Spring Manoeuvres

by Peter Gilmour

  He found her journal (clearly she had intended him to, for it was in her desk), a red hardbacked book in which there were only seven entries. From entry to entry the handwriting had deteriorated, he noticed, parts of the last one barely legible.

  In spite of its awful privacy, he took it as a kind of gift. He read it again and again, sometimes inside the house, sometimes outside, in the May sunshine, often weeping at the generosity of her thoughts and feelings, calling out to her. Why hadn’t she been able to share them with him when she lived? Or was this in part what she had been doing? Through the apparent privacy of her journal she had been reaching out to him?

  He did these things although he thought it possible that he was still being watched.

  They had been questioned, Larry and he, Larry mainly about the explosion, Douglas about Edith’s death. For a whole morning the cottage and garden had been searched, but nothing had come to light. (Douglas had hidden Edith’s journal and Larry his manuals and tools.) There was nothing to link Larry with the explosion, and Edith’s death was accepted by the procurator fiscal as suicide on account of illness and unsound mind.

  However, as if the authorities believed it was only a matter of time before evidence emerged, before father and son did something incriminating, police or military vehicles drove past the cottage daily. Sometimes they went quickly, as if on their way somewhere else, sometimes slowly, as if about to stop. Once a police car stopped under a tree: for a whole hour a pair of binoculars was trained on the cottage. Douglas and Larry could see them glinting in the sun.

  They were surprised by the blatancy of it. What was their game? Were they trying to scare them into a confession? Any confession better than none?

  The surveillance seemed to stop when Larry went to Dumfriesshire. Douglas continued to look for signs of it, but didn’t find any. This didn’t entirely persuade him it had ceased, however. If he had been sharp enough, he suspected, he would have spotted it. But grief had slowed him down; some of his awareness had been blunted. Scenes and figures from the past were visiting him, haunting him. The present could take care of itself. They might still be keeping an eye on him, the police, the military, here and there, now and then. He just couldn’t see it.

  He didn’t think it mattered really. Hadn’t he deeper adjustments to make? Nevertheless, whenever Larry rang, which was three or four times a week, he gave him strong reassurances, not thinking he would come home without them.

  Larry had been nervous as well as miserable since his mother’s death, morbid actually, going so far as to blame himself for it. Had he not been so obsessed with the raft, the explosion, it wouldn’t have happened. She wouldn’t have been driven to such an extreme. More than likely he had given her a taste for extremes. More than likely he had.

  Douglas tried to calm him, himself as well, by saying that it was clear from the journal that it was the years of pain and illness that had given her a taste for extremes, extremes of martyrdom at that. What she had tried to do was sublimate her pain, use it in the service of mankind. A kind of horrific apotheosis. That was how they should see it. The terms of the journal should be the terms of their appreciation. And they were high terms.

  He would read parts of the journal over the phone to Larry, aware as he did so that his son was sometimes weeping, sometimes sobbing. He read on because there was nothing else for it, because he was sure also that Edith would have wanted it. Her journal was her story, the last part of her life. She had left it to them.

  He didn’t seek Helen out much, but was pleased to see her whenever she called, which was every two or three days. Usually they went out somewhere, Helen driving. She talked about her cottage, her plans for it, what it was like to live there after the city. She talked about the sounds on waking, the smells, the light. She might have been trying to ease him, he thought, so simply did she speak.

  Either this or she spoke about Edith. The manner of her death had humbled her. She acted as if, for the time being, it was the measure of all things, her own contribution on the day of the march, paltry, insignificant, vain. She was desperate to hear about her, almost anything at all. Douglas was glad to oblige, for above all he wanted to talk about this woman who had been his wife.

  Doing so, however, he could become confused: was he talking to Helen in the presence of Edith, or to Edith in the presence of Helen? To the living and the dead, both, he seemed to be paying court.

  One morning she took him along the coast to where a fishing boat, its net allegedly entangled with a submarine, had been sunk, its crew of three lost. The local community was demanding an inquiry, compensation, the Americans were denying liability. She had been to the scene three times already, she said. Two bodies had been washed ashore, and Douglas had the odd impression that Helen wanted to be the one to find the third. She spoke of how the shore there would receive bodies; of how they would rock gently backwards and forwards on tidal backwaters, waiting; of how bodies found in water on a quiet shore would be less shocking than bodies found in basements, streets, hillsides, undergrowth. It was as if she had made a study of it, was preparing to offer herself to the local community as some kind of helper, expert. A way of announcing herself, the new owner of the cottage beneath the cliff.

  They parked the car above the cove where the bodies had been found. A small group of locals stood on the beach round a fire. They weren’t talking, just standing about, a kind of vigil. Two of them nodded when Helen got out of the car. Douglas wondered if their protest was already running out of steam. Then one of them called out to Helen that in the local paper the Americans had been accused of war games, of playing with the fishing boats, using them in their manoeuvres. Helen answered that it didn’t surprise her; it would have surprised her had it not been so. Hands in pockets, she moved towards the fire a little, stopped. A cold wind was blowing.

