by Angela Meyer
In the cool of the forest she found great discs of fungi clinging to the undergrowth. And at the forest’s edge she heard the bellow of a stag in rut. She would have to be careful. If another male was present, there could be a clash. She had seen it once, walking with her father. The two of them had kept still until it was all over, not wanting to get in the way. She remembered the magnificence of the display, the pomp in each deer’s amber chest, the grunting and clacking of the antlers.
It came again, that haunting bellow. She saw him now, from the edge of the forest. His head tilted with the call and flicked with the moan. He was so large, his antlers balanced like a candelabra. Leonora came through the trees quietly and saw a dozen does nearby, alert to his calls. She should have thought it through, coming this way. Though she had wanted to see it, hadn’t she? She could sit here at the edge of the wood all day and watch the rut.
She didn’t have to wait long. She found that she was trembling. The stag dipped his head forward and moved toward a doe. The doe edged away, and the others cleared a space. He picked up his pace, bellowing again. Perhaps he’d already fought off any competitors, Leonora thought, sad to miss the clash this time. The stag broke into a run and then he was on the doe. The doe paused. He licked her back and reared up onto his hind legs. Leonora saw his pink instrument extended from beneath his belly. He didn’t quite make it up the first time. Another doe came past and mounted the doe herself, as though to show him where to put himself. It was quiet now, besides the twitter and peep of birds. He mounted her again and again; the doe turned her face back and rubbed it against his horns. He bobbed his instrument up and down.
After he’d finished, the stag still bellowed. He seemed pained with his burden. Leonora moved back into the trees and skirted the edge of the forest to find a clearer path across the moorland toward Tomintoul.
At dinner in the Horseshoe that night, Leonora set down a plate for a neat English couple, and from her hair fell a small, curled golden leaf.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said.
The couple laughed. ‘It’s quite all right dear. Nature! That’s what we’re here for.’
Back in the kitchen, Cait mumbled, ‘More followers of Sir Walter Scott, I’d wager, tromping all over the Highlands.’
Leonora thought of telling Cait, and the customers, about the deer rut she’d witnessed today, but for some reason it felt private, or as though it’d be diminished in the telling.
William Wink came in late that evening, just as Leonora and Cait were packing up from supper. He was with an older man and a young woman. She was dressed in magenta silk and had tiny blonde curls about her face, matching William’s. The men had red blotches in their eyes, and had obviously been drinking at the beerhouse up the road.
‘Miss Duncan.’ William stood tall, looking down on her. ‘Please do tell me there are still rooms.’
‘I believe so, Mr Wink.’
‘Capital!’ said the older man. ‘I wasn’t looking forward to that long ride in the dark.’
‘We got carried away,’ William said with a laugh. He didn’t introduce the man and woman to Leonora. ‘Agnes, dear, Miss Duncan will show you where you can put your head down. Sorry for keeping you out so late.’
‘That’s perfectly all right, William,’ she said. ‘I’ve enjoyed your company.’
The man, whom Leonora took to be Agnes’ father, nodded his approval. They had southern accents.
‘We might stay down here for one to round out the night, if that’s all right with you, Miss Duncan?’
Leonora nodded, feeling a strange pang as she led Agnes, whom she called ‘Madam’ in lieu of a surname, to the largest of the empty rooms.
‘My girl didn’t travel with me,’ Agnes said when they entered the room. ‘Do you mind bringing my case and helping me undress?’
‘Of course,’ said Leonora.
She came back downstairs to find Cait pouring two drams while shaking her head. ‘I dinnae care how rich or sweet-faced he is, he ought not tae take advantage.’
‘It’s all right, Cait. I can take care of them.’
‘I sense an arrangement being made,’ said Cait. ‘The gentleman has come up to note the lay of the land, and brought his prettiest daughter.’
