Simpson sipped thoughtfully at her drink. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll take you across to Alt-na-Ross. Perhaps we could take a picnic if the weather’s fine.’

  ‘Are you planning to ask about your relatives?’

  ‘Yours too,’ snapped Mrs Simpson. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’

  Virginia considered losing her temper: what was the point of this trip, after all? But instead she merely nodded and traced the word ‘stupid’ in the sweat of her cider glass, invisible to anyone but herself. ‘Are you hungry then?’

  ‘Yes. Although, fish and chips …’

  There’s no choice.’

  ‘No.’

  They sat in silence, but for the sounds of the fisherman swilling and clinking, and the muffled rendition of a popular song coming from a distant speaker. When a telephone rang, it made both Simpsons start.

  ‘Kenneth Campbell?’ asked the landlord loudly, as though calling through a crowd. ‘It’s for Kenneth Campbell.’

  The fisherman grunted and slid off his stool. He stood at the end of the bar and muttered into the receiver for some time, and while he did so, Virginia took her mother’s elbow and helped her to her feet. ‘Thank you,’ she called to the landlord. ‘We’re off for supper now.’ She was disappointed. She had thought the pub would be an adventure.

  ‘Up to the corner, turn left,’ said the landlord. ‘It’s the only place with any lights on.’

  ‘Where is everybody?’ asked Virginia.

  ‘They’ve all gone home. Everybody’s home now.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Kenneth Campbell, back on his stool, tapping at his two empty pint glasses and preparing to make inroads into the third. ‘Fill ’em up.’

  Outside, the light was as it had been, although it was getting late. It was pale grey, neither bright nor ominous, a light that did not indicate any time of day at all, as though a brief moment had been held and stretched, indefinitely.

  ‘Midsummer light,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘I find it a bit sinister myself I like day to be day and night to be night. The air is the colour of the sea. It’s wrong.’

  ‘Whatever happened to the Scot in your soul, Virginia?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of his presence. And his absence has not exactly been a cause for concern all these years.’

  ‘Maybe not for you. But I’m convinced that if you had been more Scottish you would have been happier in life.’

  ‘I see.’

  Mrs Simpson’s ramblings were making Virginia herself feel very stable indeed, and more than a little annoyed with her mother.

  ‘I’ve had quite a happy time, despite everything, and I feel I owe it to my Scottish nature,’ Mrs Simpson went on. ‘I have always considered my deepest impulses to be Scottish.’

  ‘Do I take it, then, that you’ve spent your life in exile?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s something you take with you. I think Emmy has it. And look how far she’s gone. I always thought you took after your father. He, of course, dear man, was not remotely Scottish.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  The chip shop did not look particularly salubrious. It had a fluorescent light, and a grinning fish in a top hat painted on the window in blue paint. Neither the floor nor the counter nor the pinafore of the waitress was very clean. There was nowhere to sit down. And the girl’s forearms were covered with burns from the spattered fat, as well as some scabby places she had quite obviously been picking at when they came in. She wore a little badge that said MARY on it.

  ‘Good evening, Mary,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘What might you have to offer us this evening?’

  ‘I’m not Mary. Mary’s off tonight. I’m Alice.’ She fingered her badge. ‘It’s Mary’s uniform, that’s all.’

  ‘So, Alice, what do you recommend?’

  ‘T’all tastes the same, really, once it’s fried. It’s the batter, you see. We use the same batter for all of them.’

  ‘I think I’ll have scampi,’ said Virginia, seeing it on the board.

  ‘The scampi are frozen. They come from London. But they taste just the same. It’d take a while to do ’em.’

  ‘What’s done, then?’

  Alice pointed with a pair of tongs at a little pile of assorted food, huddled under the heat lamp. ‘Sausage, one portion. Cod, three portions. Hake, one portion extra large. One chicken and mushroom pie. And we have chips.’ She put down the tongs and started to pick at a scab on her elbow. ‘Most people come for chips of an evening. So we don’t fry up too much else. Wastage,’ she explained, nodding.

  ‘Cod for me,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘And chips. And a Coca-Cola.’

  ‘And the same.’

  The girl slapped the lot on to two cardboard plates and salted and vinegared vigorously without asking. Then she rolled the plates into two cumbersome newsprint packages, through which the grease instantly started to seep.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can go to eat this?’ Virginia asked as she paid.

  The girl looked blank. ‘Outside somewhere, I reckon.’

  ‘It’s a bit damp, outside.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘You can ask at the pub on the pier if he’ll let you eat in there. But he’s no charmer, MacAllister. There’s always the breakwater. But she’—a nod at Mrs Simpson—‘might not be comfortable. Because of the gulls, you know.’

  As the two women perched themselves on the breakwater, a flock of gulls did indeed swoop in from around the bay to scream and jeer at their feet. Some landed on the far side of the wall, in the water, where they bobbed up and down menacingly. They were very loud.

  ‘Well,’ said Virginia, unravelling her newsprint. ‘Here we are.’

