Bone Deep

by Sandra Ireland

  ‘Are you crazy? She’s thoroughly unpleasant. I took her some cakes this morning and she might as well have chucked them back at me.’

  I’m grooming the dogs in what I optimistically call my kitchen garden, though I haven’t planted anything here for years. Today, it’s a rather barren wasteland, the earth set hard in unloved furrows.

  ‘She might benefit from a break from routine.’

  ‘What routine?’ Arthur looks at me in that exaggerated way of his, eyebrows peaking above the rim of his glasses like gothic arches. ‘Where is she now? And what is she actually doing?’

  Floss whines under my hands. Clumps of dog hair waft upwards, transported like thistledown on cold air currents, parachuting down seconds later to snag on weeds or be trampled underfoot. There’s nothing worse than clumps of damp dog fur freewheeling round the place, but better out here than in the house. I’m not able to wield the hoover like I used to, with all the pain I’m in.

  I concentrate on a knot in Floss’s ears. ‘Of course we have a routine. Lucie is in the study, on that infernal contraption – downloading or offloading or whatever. I told her to knock off after that. She seemed quite upset. What?’ I parry his look.

  ‘You’re getting soft in your old age!’ Arthur shakes his head in that irritating way offspring do.

  ‘But not soft in the head, thankfully. What do you want, anyway?’

  Arthur blows out a breath. He’s thoroughly irritated and his nose is red with the cold. He’s been spending far too much time cooped up next to a hot oven. A turn on the beach would do him the power of good.

  ‘Don’t suppose you have any paper handtowels squirreled away? And sultanas?’

  We go into the kitchen, and I shut the back door to keep the dogs out a while longer.

  ‘Check the pantry. I definitely have sultanas. Did I hear sirens a while ago? I was filling up the bird feeders and I’m sure I heard an ambulance flying down the lane.’

  Arthur is already rooting about in my old walk-in larder. It’s one of those very cool, green-painted closets that always smells of cheese. They would have hung a ham there back in the day, or let the cream settle in big shallow pans. His voice comes out like an echo.

  ‘Looks like a car came off the road at that bad bend. Couple of cops there when I passed. It must have gone through the fence into the field.’

  ‘Dear, dear. Old man Clark’s cow pasture? He won’t be too happy.’

  ‘He’s never happy.’ Arthur emerges with his arms full. ‘I’ve taken some sugar as well, and that strong wholemeal flour I bought you a while back. You never used it.’

  His face is tight, the way it always is when he mentions flour. We shouldn’t have to buy flour, with a mill sitting idle across the road, but death has cheated him of his floury inheritance. Of course we never speak of it.

  ‘Just help yourself,’ I say drily.

  ‘I’d better get back. Now, don’t go giving Lucie an easy ride. She’s here to work.’

  ‘As I’ve told you, she’s doing my typing for me, but . . . I’m struggling with the words at the moment. And anyway . . .’ The dogs’ metal comb is still in my hand. Absently, I tease tufts of hair from it and feed them to the pedal bin. ‘She seems so sad.’

  Arthur is loading his plunder into a carrier bag. ‘Not your problem! She didn’t even tell you about the boyfriend, did she? I think that’s a bit sly.’

  ‘She isn’t sly.’ I shake my head, feel my forehead setting in furrows, like the neglected garden. ‘I think he was a blast from the past that she wasn’t expecting.’

  ‘She seems to have made him welcome, since he was there all night. Maybe there’s more than one? We don’t know enough about her, and I certainly don’t like the idea of strange men hanging around the place. I hope you’re remembering to lock your doors at night.’

  I work the kinks out of my lower back with my hands. ‘I’m sure she’s not the type to . . . She’s so quiet. Probably just an old flame. There’s absolutely no point in raking over old coals, and I shall tell her that. The beach would do her good.’

  Arthur dashes the notion with the palm of his hand and turns away. ‘Still waters run deep, and stop poking your nose in, Ma. Anyway, I have a business to run.’

  Arthur glares at me and I know the conversation is over. For now.

