The Bass Rock

by Evie Wyld

  She holds the tissue to her face and whispers, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

  I can’t be the bad person to her right now. Even if it might help her to know Dom was as bad as we all suspected. I’m too afraid of what I did and who I am and what it means that I did that.

  Katherine sniffs deeply. She shakes herself down like a horse after a long run.

  ‘Did Dad ever talk to you about Dom?’ she asks.

  ‘About Dom?’

  ‘Yeah – he would never tell me what he really thought. Did he like him? Did he think he was a good man?’

  I pause.

  ‘I believe his exact words were, He’ll make Katherine a perfectly decent first husband.’

  For a moment I think Katherine is crying again, but she’s laughing. She rests her forehead on the table and hiccups a little.

  ‘What an absolute bitch,’ she says. ‘I miss him.’

  II

  Christmas was to be just the children’s maternal grandparents, Peter’s being dead, and Ruth’s being not inclined to make the journey when the grandchildren weren’t, as Ruth’s mother had put it in a voice imploring to be understood, anything to do with us. The wedding had been a situation they did not want to repeat, Elspeth’s mother Judith sobbing openly during the vows, Ruth’s own mother with not a shred of sympathy – she had lost her only son after all, which was surely worse than losing a daughter – kept her mouth a line and muttered audibly about Americans to her father. Even Peter, who had the ability to drift above awkward social moments, had sweated as he placed the ring on her finger. Elspeth’s younger sister Pauline loudly proclaiming to guests how their sister would have livened things up at the wedding breakfast, her brother John recounting the foods that had been served at Peter’s last wedding.

  Since her trip to London, as Ruth made herself think about it, she’d been noticing the urge to break things. Like she had with Betty’s mixing bowl, though she couldn’t just go around smashing the crockery. Instead she had crept into Peter’s study while he was out and snapped three of his pencils in half, and at another time, she tore all of the pages out of her school copy of Pride and Prejudice. There was a pair of very stupid brown-and-white Staffordshire dogs on the mantelpiece that she had her eye on, but she hadn’t quite worked out the best course of action with those. They were, she knew, rather expensive, and had been a wedding gift from Pauline. To break both at once would look rather suspicious.

  The Sandlings arrived with the same fanfare they always did. So loud, so obnoxiously fun. Mrs Sandling wore a hat with a large drooping white feather in it which she immediately forced the boys to stroke, telling them it was ostrich, from Africa, and all about the ostrich egg the size of Michael’s head. Ruth’s mother would have been unable not to flinch at the vulgarity of it, but Ruth managed to smile and take the coats that were handed to her and accept the cheek kiss from Denis Sandling whose moustache smelled of old tobacco. He held her by the arms and looked into her face. ‘How are you, old lady?’ he asked, and moved her out of the way of the children before she could answer. At the children he sang:

  There was a young lady called Hart

  Who felt that she needed to fart

  She stepped outside

  And to her surprise

  Blew over a horse and a cart.

  ‘Denis,’ said Judith Sandling sharply, ‘will you please not swear in front of the children?’

  ‘They love it, and anyway, that’s not proper swearing – we’ll get on to that after lunch, won’t we, chaps?’

  Both boys smiled dutifully. It was confusing for them, she supposed. They must associate their grandparents with losing their mother, but their grandparents always acted like clowns when the boys were around, and the moment they stepped out of the room, Judith howled like a wounded animal, at a volume that the children could no doubt hear. Denis blew a loud raspberry that finally tipped them over the edge and they giggled. He then pulled a coin out from behind both boys’ ears and while they each held them in their palms, he ruffled their hair so that the partings Ruth had so mindfully combed in that morning were ruined. It didn’t matter of course. It was important the partings had been there for the Sandlings to see. It was up to them to ruffle them or not. She had done her part, upheld her side of the bargain.

  Ruth hung the coats and went to fetch the tray of drinks she had laid out. Betty was up at Landbrooke with Bernadette, and Ruth both missed her and was relieved not to have more witnesses as she failed to deliver the Christmas the Sandlings expected.