  Mrs Simpson did not look up from her soggy mess of food. ‘I won’t grace that with a reply,’ she said. ‘There is no need to be sarcastic. I’m sure we’ll do better tomorrow.’

  ‘I wasn’t being sarcastic.’

  ‘Just shush. And eat, before these damn birds move in and pluck our eyes out.’

  Both women were piling chips into their mouths with an air of quiet desolation when Kenneth Campbell emerged from the pub, pint in hand, and made his way over to where they sat.

  ‘Evening, ladies,’ he called before he reached them. ‘Not so fine for eating out, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Never mind. The weather’s always rotten around here. Absolutely terrible. Mind if I join you?’ He sat as he asked.

  ‘I suppose not, Mr Campbell.’

  ‘How d’you know—’

  ‘In t
he pub. The phone call.’

  ‘Right. He’s a right creep, that MacAllister.’

  ‘You’re not Scottish,’ said Virginia.

  ‘Well, I am and I ain’t, as they say. Grew up in Northumberland, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Are you tracing your roots? We’re tracing our roots,’ said Virginia.

  ‘No way. Wouldn’t want to find ’em. No. I run a fishing boat out of the Sound, here. Scallops.’

  ‘How interesting.’

  ‘I’ve been here a couple of years. That’s two years too long if you ask me.’ He balanced his drink on the wall and took a greasy handkerchief from his pocket. He proceeded to wipe his face with it. He was a wiry man of about forty-five, and his hair was oily and colourless, but his face, Virginia remarked, was not unattractive. He had the reddening of drink in his skin, but his eyes were clear.

  ‘What’s wrong with Skye?’ asked Mrs Simpson, who had been eyeing him with disdain since he arrived. ‘You should count yourself lucky to make a living in such a spectacular place.’

  ‘Maybe I should. Good scallops, at any rate. But the people! And the weather! And even the landscape isn’t a patch on Northumberland. Can I buy you ladies a drink?’

  ‘We’re eating our supper,’ said Mrs Simpson sharply, as if that in itself were an answer.

  ‘I’ll bring ’em out to you.’

  ‘How kind,’ said Virginia. ‘A cider for me—sweet. A half. And a whisky for Mother, with water.’

  ‘What has come over you?’ asked Mrs Simpson, as soon as Kenneth Campbell entered the pub. ‘Must we consort with such people? He’s not even Scottish! And I’m quite sure he’s no Christian, if you’re interested.’

  ‘I was only meeting good manners with good manners, Mother. Something I thought you believed in.’

  ‘You surprise me. You really do.’

  Virginia had surprised herself, rather. But she was tired of waiting, she thought. She wasn’t quite sure what she meant by this, but it seemed a good explanation.

  Kenneth Campbell was gone for some minutes—long enough, Virginia suspected, for him to have a pint or two before rejoining them. And sure enough, when he re-emerged, he was more obviously weaving than before. He seemed to be splashing the three drinks he carried into each other as well as on to the ground and on to his coat.

  ‘He’s drunk, Virginia. How could you?’

  ‘I’m not blind. It’s a question of courtesy. We’ll only stay a couple of minutes, and then we can go back to our room.’

  ‘For the ladies!’ He cheered as he plunked the drinks unsteadily on the wall. ‘To your health.’

  ‘I’m cold, Virginia. I’m going to catch cold.’

  ‘In a minute, Mother.’

  ‘Now that’s a nice name, Virginia. A fancy name for a fancy lady,’ said the fisherman, leaning towards her.

  ‘It’s just a name,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose, Mr Campbell, that you believe in God?’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘Are you a Christian, Mr Campbell?’

  ‘I’m not a Yid, if that’s what you mean. Or an Arab. By God, no. Are you?’

  ‘Oh Virginia, really,’ interjected Mrs Simpson, ‘this is ridiculous. I’m not a Christian and I can see that he’s not either. It doesn’t take a genius. And so what? Are you coming? Because if not, I’ll go up to the room on my own.’

  ‘That’s a fine plan,’ exclaimed Kenneth Campbell. ‘Because I’d like to show you my boat.’

  ‘That’s very kind I’m sure,’ said Mrs Simpson, now on her feet. She barely reached Kenneth Campbell’s shoulder, and he was not a big man. ‘We can discuss it in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean you,’ he said. ‘I meant Virginia here. You’re welcome to see the boat in the morning, if you like, but if you don’t mind, I’ll take the little lady tonight.’

  This was too much even for Virginia’s new self. ‘It’s a lovely thought for another time,’ she said in her firmest office voice, as if sacking a temporary appointment for the gravest of misdemeanours, ‘but just now we’re both very tired and I think we’ll retire for the evening.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful boat. Truly. Only a few miles up the road. C’mon.’ He grabbed at her arm.

  Virginia let out a little cry as she broke free. ‘No! No thank you. Thank you for the drinks, it was very kind of you, but no.’

  She and her mother hurried along the pier as fast as Mrs Simpson’s legs would allow, leaving Kenneth Campbell with the remains of his drink and with both of theirs, untouched.

