Rise (15 page)

She slides off the boulder she’s been sitting on, brushes her backside. From the shadow of the standing stone, she retrieves a shopping bag, one of those thick plasticky ‘green’ bags-for-life (that are probably not green at all). In it are three audio books and a flask of butternut-squash soup. Ailsa’s house is next to the old Trinity Hotel, tucked down a wee vennel like it’s a secret. From her bedroom, though, she has a fine view of the glen. Ailsa’s son answers when she chaps the door. He looks exhausted.

She smiles, wanly, lifts up the bag like it’s an apologetic shrug. ‘How’s things, Terry?’

‘Not so bad. How’s your boy doing?’

‘Och, he’s fine. Bones mend . . . Can I go up?’

‘Best not,’ he says. ‘We didna have a good night.’ He nods at the bag. ‘Is that stuff for Mum? She canna really eat cakes now.’

‘It’s soup.’

‘Ah.’

‘And I brought a couple of CDs. Book CDs. I know how she loves her reading.’

Ailsa had invited her to join the local book group, the week they moved in. She was a long, thin woman with beautiful cheekbones. Wore her grey hair in a spill down her back. Hannah had recently shorn it, to make it easier to wash.

‘Cheers.’ He takes the bag, but doesn’t move from behind the door.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to sit with her a while? Give you a wee break?’

He shakes his head.

‘It’s no bother.’

Terry’s eyes glisten. ‘No. I’d rather not. I don’t know—’ He begins to cry.

‘Ssh.’ Hannah takes his hand. ‘I understand. You want it to be you two, eh? Look, will you tell her I called round?’

‘I will, I will. Thanks.’ The door shuts gently, the glimpse of room within narrowing, narrowing. Gone. She looks up at the bedroom window, gives a wee wave just in case. Sometimes, Terry props her up on pillows, so she can see their flat, wide sky.

A white sun hangs there, behind the grey. It isn’t too cold. Hannah’s head is tight, she craves big spaces. She will walk to Crychapel Wood, where the sky is huge and open. There’s always an ache about the place, as if the land has gone to sleep. She’ll walk and walk until it comes right. The steady, meditative pace will focus her on her story, which is now two chapters behind schedule. (Hannah likes to write in word-counted chunks.) En route, she can see where the archaeologists have set up camp. She comes back round the side of the old hotel, shields her eyes to look up the brae. Mhairi reckoned they’d focus on Mary’s Well, but the hillside is clear.

Crychapel’s on the far side of Kilmacarra village, near the primary school. It’s playtime; wee bodies skip and twirl in front of the low grey stone, two pointed dormers sentinel over their charges. A line of solar panels gleam between the dormers. She sees a boy grab a smaller one under his arm, gripping his head. It’s that Johnny Green again. He signals to his friend to kick the younger kid’s bum, tapping really, but enough to make the wee one cry.

‘Hey!’ shouts Hannah. ‘Leave him alone!’

All three children turn and run.

‘I’ll tell your teacher!’ she calls. Johnny stops, sticks two fingers up at her. Lovely. Ross will be going there next year. She walks on, trying not to think about it. From the moment they go to school, you kid yourself it’s fine, healthy even, that the cord’s being clipped. They are gaining independence; it’s what you made them for. But the first time Euan toddled home going ‘The teacher says we’ve to do it this way’, it hurt. Then, the playing with friends-you-do-not-know, the stabilisers off so they can pedal further, faster. The
Just out!
replies to
Going where?
The slamming doors and silent shrugging. The distance. You imagine every sort of harm and desolation, whenever they are ten minutes late, or not where they say they are. For a heart-flinch, you feel the fear, and you push it down like sick. Because your job is to look after them.

Euan is going to be fine. She needs to stop mithering. Lose herself in the book. Or chuck it altogether. If she said, the TV folk would probably shift the deadline. It’s only provisional, nothing has been promised. But what if this is her one big chance and someone else comes along with a better, similar story? And she doesn’t want to let folk down.

