When They Lay Bare

by Andrew Greig

  Kiss my arse, she muttered, and broke open the letter.

  Dear Marnie Lauder – I have waited long to see you in my house, and now you have come I am somewhat overwhelmed to the point I could say little to much purpose last night. What you think of me I don’t know, though I fear the worst. I fear you have been misled by rumour and gossip. You are owed a true account of Jinny’s death, and I would beg of you to meet with me again and that’s what I will give you.

  Your mother was, and remains, the person I have loved above all others. I expect you long ago guessed the anonymous trust fund payments that ended on your 21st came from me – I only regret there wasn’t more to give without tipping the estate into bankruptcy. But I have turned the matter over all night and am now going to my lawyer to will you half the estate upon my death. The other half – apart from some considerations for the Tattersalls – will go to David. I gather his engagement may be at an end, and I will not deny that I have hopes the two of you will find a way to keep the estate whole – and at last heal and end this ancient, ruinous feud, as your mother would have wished. But that is up to you.

  I will explain everything at greater length on my return, and hope to get better acquainted with you who are at once a stranger and dear Jinny’s only remnant in this world. This note is to ask you to remain at Crawhill till my return in 3 days time.

  Sincerely

  Sim Elliot

  Annie stood up, walked over to the stove, then to the window. Back to the stove, head down thinking hard. Shagged the auld sod for six years – not that he wasn’t good at it, a sight better than Tat anyhow – listened to his girnings, wiped the sweat off him. Not to mention Tat and herself working for a pittance. All that to let him give the estate away to the first bold chancer that comes along?

  She opened the fire door.

  Best not mention it to Tat, couldn’t tell which way the wee devil would jump these days. Anyway, it was her job to protect Elliot and sure as potatoes have eyes, the Marnie woman meant him ill. She watched the note turn brown on the coals, crisp through and curl up wings, then suddenly like a tiny bird bleeding the red wax ran out and the note whirled up the chimney as she hitched the fire door shut.

  Back in the sitting room she paused with a duster in her hand and for a moment felt she was looking at a children’s puzzle-picture. Can she see the cat hidden in the vase? Or can she see a slender woman hidden in the green cushion covers, dispersed among the red tulips, smell her lavender beneath the woodsmoke?

  Annie sprayed with the can and followed up with the duster. Three days till Elliot returned … She rubbed her itchy palm on the hip of her slacks. Itchy palm, money coming soon, she murmured as she sauntered through to the scullery.

  *

  The young man with yellow hair is going into the woods like his father before him, without hawk or hound or friend. The trees arch and stir over his head. He looks straight ahead like a man going to the scaffold or the marriage altar, then he is lost among the light and shadow and you can see no more.

  Move on to the panel above and find his father, stepping down from a coach by an inn. Behind him are pale scratches that could be spires, tall buildings. And though you suspect Tat lied, you saw in his eyes that nothing you could threaten would make him tell what he knew or guessed. Sim Elliot is fled, you cannot catch him now.

  Elliot paid the taxi from the station and watched it scoot off downhill towards the city centre. The trees in the park stirred over his head. The day had changed, it was mild spring again. He was back in the city for the first time in two years.

  He crossed at the green man, went round the corner and fumbled for keys at the tenement door. The sharp jab and twist like a corkscrew in his heart, but it’s maybe only memories of Jinny standing beside him on this same worn step. Stone lasts so long, he thinks, yet even it wears down to our passing.

  Then he’s inside in the fousty dimness. He climbs the stairs cautiously, noting the hollows worn in the centre of each step. There’ll be time to wash and collect himself before lunch with his lawyer. He comes at last to the top landing, to the dark green door, the old brass plate Robertson he’s never seen fit to change. In the city he used to feel like Robertson, whoever he was, free from his position and his place, his marriage and the estate and all the deadly suffocations of his upbringing, free to be Jinny’s man.

