When They Lay Bare

by Andrew Greig

  I got stiffly to my feet. There was only one thing left for me to do here. I chapped on the door, waited respectfully then went in.

  She was standing in a dwam by the sink. The kitchen looked empty and the backpack was full by her feet, but the plates were still on the upper shelf of the press. She looked at me across the lamplight. She looked for an awful long time and her eyes had the shine of oiled whetstone …

  I was minded to tell her I’d jaloused her secret, that she wasn’t Marnie but one come in her place, and perhaps that was as it was meant to be. I was minded to tell her I’d let on to no one, and if she were to marry Davy and settle the estate and centuries of ruinous feud, well that was fine by me. I was minded to say I was both sorry and relieved she was leaving.

  Instead I held out my last netsuke, my glowering thrawn wee goblin with the corbie at his shoulder.

  This is for you, I said, wherever you’re gaun. I doubt I’ll make another.

  She took it lightly from my hand into hers and we both looked down at the bone, the silver, the chancy ruby een winking in the lamplight.

  I’ll treasure this for longer than you know, she murmured. I blushed, she turned away and sat it on top of her pack for the morn. But I’m very tired, she said.

  Aye … Goodnight.

  She said nothing. At the door I stopped, turned to look back one more time.

  Goodbye, Tat, she said. I hope you sleep better now.

  Open your eyes on your last day here. Light floods again through the curtainless window, the wind murmurs its many voices. Your time here is spilled and done as an hourglass broken, worn out by the sand. And you are calm, released, for this is story’s end.

  She blinked, smiled up at the ceiling that Jinny must have looked to with Patrick or Elliot at her side. Then she rose from the mattress for the last time, stripped the sheets and duvet and left them with a note for Annie Tat: It’s all yours – M.

  She washed, she made tea and toast, quiet in her head and savouring these ordinary mortal things. After all, she thought, we’re as fated or free as we believe ourselves to be.

  She washed out the last dishes, looking out the window onto a day bright but with flags of mist clinging to the trees, drifting into hollows. At peace, she was ready now to kneel and pick up the silver-framed photo, her passport to this life she was leaving. She stroked the cool metal with her thumb then abruptly turned it over, pushed the little catch. She removed the back and took out the note she’d kept there, Marnie’s last gift before she went through the security barrier and flew out of her life.

  Have my plates and the photo with my love. Do what you will with them, but remember we’re not fated. It’s all bollocks, Carol. We’re free! My love – Marnie.

  *

  Annie Tat stopped at the village shop to pick up supplies on her way to the big house. The bus to the city pulled up at the shelter and she glimpsed in the brief clear space between the shelter and the open door a small figure step rapidly. She saw a bounce of red hair, a flash of green dress then the woman vanished into the dimness of the bus.

  Impossible. Annie shook her head. Ridiculous. She was getting jumpy as Elliot. She got back into the car and drove on, still thinking and planning. With Elliot’s letter burned, the Marnie woman had to go before he came back, or they could kiss goodbye to the estate. That was the main thing. And according to Tat she was leaving this morn. Tat would watch to make sure she did, he was good at that. Though the wee sod seemed to have lost his grip of late, things looked to be working out fine.

  She turned up the drive and thought no more of it.

  *

  The woman who’d called herself Marnie for long enough picked up the little radio and gathered her last gear together, keen now to be off. It had been the longest strangest time, she’d nearly forgotten on which side of the border she belonged, so carried away by isolation and fantasy, lust and those plates. Now she was in her right mind again, perhaps even her right heart. There was no Fate, no endless cycle, no unseen forces. Marnie was right. We cannot live with Spook, it’s too big for us.

  She placed Tat’s eldritch goblin in the top of the pack and almost smiled. Here we go, back to wherever. The winding road does call …

  The plates she’d left till last. She lifted them down from the shelf, all seven. No, six. She stopped dead. Her finger ran down the stack. The top plate was missing. Her eyes jerked round the kitchen, she went through to the bedroom knowing it wasn’t there, just the exploded version of Plate 3 stuccoed to the wall below the window.

