Cala

by Laura Legge

  So he stayed in Pullhair, making, actually, a kind of replica of Fenella’s magical shack. He invited the marten inside as she had the mutt; he cooked salmon nightly; he read her books end to end. When his supplies of food and novels ran out, he vowed, he would look for other pastures. He dried some of the salmon into leather, so it would keep longer, and he read the books deliberately, letting each word hold its long haunt. He resigned himself to this sheltered life, though he drew energy from talking to other people, and in that matter his needle had started to dip low.

  Eventually, Aram started to get lonely. Head in those vapours, he considered going back to Gainntir, if only to have one good conversation. In the castle he had been denied two vital things, freedom and company. Had he gone to the farmhouse, he would have gained the second and lost the first, and after much deliberation he decided that was, at this point, a poor bargain.

  There were other houses salted around Pullhair, of course, but with winter falling, all of the public meeting places had been deserted, the town common and the landing pier and the guest house terrace. For once in his life, Aram did not have the confidence to knock on strangers’ doors. The sense that he once had, of being able to go anywhere, do anything, of being universally welcomed and even desired – an impression so many women had together given him, starting with his mother – had diminished in the years since he had been pulled over for a broken tail-light and detained at Dungavel. He had always thought that confidence was a permanent part of him, ingrained as his grey eyes. But now he saw himself as another cragged, middle-aged fisherman, one who would move for the rest of his life from port to port, cold cot to cold cot, and leave each landscape scanter than it had been before he came.

  And so he found himself heading, on foot, to the only building in all of Pullhair he had told himself to avoid. If having a simple conversation were enough to lift his spirits, then surely worshipping among other true believers would restore him to a higher state. He hoped that, to Minister Macbay, his would simply be a familiar face from years before. He trusted that Aileen’s shame had been strong enough to keep his identity a secret.

  The church was just a few kilometres west, in the direction opposite to Gainntir. It was a solemn grey building with tall, peaked windows absent of stained glass. The grass in front was badly burned, turned amber. In the car park were several cars, none of which Aram recognized. Even standing on the outside, he could hear the boys’ choir, though he remembered their harmonies being fuller and more florid than they now sounded. He had never been a devoted attender of this church, but he had come on a regular basis when he lived in Pullhair before, in part because he had noticed the minister’s redheaded daughter, and in part because the stories he had heard there, of Jonah living in the belly of a whale and Balaam moralizing with his talking donkey, had been in marvellous contrast to the tedious farm days.

  He had not known today was Sunday. But when he realized it was, he took that sign as auspicious. At least it would mean there were more bodies in the church, and the minister was less likely to single Aram out among them. He entered the room feeling secure and sat in the final pew. There were about twenty people congregated, plus five boys in the choir and Minister Macbay, huge now, in his pulpit gown. Aram could only see the backs of the congregants’ heads as they stood to sing with the choir, so he could not be sure if he had met any of them before. His heart went hard when he saw, among them, a head of tangled red.

  Though for a moment he let himself imagine the hair belonged to Euna, he knew she was taller, her body had more waves. This was someone else – the bidse who had stolen his child and his flame.

  The hymn was not a standard one, behold the wretch whose lust and wine/Had wasted his estate, and so forth. The boys seemed to stumble here and there, having been sheltered from particular lyrics, lust, wine. When the hymn was done, everyone who had been standing sat, and by chance, Aileen peeked over her shoulder to see who had come in to worship halfway through the service. She looked truly, spiritually shaken when she saw Aram. She whipped her neck back around before he could gesture to her, mouth the words Meet me outside – or better, You egg, young fry of treachery.

  He made the choice, then, not to leave the church. He would join Aileen for fellowship after the service, and then over smoky tea he would ask if she knew where Euna had gone. He would in the meantime contain his other tingles, angers. He refused to make a scene in this holy house. If Aileen genuinely knew nothing, he could then admit defeat, finally, and let himself start to grieve the loss of Euna. As miserable as it would be, he could stop reaching for her; his left hand could at last know what his right hand was doing.

