Pine

by Francine Toon

  ‘Oh, cheers.’ Niall tries to sound genuine. Lauren is opening her fiddle case, flipping up the silver latches.

  ‘Yeah, the band’s coming on pretty well actually. Looks like we might be headed for the big time. Imagine me, famous!’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Niall opens a bottle of Joker IPA.

  ‘BBC Scotland are doing a piece on folk music in the Highlands, you know, and rumour has it they could be interviewing me.’

  ‘Well, that’d suit you down to the ground.’

  Sandy smiles broadly, his teeth unnaturally white. ‘Ha! Well. Fingers crossed. We’ve got this bothy kitted out to practise in. Here, speaking of the devil, do you ever see that Alan Mackie about?’

  ‘Well, yes, you know he stays just down the road.’ Niall sinks into the sofa and gulps from the bottle, while Lauren practises her finger movements on the neck of the violin.

  ‘Just keep an eye on him, won’t you? I get a bit of a funny feeling.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Seen him pestering Diane in the Black Horse the other night. He needs to watch himself, that one.’

  ‘I can’t not think of him as Mr Mackie, you know. Since school.’

  ‘Aye, I know, always one for girls, that man. I remember it, when he was teaching us PE.’

  ‘No. You’re serious?’

  ‘Aye, I’m telling you, just keep’ – he looks at Lauren – ‘keep an eye out.’

  14

  Sunday morning stays dark for a long time. Lauren hangs over the side of the bed and reaches for her pocketknife. She can still feel the sensation of the young woman’s fingers in her hair, her palm cupping her skull. Recently, Lauren’s thoughts about what this means have been swirling to the surface like silvery sediment, loose and difficult to contain. Maybe if the woman is who Lauren thinks she is, she will appear again. Maybe this means her mother is never coming back. Lauren opens the knife up in her hands: bright metal glinting from antler. She stares at her eyes reflected in the blade, then snaps it shut.

  When it finally arrives, the dawn is buttery. A robin sings in the hazel outside. The crystals spin in the window and one produces a rainbow against the cream wall. When she opens the curtains, the world is white and a silence has fallen.

  The jet obelisk from the make-up box has been placed carefully on her bedside table, next to the worry dolls. Her father is using the buzz saw in the garden. She can recognize the different electrical devices he uses: the buzz saw, the hedge strimmer, the lawn mower, the sander.

  As she gets dressed, she takes a blue biro from her pencil case and, in front of her wardrobe mirror, she draws on her right side. A creature with many tentacles, difficult to capture. She tries to finish it but can’t draw the same way as her reflection.

  Lauren trudges up to the white woods before lunchtime, her old blue joggers ballooning over her wellies. She knows Billy will be back from church before too long. Snow doesn’t make any difference. She identifies bird calls and spots robins among the branches heavy with snow. She hears a crow and hums the Welly Boot Song under her breath as she clears a path around the hut in a circle. The stones have vanished; just the indented soil is left. She wonders if Maisie has been here again, but it feels too weird a trick for her to play. Lauren chews the chapped skin on her lip and thinks her father might be hiding something. He wouldn’t come up here, though, and do this. Lauren’s coat is thick but the air still sifts through the zip and stings her cheeks. She looks up at the blue, clear sky and believes it will snow again. She feels safer with Jameson, who stays close, his nose to the ground, padding through the paths she clears through the bracken.

  When Billy arrives, the light is already slipping away. He wants to play armies again. Lauren, feeling less disturbed, says they can if they use the walkie-talkies.

  ‘I want a dog like Jameson,’ Billy says. His nose is red, and he sounds out of breath in the cold. ‘I think he likes me better than you. Do you not, Jameson? He likes me.’

  ‘He does not,’ Lauren says. Disagreeing is almost fun.

  ‘Does.’

  ‘Not as much as me. Jameson, do tricks.’

  Jameson looks at her, then sniffs busily along the forest ground again.

  ‘No, he can do it. Jameson. Give me your paw.’ She holds her palm up. ‘I want Jameson to be a show dog. We can compete together. Maybe go on Britain’s Got Talent.’

