When They Lay Bare Read online

  Annie Tat is in the scullery. A cloud of feathers swirls round her feet. The one friend of my childhood wipes her hand on her apron.

  Welcome back, Davy, she says.

  *

  Time for a short break before your concentration blurs. Lay the plate face-down on the table and go over to the camping stove. Open the valve, sniff gas till the nausea starts, then flick the lighter and jump back laughing. On with the blackened kettle. Invisible flames turn blue on its base, yellow where they lick up the ancient crud on the sides, burning it off in flares.

  Go into the bedroom, kneel on the mattress on the bare clean floor and pull a little radio from the backpack. You wander through to the kitchen, birling the dial to Friendly Meaningless, turn the volume down and leave it by the window. Soon the coffee drips slow and heavy through its own silt.

  Sit down at the table and pull the first plate towards you again. Two people in a room lean slightly towards each other as though invisible strings pull between them. They could be negotiating or arguing or falling in love. Perhaps all three, they are not always so different. And somewhere nearby, a smudge where the watcher hides.

  But that surely comes later. Return first to the meeting by the gate, the young man turning, his arms coming up, and the woman who stands close enough for him to smell moorland and river damp in her.

  As he turned, his right hand went up inside his jacket as though to protect his wallet or his heart.

  Well, my first visitor, she said. Or is it the eviction committee?

  He blushed then, he took a redder like a laddie while yellow hair blew over his face in the snell wind. She looked direct into his eyes and thought him surprisingly young and fresh for all his standing and southern education. So she smiled before he could recover and said, Kettle’s on. You’ll surely take tea with me.

  She thought his eyes an excision from the sky above, pale blue-grey and far away. He hesitated then smiled his long-mouthed Elliot smile, not without danger.

  May do, he said, if you tell me what you’re doing here.

  His hand lifted hers off the gate latch and she cursed the old grip that made her dip her head to him. She saw the grey-green lichen gripped to the wood of the gate, the blood-red stone clasped in the clunky ring on his right hand.

  Come by, David Elliot, she said, and opened the gate wide.

  I’m sorry, he said, do I know you?

  She stared him back.

  And why should you?

  You’re not from round here?

  She shook and nodded her head as if to loosen her neck of something. The dog gurled closer round her ankle, then flashed its teeth by the hem of her trousers. He grabbed it by the collar and hung on as it slavered. The collar was finished with silver and on it his father’s crest. The hand that twisted the collar was broad and tanned, his arm was trembling from the strain or the wind.

  What brings you by here? he asked.

  You could say I’m taking time out, she said. Her smile was for herself alone. And could you get the dog off me?

  He started dragging the hound back to the Land-Rover but never took his eyes off her. When he came back he stood differently, chin high. He’s remembered who he is, she thought. The son and heir. He was better before.

  This cottage is supposed to be empty.

  Well it isn’t now.

  So I see.

  As his head turned away she saw the corner of his mouth tilt like a lapwing in flight, the white of an eye-tooth. Then he looked directly at her and for a moment she felt the force of him.

  Leave you to it, he said. But best not stay here long.

  He turned. He was going. The hound was barking like crazy in the cab.

  I’m pleased you’ve come by, David, she said quickly. I like my own company but I needed a visitor. As he hesitated she added, And I’ve got almond slices.

  Oh well, he said. That makes everything all right. But he ducked his head and came through the gate, and the world fell like an apple into her hand.

  Look out the window and think back to a morning visitor. You think you remember but perhaps you just imagine. Then pick up the plate again and read into its ghostly lines. You think you imagine, but perhaps you see what’s in the air.

  The radio burbles, the coffee is run through, and you have thoughts, feelings, words and pictures in your head, some of which may not be your own. You think yourself an original source, a transmitter, but perhaps you are just a receiver.

  Outside, cold wind through dry branch and dry stone whines like a child. Somewhere in the great distance a dog barks itself hoarse. Chill light on rough pasture and slow drifting clumps of sheep, pale glitter of the distant river. In time dusk will come and then night, that much alone is certain.

