When They Lay Bare

by Andrew Greig

  She picked up a catalogue as Annie hovered. Sniffed it, opened the contents page. Found his name third down and turned to it. Full colour photos, quality art printing.

  Kevin Tattersall brings a unique style to his mastery of quirky detail. He specialises in powerful imaginary animals and grotesque, sometimes erotic, spirits and hobgoblins of the Borderland.

  At a glance they were gorgeous and indeed grotesque. Annie shifted beside her.

  It’s called netsuke, she said.

  I thought that was something the Japanese ate.

  This is simpler than me explaining it, Annie said, and held out another catalogue.

  Netsuke: the Japanese craft of carved toggles, originally for the cords by which money pouch, pipe case, medicine case, writing set etc, hung from the girdle (eboni) of the kimono. (The kimono has no pockets.)

  Netsuke are roughly thumb-sized and carved most commonly in wood, bone and ivory, though sometimes in jade and other semi-precious stones. Further decoration by stain and lacquer, paint and inlays, is permissible – for uniquely in Japanese art, there are no clear rules or conventions governing netsuke. Designs include mythological, legendary, historical, contemporary and satirical motifs. Katabori are figure-carved netsuke. Birds and insects are common too, along with hedgehogs, mice, grasshoppers, rabbits, crows. Also mythical beasts and quasi-supernatural spirits.

  In Europe there is now a small but dedicated band of practitioners and collectors. The finest netsuke are expensive – gram for gram, nearly as costly as gold …

  Sounds like one for the obsessives.

  There you have it, dear, Annie replied. Still, it keeps him out of mischief and I dare say he’s very good at it.

  Arranged on a black velvet cloth in the corner ledge were half a dozen miniatures.

  May I?

  Annie looked doubtful.

  I suppose.

  She picked up the nearest and held it to the light. Turned it round. It was cool and rough and perfect in her hand, roughly the size of her thumb. Bone, she thought. A weasel, perhaps, emerging from rosehips. This one was a hawk’s beak jerking after a rabbit twisting away in undergrowth, cold and slippery. Here, on top of an ivory stump a beast that never was crouched like a guardian or a bad conscience. Delicate silver inlay, all the eyes were tiny rubies.

  This is beautiful.

  She looked at it one more time then put it down exactly as she’d found it. She picked up a stained ivory one that reminded her of a chess piece. A rook you might say, except the long heavy-duty beak and grey pate were all too familiar. She pushed away the dying sheep, the crunch of rock into bone, and ran her thumb over the corbie piece. Like all the others it had a hole bored through it for the cord. The hole went through the heart. Witty, perhaps. There was something about all these pieces, something strange and glittery and wounded … She stood silent a moment, trying to feel her way into Tat’s world, it might come in useful.

  I must be getting on, dear, Annie said.

  Yes of course. On the way down the stairs she asked, How on earth did Tat get into netsuke?

  Annie stopped, holding the banister with both hands. Oh, Jinny, I think. Tat said she had one hanging in the window of the cara – I mean the cottage. Her mum had been out East … You don’t know much about your family, do you?

  Thumps and shouts downstairs. John and Laura back and starving. Both had thin brown hair in pudding-bowl cuts and Tat’s pale eyes. They seemed unburdened and natural and Annie reverted to country-mum mode.

  *

  She stood by the doorstep, in a hurry for the off, made uneasy by happy families.

  Do the craws bother you? Annie asked. I couldn’t be living with that din all the time.

  I like it, she replied. It must be one of the first things I ever heard.

  Is that right? Annie stood with hands on her hips, looking up the fields towards the cottage. They’re very intelligent, you know.

  Mm, I suppose. Thanks for tea and the lift.

  Yes, I came round the corner the other week and saw a flock of craws fly across the road and into a tree. On the road was a dead rabbit, and lying beside it was a crow. They must have been run over, I thought at first.

  Both of them? Not very likely.

  Exactly.

