The Way to Babylon

by Paul Kearney

  New Year. It was always a big thing in Scotland. Should auld acquaintance and all that.

  Nurse Cohen took him round the garden in his chair that afternoon. He listened to her as she talked about the New Year and the party, and Bisbee’s tyrannies, not so much aware of what she said as the way she said it.

  It was cold, but it had stopped raining, and a fitful sun was drifting through a wrack of clouds. The river was full and noisy, throwing away sunlight as it broke over stones, and the willows were almost bare.

  ‘There will be snowdrops here soon,’ said Nurse Cohen. She imprisoned some hair that the wind had freed. ‘Then the daffodils come up in the spring, and this whole bank is covered with them. It’s quite a sight; sort of cheering.’ The chair halted. ‘Will you really not be here to see it, Mr Riven?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’m pretty much put together again now. I’ve no excuse for staying any longer.’ And I have things to do. He forced a smile. ‘I’ll tell you next year.’

  ‘Next year. Well, I’ve no resolutions made, so I won’t be breaking any as I usually do. Doody promises to behave himself a little more, though I’ve never seen bacon with wings. I reckon old Bisbee could make a resolution to take that poker from up her backside.’

  Riven laughed.

  ‘Mr Riven?’

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘You can call me Anne, you know, if you want to. Most of the other patients do.’

  ‘Okay. Anne it is.’

  ‘Good.’ She looked at the sky. ‘Rain. I’d best get you inside. Patients aren’t supposed to get wet.’ She wheeled him back towards the Centre.

  The meal was not as big an occasion as at Christmas, but it was certainly livelier. The staff ate with the patients, and there was a good deal of merrymaking at Riven’s end of the table, where Doody and Nurse Cohen—Anne—had stationed themselves. In front of them sat several innocuous-looking bottles which housed rather fiery liquid. Hence the noise level, at which Nurse Bisbee shot more than one suspicious look.

  Some electronic wizard had rigged up a system whereby Big Ben chimed on speakers set in the wall. As the meal ended, and the magical moment approached, it grew quieter. Riven wheeled himself away from the table and took up position near a window that looked out on to the garden, which was now lost in the dark.

  A fine night for Hogmanay.

  The stars were so bright that he could make out Sirius, even from inside. He wanted to be out, alone under the sky as he had so often been in his life. The lights in the room dimmed and the speakers began to crackle. A voice began telling of the crowds in Trafalgar Square and the antics in the fountains. Doody was dancing a jig with an old woman who was whooping with laughter. She looked as though she had not danced in decades. Nurse Cohen joined them, along with an octogenarian who on other days would be grumbling in his bed.

  The chimes began to ring out, and the dancing stopped. Glass in hand, Riven stood up.

  Nine, ten, eleven...

  On the last stroke he drained his glass, and raised it to the ceiling.

  For you, my bonny lass. A New Year.

  As he limped out of the room he saw Nurse Cohen being kissed by Doody. The patients were giving each other elderly pecks.

  Shaking arms entwined, and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ began. It followed him as he made his way outside into the still air and the cold stars, out to the lawn and the quietly churning river.

  The grass was wet and slippery, and his progress was slow. He stopped to place the constellations. Orion with his shining belt. The Plough, and the North Star. Venus down near the horizon, and bright Jupiter. They had guided him in times before this. They guided him now, as though the time could be taken back and he was on Skye again with a heart that was whole and in the keeping of someone who loved him.

  The river flashed back starlight and brimmed under the bare limbs of the willows. He sat down and fumbled with his shoes, hands quivering with tiredness. Then his socks; and the chill dew was wet on his bare feet.

  The water was so cold at first that it burned, but then it merely tingled, glittering around his calves. He stood there and let it pour around him, and stared at the high arch of the sky. It seemed to wheel in a velvet immensity. He was its hub, the pivot on which it turned. He knew his time at Beechfield was over. It was time to go. Time to return to the mountains.

