Authors: Karen Campbell
‘Yes.’
She slides her foot on to the Hoover. But the notion’s niggling at her, it’s taking on a life of its own and she’s buggered if this woman’s going to ignore her.
‘But you could, though.’
‘Could what?’
‘I was just thinking: if you did really want to stop that windfarm, would that not help? If you could show folk about the real place? There’s all the stones, and there’s that cave—’ she bites down on her lip. ‘I mean, there must be all sorts of hidden stuff. For tourists and that.’ Disconcerting this; talking over your shoulder to the disembodied mistress of the house. All she can hear are bracelets jangling. ‘You could even get a website.’
‘A website?’
She’s heard Hannah use the same sing-song tone with Ross. ‘So,’ says Hannah. ‘Your references? How we doing with them?’
It appears Justine’s idea is dismissed. The front door opens; Hannah floats off to the hall. Justine gives up on the Hoover. It can wait till madam leaves. She hears Michael’s voice. ‘So. That’s those archaeologists arrived.’
Hears Hannah snip, ‘Euan’s just the same, thanks for asking.’
‘I know. I went in to see him on the way to my meeting, Hannah. Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Why? Why would you do this?’
‘And why would you assume I had any involvement?’
Justine is not remotely interested in their fights. Is this fighting? Michael is pained, and Hannah pecks. She’d heard them last night too, after Ross was in bed, and she’d snuck to her basement room –
But you’re welcome to join the family in the evening, Justine. If you like
.
Footsteps outside her bedroom. Finally. She’d been bracing herself for ‘the chat’, expecting Michael for the last two days. Had been preparing a cover story, embellishing it, all the coloured patches, a full service history one careful lady owner. So easy, too, to invite the opening, for Michael to go:
You never told me you were a nursery nurse
, and for her to embroider something fanciful, explain ‘Myra’ as a desperate hook flung out to
help
you,
Michael
.
I could see she wasn’t happy
. . .
But no. It had been Hannah, not Michael – and it was not for her, either. Hannah was outside Michael’s study (where he must have been all the time, and she’d never even heard him come down), Hannah saying she wanted to get the man from John Muir to speak to the planning committee, and Michael going
you know I can’t
. Justine thought it was a man called John Muir, but clearly not. ‘Please don’t do this, Hannah.’ And Hannah swearing, ‘Oh for Christsake, Michael.’ Flouncing off. Sounds like she’s doing the same thing now.
‘Still. As long as it helps your writing,’ Michael is saying, quietly.
‘It’s my job. It’s my bloody job.’
‘Oh we know that.’
‘And you still haven’t sorted those bloody posters.’
The voices stop. A door slams loudly.
It is nothing to do with her.
Hannah Anderson is hiding by a standing stone. No, she’s leaning on it, that’s all. In the same way she has not been hiding in her room until Michael and Justine left the kitchen. Without being shown, Justine has located all the crockery, she knows which cereal Ross likes best, and is a demon with the Hoover. Hannah opens her phone, texts Euan.
How sore r u now? Tell them if u need more med. C u soon, sweetie xx.
He’ll not like the kisses, but tough.
Justine Arrow. What kind of a name is that?
Ooh, just write a wee booklet instead of a book
. From a woman with a certificate in wiping bums and making macaroni pictures. If she even has qualifications. The girl left a bright-red bra on the clothes horse this morning, and Hannah’s Crème de Mer’s been sampled too: a swirling gouge in it that is far too greedy for her. (36 double D, that bra. It was hung label-side out.) Of course she’s used to her home being full of strangers. Years of being a minister’s wife does that.
Bring me your hungry
. . . But there’s a feeling of collusion about this one; a joke or a secret she’s not in on. The way Michael had a go at her; Justine must have heard. Twice now, he’s done that. Michael does not shout. He knows nothing about catharsis.
Knife in, and – twist. Ah. That’s better. Haven’t felt guilty for . . . ooh, fifteen minutes
?
