How Far We Fall

by Jane Shemilt

  Oh for God’s sake, the audience murmurs. We want dialogue, costumes. A script. We want to know where we are.

  It’s late by the time Albie finishes his operating list. Three months into the locum and he is still going carefully, meticulous with every stitch, noting down operations in his leather book, an aide-memoire for the future. Tonight he’s meeting Beth at Quaglino’s; the box with the ring is in his jacket pocket. Her text comes through as he is hurrying down the hospital steps, struggling into his jacket and still clutching his book. She’s been asked to cover the night shift; they will have to meet tomorrow instead. She’s sorry and sends love but the disappointment is sharp, like a slap. He pushes the ring further down in his pocket; tomorrow then, he’ll ask her tomorrow. He texts a cancellation for the dinner but as he walks slowly past the Institute, he hesitates. Bruce will be in the lab, amusing if irritating, and full of the latest gossip, but up on level ten the labs are empty. Bruce has gone home and isn’t answering his mobile. Albie turns to go, catching a flicker of movement round the corner of the corridor. His pulse quickens: intruders. Porters man the desk at the entrance but someone could have slipped through. The door to the animal room is ajar. He tiptoes to the lab, glancing at the walls and ceilings – no CCTV – Bridget and her economies. At the door he pauses, heart thumping. Animal rights protesters can be violent; he takes out his phone ready to take photographs or call the police, then peers cautiously into the room.

  ‘Skuld!’

  She is bending over a cage and lifts her head unsmiling, unsurprised. She looks different from her daytime self; her hair is loose around her face, she’s wearing a short dress in some semi-transparent material. A brown satchel is slung across her chest and a jacket over her arm.

  ‘When I got home, I couldn’t remember if I’d fastened the cage properly.’ Her voice is as calm and lilting as he remembers. ‘I had, though.’ There is a faint bloom of pink along her pale cheeks but she regards him steadily.

  ‘You could have phoned the porter and saved yourself a journey.’ His heart slows and he puts his phone back in his pocket.

  ‘It was my fault,’ she says simply. ‘I had to deal with it.’

  Not every lab assistant would have bothered. He smiles at her; she looks vulnerable in that flimsy dress, one small hand on the metal bars of the cage. It occurs to him he has never yet thanked her, the harbinger of his good fortune.

  ‘I wonder – I mean, if you’ve got nothing better to do, perhaps you’d let me take you for a drink?’

  ‘I’m meeting my sisters in the pub over the way.’ A smile flickers over her face; she adjusts the strap of her satchel and pulls on her jacket. ‘Come if you like.’

  The Queen’s Larder is hot. She slips her jacket off again as she sits; her bare arms gleam amid the pressing crowds. He puts his coat on the chair and notebook on the table while he orders cider at the bar for her, beer for himself. Her sisters haven’t arrived yet.

  ‘I owe you thanks.’ He hands her the cider and sits opposite. ‘You told me what was said at that consultant meeting; you were spot on, as it happens. The Prof repeated everything you overheard, word for word. I’m doing his locum now, which I take as a good omen.’ He smiles at her across the table, feeling relaxed for the first time that day. He’d forgotten her air of stillness, the sense of calm she projects. ‘So how’s life in the lab?’

  ‘Okay. The people are nice.’

  He probes gently. He discovers she lives in Finsbury Park and swims most weekends in the ladies’ pond on Hampstead Heath with her sisters, even in winter. They own a menagerie of animals; it started with the school rats she brought home in the holidays. They have something in common then, he tells her. He looked after the rats at school too, medical school in Glasgow. He spent a year monitoring their stress for a project. She smiles when he describes the lab manager, a tough cookie called Hilary, as unrelenting to him as she was to her three little girls, who clustered round his desk to watch him work while they waited for their father to take them home.

  ‘Well, well, well.’

  He spins round, meeting the sardonic expression of a tall woman with thick grey hair piled high in a loose knot. Her lean face seems familiar. As she bends to kiss Skuld he remembers why: she was one of the waitresses serving food at Ted’s party.

  ‘Verdandi,’ murmurs Skuld, sipping her cider.

  He pulls a chair out for her and introduces himself. Verdandi nods coolly. ‘I know who you are.’