Leonora took Madam’s packages up to her, feeling fatigued, and then helped to loose her soft white limbs from her sleeves, and her body from her corset. Leonora slipped a clean nightdress over the woman’s body, her hand brushing her hips. She could feel her own lips, full and tingling. She thought of the doe mounting the other doe, the similarity of their bodies. She’d seen it a lot in animals. With the same kind of body you would know what to do, where to touch. It would feel like a kindness.
‘Thank you, Miss …’
‘Miss Duncan. And what may I call you, Madam?’
‘I am Agnes Bruce. My father is Admiral Sir Thomas Bruce, former port admiral at Portsmouth. Do you know the laird well?’ She tilted her pretty head at Leonora.
Leonora felt herself blush. ‘He is a kind landlord, Miss Bruce.’
‘He is alone in that big house, is he not?’
‘He has his dogs.’ Leonora laughed.
Agnes raised an eyebrow. ‘What is it like to live here?’
I cannae say what it will be like for you. With your meals made and a canopy bed.
‘It is quiet,’ is all Leonora said.
‘Thank you for answering my questions; I must get some rest.’
And so Leonora left.
William did not act familiar with her this night, as Leonora continued to tidy around the men. He was absorbed in his conversation with the admiral – one of business. And Leonora was hopeful for him, though, simultaneously, there was a gnawing in her – a sense of missing out. If he took a wife, Leonora wasn’t sure about the explorations she’d imagined. It would be good for him, though, to have a companion, someone to help warm up those empty, tall rooms, and to finger the cloth spines of his books.
The men finally stumbled up to bed, and at the bottom of the staircase William turned and gave her a beckoning look. She understood. Marriage was a transaction, with many benefits, but a stag was in want of a harem. Or maybe she would have been his preference for a wife if her own father were an admiral. Either way, she knew that under her rougher dress she looked just as the other woman did.
Let me just interject, here, because we’ve almost caught up. Time has been passing and I’ve been telling you my story, and recounting Leonora’s, by speaking into William’s ear – looking out over the boats on still water from the front lawn, McGregor’s fiddle providing a backdrop. You know where I am at. I am away from the world and soon to be away further. I have been trying to capture Leonora, and what it’s like to experience the world through her. When I’m there I am her; when I return I am one step removed, and so I do apologise if I am sometimes using the language I know – metaphors, for example – to encourage you to relate to her. And I have been recording it as in the past, because when I surface that is what it is – something that happened in the past.
But I’ve been thinking: would she be better captured if I tried to get down the experience as it happens for me? It will feel strange, to start with, speaking as Leonora into William’s ear. I don’t, for example, know how to represent her accent (which does also occur in her thoughts). And I’m sure there will still be instances when I can’t remember or find the right words to capture the thought or emotion I experience through her. I am tainted by my own time, my own context. We always experience other people’s stories this way, though, don’t we? I guess you – and when I say you I’ve gotten used to addressing William like this, but I do mean you, a person, possibly listening to my ghost – will also draw conclusions about me, depending on your own experiences, your own fears and desires. Are you sick? Are you alone? Have you ever had a thought that made you want to remove yourself from the world? That to simply block it and go on would be like living without a leg or an arm?
Currently, I am eating a boiled egg
by candlelight. It’s about all I can stomach today. There are needles crawling across my skin like the legs of a caterpillar. There’s a steady ache in one side of my head and my glands are bulging in my neck.
I … I was about to tell you of what I fear I’ve done, in returning again and again to Leonora. But I don’t want you to despise me that much, yet. If you’re still here, you mustn’t. It will become clear anyway. You might have done the same thing, if you were here, and alone. There could be something addictive in these tabs. Or just in living as someone who isn’t me. So here I go, changing how I bring her to you. You can partly inhabit her as well, then, though your own thoughts may be infected. Infected by me.
My hand is gorse-coloured in the candlelight, hovering above the handle to William’s door. I cannot hear his breathing. I’m not certain he is awake. The liquor may have sent him off immediately. I picture him with his shoes hanging over the edge of the bed. Then I hear his stockinged feet whisper across the floor and the door opens. His hair is matted on one side. So he has been resting, perhaps with one arm curled up under his head. Would he sleep on his side, in an elbow shape, or on his back? He does not smile; he reaches out and takes my hand, which had been crossed over the front of my bodice. There is still a battle going on inside me: is it defiance to do this, or giving in? There is an undeniable power in his closeness: an intoxicating smell, an emanating heat. Perhaps this is just the natural way we respond with some people. That is why we see people marry who don’t seem, from the outside, to get along at all.
