Rise (6 page)

‘Sorry, we’re closed.’

Justine walks to the counter separating café from the cooking. The chef is a broad, hirsute woman: plumes of grey wiry Brillo-hair, a few whiskers on her chin. Even her legs, bare and mottled beneath her bumphled skirts, have a healthy growth about them.

Her eyes flick over Justine’s hair and face. ‘Unless that’s you early for the meeting?’

She’s making some kind of savoury wheel filled with cheese and onion and sprinkled with chives. More smells coil from the range. The woman takes some loaf tins from the top oven. Bread comes out cracked and steaming, baked with poppy seeds and caraway.

‘What meeting’s that?’

‘The windfarm. Did you no see our balloon?’

‘Oh, yeah. I thought it was advertising. For your excellent-smelling bread.’ Justine offers a crumpled tenner. ‘Any chance of a wee taste? I’m absolutely starving.’

‘Well . . . you can have that one.’ The woman nods at a cartwheel of flatbread. ‘It’s a bit burned at the edge. Och, put your money away. Unless you want to donate it to the cause, that is.’

‘Sure.’

It’s only a tenner. By Justine’s calculations, she still has around a hundred of them. It is the lowest denomination they worked in. ‘What cause?’

‘The windfarm.’

‘Oh. So you’re supporting it? I thought folk usually protested . . .’ She wipes her soiled hands on her jacket, chews the bread hot, without butter. Explosions of aniseed across her tongue, little fleeting bursts of happiness.

‘Of course we’re protesting. You daft? Did you not see how high that balloon is? That’s as high as the turbines are going to be. Twenty bloody three of them.’

‘God. That’s awful. This is delicious, by the way.’

‘Canny beat homemade bread.’ The woman nods at her. ‘What happened to your head?’

‘Oh, nothing. Just a wee bump. You know, you should call this “artisan” – on the menu, I mean. The tourists’ll lap that up.’

‘The tourists? Oh aye, a daud of artisans’ll have them flocking here. Did you not trip over them all on your way in?’

Justine stuffs more bread in her mouth. She watches the woman turn and flip her wrist, the bread falling on to a floured board.

‘Is this place famous at all? I mean, would I have seen it on the telly?’

‘Doubt it.’

‘Hmm.’ She chews a bit more. ‘I definitely recognise it.’

‘Well, we’ve been in a few calendars in our time. Oh, and there was a quick flypast on a Visit Scotland ad once. That’s when I got the daft idea to open a café.’

‘You don’t do B and B, do you?’

‘Nope.’

‘Only I’m looking for somewhere to stay.’

‘Tried the hotel?’

‘The Trinity? It’s shut.’

‘No, not that one. The one when you come in the village. Big white one with “hotel” painted on it?’

‘Is there? I must’ve walked right past it. I came up through the glen.’

The woman snorts. ‘Story of our lives, that is. Everybody’s so busy looking at all they bloody stones, they walk right past the village. Like we’re invisible. Bloody
Brigadoon
. There’s more to us than they stones, you know.’ Justine must have pressed a button somewhere, because she’s off. On and on about how ancient the glen was, how kings were crowned there, and folk lived in bannocks or crannogs or something. ‘Nobody cares about all that, though. And if they stick they bloody turbines up, we’ll no even get the stoners coming through.’

‘Stoners?’

‘Aye. My wee joke. But a lot of them are.’ She screws her finger into the side of her head. ‘Nae offence. If you are one, mind.’

‘Eh, no.’

‘Nothing wrong with hippies, I was one myself. But see all that bollocks about ley lines and convergences? Well, I’ll tell you, if being stuck in a no-horse town with two mortgages and no decent men really was my destiny . . . I . . .’

She sneezes over the cooling bread. A wee swirl of dust or flour rises like Indian smoke. The woman looks crestfallen.

‘Eh, thanks very much for the bread.’ Justine shifts out of sneeze-range. ‘Good luck with the meeting.’