  Unless she was losing her mind, someone had taken it. Perhaps to stop her. Stupid bastards, she wasn’t stopped that easily. Who, then? Not old Elliot – he was gone. Not Davy … Then she thought on Tat coming to the door last night, offering his netsuke. She’d taken it in her pride as a tribute, and it was wickedly beautiful, but now she wondered if it was an apology. She stood at the front door in the morning breeze, looked to either side but there was only the silvered grass bending. The privy wing groaned quietly. As she walked slowly towards it, a bright speck caught her eye in the long grass breaking against the back wall.

  She stood over the shattered plate, head bowed as if in mourning. Then she heard a dog barking from the direction of the wood. She knew that bark, and knew the man who a moment later followed his hound out of the trees.

  *

  You shouldn’t have come back, David, she said. Goodbyes are hard enough.

  I know, I know, he said. But it felt like I had no choice.

  She stared back at him. If eyes are the window of the soul, today hers were smoked glass.

  Yesterday was … miraculous, he said. I have to know it wasn’t a fluke.

  Her mouth tugged down to one side as though he’d said something funny.

  Something to show you, she said.

  She pointed down and half buried in the grass he saw blue and white fragments, knelt down as she stood beside him with Hawk licking round her feet. He picked up one piece of painted plate, then another. A falling man. A couple entwined.

  Tat, she said.

  He shouldn’t have done that.

  No, she said slowly. He really shouldn’t have.

  He started collecting the pieces together. I’m really sorry, Marnie, he said. I’ll skin him for this.

  Leave it, she said. It doesn’t matter. As if you can break a story by breaking a plate.

  She seemed that unhappy he closed his arms around her shoulders. Her dark hair blew up in little spikes and he wanted to protect her from everything bad that had ever happened. He wanted her to demand anything of him, something impossible like protecting her from everything in the future. Then her eyes came up, dark as a tarn on the moor.

  All right then, she said. One more time. She swayed in, her hips fused onto his. Do you prefer the mattress bare, or a bed of bracken?

  *

  I sheathed my knives one last time and looked at all the fankled wee things I’d made, my beloved creatures of bone and seeing, the whigmaleeries of my brain. If I make anything more, they’ll not be so crabbit and confined.

  I keeked out the workroom window and saw movement up by Crawhill. Then through my glasses I saw young Elliot come near, saw her point down to the grass aside the cottage. He knelt and when he stood again she closed on him, and all the while the hound ran circles round them.

  I wasna happy and blithe about this tryst, and I’m not sure she was either. Aiblins I should have set off up the brae but couldn’t face her, not now she’d found the plate.

  I settled down at my sill to watch the lovers as they tacked across towards the dyke. I thought they’d go back to the knowe but she stopped by the bracken this side of the dyke, at the very spot where she’d first couried down to wait for him the morning after she’d arrived. I reached for a cheroot and lit it, drew the bittersweet nothing into my throat and waited.

  *

  Send the hound away, she said. I’ll not lie with you while he’s around.

  He looked down at Hawk
. Home! he said. Away you go.

  Hawk trembled, whined but wouldn’t budge. Sorry, David said, he won’t leave.

  She held her right arm out, two fingers rigid towards the dog’s eyes. Go, Hawk! she said and he turned and ran back to the forest and was gone.

  There was a pause between them. David Elliot’s knees were shaking with wanting her but she put her hand flat to his chest.

  Is Elliot returned? she asked.

  He shook his head. No word of him, no one knows when he’ll be back.

  And your Faith?

  He spread his hands, suddenly tearful.

  No one knows when that’ll be back either.

  She smiled, then tramped down the bracken and spread her cloak. She looked down the dale then gripped the bottom of her sweater and peeled it off over her head. She stood before him, strong and pale and proud.

  You’re right, she breathed into his ear. She bit his lobe then licked the pain. We have no choice, Davit. Lay down, my bonnie man.

