When They Lay Bare

by Andrew Greig

  Right now. He glanced round the kitchen, through the half-open door to the bedroom. It’ll take you half an hour to clear this lot.

  Her head stayed down and away from him. Perhaps that was why he added Nothing personal, Marnie, if that’s your name. But I’ve this howling in my gut says you should be away. Jinny was right special to me but I’m factor for the living not the dead.

  You think it’s that simple? The living and the dead and no passage between them?

  Her voice was husky like she was about to greit. Tat shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

  In the end, aye it is.

  All right, she said. Her chin dropped to her chest and he had to come closer to hear her. If this is how it has to go.

  *

  He stood a little way behind her as she lifted the Corbie Plate and put it on the pile on the dresser. The sixth plate, she’d got that far. Tat shook his head. Those plates gave him the creeps. For a moment he saw Jinny Lauder’s hands pass over them, her voice telling him the story.

  Pass me the satchel, will you.

  It was hung on a hook below her shawl. He looked at it, at her slumped shoulders. Jinny had been kind to the boy he once was. She’d never mentioned seeing him watching on Creagan’s Knowe and he doubted she knew of the other times, what he’d seen through the cottage window or down by the river. Her thin pale legs wide open, the hairy darkness in between. The lips held open, flash of red. Much more than that, the long white pole disappearing into them. And then the cries, guttural as corbies. The huge prick of Sim Elliot withdrawing, her hands pulling him back in again. The boy had felt it deep inside.

  He shook once like a dog casting off water, then put the shotgun across the table, reached down the satchel and held it open as he turned back to her.

  The knife was very steady in her left hand. Young David’s fishing knife, the reiver’s dagger sharpened to a slicing edge.

  Now back off, you wee bastard.

  Dinna be daft, lassie.

  Believe me, I can use this.

  He glanced down. Her thumb was firmly along the blade. The tip very very sharp and pointed at his gut and not shaking at all. Light was peeling off its edge. She had the fighter’s crouch and no doubt whatsoever in her eyes.

  He backed off, feet sliding across the floor. She followed him step for step with her eyes levelled into his. His back touched the wall, the knife-point steadied at his belly-button. He felt the scrape through his shirt. He felt heat radiating off her. In truth she was an outlander, a stoorie-foot, with nothing to lose and capable of anything. He smelled lavender and somewhere a smell like burning thatch.

  Want me to cut your balls off, friend?

  Something way back in his eyes flickers, is gone. She saw it. She knows. She knows everything about him. Her eyes are even darker than Elliot’s.

  You do want me to cut your balls off.

  He doesn’t move. Pores are springing open all over his body.

  Tat, she says gently.

  She puts her left hand, outspread, palm up on his chest. Possessively, almost tenderly, her hand moves across to his heart. Her hand pumps slightly to the beat. The tip of the knife still pushes against his belly-button as her fingers slip inside his shirt and close on the extended nipple. His breath hisses in the silent room as she squeezes. She stares into his eyes and almost smiles.

  You poor love. All you had to do was ask nicely.

  She squeezes hard between thumb and finger. Squeezes then tugs and looks grinning into his face and he is lost. Then the knife goes back into her belt as she half turns away.

  You’d better come with me.

  She leads him through the half-opened door into the bedroom. Mattress on the wooden floor, small silver-framed photo by the pillow, some books.

  Lie down, she says. Open yourself.

  She stands tall over him for a moment in the dim room, then she begins.

  *

  She did things to me no woman has ever done, nor randy callant in city parks at night. She did things to me I didna ken were possible.

  She did for me what I have aye needed done. She brought delirium and peace.

  There’s a stang and a saftness where she has been.

  Later I told her near all she wanted. The where and the when and the how. Of what I saw when the lovers closed on top of Creagan’s Knowe, and what I minded of Elliot’s secret diary – aye, I’d read that more than once with beating heart and stirring in my breeks – and Jinny’s fareyeweel note written on the back of a shopping list. How her eyes flashed at that. Reive it, she said. Reive it for me. I want that in my hands.

