When They Lay Bare

by Andrew Greig

  She said it clear and deliberate, like a statement made on record, and held Marnie’s gaze a moment longer before looking back at the road. The car slowed for the turn-off up to Crawhill. Marnie reached over the back seat for her bags.

  Why did you come back here? Annie’s voice had hardened, not even pretending to be casual.

  (In the airport bookshop, unable to leave till her love’s plane had taken off and in any case she knows not where to go from here. She’s looking over the shoulder of a woman in front of her, who is flicking through a road map, her loose red hair curling over the pages. And it would have meant nothing but for the page she stopped at. A finger brushes by the name of a town, then a village, and at the back of her head a sound is ringing from a bell no human hand has struck. Then the petite woman turns as though angry at this invasion of her space, thrusts the book at her and is gone, leaving a daze, a direction, and a faint sweet smell.)

  The car stopped.

  Are you here to see Elliot?

  Silence. The empty whump of wipers. The car moved on.

  I’m not having you walk up the hill in this, dear. You’ll come in for some tea.

  Bouncing up the rough track they passed a tall slouching man with a dog and rifle crooked on his arm. A toot on the horn, brief wave answered by an even briefer nod.

  Is that Smiler Ballantyne?

  Aye, my dear. Annie Tat laughed. Except he never smiles and he’s not a Ballantyne.

  Huh.

  Plenty of things here aren’t what you might think.

  The car lurched to a halt outside the Tattersall house. An old cottage extended in breeze block with an uneven patio and conservatory tacked on the side. Mud up to the back door and a satellite dish below the eaves.

  Well, I hope a cup of tea is still hot and sweet, she said.

  Two women talking together: two hedgerows meeting at a boundary. The shivering tops, the sides with their ancient wizened berries and crimped leaves rustling together. In behind the thorn-protected centre, the hidden nests, wool and feather-lined.

  Two women talking cannot be simple. You realise you had thought lazily about Annie Tat if you’d thought at all. You had her down as a stock figure, the housekeeper and country wife. As you prepare for bed you’ll still weigh the last thing she said today, the story about the crows. She was telling you something but you’re still not sure what.

  The kitchen was reassuring and as it should be. Wood-burning stove, chewed-over rugs on linoleum, a pulley with drying clothes hoisted up by the ceiling, microwave and the usual collection of terrible children’s drawings mostly in purple and green. Underlying animal smell, dog and cat with a hint of guinea-pig from the cage in the corner.

  The kids are round at their pals, Annie Tat says. Tat’s away for his classes, so it’s you and me. Put on the kettle, I’ll just be a minute.

  Annie crosses the kitchen to switch on the radio, glances then goes out the door opposite.

  Leaning to fill the kettle, she hears another door close quietly. She twists the tap and finds herself thinking of that last appraising glance. Something about the way Annie left the room. The unnecessary radio. The insistence she came in for tea. Above all, the tell-tale forking quiver at the back of her knees.

  She noisily filled the kettle, clunked it on the stove then edged out through the yellow door. A hallway, a rug, a child’s anorak lying on the floor. Black binoculars hung from a brass hook. A small table in the corner and a white telephone lead running round a closed door. A faint murmur of Annie Tat’s voice. She put her head to the door but still couldn’t hear enough.

  She pushed open the door. Annie’s head came up, she stopped speaking. Left hand cupped over the mouthpiece.

  Sorry. I was looking for the loo.

  First door up the stair, dear.

  *

  She went loudly up the stair, humming to herself. She’d not caught a word Annie had said but she was sure it was a man she’d been speaking to. Something about the way she sat, and her tone of voice. It’s one of those evident things.

  She had her pee, ran the tap and eased the frosted window up. The back of the house looked past Ballantyne’s up the grazing land towards the moor. The dyke, just a darker wavy line at this distance. Follow it along to the cottage. Then the woods. And through the woods and across the burn, out of sight round the corner, the big house where Elliot sat twitching, hugging his Not Proven like a cancer in his chest, waiting for news from his spies. And Tat’s in the city, so … So it’s Annie on spy duty today.