  *

  She kent fine I was watching as they lay ahint the dyke. She turned him so I could see everything through my shoogling glass. I saw her nakedness, even the flicker of his whang afore it went in, as I had seen Elliot’s lang syne. I saw her wrap hersel around him like a net. The phone rang and rang downstairs. I let it ring a long age till the lovers shuddered or my hands did, and it was done.

  *

  He lies beside me in the bracken below the dyke, shirt half-off, pulled back over his shoulder and angular hause-bane. The clasp glitters dully round the emperor’s coin, it would be so easy to pocket it again. His eyes are closed, the long lashes stir as he breathes. We could have fallen from another planet, like this one but much greater than ever suspected. It could be mine. It could be ours.

  I look again at his calm face. I look at the lie of his rumpled yellow hair and then against the hazy sun see in his hair cornfields parting on horsemen riding in ambush. I see a man pushed off a bridge, a woman falling. In the drift of his golden hair are red tips of sword and lance, and the burning farms appear, the cattle reived, men going down, the mother raped and harried.

  At my side his knife lies spilled on the grass, and I know at last how it was done. How a woman may kill a full-grown man in open air. It is this moment after love, the one time he rests defenceless. The knife is so sharp, he is near-sleeping as my hand reaches out for it and grips the cold handle.

  His eyes open, so pale blue and northern as he stares into mine. He looks into me and I can never know what he sees. His eyes flicker to my hand on the knife and he almost smiles, as though he accepts everything. His long Elliot mouth moves.

  I believe in the Mystery and the Mercy, he says slowly. I even believe in Spook. But I’ll never believe we’re fated.

  Staring still into his eyes, I lift the knife and slide it back into the sheath.

  *

  The city street is loud with rush-hour traffic, no one would notice if her feet made no sound as she crosses at the lights. She is slight and light-footed and no one bumps into her as she slips like a salmon up along the grey river of the pavement. As she moves through the evening crowd, uphill towards the crossroads and the tenement, the wind blows crisp packets and papers about her ankles then passes on. She rounds the corner smiling slightly and stops outside the tenement door. Her index finger alights on Robertson, then she’s in and moving up the stairs.

  They stand up, pulling bits of bracken from their clothes. He lifts her cloak and puts it round her shoulders. She kisses him lightly on each cheek, and as she kisses reaches in his pocket. She stands back.

  This is what I want from you, Davit, she says.

  He stares down at what she’s holding.

  My keys? he says.

  No, the stone disc. It was ours once, long time syne.

  He stares but makes no objection as she carefully prises the broken metal circle from the stone. She clasps the disc with its off-centre hole in the curl of her palm, breathes on it, runs her thumb round then puts it into the hole with a low sigh. When she looks up at him, her face is radiant.

  This is so old, she says. You’ve no idea.

  He shrugs uneasily.

  So everything’s returned that was owed, he says. What happens now?

  Nothing has changed. Then she smiles and a little colour comes to her cheeks. Except we know the first time wasn’t a fluke.

  Marnie, about what we did back there … I assume you had protection.

  And her voice is not so pleasing as she turns away.

  Don’t worry, you’ll see no bairn. I’ll walk you back as far as the brig then we go our ways. And when he hesitates, she adds We can’t part like this, not yet.

  She takes his hand and with her other clasping the disc she walks him into the forest.

  *

  I watched them go and thought there time left to chase after, but the woman who’d come from the mist birled round and looked directly down the dale to me, her white face agin the dark green of the woods. She made a very simple gesture that forked me to my goolies and I sat down winded on my seat at the window. I wasna just feart – thinking on what I’d done to her plate and of all the keeking on lovers I’d done over the years while looking for what only she had given me, I was affronted at myself.

  If she wanted young Davy, she could have him. Whoever she was, she wasna his sister. And if it came to marrying, she could have half the estate when Elliot passed on. If meeting Jinny among the trees was anything other than a dozent dream, this must be what she wanted, one who came in Marnie’s place, unless the dead are unkennin as ourselves.

