A Superior Spectre

by Angela Meyer

  Anyway, he gave me the tab that night.

  ‘I don’t know where it will take you,’ he said.

  T he nights are getting colder. The wind seems at times like it will lift Aignish from the ground. I worry about the animals down at Barnsoul, and Mrs Grant’s dogs that remain outside year long. I’m lucky Father lets me keep Duff inside. She is curled up next to the bed. I can hear the wheeze of her breath in the dark. I push aside the thought of ever having to be away from her. We have been thinking she is pregnant lately, because of the milk leaking from her when I rub her belly. She sniffs and licks at it with her purple tongue. It could be what’s happened before, when she thought she was pregnant, and her body took on the symptoms, but it was false. A phantom, Mr Anderson called it. It makes me think about how powerful our thoughts can be. We might think we are sick when we truly have no ailment. But if we present the symptoms, and believe them, are we not sick anyway? Is a false illness still genuine in some way?

  Might the mind also trick the body into attraction? My father, lacking something in his daily life, may have latched onto Penuel, the available woman, with a physical attraction to follow.

  The dog eventually realises she is not pregnant. Do some people realise they are not in love?

  I wonder if a person could learn to be aware of when the mind is influencing a bodily reaction, and also when an instinct is overruling the mind.

  I try to talk to Father about the concept the next day as I put on his plate some barley bread and cheese.

  He shakes his head. ‘Yer own mind is tae active, Lae,’ he says. ‘It’s a wonder ye get any sleep.’

  I am frustrated that conversations do not open out for me. That I am always forced to withdraw into myself. And sometimes I feel like Penuel has something to say, but she doesn’t, as though she is afraid it will seem she is taking a side with me. But I do not want an argument, only a discussion. Again, I think of the need for a friend. I think of talking about the body and the mind with William. He might even know of some books that explore such ideas.

  But I am completely surprised when he knocks on the door while we are eating breakfast. Father lets him in.

  ‘Pardon me for interrupting,’ William says.

  ‘Not at all, Mr Wink, what can we do for ye?’ Father asks.

  He looks unsure of himself. Father puts his hands on his hips.

  ‘I was wondering if Miss Duncan would be available. Her biological knowledge is required.’

  I can tell that Father wants to say no; wants to ask why the laird would be interested in seeing his daughter, and of being seen with her. Father is becoming more wary of William’s attention. He’d be more afraid if he knew that we were close; that we had an unusual silent agreement. Father would think it was all one way. Everyone would.

  Father says I can go with William, but that I have to be back soon to help him with putting parts of the garden to bed for winter.

  We walk toward the Tom A Voan Wood. I don’t ask him what is required of my biological knowledge. I know it was only a front. The sun warms my skin and clothes. It is better to be outside than in, and I smile at the fact. The gardening will be no problem today. William smiles at my own lit-up face.

  I reach for his hand, and he looks around, unsure, but then takes it.

  ‘When in your heid you are grieving,’ I say, ‘do you feel that your body is grieving also?’

  He doesn’t answer for a while. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I feel very tired, but then I can’t sleep.’

  Nearer to the forest we move to the ford and sit on the bank by the water. I like what we have right now. It doesn’t feel complicated, if I don’t think about it. If I don’t leave the mind in control. We sit close.

  ‘I am going to marry Miss Bruce,’ he says, staring across the ford to the cows from Chapeltown’s collective crofts, grazing together.

  I curl my hands in the grass, an unexpected rush of emotion in my chest. ‘That will be good for you – your house is too empty,’ I say blankly.

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘You should have children,’ I say.

  We sit there for a long time. We don’t kiss. Maybe the kissing had been a way for us to learn about each other. When I was a child, girls and boys could be close like this. When we grow up there are enforced divides. You are strangers, acquaintances, or spouses. With someone of the same sex it is more acceptable to be close.

  I have to admit it would have been easier to find a way to stay, to keep my place in the Highlands, if the impossible had occurred, if William had thought it appropriate to marry me. Whether I’d truly desired it or not.

