by Allan Watson
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I heard myself say.
Teri scowled and shook her head. ‘You’re being dogmatic about this, you know that? You probably think it’s embarrassing to admit there are some things science can’t explain. Elaine Thompson told me she once saw the ghost of a nun standing at the foot of her bed and swore on the Bible that she wasn’t making it up.’
Teri’s friend Elaine was one of those women who were obsessively into séances and Tarot card readings. If Teri wanted to argue the point objectively she could have done much better than use Elaine’s ghostly nun as incontrovertible proof of an after-life.
‘Elaine Thompson is a nut,’ I said. ‘The girls are a bit unsettled sleeping in a strange house, that’s all. Everything will be fine tonight, you’ll see. They’ll both sleep like babies.’
Teri looked genuinely annoyed at my recalcitrant attitude and fixed her gaze on Bugs Bunny who was tricking Elmer Fudd into looking down the barrel of a shotgun. The gun went off with a loud bang leaving Elmer with nothing more serious than a smoking, blackened head.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I thought I might take the girls swimming today.’
A little, hard knot of resentment formed in my stomach at her words. Teri was punishing me. I didn’t know if it was for disagreeing with her haunted house theory or calling her friend a nut, but she was punishing me all the same. She knew I couldn’t go swimming with them. Swimming pools made me feel like an agoraphobic placed in the middle of a desert. I was effectively being excluded from their company. I wanted to make a sarcastic comment but forced myself to bite my tongue. If Teri wanted to score a small victory over me with that tactic then so be it. Although it almost made me wince to do so, I nodded nonchalantly and took a ferocious bite from one of the cold bacon sandwiches.
After lunch I dropped Teri and the girls off at the East Sands Leisure Centre. We had spent the last few hours of the morning walking around the shops. No-one seemed interested in my complaints at being left to stand like a tethered horse outside every women’s clothing shop in South Street. In revenge I lingered over shop windows with knives and fishing tackle on display and made them wait impatiently while I leisurely perused the Bargain Book shop. At noon we ate in Bella Pasta where they were doing a special Two for One pizza offer. Then it was back to the flat to pick up the swimming gear.
Left to my own devices, I thought of driving to Anstruther or visiting the Secret Nuclear Bunker which by its very name flaunted the trades description act seeing they advertised it as a tourist attraction. Then I remembered something else I’d read on one of the tourist information pamphlets scattered around the flat. There was a coastal walk which started at the east beach and followed the cliff line towards Kingsbarns. Swimming pools and lochs and flooded quarries might send me into a panic attack but I was not afraid of the sea. Its vastness held my phobia in the grip of paralysis, stupefying it into submission.
I decided walking would be the perfect way to calmly think about what was happening to me. I needed to find a neat and tidy rationalisation of the strangeness which had draped itself around my shoulders over the last few days. It was the familiarity that really bothered me. The unshakeable certainty that some part of me knew more than it was telling.
I parked the car at the bottom end of Kinkelbraes caravan site and made my way along the cliff top path. From up here St Andrew’s was reduced to scale model size. The sea however had grown and only ended at the curve of the world. The path led to a hazardous set of stone steps which wound steeply through the thick undergrowth of the cliff. Some of the steps were cracked in half, while others were weatherworn to the point of falling apart altogether. My secondary fear of heights made my mouth go dry, and as I descended I let my hands trail through thick ferns on either side of me in case I stumbled.
Eventually I reached the beach below and was glad I’d made the effort. This beach had nothing in common with the tame, sandy stretch of land around the shoulder of the cliff. This was a wild, rocky terrain that still remembered the tectonic violence of the earth. Here you felt like the only person left alive after a nuclear holocaust. My feet crunched through thick shale and scree as I skirted massive boulders covered in limpets and other marine eczema. Untidy ropes of seaweed and bladderwrack trailed in and out of rock pools promising a twisted ankle to the unwary, and driftwood lay scattered like disinterred bones from a ships graveyard.