She fingers her notebook. Why is getting some archaeologists up here so bad? Or writing in the hospital for that matter? Sitting, staring at her half-sleeping boy, she has to do something. With one hand, she strokes Euan’s cold arm. With the other, she writes. Why is that unmotherly? Whatever she does, it seems to be wrong. Michael’s still going on that she didn’t take Ross to hospital on Monday; that she’d not got him till she was on her way home.
But why Hannah? After we’d agreed?
She wants to roar at the sky. Ross is only little; not an irritant, not at all – she hates how Michael looks at her when she tries to explain. That it can sometimes be too much. She just couldn’t cope with Ross in tears and his brother semi-conscious, and all the nurses and the doctor talking at her. Not on her own. She’d a feeling, too, that Michael would fail to appear. St Michael of the perpetual predictability has become anything but. He looms, then quivers, recoils, then ravishes. (Fair enough, she’s not complaining about that last one. But where is his head? Where is her Michael?)
And then, in the midst of it all, she comes home to find he’s adopted Justine bloody Arrow. Jesus. Wouldn’t anyone weep?
Of course, Hannah can take the credit for her entire broken family.
Look on my works ye mighty
. . . Crumbling man; tight-buttoned baby; wilfully speeding son who neglects to wear reflective stripes. It’s all your own work. You must be so proud.
No.
And was it worth it, Hannah?
No.
But did you come alive? When your lover loved you on those dull afternoons?
She’d felt less dead, put it that way. Oh, that sounds so glib, and it’s not. She’s not. She was sleepwalking on to razor blades. Gil was an English teacher. Hannah had being doing a series of poetry sessions at an arts centre in Glasgow. He’d waited at the end of one of her workshops, invited her to talk to his Higher class at school. ‘I’m sure we can manage some Live Lit funding too. Your poems are so insightful. I think they’ll really speak to the kids.’
Yes. Pass the sick-bucket.
Gil was dark and defined. Ross was two years old, and still a surprise. Gil’s face was angular, unknown, he wore fitted floral shirts. Hannah had been a wife for fifteen years. A minister’s wife. Such a rubbish gig. You never possess your husband fully. He has claims on him far more important than you. He is a respected community leader, a beacon, an example. You are his sensibly-clad helpmeet: an infinite supply of patience and sacrificial smiles. You don’t mind the groups and endless meetings. The Sudanese family who sleep in your lounge for six weeks. The cakes you bake badly for the fundraising for causes that are good. Your children’s needs being superseded by the needs of everyone else. You must be quietly human, never contravene nor contradict. He is . . . whisper it . . .
holy
. Your home is not your own, it is open house and you, too, must be always open.
She’d grown faded. Poured herself into nice clothes and 2-D poems until she was ripe for the picking. Obvious. Gil spent his day doing interpretations; Hannah was no mystery to be described. She was a latter-day Madame Bovary. In her sad defence, she stumbled into infidelity. Gil was younger, not much, but enough that it added gloss, made it improbable, in the beginning, that this was anything other than harmless flirting. Tender partings, a hand too long on top of another. The listening
to her
. Gil was a consummate listener. They had talked about books (again; textbook), their lives, their pasts, their presents, their aspirations, before arriving at desires. If you plotted it out, you’d see the story arc: narrative tension building, the dramatic spikes, the twist leading to inevitable denouement. The End.
She never did get paid for that first session.
Michael was told by a friend, a concerned parishioner who was for ever snuffling round the edges of their lives. Hannah can’t remember her name, only that she had badly dyed yellow hair that sprung from the crown in a series of stripes: darkest, darkish, light. That is the only distinctive feature Hannah can remember (thus proving how dark her soul is). Maybe she was bloody Myra? No. It wasn’t that. Agnes? Angie? She was an art teacher at the school, Gil’s school, no, of course Hannah hadn’t known that, but there you go. It is a bald, unyielding fact, as is the evening when Hannah left Gil’s car for hers, both parked up in the staff car park and Mrs Stripy-Head had been shaking out her paintbrushes or dust sheets, oh but she could have
said
. She could have shown herself, declared her hand and threatened the worst. That would have been all it took. Right there, in that instant, Hannah would have stopped. She would have humiliated herself, sunk grass-reddened knees to the asphalt playground and prayed for mercy, discretion, a modicum of kindness, let he who is without sin . . . Oh God, anything to keep from hurting Michael. She would have punched Gil’s lights out as proof, ridden naked through the town.
