When They Lay Bare

by Andrew Greig

  He rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes and looked for David coming along the path through the woods. But Tat wasn’t by the path any more. He was sitting by the bright murmuring linns of the river, four hundred yards further down the hill. And – check the watch – he had lost an hour and some.

  He was on his feet and running back up through the trees, already too late.

  The lovers climb higher and higher through the green light under the trees. They’re silent but panting, their faces pale and set. The path kinks round the back of the knoll and then they step out from the last of the trees, and stand to face each other in their appointed place, at their appointed time. Late blue sky above them, the dizzying fall to the valley before, the coarse turf of their bed at their feet.

  *

  Sim Elliot slowly climbs the tenement stairs. The meeting is done, the new will witnessed and signed and filed in Adam Crozier’s safe, but now the air in the stairwell is vile green and hard to breathe, and he’s weary unto death. The ancient steps go up and up. He pauses on the second landing, feeling for a moment Jinny swinging on his arm, seeing her run barefoot down the dusty stairs that last weekend to greet him though he was late. Her smile, her vitality, banish all dinginess and dross and doubt. Whatever comes, it will be worth it for this moment as she wraps herself round him and her belly melts into his and he says in her ear Love you for aye.

  He smiles now and murmurs to her shade then sets his foot on the next step for all the tingling in his chest. I have lived, I lived in those hours, he thinks. The rest has just been existence.

  He climbs on and up, near the top now, letting his memory run ahead with Jinny into the flat to fornicate lovingly, desperately, the way one does when every time could be the last. Now the endorphins had calmed, the receptor sites sated and all that had permitted their bodies unprecedented energies and their hearts to open like prison gates – now that was done, what was left? Each time they looked at each other, the unspoken question was reflected in the other’s eyes: is it worth it? Where do we go from here? Does this mean anything?

  He scratches and fumbles his key into the lock, seeing her tumble up and over him, the ragged edge of her laughter as she settled down to ride him, gripping his hips between her knees and his hair clenched tight in her small fists.

  The door lurches open. He drops the keys on the hall table and hesitates outside the other bedroom, the one with the blue door he keeps locked. She’d said it would be safe – had she lied or just been mistaken? In any case, his seed had found her and their bodies got what they were straining for, and even as they lay cooling on the bed the way had opened up to her last summons and the final tryst on Creagan’s.

  Elliot grinds the heel of his hand into his forehead, picks up the keys and opens the blue door.

  *

  They weren’t on the brig over the falls. Thanks be to the gods of the North for that. I leaned over the rail and peered down into the louping water and the black still pool at the bottom. As my een strained in the mirk, at last the knowledge rose up through the spray and stramash: Marnie isn’t Marnie. This one has come in her place. She’s a step-in.

  I blinked, went empty. The waters stopped falling and I saw clear how it was. She was something far more queer than an imposter. And Davy wasn’t protected by her notion Elliot was Marnie’s sire. And because she wasn’t Marnie – and Lord alone knows who or what she might really be – she could do anything she wanted with him.

  Then I hurried at a lick across the greasy planks, through the woods towards Crawhill, still hearing at my back the Liddie roar to its rest.

  *

  I keeked in through the bedroom window. No bodies there, no lovers yerking or lying still. The mattress had been stripped bare. In the kitchen, the books were in a cardboard box with the silver-framed photo on top. Clothes lay folded by her backpack. The woman was set for a flittin.

  The plates were stacked on the uppermost shelf of the press. I reached and took down the top one and gowped at it long. It was as I’d minded – the tryst on the high place, the lovers raxed about each other, a body falling without end.

  Jinny, Jinny, I muttered, what are you about? You must ken she’s no the one.

  I stood outside, not knowing which way to go. The dale was empty in the low yellow light, only the sheep, and Smiler Ballantyne slouching down the lane. I raised my glasses and scanned the muir, found nothing but a hawk hung high above the old stane. It was as though the woman had taken David off with her, back into the mystery.

