Bear Witness

by Mandy Haggith

  She stumbled into her bunk and lay awake, with her teddy bear tucked under her chin, thinking ahead to her father alone in his bed. The house would be full of memories, her mother’s presence everywhere from the front door to the big loft, the best thing about their Scandinavian-style wooden house. She had always loved it up there: it was perpetually warm, full of her father’s wine, rows of demijohns with their furtive bubbles, burping through the winter, as if each glass jar had its own invisible frog-genie.

  She remembered when she was little she had made a hibernation den in one corner and taken her teddy bears up into it, having heard that this was what bears liked to do at the first onset of snow. Her mother had helped her up with a huge cardboard box, which she had turned on its side, in the corner of the room. It took several trips up and down the stairs to bring all her bears up. She had installed them all in their cave, making sure they were each snuggled comfortably, then wished them good night, until the spring.

  That night she had woken in the dark, her empty bedroom scary without its furry inhabitants. She must have cried because her mother had appeared in her nightie and told her that although brown bears slept all winter, she wasn’t sure that polar bears did. She offered to find out if one of them might still be awake. Callis lay listening to the creak of the loft stairs, a pause, then the padding of slippered feet back down. Her mother reappeared with Berg, her fluffiest polar bear, who was not hibernating. Sleep, presumably, returned to normal.

  She had spent a lot of time that winter in the loft, she seemed to remember, checking on the bears in their burrow, snoozing to their chorus of wine-frogs. At some point, spring no doubt had come and the box of bears had emptied. She had no memory of that. She just recalled the warm brown cave full of sleeping bears, who moved over to let her curl up among them, one or two of whom might wake from time to time and growl or shuffle over for a cuddle and to listen to what she had to say.

  Back in the present, in the last vestiges of this short spring night, she imagined herself curling up in the den of a real sleeping bear, feeling the hushing lap of breath against her cheek, sinking into fur. She must have slept eventually, the roll of the boat like the rhythm of air in lungs, the engine-growl of sleep droning her to a dreamless place.

  Waking for a pee, her head scrubbed clear of everything but self-loathing on account of the gin, it was obvious what to do. She couldn’t bring her mother back, but bears were a different matter.

  Her father was standing at the arrivals door and at first she didn’t recognise him. Her own father, grown so old, so suddenly. Perhaps it had been coming for some time. She hadn’t really looked at him, she supposed, for ages; he was just the shadow behind her mother. It was nearly a year since she’d been back: she had stayed in Norway on her own at Christmas, gone to a local New Year party, avoiding Hogmanay at home, with all the rituals she had long outgrown.

  He reached out to her and she let him hug her. Still wearing uniform blue slacks and fleece, but his straight, tall body had shrunk, somehow, or slumped, as if an internal wall had collapsed. His eyes were vacant, deep in, and there was a manner about him she couldn’t place at first, then it struck her. He was in policeman mode. On guard. He tried to take her bag, and she tried to stop him, then gave in: the rucksack on her back had all the weight in it.

  She followed him outside. He had parked in a disabled bay, right beside the entrance, and when she gave him a questioning look he waved at the windscreen. ‘Disabled sticker. Got it for your mum.’

  She slung the rucksack in the back seat, then got in the front.

  ‘So,’ he said, as she buckled up. He reversed out of the space and joined the flow of traffic. She waited for him to continue speaking. ‘How’s the job?’

  First things first, she thought. She toyed with various answers: I slept with my boss and now he reminds me of a lizard; almost as boring as being a policeman; well paid but soulless. ‘It was an easy crossing,’ she said.

  He glanced at her. ‘You smell of drink.’

  ‘Did you hear about the bear?’ she said.

  Nobody told her Malcolm Johnstone would be at the funeral. Not long after the service started she turned to catch the eye of Diana, who was sitting with Frances and Stig a few rows back on the other side of the crematorium chapel. Her friends smiled at her, and Diana held up a camera and pointed at it questioningly. Callis shook her head. Her father had expressly said no pictures. She saw Frances nudge Stig on her left and he winked a greeting. Nice of Stig to come, Callis thought. He had spent a lot of time with her mum while she and Frances had been playing girly games together. And there just behind him was Malcolm, a big well-groomed presence in the crowd.