  Inside is chill and smells faintly of sweat and booze. He ignores the blue door, her room, not ready to face that yet. In the other bedroom everything’s tidy, the bed stripped, but it has a whiff of Tat and semen, the dirty wee bugger.

  He puts down his suitcase, then the slim briefcase with the documents, and slumps for a minute in the worn winged chair by the window looking out over the city’s spires, the castle, the hill, the distant firth. All that hard clear rational East Coast light clears the head of bogles and fanciful imaginings. In a moment he will wash and sprush himself up, but not yet, for in this seat there lingers still the whiff of lavender.

  So the clever, skittery fiancée is gone, fled back to the South, leaving David and Marnie. He smiles at the possibility, feels the rightness of it as pressure coming off his chest. At feud – and God knows the Elliots and Lauders were at it long enough – often ended this way, in marriage. All may yet be well.

  But it may not, he is not God almighty. So he must do this and give the lassie justice. Justice not cash she’d whispered hot breath in his ear under the stars. The note will keep her there till he gets back and tells her to her face how Jinny died. Then she will have what justice there is in the world, and cash for what there isn’t. Adam Crozier will purse his lawyer lips, he will not like it, on the phone he certainly didn’t like it, but when Elliot gets to the offices the documents will be there for signing. Then he can sleep.

  He twists his neck and inhales the musty seat covering. The smell slips inside him, sweet and painful as a day long gone. Jinny would approve, he thinks. My boy and her girl, surely that is what she’d want. And then another bairn to replace the one that died with her.

  He sits back and closes his eyes, imagining Jinny coming up the stairs to him, her standing ringing the bell, all raised and flushed, some answer still in her eyes. But the bell doesn’t ring, of course it doesn’t, he isn’t soft in the head yet, and she can never come again.

  *

  Tat flickered up through the trees on the far side of the Liddie Burn, came to the path from the big house to the falls and checked his watch. Seven minutes dead. No way Davy could have passed by yet.

  He hunkered down with his back against a rowan, facing the way young Elliot would come. He let his breathing slow and empty out his mind, then it would come to him what to do when the laddie came through the trees towards him. He knew fine why Annie wanted to prevent this tryst, she’d long had hopes of the estate. His reasons were his own. Jinny’s bairn had possessed him, but deeper than that he was Elliot’s man.

  He waited. No one waited better than Tat, eyes fixed on the path. The day had changed utterly since the morn, and the afternoon was very still. Not a whisper in the tangled firs, not even a hiss of breeze over the bare oaks and alders. It really was awful close.

  Twigs blurred along the way, a branch twitched. He blinked. Blinked and looked again. A flicker of gingery-red in the dim tunnel of the path. A fox, surely, though byordinar in full daylight. He crouched unmoving, feeling sweat tickle under his arms. Movement and colour again, coming closer, coming his way.

  Then Tat is pushing himself upright, leaning back on the trunk to stop himself falling over. For a woman is coming along the path towards him, and it isn’t Marnie. She is not as tall as she should be. Her hair is too long. Its red lights flicker in the still air …

  Jinny walks towards him, the same rapid light steps he remembered, same dancing hips under the long green dress. The day starts to go dark round the edges, his fingers are freezing but sweat’s running into his boots.

  This is not possible, he thinks. This is not on. He shakes his head, blinks severa
l times, and she is standing right in front of him. She grins exactly her grin. Then she smiles, dead natural.

  Hi Tat, how’s it going? she says.

  He gurgles. She’s wearing sensible shoes but nothing else is sensible in his universe.

  I miss you too, she says. Pleased about your bairns, though. Congratulations.

  This is no Banquo’s ghost. She isn’t covered in blood, head caved in, last breath hissing from her battered mouth. She is just his friend Jinny, nodding to him to follow her as they start to wander slowly down through the trees. He can’t focus on what she’s saying, can’t retain a thing. She chats away like they haven’t met for a week or so. She smiles to him again, almost slyly, like there’s some secret joke he hasn’t got yet but soon will. He can’t feel the air. His whole body has gone numb. Maybe he’s dead. Jinny’s dead. He clutches his mind round that.