  David Elliot followed her into a cool bare stone-flagged kitchen. A wooden table, two chairs, a recessed press cupboard, a cardboard box full of groceries on the floor. Two notebooks and a pen by a squared-off pile of books. A little black radio. On the main window sill, a saucer lined with moss, some early primroses, and one tall black feather stuck up like a mast. A slightly open door into what must be the bedroom. Slim bunch of daffs in the paint-streaked jar by the side window that looked back down the drove road.

  Very spare, almost monastic. Impossible to tell whether she has been here for weeks or just arrived. He’d expected the cottage to smell damp, unused, musty, but the air was fresh, smelled faintly of moorland and outdoors. A clutch of bog myrtle hung head-down in the corner.

  There’s a lot he should ask her, but he hates it when his voice goes cold and officious, and now he was inside he felt quite different, light and almost young. So he perched on the edge of the table, swinging his legs and watching while she quickly put away some plates and chattered on about the wind, the view, the mice in the roof at night. For the first time she seemed eager to please and uncertain, as if now she’d got him in here she didn’t know what to do. Her dark eyes moved about him like flies around meat, landing for a moment then away.

  Your hound will get hoarse, she said. What’s he called?

  Hawk.

  She stopped then, hands poised over the old stone sink.

  I’m sorry?

  His name’s Hawk. When I was a boy and my parents – well, I desperately wanted to have a hawk of my own. But Dad wouldn’t have it, said he didn’t like wild things tamed.

  She stared fixedly out the window at nothing he could see. Did he now? she said. I’ve some sympathy with that.

  So do I now, he admitted. I was just a boy.

  And were you angry?

  I suppose. Yes. Aye.

  So now you’ve a hound called Hawk, she said. Very good.

  He shifted on the table and waited. In no particular order he registered large pale hands, dark hair cut short and loose, fringe swinging across her forehead as she turned away. Grey wool trousers tight around her hips, loose linen shirt, straw sandals she kicked off. She dressed in clothes of other times, he thought. That was a ballad, but which one? Something to do with hats made of bark. It fell about the Lammastide, when nights are lang and mirk. She paused to undo the green shawl and hung it on a hook by the door, and he saw again the glint of a heavy brooch pinned to its throat. The Wife of Usher’s Well, that was it. When the dead come chapping at the door.

  He stood and looked out the front window. A fine outlook from up here. Beyond the dyke a patchwork of fields, getting greener and more hedged in as they descended into the valley where the sheep multiplied. The upper headwaters of the river were burning threads of platinum wire. Big sky, steady clouds and breaks of blue. One could spend a lot of time just looking. He had a feeling she already had.

  Her hand came past his head and pushed the window open.

  Have a good look, she said. I expect it’ll all be yours soon.

  He stared at her. She stared straight back. Eyes dark, very dark, the colour and sheen of wet peat from the bottom, densest cut of the bank.

  You have a problem with that?

  Do yo
u, my Lord Elliot?

  Cut it out. My father’s title is nothing to do with me.

  Sorry, she said with no effort to sound it.

  How do you know my name?

  She crouched over the box of groceries, sorting through jars and tins, bread and at last the almond slices as she talked back over her shoulder, so that much at least was true.

  The sudden return of the son of the lord of the dale to make peace with his reclusive father isn’t the least discussed news in the village, she said. Apparently the prodigal is tall and tolerable-looking, fair-haired, beaky-nosed, near thirty. Need I go on?

  Her accent wasn’t local, in fact he couldn’t place it at all, yet there was a tinge of the Borders about it, faint and unmistakable as the myrtle. He put his hands in his pockets to get them out of the way.

  This place is supposed to be empty. He tried to sound authoritative but it just came out grumpy. He sounded like his mother, uselessly complaining. Girning. That’s what came of trying not to sound like Dad.