Of course it would be full of nutters. Why had Justine assumed a small country village would be a place of refuge and anonymity? Didn’t everyone migrate to these places for the same thing? The retirees seeking the quiet life in a not-so-foreign land. The slow and failing businessman who knew a nice country pub was the answer. The suburban family wishing for only a muddy plot and organic carrots and then
JOCASTA WOULD SLEEP
.

The loner who is lonely.

You bring your shadow with you. The cold outside is amplified after the warmth of the café. Bracing. Justine returns to the churchyard, where the nutters are surely dead. An electricity van is parked outside. She recognises the red and yellow logo from this morning. Was that only this morning? Sentinel Power. Man, are they following her now? A narrow, pale man strips off his jumper inside the cabin. His T-shirt rises with it. She’s trained not to look, but the play of ribs through skin plucks some visceral gut response, down by the money.

Fuck, she is messed up.

Imagine if Charlie Boy’s hold extended from the scummy ring of miserable deviants who lapped at his balls, into proper organised crime. Imagine if he could infiltrate international companies, companies who could journey across the country, who could access a network of watchers who would track her down and pick her off. Or worse, bring her back to him.

But then he could. All it needed was a man with a van.

Justine begins to shiver. A deep and desperate blaze, beading through her pores, imprinting a net across her skin; she is a tiny, tiny fish, good with her hands which stink of work-dirt, nae bother to nae one just leave me leave me leave me. Her safe wee pleat is shaken out, and he’ll catch her at the bottom. The fear burns through any residual goodness she might have retained.

She should have killed him.

The entrance to the churchyard is a stone arch which seems to double as a war memorial. Neat names carved above her head. She unlatches the gate. A mild pale air opens with it. You can feel the change again. Nothing fizzes, nothing screams. Just peaceful. Kilmacarra would be a good place to clear her head. It doesn’t need to be for long, just till she decides what she’s going to do. Disrespectful in her burgundy hair, she flits through tight-packed tombs. A lurid tourist, gawping. There’s a bloody dog following her too now. A black and white collie. He seems friendly, but – after Askit – dogs make her wary: all those grinning teeth, like a crocodile. She hopes he won’t crap round the graves. He’s sniffing at the edge of Jemima White. Experiment. Died 1685. Aged 17. There’s a smiling skull over her name.

The van drives off.

‘Shoo. Shoo now. Away you go, stupid dug.’ He limps off, looking hurt.

She examines the gravestone again. Keeps her head low until the van disappears. Experiment. Place or process? She feels that boom-boom pulse of exposure. Maybe it will never go away. She wonders if the church is open. Sunday; nothing much else is. The hooped handle of the door turns easily and she slips inside.

She looks for holy water, to see if it will bubble, but there is none. No crosses burst into flame, no chalices rise to strike her. But still. But still. Justine sits in one of the pews. A slight white bloom is spreading on the lower shelf, linking the holes where communion glasses go. The side of the pew is numbered. She glances wider. Every mouldy pew is embossed with a number. Her eyes seek out the number eleven. There it is, across the aisle. Legs Eleven.
All the way up to your thighs, eh?
In her pocket is a knife, a little pearl one. Useful. Not blunt. She slides one of the hymn books along the shelf, presses the knife into the soft wood before her. Barely breaking the surface, she carves out a J – shaky along the top, then a flourish as she comes back down. A baby-spider letter that no one will notice. She kisses her finger, traces it round the shape.

There’s a greenish glass window behind the altar, leaded in small square mullions. At the top, the window splits in a kind of fanlight, three glass teardrops, outlined in stone. The design is echoed in the wooden pediment above a small door to the side – which you’d think would lead to the holy of holies but is probably where the minister hangs his coat, or does a pee. The pediment reminds her of a Girl Guides trefoil. As a kid she’d watch them march to church past the flats where she lived. Her and her mates would try to shoot them with spud guns, for the sheer joy of watching them bolt like gazelles when one got hit. The pediment is darker than the rest of the wood in the church. Each petal of the trefoil has a carving: the first is a humphy shape like a cartoon ghost or a hill, the middle one is carved with two of the same teardrop shapes, making a circle like yin and yang (except one shape dominates the other, curving bigger and higher over the top of it). The last petal has another grinning skull. They are clearly cheery folk in Kilmacarra. Apart from the stone crosses behind her and the silver font in front, there’s no other ornamentation in the church: plain oak altar table, plain pulpit, stone floor.

