Girl on the Landing

by Paul Torday

  I often felt like this after a good day’s stalking: a mixture of melancholy guilt at killing such a beautiful animal combined with the intense satisfaction of concluding a difficult and demanding stalk. Reason told me that the stags had to be culled every year; instinct said otherwise.

  It had been a difficult stalk, too, I thought. We must have gone up and down over three thousand feet and walked several miles over steep and sometimes dangerous ground. Yet I felt well on it, not tired somehow, and more full of life than when I had started the day. I wondered what had spooked the deer: we didn’t often see hillwalkers on our ground. If they came to climb the peak of Beinn Caorrun it was usually from the other side.

  Home is the hunter, home from the hill.

  That was what my father used to say after a good day’s stalking, when he came back to the house and pulled off his boots, put the rifle on the hall table, and poured himself a whisky and soda. He did not know the truth of what he said. We are all hunters: we can never be separated from our origins. Civilisation has developed our social brain, and taught us other skills. But beneath that overlay, somewhere at the back of our brains, is the genetic imprint of an ancient hunter, who stalked far bigger animals than deer: aurochs, perhaps mammoths, perhaps other humans. We are all hunters, whether we like it or not.

  As I walked down the track towards the forest below, the wind sighed around me, ruffling the grass like a woman stroking a man’s hair. I smiled as the image came unbidden into my mind. The grass around me bent in waves, then straightened again, and then the wind touched me. Every hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  I stopped for a moment, wondering what had alarmed me. I looked uphill, expecting perhaps to see a fox staring down at me, or a buzzard wheeling above me in the sky. The sensation of being watched was now so powerful that I could scarcely prevent myself from breaking into a run. A prickle of sweat broke out on my forehead. All of a sudden, I was seized by a feeling of horror, as if something from outside had come into the world.

  I tried to reason with myself. This was panic: I had heard one or two old stalkers talk about it, a feeling of otherness that can overtake you out on the hill, alone at dusk, with not another person, nor any house, for miles around. As the colours fade from the hill and the stars begin to appear in the sky comes that feeling of utter isolation. But it was more than that: a feeling of having strayed, by accident, into someone, or something, else’s world, of being followed by something you cannot see. I had heard them speak of it, and had dismissed it as the kind of story it is good to tell after a day on the hill, when you are sitting by the fire and have a dram of whisky in your hand to comfort you. I shook my head and tried to get a grip of myself, but the feeling would not go away. It was not as intense as it had been a moment ago, but the sense of quiet watchfulness was still very strong. I stepped up my pace and before long I was striding downhill so fast that from a distance it must have looked as if I was running.

  As I entered the forest, and the road became more like a road and less like a track, the feeling began to fade. I did not slow down, though I was wet with perspiration. The sooner I was indoors, the better. The road turned a corner and there was the house, the light from the drawing-room windows casting pale rectangles on to the grass. Mrs McLeish had been in to light the fires and cook the supper. I was never as glad to get inside the house before. Rupert met me in the hall, wagging his tail and asking to be taken for a walk. I let him out into the garden for a few minutes, but couldn’t bring myself to go outside again. I stood in the doorway and whistled for him until at last he came back, looking at me with reproach.

  When he was back inside I did something I had never done before at Beinn Caorrun: I locked the doors.

  That night I sat by the fire late, drinking more whisky than I usually allowed myself, and reading articles about golf matches, and a new type of graphite driver, until at last a sense of my old, safe self returned to me. Tomorrow night Elizabeth and the others would come, and we would laugh and joke, and make plans for playing golf, and I would be Michael Gascoigne, member of Grouchers and dependable husband, once more.

  At last I found the courage to go upstairs, across the poorly lighted landing, and so to bed.

  5

  Serendipozan

  Michael sounded awful when I rang him.

  ‘Oh, hello, it’s you,’ he said.

  ‘Who were you expecting to ring?’ I asked.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to call at this time of the morning. I’m half asleep.’

  I looked at my watch. It was half past eight. By this time Michael should have been up and about for a couple of hours, if he had followed his usual routine.

  ‘Have you been hitting the whisky?’ I asked. It sounded as if he had been hitting something, or else something had been hitting him.

  ‘No, damn it. I had a bad night, that’s all.’ Then he muttered something away from the speaker that sounded like ‘lama’.

  ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ he answered, now definitely awake and also sounding as if he might lose his temper. ‘What do you want?’

  I almost hung up the phone then. If there had still been such things as telegrams I would have sent one saying ‘NOT COMING STOP YOUR BEHAVIOUR ON TELEPHONE BOORISH AND AWFUL STOP LOOK AFTER OUR GUESTS YOURSELF STOP’.

  ‘Well, we could start with you saying something along the lines of “Hello, darling, how are you, can’t wait to see you”,’ I suggested. There was a silence and I could visualise him trying to pull himself together.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth,’ he said. There was a faint suggestion of gritted teeth, but he carried on: ‘I really did have a bad night and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know what time it was when you rang. How are you?’