  Pinned to the glassware cupboard she had written out a list.

  11.45–12.15 Arrival

  12.15–1.45 Drinks and canapés

  She took a pencil and put a line through the first item, as if she had achieved something already. The jug of snowball had separated a little as they had arrived closer to 12.15, so she stirred it with a wooden spoon, checked its temperature and poured. Judith of course refused her glass, Denis looked confused by the bright red cherry.

  ‘They’re snowballs,’ Ruth explained, ‘for Christmas.’ She had thought they would have been all the rage in America. ‘Not that – that’s a maraschino cherry.’ She had had Alice send her a jar up from London specially.

  ‘And what’s in the drink?’ asked Denis, sniffing it and failing to disguise his mistrust.

  ‘Lemonade, brandy and egg white.’

  ‘Egg?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s just for texture.’

  ‘Do you have perhaps just a simple glass of sherry?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Egg. You don’t say,’ Denis said quietly to himself and took a sip. He pulled a face that was not entirely wretched. ‘You know what – that’s not too bad.’ He smacked his lips together as if considering the taste, then set the glass down on the occasional table next to him. ‘Try it, Judy, you’ll surprise yourself.’

  ‘I’m just not such a fan of eggs.’

  ‘It doesn’t taste of egg, really, honey.’

  ‘Still. It’s the thought of it that turns my stomach.’

  ‘I’m sure Ruth can find you a sherry, Judith,’ Peter said and looked at Ruth expectantly.

  Back in the kitchen Ruth opened a new bottle of sherry and looked at the mutinous devilled eggs she had made. Was it worse to serve them or to pretend she hadn’t made appetisers? The book had described devilled eggs as a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. But now it seemed an altogether disgusting idea.

  She tipped the contents of the plate into the bin and poured Judith’s sherry. She fought the urge to dip one of the binned eggs into the glass. Then she poured some for herself and drank it standing at the bin. She’d had her first drink of the day just after nine o’clock, a teacup of brandy. ‘A breakfast drink,’ she had said out loud to herself.

  She listened for a moment outside the door of the drawing room.

  ‘So, boys,’ said Judith, ‘what did Santa Claus bring you?’

  ‘I got a potato gun,’ said Michael. Judith made a noise as though she had been told something offensive again.

  ‘And Christopher, what did he bring for you?’

  ‘A Swiss army knife.’

  ‘A knife? A knife and a gun.’

  Ruth entered with the sherry.

  At lunch, the goose, perhaps a touch overdone, and the potatoes, not hasselbacks, like we had in Sweden that one time, the Sandlings sat together facing the children. They had given Peter the gift of a silver-framed photograph of their daughter, and one each to the boys, smaller – the same gifts as the previous year, the same as they would get for birthdays. And it would no doubt continue until their deaths. The house was lousy with images of Elspeth that Peter put up before a visit. ‘You understand, it’s for them?’ he had asked and she realised he assumed she was jealous.

  ‘Leave them up if it makes you feel better about anything,’ she’d said, and he’d frowned at her but said nothing further.

  After the goose came the wretched steamed pudding, which, as Judith remarked, was purchased rather than handmade
, and the boys were excused and Peter opened the brandy she had bought for him. ‘I suppose,’ Ruth said, ‘someone made the pudding with their own hands. It didn’t just form itself out of goodwill.’ She smiled. She had perhaps had a little too much sherry and she held her tongue between her teeth hoping to still it. Denis laughed loudly and Peter proposed a toast to those present and departed very quickly afterwards, as though Ruth had said something highly inappropriate. She felt his foot on her ankle, and skittered her leg away from him.

  With the boys out of the room, Judith finally and inevitably felt comfortable enough to collapse into tears. Ruth cleared the plates and brought her a glass of water.