  And I’ll do it, for she has me now. She could threaten to clype to Annie but she doesn’t need to. The burden’s off at last.

  *

  I rise from my knees, take a break and heat some soup then drink it walking in the darkening kitchen.

  David’s blade still lies across the table. I think of him, of Tat surrendering the soft places in his thin hard flat body, of Jo with the wounded mouth and huge needy eyes. Her light breathy voice and the tough clever things she said when she spoke of her work. Semiology, ethnography, portents, signs and contexts. Beneath her T-shirt, tiny breasts with swollen teats as she talked of the construction of gender and sexuality. Davy shifting in his seat, fiddling with bread in his fine right hand then dunking it in the stew. I watched his lips, the long Elliot mouth, the lower lip I’d sucked and plumped for him. Her mouth kept moving, sweet white teeth beneath her upper lip as she leaned to me, laughed then looked to him. She thinks she knows all the secret signs, yet she knows nothing of Spook.

  We sat one at each side of the table and as the afternoon went by the presence of the one at the fourth side became so strong I put an extra mug of coffee at that end, a libation for the gods, a mug of instant coffee for the dead. Against my shawl hung in the corner Jinny stood on the border of visibility, a spring of red hair against the green. I felt she was willing us together but to what end I still do not know, and for the first time I wonder if her ends are mine.

  In the silence of the evening the birds drop off one by one. With a short invocation to the kingdom of the invisible I lean over the table and spin the knife. It revolves like a compass needle that has lost its North, flickering by the places where each of us sat this morning. It begins to slow. The blade points to me, scrapes by to aim where Davit had sat. It wobbles once then stops, the blade pointed directly at the chair where Jo had been.

  Let it be so. My heart is thumping but my hands are steady as I go through to the bedroom, flick on the light. I kneel by the window, mixing fresh plaster, and wonder when I last felt so strong, so sure, so far gone from the wee girl I was.

  Whatever happens next, I will leave this much behind, embedded in the wall of the room where a woman once lay, betrayed, and was betrayed. It’s been a long long day but I work on, remaking the ancient pattern. I select my next piece of shattered plate so delicately between thumb and ring finger and prod it into its soft bed.

  Don’t pass beyond this morning hour until you must. Shake your head and hear the tiny rattle like poppy seeds in your neck.

  Too early in the day to give much thought to the scenes you must go through tonight, too late to dwell in yesterday. So look here, just left of centre: the meeting of waters below a red bluff where a body lies sleeping. Or dead. Someone is standing over her, if it is a her.

  Even in sharp morning light through the kitchen window, it’s hard to be sure what is happening here. This could be a scene where the young man stands guard over his sleeping lover. Or is about to possess her. His head is bowed as in prayer or thought or respect. Perhaps she has fallen to her death and he mourns her.

  Perhaps she was pushed, or jumped because she could not bear … Bear what? Another child? The truth?

  Your heart is chapping at your ribs like a demented woodpecker, and you haven’t even had your first coffee yet.

  *

  What’s your dad up to? Annie asked as she unpacked food.
>
  Heh, not very much these days, David said. He felt high and giggly and not quite in control as he waited for the kettle to boil. Two mugs, oatcakes and cheese for two. A surprise for Jo, a little wooing. A kindness to cross the distances between two people.

  Don’t be too sure about that! Annie said.

  For once he didn’t like her laugh. He used to think her jolly. He kept his head down and waited for the steam.

  I mean, why does he want to meet the lassie now? He owes her nothing.

  David shrugged, tightened the cord of his dressing gown, shifted his cock under the pyjamas.

  He’s more likely to confide in you than me, Annie.

  He’ll not give me a word on her. Is it about the estate?

  He looked at her then as she slammed tins and pans onto the work surface.

  Why shouldn’t it be?

  If he thinks I’ve – She crunched the jaws of the opener into a can of plums. Strong brown-speckled hands, brisk and competent. He thought of her stripping her washing from his father’s. No, surely the world couldn’t be that iniquitous. There had to be someone honest, someone who wasn’t at it. Someone like Jo.

  Annie sighed and scooped out flour. Well, I only work here, she said.

