by Allan Watson
The stairs leading to the top floor were steep and curving and I had trouble negotiating the tight bend with two bulging suitcases. I dumped them on the double bed of the master bedroom and peeked in the other two bedrooms. The first was bright and sunny, overlooking the back gardens. It held two single beds and had built-in wardrobes fronted with pine louvered doors. The other room was long and narrow, and most likely been used as a storeroom at one time. There was only space for bunk beds and a chest of drawers that looked like something pulled from a bonfire. Like the street outside, the room had a depressing, gloomy feel to it. It gave the optical illusion the walls were drawing together like the jaws of a giant vice. It would be easy to imagine a razor honed pendulum dropping from the ceiling above the bed on the stroke of midnight, to begin its murderous arc of descent.
I hoped Teri might have had second thoughts over the sleeping arrangements, but I wasn’t prepared to push things. Even if it meant sleeping in one of the bunk beds for a couple of nights until we made up more ground, I was resigned to compliance. After jogging back down the stairs to fetch my own bag, I decided to put my things into the room with twin beds as this would show Teri that I fully intended to honour her conditions of the holiday. With any luck it would make her feel guilty and lead to a swift withdrawal of sexual sanctions. That was my game plan anyway.
It didn’t take long to empty the small amount of clothes I’d brought into the first wardrobe. This done I checked the other two out of curiosity. One was empty except for a huddle of wire coat hangers. The third wardrobe was locked. For some reason this vexed me. I tried peering through the louvered slats of the door but could make out nothing but shadows. Most likely the owners of the flat used this wardrobe to store their personal effects. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to force the flimsy lock, but I knew it would have been nasty prying, like looking in someone’s diary. With a shrug I left the room and wandered downstairs.
Teri was in the process of filling the kitchen cupboards and looked distinctly harassed. Denise was lending a hand but being more of a hindrance, while Alice, the Polter-child, was running around like a dervish, excited beyond any constraint with her new environment. Trying to act as if it was perfectly natural, I slipped my arm around Teri’s waist and pecked her lightly on the top of her head. She didn’t lean into me as I had hoped, but neither did she cringe away which was a victory in itself. I couldn’t help noticing the slight roll of fat she’d had around her middle since the girls came along was gone. As if realising she was being appraised, Teri slipped out of my grasp and began rinsing drinking glasses at the sink.
She suggested that I take the girls out for a walk and get some food while she finished the unpacking. I was only too happy to agree. Unpacking is one of those chores that always makes me edgy and impatient, especially when I know everything I do is going to be overruled by Teri’s higher authority and moved elsewhere. Both the girls were delighted at the prospect of having their first look at the town. I made sure I had my wallet and mobile phone and led them down the stairs.
The first thing I did was take them along to Luvian’s beside the fountain to buy ice creams. There were several stalls set up around the fountain selling tea towels, hair ribbons, cheap jewellery and all the usual nik-naks aimed at the casual buyer. One of the stalls was packed with second hand paperbacks and I was ecstatic to find a couple of old dog-eared Phil Rickman novels I’d been meaning to read again. The good feeling was back with me. It lay in the pit of my stomach like a fluttering ball of tinsel and coloured glass. I bought Alice a Winnie-the-Pooh hair clasp and silver earrings for Denise. There was also a flower stall beside the fountain. I made up my mind to return here after we had done the shopping and buy Teri the blooms I had been too afraid to buy that morning.
I took the girls on a mini-tour of the nearby streets, showing them the Holy Trinity Church, parts of which have stood for more than half a millennium and still used as the Town’s main Kirk. Behind the stained glass windows, the Reformist John Knox once incited the Calvinist Protestants to pillage the Cathedral and drive out Catholicism, killing hundreds in the process. All in the name of God of course. Not that the Catholics were so innocent either, having been prone to burning Protestants in the middle of the street for public entertainment.