  ‘For God’s sake, girl, I’m not choking!’ the woman sobbed into her napkin. Her husband patted her back and Ruth went to see to something in the kitchen. Betty kept a bottle of gin under the sink, and she poured herself a large measure of it. She felt better. She pulled on the washing-up gloves, frowning at the texture of damp rubber on the tips of her fingers. Betty had told her she would return in the evening to take care of the washing up, but Ruth felt grateful for it. She wondered at the Christmas happening in London with Alice and her parents. No doubt they would have kept staff on to prepare lunch – Alice was even less of a cook than she was. And Betty and Bernadette up at the home. What ordeal were they being put through?

  She could hear that conversation had started up again next door – the woman was evidently able to pull herself together as long as Ruth stayed out of the way. Peter was speaking about a business trip he would take to Frankfurt in the spring. It was the first Ruth had heard of it, but she shook that off and poured another drink. Suds slid down the green bottle.

  The kitchen door opened and Denis stood, uncomfortable in his moustache.

  ‘Could you use a hand?’ he asked. She was going to say no, but before she could he spotted the bottle.

  ‘Aha,’ he said. ‘Glass?’ She pointed to the cupboard and he took another glass, refilled hers and then filled his. ‘There’s no tonic, I suppose?’

  ‘There’s none – this is Betty’s secret stash.’

  ‘Well.’ He handed her the glass. ‘By way of apology. Cheers. Judith does not mean to . . . well, yes, she does mean to, but, what I—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Ruth, ‘you really don’t have to.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and drank his gin, grimacing afterwards. ‘Good God. The things you people drink.’ He filled his glass from the tap to wash it down.

  ‘Elspeth was no better. Hers was cherry brandy. Disgusting muck.’

  There was stale air between them, which Ruth did not feel inclined to dissipate. Eventually Denis spoke.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about you here in this old house.’ And she knew as soon as he’d said it what was going to happen. She stilled her hands underneath the suds, girded herself in anticipation of a blow. ‘It’s a funny old thing, grief. Can do strange things to a person – to a man. What with the war and one thing or another, I expect there’s rather a feeling that those of us left behind are . . . indestructible. But . . .’ he struggled for the words, ‘the flow of emotion – the size of it, you know. It doesn’t sit well – inside the body. What I’m getting at is we all cope in various ways, and the important thing in all of this, of course, is the children.’ She felt him curl a stray thread of her hair around her ear, sending an unwanted feeling down her back. Her job, she knew, was to stay still and be petted. Instead she turned round and faced Denis, put her gloved hands either side of his face and kissed him. It was a long and dangerous kiss, and both kept their eyes wide open. Ruth pressed against him, felt his body twitch into action.

  ‘Go on,’ she whispered, staring him dead in the eye, ‘go on.’

  His hands went to his belt and she could see him weighing things up. He put his hand under her skirt instead and clutched at her. His breath in her face was loud, wettening. Eventually he stepped away. Ruth turned back and carried on with the washing-up. That, she thought, ought to confound him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Another drink?’

  ‘No, thank you, Denis, I really ought to get on with this.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘good.’ She did not look at him, just scrubbed in the sink. ‘I’ll just,’ he said, and left the room.

  Once she had finished the washing-up, she went into the drawing room, took one of the Staffordshire dogs off the mantelpiece and carefully snapped its head off by cracking it like an egg on the hearthstone. It made a satisfying noise, but nothing loud enough to arouse suspicion next door, and she took the two pieces and wrapped them in a bit of old newsprint from the coal box, placed it on the hearth and stamped on it with the heel of her shoe.

  ‘There we are,’ she said and brushed the coal off her fingertips. She felt someone looking at her from the corner of the room, and turned in alarm, having no excuse at the ready. There was just the face of the ticking carriage clock, and once she had shaken off her unease, she thought about how she might, at a later date, go about scrambling the insides of it.

  Once the Sandlings had gone, and the boys were quiet in their room, Ruth went to bed, leaving Peter standing with an expectant face in the drawing room. She took off her shoes, her stockings and dress, and got into bed in her slip, make-up still on. Her mother would have had a conniption fit. She lay awake listening to the house contract and expand around her, the sound of Betty coming home with Bernadette and wishing Peter a happy Christmas. Booey in the garden barked three times before being silenced by a hush. A seagull, the waves, the creak of the stairs. She closed her eyes when Peter came to bed, pretended to be asleep, felt his side of the bed depress and spring up as he removed his watch, and settled in.