  He returns to the bar to buy her a cider as well, watching as a third woman joins the group, small, plump and laughing, shedding scarves and jangling bracelets. The three heads move close together, lemon blond, pale grey and now fiery red. He orders another cider.

  ‘Sorry for crashing your party. I’m Albie.’ He distributes the drinks, then leans to shake the redhead’s hand. She stares. ‘Gosh, do people really still do that?’

  He withdraws his hand and sits down, discomforted.

  ‘I’m Urth.’ The brown eyes mock him. ‘Pronounced earth, as in salt of the. I saw you at that party.’ As she reaches for her glass, her bracelets slide back and reveal a little mouse, inked in red on the base of her thumb.

  ‘Ah. The mark of the sisterhood.’ He smiles.

  She ignores him, lifting her glass. ‘To freedom.’ A few heads turn but the sisters seem unaware; they are focused on each other as they clink glasses. Perhaps they do this every evening, celebrating the moment of release at the end of the day. That sense of freedom hardly registers with him nowadays as he hurries down the streets into the underground, heading home to write up his PhD until the early hours.

  ‘What’s this then?’ Urth spots his notebook and begins to turn the pages with stubby fingers; her tone is amused but her cat-like eyes are avid.

  ‘Oh, records and plans, that sort of thing. Boring stuff, really.’ His face burns as he reaches for the book and slips it on his lap. He doesn’t want her making fun of his drawings. ‘So Skuld told me one of you works with animals and one of you in the kitchen—’

  ‘I’m the cook.’ Urth opens her coat to reveal a striped apron underneath. She laughs, a sexy, low-pitched chuckle. ‘Very scientific.’

  ‘So … you both work in the lab?’

  She shakes her head, grinning at his confusion. ‘No, that’s Verdandi. I work in the kitchen, producing food for the consultants’ meetings and their personal events. And I run a little cake-making company on the side. We deliver, since you ask.’

  ‘All this on your own?’ he asks, surprised out of his awkwardness.

  ‘My sisters help when they can. Mum chips in. Chips – that’s a joke.’ Her sisters smile too, watching him.

  Is it all a joke? ‘Sorry, I thought Skuld said your mother—’

  ‘Works with animals?’ Verdandi interrupts. ‘She does. A woman of many talents, our mother. Baking’s her hobby; what do you do for fun?’

  He hasn’t thought of fun for a while. It was his brother’s word, not his; it belongs back in childhood and disappeared when Jamie left, along with surfboards and music, outrageous clothes and crowds of people. Fun recalls the fairs their mother took them to as little boys; it has a taste as sweet and brief as candyfloss.

  ‘I play squash.’ Though not now that Ted’s away. He won’t mention Beth either; they’ll turn that into a joke. It’s hard to think of anything unconnected to work. ‘I go for runs. I went to the theatre a few months back, but most nights I’m on the wards or writing up my research …’ His voice trails off. They are looking at him with pity.

  ‘Make cakes,’ Urth says. ‘More fun.’ She moves closer until their shoulders touch. When she opens her mouth he can see the glint of a piercing through the point of her tongue. ‘We’re going out for some fun now, come with us.’

  He could swear there is a feather-light touch on his leg, like the brush of a small foot. Around him the noise in the pub coalesces in an unpleasant roar of sound. Something dark seems to hover in the air. People look round at the scrape of t
he chair as he stands. The sisters stare up at him as if he were an amusing spectacle at the zoo, and no doubt he is being ridiculous.

  ‘Past your bedtime?’ Verandi’s eyebrows rise on her forehead; they are thin and grey like the tails of tiny animals.

  ‘Forgive me.’ He blushes. ‘I’ve just clocked the time. I’m meeting a friend … supper …’ His lies stumble on. ‘We must do this again.’

  He walks to the door with his book, conscious that their heads are close together again; he hears laughter. The cold air calms him. How stupid he’s been. He’s dog-tired; the day has been exhausting – a pint of beer and he feels threatened by a bunch of girls. All the same, as he hurries down the road, he is conscious of a sense of danger looming somewhere just out of sight. In the station, the sleepy pigeons flutter from his feet and swoop low over the track. The birds in Jura come to mind, the sea eagles that fly over the waves looking for prey, their great wings casting wide shadows on the water as they skim the surface.