We wandered into South Street and I tagged along behind Denise and Alice as they window shopped. Across the road stood the remains of Blackfriars Chapel, another casualty of Knox’s heavy handed boys. Only the three sided apse had survived the onslaught, standing like an medieval bus shelter against the backdrop of Madras College. I had always found this black stone ruin to be a sinister piece of olden day architecture. It squatted like an dark, ugly troll on the college lawn, staring at the passers-by with bitterness and contempt in its empty, arched eyes. Naturally it was reputed to be haunted.
On that first day of our holiday however, the Chapel ruins looked more mournful than menacing, and the way the mid afternoon sun slanted through its arches threw my mind back to the first time Teri and I had come here. I remembered us walking down this same street, my arm around her waist, her hand in my back pocket. We were nineteen years old and had the mental freedom that only youth possess. No mortgage to worry about, no kids, no bills to pay. All we had to think about was enjoying each other. And we did. A friend of mine had loaned us his rickety old caravan and I always like to think that we hastened its demise with our naive but energetic love-making.
Alice broke my reverie of the past by asking, ‘Dad, why are those people dressed so funny?’ I looked to where she was pointing and saw a group of middle aged men and women wearing a uniform of hideous checked trousers and garishly coloured Pringle sweaters waiting to cross at the traffic lights. Despite not wanting to appear rude, I found myself smiling. St Andrew’s had once been an important ecclesiastical centre for Christian pilgrims all across Europe. Now history repeats itself in the form of these new pilgrims, who come to pay their respects at the altar of the Royal and Ancient, the birthplace of golf. It’s probably wrong to laugh at them and their ridiculous attire, for without their patronage, the town would slip once more into the role of a second rate sea-side resort, of interest to no-one except historians and students.
A elderly golfer with a pastel pink sweater overheard Alice’s remark, and he stared at me as if waiting to hear what sort of stern rebuke I would issue to my bad mannered offspring. Denise had also the seen the hostile look on the man’s face and moved closer to me. I disappointed Mr Pink by merely ruffling Alice’s hair and saying loudly, ‘Don’t be frightened girls, they’re only golfers.’
The pedestrian light flashed on and the golfing party started to cross the road except for Mr Pink who continued glaring at us as if seeking a confrontation. In the end he allowed himself to be led away by his overweight wife, who barked, ‘C’mon honey,’ in a nasal American accent.
I checked my watch and reckoned it was time to get some shopping done before Teri came looking for us. I walked the girls back to Market Street where a supermarket was still open. Denise pushed the trolley, while Alice jumped on the sidebar and rode shot-gun. Teri would want to do the main bulk of the shopping herself, so I grabbed mostly snacks and junk food to see us over the weekend, stuff like crisps, burgers, cheese, bacon, micro-wave chips, Cornflakes, coke and chocolate. As we were walking past the freezer section, a girl with familiar flame red hair was leaning over one the chest freezers.
I halted so suddenly that Denise barged into me with the trolley, almost spilling Alice from her precarious foothold. For a few moments I was oblivious to their protests as I gazed at the girl rummaging around in the frozen vegetables compartment. I couldn’t see her face but I had no doubt who I was looking at. The mane of fiery red hair, the way her small breasts hung like inverted cones inside the white T-shirt, the swell of her buttocks encased in faded blue denim. I knew them all too well. It was Rita. I took a deep breath expecting to smell violets.
Alice’s voice was loud enough for half the store t
o overhear her say, ‘Dad, it’s rude to stare at people’s bottoms.’
My face blushed red as the girl lifted her head from the freezer and I saw I had been mistaken. This girl was younger than Rita, perhaps only seventeen or eighteen years old. She was pretty with pale skin and a smattering of freckles across her nose and under her eyes. The corners of her mouth lifted in a wicked smile before she busied herself once more with frozen sprouts and baby carrots. Taking my chance, I grabbed the trolley from Denise and pushed it quickly towards the check-outs, half tempted to tip Alice off into a freezer full of fish fingers. I was still so flustered by the incident that I never noticed the smirking girl at the till had overcharged me by three pounds until I was well away from the store.