He takes the candle from my hand and sets it on the mahogany cabinet by the window. The curtains are drawn. I fold my arms back across myself, notice I am doing it, and then set them by my sides.
‘Good evening, Leonora.’
‘Mr Wink.’
He tilts his head in amusement, looking like a child.
‘William.’ I try it on my tongue.
‘Will you sit with me on the bed? We can talk.’
I move over to the bed and sit at the edge. I look down at my skirts and the shoes peeping out. This is something I do when I’m not sure what to say. He sits by me, not quite touching. The scent of him hits me fully: stone fruits and the salt of sweat; I arch my neck to take it in. He turns to me, looking fearful for a second. We are close so quickly. I feel his hand on my lower back. I cannot remember anyone ever touching me there. It reverberates up my spine and causes prickles on my neck. My face flushes and my mouth parts, the beginning of a gasp. I see that he is beautiful up close but I am still sorry for him. His eyes are eager, like a dog’s. And then we kiss. I am glad I have been curious, because the sensation is pleasing. There is life in this warmth, this softness of lips on lips, a gentle sweet parting of the mouth. There is power and there is giving in. A taste of peaches and cloves. Taste of tastebuds.
It surprises me that I want more, that my hand moves quickly across his back, presses hard at his shoulder. I can feel where each tip of myself is touching him, touching my clothing first. We kiss for a long time, in the quiet with the candle flickering. We are quiet. We pause to remove his jacket, loosen his shirt. We look into each other’s eyes, and there is a shift in his. When he moves back in toward me his mouth is less sure. I put my palm on the back of his head, pull him to me.
He pulls away again. ‘This won’t do.’
I stand up and adjust my clothes, turn toward the door.
‘Leonora …’
I look back at him. His cheeks are red. He looks like a child.
‘See you soon,’ he says, with a half-apologetic smile.
‘Goodnight, William,’ I manage.
A few minutes later I lie in bed, buzzing at my edges, running my hands across my chest, my stomach. I remember the deer’s bellow. But a doe doesn’t bellow like that. What of a human female? Can the dominant pursuer sometimes be her? And if there is that inversion, would the male be intimidated? I wonder if that is what happened – why William stopped. Or was it a true attack of moral guilt, that he’d be spoiling a poor village girl? Perhaps I should see it as a mark of respect. But I find that difficult. It was something about the look in his eyes, a realisation that in this situation, too, he was not in control. Then why did he go so far? It was confusing. But he’d had so much loss, lately. I did feel for him, despite myself; I felt affection, like a rose uncurling in my breast.
The bed is narrow and I am wide awake, but I’m not overly worried about the busy morning. I feel that this energy will carry me tomorrow. The buzz at my fingertips, as I wiggle them toward the stained ceiling, makes me appreciate my liberty. I am not bound by the responsibilities and pressures of someone like Agnes, and not surrounded, either, by people determining how and to whom I should speak. Work, a garden, walking: these elements of my life are uncomplicated.
In the morning the encounter is more tinged. I am not tired, as I thought, but when I pull up my blanket and step into my shoes I feel a quick beat of shame. Is there someone in his life with whom he will joke about me? That wanton girl. Will men at the inn make jokes and try to grab me? It is less simple than with the animals. Language makes it so.
A cold rain turns the morning grey, and Cait is in a mood about it. We barely speak as we serve the breakfast. I warm my hands on the underside of a bowl of porridge, from which heat curls like arms reaching. William and Sir Thomas come down late, and seat themselves by the fire. William beckons to me, and I remember the taste of him.
‘Do you mind helping Miss Bruce into her clothes?’ he asks, looking somewhere beside my head.