  But you’re dead, he says.

  Did he say that aloud? She stops, one pale hand on a scarred oak. Her fingers spread then are still.

  These things happen, she said.

  She turns and steps gracefully downhill. He follows and finds himself confessing how he’d watched her and Sim at it all those years ago – down by the linns, in the cottage, on Creagan’s Knowe.

  Her head bobs, copper coils and russet lights shake loose through the forest.

  I know that, she says gently. Don’t worry about it.

  But there’s mair, he gasps behind her, his voice going wee and bairny. What I said at the trial …

  Don’t fash yourself. Don’t worry about it. Her voice floats back to him. You thought it better to defend a living man than a dead woman, and who’s to argue with you? I know you only wanted to be me, he thinks she adds as she moves further away.

  He hastens to catch up with her, suddenly panic-stricken she’ll just drift away and take the last of his right mind with her. The ground begins to level out, she hunkers down by the linns and trails her fingers in the water.

  Let them meet, she says carefully. That’s what I want.

  Davy and Marnie?

  She lifts her hand and watches, seeming fascinated as the water streams, trickles, forms single drops. The last pearl shakes and falls and is gone into the wide water.

  Let them meet, she says again. Her head moves down then to the side as though both nodding and shaking her head. Or perhaps she is listening to something beyond his range.

  Tell me, he says then stops, but he must know. Is Marnie – is she Sim’s child?

  She looks for a long time at the smooth gleaming water. That’s not for the living to know, she says at last.

  Then she looks up at him, all easy and smiling. She hasn’t touched me, he thinks. She casts a shadow, she’s breathing, but she hasn’t touched me. If she did, would I feel anything? Would I die?

  Here, Tat, she says. Mind we used to play hidies before Marnie was born? You were always good at it. I want you to play it with me now.

  Now? he says. Here?

  She nods like it’s great fun, a game between pals. I’ll hide in the world, she says. You sit here, close your eyes and count a hundred, then try and find me.

  He does as she asks, feeling some inevitability press down on his shoulders as he sits back against the nearest tree.

  No cheating, she says. Promise?

  Aye, he says, and closes his eyes. Promise.

  Plate 8 (Broken)

  You should be getting ready to move on for the finish is certainly nearby. Instead you’ve fallen into a deep dwam over the last plate, your eyes open but not seeing anything else around you. More and more you find yourself falling into that other world.

  The rider jumps down from his horse, the woman rises from behind the wall. They lie together and life sparks. A man falls off a brig, a woman lies broken at the bottom of a cliff, a figure in the shadows draws a dagger from its sheath. The man and woman lie down again. And through it all the wind blows over the moor, wearing even the stone away.

  But you stop and sit up straight, for you’ve felt or heard something just beyond human range. Though you could have read it in this plate, you did not expect this. And though you may have desired it, you dread it deep. He’s coming.

  She secured the sheath onto the belt of her jeans, slotted in the dagger. She paused to glance in the little mirror, didn’t see Jinny’s face in there, then hurried out the door. She stood with a cup of cold coffee, waiting for him in the late afternoon sunlight, the air full of unseasonal bugs, the corbies near asleep on the dyke as he came from the woods.

  He put one hand on the sagging post and easily jumped the gate and strode towards her, strands of lichen in his yellow hair. He stopped at arm’s length and stared long at her. A fine hardening, she thought.

  Did you have to? he said. Of all the folk in the dale, did it have to be her you had?

  He was panting. The ends of his hair were shaking, coarse and yellow. She couldn’t meet his eyes but watched only his mouth and his right hand flexing by his hip. She said nothing.

  Christ, Marnie! Jo and I have waited a year and a half, then you two have it all in one night.

  David, she said, and now she looked in his eyes. David, I didn’t exactly seduce her. She’s an old hand, believe me.

  This is the moment, she thought. Now we see.