  ‘Army dogs aren’t show dogs.’

  ‘He’s not an army dog.’ She shakes her head to herself, as if she’s older than Billy, not younger.

  The snow deadens sound between the trees. Billy is now a general, ordering Lauren on a special reconnaissance mission and teaching her how to fire a gun.

  ‘I know how to fire a gun. My dad has one, a real one,’ Lauren says. ‘He showed me how to use it.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’ He rolls his eyes.

  ‘Did.’

  ‘Go and bring it out next time and give me a shot.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Lauren says, more to the trees than to Billy. The bones of her toes feel like shards of ice. She notices another buzzard sitting on a branch further away in the oncoming twilight. ‘I like the snow,’ she says. ‘Everything so still.’ Snow is hopeful to her.

  Billy is breaking a large branch apart and doesn’t hear. ‘It wasn’t this cold in Paris. It was nice.’

  ‘Do you ever stop wearing that hat?’ she asks, pointing at his Aberdeen FC beanie. She remembers two years ago when his uncle gave it to him for Christmas.

  ‘Not in church,’ he says.

  ‘No, I bet you love it so much you sleep in it.’

  She tries to grab it off his head and he pushes her away, gently but defensively. ‘You’re not an Aberdeen supporter,’ he says, half smiling. ‘You don’t get to touch it.’

  ‘Whatever, pal,’ she says, knowing it will irritate him, and walks away to collect more stray twigs to twist around the den. They hardly ever sit in the hut, but Billy has suggested that maybe one night they’ll camp there, in the summer.

  She finds Jameson digging in the ground with deep concentration, as though he has found a rabbit. As she gets closer, something small and hard chips into the air, catching the snowy light. She watches it fall into a pile of leaves that are dusted with snow like iced biscuits. She upturns the mulch with a crooked stick, poking around for it. In this part of the forest there are no birds. The snow here is untouched, like mounds of sugar, except for the occasional line of a deer’s track. She can feel the chill through her wellies, seeping into her socks. She prods around some more until she finds a dull piece of metal: a silver ring. When she picks it up she sees that it is shaped like hands holding a heart. She tries to catch her breath in the cold, and the forest and Billy and the rest of the world fade away. She holds the ring tightly in her fist, as though this is the only thing she has in the world.

  ‘Mum. Mum.’ Her tears are hot and she finds herself on her knees, her legs being too weak to hold her. She does not know what is real any more. And yet, she feels the slippery, metallic coldness against her fingers and opens her hand again. The ring is still there. She wipes her eyes and cheek with a snowy glove, pulls her hand out into the freezing air and slides the ring over her thumb.

  She walks the short way back, calling Jameson to heel.

  The sun is sinking and the walkie-talkie twitches with static in her other hand, before Billy’s voice comes through: ‘Lauren. Lauren. Where’ve you gone?’ She can see Billy’s outline growing larger as he walks towards her. The clouds hang heavy, like wet wool, and stars start to appear through the trees like large, shining stones at the bottom of a river.

  The temperature has fallen with the sun and Lauren hugs her padded arms to her padded body.

  ‘It’s already dark. Come on,’ he says. ‘I’ve got homework to do.’

  The thought of school tomorrow sits in her stomach. They gather various belongings and treasures scattered around the camp – some plastic binoculars, a handmade catapult, a rusty teapot, a length of rope – and put them inside the hut. They
argue about whether to take home the packet of bourbons that have been stolen from Billy’s larder, before deciding to leave it in the supply tin, half buried in the frozen ground.

  They walk back down the looping path, banked by snow-laden ferns, towards Clavanmore. She likes Billy walking beside her like this, in his Aberdeen beanie. He’s like a big brother, but with a better face and hair. Lauren rolls the silver ring between her index finger and thumb, in her pocket. Darkness seeps into the forest and the white snow fades to a dark grey, then darker still, until the world is black.

  15

  Niall wipes away the grouting and stands back. ‘That’s me done for today,’ he calls. Catriona hasn’t heard him, but everything has seemed back to normal since she was ill. She must have forgiven him. He reaches into his coat and takes a sip from a rectangular flask.