  ‘What on earth, Virginia? What on earth? Haven’t got the sense you were born with.’ Mrs Simpson was mumbling furiously.

  But Virginia, although shaken, felt strangely pleased. Kenneth Campbell had grabbed her arm, and she had broken free. Mrs Simpson had told her not to speak to him, and she had anyway. Although in one way it had all gone terribly wrong, in another it had proved something. She was proud of herself, and when she looked out of the bedroom window at the bent silhouette of Kenneth Campbell (the light, now, was dimming somewhat), she realized that she liked him for his part in the scene. He had played it just right.

  Virginia’s triumph didn’t last long. Melody Simpson, irate, had decided that she was not speaking to her daughter, and let this be known by bangings and crashings and, ultimately, great shaking of her bedcovers—all of which announced to Virginia the impregnability of her mother’s wrath and at the same time demanded her full attention. In this fury of noisy silence, Mrs Simpson snapped off the lamp, and both women courted sleep in the endless half-light, while Kenneth Campbell called out to the sky and threw three glasses one by one into the bay.

  The weather on Skye changed very quickly indeed. When Melody Simpson awoke and saw the sun sparkling on the water, she felt a rush of pleasure: her mission would be so beautifully dispatched! It was a mission that seemed to be coalescing of its own accord: it was not born of any conscious reflection on Melody’s part. All it required was her certainty: she had long been convinced of the power of her will to direct the course of events, to control reality. What she saw in her mind’s eye were two beams of light, destined to cross: that of the necessary trip to Skye, and that of the impending but unknown moment of her death. Her mission was to locate their crossing, and Alt-na-Ross, her unthinking but unshakeable conviction assured her, was the place.

  Beneath so clear a sky, the ancestral route and her place in it could only be thrown into the most perfect relief. Melody felt eager and, so far as her daughter was concerned, conciliatory.

  But by the time they were poking at their rubbery fried eggs (served with a misplaced effort at sophistication by a pimpled youth in a blue waiter’s jacket), Melody, Virginia and a gangly, drab Dutch couple with whom they shared the table were watching fat drops of rain against the picture window, and the bay had so blurred that it all but disappeared from view.

  ‘It is very difficult, the rain in Scotland,’ said the Dutchwoman, in a third, wilted attempt to make conversation.

  ‘Does it rain a lot in Holland?’ asked Virginia.

  ‘Oh yes, quite a bit,’ said the woman.

  ‘Not so very much,’ said the man.

  ‘Not as much as here?’ asked Virginia, with a thin laugh.

  Mrs Simpson could not bring herself to look at their breakfast companions. They deflated her further. Virginia was having the same effect.

  ‘I think my feet have swollen,’ she said. ‘My shoes are too tight.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like a lie-down, after breakfast?’ said Virginia, in that public, maternal tone which indicates, to non-family members, that such complaints are a recurring nuisance which must be humoured.

  ‘No need to patronize. I shan’t be napping, thank you.’

  The Dutch couple, who were returning to the mainland and driving up to Inverness, excused themselves, and Virginia pushed back her chair as if to get up.

  ‘Where might you be going then?’

  ‘We’ve got to go somewhere. I thought I’d bru
sh my teeth before we go.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘This is a bed and breakfast, Mother. It is not an hotel. Whether we like it or not, whether it is pouring or sleeting or snowing outside, we are not invited to stay here for the day. It’s not done.’

  Mrs Simpson knew that this was so, but decided to keep up her fight. ‘According to whom is it not done? We’ve paid for our room, haven’t we?’

  ‘Mother, don’t make a scene.’

  Mrs Simpson looked around the little room. The pimpled youth was hovering forlornly by the door, hoping they would go away. ‘I just don’t see your point,’ she said. ‘We are paying good money, and quite a bit of it, for that little box with a sea view. And if I choose to lounge around it all day in my underwear, then surely that’s my choice?’

  ‘Mother, please. It doesn’t even have a chair. There’s nowhere even to sit.’ Virginia was overwrought, Mrs Simpson realized suddenly. Caught up in her own schemes and disappointments, she had quite forgotten her daughter’s precarious state. Although a bit of bullying never did anyone any harm. It made clear the fact that she, Melody Simpson, did not consider her daughter an emotional invalid, a strategy which ought to give the woman some pluck, but never seemed to. ‘You are overwrought. But I suppose,’ she conceded, ‘that I would not want to be cooped up in that horrid little room without even a chair.’

  A quarter of an hour later they relinquished their room to a very fat chambermaid (‘Chambermadam, more like,’ scoffed Mrs Simpson) and made their way, beneath a borrowed umbrella, to the Ford Fiesta, the passenger seat of which was completely sodden.

  ‘I think I’ll have to sit in the back,’ said Virginia, after pressing at the cushion and watching the water rise up out of it, around her fingers. ‘It’s too wet.’

  They sat in silence for a time, wondering what to do. After a while Virginia coughed. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘This view of the pier is fine, but—’

  ‘Fine but what?’

  ‘We have to go somewhere.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe there are some Celtic churches we could visit. I know there are some very old places of worship on these islands.’