  Is it now? She rose fast off her knees, then smiled in a way that made him glad and wary. So I’m curious as to why this prodigal should come so furtively to a cottage he thinks is empty, and that Sim Elliot, after all, owns. An assignation, maybe? Local girl? Bit on the side?

  The contempt in her voice was bad enough, its casualness worse. He made for the door.

  I’ll pass on the tea and almond slices, he said. Goodbye to you.

  Davit!

  He stopped dead, one hand on the door knob. No one had called him that in twenty years.

  David, I’m not very used to people at the moment. I get a bit nippy because I forget how to act. Sorry.

  He hesitated. Her mouth had softened, her lower lip swollen out towards him like she’d been biting it. She held out her hand, palm up.

  I apologise, she said. Nothing’s your fault.

  He thought that an odd way of putting it, but his hand dropped from the door.

  Well, just for the slices, he said, and got a smile that left an afterglow like whisky or heartburn. Look, I’m not much interested in conversation as jousting.

  Her eyes moved slowly over him, much more carefully than before.

  And conversation as conversation is boring, she said. Such a waste of energy. Maybe that’s why I don’t see people much.

  He laughed quietly, recognising the feeling. Sometimes Jo complained he’d rather talk to the trees than people, and it’s true they disappointed him less.

  So what possibilities are left? he asked.

  She grinned as if he’d said something funny, then twisted again the single tap at the sink. The jet pummelled into the heavy black kettle. She tightened the tap abruptly. All her movements were like that, powerful and decisive. She nodded at the gas rings and he flicked the clicker then put the kettle on the flame. No doubt she is deeply strange and … unaccustomed, like she’s just dropped by from somewhere else. And yet there are moments when he feels to have known her most of his life, knows the very lift of her elbow and anticipates the dip of her mouth when she talks.

  He peeled off his old Barbour and hung it on the hook next to her cloak.

  Can I borrow your knife? To cut the bread and that.

  He took the fishing knife from his belt, held it carefully by the blade and set the handle towards her. Her fingers wrapped round the wood and brass and ivory.

  Nice one, she said. Very sharp. Too good for fishing.

  I found it in the back of a drawer in the big house, thought I’d best use it for something.

  Inheritance … she said vaguely. Can be a mixed blessing, I suppose.

  She had her back to him again, sorting among the shelves of the press.

  You get the bad stuff along with the good, she said over her shoulder. Bad debts, bad genes, old feuds … Old hauntings. Bet you’ll get a lot more than the big estate from your father.

  You’re out of touch if you think there’s much of the estate left. And I don’t believe in haunting or inherited characteristics – they’re an insult to my reason and free will.

  So you have free will. Gosh.

  He blushed, believing she was putting him on, but he couldn’t stop.

  Yes, he said. I do. So do you.

  Her eyes turned away from him, her strong shoulders dropped and left her white neck long and vulnerable. He felt he’d pushed into a painful private place. Maybe that was why he found himself saying there’s bad things – lust, betrayal, murder even – said to run in his family. And he can’t believe that. It can stop running right here.

  You’re an only child, aren’t you? she said. So if you die soon, that really will be an end to the family.

  He paused by her cloak, thinking about children and Jo. Wait till we have sex first, Jo had laughed, then we’ll see. But you know how I feel about it.

  He fingered the big heavy brooch. Pewter, he thought, or an oddly pale bronze. His thumb ran over the worn silver disc mounted in its centre, feeling something cold come through the gap left by his mother’s death. He didn’t know how they’d got here, why they were talking like this, or what on earth they were really on about.

  The Borders have long been wild and lawless, she said as she cut into the bread. Badlands. Fire, lance, sword, hangings by the score. Rustling and revenge. Murder most casual. Elliots and Grahames, Nixon and Johnstone and … Lauder.

  His fingers lifted from the brooch like it was molten, he looked to her but she was bent over the kettle as the steam rose.

  Sure, he said, trying to sound casual. Blood feuds to outdo the Sicilians. Kidnapping – and more rape than you could shake a stick at, though they don’t like to talk about that.