  I looked down the drove road, kinking round the shoulder of the hill towards the next dale and Creagan’s beyond that … And then I kent. I went back into the kitchen, came out with the last plate in my hand and in a bleeze of anger and fear, smashed it agin the hind wall. Then I was running straight for the low sun settling over the knowe.

  *

  They emerge from the last trees at the crown of Creagan’s Knowe and he follows her towards the edge, a narrow strip of turf and then the drop. His chest is heaving from nerves and the other. He knows what she thinks happened here but he’s never allowed himself to think on it. He’d pushed it away with a lot of other things he didn’t want to look at. He just called it Sin and thought that dealt with it.

  Now she stands on the very edge, faces out over the drop and spreads her arms wide like she’s greeting some old friend, he sees he never knew much about anything – not his dad, not his mother, not Jo, certainly not the woman who has brought him to this place. All this comes too late as she looks round and holds her hand out toward him.

  Come on, she says. Take a look.

  He steps towards her but stops just beyond her reach. She’s right on the edge where the grass peters out to some crumbly rock. He looks into her unfathomable black eyes and thinks of the Devil taking Jesus up to a high place and showing him the kingdoms of the world. That’s what she can show him, the kingdoms. They’re locked in her eyes, in the mouth he’s felt on his, in the force of her hips. She is not of the dark, he tells himself, not entirely, and we can both be saved in ways we’d never expected.

  Come on, she says. Hey, don’t you trust me?

  The kingdoms are the secrets of her heart and they can be his. He takes another step forward and stops, a yard back from the edge.

  No, he says. Since last night I don’t trust anyone.

  She laughs quietly but her eyes go down.

  I’ve taught you something then.

  Least of all myself, he adds. So I’m staying right here. If you want my trust, you have to earn it like anyone else.

  Her chin comes up, something flickers in her eyes. He doesn’t know this woman at all. He’s known her since he was a wee boy. Then she shifts slightly and the setting sun makes it hard to see into her any more.

  Fair enough, she says. She holds out her hand to him again. Her voice drops low and quiet like there’s only the two of them left in the world and no need to talk loud. Come here and stand with me. No more games.

  In the end it’s not what she says, nor the look in her eyes which he can’t see rightly anyway for the glare, but the tone of her voice that decides it. It resonates somewhere round his breast-bone. He’s been waiting for it for years, that buzz in the bone: her absolute kinship with him.

  He steps up beside her, holds out his hand. They’re standing together at the lip of the drop as her fingers knit round his. Her knees flex, her shoulders come forward. So be it. If she wants to take him with her, so be it. He’s lost everything anyway. He’s nothing like he thought.

  She’s breathing heavy. The burn glisters way below, the fields and woods hump down to the Border and somewhere cushie-doos are calling. At this moment he’s prepared to go.

  Her fingers squeeze hard.

  Thank you, she says all throaty. Then she turns to face him, puts one arm at his waist and the other round his neck like they’re dancing, and together they take one step sideways away from the edge, and then another. She looks up at him and gives a near giggle.
<
br />   Let you into a secret, she says. I don’t know myself at all, so you taking a chance on me means one of us is crazy.

  Her hands clasp together at the back of his head.

  So here’s our reward, she says.

  *

  I saw them from the valley, wee figures on the brow of the knowe, miniature and twisted as my netsuke. I stopped running, it being ower late to change anything now. I raised the glasses and saw them close on each other. I saw them clutch and graipple agin the sun and thought of the peregrine falcon, the blue gled we cry them, how afore they mate they link claws, fold wings and drop as one out of the sky. Trust. It’s an unco sight, and most times they mind and let go, but years syne I saw a pair crash. Found the one deid, the other blinking up at me its black and golden eye, baith wings smashed. I put the pair thing away. Never made the same mistake myself.