  And I’m only his son.

  And they laughed, but it wasn’t the same.

  Don’t heed me, dear, Annie said. I’m in a bit of a tizzy the day. Tat’s been acting right queer again, prowling around in his workroom half the night.

  So what else is new?

  I reckon Marnie’s not right in the head. You shouldn’t trust her.

  Oh really. David mashed the tea-bag and flipped it into the bucket. Why?

  Annie looked uncomfortable as she hid her hands in the flour.

  You’ve met her, and she’s surely a bittie touched.

  She’s unusual, he admitted. She’s also the most vivid person I’ve met in ages.

  He put the mugs and oatcakes on a tray and squeezed past Annie’s solid arse, outlined in blue stretch pants as she bent down for pans.

  So it’s breakfast in bed with the lass?

  He stopped at the door.

  We don’t do that, Annie.

  More’s the pity, if you ask me. You should bed that lass soon before she gets other ideas. Her voice was muffled in the cupboard as she rummaged and clattered. Or you do, he thought she added as he left the room to bring some kindness to his intended. He hesitated on the stair then went on. Not worth making a fuss about, he decided. Soon enough they’d be out of here. He tapped at the door and went in. Jo was lying on her side looking at him.

  Hi, she said. That’s kind of you.

  She sat up in bed, her pale hair flattened to one side like a cornfield beaten by rain. She took the tea and coddled it to her white T-shirt, held it steaming in the low valley between her small breasts. He looked away, wanting some truthfulness in this world.

  Sit down, she said. I won’t eat you. She sipped her tea then looked straight at him. Unless you really want me to.

  He said nothing, with his tongue swollen in his mouth. He’d known, of course he had. Known about Annie and Dad. Known in the tingle and rush in his head his own motivations for bringing Jo tea in bed, what he’d hoped for. He would pray but that’s impossible now.

  You do want me to, she said and put her mug aside.

  He sat down slowly, knowing what was coming next and why he’d come up here. Her hand slipped inside his dressing gown, fingers flickered through the fly of his pyjamas. It happened once in a while. Nothing in the Bible against it, she’d pointed out. Fingertips lightly under his balls. She was amazingly expert at this. The rules were he mustn’t stroke her head or touch her or do anything at all.

  He sat in the dim room looking down at the top of her head and the bulge along inside her cheek. If he held her they were both lost. She had to be in control, unthreatened. This was her kindness to him. He saw the movement under the blanket as her free hand began to move between her legs, and then he closed his eyes against everything. He’d wanted truth and this was it and it didn’t feel much at all.

  *

  I stand blinking in the doorway looking out over two countries then walk out onto the grass, feel the cold dew hiss on the soles of my feet. Hold my arms out, palm upward to the sun, and listen to the messages streaming through me. There is vengeance and there is love. Which do I desire? Which does Jinny want?

  Surely that’s obvious by now.

  I close my eyes and sway from side to side like the grasses bent in the wind and springing back. Because for the first time it has occurred to me I’m not bound by what she would want. I am not bound by the story I read in the plates. I’m not bound by anyone at all.

  When I finally turn and go inside, it seems dim and ghostly in the kitchen. I put the plate on the table and lean over it. There seems a new urgency in all this frozen stillness, a speeding up like the river approaching the falls.

  *

  Jo sat back and swallowed tea.

  Better? You’d been storing that up for a while.

  He reached towards her, felt her flinch and swerved his hand onto her thin shoulder instead.

  It’s not right, he said.

  Don’t come here for sex then give me your guilt. She bit into an oatcake then made a face. Sorry, she said. Didn’t sleep too well last night, lots of weirdo dreams.

  Me too. It must have been the coffee or something.

  Like to tell me about them so I can do my deconstruction trick?

  Isn’t that what you’ve just done?

  She glanced down at him. Yeah, not much left of the young laird now.

  They laughed. This was safe ground. They could always banter their allotted roles, and find a certain kindness there. He opened his mouth, knowing it a mistake.

  I’ve never been loved, he said. My childhood was so cold that boarding school was almost a relief.