As I poked around in some of the pools, disturbing small crabs and spindly water spiders, an odd feeling of happiness and excitement stole upon me. I was like a ten year old boy again - an explorer in a strange and savage country that had mysteriously risen from the sea in the dead of night. This section of the beach ended in a massive upheaval of layered granite slabs that had ruptured through the shale like a dragon’s spine. I climbed the shattered rocks wanting to see what lay beyond. It never occurred to me that I might have slipped and broken my legs, maybe lying there helpless until the tide came in and covered me with its cold hand. Recklessly I scrabbled over the rocks until the new terrain beyond was revealed. This beach was similar to the last. More stones, more shale, more driftwood, and in the distance another dragon’s spine jutting from the bedrock. I decided I would like to see what lay beyond this too.
Ten minutes later I was once again pulling myself over the rocks, and this time when I peered over the edge I almost fell back with surprise. On this section of beach, a tall, twisted finger of stone pointed accusingly at the sky. The angle of the cliff had hidden it from view until I had crested the dragon’s spine. Some primitive racial memory woke up inside me and the emotion I felt at that moment was sheer awe and wonder. This was a stone worthy of worship. I found myself almost carelessly scrabbling over the granite spine and walking towards the stone.
As I got closer to the sea-stack monolith, I could see it was made from softer stone than the angular outcroppings marking the borders of the beach. The sea and weather had carved the rock with its wet salty tongue, creating whorls and glyphs in its pitted surface. Beside the stack there was another huge stone whose slanted face had radiating spokes rather like an old fashioned spindle laid on its side. I cursed myself for not bringing my camera. Photography was one of those hobbies that had dwindled away beneath the onslaught of parental responsibility. Some of my old passion for the subject rekindled itself awake as I stood there on that lonely beach. Before we left St Andrew’s, I knew I had to come back here and photograph this finger of grotesquely twisted rock.
On the way back I realised I had forgotten all about the conflicts taking place inside my head. The dreams. The déjà vu. The lurking paranoia. Suddenly it didn’t matter, the walk had brought its own answer. I had been looking for sinister evidence of a chemical malfunction. Reeking secrets from the past, rising like fish eaten corpses to the surface of the swamp. Something so dreadful, I had completely erased it from memory. The trigger? Self retribution, the need to scourge myself through guilt. It was a faulty hypothesis. All I was suffering from was a bad case of mid life crisis. The affair with Rita was only a symptom of my malady, not the root cause.
Climbing the stone steps back up the cliff side, it occurred to me I had reached the age where married people suddenly become aware that their individual identity has been left behind somewhere along the way. Surrendered piece by piece and replaced by the hybrid model fashioned from the intertwining of two souls caught in the dance of wedlock. I had subconsciously tried to save myself by sleeping with Rita. I wasn’t the first fool who had acted so predictably. But I had been caught. The internal forces that had been busy trying to salvage something from my personal identity then had to grapple with the onslaught of guilt. I was a casualty of war.
But I had found the answer. I needed a hobby, an interest to appease the sad ghost of my deposed ego. I needed to detach myself from the suffocating bosom of family life now and then. The atoms from which I was constructed remembered being a hunter/gatherer. I had been gathering too long and now I needed to hunt. I would t
ake up photography again. It would be an insular, self sustained world where I could go live and breathe, when the need to set off in pursuit of prey came upon me.
Teri had said she would make her own way back to the flat with Denise and Alice. She had set no definite time to meet up and I decided to keep my own company for a little while longer. The tall finger of rock on the lonely beach had instigated the beginning of a new phase in my life. It was only fitting it would be my first subject. I wanted to know more about the rock before I returned to photograph it. It had to be a well known landmark among the native population of the town. It would have a name and a history I imagined.
Half an hour later I was standing in St Andrew’s library in Church Square. The smiling old woman standing behind the main desk was wrinkling her forehead in deep thought. Her name tag said she was Miss Jean.Sinclair. She was a plump, red faced apple of a woman. Friendliness radiated from her as if she were a happy sun. I liked her immediately.