  ‘Too late for that,’ I said, but he could hear in my tone that I wasn’t going to make him suffer any more, at least not right now. ‘I just rang to say I will be at Perth at six o’clock and Anna and David Martin will be with me. The Robinsons are supposed to be leaving London about midday. They’re driving up, and bringing some of our kit, which is very nice of them: your golf bag, for instance, which you forgot.’

  ‘Oh God, so I did,’ said Michael, now sounding quite himself, even contrite.

  ‘Yes. What are friends for, if not to act as couriers? Heaven knows when they will arrive. About ten, I should think, so I said we wouldn’t wait for dinner. Clare the cook should be there about two o’clock. Now, will you remember to come and meet us at the station?’

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘And is there anything you want me to bring? Anything else you’ve forgotten?’

  There was a pause and then he said, ‘Bring some Nurofen in case this headache doesn’t go. It will save me having to go into Perth to get some when I drive down.’

  We spoke a few more words to one another and then Michael hung up. I put the telephone down, frowning. I hoped he wasn’t going to be in poor form this weekend, and leave me to make all the running. It would be hard enough work as it was, trying to be bright and jolly and make people forget that they were staying in a house in the mountains practically in the depths of winter, with no central heating. Michael would provide reasonable drink; he couldn’t be called mean, and his wine never gave anyone a sore head. Thanks to Clare and me, the food would be good. But was that enough to get people to overlook peeling wallpaper on the stairs, lino with holes in it in the bathroom, and spiders in the bath? I know Scottish lodges are meant to be good for the soul, rather than being renowned for their luxury, but Caorrun Lodge was at the extreme edge of what could reasonably be regarded as habitable.

  I went into the bathroom. My taxi would be arriving soon so it would be as well to have a final check through what I was meant to be taking. First, I would find the Nurofen. I opened the cabinet above the washbasin, and found a family-sized packet of the stuff. Michael was prone to headaches; more so in recent months. As I took the Nurofen out another small packet fel
l out and I caught it, to my surprise, on the way down. It was a prescription medicine. I looked at the label. It said: ‘M Gascoigne Serendipozan’. Underneath the name of the drug was the name of the manufacturer: ‘Tertius AG’. The packet was intact, so I couldn’t tell whether it was something Michael was taking now, or had taken in the past. I was puzzled for a second. In all the years of our marriage I could not once remember Michael going to the doctors. Never in London, at any rate; I remembered I had once had to drive him to the surgery at the Bridge of Gala, when we had been staying up at Caorrun. But that had been in order to remove a fishing fly that had got stuck in Michael’s cheek, just below his left eye, when a gust of wind had taken him unawares while he was fishing. That was one of the few occasions when Michael had been to see Dr Grant, the man who had turned up unexpectedly at our wedding. It was almost as if there was some bad feeling between them, except that on the one occasion we had asked Alex Grant up to the house for a drink, he had been friendly and courteous. In fact, he was an agreeable and civilised neighbour who I wished we saw more of.

  I decided that, if Michael hadn’t mentioned these tablets, then he didn’t want them. I thought I ought to check what they were for, just in case, went into the little room we used as a shared study and switched on my laptop. I had a few minutes before the taxi was due. When the computer had booted up, I Googled the word Serendipozan and clicked on the entry at the top of the list. It read:Serendipozan is one of the new generation of neuroleptics. While we must concede that extrapyramidal symptoms (e.g. acute Parkinsonism) and neuroleptic malignant symptoms (sometimes resulting in mortality) have been observed in control groups, we believe that these occurrences are statistically insignificant. This must be balanced against clear evidence of the effectiveness of Serendipozan and the significant improvement it can give to the quality of patients’ lives, allowing in many cases for them to live within their own communities without the need for medical supervision. That is why we are recommending this treatment for licensing by the Federal Drugs Agency and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NIHCE) in the UK.

  Dr Hans Bueler, Tertius Corporation AG,

  International Symposium on Clinical, Psychiatric

  Medication, Basle, 2002

  I stared at the screen. None of it made any sense at all. What did this have to do with Michael? I was about to click on another entry when the doorbell buzzed. I switched off the computer, went back into the hall and answered the door. It was the taxi driver.

  ‘Two minutes,’ I said. I went back to the bathroom and collected the Nurofen, then went and got my suitcases.

  At King’s Cross I met Anna on the train.

  ‘Where’s David?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s stuck in a meeting in the City. Something came up. It always does, and usually on a Friday.’

  Anna is one of my greatest friends, but her husband David is rather a trial. He is a stockbroker, and one of those men who always greets you with an enormous, cheesy smile and is very touchy-feely. David makes me feel uneasy, and I don’t think he makes Michael very relaxed, either. His other defining characteristic, when a few men are around him, is to make outrageous, ultra-right-wing remarks about anything and everybody. I think he sets Michael’s teeth on edge sometimes.