  After the service, Aram went downstairs, where card tables had been trimmed with treats made by the town matriarchs, as well as bowls of tropical fruits, presumably grown by the minister’s wife in her forcing house. He had visited that place on one occasion. The occasion. They had conceived his son there, while a rare Hebridean sun beat down, beaded the wide bridge of Aileen’s nose. He had been aching for Euna. He had missed her so much he found a warm form with her hair and entered it bare.

  He dyked those thoughts. Not here. Not in the Kirk.

  On the far side of the basement, Aileen was pecking at a scone. A man in Highland dress was holding her other hand. He was entirely traditional: kilt of his clan tartan, fly plaid, sporran, brogues. Aram recognized him from years before, when he had come to repair the automatic fish feeders. A fine-looking man, if a bit lanky, with a well-oiled beard. He seemed rather old, until Aram realized he was old now, too, and the man was likely of a similar vintage.

  Aram took a bun from the table, as an attempt to fit in, and walked to where they were standing. Hey there, he said to the man holding Aileen’s hand. I think we met at the farm a long time ago.

  The man let go of Aileen and clapped Aram’s shoulder. Aram noticed they were wearing matching wedding bands. Aileen was looking into the distance, where her father was in yawning conversation with the owner of the guest house. That’s right, Aileen’s husband said. Whether he remembered Aram or not, he was firm about his fellowship. I’m Carson, and this is my blushing bride, Aileen.

  Aram. He smiled as he had seen others in the room do, meeting one another, beaming.

  A good and glad name, Carson said. Like in the Bible, hey?

  Aram would not consent to seeming ignorant, especially not here, so he nodded. He would find the reference later. He had an Old Testament from the castle and a New Testament from Fenella, and between them he would learn the import of his name.

  Do you think, Carson, I could borrow your blushing bride for a moment? I have some salmon to give to the church and I just need her to show me where they plan to store it.

  Sure thing, Carson said, and kissed Aileen on the cheek. Make sure you set some aside for me, my wee cauliflower.

  Aileen peered at Aram finally, for a brief and uncomfortable moment. Then she moved past him up the stairs as he dogged along behind. She led him to a small green behind the church, to a patch of charlock they had tramped on their way to the forcing house that day. Now it seemed so delicate, hurtable, that he stood a few paces from it, where the grass was already charred.

  Thank you, he said to Aileen.

  For what?

  For carrying him.

  Aileen looked at Aram now, held and held the look. For the first time he knew how his fish must have felt as he gutted them, his knife moving coldly from vent to head. How do you know that?

  Euna, he said.

  Aileen reached down into the charlock and tore a handful from the ground. It had started to rain, though gently, and the water ran from the roots in long, crimson strands, staining the hem of Aileen’s church dress.

  Did you hear me? he asked.

  Of course I heard you, you hollow heidbanger. When did you talk to her?

  She sent me one postcard, when Lachlan Iain was born. It had a little sketch of him. Where is she?

  Aileen started tearing leaves from the ma
ss that was in her hands, tarnishing her nylons, her nails, both cleaned for Sunday worship. The dress was getting soiled. I haven’t seen her since I came back to Pullhair a couple years ago, she said. She’s forgotten me, I’m sure. She’s big time now.

  Big time, Aram repeated, confused.

  Have you been living in a dungeon? Aileen asked. She’s off touring Scandinavia and Lebanon and everywhere you can imagine. Hammer of Witches, biggest band in the country.

  Aram remembered the magazine at the corner shop, the name those boys had been spewing, a singer, Euna. But it could not have been his girl. Her charm was in her smallness. His humble, diminutive, modest Euna. And my son? he asked.

  I don’t have any good news for you, she said. I came back here to marry Carson. That was always the plan. I couldn’t bring a boy conceived out of sin.

  Coldly, from vent to head. Aram was suddenly worried that Aileen had sacrificed his seed, bedded him under the headland. Is he gone?