  She hated crematoria. Why her mother had chosen to be burned she couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t exactly a religious service, that would have been too inappropriate for an ardent atheist like her mother, but she had loved to sing, so there were hymns. What else do you sing? Auld Lang Syne? It sure as hell wasn’t Hogmanay.

  Callis stood on the front row beside her father. He looked so frail, as if his wife had been keeping him firm, pumped up, and now he had deflated overnight. The woman cleric who was leading the service claimed to have been an old classmate of Flora Scott – as she’d been called before she married Derek MacArthur – but from the nonsense she spoke, Callis thought she mustn’t have seen her mother since they’d left school forty years ago. She stood wishing she had a sister, someone to stand beside, to conspire with over what to do with their father, someone to share the mourning with. Though maybe, she thought, maybe grief is such a private thing it can’t be shared. There was only her and her father now. The stable leg of the family tripod was gone.

  On her other side was Aunt Marjory, whose hands were trembling so hard that Callis eventually grabbed the one nearest to her and held on. They smiled at each other through tears. Marjory’s make-up was a mess. They might not have been as close as they could, but being family seemed somehow enough for now.

  As the coffin disappeared into the hole in the wall, organ music started up, a Bach toccata. Oh Dad, thought Callis, did you not see further than the first thing on the list?

  It was odd that Malcolm was there. As the congregation filed up the aisle towards the door, their eyes met. Hers were dry again, but smarting, raw; his seemed brown and friendly.

  Callis and her father stood at the porch door, thanking people for coming, asking how they were, muttering embarrassed noises at their sympathies and trying not to baulk at crassness and pity. Callis wished that she did not have to be there at all.

  Malcolm shook her father’s hand first. ‘You won’t remember me,’ he said.

  ‘Of course I do. You’re Maureen Mason’s boy: Donald, isn’t it? No.’ Her father shook his head, knowing he’d got it wrong.

  ‘Malcolm.’ They both said it together and smiled.

  ‘Look, love!’ He turned to Callis as Malcolm reached his hand towards her. ‘It’s wee Malcolm from the old school house. You haven’t changed a bit, son. Thanks for coming!’ He turned to the next person emerging from the chapel’s doorway.

  Callis felt her right hand enveloped by strong fingers, and looked down to see her thumb and knuckles covered by a second palm. Her other hand involuntarily joined the many-fingered clasp.

  ‘Long time, no see,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry about your mum.’

  ‘Thanks. So am I.’ And before she knew what she was saying, it came out: ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye.’

  She was crying again. She looked outside to gravel, yew trees, overblown tulips and gaudy primroses every colour of the rainbow bar the pale, watery-sunshine yellow they should naturally be. More people were trying to be polite and all she wanted was to run away. Malcolm took a hand from hers and made a stroking gesture on her upper arm, then wrapped his arm round her, hugging her so she found herself sobbing on to his black coat. The fabric was rough against her cheek. Scratchy and dark and smelling of smoke and mothballs.

  She pull
ed herself away and swallowed, reaching for a hankie. ‘Sorry. Where did you come from today?’

  ‘Not far. Near Inverness.’

  ‘Far enough.’

  ‘I heard you came from Norway.’

  She nodded. ‘Can you stay for lunch? We’re going to the Point.’

  ‘Yeah, that would be good. I’m starving. Had an early start.’ He smiled and his eyes were shiny as melting chocolate.

  ‘Speak to you later. Thanks for coming.’

  All the rest was a stream of hands and mouths and words about her mother that Callis didn’t want to hear. Memories shattered over and over on to the paving slabs and gravel, reforming and splintering again, cutting into her with each platitude spoken and answered outside the grey, fuming building.

  Eventually Callis turned to her father. ‘Let’s go and eat.’ She felt sick.

  He nodded mutely, his face like quartzite.

  ‘Do you need a drink as much as I do?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. She wasn’t sure he had heard her.