  On the other hand, David is a crack shot, an excellent golfer and a very good trout fisherman. He never minds being woken at dawn to go and kill something, and never complains about the weather. So, while sometimes a pain in the dining room, he is an acceptable playmate for Michael on the hill or the golf course.

  ‘How’s David going to get to Caorrun?’ I asked, feeling relieved that I wouldn’t have to spend the next seven hours in his company, which I had been slightly dreading.

  ‘Fly-drive. He’s going to get the five o’clock from Heathrow to Edinburgh, and then pick up a hire car. He should be with us in time for dinner.’

  This was perfect. I could chat to Anna as much as I wanted, and we could share a bottle of wine, and then I might try to kip for half an hour.

  So Anna and I chatted. She was about my age, in her mid-thirties, medium height, dark haired and beginning to put on weight, as indeed am I. The Martins have two children at boarding school, but thankfully Anna has little inclination to talk about them; or perhaps she is just being tactful, knowing that Michael and I have a childless marriage.

  Instead, we usually talk about people we know. Anna works for an upmarket estate agency near Sloane Street - and that’s how we met, when I interviewed her a few years ago for the magazine. She’s one of those people who actually understands what I do, knows what is going on in my world, but is less likely than the people I work with to plant a dagger in my back.

  After about half an hour of this, and our first glass of wine, Anna said, ‘How’s Michael, Elizabeth?’

  ‘Oh, much the same,’ I replied.

  ‘David said that he hasn’t been looking himself recently. David never normally notices what other people look like, so I thought I ought to ask.’

  I considered this.

  ‘Truthfully, I don’t know that there is anything wrong with Michael, not physically. He’s been a bit moody recently, but then that’s probably because he’s been away from his beloved Scottish mountain for too long. He hasn’t spent as much time there as usual this year, and I think he’s been missing it. London gets him down after a while.’

  ‘But you’ve only just got back from Ireland.’

  I considered that, too. It was true that, if Michael was not himself, overwork was not the cause. The fact is, Michael had always been distant, slightly detached from everyday life. Sometimes he gave me the impression of a man fumbling through fog. I knew it would be like this when I married him; what I hadn’t allowed for was that it grew no less painful as the years went by, watching a grown man so ill equipped for dealing with the world. In fact, if anything, it became even more painful. I used to find myself grinding my teeth and quietly muttering ‘Come on, Michael’ when he suddenly faded into silence in the middle of a sentence, as if the clockwork inside him had wound down. I didn’t realise that the fact we never sat and giggled about anything, never got drunk, never, ever did anything unexpected together, would matter more to me as time went by, not less.

  I never thought about leaving Michael; not for very long, at any rate. I think some instinct within me told me it might kill him. But since we had come back from Ireland, something had changed in him - maybe it had been going on for longer than that. He was different: he had lost weight; there was a change in his expression from time to time that worried me. I didn’t think it was anything to do with me. Our married life was no worse, if no better, than it had been for the past few years. Then another idea occurred to me.

  Oh God, I wonder if he’s having an affair.

  I didn’t speak out loud but Anna caught the thought, as close friends will. She asked, ‘Everything is all right between you two, isn’t it? I mean, you know you can tell me anything. I would never repeat a word to anyone, not even to David.’

  She poured two more glasses of wine, inviting me to tell all with an expectant look.

  ‘No, Anna, nothing like that,’ I said.

  At least, not that I know, I thought. Anna paused for a moment, to see whether I would say anything more. I was surprised by the sharpness of the pang that the thought gave me. When I said nothing, she gave an imperceptible shrug and we talked about something else. I could see she didn’t believe me.

  After a while we stopped talking, and watched the east of England go by in the pale sunshine, which glinted on stubble fields and the autumn colours of the woods. We both read our novels for a bit, and then I slipped into a doze, mostly asleep, but remembering to keep my mouth shut and not to snore.

  The train reached Perth on time, and Michael was waiting for us there. He seemed his old self, and almost pleased to see us. He kissed me, then Anna, on the cheek, and put our bags in the back of the Range Rover. Once we were inside the car I asked, ‘
Has Clare turned up?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael, ‘with a carload of food. She’s cooking away, Mrs McLeish has lit the fires and all the rooms are ready.’

  He made Caorrun Lodge sound almost cosy, even though Anna had been there before and knew what to expect.

  We drove up the A9 and then turned off up the single-track road that ran beside the Gala. As usual I was dreading the next few days. I would be cold, uncomfortable and bored. It helped that the Robinsons and the Martins were going to be there too. At least the evenings would be lively, as long as David didn’t go over the top, and not full of the long silences that occurred when Michael and I were on our own. But that was the contract I had entered into when I married Michael. I was marrying him, and I was marrying Beinn Caorrun. It was where he felt he belonged, and for as long as I could manage I had to put up with it. Michael knew how I felt, and to be fair he often went up there without me, knowing I would be happier staying in London. During the last three or four years this had become more frequent, and for months at a time we now led separate lives.