  Aileen was visibly hurt. I’m not a monster, she said. The boy is fine. He’s on tour with Euna. I’m sure her roadie, Muireall, is taking good care of him.

  So you do have good news for me, he said. He could not bear to see her church clothes get any grungier, could not stand one more minim of dirt on lace. He took the weeds from her and placed them on the ground where they had, before, been growing. How are you doing with all of this?

  My heart was so full of you, she said, at once, as if the words had been hot in her mouth a long time, a smoky tea. And you didn’t want me, you didn’t ever want me, you just toyed with me like I was a trinket. And when you had enough, Aram, you left me broken in my father’s house.

  Aram tucked her long hair behind one ear so he could see her face. She was not crying. I never deserved the attention you gave me, he said.

  It was not a choice.

  Believe me, he said, I know.

  I wondered all the time what was wrong with me. I cried so much my nose bled.

  He needed to haul them back to the present. He sensed otherwise he could be in for a long spell of this tillage, waiting patiently while she dug up old graves. You’re the mother of my child, he said, and I’ll do everything in my means to protect you now. From myself, as from others.

  Aileen did not seem keen to move on without his accepting some blame. And he knew that was fair. The harm he had caused her was different from the harm he had caused Effie, much deeper, more grievous. The wound would be, even for the strongest woman, immense.

  There’s one thing you should know, she said to him. Euna was a vestige of you, a kind of limb, and I came to love her, too.

  He did not feel protective or shut out; he did not linger on the naked and neon of their late nights. He was covered by a warm wash, thinking of these two women who mattered to him comforting, coming to love, one another. Maybe it trimmed back his shame, knowing Aileen had not been alone with Lachlan Iain. Or maybe any story in which Euna was a living, breathing being brought him pleasure.

  And Carson, he asked, do you like him?

  You know, Aileen said, he’s handy. And he goes all the way to the grocer in Kershader to buy me exotic flowers. I’d say I drew the long straw.

  Aileen had glowed up. The indecent, deep-fried teenager he’d met those years before, her mouth a latrine, her laugh a snort, had been cast forth. In her place was a true adult, poised, pert, a self quite hot with mettle. He had learned from his mother that a shrub rose must be pruned, its oldest canes clipped with a sharp blade, so the plant does not overgrow. The baby, the broken heart, the trek home from wherever she had been. All hard. All bladed. And yet together they’d had this effect on her.

  Now, Aileen said, you better not have been lying about the fish.

  Aram laughed. I’m afraid I was, he said. But I actually do have half a cooler back at my place, and I’d be glad to bring it to you. Are you here every day?

  Every day, she said.

  Then I’ll be seeing you soon, Aram said. He stroked her cheek and then turned to walk away.

  Aileen stopped him with a hand on his forearm. No, she said. You wait here. I get to be the one to leave this time.

  He submitted. He watched her disappear into a chalet in the shadow of the church. This building was separate from the place the minister shared with his wife, a conventional house with a thatched roof. Aileen would have had to explain her dirty clothes had she entered the church again without changing. Aram guessed she had gone back to the chalet to dress in something tidy.

  Aram was iced, his skin a kind of buckram. It was time he went back to the hut. He walked past the chalet and house and through the car park. The fellowship must have just been finishing, because the congregation was coming out of the doors. With them they brought grins and, from above, sun-shafts. An elderly woman fastened a bonnet over her hair. But by then the rain was so spare she hardly needed the guard.

  *

  That evening, Aram searched the Old Testament for his name. He spent hours on his cot doing this, holding a candle to the pages, close enough to light them on fire. The book was cosmic in scope, and searching for Aram in it suddenly seemed as vain as looking for Euna in real life, wherever on earth she was. But ultimately his name did come swimming up through the dim light.

  Isaiah 7:8. For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.