  So my bonnie pair linked on top of the knowe and I could only watch from half a mile off. Aye in my mind were the other lovers I’d seen up there yon afternoon twenty-plus years back, and what I had witnessed, and how I had forsworn myself. It was that half-lie that kept me safe for all these years and now had brought me here as punishment to witness again while the lovers enacted their weird, helpless as myself.

  This surely was what Jinny willed, even if she was just a whigmaleerie of my brain. I couldn’t understand it. Then the notion came and made me grue – the dead may know no more than we what is to come, and their plans go agley as our own.

  *

  He had his father’s mouth, but young and sweet. I matched my lips to his, the fit was perfect as I’d known it would be. A man’s mouth but so like my own, and as we clutched together in that high place, each movement unlocked gates in me I’d thought closed for ever the day my lover left me at the airport.

  We fell on our knees, still locked together, his belly burning into mine. Chill hands were on my breasts, he held them as if they were something wonderful. He was full of juice, that man. I felt I could lift the ripeness of the world into my mouth and crunch.

  Then something broke somewhere and we fell over on our sides in coarse dry grass. The low sun lit on the blood-red stone of his family ring as he stroked my face over and over and my hands moved inside his shirt. He felt closer to me than any man I’d ever known, he was mine as our hands worked each other’s belts, and with a groan deep in our throats he eased into me.

  With eyes closed there was no-time, that place of peace. There was no-person, we were neither two nor one. Only him-and-me, and the evening air cool over the valley and through our open clothes. The world was young as in the early days, and we were gripped by nothing save each other.

  Then there was no more but the pure doing of it. As the horizon sliced the sun in twain, I held him there for all time on the brink of Creagan’s Knowe.

  Behind the cottage the last plate lies smashed. Broken shards slip down in the grass. Some are face-down, others lie open to the conflagration in the sky. Here are the lovers embracing, over there is the woman falling. The watcher is lying on his side near where the barefoot woman is doing some kind of dance or perhaps calling for help. And here is the dark man in a room, broken clean down the middle.

  Sim Elliot stood awhile in the little bedroom, sniffing the air that held her yet. Her crushed blue velvet dress, the one he’d bought for her that last weekend, was still spread out on the bed. Her little bottles and jars were on the sill, her green hair-grip crusted with dust on the bedside table. Her spare knickers in the chest of drawers, folded neatly beside her red sweater and the hairbrush he couldn’t bear to throw away with her hairs faded in its grip.

  And that was all that remained visible of her. He felt the tearing streak down his chest as he slowly laid himself down on the bed. His hand groped and tugged her dress to him. He tugged as he had tugged at her on the knowe. He held the dress to his face, felt it cover his nose and eyes, then he let go and wept as he saw.

  *

  Jinny tearful, wracked, almost possessed on the top of Creagan’s where she had called him with her mind to tell him she was pregnant again. Talking of abortion, of telling Patrick everything. Telling Fiona. Or having the baby. I can’t lie to you again, she says. He doesn’t understand this, she’s never lied to him. She can’t stand it, she can’t live with it any more. He wrestles with her, trying to stop her. Calm down, Jinny. Let’s think this through. It can be all right. No it can’t! she sobs. It never could be. We’re not even sure how much we want each other. (Did she say that, or did he? He’s no longer sure.) I can’t bear it. Let me go. Let me go!

  She pushes past him, he grabs at her, she pushes at him – and because he’s much bigger she staggers back. One foot goes over the edge. The soft thin soil crumbles under her other foot. She looks down at it as though puzzled, then back at him. She says nothing, does nothing but keep looking at him as she begins to fall away from his grab. She drops, tumbles then hits the first ledge and lies still. He peers over the edge and calls to her. Don’t move, dinna move lass!

  She gets up onto her elbows, then her knees. She stands upright, swaying. She looks up to him, almost smiles as she steps sideways and falls again. A thud, rattle, the groan of her breath knocked out. She’s twitching and jerking like a puppet with tangled strings. Then impossibly she’s up again, staggers to the edge and falls one more time.