  Poisoned, then. The rabbit must have been poisoned and the crow ate some.

  I’ll tell you what happened. The craws had a good long look, peering and jooking and cawing. Then of a sudden, a clap of the wings and they’re off.

  That’s intelligent of them, she said, and made to go.

  That’s what I thought, Annie said. She put one hand up on the door frame to block the passage. Then when they’d gone the craw on the road jumped up and went back to tearing away at the dead rabbit.

  Now that is intelligent.

  Learn something every day, don’t you, Annie said. I’d keep it in mind.

  She nodded like nothing special had been said. Thanked Annie again for the lift and the tea. Said cheerio to the kids and cut up between Smiler Ballantyne’s barns before the blood came back to her face.

  She yomped up through the tussocks, muttering under her breath. She sang the ballad where one sister drowns the younger and bonnier one. The Banks of Binoorie. The drowning sister, who like Ophelia seems to take an awful long time to sink, begs to be rescued. Give me your hand. Sister o sister, but give me your glove … But she is younger and bonnier and has the man, so the elder sister turns away and lets the water do its work.

  The song is remorseless, wicked, bleak and beautiful. She sang it through twice and felt better. Annie Tat was no pushover but she’d over-played her hand. And Tat’s netsuke … She came up loudly across the fields in the brief gloaming, pushed open the gate and went up the path. The padlock and chain were back in place. She picked the lock with her clasp pin and went in.

  The air had been subtly displaced. A faint sweet earthiness that hadn’t been there before. She checked the plates, wondering if Elliot had noticed the missing broken one, the pieces still in the carrier bag under the sink. That’ll give him something to think about.

  She went through to the bedroom and knelt by the bed. No doubt he’d held the photo in his hand. She wondered if it had shaken. He’d called secretly when he knew she was away, he’d left no note – yes, she had him on the run. She reached under the mattress and felt for her journal. If he’d found and read it, her future here had a sudden ending. It was still there, felt undisturbed.

  But you were fair and I was thin

  So you’ll droon in the dams of Binoorie-o.

  In the ballads, that was motivation enough.

  *

  The posters we pass tell me to Just Say No. We laugh and carry on. I was thinking whiles we hurried through the streets with the fire in us how fine it is to be burned like this and be delivered of that scunner, choice. I can’t lay a hand of judgement on Elliot and Jinny. What they were about was wrong but when I surprised them that first time how their eyes shone. And I saw it in the eyes of the lassie in Crawhill. May be she saw it in mine.

  Later I’ll not feel so grand and canty, but right now I’m up for the whole clamjamferie. For I’ve the key to the flat in my hand, and my click sliding a fist into the pooch of my breeks even as we climbed the tenement stair.

  My need leans back against the door, grinning cockily.

  So what’s in the other room, Kev?

  Never you mind.

  My affliction rattles the handle then gives up.

  Got a drink in here, my man?

  I find the bottle and pour two shots, my hand dead steady yet. I never hurry this sulphurous moment. This is the best, the last drawn pause before the rammie and the tummle.

  Bottoms up.

  That’ll be right.

  My curse drinks with one hand, winks and puts the other straight to my crotch, feels around and squeezes exactly where. They aye ken what I’m about. I back against the wall, my knees shaking as my click undoes the first buttons – my craving, my tart,
my fine rough justice.

  *

  For those who lived around the Borderline, ‘at feud’ was a most deadly state of affairs. It could start with the stealing of a horse, an accusation of cheating at cards or in love, and quickly become an implacable vendetta between families, one of quite Sicilian longevity and ferocity. For the argument was extended beyond the guilty party to include his entire family and descendants, and pursuit of this vengeance – and violent reprisal for it – by man or woman was considered a matter of honour, almost a sacred duty.

  Such quarrels could go on for generations – as between the Maxwells and Johnstones, the Scotts and Kerrs, Grahames and Irvines, the Elliots and almost every name either side of the Border. Sometimes the feud would die down for a generation then, like a below-ground fire in a peat bank, break out again into the light of day.