  FOUR

  RIVEN WAS NOT going back to Camasunary to write a book. He was trying to lay a ghost to rest, to heal himself. He thought that perhaps the writing would be a part of that, but he could not be sure. Whatever was to happen, he was here, now, on a train, his belongings crumpled in a rucksack at his crooked feet, Beechfield half a dozen counties to his back, and a new year opening out like a dark flower in front of him.

  A night train journey. He never bothered to get a sleeper; it was a sort of tradition that he pass as uncomfortable a time as possible getting to Skye. It seemed to make the first sight of the Cuillins across the Sound of Sleat all the more worthwhile. Mind you—he peered at the blue gloom beyond the window—if it keeps like this I’ll see nothing but the usual drizzle.

  Carlisle went past, and with it England. The motion of the train lulled him into a doze. He woke hours later from his cramped sleep to feel the pains in his legs and see dawn break out over high land. It was already spotted with snow. He wondered if there would be any on the islands; and for the first time considered the difficulties of getting to the bothy. There was no alternative to hoofing it over the ridge. He could hardly get someone to carry him.

  He got off the train on a grey, damp morning at Mallaig, and walked the short distance to the harbour. Around him were fishing boats, and a tangle of lobster pots and fish boxes. Gulls screamed overhead, the first time he had heard them in what seemed like years. He looked up to see the housing estate perched incongruously on the side of the mountain above the harbour. The slopes were brown with dead bracken, but he could see Skye across the sound. He was back again, back in the land of sea and stone.

  He was in time for the noon ferry, and boarded the small vessel with a feeling akin to fear. To be this close again. Was it the best thing? But there was a determination in him.

  He stayed on deck during the short voyage, and let the wind mock his beard. Armadale, low-lying and wooded, was approaching. From there it was a long bus journey, and then the hike over the ridge.

  Speed, bonny boat... I think.

  The ferry pitched and tossed below him, and the gulls followed in its wake. What was he coming back to? The thought of Camasunary, dead as she was dead, with her things inside, left as they had been left that summer morning, made him squirm. Made the black mood hover close to his head and nestle on his shoulder.

  Maybe Molesy’s advice was not so hot.

  From the pier at Armadale he was subject to the vagaries of the island bus system. He managed to get to Broadford without much trouble. From there he could catch the post bus which went through Torrin; first, however, he ensconced himself in a hotel and fortified himself with a few drams of McLeod’s whisky. A head for the hard stuff was a vital social skill, and it was something he had picked up in his time in Scotland.

  The little red bus that took post around the island arrived late, as usual. The driver did not recognise him, for which Riven was profoundly thankful. He sat in silence as the vehicle wound its way around the knees of mountains, south beyond to Torrin. For Riven, it was like going back in time. The months in the Centre seemed like a grey and hazy dream from which he had finally woken.

  And at last the ridge, leaning tawny with the bracken above him, its head powdered with snow. He breathed deeply and fingered his stick, looked about him. From a dripping stand of hazel nearby, he cut himself a staff better suited to the rough ground, and began the long haul upwards. The whisky glow left him after a few moments of wind-driven drizzle. He bent forward, took small steps and tried to regulate his wild breathing.

  Noisy rills crossed what path there was, soaking his feet. He felt the beginnings of swea
t on his back and under his armpits, though his face remained wind-cold. Stopping for a moment, he straightened up and stared at the climb ahead, trying to ignore the pains in his legs.

  I must be mad.

  But he lurched forward again, leaning on the hazel staff. There were a few Highland cattle on the hillside. They eyed him with placid curiosity, chewing cud under a shaggy fringe. He splashed past them and stole a glance at the sullen sky.

  Looks as though it’s about to dump something really unpleasant. He was familiar with this path, this ridge. He knew most of the twists and turns, the false summits, the areas of bog and black peat water, but the body which ached up it now was unfamiliar. New weaknesses mapped his ascent, so that he was taking this path for the first time, ignorant of the effort required to follow it.

  He crossed the snowline, and the rain turned into sleet that gathered on the rocks and the clumps of heather and then degenerated into slush, only to be replaced by a fresh flurry. A soft day, Calum would have said, with his imperturbable pipe in his mouth and his eyes gazing out from a face which had seen much worse. But Calum had died a year before his daughter, with his dog whining at his feet on a clear night of moon and silver surf, bowed under a load of drift which his heart had refused to bear.