‘Och, I do know the stone you’re talking about. It’s called....... let’s see now.....’ The wrinkles became deeper and spread outwards, dimples pooling like dark tarns on her parchment skin. She appeared to age visibly before my eyes like a vampire caught in sunlight. I smiled encouragingly, hoping to jog her memory.
‘It’s called.......it’s called. Oh bugger it! It’s gone completely. Please pardon my language Mr McVey. I could probably tell you the author and title of every book in here, but the name of that rock has slipped right out of my head.’
I shrugged sympathetically. ‘Perhaps there’s a book that can help me then? Something about landmarks in the area.’
She beamed at me, ‘I can do better than that. Miss McCulloch lives in Boarhills. She would know about that old rock. You’ll probably find her filing books in the biography section.’
I thanked Miss Sinclair and wandered down the library, passing through the general fiction and into the reference section where the biographies were held. A cart laden with books stuck out from the end of the last aisle. Miss McCulloch was still hard at work it seemed. I imagined her to be the opposite of Miss Sinclair. Probably a thin scrawny woman with sharp black eyes and witch’s hooked nose and chin.
When I rounded the aisle I was surprised to see a young woman with her back to me. She was stretching on her tip-toes to replace a book on the top shelf. As she reached upwards to push the book into position, her short skirt rose to the tops of her thighs. It was impossible not to admire her shapely bare legs. Even as she sensed my presence and half turned to face me, I realised I knew this girl - and by the time she had turned fully around I remembered where I had last seen her. By then it was too late to slip away unseen.
The pretty young library assistant brushed her long flame hair away from her face and smiled impudently at me. ‘Why, if it isn’t the man from Presto’s who lurks around the freezer department looking at ladies’ backsides. A girl isn’t safe buying frozen carrots in her own supermarket these days. Are you stalking me?’
I was mortified. I couldn’t think of a word to say. I tried to apologise, but utter gibberish spilled from my mouth. I felt like I was caught up in one those absurd Benny Hill sketches from the 70’s. At any moment someone was going to puncture a beach ball in the next aisle and make it sound as though I was breaking wind. I finally managed to splutter out, ‘I know how this must look, but I..............’
The girl crossed her arms over her breasts and giggled. ‘Oh, don’t apologise. I’m only having a laugh with you for goodness sake. I know you’re not following me. I heard Jean Sinclair send you down here. When you work in a place as quiet as this you develop sensitive ears. I peeked round the aisle and saw it was you. I couldn’t resist having a joke with you.’
‘You mean you deliberately set me up, filing that book on the top shelf?’ I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or annoyed.
The girl flashed her dazzling smile at me and winked. ‘I know, I’m wicked to the core. Actually that book shouldn’t even be there. Hang on.’
She turned and reached for the misfiled book, once more making her short skirt slide up her thighs. This time I got a shadowy glimpse of her underwear. She lingered, almost intentionally over freeing the book before pulling it out and throwing it back on the cart.
‘Ha, caught you again. You’ve got no morals at all have you?’
This time I laughed along with her. She was a tease, there was no doubt about that. But so what? If she wanted to take the piss by flashing her knickers who was I to complain?
She said, ‘Now was it something to do with a rock I heard you asking Jean Sinclair about?’
I nodded and repeated what I had said to the woman at the desk about stumbling across the tall monolith on the beach.
‘You’re talking about the Rock and Spindle. Why do you want to know about those old things? Are you writing a book?’
To my own disbelieving ears, I heard myself lying. I had gotten a strong feeling this girl would be impressed if I was researching her rock for professional purposes. I had no idea why I wanted to impress her. It just suddenly seemed like a good idea at the time.
‘I’m a photographer,’ I said without the slightest trace of discomfort. ‘I’ve been commissioned to do a book on the Fife coastline.’
The girl looked surprised. ‘Really? That’s neat. I’ve never met an author before. What’s your name?’