  ‘You awake, old girl?’ he whispered. She didn’t answer and he ran a hand from her thigh to her shoulder. She felt deeply that she wanted to hurt him, physically. How dare he ask if she was awake, receive the information that she was not, and then seek to wake her. It felt at that moment like the very most callous thing he could do.

  ‘Denis kissed me in the kitchen.’

  His hand stopped. There was no spear of vindication.

  Peter sat up and his light went on. ‘What on earth are you on about?’ He was angry. Not confused in the slightest, and that, she supposed, was the difference.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I absolutely do not. What is it that you thought happened?’

  ‘He kissed me. He put his hand up my skirt.’

  There was a silence in which a decision was made by both of them.

  ‘Well, I don’t know who you think you are. Whatever ridiculous idea you’ve got in your head is entirely of your own making. Quite honestly –’ his voice was rising in volume and pitch – ‘your level of self-regard is what disturbs me most. That and your recent drinking problem.’

  ‘I don’t have a drinking problem.’

  ‘You made an absolute show of yourself tonight. I only put up with it because I didn’t want to worry Denis and Judith, but what on earth were you doing behaving like that? I don’t want to have to explain it to my children. All this nonsense springs from drinking too much – I just hope you realise that.’ He turned out the light. They lay in silence.

  ‘Do you kiss other men’s wives?’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I won’t put up with this poisonous nonsense.’ He removed himself from the bed and crossed the room to the door. ‘If I were you, I’d think very carefully about how you behaved tonight.’

  He left the room and Ruth listened to the sound of his footsteps moving down the hall to his study. The door opened and closed.

  Three thumps came from the corner of the bedroom – one, two, three – and this time Ruth felt none of the dread of her nightmares, just a vague satisfaction that the scene had been witnessed by a third party.

  On days when the weather was not absolutely unmanageable, Ruth strode inland, leaving Peter alone in his study, bent over his desk, and the boys and Bernadette nearly always gone either down to the sea
or into town for pikelets straight after breakfast. She made her way to the foot of the Law, which gave one a feeling of vertigo until you were close up to it, when it seemed to shrink right down. On her first outing, she had imagined a walk to the whalebones would take half the day, but as she reached the initial steep incline, two runners in white singlet vests and shorts appeared from behind her and overtook her, running straight up. They nodded a good-morning to her and flung themselves upwards, scrambling over rocks and sending a small landslide in their wake. She chose a gentler path but they passed her on their way back down not fifteen minutes later.

  Today she was comfortably alone. The light rain that had started when she left home had hardened somewhat, though the drops were not too concentrated. Recently she had found herself less and less comfortable in the house with Peter. In the long quiet days between Christmas and Hogmanay they had stepped around their argument without quite addressing it, one or the other or both had said Christmas can be a stressful time, and though Peter still kissed her on the cheek and called her old girl something had been cleaved apart, the vital tendons separated. It was only movement that felt correct. If she sat in the drawing room and tried to read a book, it was like the house was on fire and she needed to take action.

  When she reached the top of the Law, her hair flipping into her eyes, her coat not tight enough around her to stop the wind finding its way down the back of her neck, she noticed a swimmer bobbing in the shallows. What they could have been doing in the cold escaped her. She sniffed deeply and felt a burn down her throat – perhaps the flu on its way. She lit a cigarette in her cupped hands and smoked it, leaning on the whalebones. Such an unnatural thing to have up there, decayed white beauty.

  The Bass Rock’s colour looked, from where she stood, as white as the bones. She thought of the birds on its pate unsettling and landing again. Movement to her left caught her eye, a wren in the gorse. It hopped from one branch to another, cocked its head at her. She felt a tremor in her mouth, a belt of great emotion, which she stilled. It was not fair on Christopher and Michael to have one mother die and another let go to insanity.