When They Lay Bare Read online

  Or come back tomorrow, Lord Randall.

  So you can poison me?

  She tossed the knife clattering into the stone sink.

  My cooking’s no that bad.

  He had to laugh then, feeling raised and foolish and alert. The brightness outside, faint caw of the rooks, kettle sputtering, the square of light that fell across the pale wood table and stone floor, it was all very clear. Smell of jam, and lavender – from her shawl, he thought. Or maybe her hair.

  He plucked two tea-bags from the box on the floor. Found a second mug in the open cupboard and rinsed it out, standing beside her at the sink. The lavender was definitely from her hair. How old-fashioned.

  He hummed Where have you been, my blue-eyed boy? He’d a notion Annie Tat used to sing it. Another song of sex, jealousy and murder. Then she sang back, unexpectedly high and clear.

  Where have you been, my darling young one?

  They sang through the first verse till he clutched his heart and staggered against the sink.

  I’m weary wi hunting, and fain would lie down.

  Take a seat then, she said. You might feel safer making your own tea.

  I will that, he replied and stood guard over the kettle. She was on his right, still humming to herself as she rinsed the knife under the tap, her fingers turning the blade to flick sun into her eyes, and for the first time since his mother died his belly felt spacious and soft.

  *

  The kitchen is cool and the rusty stove stays unlit though there’s wood and a bag of coal by the grate. She doesn’t seem to feel the cold and her long-toed feet are bare on the stone floor. He licks his fingers and dabs up cake crumbs from the table as he talks. The low sunlight picks out tiny hairs by the corner of her mouth, then spreads a square of light on the floor hard by his chair. Her mouth – wide, level, strong – tugs to the left as she talks. They seem unable to stop talking. The streams of their words interrupt and intertwine.

  He doesn’t know where the words flow from, only that they must come. They are talking about times of fear and it’s his turn.

  *

  The child clings to the handrail, his thin bare legs shaking and his face wet with spray. His father walks on across Lauder Brig using no hands like he’d done it a hundred times. His father waiting at the far side, calling something but David can’t hear, not above the spate that skooshes under his feet, hits a ledge and bounces out into space. It hangs then smashes on another outcrop, streams out in a dim peacock’s tail of fractured light. The broken river rushes together again at the bottom, foaming yellow and brown at the edges then settling into the stillest pool he’s ever seen, black and radiant as the centre of an eye. That was where Lauder had been found, bits of bone and skin and not a shred of clothing left on him, and the silver coins gone for ever though you can see them glint yet if you look down on a moonlit night.

  He clings to the rail. He can see his feet sliddering across the planks, slipping off the edge leaving him hanging by the rail over the drop, above the pool a hundred feet below. He looks back the way they’ve come, but it’s too far away, he can never make it back. He looks to his dad who is waving him on, looking impatient now. But wee Davy Elliot can’t shout or scream. He’s starting to greit and he can’t see properly. He can’t move. He knows, absolutely knows, he will die here.

  He begins to slide one foot forward, then the next. He daren’t lift them. He inches forward, hand over hand along the slimy rail. If his dad would come back for him, he wouldn’t die. They’d go and see his mum and she’d come back. But his father won’t move, and his mother is in another country.

  Slicing pain in his left hand. A long skelf of wood from the rail sticks from his palm like a dagger. Blood begins to ooze. He glances up at his dad, whose mouth isn’t moving now. He isn’t even waving, he just stands on the far bank, waiting, so tall, so dark, unmoving as the rocks by his head.

  The child stops. He must pull out the spear of wood but that would mean letting go with his other hand. He can’t do that. He looks down. He’ll let go and fall. Then they’ll be sorry for what they’ve done to him. He feels the tug of the water, the fall pulling his chest as he sees himself slide down into the centre of that black eye.

  He slowly lifts his damaged hand to his mouth and grips the wooden skelf between his teeth. Tastes the blood as he jerks it out and spits and the huge splinter drops into the fall and vanishes. He turns to face forward and feels enormous as he half-runs along the rest of the soaking planks.