She’s shivering again. Justine clicks the knife into its sheath and goes back outside, which is actually less chilly than the church. Widdershins. Isn’t that how you’re meant to go round a graveyard? Opposite the motion of the sun. Justine has almost completed her circle when she sees him. A middle-aged man lying prostrate on the grass. He is a series of gently rolling peaks, his belly slightly higher than his toes, but lower than his profile. His eyes are staring at the sky, and he is very, very still. Black anorak, grey-black hair. Has she summoned up Death? She runs over, shakes him.

‘Hey! Hey! Are you all right?’

‘Leave me,’ he moans, without looking. His face is glossy pink, as if he’d been dangling upside down.

‘Right, sit up. C’mon. That grass is soaking.’

Unblinking, he gapes at the space above him. The guy must be on something; pished at the very least. She hoicks under his armpit, pulls him to sitting. His coat falls open, revealing a dog-collar.

‘Shit. Hey, Rev . . . Father. Are you OK?’

‘GET OFF ME! What are you doing? What do you want?’

Justine lets his arm drop. He wobbles a little, but stays in place.

‘I’m just looking. How, what’s your problem?’

The pink is getting purply. ‘This is Church property.’

‘Oh, and here’s me thinking it was God’s.’

He scowls. ‘You’ve blood on your head . . .’

‘What?’ She pats her forehead. The pad’s damp. Her fingers are rouged with blood. ‘It’s fine, I’m fine.’

‘What do you want? There’s nothing here to steal.’

Is that what he sees? An instant thie
f
? Pour one cup boiling water, stir, then serve. Justine opens her mouth and her brain pours into it, quick as you like and bypassing any sense of planning.

‘Excuse me? Steal what? You’ve a bloody cheek. I’m . . .’ She scans the landscape behind him. ‘Doing research. Looking for my father, if you must know.’

‘Your father?’

‘Yup. My dad. Frank. I think he might have come from here.’

Because that would give you a reason. People are safe if they have a reason. And questions; questions pad out time and build nests; they help folk help you to build your nest and she is not a shit-scared zombie, she is smart. Could read before she went to school. Justine is not crap. It is important she remembers this.

The minister wriggles, so his back is against a tombstone. ‘Frank what?’

‘Um . . .’ Her eyes range the graveyard for inspiration. On one of the taller plinths, an angel weeps. Her marble heels are feathered, in her hand she holds a bow and quiver. Decades of moss and birdshit clag her breasts.

‘Arrow. Frank Arrow.’

‘No such name.’

‘Aye there is.’

Why did she not say Moss?

‘Not here there’s not.’

The man is being unreasonable. Her father grows in stature. ‘So you know everyone that ever lived or died here, do you? Frank. Big guy. Bright-red hair. This,’ she wiggles the umbrella, ‘was his actual brolly.’

‘I see. Sorry. I didn’t realise he was . . . passed. So you think he’s buried here?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t even know he’s dead. Not for sure . . .’

Change the subject, doll
. ‘Are you all right, though? Seriously. No disrespect, but you look like utter shit.’

The minister creases like an ironing board, like she’s kneed him in the balls. ‘Are you—’ he reaches wide, squeezes her ankle.

‘Ouch! You fucking old pervert.’

He pulls his hand away. Covers his eyes. ‘Oh God. Just get lost. Get lost before I call the police.’

‘Maybe I should call the police,’ she bluffs. ‘It’s not me lolling like an old drunk in the middle of a graveyard. Groping folk.’

‘Get away from me! Do you hear?’

She retreats a little. Watches him shoogle the tombstone, testing it for sturdiness. He hauls himself to his feet. Arm trailing. His fist quails, in and out.

‘Is there anyone I can get to help you?’

His laugh is mirthless. ‘No.’