‘Matt McVey. And I’m not an author. I’m a photographer. I just supply the publisher with a lot of scribbled notes about my pictures and someone tidies them all up.’ I was plucking lies from thin air. I didn’t even have to think about what I was saying.
‘They probably won’t print anything at all about the Rock and Spindle. They’ve got a black history. I’ll tell you all about it if you like.’
I was intrigued. Not only by the rock, but by the girl herself. There was a self confidence about her that belied her age, which I guessed to be eighteen or nineteen. I glanced in the direction of the front desk. ‘Look, I hope I’m not holding you back from your. I wouldn’t like you to get a ticking off from the old lady at the desk.’
The girl laughed, ‘Oh, don’t worry over keeping me from filing these stupid books, and don’t worry about getting me a row. I’ve never heard Jean Sinclair say a cross word to anyone in my life. By the way, my name’s Alison.’
I grinned and held out my hand. ‘Hello Alison.’
She took my hand and held it firmly. Her skin was dry against my own clammy palm. ‘Hello yourself Matt McVey.’
We broke contact and stood smiling at each other. I knew this was completely insane. I had come to St Andrew’s to salvage my marriage and here I was flirting with a girl young enough to be my daughter. A mean, nasty voice inside my head said it was Teri’s fault. If she hadn’t insisted on taking the girls swimming I wouldn’t be in this position. I didn’t totally disagree with this voice. Teri had dumped me this afternoon. I knew the argument was irrelevant anyway. It wasn’t as if I intended asking the girl out or anything like that. It was merely a harmless encounter with a pretty girl who worked in the library. Most likely I would never see her again after I left.
Alison McCulloch sat on the book cart and crossed one shapely leg over the other, blatantly daring me to look at the expanse of creamy flesh now on view. I kept my gaze fixed on her face, playing her at her own game. I was close enough to smell her perfume. Nothing expensive, just the everyday type of scent young women wear to work. Beneath the perfume I caught the tiniest hint of her sweat, it smelled as sweet as the perfume.
Eventually the girl said, ‘They used to sacrifice people down at the Rock and Spindle. Young girls mostly. Virgins. That was when the Picts lived here. There also used to be a swine worshipping cult in the area, hence the name Boarhills. They thought it would bring them favours from their piggy Gods if sacrificed young girls on The Spindle. That’s the smaller rock that looks like someone has carved the spokes of a wheel on it. The whole thing is really an old volcanic vent from the Carboniferous
age which makes it about 300 million years old.’ She giggled and held her hand up to her mouth before whispering ‘About the same age as Jean Sinclair,’ before breaking into another fit of giggles.
I couldn’t help myself from grinning back at her. The older librarian did look like she came from a time lost in history.
Alison got her laughter under control and continued with my local history lesson. ‘Much later smugglers tied their enemies to the tall rock and watched them drown when the tide came in. It’s really not a very nice rock formation if you think about it. It’s seen a lot of blood and death in its time. I seem to remember it also had another name amongst the girls in the area.’ Alison stopped and smiled slyly. ‘Bet you can’t guess what we called it.’
I shrugged. ‘Fraggle Rock? Blackpool Rock? I don't know. Tell me.’
‘Cock Rock. Because of its shape. Although I have to say I’ve never seen one as big as that before. Can always live in hope though.’
Once again she squealed with laughter and I felt myself blushing. Alison McCulloch certainly wasn’t the shy and retiring type. Normally this kind of juvenile, smutty humour made me cringe, but coming from this girl’s lips it made me want her all the more. I found her enchanting. I let my eyes glance down at her legs and imagined what they would feel like if I ran my hand along them. I knew if I didn’t get out of the library in the next few minutes I was going to ask this girl if I could meet her somewhere later on.
Only the kindly red face of Miss Sinclair peering around the end of the aisle stopped me from making a complete ass of myself.
‘My, it sounds like you two are getting along like a house on fire. Did you find out what you wanted, Mr McVey?’
I nodded, feeling extremely flustered. It crossed my mind the old woman might have timed her interruption just right to catch me staring at Alison’s legs.