  He jumps off the last plank and hugs the nearest tree. He feels a big hand on his shoulder, but he ducks under Elliot’s arm and runs on. When he comes out into the light at the end of the trees he shouts his rage till the corbies skirl in the sky like a black snowstorm.

  *

  David sat on the other chair and sipped lukewarm tea through his nausea.

  I can’t believe I’ve told you that, he said. I’ve never told anyone. It seems so … weak.

  It sounds a scary place for sure, she said. Thank you. Her hand rested on his shoulder for a moment as she went past to close the window. And your father shouldn’t have done that to you –

  One quick thump then the door scrapes open. The short man is framed by light that leaves him dark. A wind comes in behind him, the shotgun hangs in the angle of his arm.

  Tat, David says. Long time.

  The man nods. His elongated shaved head turns, takes in the groceries, the cloak, the gas-rings, pauses at the myrtle. His head twitches, he glances at the half-open door into the bedroom.

  Saw the Land-Rover, laddie. Elliot never comes up here.

  My father doesn’t go anywhere these days.

  Heh, true enough.

  *

  Tat knows how to wait. He looks at the back of the woman who has not turned to face him. Her shoulders are raised like a hawk. Dark hair short and coarse as a boy’s, matted across a white neck. He checks beyond her again to the green shawl and a glint from something hanging in it.

  She got permission?

  David puts down his mug. His hands lie flat on the table. He looks across at her but gets no cue there, only her knuckles white around her fork as she turns at last to stare at the factor.

  Got a message for me, Tat?

  Heh, no.

  His long thin head is full of angles. Hooked nose, high cheekbones, sunk cheeks. Eyes a very pale grey, like the sky nearest the horizon. For the first time David sees Tat is not that much older than him, though it’s hard to imagine he ever was young. He could have been his father’s younger brother, or adopted son. Or shadow, or conscience. In fact he doesn’t know what Tat’s role is, only that he’s always been there and for some reason his father is beholden to him.

  Tat opens his fist and lets a length of chain slip and dangle a brass padlock.

  There’s twa keys to this, he says. One’s in my pooch. The other’s in the big house. So I’m wondering how she got in.

  David stirs.

  Does my father tell you everything, Tat?

  A smile flickers across her mouth, a swift undulation like a weasel flowing under a fence.

  Is she your wee secret, lad, or his? Or is it squatting?

  David pushes down on the table then reaches out and lifts the chain steadily from Tat’s hand.

  She has permission.

  He pours the chain, clinking clattering onto the table. The two men stare at each other while she watches.

  Fine, Tat says. All righty right. I’ll leave you two to it.

  He’s at the door. His skull tilts.

  I’d step canny, young Elliot, he says, and is gone. He moves like that.

  *

  A long silence in the kitchen. He looked up in time to see her tongue brush along her upper lip then vanish inside.

  Thanks, she said. I appreciate that.

  He shrugged. I’ve known Tat since I can remember, and he’s always got up my nose. Something sleekit about him. David nodded at the padlock and chain. As a matter of interest, how did you
get in?

  The usual way. She lifted the brooch from her shawl, flicked the pin and diddled around inside the brass padlock. It clicked open.

  Easy-peasy, she said.

  Where did you learn to do that?

  A school for Very Bad Girls.

  She shrugged and dropped the subject. He picked up the brooch and looked at it more closely. Its centre was surely a coin and on its worn silver he could just make out the remains of a pattern. A head perhaps.

  This looks old, he said.

  It is, very. Her voice had dropped way down. It’s family.

  He looked at it more closely. What he had thought scratches round the circumference were the remains of an inscription. Not in English. Latin, maybe. At the centre, worn almost flat but not quite, was a silhouette, he could see that now. Hooked nose and some kind of halo round its head. He wondered just how old it was. Her eyes clicked onto him like round black magnets.

  My real family, she said, then turned away.