  Lucie

  They sit on the grassy bank and launch seed pods, which bob downstream like little galleys. Bella has been thinking a lot about men, about marriage. She asks her sister if she would like to be wed, and Elspeth says aye, in time. But when will it be the right time? How do you know? And Elspeth says, ‘Well, I’ll know, because you must wed first. The eldest always does.’ Bella thinks about that. But what if Elspeth, the youngest, meets someone first? What then? Bella has lots of questions but no answers. ‘Do you think we’re of an age now, to be wed?’ Elspeth shrugs, as if she doesn’t much care, and continues tearing the petals from a gowan. She thinks about it some more, and then she says, ‘But it’s not for us to decide, is it?’

  I sit back from the computer, knead the tension from my neck. I would like to be a writer. I used to keep a diary, when I was a teenager. Every Christmas my mother would give me some slim pink or purple volume, way too prim to hold thoughts like mine. Being virginal and boyfriend-less didn’t stop me having the sort of imagination that would have turned my mother’s hair silver. What I wrote in my diaries therefore was heavily censored, as if somehow my parents were looking over my shoulder. The pages bore bland references to whatever boy had taken my fancy at school – it changed every week – or to some unattainable movie star or rock god. If anyone had sneaked a peek, they might have sniggered, or shaken their heads. What was really going on in my head remained unedited, unashamed.

  When I lost my virginity to Robert Guthrie at the age of fourteen, my verdict never found its way into print. Was that it? Was that what all the fuss was about, this dry, painful fumbling business? It put me off for a long time. There were one or two other experiments. If I had to write a review, they’d probably all be three star. Until Reuben.

  After that first boozy afternoon on the couch, that first kiss, I never did think about Jane. It was strange. The whole thing with Reuben – it was such a perfect fit, I never paused to consider how Jane fitted in with us. There was a new us in town, and that was real life. Jane was my fantasy sister, relegated to the dark recesses of my conscience; I never brought her out to the light. Maybe that was my coping mechanism. Maybe I’m just a bad person.

  Anyway, the day after that kiss, I had to go to work as usual in the DIY shop. Mrs Black looked at me curiously, probably because I couldn’t stop smiling. I behaved like an absolute loon. I smiled at the grumpy old man who returned a battery-operated alarm clock. ‘It doesn’t work,’ he growled. ‘I was late for my bowling match.’

  ‘Did you put a battery in it?’ I asked sweetly.

  He stared at me. ‘Aren’t batteries supplied?’

  I pointed to the small print on the box. ‘I’m afraid not, but I can sell you a battery.’

  There was some swearing. The man demanded a refund and huffed away. I laughed, and squirreled the encounter away to share with Reuben. We would have a giggle about it later. But as the day wore on, a coldness settled around me. What if that was it? A drunken kiss that meant nothing. I didn’t have Reuben’s number; I knew nothing about his plans. Maybe he was already on the helicopter bound for the rig? We never even got to say goodbye. Tears came down like a black cloud and I struggled to hide them. Mrs Black kept staring at me and I retreated to the loo for a long time. Eventually, blowing my nose, I returned to the counter and there he was. There was Reuben, examining some rawl plugs.

  ‘Gentleman to see you,’ Mrs Black said pointedly. My face broke into a wide grin. Reuben’s eyes kindled with the special heat he would keep especially for me. Mrs Black retreated stiffly to her office, and Reuben pulled out his phone.

  ‘I just realised you don’t have my number,’ he said, punching hi
s keypad. He looked up and stole my breath away. ‘We really need to keep in touch.’

  My thoughts drift back into the room, and I realise I’ve picked up a pencil, worrying it between my fingers. It’s a curiously flat pencil, rustic, and looks like it may have been sharpened with a knife. My father had a pencil like that. He called it a carpenter’s pencil. Gingerly, I tuck it behind my ear. It doesn’t feel natural or workmanlike. I begin to wonder whose ear it belonged to. Mac’s dead husband, perhaps. I imagine him methodically going about his chores, knocking up bookshelves, fixing machinery. Emerging from the mill, white with flour, to sit for a moment in the setting sun.