The track past the school is empty. Crychapel Wood sits on the far side. It’s an odd name, for there is no chapel, and very little wood. Only a scatter of trees, enclosing the circle of stones. These are not the majestic pillars of Stonehenge, mind. They are humps, no more than waist height above the ground. In the middle, it’s all filled in with pebbles and cobbles. Right up until last century, the locals called this Crychapel Hill. A wee hill – that’s all they thought it was. When the peat was scraped off after the war, Mhairi said they found the remains of a cairn, then discovered the humps of the stone circle sticking through.

‘Why would they pile stones on top of their circle?’

‘Put it out of action? Seal it up? Either that or preserving the power.’

Hannah had laughed at her. ‘What “power”?’

Mhairi hadn’t answered. ‘Anyway. Look at this.’ She pretended she was indifferent to the place, but she wasn’t. It had been infectious. Mhairi leapt like a skittish kid, pointing and oohing.
Look! See there? And what d’you make of that?
The northernmost stone has a spiral carved on it. Mhairi said that was to do with sun worship. It isn’t even a circle any more – the stones on the east side are long gone, taken by builders and farmers. One must have broken while being shaped into a millstone, abandoned, half-carved where it lies today. Hannah had pushed her finger into the millstone’s hole, tight and weighted like the inside of a bowling ball. If she goes there now, closes her eyes, that feeling will come back. She will be where life slows and stops, and fine filaments of light are your fingers and the ground, where there is a silent slotting into place of everything, and you are totally alone. There was no birdsong that day, just a hard blue sky and the sound of beetles crawling.

Something jags her. A twig’s caught in her hair. It keeps lancing her fingers as she tries to untangle it, jagging and jagging until it tears away. Strands of yellow hair remain on the broken branch. Holly. Bad luck to cut holly. Keeps the witches away – they used to reroute roads rather than chop down holly. Hannah sucks a drop of blood from her thumb. She takes out her notebook. Writes
Witch
. Then writes
Cailleach
, which is the same in Gaelic. A wee blood-smudge covers part of the word.

As she nears the stile into Crychapel Wood, she sees two white vans parked there, by the dyke. Those bloody electricity people. If they even think they’re going to put turbines near Crychapel . . . Men’s voices float from inside the trees. ‘Careful now.’ A shout. ‘Don’t butcher it, John. Slower.’

‘Yes, slow it right down. Peg out this section first, like I showed you.’

Four men are crouched inside the circle, sorting through rocks. One is using a pick to ransack a corner of the rubble.
Chop-and-crack, chop-and-crack
. The stones shudder, grey puffs of dust bursting into air.

‘Hey!’ yells Hannah, scrambling over the wall. ‘You can’t dig there.’ The men stand. They all hold metal in their hands, honed edges glinting. ‘Leave it alone!’

She’s right at the opening of the circle when a fallen branch snares her ankle. Her pens, notebook spilling from her hand as she trips, falls on one knee.

One of the men comes towards her. ‘Are you all right, dear?’

‘I’m fine.’ Stiffly, Hannah gets to her feet. Her hands sting, her knee smarts. But the embarrassment is worse.

‘Here.’ The man gives her the pencils he’s retrieved from the grass. He’s about her height, has ruddy cheeks and gravy-coloured hair that sits in waves. His hands are calloused, cuffed with bright yellow. There is a sheen of healthy sweat about him. She looks towards the others, still watching but pretending to be back at their work.

‘Thank you,’ she mumbles, brushing herself down.

The man holds out his hand. ‘I’m Tom Wilson. Professor. Pleased to meet you Miss . . . ?’

‘Mrs. Mrs Anderson. I’m the local councillor’s wife.’ It sounds absurd, like she is bartering for status. Her grazed fingers shake his.

‘Did we give you a fright?’

‘No. It’s just, I saw you bashing at the stones . . .’

‘I’m sorry. But I promise, we’re not damaging anything. We’re being very careful. Look.’ The professor gestures to the circle, strolls from the perimeter towards the centre. Hannah follows, wobbling on to the cobbles which clunk and rattle like hoofbeats under her.

‘You’re not with the electricity people, are you?’

‘We’re a dig. An archaeological dig.’