‘Of course,’ I answer. Cait is vexed about it but waves me off. Taking a few plates out from the kitchen won’t harm her. ‘I’ll be quick,’ I say.
I knock gently on Agnes’ door and she says I can enter. Her cheeks are flushed.
‘Did you sleep?’ I ask.
‘Not too well,’ she says. The thought that she may have heard something both worries and thrills me.
She stands and holds her arms out, a helpless doll. I remove her nightgown.
‘I’ve washed my face,’ she says, and I take this to mean that I should just help her with her garments. I wonder if any man has touched her. I want to ask. I won’t, but I do realise I don’t have this intimacy with women, with anyone. My schoolhouse friends are married, and many have moved to the Lowlands. I talk to the animals, and find words in books to explain what I feel. But, I realise now, a friend would be something else.
Perhaps William can be a friend. There may be more ways for men and women to relate to one another. But I know as soon as I think this that he is too unsure, that he wouldn’t let me in, not in that way.
Agnes thanks me coldly. The lack of sleep and the weather have affected her badly. Or perhaps it is the two men downstairs.
‘I dreamed of you last night,’ I say to her, not sure how the lie comes out of my mouth, ‘and you were happy here.’ I smile.
I was a sales and marketing manager at Glazen, in their biopharm department, though I started out writing copy at a low level on their products, for various websites and communications (from ‘straight’ ads to edutainments). I worked on my art in my spare time, half-heartedly I must admit; I more liked the idea of being an artist than actually doing the work. That’s something Faye accused me of and I’m acknowledging it now. Of course, back then I threw my canvas at the wall, smearing it with acrylics. She just laughed. And then I laughed at my own dramatics. Again, I probably wanted to be seen as being dramatic. Everyone around me was so calm. We seemed to ‘be made of paper and straw’, I think that’s the John Cheever quote. It might have been the Gloss – Glazen’s bestselling anti-anxiety nanopharm. Maybe you don’t know what that is. It’s a piece of tech that knows just where to go in your brain to calm you down. It makes people peaceful, productive and personable. I had one installed for a while, while swinging an arm from my teaching job to the lower rung of the corporate ladder. But it was too easy to feel that ‘functional’, so after I’d settled into the new job I had it removed.
I don’t know who engineered these tabs. There’d been many years of studies into digitised neural experience (DNE). The trials of another pharm, Know, had been disastrous. It was tech that allowed a person to hear another’s thoughts. Unfortunately, the thoughts of the closest person weren’t the only ones that came through. The trial subjects experienced a screaming cacophony. And due to the way the nano was administered, it went on for days. The subjects, afterwards, had to be treated post-traumatically. This trial wasn’t public. I only know about it because of Henry, the friend I’ve mentioned who works in design. Even he didn’t know about other projects, other experiments – only the ones his team was attached to.
He was in love with the idea of the tabs, once he’d started working on them. ‘This is something that could actually do some good, that could change the way we treat each other,’ he told me one night in my studio. He was a blabbermouth with me only, as far as I know. He wasn’t allowed to talk about his work but he said he had to tell someone or it would drive him crazy, especially the projects he found most exciting.
Trials were due for the tabs just when I found out I was sick. And as a return favour for everything he’d shared with me, I told Henry I was going to go away. I didn’t tell him where to.
We sat for hours in my apartment, drinking my best single malts. ‘I won’t need these anymore,’ I said, as we sipped on The Balvenie 30.
He squinted with sadness into the glass, but then closed his eyes in pleasure when he took a sip. ‘You know people care deeply about you,’ he said.
‘I know.’ Did I really, though? Sometimes I think no one truly cares deeply about anyone else. We need people for various reasons; we make grand gestures and are pleased with ourselves and we expect something in return. Or maybe we do care, but only rarely. It almost shocks us when it is genuine, from ourselves. I really do question whether anyone cared deeply about me. Wasn’t I just Henry’s sounding board? But he was – is – kind and idealistic, often beaten down. I think he meant well.