  He walks out through the darkened corridor, over tiles he has laid himself, to the kitchen, where he can smell cooking. It is a nice house and he likes being part of it. He pads through the open door and sees Catriona standing at the countertop in black leggings and an oversized shirt. Her feet are bare on the terracotta tiles.

  ‘Watch you don’t catch a chill,’ he says.

  Uncertainty flickers across her face; then she gives a tight smile. ‘Oh, I’m feeling loads better now.’ Her nose still sounds blocked.

  A couple of trout lie on the glass chopping board. She picks up one and slides a long, thin knife under its left fin, cutting deep towards the head. Her bouncy hair is tied back with a polka-dot ribbon and her short nails are painted a cherry-juice red. A high, winding guitar plays a riff he doesn’t recognize from a silver stereo. She turns the fish over and begins to cut the other side. He clears his throat and she springs up.

  ‘Niall. Sorry, I’m a bit flustered today.’ She shouldn’t have to apologize; he knows he was the one who overstepped the mark.

  ‘You’re all right,’ he says.

  ‘How’s the floor looking?’

  ‘Pretty good.’ He smiles hesitantly.

  She looks back at him matter-of-factly. ‘OK, thanks.’ She proceeds to snap the head off the fish, gently, throwing it into a poly bag hanging from a drawer handle.

  ‘Those local?’ He tries to sound good-natured, friendly, but wonders why it seems so hard.

  ‘Huh?’ She turns back towards him, headless fish in hand. ‘Yeah. I caught them at the lochans.’ She shrugs, and he watches the way her plump mouth moves.

  ‘You’re into your fishing, are you?’ he says.

  She laughs again, as if she’s embarrassed, and turns back to run her knife down the fish’s back, rippling the silver scales. Her hands are smooth and young. The kitchen smells of butter and lemon.

  He walks over to her and stands just close enough to hear her breath as she begins to fillet the fish.

  ‘So that’s me done for the day,’ he says. He wonders what she likes to drink. He wishes he could ask.

  She takes a couple of seconds to register what he has said and how close he is standing. Her body stiffens. ‘Thanks very much, Niall, I appreciate it.’ The knife scrapes against the spine of the fish as she separates it into two halves.

  He steps back and props his hand on the edge of the marble-effect countertop that he fitted a few months ago.

  ‘Mind those fish guts,’ she says.

  He looks at the golden hoop through her ear, then at his boots on the tiled floor and the good grouting he has done. Her brown feet look so delicate next to his. ‘Any plans this evening then?’ He can’t quite leave this beautiful room.

  ‘Yeah, actually.’ She looks down and makes another cut into the side of the second fish. ‘Yeah.’ She glances at the black window. ‘I think you know him maybe,’ she says, turning over the second fish and positioning her knife just under its fin. ‘Sandy Ross?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Niall says. Oh aye. ‘How d’you know him?’

  ‘Well, we got chatting at a folk music night when I first moved here. He asked me to come to the ceilidh the other night. I didn’t even want to try and dance, I didn’t really know many people, apart from those who visit the surgery. So I just watched him and … and you, of course.’ This last part is only a politeness. ‘That was after he took me to the lochans the other weekend and showed me, you know, how to catch these. Pretty nice of him. I just stuck them in the freezer.’ She cuts deep behind the brain of the fish. ‘Maybe that’s how I caught the cold.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Niall says. The bastard.

  ‘So, you know, he’s actually going to pop round and try one of these, he said.’ Her voice trails off.

  ‘Right, uh-huh,’ Niall says. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’ He can feel his heart beating in his chest. He needs to get out.

  ‘See you, Niall,’ she says absently.

  ‘Go easy on the bevvy,’ he mutters as he leaves, but she doesn’t hear him.

  He plans to go home, but finds himself taking the turning for Strath Horne instead. Leaving his tool kit in the pickup, he walks, dazed, into the Black Horse Inn.

  The back door is locked. Lauren rattles the handle several times, but she can’t get back into her house. Her dad never mentioned he would be out this evening. He never usually is on a Sunday, even though he still often works, keeping odd hours. She takes out her single spare key on its puffin keyring and jams it into the lock.