  She turned back to face him. Fair’s fair, David, she said. So I’ll tell you one of my scary places.

  Her head is turned away to look out the window. His arms are folded. It could appear they are trying to get away from each other. But between them there run barely visible lines – which could just be scratch marks where a knife has come down too hard – and these lines connect them. They could be talking about anything as fine wires multiply between them.

  Stranded between midnight and dawn she clung to the freezing rail of the iron bed. Up to now it had been possible to believe she’d been pretending. She’d felt bad, a little rocky for sure, slightly besieged by impulses not her own, but nothing she couldn’t out-face. She was still in her right mind though it wasn’t a very pleasant one. Still fighting, still in control. It wasn’t that she couldn’t cope, she’d just needed a safe place to rest and hide out a while – and where better than the ward, the soft-slipper shuffle, the slop food, the therapy groups. How restful to have the burden of choice lifted for a while, to be told when to get up and go to bed! The individual sessions with the man with the white socks and slip-on shoes and no irony whatsoever. How could a man with such tastes know anything of her? Him she could take anytime.

  The other inmates? At times it had been possible to feel moments of affection as she pretended to be one of them. But now they slept, now it was for real and her night terror was in full bloom.

  The clock on the wall ticked, paused and the world stopped. She fell into the chasm between one moment and the next. The clock ticked again and she was back. Then the silence and she began falling again, terrified at her existence. Anorexic Billie whiffled in her sleep in the next bed. Tick. Back again.

  If she let up for a moment she was gone. The night was too long. At last she really was cracking up. This wasn’t a game or a fantasy or a try-out. It wasn’t even the times she’d had to be restrained as a child. Thoughts split, fragmented, split again. She was locked inside her own head with a crazy. She whimpered and stuffed her knuckles in her mouth to keep silent.

  She couldn’t hold out all night. She had to let go. In the morning they would find her in the bed, but she’d be gone, gone even from herself. Let go, then. Fall out of your mind for ever, for it’s too awful a place to remain.

  She coughed, her throat swelled till she began to choke. She mustn’t throw up, not here. On her feet. Cold floor. Find the handle. Into the dim-lit corridor. The loo third up on the left. But light under the door of Rosie the night warden. She couldn’t go in. She’d never asked for help ever, not even in the worst times when her only love had been sent away.

  Clinging sobbing to Rosie’s knees. Hands on her back, clasping and stroking her head. Smell of vanilla. Soft warm stomach she clung to. Spray of hair tickling her face. It’s all right, it’s all right. Her name over and over. It’s all right, I’ve got you. Let go, it’s all right.

  She let go and though it felt like dying it didn’t kill her. She came to herself clinging to Rosie’s breast, a pink nightgown wet with her own tears. She looked up, stripped bare. Rosie’s face above her, eyes sure and gentle. Her lips slightly open.

  She strained up and kissed. She sucked and hung on. Human warmth, Rosie’s mouth, tender as a mother. They both wanted. She needed Rosie, needed these kisses, tongue in under her lips and the long-forgotten warm softness of breasts against hers as she kissed. Look down and see the nipple rising, bend towards it. Hear Rosie groan quietly. Feel strong.

  Hand in her hair. Tightens. Pulls her head gently back. Rosie smiles down at her like a regretful madonna.

  We’d better stop there, Rosie says. My partner is very jealous and I have to tell her everything. And I need to keep this job. This is not what you need.

  A finger to her lips. Shush, Rosie says. Cry all you need. And holds her, carefully, to her shoulder till dawn.

  *

  Was it the, ah, gay part scared you?

  Oh no. That … She stared out the window as if that night was still out there. I’ll always be grateful to Rosie, she said. Wherever she is now. It was the letting go.

  Silence in the kitchen. Cawk of the crows, sporadic distant hoarse barking of Hawk out in the Land-Rover.

  It’s safe with me, he said. Promise.

  She looked across the table at him, soft, expressionless. Then her mouth tightened as she leaned forward. Excite you, does it?