But no. The serpent slid away, straight to Michael’s ear. Whispering secrets, which he brought home with him. Presented at Hannah’s feet. Hannah can’t stop remembering his face; how it seemed to darken and die in front of her. Seeing what she had broken there made her sick. To have wounded him so publicly. And for such a . . . for nothing, really. Some ridiculous head-rush to validate she was still extant. She would have been as well getting a new haircut – or a tattoo. Either thing would have provided the same transitory high, and neither would have crucified their marriage. Beside Michael, Gil was ridiculous. Deep down, Hannah suspects that’s why she chose him. But this only magnified the sin, to the point she could – can – no longer look at Michael, is constantly furious with him, when in reality she is furious with herself.
Moving away was a condition of repair. She would have done anything then, to make it better. They were talking properly at that point, when they weren’t crying. Unified almost. Both shamed: the way they held their heads outdoors, the looks they flinched from, then ignored. They were raw, they were oozing honesty. And when he’d said – unbidden – that he no longer wanted to be a parish minister, she’d seized his hands and kissed them.
She thought they’d be all right.
Kilmacarra is their fresh start. Everything fresh: the air, job, people, them. The purposeful silence. A brittling. Michael’s new, hopeful career bleeding into the patterns of the old. Now he’s invited another cuckoo to their nest. Justine. A watchful, burgundy cuckoo, with the exact same violent shade of hair that Hannah used to have. Does he even remember that? Justine who? From where? There’s still no sign of references.
You can tell she’s a nursery nurse, though; she has that firm, solid way of managing them all. A glue of sorts. Food on the table, Ross washed and dressed. Ross giggling at some puppet she’s made from socks. And she keeps asking after Euan, as if she’s genuinely concerned. What must she think of the Michael and Hannah roadshow? More like Punch and Judy. Hannah’s face feels hot. The archaeologists were Mhairi’s idea, not hers. Six months ago, when rumours of the windfarm started filtering in. OK. As soon as Hannah had read the committee reports and told her, in a worried what-do-you-make-of-that way; when she should have talked to Michael. She cannot bear this. He was her best friend.
She checks her mobile. No reply. Hopefully Euan’s sleeping. It’s worse when she isn’t with him. Then you’re free to imagine: that he’s shouting for you; they’ve forgotten to feed him; he’s died in the night and nobody said. But his dad will be going shortly – unless the lovely Justine is distracting him. From here, Hannah can see the bonnet of Michael’s car. So he’s not left yet. Euan loves his dad, and vice versa; not that either would admit it. They are both fine examples of Scottish maledom: emotion is for jessies (and football) only. But she shouldn’t have screeched about the posters; it was only last night he offered to do them. After telling her to get stuffed about the environment people, mind. Michael had waited a while, then come up to the kitchen to find her.
‘Why don’t you go to bed?’
‘I will when I’ve finished these.’
Very gently, he’d pushed away the reward posters, taken the pen from her hand and replaced it with a glass of water. ‘I’ll do them tomorrow.’
‘What if we don’t find them?’ she’d said. ‘What if we never get the person that did this?’
‘Does it matter, though?’
‘Yes! The bastards left him lying there. Don’t you see that?’
He didn’t answer, only held her.
She cannot believe there are no witnesses to her son’s accident. Or culprits caught. Who phoned the ambulance? Why did they not stay with her boy? Because they are the ones that hit him. Had to be had to be had to be. She presses her face into the standing stone. It is cool and smooth. It is fine. It’s fine. Euan is alive; he’s safe. But the bastards left him lying by the road. Michael copes by giving. He always has. If he’s tired, he’ll offer someone else his bed. Hungry? Have his chips. If Michael is busy, then he’s needed. If he’s needed, then he needs Hannah less.