  Inside, it’s dark and cold with a shaft of moonlight falling upon the stairs from the window. The clouds have drifted, and the night is clearer than the day. She does not know how to stoke the boiler. She pulls her father’s heavy dressing gown from the hook on the back of his bedroom door and wraps it around her, rolling up the sleeves in wide folds. The end trails behind her like a cape as she walks.

  Up in her bedroom she lays her tarot cards out on the bed. A draught creeps across her shoulder blades and, for a moment, she gets a strange feeling of a hand, reaching out of the darkness. She shakes her head and shoulders and shuffles the dog-eared cards. She flicks three across her bed, face down, then puts her hand over the first card and asks it to tell her what is going on. The next one she asks what is getting in the way. The third she asks what will fix the problem.

  Lauren takes a moment to clear her mind and push thoughts about time and school away, as best she can. She turns the first card over on the bedspread. The High Priestess stares back at her with blank eyes, her face placid under a strange horned crown. She sits between two pillars, one black and one white. These, Lauren knows, stand for the bad and the good, the dead and the living, the end and the beginning. Meanings refract through symbols like sunlight. The woman’s necklace is shaped like a ‘plus’ sign, showing she is like both of the pillars she sits between, two opposites in one person. There is a wall of red split fruit and dense leaves behind her. A sliver of yellow moon lies at the woman’s robed feet, like the joined horns of a Highland cow. Lauren props this woman up on the windowsill.

  She turns over the second card. It’s the Hermit: the obstacle. He is a thin, white-bearded man with stooping shoulders under a long, hooded cloak. In one hand he holds a tall yellow staff, and in the other a lantern. Inside the lantern is a pointed, shining star. It’s as if he has taken it from the sky and imprisoned it there. He walks over craggy grey ground.

  This is a card Lauren doesn’t know very well. She flicks through the spaewife’s book and finds an old, shaky note written in the section on tarot:

  The Hermit: his right haund holds the Lamp o’ Truith, its star guidin those who dinna ken the way. His left haund holds the patriarch’s staff to bide by dern, saicret paiths, using his lanesome nature and knawledge to find his way. His cloak signifies he is unseen, discreet, cannie. His saicrets are no for awbody.

  She places the Hermit, the obstacle, next to the High Priestess on the window ledge and turns the final card. A hand reaching out of cloud, clutching an upright, shining sword, from which golden leaves or flames fall. The tip of the sword meets with a small gold crown and drooping wreaths. Lauren flicks again throug
h the pages of the notebook. Written in another sloping hand are the words The Ace of Swords signifies clarity, raw power, triumph.

  Thick flakes of snow float down diagonally outside her bedroom window, increasing in speed.

  She places the card next to the others before reaching down and tucking her knife inside her rucksack.

  There is the dripping sound again. When she goes to take a look downstairs, the dripping speeds up, faster and louder. She looks around the kitchen and at the ceiling to make sure nothing is wrong. There is a rank smell coming from the utility room that gets stronger when she opens its dark door. She switches on the top light and it sparks. She jumps, and backs towards the door. In a dark, far corner she can make out what looks like blood, spattering down from a crack in the utility-room ceiling. Water doesn’t fall that way.

  Lauren’s chest feels like a deflated balloon. She tries to breathe. The blood is falling into the bucket her dad has put out to catch the drips. She notices the smell of iron. The blood pools on the top of the chest freezer, the colour so dark it is almost black. She runs without turning to see if it was really there. When she closes her eyes she can see the woman, protecting her. Her face placid, like the tarot card.

  Lauren sits in the sagging armchair and watches an Italian cookery show blankly for an hour on the TV. At the closing credits she realizes the windows have turned black. She texts her father: ‘Where are you? @ home.’

  Next up is a game show, but Lauren can’t answer any of the questions.

  ‘In which city would you find the Bridge of Sighs?’

  ‘Glasgow,’ says Lauren in a spaced-out monotone.

  ‘Let me repeat that. In which city would you find the Bridge. Of. Sighs.’