  Callis sat at a table with Diana, Frances and Stig, Frances’ twin brother. Her father’s table seemed to be monopolised by old police colleagues of his, or maybe they were from the football club, she didn’t really know any of them. There were some friends of her mother too, who had indicated she would be welcome with them, but it seemed easier to join her own pals.

  The lunch was one of those dreadful pub back room buffets with potato salad out of a tin and chicken drumsticks. Callis and her father had quickly dismissed the idea of having people back to the house, but now she regretted it. Her mother deserved something a bit less tacky.

  Callis was on what she called ‘cooking lager’, the weakest at the bar, not her favourite drink but working on the basis, drummed into her by her father, that you should only let your drinks get stronger as the day goes on. This looked like it might be a marathon. She would have rather had a gin and tonic or a dry white wine but, wanting to stay in control for once, hoped a lager might spin out for longer.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Frances asked.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Callis. She found she couldn’t tell her what she’d said so easily to Malcolm. Frances had been her best friend since they were teenagers, but right then Callis was not prepared to pour her feelings out on to the table with the vol-auvents and deep fried onion balls.

  Diana pulled her camera out of her big leather bag. ‘Is it OK if I take some shots now?’

  Callis shook her head. ‘Dad said no pictures.’

  ‘What, not even now? There are some great faces here.’

  ‘Sorry. He hates what he calls “the paparazzi”.’ Callis tried to sound conciliatory.

  ‘You could ask him, maybe, if I could just take a few?’ She leaned forwards, trying to get Callis to look at her.

  Callis sighed. She didn’t want to seem unreasonable. ‘Look, I know he’ll just say no.’

  Diana put her camera back in her bag with a pout and a shrug. Callis looked at Frances for help.

  ‘Who’s the red-haired wifey with your Dad?’ Stig asked. She could have kissed him.

  ‘That’s his little sister, Marjory. Runs a sauna in Dundee. She’s the family’s naughty lady.’

  ‘She sure looks the part,’ he grinned. She did stand out. As usual, she had seized the opportunity to take dressing up a few steps further than the rest of the family.

  ‘She’s an inspiration to us all,’ said Diana. ‘Glamorous and independent-minded. And a fabulous model! One of my photos of her won the Women’s Photography Prize a few years back.’

  ‘My father always said she should have been on the stage,’ Callis said. ‘Apparently she spent her childhood dressing up and stripping off and never lost the knack. She’s an old softie, really. But she’s had some life.’

  Her red hair was natural, Marjory claimed, just enhanced a little. But she made the best of those red locks, and today they were sculpted up into a kind of beehive on top of her emphatically painted face. She had done a bit of retouching since the ceremony, Callis noted. Her black gown – it was far too fulsome to be described merely as a dress – glittered. Her laugh, as big as her figure, drew everyone’s attention.

  ‘And the fella beside her?’ asked Stig. Marjory was flanked by a sea captain, complete with leather-elbowed navy jacket and hoary beard.

  ‘That’s her man, Jack. He runs a ship’s chandler business, has shops in a few coastal towns in the northeast, and he does what he calls “jobs on the water”, whatever they are. The lad on the other side of my dad is my wee cousin, Donnie,’ Callis said. ‘No. Cousin’s son. Whatever that makes him. He’s a star at Dad’s football club.’

  ‘Is he still coaching?’

  ‘Yeah. I think most of the guys along that end of Dad’s table are from the club.’ She took in the row of well-muscled whisky-drinkers. ‘I recognise some of them, but most of them, no idea.’

  ‘I assumed they were all colleagues of his,’ said Frances. ‘They look like policemen to me.’

  ‘How did your dad get on being a copper and having a sister who runs a sauna?’ asked Stig.

  ‘Don’t ask!’ Callis laughed. ‘He refuses to speak to her most of the time, but my mum and her got on like a house on fire, so he had to be civil. She’s not one to be ignored, isn’t my Aunt Marjory.’

  ‘Families, eh?’ Stig smiled.

  ‘And who’s your lonely watcher at the bar?’ asked Frances.