  Riven reached the summit of the ridge, and sat down on a stone with the sight of Sligachan glen blooming out before him in the gathering darkness and the whipping sleet. A mountain loomed opposite, and to his left the sea hissed in long spumes that crashed on the beach below. Aye. A soft day; but not a soft night to follow it. He rubbed his legs, utterly alone and near to tears. Only some stubborn, partly military thing prevented him from sobbing, as it had prevented him from weeping when his corporal had been blown to bits in front of him in Ireland, or when he had known Jenny was dead.

  And, again, he could see her, hair tossed by the wind, wrapped up against the winter, laughing and telling him to hurry on. To hurry on down this hill I’ve climbed. So he started off again, swearing at his legs, the mud, the water and the winter, and most of all at himself.

  The way down was harder, hurting his calves and jarring his bones. He had to grasp heather and boulders to control the rate of his descent, jam the staff in the sodden ground before him. The way was so steep that the path had to double back on itself every so often, creating a pale zigzag down the side of the ridge. Streams took the more direct route down, bisecting his way frequently. His wet feet ceased to feel uncomfortable, but the pain bothered him. He had visions of bolts coming loose, screws floating away inside muscles, metal scraping bone.

  The sleet turned to rain again as he descended. Chill, stinging rain propelled by a wind off the sea. The breakers were roaring into the bay and smashing in a white fury on the headland beyond. His eyes followed the beach as he stumbled down, and he thought he saw the dark dot of the bothy on the far end of the bay.

  Then he slipped on a green boulder and fell heavily, rolling a little down the slope and landing with his face an inch away from black peat water. He lay there a moment as the water calmed and the beginning of his reflection was created; then struggled on to his hands and knees, sinking in the ooze to his wrists. Soaked to the bone and black with mud, he levered himself to his feet and staggered on, mouthing curses, head bent against the wind.

  ‘LOOK HOW BLUE the sea is today,’ he said, stopping on the top of the ridge and easing his thumbs between the pack straps and his shoulders.

  She looked at him, hair whipped by the wind to a dark, flickering mane. ‘It’s all blue and green here in the summer, and calm as milk down in the glen. Lots of midges, though.’ She took off her pack and dropped it to the ground. ‘Let’s stop a wee minute and have a breather.’

  He joined her.

  The wind swept across the hills in erratic waves of air, flattening grass and making its underside glisten in the sunlight. The clouds were white and billowing, tumbled across the hard, pale blue sky. The day was clean and fresh; they could see with crystal clarity the stony peaks of the Cuillins parade in the long ridges to the edge of sight.

  They lay in the crackling bracken, Jenny’s hair spread out like a fan. She pushed it back from her face and leaned on one elbow beside him. Overhead a curlew arced, calling shrilly, and the shadow clouds covered them more frequently. Perhaps a mizzle of rain was forming out over the sea, and readying itself for the assault on the mountainous coast.

  Jenny stirred. ‘People are like the seasons, you know,’ she said absently. Riven frowned at her. She lay now on her stomach with her chin cradled in her hands. Her eyes flashed with laughter at the puzzlement on his face. ‘It’s true,’ she said, ‘they are. Some are winter, some summer, others spring and autumn.’ He laughed at her, and she tugged his hair.

  ‘What does that make me?’ he asked.

  ‘An idiot,’ she cried.

  He grabbed her and held her captive, but she struggled. ‘Idiot!’ she yelled again, triumphantly, and twisted in his grasp, but could not break free. Finally she lay quiet in his arms. The wind blew her hair out behind her, sweeping across the hillside and tossing the gulls overhead about like leaves. They grinned at each other, their faces inches apart.

  ‘You,’ Riven said breathlessly, ‘are spring, with the wind and the showers, and the shifting clouds...’ He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘And autumn,’ he murmured, ‘with the richness of harvest.’

  Their lips met again as the wind hissed around them, and the clouds massed steadily, obscuring the sun.