  William has a carriage waiting at the church. He sets off and I sit for a while longer, picking at the grass, before returning to Aignish.

  Father is in a dark mood as we garden afterwards, grunting responses to my questions.

  ‘Mr Wink is troubled, Lae,’ he says to me.

  ‘Nae more than many people, Da’,’ I say.

  ‘But he has more power than most.’

  I am placing in stakes to mark the carrots and leeks.

  ‘Stop ye for a moment, Lae,’ Father says. We both stand. My head goes light for a second. ‘I think it’s time ye go stay with yer Aunt Ailie.’

  No. I’d hoped he had put the idea out of his mind. My chest tightens; heat comes to my face.

  I turn to walk into the cottage, to ignore his words.

  ‘Lae, don’t walk awae. It will be guid for ye. She is livin’ well; ye can learn from her. Ye can grow.’

  ‘Like Mother did in Edinburgh?’

  My father’s face falls. Hurt, not anger. ‘Lae, we didnae have the conditions …’

  ‘I dinnae want to leave here. I am content!’

  ‘Sometimes tha’s the right time tae go.’

  He isn’t saying it but I’m certain he’s decided that I must go because of the laird’s attentions. He doesn’t want me to become pregnant, or live my life as a mistress. He doesn’t know or care that for me it is a friendship that has developed. That William and I have some understanding of each other that defies any conventional explanation.

  But then … I do know that once William marries, our relationship cannot possibly continue along the same road. And there isn’t anyone else here for me to meet, with whom I can fall in love. Father is worried about my world being small. Though he is allowed to want smallness for himself.

  I go to my room and push the wooden door until it sticks. It doesn’t quite close all the way. I can’t imagine Edinburgh. It feels terribly dark; it feels like a loss. Duff snuffs at the gap in my door and I let her in. She can tell I’m upset and I let her jump onto the bed. I lie down and she tries to lick at my tears, which makes me laugh.

  I close my eyes. Suddenly I do see Edinburgh, as though I have conjured it. It is brighter than in books, and women are showing their legs. The vision is crisp and unnerving, stamped behind my eyes. I open them and look at Duff, blink a few times to try to clear the image. Duff whimpers.

  It is my first time on a train and I am hemmed in by a woman and four children with snot on their faces. There is a continuous rickety clank, and sulphurous smoke fills the carriage each time we pass through a tunnel. The sound and smell are an assault. The eldest child tells his sister to stop staring at me. He calls me ‘the lady’. Have they, too, already endured a cab and an omnibus before this journey? The mother is quiet, with her eyes half-closed. I should offer to swap seats with her so she can lean her head against the wood. But my jaw is tight and words don’t come. I close my eyes to try to rest but we are too much in motion. Tears burn at the back of my throat, but I will not let them through. I did not say goodbye to William, as he was on his way to England to marry Agnes. They will have a second celebration at Dearshul. That, I am glad to miss.

  It is Duff I am thinking of, to have her in my lap. As I am thinking of her, the smallest child crawls from her mother to me. The woman’s eyes are closed, so she doesn’t notice. ‘Leave her alone, Annie,’ says the eld
est boy.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say, placing a hand on the child’s head, as she curls in my lap. A wave of calm comes over me. Sweet creature. I close my eyes again, and now the motion of the train feels a little more like jagged flight.

  I dread arriving in Edinburgh. I don’t know my aunt, I won’t get along with the place, and I may be forced into arrangements simply because that is what one does. I may get sick. I may not know any animals. I will be ‘bettered’ or brought up, and I don’t know what that means.

  It is very hard to rest with the noise. I envy the child on my lap, whose breaths are deepening. I try not to stroke her hair, to calm myself. It is not my place.

  Scotland goes by outside, purple under clouds.

  I wake to a flash of bright light and thunder so loud it shakes the glass in the small bedroom window. I feel the child on my lap, on Leonora’s lap. When the bedroom lights up again there are shapes in the corners: human-sized and ethereal. One is Leonora’s mother. I am conjuring the past, while she is beginning to see the future.