  To have that sort of comforting presence ripped from your life . . . I can’t imagine how Mac must have felt. How she feels. Perhaps that’s why she writes, to fill the gap. When Reuben first came to stay, and I realised my feelings for him ran way deeper than they should, I started to write in earnest. I wrote about how I felt when I saw him, the crippling shyness, the awkwardness. The way he looked, the things he said. Like a lawyer, I recorded every scrap, every thread of conversation. The words he used, and the way they related to me. Sometimes I would take a notion that I’d got it all wrong, that the phrases I’d thought so meaningful were actually just misinterpretations on my part. Of course he hadn’t meant it that way. I was reading things into it, slanting everything so that it was about me, when really it was encoded for Jane.

  I thought I could get it all out on paper, purge myself, and no one need ever know. Reuben was my sister’s boyfriend. He was a secret crush. A fantasy. In this way I talked myself out of Reuben for a long time. I told myself his interest in me was a figment of my imagination. If his eyes smouldered a little bit darker when he looked at me . . . forget it. Don’t listen to your intuition. Ignore your gut feeling. Why would he ever be interested in me, the mousy older sister?

  Sometimes it is necessary to spill your feelings onto a white page, to try to put them in order. It’s a safety valve, I guess. A way of releasing the pressure, if you can call it that, this deep-seated ache. I find an old scrap of paper and scribble furiously for five minutes with the fat stub of a pencil. Words. Some meaningless, some so heartfelt I cannot read them. A goodbye to Reuben.

  Just as I place a final full stop, my phone begins to vibrate in the back pocket of my jeans. I fumble for it, peer at the screen. My sister’s name flashes at me: Jane, Jane, Jane! As always, guilt nibbles away at my gut. My thumb hovers as my brain completes a quick scan. Not in bed: check. Dressed and decent: check. No Reuben on the scene: check.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Lucie, it’s me.’ Sniff. Is she crying? Why is Jane crying?

  ‘What’s wrong?’ My innards drop. There’s something wrong. I can feel it. Dread begins to crawl down the back of my thighs.

  ‘It’s Reuben. He’s been in a car crash.’

  My legs give way. I sink into Mac’s leather chair. I can’t speak.

  ‘Lucie? Are you still there? Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ My voice is a croak. ‘How . . . bad? Is he . . . ?’

  ‘They’ve taken him to Ninewells Hospital. I . . . I don’t know yet. I don’t even know what he was doing in Dundee. I thought he was in Aberdeen. He’s unconscious. I’m on my way down now, Dad’s driving. Lucie, can I stay? Can I stay with you? I need to be near him.’

  My breath stops. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. ‘Of course,’ I hear myself say. ‘Of course you need to be near him. Where exactly did it happen, the crash?’

  I can hear her weeping now, openly. She can’t speak any more, she says, but she’ll call me as soon as she gets news. She hangs up. I’m glad. I can’t trust myself to speak.

  Mac

  ‘Yes, of course you must go. Arthur will take you to the hospital, won’t you, Arthur?’

  Arthur’s mouth drops open, but he doesn’t object. Gives perhaps the merest shake of his head. He takes off those flimsy specs of his and wipes them on the hem of his T-shirt. He does that when he’s nervous; I’ve noticed that before. The girl is shaking, and I feel a certain tenderness steal over me. Last year, Jethro got clipped by a car in the middle of the village (my own fault, should have had him on a leash) and had to be taken to the vet. He looked so sorrowful that I became almost maudlin over him. I can’t abide all that mawkishness we’re subjected to now. Every time you turn the TV on someone is weeping, or lighting a candle. Weeping and candle-lighting are the scourges of modern society. But the point is, I felt a certain motherliness towards the dog, and I feel it now. This young girl is away from her parents and home, and now this. It strikes me that she must be very close to her sister after all, to react so violently.

  She’s still standing beside my desk, as if she doesn’t know which way to turn. Behind her I can see a copy of one of my stories open on the computer screen. I hope it won’t get lost in the ether.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ I pat her shoulder. ‘Chin up, my dear. Arthur will take you to the hospital. But first, do save that whatchamacallit, won’t you? Should hate to lose any words.’

  She does something with the keyboard and my story shrinks from view. Arthur is there, sweeping her jacket from the back of the chair and holding it out by the shoulders in a very gentlemanly fashion. Lucie doesn’t slip her arms in, of course. She wrests it from him almost defiantly, and shrugs into it under her own steam.