‘Here? I thought you’d be working up at Mary’s Well?’

‘Yes, we intend to. But we wanted to spread over two sites; make it worth our while.’

‘But there’s nothing here, surely? They dug it all up after the war.’

‘They certainly cleared it in the twenties, exposed the cairn and so forth. But that was primarily for fuel – and agriculture. As far as we know, there’s not been any significant archaeology done on the actual site itself.’ The professor kicks at the carpet of pebbles. ‘Under the cairn stones, I mean. We’re very interested in what lies beneath these little beauties. We’re just removing a section at the moment, if you’d like to see?’

Hannah would. But in private. She doesn’t want these people here. ‘I don’t think you should. What if it . . .’ She circles her foot, rubbing where it throbs. ‘I don’t know. It just seems like disturbing it to me. We’re trying to keep this whole glen as it is, not destroy it even more.’

‘Oh, everything we move will be numbered and labelled, I promise.’

‘No, I don’t mean that. It’s just, this is a special place. I think you should leave it alone.’

‘But how much more special would it be if we knew more about it? Who knows what else is buried under here? Aren’t you curious?’ Tom Wilson smiles. Properly, showing large, ivory teeth.

‘Hoi, Tom!’ A man waves his trowel at them.

‘Excuse me a minute. Won’t be a tick.’

‘I’m a writer, you see,’ she calls. ‘I’m writing about this place.’ It comes out desperate and childish.

‘Tom. Come and see this, will you!’ The shouting is more insistent.

‘A writer?’ says the professor. ‘Well. How can you resist?’

They hurry over to the group, the archaeologists all babbling at once.

‘It’s a cist of some sort.’

‘No, it looks too small.’

Tom Wilson surveys the chink of paler stone that shines under the cobbles.

‘Well, smooth it away. Carefully. Graeme, are you noting this down? Take your time. I want the location sketched exactly.’

The man has cleared the cobbles carefully to one side. Now he begins to ease the earth away with the tiniest of trowels and brushes. The stillness sinks a shade deeper. Nobody speaks as they stand in a ring, watching him unwrap the corner of what is a slab. Scrape. It becomes a box. Scratch. Scrape. Clink. Scrape. Becomes a stone shoebox without a lid.
Uneasy thrill
 . . . Treasure, secrets . . . Hannah reaches for her notebook.

‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘You said a cist?’

Swallowing and focusing. A little bile comes into her mouth.
Burn of bile
– she writes that down too.

‘Hmm. Yes. Oh, this is exciting.’

‘What’s a cist?’

The professor is distracted. ‘Hm? A container, a chest. OK. No, Graeme. Wait. Another photo please.’

‘A container for what?’

But she knows, really. This is perfect.

‘Remains, most likely.’

The shadow of an owl swoops over them. Hannah sees the glint of one massive yellow eye, feels almost like a god.

Chapter Ten

‘
There you go, Michael. I thought you might be hungry.’

There is a strange woman in Michael’s house. An emollient. It is nice how they can run on wheels around her. She sets down a plate of soup, and a sandwich cut in triangles. Things are being done, useful things. She untangles and sorts. His jaw is becoming unclenched. It’s the most pleasant feeling.

She puts down his plate. ‘I’m away to get Ross.’ Slips off. It’s late afternoon. He ate his fill at the council buffet anyway, but doesn’t like to say. Michael flexes his fingers, feels the blood. There has been no Ghost whatsoever since Justine came. He feels . . . well, he feels good again. In control. All the same, he swallows a couple of Panadol. Better to avoid the headaches before they start. Come on, come on. He wriggles his fingers harder, waits for the energy to flow.

Some meat stews in a pot. Smells good. He inhales the woody fragrance of thyme, and thinks of the cedar fireplace in his office at the council, which still gives off the scent of fresh-cut wood, even though it must be a hundred years old. Big chunky pillars, with an age-spotted mirror above. He loves it there, with his flock wallpaper and his big desk. A cosy nook in which to carry out the business of the day. It makes his meetings feel important, and his meet-ees grateful. It’s even comfier than his office here at home. Like a sanctum.