To allow myself time to regain self composure before returning to the flat, I popped into Oddbins for some lager and a bottle of wine. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been to think that Rita was in St Andrew’s, now of all times. That would have been too much of a coincidence. The illusion had been perfect though. How many hundreds of times had I seen Rita in that same position leaning over someone’s desk at work, not to mention a few occasions in my car minus the T-shirt and jeans.
I concentrated on what to buy. I didn’t know if Teri would even want to have a drink tonight. She might see it as a ploy to ease my way into her bed. I bought her a bottle of white wine anyway, and for myself, six pack of Peroni. There was no point in being unprepared should the opportunity present itself. As I waited for my change, I turned just in time to see Alice removing the bottom can from a fragile pyramid of Murphy’s Stout. For the second time in five minutes I found myself hurrying from a shop with a red face.
CHAPTER 3
By nine o’clock both girls were fast asleep in bed. The first day had gone pretty well. After a meal of burgers and chips, which I cooked, we took a walk along the East Sands. A few times I actually forgot what the domestic situation was and just enjoyed being part of my family again. Then I would remember that Teri could take all of this away from me at the end of the week, and I’d feel the wind gusting in from the sea grow a little colder.
On the way to the beach, we walked through the Cathedral ruins, reading the lichen stained grave stones and joking about the possibility of finding one with our own name on it. Alice pretended to be a ghost and hid behind the larger headstones, jumping out when least expected. Only Denise seemed to be in a sombre mood, and when I asked what was troubling her, she said she didn’t like the thought of so many dead people lying beneath her feet.
We left the Cathedral by the back gate which led onto the cliff path. Far below us the sea relentlessly swept across the rocks. If you listened to its soothing whispers long enough you could sometimes hear voices in the undercurrents, but this is an unwise practice as the sea is a queer beast, whose stories should be left well alone. Following the cliff path we came at last to St Mary’s on the Rock. This was the site of the ancient Celtic Church of the Culdees where St Andrew’s relics were once supposedly kept. Nothing remains of the Church now but the foundation stones and a small plaque dating the ruins back to the 9th century. The path took a steep downward turn here as it wound towards the small harbour.
I couldn’t resist giving Teri and the girls an impromptu history lesson on how St Andrew, the brother of St Peter, was crucified on a diagonal cross called a Saltire and how a Greek monk, St Regulus, later to be known as St Rule, was charged with bringing his relics to A region towards the west, situated in the utmost part of the world. According to the legends, St Regulus was shipwrecked in St Andrews when it was still a Pictish settlement called Kinrymont. He duly built his shrine and history was made. I also explained that the St Andrew’s Saltire was adopted as Scotland’s national flag after its image appeared as a fiery cross in the sky the night before a victorious Scottish battle. Alice made us laugh by immediately gazing up at the sky as if expecting to see a flaming Saltire appear among the clouds.
As we made to leave St Mary’s on the Rock, the sound of enthusiastic applause made me turn to find a Japanese man and woman smiling widely and clapping their hands. Obviously they had been impressed by my lecturing skills. To Teri’s great amusement the man insisted on taking our photograph. I saw the photograph later on when the man sold it to a national newspaper after the murder trial was underway. Beneath the picture our names were printed in small, neat courier type. Only the smiling old man standing just slightly out of camera shot wasn’t named. By then I could have given him a name, but they thought I was crazy enough at that point.
Leaving the Japanese couple still smiling and waving, we took the steep path down to the harbour where the walls were lined with orange meshed lobster creels stacked on top of one another. On the opposite side of the water two young women sat with pencils and large sketching pads capturing the picturesque scene. We crossed the harbour channel where it met the Kinness Burn by way of a open sided metal footbridge. The tide had gone out in the harbour inlet twenty feet below us, and the small fishing boats lying on their sides in the mud looked sadly forlorn. Terns and cormorants hopped about in the mouth of the estuary, picking up tasty tit-bits the tide had left behind.