  He knew Damascus was a real city, a mark on a modern map. In the castle he had met a couple of Syrian men, one from the base of Jabal ash-Shaykh, one from Damascus. They had asked where he was from, as if they wielded the answer, then seemed bewildered that he could not locate Sketimini in relation to any other place. He looked like them, they said, the bones just so, the brows just so. After a while, he’d learned to avoid those particular men, because they would not listen to what he was saying, and because he did not know if, maybe, there was some minor truth hiding in their notions.

  His mother had never been candid about anything, had chosen instead to hold secrets to her breast, banded. Her lips tended to be closed, he remembered this about her – how often he had wanted to prise that tight line apart, how he’d craved a white glint when she smiled. Please, Mam, just one tooth, had been his refrain. And now he could not stop himself from wondering whether his name had been a silent sign from her, an Easter egg hidden until he was ready to find it. Son, you belong to this land and lineage, your bones, your brow.

  She had withheld the truth about his father’s death, too, until his absence could no longer go unaddressed. Even when she had offered Aram morsels of the story, she had been looking away, at her sandals, her book laid open on the boat deck. Always holding her voice to a single note.

  Where was Sketimini?

  On a paper map, on a spread of dirty scenery, where was Sketimini?

  His mother was now out walking somewhere, or else lying under a headstone and planted flowers, and because of her silence, that tight line he could never prise apart, he would never find her. That same streak in him – his silence when Euna was set to leave the castle, his dismissal of her curiosity before that, Euna, you wouldn’t understand – had dashed his chances of seeing her again. How was it that he had assumed this trait of his mother’s he so deeply disliked, her dry reserve, and let it strike down all he had learned on his own about womenfolk? How had he, with so many options in hand, ended up alone?

  Aram was crying for the first time in as long as he could remember. The feeling was afflictive, the way his nose tingled, the way his eyes itched from the inside. His body had come close to this only when he discovered his sensitivity to mussels, after, of course, having consumed pounds and pounds. He blew the candle out and sat in the dark so he could cry without being humiliated, though even his pet marten was out at that moment.

  At the castle, he had braved his pain in private. For other prisoners that would have been an added punishment; others were eager to air their wounds. But Aram would only explore his sadne
ss in his stone room. As a matter of protection, of pride. His mother had been the same way. Now, crying, knowing how it felt to hold sorrow in his own face, and pulse, and belly, he read his mother’s silence as he never had. She had not wanted to burden him. She wanted her story, as far as her son was concerned, to begin in the catamaran. Claiming, then concealing, the harm done to her before that. So her son’s life could start from a plain, emptied-out place – nothing inherited, not even a homeland.

  But she had taught him a language, English, and though she had raised him in the ocean between countries she had, before that, rooted his earliest years in Scotland. It was impossible, anyway, to live among people and be free of origin. He had tried. He had been cosmopolitan, chosen by women of every creed; had worn stylish clothing and a trimmed beard; had learned to use his body to full effect; had advanced beyond the mundane need for friends, and so avoided being defined as they would be. He had done his very best, in other words, to be a man from Sketimini, though part of him had known for years that this was a fantasy. He would sooner succeed in catching a blue man of the Minch and inviting him to dinner.

  Aram put the Bible on the ground and huddled under his thin blanket. He longed for a pillow. A hutmate. A speaker in the night. He had convinced himself he was superior to others who were so tribal, clannish, as to be defined by a mutual language, or place, or skin tone. Only on rare occasions had something pierced this thick logic, as had happened at mealtime in the castle, when everyone had clumped in their groups and he had ambled around looking for a place to sit, though he found, each time, that there were no tables for one.

  He would bring the salmon to Aileen and Carson in the morning, and he would shake their hands, kindly, so they might know him as a true friend.

  *

  When Aram arrived at the church the next morning, he found it was much stiller than it had been on Sunday. The sky above the building hung grey and eternal, so lifeless that Aram missed yesterday’s rain. That grey stretched all the way into his centre, and just as he missed the rain outside, he missed the way he had felt the night before in the hut, when at least he had been miserable. Anything was better than this dull detachment.