  When she moved on, it was purposefully, taking Douglas to the spot between two rocks where, propped in a sitting position apparently, one of the bodies had been found. As if it was she who had discovered it, she made sinuous movements with her hands as she spoke.

  “The last body may be found miles away,” Douglas said. “Or not at all. It sometimes happens.”

  “I know. But it’s important he should be found. He was married, with three young children.”

  He would have said that, when he opened his mouth to speak, it was to persuade Helen to come home. It was too cold to be out; a bank of dark clouds was moving in from the sea – soon there would be rain as well as wind. Also, he didn’t want her to be disappointed: quite obviously she was hoping to be invited to stand by the fire and discuss the recent outrage, make plans.

  When he spoke, however, it was to encourage her in her search for the body, to commend her, her patience and concern, her radicalism, low grade and borrowed though it might be. He heard himself suggest that they walk along the shore for a mile or two, searching. Surprised by his mood of willingness, wanting to act on it while it lasted, he turned his jacket collar up and, taking her by the hand, set off.

  Since Edith’s death, he had got used to this sort of thing, to being surprised by himself, his moods, initiatives. Of all the strange things he had done, though, this was probably the strangest. Their chances of finding the body were remote, but here he was, diligent amongst rocks and seaweed, pools and backwaters, giving it a try.

  If he had embarked on the search as a kind of game, a way of humouring Helen, it wasn’t long before he was taking it seriously. From diligence to gravity: he noted it in himself.

  The wind was getting colder, it was becoming very overcast, and a group of fishing boats, in solidarity with the dead, was moving towards the base, flags flying.

  Quite suddenly then Douglas had the sense that their presence on the shore, the locals in quiet vigil about the fire, the fishing boats in protest on the loch, were necessities, hard and radiant beyond mere contingency. It seemed to dignify him. He moved with a kind of strenuous gravity, looking left and right, stopping, going forwards a
few yards, stopping again, checking behind rocks, in pools, going forwards once more.

  The arrival of the rain, far from deterring him, made him quite as urgent in his searches as Helen. His strides were vigilant and disciplined, perfectly adapted to the conditions, and it was perhaps for this reason indeed that he had the intermittent illusion that he was pushing Edith in her wheelchair. Once he actually leant forwards slightly as though to try and catch what she was saying or to say something himself.

  Helen had a pair of binoculars with which, every five minutes or so, she would scan the loch, the shoreline. When she spotted anything, she would raise her left hand and call to Douglas to come and check whether what she was seeing was a tyre, a crate, a buoy, a body.

  When the fishing boats came back, rolling and pitching, still in formation, they looked at them too through the binoculars. The crew were in yellow mackintoshes, standing to attention beneath the vigorous flags as the boats, as though self-driven at this time of grief, moved steadily towards the bank of dark clouds.

  It started to rain heavily. They left the shore and made for a wood, sheltering there for about half an hour while the rain fell angrily through the foliage into the earth about them. The loch was heaving, the line between water and sky indistinguishable now, and the fishing boats were moving in and out of mist and darkness.

  “The fire won’t survive this,” Douglas said.

  “No. But they’ll be back on duty as soon as they can.”

  “There are always causes,” Douglas offered, believing that Edith had said something like it in her journal. “We don’t have to look far.”

  But Helen was glued to the binoculars again. Even from here and in the poor light Douglas could see that what attracted her attention was a seal, not a drowned fisherman.

  He wasn’t sleeping well. Either he couldn’t get off at all or he would wake suddenly (once, convinced that Edith was in the room, calling for him) and be unable to sleep again. He took to visiting his observatory around midnight, staying there until three or four when he would go to bed and sleep for a few hours, waking, if not refreshed, then alert, sanguine before the day.

  In the first two weeks of June there was a succession of clear nights after hot days. It was still warm as he made his way up to the observatory. Moths and fireflies greeted him at the door, bats were about, and there were rabbits, undone by the heat, barely moving.

  Setting up the telescope, he felt the heat of the day in the wooden walls and roof, and, if he trained it on a cottage or a boat, he was aware of haze, shimmering, distortion. When he trained it on the sky, however, he was aware of no such interference. Distant space seemed clearer and steadier than his own locality, purer. He felt its coolness, from the troubled heat of his earthly frame felt it keenly.

  He had been observing Andromeda for five nights, but tonight the Great Square of Pegasus at its western end was clearer than he had ever known it. One of the great constellations of early summer, two sides of the square were pointing towards the Pole Star. He didn’t know why he was dwelling on it quite so ardently, with such expectation, and he didn’t know why he had begun to speak the names of the stars out loud. Algenib and Markab, the names of the bottom stars of the Great Square, he uttered several times with grand emphasis.