  She coughed. Some dangerous women too, she murmured. They were no softies.

  He sat back at the table. Probably just chance, he thought – Lauder is a common enough name.

  Anyway that’s all by with, he said. Nowadays this is a prosperous douce wee place where nothing much happens, and the Borders have been settled these four hundred odd years.

  Really? she said. I look at some of the faces in the village and it seems like yesterday.

  She stretched and reached up to the top shelf and her shirt pulled out from her waist. Pale skin, thick and white. A trace of hairs in the hollow of her lower spine. The same hair that catches in the light below the line of her cropped hair. For a moment he’s tracing that powder trail from the base of her neck to the base of her spine, connecting head to hips.

  He blinked and stuck his head out the window, needing cool air. He felt right strange, not quite himself, as though normal had been suspended the moment he’d come in the door. To the left were the high twisted beech trees he can just remember. Above them, rooks rose and fell like soot from an unseen conflagration. A faint path tunnelled into the woods and disappeared. As the kettle began to hiss, down some long-overgrown pathway words stumbled and emerged. Creagan’s Knowe. Lauder Brig. The Liddie Falls. He felt dizzy and strange, like the words were coming in a voice not all his own.

  *

  Lauder Brig. The narrow hanging wooden bridge over a crash of water, planks green and wet from spray. His father waiting halfway across, urging him on. Dripping black rock, moss and ferns clinging above his head. Roar of water and the gloom. Some drunken farmer going home was said to have skited off the bridge. It may have been Lauder himself, or maybe a Lauder had owned the estate, or swum in the pool at the bottom. Nothing more corrupt than folk memory.

  But give the man a name and say one dark night a long time ago, coming home with a head full of whisky and a bag of silver coins, taking for some reason the short-cut path from the big house to the cottage, Lauder fell from the bridge. The money was never seen again, though plenty looked. Some said Lauder was pushed. Murdered. How that word ran between them in the village, thrilling and wicked as ghost, rape, divorce. Then another – the Ballantyne kid – said that was haivers. Everyone kent Lauder had jumped. Jumped into the black heuch. Why? Debts, some guilt, a black mind? Whatever. Deid M
an’s Brig and the falls that rushed by it …

  *

  David Elliot turned away from the window, saw her head dip as she went back to buttering, the dark hedge of her hair brushing her pale ear.

  Sounds scary, she said. We must take a look sometime, see if we can find the silver. Interesting detail that, isn’t it? And you can call me Barbara.

  She stuck out her left hand behind her, her right still holding the knife. Her head turned, he hesitated then held out his left hand. She grinned as if he’d finally got something right. Her hand was hotter than he’d expected as her fingers tightened across the back of his knuckles and squeezed on his ring. He tried not to wince.

  You still have the advantage of me, he said. She raised a very dark eyebrow but he knew she knew perfectly well.

  Second name, he said. Surname.

  She hesitated. Allan, she said.

  Barbara Allan. Oh sure. Born in Scarlet Town, I suppose.

  The knife smeared the same jam over and over. Her shoulders rose round her milk-white neck, then dropped again.

  Well all right, she said. It’s really Mary – though I always wanted to be Barbara. Honest. And Allan’s my … adopted name.

  Let me guess – you’re hiding out here under an assumed name from an international terrorist organisation.

  She turned and levelled the knife at his chest.

  You’re winding me up, but I’m not a clockwork toy.

  He stared back at her, then nodded.

  Absolutely, he said. No one takes the mickey out of Mary. Mickey-taking is strictly one-way traffic, yes? And I don’t take jam before tea-time. Cheese would be very fine.

  Her lips twitched. Very fine hairs at the shadowed corners of her mouth.

  I had it changed for me, she said. And I’ve no cheese so you’ll either have to do without, or change the habit of a lifetime, or …

  Or?

  She looked up and smiled. He felt ludicrously gratified, like he’d done something unexpectedly right.