  She eased the window down, turned off the tap and clumped down the stairs.

  *

  She looks back smiling at Annie Tat then sieves more tea through the cake crumbs. The two women talk in the cluttered cosy kitchen. They talk about the cold and the wet.

  My Tat says there’ll be a change soon, maybe an early spring after a last frost if you’re staying that long.

  I’ve no plans but I’m pleased Sir Simon seems to be letting me stay a while.

  You have some work to do here?

  Some loose ends to tie up.

  So this is a sentimental journey?

  Yes, you could say that.

  And will you be calling on Elliot?

  I will have that cigarette, thank you. She lights up and smoke rises between them. I’ve no plans at the moment, beyond recovering myself.

  Annie dips her cake in tea and sucks.

  Have you been unwell, dear?

  My last mother died a few months back. And … a close friend emigrated recently.

  Annie nods and leans forward. Maybe it’s best to make a fresh start like that, she says. Yes, I could fancy emigrating. Leave the past and begin again.

  She balances her cigarette on the ashtray’s rim and watches the smoke unkink.

  That’s what David says. Just walk away and start again.

  Does he, now? But the estate will surely be his soon enough.

  I don’t think he wants it. I mean, would you?

  Me and Tat? Annie leans back and laughs loudly. She seems to shake with laughter but the cup in her hand is entirely steady. More grief than it’s worth, dear. There’s not much left but the fishing and that’s on the slide. And the big house is falling apart. She pauses, fills her mouth with cake. You’ll see if you come visit sometime.

  I might if I was asked.

  I could mention it to himself. Elliot doesn’t see many folk, but in your case …

  She drinks more tea and puts up a cloud of smoke and lets it pass.

  So Tat works as factor and you’re the housekeeper?

  More or less, ever since the kids were old enough to go to nursery, like I said.

  You do all the cooking and cleaning for that house – must be a lot of work.

  Part-time, dear, and my duties are … flexible.

  She watches as Annie gets up for more tea, and sees from a fluidity of movement that the woman’s actually quite young. Maybe only ten years older than herself. Plumpness doesn’t necessarily mean soft nor in any way past it. At the back of her head something more ratchets into place, a distant rumble as the grinding-stones spin.

  I’m sure they are, she says. This tea’s running through me.

  *

  Out in the hallway she lifts the binoculars from the hook and clumps up the stair. She opens the bathroom window. Now the cottage is quite clear. So too is the car parked on the track outside it. And now in the shaky binocular circles, an impression of grey, hesitating at her door. The door opens, the man ducks inside.

  She leans on the window sill and considers. Sim Elliot himself, seen first through a window at the big house, now through these glasses. Next time it will be face to face.

  She slides the window down, flushes the loo and goes downstairs.

  *

  Annie Tat pours more bog-brown tea. With a glance to her guest, she adds a slug of whisky to both mugs. She talks about money for a while, about how it’s a bits-and-pieces economy these days. Like Tat has his carving hobby,
makes some cash from that when he can bring himself to sell a piece. Sir Simon has a wee business up in Edinburgh, a share in some rented properties, a framing business. And what about yourself, Marnie?

  Bits and pieces, she says. Just like you say. Sometimes I cook, sometimes I nurse people, but mostly I develop story-lines.

  They both look at the last piece of cake. Annie divides it with a knife, clean and decisive. Hands it directly to her. Their fingers touch for a moment.

  David will take the estate when it comes to it, Annie says. His father never wanted it either but once his dad died early …

  They seem an unlucky family. Always dying early.

  Annie doesn’t quite glance at her watch as she swings her feet up across the chair and passes over another cigarette.

  Bad hearts and bad luck, dear. Anyway, the estate’s not something to sell or give away. You’re a Lauder, you’ll understand that.

  I don’t exactly come from the land-owning classes.

  Your mother did. What d’you think she was getting away from, coming here with her caravan and her man?

  She lights up and tries not to cough.

  She and Patrick lived in a caravan before the cottage?