  She’s lying twisted on her back, a dark stain blooming at the side of her head, her blue eyes fixed on nothing. She seems calm, or just blank. Is she in her right mind or on another planet? He can never know as she twists again, rolls over and falls out of sight to crunch at Tat’s feet and finally be still, herself and the unborn child dead.

  And now, back in this room, it seems at last he can read the meaning of Jinny’s last glance, the half-smile as she turns away. He’d thought it terror, accusation, even resignation. But in that slightest shake of her head, her mouth opening in a little O, her eyes widening, he can see acceptance. Even relief. She’d wanted it. At that moment, poised in the balance, she’d wanted out. And then he truly wept.

  *

  Don’t know about you, Davy, I said, but I’m getting damp and cold here.

  He blinked once, then grinned. Me too, he said, and began pulling on his breeks. Yes, he was a man who could yet turn out well. As might even I.

  We stood a moment in the gloaming on top of that high crowning place. I shivered and drew my shawl around me, hesitated then unclipped the brooch, fumbled with it for a moment.

  Here, I said. You have it.

  He stood and let me push the long pin through his shirt then clip it.

  To remember me by, I said.

  His head came up at that.

  You’re leaving?

  And so must you. Go and see Jo and get it straight.

  Straight? he said. That’s a bit of a laugh.

  It can be a good one, I said. You’ll know soon enough if it’s right.

  And if it’s not? Where can I find you?

  I linked my hand through his and squeezed.

  I’ll find you, I said.

  *

  I saw the two of them rise again and stand body-black on the knowe. My eyes watered with the strain, and the figures ran into Elliot and Jinny, struggling or embracing at the brink. I was young then, a loon, and a distance away hiding in the trees below – how could I ken the difference atween anger and desire? All I saw were arms rising, her turning, him reaching or pushing, then her slow backward fall. No matter how often I replayed it, I truly didna ken.

  At the trial I lied, of course I did, and Elliot never looked at me aince as I testified how I’d seen Jinny step away from him and over the edge. And so I saved him because I loved him, and made my place siccar, and when we met outside the courtroom he looked into me, nodded once and turned away, his hair already growing grey, and we never spoke directly of it ever.

  I thought this my punishment, to see his only son and heir fall and be able to do nothing. But at last the tiny black stick figures turned away back into th
e trees and I was saved. I shadowed them through the gloaming as they came down out through the trees, crossed the burn and headed for Crawhill. They walked the drove road and I jouked along above them on the muir, my heart burning like the sky ahint us.

  *

  And so I let him go, and so I let myself go. We walked in silence through the gloaming, for I was blown apart and he was soft and dazed as men are after love. As love it might have been. As love it might be.

  As we rounded the drove road and saw the cottage up ahead, he began to sing very softly In Scarlet Town where I was born, there was a fair maid dwelling. His voice was pleasing to my ears and seemed to sooth the drowsy rooks in the tall trees above the heuch. And I answered him back, singing And her name was Barbara Allan, and in his glance at me I was pleasing to myself once more.

  At the time we crossed the dyke the air was the colour of the stone of these parts, grey but lit within. The western sky was burning low and I was near at peace with no voices in my head save his and my own. I’d gone so near the border into the kingdom of Spook but stepped back.

  He stopped and shuffled on my briggiestane. But I put my finger to his bonnie lips and bid him goodbye and good luck, needing now to sleep for a thousand years.

  *

  When young Elliot had gone back across Liddie into the gathering dark and she went inside and closed the door, I stayed hunkered down ahint the dyke awhile. So they had done the deed and she hadn’t killed him. They had met and parted, perhaps would meet again syne. Perhaps this was what Jinny had wanted, she might have seen that far ahead. If not her daughter with young Elliot, then someone – I near thought something – who stepped into her place. About our meeting in the woods, I wasn’t yet prepared to ponder oer long.