  IT WAS DARK, and he was stumbling through knee-deep mud that marked the end of the descent. The mountains were vast dark shapes against a slightly lighter sky. The wind had battered away most of the cloud, and the rain had lessened. Soon it would be moonrise. He splashed on through the rushes that carpeted this part of the valley floor, the pain in his legs becoming a bright light in his head.

  Hard part over, me old son. Now just a plod across the bay. The rain finally ceased, but a fine spray whipped off the water to sting his face and salt his lips. The beach was awash with foam and moonlight, the breakers shining in long lines out to sea.

  He was past the mud and crunching on shingle, his feet sliding on the larger pebbles and the staff slipping off smooth stones. It kicked up the odd shell to reveal sudden mother-of-pearl palenesses.

  He stopped, breathing hard. The bothy could be seen clearly. It was dark, with the bulk of the mountains behind it and the bright marriage of sea and sky beside it.

  No lights. No fire.

  A stab of grief went through him and then drained away, leaving him as cold as the shingle.

  Fuck it.

  He jabbed his staff at the ground and hauled himself forward, the sea spray making him squint. There was a storm of wind rushing down the glen. He could imagine it beating at the windows and howling down the chimney. Making the door bang.

  This door. This threshold.

  He fumbled with the keys, chill in an outer pocket, as the wind battered him relentlessly.

  Numb, useless.

  And the door opened.

  He stood swaying with the storm a black and silver roar behind him and his legs a painful abyss away. The door banged against the wall and the wind rushed in past him, sending up a flock of ashes from the dead fireplace, ruffling the pale pages of a book left half-read. Flapping the sleeve of a jumper flung on a chair. Flung, where she had left it.

  ‘I don’t need it—it’s too nice a day, and it would make me boil. Come on, Michael, you old woman, let’s get out while the sun lasts. It’s beginning to darken earlier these days.’ And the sound of the gulls outside, screaming.

  He closed the door behind him, thrusting it shut against the wind’s insistence; and the room became dead again, dark save where the moonlight came in the windows.

  He dropped his rucksack and staff with a clatter and sank to his knees on the flagged floor, his clothes dripping and his hair lank across his forehead. Their picture peered at him from the shadowed mantelpiece, and the two brass candlesti
cks glinted coldly in chorus. There, on his desk, his typewriter and a thick file of paper weighed down by a rounded rock from the beach. A coffee mug sitting there.

  ‘—But I haven’t finished this—’

  ‘Oh, leave it. Your head needs some mountain air in it.’

  Here, by the door, wellington boots. His hiking boots, also, along with a smaller pair. He touched a lace idly, then turned away and lurched to his feet.

  Tired. God, I’m tired.

  He navigated across the room and stared into the black hearth, thinking of past fires. Of carrying in peat through lashing rain, feeling the warmth of the first flames lap his face. Sudden anger flushed him.

  ‘I don’t need this. By Christ, I don’t need it!’ He thumped the mantelpiece so that it quivered, then flinched away from the photograph there. The door to the bedroom was open. Mouthing curses, he plunged towards it.

  Into the bedroom, to see the bed unmade, pillows awry. One with the dent of a head in it still. And her nightshirt lying across it.

  A warm tangle of hair and flesh, smelling of lavender and curled up in his arms, frowning slightly in sleep; the cold toes seeking his legs to warm themselves, the face nuzzling his shoulder.

  Something between a snarl and a sob escaped his chest. He felt the old black wings beating perilously close to his head, but knelt on the bed and took up the nightshirt in his fists. It smelt musty, damp, but he buried his face in it, and sank down on the cold mattress. Then, still dripping, he curled up there and hid his head; blind and deaf to the storm, the battery of the sea, the howling mountains.

  CALUM TAMPED DOWN his pipe with a finger grown fireproof through the years, and let slip a skein of blue smoke from between his teeth.

  ‘So you’ve a mind to marry her,’ he said quietly, his grey eyes on the breaking waves that the southerly breeze was pushing on to the beach.

  ‘Aye,’ Riven answered him.