  Annie Tat opens her mouth and lets out three perfect zeroes. Well I don’t know, she says. It was all before I came here. Annie chaps her cup into its saucer. It’s a right pity when you think of it, she says. If Sir Simon hadn’t already been married when they met, he and Jinny could have finally ended the whole thing. United the families, eh? All that ‘at feud’ rubbish meant nothing to them, it doesn’t to anyone these days, does it?

  You’d have to have a very long memory, that’s for sure.

  Of course whoever David marries will share the estate. Annie stubs out her cigarette and swings her legs down off the settee. He did say he’s getting married, dear?

  All the time.

  He does seem set on the lass, doesn’t he? She’s arriving any day. Ah well, there you go.

  The two women look at each other.

  *

  Sim Elliot stood at the Crawhill doorway, waiting till he could breathe properly again, resting his forehead on the lintel. He’d once nearly knocked himself out on this, hurrying to see Jinny. She’d summoned him to the bridge and told him over the roar of the waters she was so low she wanted to die. Perhaps it’s hormonal, after the baby, she added. But I must talk to you again soon. I can’t hold on much longer. And of course he’d come next day, so het up with anxiety, excitement, and some residual anger from when she’d ended the affair and he’d almost got resigned to it and now she’d called him again, that he pushed open the door and forgot to duck. Bam! A great dunt on the head and the world black and white for a minute.

  That was how they’d started again. A dreich afternoon, Patrick working or drunk at the hotel in the village, the bairn sleeping in the cot by the stove. This same stove, same smell of coal and woodsmoke and … lavender. After she’d cradled his head, them both laughing and crying, more despairing than glad. In the bedroom, not on the bed but pulling blankets onto the floor by the window as though that softened the betrayal. The shock of her belly on his after nigh two years.

  He went through to the bedroom, pushed the door open. The bed had been against the wall on the right. This woman who said she’s Marnie had only a mattress on bare floorboards but it was right under the window, exactly where Jinny’s head had rolled from side to side as she cried out. He’d felt her roughened soles scraping on his thighs as she’d pulled him deeper. It was a wonder the wee girl had slept through it, if in fact she did. And now it seems she’s come back.

  He stared at the duvet rumpled on the mattress. I’ve got you. Don’t worry, I’ve got you. And then five minutes of unrecoverable peace lying like cooling meteors in the rough blankets with fading memories of their flight. And then the rain on the window, checking of the watch, the awfulness starting again. The alibi. The cover story for the welt across his forehead. Washing away guilt at the kitchen sink, rinsing their hands, drying on the towel. Part of me will always be here, she’d said.

  He sat heavily on the mattress. The chintz settee had been here. The planks on bricks that held her and Patrick’s books. The little altar for the plaster Buddha and brass incense-stick holder. A smell of lavender. Dear God.

  He flipped through the books by the bed. Border histories. Border families. Accounts of the reivers, their stratagems, their brutality, boldness and queer honour. All tacky and bent from much reading, the tops of pages folded back.

  ELLIOT: One of the largest, most powerful and most quarrelsome families, with bases on both sides of the Border, the despair of the Wardens of the Marches. Quick-tempered, passionate and cunning, bold yet capable of being underhand when they judged it necessary, the Elliots were born for the reiving life. When things were quiet, they could be depended on to stir up action and, in the phrase, shake loose the Border!

  The last phrase had been underlined three times. He put the book back carefully on the pile. The lass has been doing her homework.

  I’ve done nothing so right and wrong as this, Jinny whispered.

  Why do they call it falling when it feels like soaring? he’d replied, still dreamy.

  Her giggle. Well I’m sore. Oh, why are our jokes so sad? What happens now?

  Then he saw the little photo frame on the floor in the shadow of the mattress. Carried it to the window, smooth and cool in his palm. Tilted it to the light. Jinny. Wee Davy. Marnie. Outside the cottage, summer, a foolish impromptu picnic. Her crappit little camera. I want something to remind me.