  7

  Jura. Late Spring 2016

  A mass of black hair moves sluggishly in the water, the strands separate as the waves bring it forward and close together when tugged back. Beth dips her fingers in the icy foam. The strands are slimy, fibroid. Seaweed, not hair. The ring on her finger flashes, a fragment of green ice refracted in underwater sunshine; the gold band above it sparkles. She wipes her hands on her shorts and shoves them deep in the pockets. She won’t tell Albie. He would smile and ask how human hair could possibly come to be floating in the tide at her feet. She kicks the dark hank aside, disliking the way it clings round her legs. A couple of dead fish lie at the edge of the water; the eyes have gone and nests of flies are busy in the sockets. Albie is further down the beach, stretched out on a ledge of rock in the heat. He hasn’t moved for ten minutes; one arm is over his eyes, the elbow pointing skywards. He looks at home, moulded to the landscape.

  Harris noses at dried seaweed and coils of rope at the back of the beach; behind him the jagged rocks rise to an overhang of grass and heather. A bright strip of gorse straggles near the edge where a tree clings to the top of the cliff, bent by the wind, the trunk soft and green with lichen. The Paps, Jura’s central mountains, loom distantly. Her face had been wet with sweat when they climbed them yesterday, her feet sliding on scree, but Albie had pulled her on. At the top he showed her the empty moorland stretching to the sea, the small white crofts dotted along the shore and clustered around inlets, with Dunbar further up the coast on its own. The land rose and fell, patterned with shadow and pocked by inland lochs; uninhabited islands were scattered off the coast and across the sea, the mountains on the mainland were faintly visible, purpled by distance. A vast landscape inside which her world had narrowed to the hot clasp of his hand.

  A curlew treads at the foamy edge, one curled foot held high as the downward-sloping beak probes the sand. The warm air carries its watery cry above the thud and suck of the ocean. A tern swoops low, wheels, then comes back at her fast, the wings beating close to her face. She holds herself very still. The cold surf swirls over her feet, as lacy as a wedding dress, though hers had been quite plain, a sleeveless white shift bought in a hurry online. Albie had been in a rush, keen to take her to his island home as his wife. Their home, he had corrected himself, a place where they could escape. A place for children. They had known each other for six months and been engaged for one – why wait any longer?

  Children. Her heart had swollen with hope but a shiver ran over her skin, like the tremor of water in a passing wind; could she risk loss another time? She smiled and agreed to everything. This was a time for happiness; nothing must get in the way.

  They were married a month later, Owen and his wife Elsa came as witnesses. Owen’s beard tickled as he kissed her; the beads strung into Elsa’s blond locks clicked and swung merrily when she hugged Beth, but Gus, their two-year-old, cried loudly throughout the service. Owen threw rose petals over them on the steps of the registry office afterwards, but it was raining and the petals melted to brown scraps underfoot. The weather was cold for late May, her sleeveless dress had been a mistake. People stared. The rain, like the child’s incessant sobbing, seemed unlucky, a bad omen, though Albie smiled all day, gripping her hand like a prize he’d just won and didn’t dare relinquish. They took the train to Glasgow then drove to Kennacraig, caught the ferry to Islay and another to Jura, the skies clearing as they arrived. A good omen at last to set against the bad. Dunbar was waiting, the white walls bright in the sun. She stumbled from the car into warm air scented with grass and salt; he led her across the lawn and through a gate where a path wound steeply downwards to the beach, narrow between high banks, quiet and shaded with ferns. When they emerged on to shingle with the seabirds wheeling above, it was as though they had entered a cathedral of light and song. He spun her round until she was giddy. A sense of happiness and luck enveloped her; she felt married then.

  The tern moves away, hovers over the breakers and dives, hovers again. When she reaches Albie, she lies down next to him, sliding her hand under his, settling her face against the rough linen of his shirt. He wakes and grips her hand, holding it against his heart.

  ‘I dreamt about you.’ He tucks his chin down, staring at her.

  ‘What was I doing?’

  He doesn’t answer but kisses her fingertips, one by one.

  ‘What was I doing?’ She slips her free hand under his shirt, and watches his pupils dilate in her shadow.

  ‘You were in the sea a long way out, struggling on your own.’ His voice is strained. ‘It seemed real. Promise me you’ll never swim by yourself.’