  I pull the blanket up around my ears, call shakily for William. Something solid and belonging to now.

  He is at the bedside. ‘I will fix you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Yes – not yet,’ I say, and reach for him, like a child who has had a nightmare. I can hear the wind wailing through sails, the creak of boats tipping in the bay.

  The robot runs his hands through my hair, the way I like it.

  I am so frightened for Leonora. I am so frightened.

  This must be my aunt: the plump woman dressed in a shimmering green fabric, who runs toward me with her arms out.

  ‘You look just like your mother,’ she says, gripping both my hands, and I smile as best I can. I feel sick. I recognise our familial connection in her small nose, and in the way her lips curl. I don’t remember my mother well, but here is this woman who looks like her – living and bold.

  ‘Thank you for having me, Aunt Ailie,’ I manage.

  The mother and four children emerge, depleted, from the carriage behind me. I let go of Ailie’s hands and turn to them. The mother gives me a soft smile, which I return. ‘I wish you all the best,’ I say.

  ‘Now, now,’ Aunt Ailie tuts quietly, grasping at my hand again, ‘you’ll learn soon to whom it’s best to speak.’

  I am not confused, but am disappointed. I want to slip my hand from hers. There’s a red burn at my core, a refusal to change if it means ridding myself of common collegiality. I will not forget that my mother died poor in a tenement. I will not forget the rough feel of the floor under my infant knees.

  My skirts, now, already fringed with soot.

  ‘You’ll get used to it, dear,’ says Aunt Ailie, noticing me noticing.

  A porter is soon beside us with my packages, and I follow my aunt to the station’s entrance, struggling to keep up as she weaves confidently through the crowd, occasionally catching a shoulder or bag. ‘Excuse me, pardon me,’ I say, and then we are outside in the grey.

  My packages are loaded into the cab and as we pull out onto Princes Street I see the Scott Monument and the castle beyond it, rising out of the fog. On the other side of Princes Street, shops line the bottom of buildings and fruit sellers spill onto the street. A well-dressed man pauses, pulls out his pocket watch and frowns, causing people to flow around him like a stream around a rock. So many people.

  The cab takes a turn and I watch the black horse navigating the corner, then heading up a hill. It is immediately quieter on Frederick Street. I notice black streetlamps with circular bulbs suspended like droplets from a tap. We navigate around a confident statue, go over the rise and down, and as we take one more turn, I see the water below, and catch the scree of gulls. We pull up at the bottom of a tenement building in a light brownish-grey stone, joined uniformly to its neighbours.

  Once inside, I follow Aunt Ailie up the front stairs and she unlocks a great heavy door. The driver is behind us with the packages. We take two flights of iron stairs and then enter her apartment, into a sitting room with deep green couches and rich clashing curtains. An armchair faces the window, and I immediately know that this is where my uncle passed on. It has an air of the untouchable about it.

  ‘Now!’ Aunt Ailie claps her hands together. ‘Let’s show you around.’ She takes me into a small but spotless kitchen with a large stove taking up much of the room, and shelves for storage. Next is a room with a claw-footed bath, and a cabinet with a looking glass. Something for the soot. Then there is my room: clothed in embroidered off-white. A canopy bed that I could become lost in, my own looking glass, washbasin and jug.

  I clear my throat to try to thank my aunt. There’s a rock in it. I must be grateful. But I feel alone.

  She beams. ‘You’ll feel at home soon,’ she says. ‘And you’ll fit right in.’ She looks me up and down. ‘With some more meat on your bones.’

  A girl of about sixteen appears behind her, gives a little curtsey when she sees me.

  ‘This is Edith,’ says Aunt Ailie. ‘Quiet as a mouse, just the way we like them.’

  Edith blushes. She does not look like a mouse – she has bright green eyes and her blonde hair flies out from under her cap. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Miss Duncan,’ she says.

  ‘And you, Edith,’ I say.