  She is smiling across at him as she crosses from light into shade. She looks so present yet so fugitive. The toddler is pushing herself up from the ground, not looking at him. She’s turning towards David who’s waving a plastic sword. He’s grinning, pleased with something, but she is so serious. Marnie Lauder aged two, rising between him and Jinny.

  He’d never thought to see this photo again. From all their times together which crowd his mind of late, this is the only evidence he has of her apart from the one scrawled note. Patrick must have kept it when the cottage was cleared before the trial. After his death it must have been passed on to the child in care.

  He put the photo down, trying to reproduce the angle at which it had sat. Think, man. Work out what she can know. What she believes she knows. What she’s here for. If it’s to look him up, she’s taking the long way round the mountain. Maybe she just wants a free place to stay. She can have it, because this must be Marnie all right, she can have whatever she asks for, though he’d be disappointed if it’s just more money. For years he’s been waiting, hoping, dreading. He’s imagined a dozen ways in which she’d reappear to accuse, to embrace, to sit opposite him and talk through Jinny’s mouth and eyes …

  But her just arriving at the cottage then sitting there doing nothing, not even giving her right name at first, that squeezes his stomach so tight and triggers the zig-zag jag across his chest.

  He glanced out the window to check she wasn’t coming up the fields towards the cottage, then hurried back through to the kitchen. He found the plates as he knew he would. That’s it, then. It’s her all right. He just glanced at the top plate, it was the third one, the one of intrigues and ambush and a rare city scene. He remembered it well enough, though Jinny never liked to take the plates out often. They’re not to be played with, Simon.

  Then he couldn’t breathe in that room and had to get out. Crack on his forehead, the world went black and white a moment. God damn it. Damn these repetitions. But this time there’s no Jinny to laugh and cradle his head. Her lips rising to him, white teeth and eyes closing, both their eyes closing as if that would stop it. If it hadn’t been for that crack on the head, they might never have started again. She might be living yet.

  He hurried out shaking water from his eyes, clicked the padlock and made for his car and the safety of home.

  *

  Tat in the city – on fire, in heat, bright hard grey ey
es chapping like a flint off the eyes he meets, looking for a spark. He comes from one place he knows, where his name could be Kevin, and sets off for another where he’s Ian.

  Charcoal makes the cleanest blaze. For all its darkness, there’d be no stoor at all, no residue, just pure heat.

  *

  Whisky is fine but couthy – I’ll take a dram with Elliot but never touch it here. In this place I experiment among firewaters. This evening it’s tequila slammers with my forcie friends, banged down on the formica then down my thrapple mixed with lights and laughter and a bitter cheroot. Catching an eye here and there, the promise offered in a wide-set mouth or hurdies leant forward at the chair’s edge. I stick the promise behind my ear like a smoke for later as we spill out onto the street, well lit, and head for the action of the evening.

  And if I stay away for months on end, it’s not because I’m fickle. It’s because I love it too much, this illdeedie stirring in my belly, this hunger I see in folks’ eyes at the onset of Saturday evening as we step onto the street, me and half a dozen braw callants, and a sprinkling of hoors like early stars already coming out above where the footbridge crosses the canal, and sweet guff blowing from the breweries as we head into the random trysts of the night.

  *

  Annie Tat glanced at her watch and picked up the tea things. She must get on, the kids would be back soon.

  This carving you said Tat does – could I have a look?

  I don’t see why not. She sort of laughed. No big secrets here.

  Thanks.

  She followed Annie up the stairs past the bathroom. A low brown door, more stairs up into an attic workshop. The dormer windows looked straight up to Crawhill Cottage and the moor behind. Another pair of binoculars on the window-shelf. A brass telescope on a stand in the corner. Likes to look, Tat does.

  A long trestle work-table in front of the window. Small heavy work-bench with a vice off to the side. An expensive adjustable chair on rollers for moving between the two. Two racks of knives with bone handles, some of them so small. Some curved, some straight, some pointed. All very sharp. Tiny jars of paints. Rasps, files and emery paper. Brushes, tweezers. Everything in order. A pile of exhibition catalogues. Tat’s secret world.