  I stand for several minutes after they’ve gone, listening to the old Westminster chimes ring out loudly from the clock on the window ledge. There’s the chill of disturbed air about the study. It’s odd having someone in your space, going through your things, even if you’re paying them to do it. I suppose I’ve become used to my own company. After Jim . . . Well, I did think, for a while, that I should make an effort to look for someone else. I had a fantasy once, of a kind older gentleman in a bottle-green sweater and moleskin trousers. He’d have binoculars permanently attached to his neck, and like hiking and dogs. He never materialised. Mother always said that humans weren’t designed to be alone, although trying to be with someone else is sometimes pretty darn difficult. I linger by the desk, standing in the same spot so recently vacated by Lucie. The laptop screen is black; Jim eyes me from his photograph.

  Lucie isn’t any neater than I am. My desk is still chaotic – open notebooks, a pack of chewing gum (I screw up my face and chuck it in the waste-paper basket), tissues, crumpled paper, pens and pencils. I pick up a short, stubby one. Jim’s carpenter’s pencil. My heart wobbles. Where did she get that? He always wore it behind his ear, even in the days when we went out to dinner parties and the like.

  I sift through the torn bits of paper. I see Lucie’s writing; furious scribbles in pencil. A poem, is it? Does she write? Another thing she never mentioned. I peer intently at the note. Yes, there is a rough poem-shape to it, an early draft of something, perhaps. Irritation prickles. Why is she writing poetry when she’s supposed to be transcribing my notes?

  It’s still love, isn’t it?

  Even when it’s a big fat dirty secret.

  I can still feel my hand in yours

  even though no one has ever seen us walking

  hand in hand.

  Your favourite cologne lingers on me,

  Even though I have never asked the brand,

  or bought it for you.

  I’ll never be able to wrap it lovingly and plant it

  under our Christmas tree.

  We will never have a Christmas tree together, you and I.

  On my birthday, you wish me all the best,

  and I act restrained,

  as if I couldn’t care less,

  but inside

  I am waiting for another chance to be alone

  with you, to memorise you all over again.

  That’s still love, isn’t it?

  Good heavens. What on earth can that mean?

  Lucie

  I’m kind of half-slouching against the window, as if I can make the car go faster just by glaring at the landscape. The road is win
ding, narrow, and Arthur is a cautious driver. There are bulging ditches on each side and, coming up on the left, I see unmistakeable tyre tracks forged into the bank. Oh God. Nausea grips me, and the car slows down. I don’t know if Arthur is responding to my sudden lurch, my fingers gripping the door, or whether he has known all along that this evidence is here.

  His voice is gentle. ‘Isn’t that your visitor’s car, the blue Citroën?’

  I see a flash of blue down in the field and turn my face away. Before answering, I pick over the words in my head. But Arthur has already guessed my secret. We have stopped, the engine is idling, and he’s slightly turned towards me, his hand resting on the gearstick. I don’t want to look at him. I stare at the glovebox. It’s closed, giving nothing away.

  Arthur tries again, still gentle. ‘So is he your sister’s boyfriend then, rather than yours?’

  Blunt. Sometimes I like that in people, but not now, not today. I round on him, see him flinch at the bitterness in my voice.

  ‘What are you, the boyfriend police?’

  ‘I’m not judging, I’m just –’

  ‘Saying. Well, don’t. Drive on.’

  There’s a pause. Arthur checks his mirrors and shoves into first gear. We move off, faster now. Fields flash by; detached bungalows. A Shetland pony in a paddock. I’m still angled towards the window. My breath catches on the glass.

  ‘No one knows,’ I whisper. ‘No one.’

  ‘You think that, but in a small place . . .’

  ‘No one will know unless you tell them.’

  But it’s not true, is it? That no one knows? My mother knows. And she is the first person I see when I get to the ward where Reuben is. She is waiting in the corridor, her shoulder bag gripped so tightly under her arm that her chest is all squished out of shape. She’s wearing a buff-coloured top that blends in with the hospital paint and she’s gripping that bag as if it’s the only thing that’s stopping her dropping through to the basement. Above the usual clinical smell, I catch the whiff of her floral perfume, and it takes me back to childhood. Without warning, I burst into tears. It’s noisy, slightly hysterical, and my mother looks mortified. She doesn’t try to comfort me, just hitches the bag up tighter.