  ‘At feud’ was ended, if it ever really ends, with Union – the union of crowns or the union of marriage …

  I put down my book and in a daze look round this little room. It’s late, late, the time of strange voices on the radio. Woods and wild seas are silent and all good citizens are in bed. Only weasel, owl, lover do not rest. The plates are full of need tonight, or perhaps it is me – so hard to know just where that border lies.

  Soon I’ll to bed and take myself in hand till sleep comes. I do not think Sim Elliot will sleep well, not once he’s phoned Annie Tat and he’s learned of our conversations and my visit to the newspaper office.

  Into my head slides an image of Elliot pricking through the trees behind the point of his shaking torch. He’s heading on down towards Ballantyne’s. He’d be going to see Annie. Yes of course, Tat’s away in the city, and he doesn’t want David to hear the Land-Rover. That’s how the story-line goes. So, yes, he’s walking, taking the short cut through the forest and over the bridge. That would be hard on him. His need must be great.

  He wouldn’t pause in the middle of the brig though his head yawns wide as the night and the spray blows upwards, dimming his torch. He would think of Jinny and stare straight ahead as he clutches the rail and inches along the slimy planking. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, he would tell himself that, though his breath hisses with each step like a sword being drawn from its sheath.

  You cross your legs, uncross, improve your posture but soon enough it returns to its bad old ways. You tilt the plate a little and see yourself reflected back. In this world what you see is what you are. You tilt again and see Elliot on this side of the bridge, coming your way with white torch juddering.

  Time to lie down and take yourself in hand.

  *

  David wakes in the bedroom where he was once a child. The ache is back in his right leg again, above the knee. It could just be from that stupid struggle with Marnie on the muir, but it feels deep in the bone. At this time of night, it feels like bone cancer.

  He turns on his left side and tries to think about something else. They say thinking about cancer lets it in. Think about Jo. What would she be wearing? He’s marrying a woman when he doesn’t know what she wears in bed, if she sleeps on her back or front or side. He knows her entire medical history – the sexual he opted not to hear too much about – but he doesn’t know how she sleeps.

  He sees Marnie, lying under the duvet on the mattress on the floor. Her shape is stretched out long, one arm extended past her head as though swimming side-stroke. He can lean in to kiss her neck, settle in at the curve of her back and kiss the neck by the dark hairline, smell the faint lavender and feel more certain about this than anything ever.

  He turns onto his other side, sweating and sick. At this superstitious hour of night, with the bone-cancer ache in his leg like a weight pulling him down into his grave, for a moment he feels Marnie is doing this. She believes she can project herself. She believes people constantly pick up each other’s desires and thoughts, and think them their own. Spook. A world of invisible forces, processes, powers, hauntings.

  He turns again, his erection rising as though some mouth was already tugging at it. He must not think about that. He is sinning in his heart. This is ridiculous. He’s being given oral sex by some succubus. Sick mediaeval claptrap. There is no kingdom of the invisible. Except one. Why only one?

  The quiet voice is clear, mocking, high: In Scarlet Town where I was born …

  He jerks onto his back and opens his eyes into the darkness, his heart thrashing in his chest. Marnie’s voice, clear as waking.

  Then, very quietly, There was a fair maid dwelling, then her laughter, not unkind, just sharing the joke she’s played on him. He turns his head to the sound. She’s actually in the room, by the open window, looking at him and raising a glass of water to her lips. She has her cloak on over jeans and sweater, her feet are bare. She toasts him and raises a dark eyebrow like a tilting wing.

  So, my Lord Elliot …

  Cut it, he says. Cut it out. How the hell did you get in?

  Through the window, how do you think?

  She steps towards him. The soft thud of her feet on the wooden floorboards. She has weight, this is no spirit and no dream. With each footfall the ache in his leg is worse, his desire closer, his death more imminent. He falls onto the floor in a twist of shroud sheets.