  I know, she said. And my growing up was way too hot. The idea is we balance each other out. What are you trying to tell me?

  He shrugged, looked away from the white crust at the corner of her mouth.

  It’s not right.

  Hey, we’ve been right through your master text and found no prohibitions on blow-jobs.

  I didn’t mean that.

  Oh.

  A long silence. Her hand stopped moving. She put the oatcake aside.

  Just once, he said. Just once in my life I want to be passionately loved. I want to … He shook his head, swallowed. I don’t know. Look into someone’s eyes and see no distance. Something daft like that.

  She sighed and shook her head as though he was a particularly dense student, cute but dense.

  David, that’s just romantic myth. The other is always other. A good relationship is like two people living in separate houses with communicating doors, and we always knock and ask and take our shoes off before we come in. We share for a while and then we separate. Above all, we respect boundaries.

  Can’t people ever be, you know, inside each other? I mean, eh, touch souls?

  She clasped his hand and put it gently between her knees where they rose under the blanket.

  That’s not my vocabulary, David. Our hardware is animal, biological. Our software programming is socio-economic and psychological. And that’s it. There’s nothing else. I know you want there to be, but there isn’t.

  He looked away sweating, looked at the strip of light between the curtains. Some days he wondered what was wrong with him. Some days his Faith was faint and he felt himself falling into chaos.

  David, I know you want the absolute symbiotic oneness we maybe knew as infants, but it’s not there. There’s no ghost in the machine.

  No ghosts, he said vaguely. I hope not. Wouldn’t like to think my mother was watching me now.

  She grinned and squeezed his hand.

  That’s better. Believe me, it’s better like this. More sane. We can respect each other and help out and be kind. I’ve seen the other, and it’s quite mad, all passion and p
ossession and the heebie-jeebies. My wolf thrives on it. But we’re adult and we can choose to walk away from all that.

  He nodded, thinking of the little she’d told him about her sexual past, and the wolf that always stalked her and moved in when she was stressed. Thought of his father and Jinny. Yes, it was a madness.

  Do you love me, Jo? Want me?

  He hadn’t meant to say that. She looked down, smiled slightly. The favoured student was being particularly obtuse today.

  David, you’re not hearing me. What do these words mean, other than your own insecurity? Of course I do, if that’s what you need to hear.

  He took his hand away and stood up and then didn’t know what to do so he went over to the window and pulled back the curtains. A fine-looking morning and something was terribly wrong with him.

  Jesus, he said softly.

  Look, don’t worry about the sex. It’ll be all right once we start … you know. You’ll just have to be patient with me and always very gentle. You know why.

  I know.

  And – hey – it’s not as if you don’t enjoy this. We’ll be good to each other.

  He turned away from the window and picked up the tray.

  Reckon I’ll go fishing up by Cauldhame Rigg. Hope you enjoyed your breakfast as much as I did.

  Get out of here, David Elliot.

  As he closed the door he saw the movement of her hand under blue blankets like a mole burrowing. Her business, her separate business. Nothing in the Bible about it.

  As he went slowly down the creaking brown familiar stairs, into his head slid a picture of Marnie barefoot at the cottage door, stretching her arms out to the morning, greeting the world of Spook.

  Sinners who overcome will be given a white stone, he thought vaguely, and on that stone a new name written. He had no idea where he’d picked that up, nor what the name could be, only he carried that phrase with him as he took the rods, dirled the stone key-ring round his fingers and set out into the world.

  *

  As you touch each painted figure it seems to quiver then move and become what you need it to be. The solitary fisherman flicks his rod out over the ruckled water. The shaven-headed man bends over his work-bench, reaming out his latest tiny figure of bone. He gets up to check through his telescope, and the next panel shows the cottage and the dark woman sitting on the briggiestane, hands dropped loose over her knees as she stares out, giving nothing away. The lady fair sits at a desk in the study, her hand moving steadily over the pages she’s studying. From time to time her legs squeeze tight together, then relax. Let your fingers drift on, and there she is going through to the kitchen where the housekeeper looks up from mangling dough. The two women talk for a while but you cannot hear the words that pass between them.