Once safely across there was only a grassy knoll between us and the East Sands. Teri sat on a bench while I ran down to the beach with Denise and Alice. The retreating tide had left many small pools, and in one of these pools I found a decent sized crab which I chased the girls with, making them scream and shriek. Alice roamed around collecting the prettiest sea-shells, while Denise and I used sticks to write funny things about her in the wet sand. When Alice asked what we had written, we lied and paid her the most outrageous compliments.
Eventually we made our way back up the beach with damp feet and light hearts to where Teri sat shivering on her bench. On the walk back, Teri complained about the cold sea breeze and I took that as my cue to slide my arm around her. This time she snuggled into me, moulding herself against the side of my body. She was wearing only a T-shirt and a thin, denim jacket and I could see she wasn’t lying about feeling the chill by the way her nipples poked out from the flimsy cotton material. I decided there and then to get myself into her bed that night.
By the time we crossed the harbour and climbed the hill, the Cathedral gate was locked for the night, barring us from taking the shortcut through the cathedral ruins. I noticed Denise looked relieved about this as we followed the path which led back onto North Street. Twilight had fallen upon the town and I was tempted to take the longer way round, continuing along the path until it reached the castle. The girls were tired however, and the thought of getting Teri on her own while this mood lasted was an appealing one. The castle could wait for another day. I had a different type of battlements to lay siege to.
Alice insisted she wanted to sleep in the top bunk in the narrow room and I only agreed after checking the safety rail was safe and well secured. Denise sulked at having to take the bottom bunk as she had wanted to sleep in the room with louver wardrobes. Peace was only restored after I promised her a double ice cream at Luvian’s right after breakfast. I kissed them both goodnight and descended the stairs.
Teri had closed the curtains and switched on a lamp, giving the room a warm, cosy feel. With the buffer our daughter’s presence had provided now removed, we sat a few feet apart on the couch watching the television. Normal conversation was going to be impossible until the whole issue of my fling with Rita was properly thrashed out, but Teri gave no indication of wanting to bring the matter up just yet and I was happy to avoid that confrontation for as long as possible. A film was starting on the television, Angel Heart, with Mickey Rourke as Harry Angel the doomed private investigator, and Robert De Niro playing Luis Cyphre, his devilish client. I had already seen it twice but didn’t mind watching it a third time.
I slipped into the kitchen and poured Teri a glass of wine, getting a bottle of lager for myself. I tipped a couple of packets of crisps into a large soup bowl and carried them through. I sat closer to Teri this time with only
the width of the bowl between us. The plot of the film was complex and Teri frequently asked me what was meant to be happening. Usually I got irritated at having to explain films when I’m in the middle of watching one, but this time I was patient and eager to please. When the crisps were finished I set the bowl on the floor and inched closer to Teri until my thigh was against hers. There was something exciting and erotic about this minimalist contact that reminded me of our early courting days before we started sleeping together.
Whenever the adverts interrupted the film, I would scuttle off to the kitchen to refill Teri’s glass. I could see by the flush in her cheeks and the brightness of her eyes, that the alcohol was taking effect. It occurred to me that I was using the crudest method of seduction in existence, a mercenary tactic. But I felt no shame, there was much more at stake than a drunken shag. I knew if I could get Teri into bed on the first night of our holiday there would be no turning back.
By the time poor Harry Angel was on his way to hell, the bottle of wine was mostly empty and I had finished off four bottles of Peronni. As the credits rolled down the television screen I realised that I hadn’t really planned on any specific modus operandi to secure an invitation to the master bed chamber. Then fate lent a helping hand. Teri lost her grip on the wine glass, grabbed wildly for it, and only succeeded in sending it spinning towards the floor, showering us both with droplets of wine. Instinctively I stretched out to catch the glass just as Teri did the very same thing and our heads knocked together with a dull thud. The glass hit the carpet and rolled harmlessly beneath the coffee table.