  Callis looked behind her, into those brown eyes. She waved him over.

  ‘Malcolm, meet Frances. We’ve been friends since before university. And this is Diana, and Stig. Grab a chair.’

  He put his pint down, reached forward and gave each of the three a brief, business-like handshake. Then he pulled a red-velvet upholstered seat over from an empty table, and slung his coat over its back. Stig shuffled his chair aside to let Malcolm settle in beside Callis. She smiled at him, at a loss for words.

  He lifted his pint and took a swig, then licked the moustache of foam away. It reminded Callis of how he looked eating ice cream, the boy still there in him, just a whole lot bigger. She noticed Frances and Diana exchanging glances.

  ‘How do you know Callis?’ asked Frances.

  ‘We walked to school together from the age of six.’

  ‘Five,’ Callis corrected.

  ‘Hand in hand,’ he said, grabbing hers and swinging it. Callis laughed then for the first time in days. Or was it months? She could see Frances adding two and two and making five and she found she didn’t care, just wanted him not to let go. It was such a big hand, with fingers as rough as tweed.

  Callis and Malcolm hadn’t been particularly friendly at school until the day she went with her mum to the local dairy to watch the cows being milked. She had been shy of the farmer but enthralled by the bulky swaggering cows with their udders dangling, pushing into the milking parlour. Malcolm had been there with a stick, slapping the cows, not fiercely but enough to direct them into their stalls. She had been shy of him, too. He had nodded to her like a man, then ignored her like a man, but she had watched him.

  To her surprise the next time she saw him at school he had been friendly to her. He was a boy again. He was going to be a farmer. He explained to her all about the cows and she was impressed by what he knew. It wasn’t school knowledge, it wouldn’t help him in English or Maths, but it was real and she knew, somehow, it mattered more than most of the things they learned in Science and Nature. Malcolm knew about cows and milk and, it turned out, he knew about grass and hay, barley and wheat, soil and rain. He knew more than you would guess just by looking at him.

  ‘Was she besotted with bears back then?’ Frances asked him.

  ‘I don’t know, were you?’

  Callis tipped her head, thinking back. ‘Yeah, I guess I was.’

  ‘Why? What is it with bears anyway?’ Diana said.

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s something to do with the way they’re portrayed in all those kids’ books, like Pooh and
Paddington, as dotty old softies, and then in reality a mother bear will knock your head off with one paw if you threaten her babies. They seem to have a lot of possibilities – cuddly but dangerous. For some reason that appeals to me!’ She stopped. Diana was nodding as if this explained something profound, and Malcolm had a teasing grin on his face.

  ‘I could probably tell you all kinds of other things about her she’d rather you didn’t know,’ he said to Frances.

  ‘Me too,’ said Frances. Callis gave her a hard stare and she smirked back. ‘Later.’

  ‘And how about you?’ Malcolm asked Diana.

  ‘Well, I’ve known both these lovely ladies since they joined my secret society at Edinburgh.’

  ‘Secret society?’

  ‘Not that secret, I guess. We met at Fe-Phi-Pho…’

  Malcolm frowned, ‘As in?’

  ‘A group of right-minded women with a flair for photography.’ Diana looked around, checking she had everyone’s attention. ‘We met every Thursday evening in the back room of Bannerman’s in the Cowgate, to plot the revolution, or at least a revolution in imagery of women.’

  Frances and Callis grinned at each other; they’d heard this version of the story a thousand times. But Diana’s attention was squarely on Malcolm, to whom it was all new.

  ‘From pornography to supermodels, from music videos to advertising, we chewed over all the ways our society manipulates women’s ways of seeing themselves. We were all mad on photography of course, took endless pictures, tried to afford the latest and best equipment, and we ran some, I have to say, brilliant campaigns trying to change the way woman are shown in everything from university websites to the Sunday Herald’s colour supplements.’

  ‘Why fe-fi-fo?’ asked Malcolm. ‘Were you cannibals as well?’

  ‘Aye, definitely,’ said Callis. ‘We had a ritual Englishman barbecue at every meeting.’