  I felt near at peace if a wee bit chittery as I waited on.

  *

  Inside the flat, Sim Elliot opens his eyes and stares into the blue cloth of her dress. He must have been asleep all night, or passed out. He can’t remember when he last ate. Eating doesn’t matter. He hugs Jinny’s dress to his face and goes through the blue into paler blue. It’s very calm among the blue, no pain in his chest at all as he goes in.

  *

  Their last day out together, some weeks before she’d summoned him to Creagan’s Knowe. They’d driven south across the border and finally out along the causeway onto the tidal island, parked and walked past the ruined abbey till they came to the water’s edge and could go no further.

  They sat on the beach in hot sun and felt the day grow full around them. Past her shoulder, sand dunes rose and marram grass spiked the sky. The tide was very full. Near-in the water was flat calm. Beyond that, three dinghies swung lightly together at anchor. Further out, beyond the tidal islands and the two strange obelisks, the open sea was ruffled and much darker blue. Someone somewhere was ringing bells. Her dress was blue, the sky at the horizon was platinum, her eyes were very bright as she turned to him. Her small square chin, two uneven white teeth, the little mole on her cheek moving as she spoke.

  This is Heaven, she said. Here, now.

  Yes, he said and put his arm around her waist, and his hand on her hip-bone fitted. She was familiar now, not strange. The light seldom quivered about her like the air over a hot country road.

  Right now I love you without reservation, he said. With all my heart and soul.

  Breath came from her mouth, he heard a faint puff, the kind that could fill a silk sail and push a ship across the sea.

  I know, she said. I feel it. She leaned her head on his neck and closed her eyes. Me too, she said. Whatever happens. Always and for aye.

  *

  Always and for aye. Lying across the bed, Elliot’s breathing is thin and erratic as breeze up on the moor. And he smiles because at last he knows that their doubt was unfounded. Since her death she’d never left him. He had ached every day and never ceased to mourn her. Love arises and is gone, that’s for sure, but it has one foot in that other world, the one Jinny believed in, and lives there still.

  If only she’d believed a little more. If she’d waited.

  *

  David Elliot led the way through the
dimness under the trees, put his foot on the first plank of the brig. He looked back at her, she nodded and he went on. She followed, the upblow of the water settling on her hair. It was loud by the fall and she had to call on him twice before he heard her and stopped.

  She came up to him in the middle of the brig and said she felt dizzy. The rocks above them were grey with falling water, deep green from slabbering moss. She freed her arm.

  You’re white-like, he said. Don’t look down.

  She nodded, looked back and on. Her fingers closed on the disc, she slipped her thumb again through the hole and felt herself wed, avowed.

  Was that a kingfisher down there, Davy?

  Where?

  She pointed down over the wooden rail, into the heart of the fall.

  Where the moss stops. I’ve long wanted to see one. Look!

  He leans and looks carefully over the thin moss-eaten rail.

  It’s too dim to see much, he says. I must be getting back home.

  He starts to walk on.

  Wait for me, she calls. I’m feart.

  He stops then, turns round half-smiling.

  Down there, she whispers in his ear. Look again.

  He sighs and leans over the rail, then one hard push with both hands on his back and his body falls spread-eagled through the mirk, into the grey falls without a sound above their gowling.

  *

  The neighbours will agree they heard no one come or go on the echoing stairwell. The entry-phone wasn’t buzzed and the outer door had stayed locked. There was no sound of feet mounting the stairs, no quiet singing. Only the faint seep of tea-time television voices, and then the bell began ringing at Robertson’s door at the top of the stair. It rang on and on and on.

  *

  Sea and sky weld blue on blue behind her and everything is seamless, inside and out. Sim and Jinny sit on the shore just watching and breathing until the light begins to go. Seagulls skreek, a curlew pirl-pirls from the grasslands, a bell is still ringing in the distance. On their way back to the car in the gathering dusk, they pass a ruined window arch empty against the sky where birds fly through. He thinks to say something but she stops him, smiling, after the first three words.