Authors: Karen Campbell
‘I told Effie you would be. I said, look Effie, that’s them home the now. Probably for a wee wash and a catnap, I said. But they’ll be heading off again, you watch. So I thought I’d better be quick. I mean, poor Mrs Anderson. She doesna look well, does she?’
‘Can I take that from you?’ Michael watches his wife drive away, him trapped between his own front door, a murky Irish stew and the Ghost, who has twirled inside the hallway and is standing, hands on hips.
‘Oh God. You wonder what it’s all about. I mean, he was such a good wee boy, wasn’t he? You wonder, is there a reason—’
‘Miss Campbell, I really have to go. We’re meeting the doctor at Lochallach. Euan might need to go to Glasgow . . .’
‘Och, of course you do. Of course you should be with them. I mean, I suppose you know all just the right things to say, don’t you?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re used to all these shenanigans. Bedside vigils; folk all upset.
Besides
themselves, I should imagine. I said to Effie, mind though, the cooncillor being a minister and all. He’ll be a tower of strength. It’s a test, most like—’
‘Miss Campbell. It’s my son. It’s my son we’re talking about. Not a test.’
Her delicate wee fingers cover her mouth. ‘Oh.’
‘Now, I’m sorry, but I have to go.’
‘But what about your stew?’
He slams the front door shut, closing the Ghost inside. ‘Just leave it on the step.’
‘On the step?’
‘Yes! On the step!’ He jostles past her, Crimplene static cracking air. Can’t stand to look at her soft old face oh Jesus. Jesus God. Why are you doing this to me? He stalls the engine. Too much gas. Takes it slower, again. Again. Once this bugger flooded, you could forget about going anywhere for the rest of the day. Why are you doing this?
‘Now. Why should He get all the credit? Eh, Michael? Eh?’ The Ghost, who’s very small now, is a curled cat on his lap. Michael ignores him. When he was a wee boy, he saw faces in the fire. This is no different, no different, not one jot. He keeps his eyes on the road, he fixes on the road his boy was crushed on. When did he last speak to Euan, when was it not a row, or a query about what time he’d be back or the whereabouts of Hannah? The hot, wet, unimagined weight presses on his groin my God my God why hast thou forsaken . . . Medicine. He could go to the doctor and get medicine. People will forgive him because of Euan. You are allowed to be tranquillised if your son has multiple fractures.
No pills. Absolutely no pills.
At the bus stop, a girl yawns. He recognises her hair, a kind of metallic red. It’s her; the one who’d found him in the churchyard yesterday, seen him flat on his back. He remembers her voice. Low and gallus. The weight is suddenly gone. He checks his crotch. No Ghost. No unnatural heat. No voice. A mellow glow wraps him as he stops the car. Relief. He winds down the window.
‘Hello.’
The girl frowns. He has no context now, no dog-collar or grieving angels. Just a middle-aged man, patting his own groin.
‘It’s me. You um . . . you helped me yesterday. In the churchyard.’
Her eyes widen. Green-flecked hazel. ‘Oh. God, yeah. You. How you doing?’
‘Ah . . . not so good actually.’
She nods. ‘You do look worse.’
‘I’m on my way to the hospital.’
‘Should you be driving then?’
‘Oh, it’s not me. It’s my son.’
Another nod. More cautious, her eyes flitting away. Then, laboriously, she raises her wrist, looks at her watch. He senses an impatience in her, and he is impatient suddenly too. But he doesn’t want to leave.
‘Bus late, is it?’
‘Not sure.’ She shakes her wrist. ‘My watch keeps stopping.’
‘I make it twenty past. You’re fine. Where you off to?’
She shrugs.
He has to go. Hannah will be waiting. ‘Did I tell you it was my son?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He got knocked down.’
Her body flinches, as if the word ‘knock’ has physically knocked her.
‘Last night.’
‘Shit. That’s terrible.’ She looks at him again. ‘Is he all right?’
‘He’ll live.’
Her face is pale and thin, with tinges of lilac beneath the skin. Yesterday’s blood has become a bruise, a wing of blue on her forehead. She wears the same black ankle boots with aggressive heels, caked in mud.