  Aunt Ailie gives a little roll of the eyes, waves her hand. ‘Run along now, Edith.’ Then she tells me about Edith’s duties: the cleaning and washing, the cooking. The girl does so much that I don’t know what it is I’ll do. I know Aunt Ailie wants to ‘relieve’ me from the kind of life I’ve lived; I don’t know how to express to her the way I feel about putting my hands in water, in dough.

  Aunt Ailie waves to indicate her own room but does not take me into it, understandably keeping her privacy. And where does Edith sleep?

  ‘You look weary,’ says Aunt Ailie. It’s getting dark outside and it has been one of the longest days of my life. She tells me to freshen myself and rest before we take a meal. I want to ask her about the privy but feel embarrassed. I assume it is downstairs, perhaps in the back alley where the clothes hang. I remember the cramped alleys of the old town, the way waste was thrown into the street. The stench day and night.

  I close the door to my room, hoping she does not perceive the action as rude. I will use the bedpan for now. I look around for a lamp or a candle and then clutch my heart in shock as a light comes on by itself on the wall of the room. Silly to get such a shock from gas lighting – they were soon to get it at the Horseshoe Inn. The visitors from the Lowlands were used to the brightness. I knew I could adjust the strength on the wall lamp, to which the gas was being piped. I approach but am too afraid I will do it wrong. I blink several times. It’s like someone has turned back on the sun.

  Later, as Edith serves me and Ailie a supper of Scotch broth, my aunt tells me that tomorrow she will take me shopping to a new store that she likes, so that I have some clothes more suitable to Edinburgh. More suitable, I know she means, to accompanying her. And tomorrow evening she will have some friends over for supper.

  ‘A way to welcome you south, young Highlander,’ she says.

  I am still tired from my journey, but I appreciate the food, served in smooth, fine, patterned dishes. I am very careful not to scrape my knife and fork too hard upon them. I am careful not to make too many glances toward Edith. In between mouthfuls and telling me about some of the events in Edinburgh that she likes to go to – public lectures and readings in particular – Ailie lapses into silence, her eyes moving to the armchair by the window, which can be seen from her side of the table. The gas light throws the shadows of her face into relief: a furrow at the brow, and the lines that hold up a laugh at the mouth and eyes. Her powdered cheeks are pert and plump, like the body of a bird. She chews daintily on each bite. Something about it angers me. I try to eat at the same pace as her, so as not to seem greedy. I only have a second helping after she does. She sips from a glass – red wine, I presume – but does not offer me one. Perhaps drinkin
g is unbecoming in young women.

  ‘After supper, if I am home, I usually read by the fire,’ she tells me.

  It is difficult to resist picking up my plate from the table before I follow her rustling skirts into the sitting room. There are bookshelves on either side of the window. ‘I hear you are a reader,’ she says. ‘I thought it might be glorious if you would read aloud to me.’ She reaches up and takes a book down from a high shelf. ‘We would essentially be reading together,’ she says, smiling at me. ‘Doesn’t that sound nice?’

  ‘It does,’ I say. It is something.

  The bottom shelves are taken up with periodicals, such as The Illustrated London News, Household Words and The Owl, and with a quick glance at the rest of the shelves I see (with a sense of relief) works on nature, economy, philosophy; and works of poetry and drama. I don’t see any novels. Ailie has in her hand a book: John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. I don’t know the word. She encourages me to sit opposite her and hands it to me.

  ‘From the beginning?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  I begin to read. There is much I don’t understand, since I am reading aloud and cannot linger over the words, but I think it is about morals and happiness. That there is no real foundation, yet, for determining what is morally good and what is not. And can we be good and happy?

  Ailie gives a small snort when I am three pages in and I look up from the book to find her head lolling to the side. Either the book is not as stimulating as she thought it would be, or I am terrible at reading aloud. It’s something I’ll work on. I’m not sure whether to nudge her, or to continue reading. I continue reading, projecting a little louder. Her head snaps up and she makes no acknowledgement of her nap. Soon her head lolls again. We continue like this for twelve pages, but this time she has truly made herself comfortable, reclining back onto an embroidered cushion. I close the book and sit quietly in the yellow light, trying to quell my annoyance.