  When Annie Tat comes to make up his bed again, the way she did when he was a feverish child, he knows perfectly well where she’s come from and what’s been happening upstairs. She puts her fingers to her lips, winks. Wheesht, she says, no need to wake up now, and leaves.

  Even as he struggles upright to pray for help, a voice whispers he is only dreaming he is praying and so it doesn’t count. His God cannot hear him, the night sky is empty, Spook is coming his way.

  *

  I threw the duvet off and let myself cool awhile. Always I feel lonely after.

  I got up for water, the stone flags cold on my feet. I glanced out the window and nearly dropped my glass for a yellow-white light was going by on the other side of the dyke. The torch bobbled up and for a moment I saw the head of Simon Elliot, his face set and grim as any carving, before the light turned away and headed down towards the Tattersalls’.

  Now for the first time since my arrival I’m truly frightened. These were meant to be only imaginings.

  The Lovers’ Plate (Rose)

  Were it not for a similar border – a frieze of hawthorn and bramble, birds, dogs, beech trees, leaping fish – at first you might think these next two plates come from a different set altogether. What colour remains in them is pale rose and red, not green and blue. They’re not numbered on the back. No weapons here, no hanged man, no burning towers nor mounted riders. They are perhaps more lyrical. There’s secrecy but no death, not yet.

  You think of this pair as the Lovers’ Plates. For it isn’t pain that contorts and spreads these bodies so. You may feel that old heat rising as you dream over them, for some of these scenes though sketchy are explicit. You do not think that is a red squirrel he’s feeding by hand in her lap. She could be lowering her head to nibble from a bunch of fruit, but on the whole you doubt it.

  She jumps up, breathes on the window and writes her name against the valley below. These plates are near four hundred years old and so is their story, but the lovers that pass through her today are the last generations, very close to home.

  The windows rattle like a drum roll. The wind is high this morning, blowing one weather out, bringing a new one in. She reckons spring will be here in a matter of days, and wonders if she’ll be here to see it.

  She clenches her hips, relaxes, holding the glow inside as she sits again. What goes on in these plates is quite sickening as well as quickening her breath.

  There’s treachery and betrayal aplenty here, frequent enough to make it impossible for her to always blame the man. She can see the woman standing in a clearing of mountain ash, arms raised to the sun as she pulls a shift off over her head. Look at what remains of expression there – there may be pride, fearful joy, or self-disgust in that dark twist of her mouth as she stares acros
s at her lover sliding down from his horse, but she doesn’t look a victim.

  Jinny was young but scarcely a child. She’d been married for two years. She must have wanted this, she must have chosen Elliot.

  Down in the valley she sees a tiny figure leave his house, cross the yard holding a stick or a gun more likely. Sun flashes on his binoculars, then he’s into a shed. It’s tempting to go down and talk to Tat, there’s much she needs to know. About the caravan, for a start, and just when the baby came.

  But her boundaries are too thin today to talk with anyone real. She could dissolve in conversation with anyone but ghosts. She doesn’t want to dream up something then look out the window and see it happening. She doesn’t want to look up from the plates and see Sim Elliot going by in the night as though she wasn’t running the story, the story was running her. As though she were helpless and fated as the others in its grip, held like the bloody stone in David Elliot’s ring.

  If you play spooky games you must expect to raise the dead.

  No, this is coincidence and too much solitude, nothing more. David will not be back and in any case her business isn’t with him. So she turns again to the plates, the rosy and the red that must hold her attention now.

  In scene after scene she sees the pain of that affair, but worse, she feels the lovers’ joy. It reaches her intimate and dizzy-making as a whole summer crushed in one handful of myrtle held to her face and breathed in.

  *

  In the topmost arc of the first Lovers’ Plate a tall young man is bending to tighten the girth of the saddle, one arm hugged around the neck of his horse. You like that arm, it’s strong and full of juice. The phrase The morning of the day drifts in from somewhere.