‘Not be running again for a while, though. His leg’s all smashed up. And his mouth. His mother’s worried he’s going to need dentures.’
That is not true, not once has Hannah even mentioned this. He doesn’t need to lie, or make this a witty anecdote. A spoonful of humour to make it taste nice. The strangest sensation is on him; it is as if he’s stepped in a bubble, and the world is continuing to thrash along outside, but muted. The warmth in his lap is only pleasant, the notion of scales and feathers daft. The Ghost – the feeling – has definitely gone. Twice now, this girl has thwarted the beast. Is she a sign, or a test? Michael’s life has been a delicate scrabble across the cracks, all those twisty forks in the road, the strangers who might be angels, the monkeys on your back. He’s been to university to study the paranormal, the divine. In theory, he knows all the hierarchies and the legions, and that only makes it worse. For this, they also expect you to be sane?
‘I’m sorry about yesterday. When I shouted at you. Really sorry.’
‘That’s OK.’ She is shivering. Skin so pale it is see-through. How could you yell at a wee scrap like that? You, Michael. You and your ugliness.
‘How d’you get on with your dad?’
Her knife-edge chin juts at him. ‘What?’
‘You were looking for your dad. Frank? Maybe I could help?’
‘Nah. You’re all right.’
He follows her gaze, to the window of the store. A poster advertises the mobile cinema’s latest showing.
Predator
.
‘Are you coming back?’ He has to go. But he can’t leave her, shivering.
‘What?’
‘Wherever it is you’re going – are you coming back?’
‘Doubt it.’
‘So where are you off to then?’
‘I thought you were rushing to the hospital?’
‘I am.’
Her white nose is glistening. She reaches for a hanky. Dabs it at her nose. ‘I’m going to look for a job.’ She falters, as if the hanky is somehow shocking. Fumbling in her pockets. A slow breath out.
‘I need someone.’
The thickness of his desperation is mortifying: the sentence splatters round them, and he tries to wipe it up. ‘A cleaner. Well, an au pair. We need a sort of assistant – my wife’s in the middle of a book, the cleaner’s just left. Euan’s going to be in hospital for Godknows how long. And we’ve got a wee boy of four. Can you drive?’
‘Do they let you loose in the Sunday School?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m a total randomer you just met at the bus stop.’
‘No. No, that’s not fair. In the churchyard . . . you helped me. You were kind.’
‘Aye, and you were a total loony. Nae offence, pal, but I think it might all be a bit freaky.’
‘Look – have you got a job already? You’re cold. Have you got somewhere to stay?’
‘No . . . Not yet.’
‘Well, why don’t you? Not that many jobs going round here. If you need work, we need help. Sounds like a plan to me.’
At least give her a hot meal
. ‘Divine providence in fact! And we could . . . maybe we could go through parish records and stuff. You know. For your dad.’
‘I don’t think so. No.’
She hefts her bag higher. It’s a large leather affair, looks like a Moroccan pouffe. Her eyes are firmly back on the road. Michael shrivels. Is stupid. ‘Of course,’ he says in a voice that sounds normal. ‘Well, good luck anyway.’
‘You too.’ She lifts her voice above the engine and the grind of the wheels as they bite the road. ‘Tell . . . I hope your son’s all right.’
Michael drives a hundred yards before he has to stop the car. Or it is stopped, it bumps gently into something as, from nowhere, a lucky omen is crapped bountifully across his windscreen. He hears grunts, thinks possibly that he is making them. Rich white mucous streaked with black. A roar, bright sun. A piercing. He cannot see. Nothing he can do will ever change things. All the lost souls he gathers; it won’t make any difference.