  If it was real, he must have glimpsed her past and not the future; as a child she had wandered into the surf on her own, while her parents lay sleeping on the sand, their empty bottles strewn around them. She was up to her neck by the time a passing stranger hauled her out.

  ‘It’s hot. I want to swim now.’ She frees her hand, takes off her shirt and lies back to push down her shorts. She is wearing nothing underneath her clothes; he stares down at her, surprise and desire flitting over his face. She smiles. ‘If you’re worried by your dream, you’ll have to come with me.’

  He sits up to take off his shirt and bends to kiss her right breast, taking her nipple gently in his mouth. His tongue is warm. He lifts her from the rocks to the sand and carries her into the sea till they are waist deep, then sets her down gently as if she were a bottle of wine that he doesn’t want to spill. The water is shockingly cold. They swim the length of the beach diving under the waves, the noise thundering in her ears. Seals bob up to watch, disappear then resurface metres away, their dog-like faces placid. After a while the chill seems to enter her bones and she comes out, struggling to find her feet in the surf. She sits on the pebbles wrapped in a towel; Harris pushes his sandy body against her and the shuddering gradually slows. Albie stays in the water for another hour.

  Later they drive to the hotel in Craighouse for lunch, leaving Harris at home. The hotel faces the shore, next to the distillery. The air smells of peaty alcohol, as if the molecules themselves were saturated in whisky. Stone bungalows line the road facing the sea. A couple of freckled little boys lean against the village store, balancing on bikes; their fair hair shines in the sun as they suck ice lollies and stare at Beth. Three men in overalls stroll to the quayside from the shop, sandwiches in hand, while a group of tourists in bright anoraks troop into the distillery. She watches them disappear into darkness, glad that she isn’t one of them. She has a home on the island, she belongs here now, an insider.

  In the hotel reception a round-faced woman with a wide frizz of grey hair is writing in a red file; she looks up when they come in, her eyes widen comically, then, whipping off half-moon glasses, she comes forward to grasp Albie’s hands. ‘Well now, I heard you were here.’ She stands on tiptoe to kiss him and steps back, eyebrows raised, smiling at Beth.

  ‘Iona, this is Beth, my wife. Darling, Iona. She keeps an eye on Dunbar when we’re away; she�
��s in charge of pretty much everything on the island.’

  Iona laughs, shaking her head. ‘Welcome to Jura, Beth.’ The hug is scented with jasmine. ‘Congratulations.’ She turns to Albie. ‘Your father would have been so happy. Dunbar has been empty for too long; people have been enquiring if it’s for sale—’

  ‘It isn’t; I thought you knew that.’ There is an unfamiliar edge to Albie’s voice.

  ‘Of course I know that, dear, but it could do with a bit of money spending on it. There are gaps in the roof where the tiles have been blown off. The window sills are rotting. I can see why people think it’s been abandoned. Now, what do you think, Albie?’

  ‘What do I think?’ Albie’s eyebrows descend, his lips tighten. ‘I think we’d be extraordinarily lucky if there was any money at all to spare for repairs.’

  ‘Well, we’re lucky with the weather.’ Beth slips her hand into Albie’s. ‘We went swimming by the house this morning.’

  ‘You’ll be hungry then.’ Iona nods, her eyes meeting Beth’s with the ghost of a wink. ‘Follow me.’

  It’s early in the season; she leads them through a forest of empty tables to a place by the window. Beth leans her head against the glass; while they were talking to Iona a summer squall has blown up. The sun is still strong but rain is pattering against her cheek the other side of the pane. The fronds of the palm tree outside are moving in the wind and the wire is slapping against the flagpole on the lawn. A large boat stirs at anchor by the end of a stone pier over to the right. Men load casks on to a crane that lifts the heavy barrels on deck; they work stolidly on in the rain. The wet air is luminous. A rainbow stretches across the sky. Albie hasn’t noticed. He’s studying the menu, deep lines between his eyebrows. The exchange with Iona has worried him. Some deal Ted arranged with a drug company to buy Albie’s virus patent seems to have come to nothing – like all Ted’s promises, though Albie doesn’t know that yet. Beth reaches to touch his hand across the table. Albie looks up and smiles, covering her hand with his.