  He ripped the cup from her fingers. It hurt, she panicked, reached down for the knife but he grabbed her wrist in a flash. His other hand blurred forward, the Willow Pattern cup whizzed past her head and shattered on the wall.

  Shit! he shouted. Shit shit shit. You bastern Lauder!

  She looked back at him, denying nothing, open to anything. At last he let go her knife hand and stood before her like he could burst into tears but resolute yet. Yes, a fine hardening.

  Of course I knew she used to … He looked over her head, down the drove road. I mean, we both had things to put behind us. That was the deal.

  She put her hand on his arm, felt it flinch. She gripped tighter.

  Love’s no big deal, she said and leaned towards him.

  You’ve nothing worth telling me, Marnie. Cynicism’s cheap.

  I mean it’s not a deal at all. His head turned slowly back to her. His horizon-blue eyes locked onto hers. Davy, love exists way before you agree to it and way after you end it. She paused. Ask your father about that.

  It was a rotten thing to do.

  I know.

  He stared at her, waiting for something.

  It’s no excuse, she said, but I’ve been alone for a long time. I have my needs, I wanted her and she wanted me. Jo thought she was seducing me. It’s the only power she has.

  He looked down at his hands like the answer was there. Hands broad-palmed, long-fingered. A larger version of her own. She reached and took his hand.

  But I hurt you, she said. And for that I’m sorry.

  *

  Her voice was ragged, she said the words like they were foreign to her. But she gripped his hand tighter till he had to look her in the eyes again, and maybe he saw moistness there.

  Perhaps I wanted to hurt you, she said. But I don’t now.

  What’s with you, woman? What have I ever done to you?

  Jinny. Patrick. She paused. Your father. I couldn’t get to him, so I got you.

  There was nothing he could say to that but let it sink down and down through the silence of the afternoon. At last he loosed his hand from hers and stepped back. He looked at her standing so ready, one hand on the hilt of his knife, the other still held out towards him.

  There’s one thing I have to know. Are we …?

  Related? She smirked like it was funny. I don’t think so.

  She stood square on, poised on her feet, alert, black hair swinging across her forehead. So alive, so there. So not all there.

  I must be off, he blurted. I’ve no more business here. It’s been …

  With each step back away from her the tugging forward in his chest was stronger, like there was elastic strung between them.

  D
avit?

  He stopped like she’d run him through. Davit. So personal, no one had ever been so personal. He looked at her with the cottage behind, remembered the old photo, the plastic sword, the little girl pushing herself up from the ground, Jinny smiling as she moved from light into shade.

  There was another reason, she said. Her voice faltered then her head came up and she said it clearly. I was jealous. I’m very jealous and insecure.

  Jealous of me? Come on!

  No.

  Now he couldn’t move. They were frozen like figures on a painted plate.

  Jealous of her, she said. And I think now you are too.

  Her eyes came up, she almost smiled. It wasn’t her we wanted, she said and came towards him across the overgrown garden. He couldn’t pretend not to know her meaning as she put her arm through his like they were old fellow riders.

  We’re both tense and confused, she said. I think we need to take a walk. Just a little walk.

  *

  They crossed the dyke and set foot on the drove road and walked along it, heads bent towards each other as they talked. They walked unconscious of time or distance, empty moor on their right and green pasture on the left. They walked till the road dipped and then they were facing over the next glen to Creagan’s Knowe, the red bluff and the stream and woods below.

  He stopped dead, with the tug of her arm pulling him on.

  No, he said. No!

  She halted, came back. Lips warm and strong, the tip of her tongue burning in his mouth. It felt like nothing else in his life.

  We’ve put this off too long, my blue-eyed boy, she said. We’ll be able to see everything better from up there, believe me.

  *

  Tat came up from somewhere dark and comfortable, still counting. He opened his eyes. No Jinny, no smothered laughter through the trees. Of course there wasn’t, she’d never been there. Just a daft dwam on a close afternoon, come to a mind shorn of sleep from the night before.