The heaviness of him. He does not look down, is rocking. He pretends the weight he carries is his baby son. A good weight. It is moments after Euan’s birth, it is dark. Hannah has been taken for a bath: the afterpains are horrendous, so Michael is first to cradle him, not his wife. They sit one inside the other in an institutional chair, on a putty-pink vinyl seat. Euan wears a white sheet like a little spectre. The delivery room is unnaturally hot – Hannah’s screams have condensed on to the windows. They are alone. Awe-struck, Michael breathes in his son. He unfurls created fingers, examines unused feet. The unfeasible head is bare, soft skull-shell has blossomed in his hand. He remembers crying; like it was he who had given birth. Somebody’s son, who will become a man. Michael keeps his eyes screwed shut. He will always cradle his son.
‘Hey. Are you OK?’ A perfumed arm is in his window. Bright hair bends. Unstraps him. ‘C’mon you.’
He is enfolded, his body held. Feet swung on to hardness.
‘I don’t think you should be driving in this state. You nearly hit that wall.’
Michael looks at the windscreen, to explain. It is clear.
‘
My wife had an affair last year. I’m not coping too well.’
Justine has got the minister home to the manse, that white building behind the church. She took the keys when his hands wouldn’t work, shoogled at the damp lock, switched on a lamp, placed him in a chair. His plumpness, she discovers, is in his face and the layers of jumpers – the rest of him is lean and brittle, she can feel sharp angles beneath his clothes. She takes off his coat, two cardigans, his shoes. No socks. They must have looked as if they were drunk, stoating up the road, arms over and under. No other bugger visible in the street. Maybe they were hiding, out of respect for their minister.
Did you see the state of that?
She’d thought of knocking on doors, but that would only prolong it. And he wasn’t ill, exactly. Just pathetic.
She’s missed one bus already – on top of being stranded here last night. After she’d phoned the ambulance, she’d run as far as the village, right up to the door of the hotel. But going in, signing a register – that would weave her into this place, to the crash that keeps repeating in her head. So she did what she aye does. She hid. The door to the hippy café place had been left unlocked. That must be how folk lived here. Deserved to have the place screwed. She didn’t take anything, mind, apart from more of that bread. Man, it was good: warm and floury. Cushions on the chairs. Nothing to see, move along. Up early, early and out out out. Bloody freezing. Wandering. Shivering. And now she’s missed the bus. Because of him. She cannot stay any longer, and this, this is the
dad
. Fucksake. But he looks so helpless. Like a bird that’s just smashed into a window. He hasny said much, beyond that initial burst about his wife. He repeats it. Waits, hunched like she might hit him. Feet jostling, fingers in a circle, his thumbnail pinching at his index finger. What do you say, though? What do you say when a strange man tells you he’s a cuckold? His eyes are raw. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . you don’t . . . Sorry. Ignore me.’ A vague, imploring glance.
‘Look. Can I get you some tea?’
‘Please. You’re very kind . . .’
He goes to stand, and her hand shoots out. To steady him, repel him, warn him of her comfort zone which is way beyond him? He keeps staring, though, at empty air. There’s nothing there – paintings, a fireplace, some fancy flowers in a vase – but he scours the room like he is searching for some familiar shape. It’s a beautiful room. Even without the fire lit, there’s a faint smell of smoke, the piled abundance and implicit warmth of two neat baskets of logs. Green curtains edge casement windows and a view of more standing stones, smirred with the rain that’s starting up. The dark clouds scudding compound the cosiness inside. Branches wave, the pool of crisp yellow from the lamp. On the back of the couch, a knitted blanket begs to be wrapped round Justine’s shoulders. Her boots are discarded by the hearth. One of the antique fire irons is an actual toasting fork. She has never used a toasting fork.
‘Please don’t say about Hannah . . . my wife. She’ll be home soon. Oh. No. The hospital—’ Swithery and loose, gangling on bare feet. ‘God. You phone her. Here.’
‘Whit? No way, pal. She won’t know who I am.’
‘Please.’ He offers an old Bakelite phone. ‘I’m not up to . . . Just say I had a . . . fall or something.’
Reluctantly, Justine dials the number he gives her. The phone’s not really old, there’s a push-button square in the middle. But she likes the feel of the solid receiver in her hand, how it balances neatly on both sides, in the shape of a crooked bone. Straight to message. She lifts the phone from her face. ‘No one there.’
‘Better leave a message.’