  His lips parted but nothing came out. He shook his head then quickly stood up.

  Look, I must be getting back. Expecting a phone call.

  From the lady fair.

  What makes you think there’s a lady fair?

  There’s always a lady fair. She shrugged. Anyway, I picked it up in the village with the other talk. American?

  Canadian.

  She stretched and stood up. Would you show me that bridge before you go?

  He lifted his jacket from the hook. Another time, maybe, he said.

  Meaning never, she knows. She’s scared him off. Too intense, too confessional a session. And he’s not the one she’s looking for. He’s not guilty. So let him go.

  He felt in his jacket for his keys. Looked baffled. She dangled them in front of him, her fingers through the round hole off-centre in the black polished stone disc.

  Interesting, she said. Unusual.

  His mouth went like he’d been sucking something sweet and bitten on silver foil. Used to be my father’s, he said. He gave me it on my 21st like it was a big deal.

  So you use it as a key-ring to piss him off.

  He shrugged. Seeing he won’t tell me what’s special about it, yes.

  So it is special?

  To him, maybe. But all that old stuff … I’m not interested.

  So it seems, she said. I’d better let you go.

  Yet she gripped the stone a while longer, felt the metallic taste rise in her teeth, and knew what she must do as if it were already written. She dropped the keys into his hand and led him out into the light.

  *

  Parts of this plate are so faded it’s like looking at the world through mist. Half-drowned trees stretch out to nothing, headless men hold conversations. The animals weaving through the scenes and round the circumference could be weasels or frantic dogs, so uncertain have scale and distance become. You have to invent as much as you make out.

  There’s a space dead centre. It may be the picture has worn away completely, or perhaps it was always so. It’s the one spot where you may rest. You lean forward till you feel the coolness on your lips and are comforted.

  But what you did with your visitor was so very unwise.

  She pulled the cape round her shoulders against the wind and followed him to the Land-Rover. They were nodding and talking while inside the cab the hound scrabbled on the glass. In the trees corbies skirled as a hawk circled overhead. A peregrine falcon, David said. That at least my father got right, they’re better wild. Then they gabbled about birds and falconry and he laughed, so full of ease and confidence and decency she could have hated
or loved him. She was creaking inside. She needed him gone, then she caught him glancing at his watch.

  Thanks for the morning, he said. It seems the world’s still full of surprises.

  She slipped her hand from under her cloak.

  The world is as it’s aye been, she said. She laughed. But life’s most interesting where the border’s up for grabs.

  He pulled a face and reminded her the Border had been settled a long time now.

  On the maps, maybe. Are you that settled, Davit?

  His eyes flicked down at her clasp or her breasts.

  My father used to call me that when I was wee. Davit. When he was being affectionate or light-hearted, in the time before …

  He looked back at the cottage. He looked everywhere but her, and she glimpsed what had to happen next.

  So it’s odd to hear it from your mouth, he said.

  She looked away. He wasn’t simple but he was guileless. It was hard not to feel her hands at his throat.

  So am I too familiar, my Lord Elliot?

  Piss off. He hefted the keys in his hand, the hound barked again in the Land-Rover cabin. But you do feel familiar, he added.

  The things we’ve said – you’ll keep them close?

  On my life, Mary Allan.

  But there’s some have wildness yet, she said then and put her hand behind his head and pulled him down.

  She opened his chill mouth and found a soft ridge inside his long upper lip. She opened her lips to him and a little gasp bubbled in his throat as her tongue came in. Then she stepped back before he could, smiled like it was foolishness, a nothing, and sent David Elliot on his way.

  *

  You fabricate. You embroider. You make stories and surround yourself with foam till you are the bug hidden safe in the heart of cuckoo-spit.

  There has been fact and invention but till now you have always known the difference. There’s a border you move back and forward across, like a needle stitching up a life. And you’ve always known which side of that border you’re on at any one time. You are just wandering a while in these debatable lands, embroidering a story, still confident you can find a way home, even in the dark.