  Sailors dependent on them for navigation, he thought, might have spoken them thus. Algenib, Markab. Great presences. He tried to study them silently, but soon he was speaking the names again and in a voice not quite his own, he felt. Incantatory, as though someone was speaking through him, it seemed to issue from abnormal depths, his whole body quivering. Sweat gathered in his eyes; the end of the telescope grew moist. He had to step outside for a few moments, into the close darkness.

  Around four he went down to the cottage, but instead of going to bed, he made himself a meal. He hadn’t been eating well and this sudden hunger surprised him. He even laid a place for himself at the kitchen table. He ate meditatively, with gratitude, an omelette, a salad, fruit salad, remembering the time after his heart attack when he had rediscovered food.

  He looked out into the garden as he ate, seeing that the short summer night was almost over. Released from the shades, Larry’s hut was a presence again, seemed to be asking for attention, use.

  When the phone rang then, he was as prepared for it, he thought, as he would ever be. If it was a friend, he would tell them about Andromeda and Pegasus; he would speak the names Algenib and Markab. Would be glad to. Midsummer equanimity. The sort of night which kept people up, made them take note of their world. Possible to think that even the careless would be moved to see that the stars were close, the earth warm.

  If it was an enemy, he found himself thinking, it wouldn’t make any difference: he would still talk about Andromeda and Pegasus. Why not? For the time being he had few other thoughts. Truly spoken, Algenib and Markab might carry the day.

  He spoke into the receiver fearlessly, giving his number. There was no reply. He spoke his number again. Still no reply. He thought it might be Larry, drunk and desperate, struggling in a phone box or someone’s home. He waited. Still no answer, but he could tell, from a certain fullness, openness, that the line was alive and that there was someone there.

  A click then: the line was dead, leaving him with the feeling that he had been looked over and found, if not wanting, then irregular somehow, out of step.

  Though it was almost light, he went up to the observatory again. He loved to watch stars disappear, dissolved as by light and distance. As a child, he had had the fancy that when dawn broke the stars sped to the outer reaches of the universe, there to be consumed and replaced, the following night, by other stars. To see the Great Square of Pegasus fade, the air softening about the hooded earth, was to be quietened. It was easy then to fold up the telescope, lock the hut and go down to bed. Sleep would follow.

  He was surprised in his descent by the sight of a car. It was stationary, parked off the road a little past the cottage. He couldn’t see if there was anyone in it. Nestled into the hillside, it looked as if it had been there all night. It wasn’t a navy car or a police car, but that didn’t mean anything. It was harder than ever these days to know what was what, who was who. There seemed no end to the forms of disguise and masquerade.

  It worked both ways, of course. Whoever was in the car might be thinking that Douglas’ observatory was a cover for something else. In parts of the world like this, there was no reason to trust appearances. None at all.

  He went deliberately down the hill through the luminous dawn, keeping his eye on the car. When he reached his garden, he set up the telescope between two trees and went down on one knee.

  He could discern dim shapes in white shirts, a match flaring, movements, also something glinting, binoculars perhaps. In the lee of the hill, nothing was clear. Probably why it had been chosen, he thought. Tactics. The necessity of tactics.

  The deadliness of mutual scrutiny. Stalemate. Too ridiculous to unnerve.

  Laughing, he stood up, folded the telescope and went inside.

  He was woken by the phone just after nine. It was Helen, asking him did he want to go for a picnic, it was such a beautiful day. He agreed, thinking that today almost any of her suggestions would have seemed inspired.

  Still in pyjamas, he went outside. The air was balmy, the loch without ripples, like glinting tin, and the sky cloudless.

  The car had gone, the place where it had stood bright and clear, a lay-by merely. Perhaps they had been a courting couple, overwrought by midsummer, unable to keep their hands off one another.

  The phone rang again, Larry this time, wondering if it would be all right if he came home for a short visit in ten days’ time. Apart from anything else, he had his court case. And there was a girl, Belinda, he wanted his father to meet.

  “You’ll like her.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  “We won’t be disturbing you, Helen and you, I mean?”

  “Not at all. Delighted.”

  “Not moved
in yet, has she?”

  Douglas laughed.

  “Moving in maybe but not moved in. That’ll take time. Months.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Dead sure.”

  “See you then.”

  “Sure. Take care.”

  He went outside again, for it was indeed a beautiful day, unusually quiet for that part of the world.

  Copyright

  © Peter Gilmour 2015

  Published on 30 May 2015 by

  Vagabond Voices Publishing Ltd.

  Glasgow

  Scotland

  ISBN: 978–1–908251–50–3

  The author’s rights to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 have been asserted.

  Cover design by Mark Mechan

  Typeset by Park Productions

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy towards this publication from Creative Scotland

  For further information on Vagabond Voices, see the website:

  www.vagabondvoices.co.uk