A Superior Spectre

by Angela Meyer

  Ailie and I are in the sitting room, taking tea.

  ‘Are you sick?’ she asks me.

  ‘No, I don’t believe so, Aunt,’ I say.

  ‘It is probably just the cold in your bones,’ she says, frowning.

  Homesick, so sick, and feeling strange, but I can’t talk to her about that.

  ‘We will go to more lectures, and in the summer, to the Gymnasium,’

  she says. ‘You need to meet people your age.’

  ‘I am grateful to ye, Aunt.’

  I want to meet some animals.

  We hear footsteps on the stairs and then a knock. Edith rushes in from the kitchen, and she and Ailie share a look – we aren’t expecting anyone.

  Edith opens the door. ‘Oh, hello, Miss Taylor,’ she says, a little awkwardly.

  Ailie stands quickly, her brows furrowed. She walks to the door. Edith steps out of the way.

  ‘Well, now,’ my aunt says.

  ‘I came to apologise, Ailie.’

  ‘Well … that’s quite all right,’ says Ailie gruffly, as she stands aside to let her in.

  Miss Taylor is dressed in soft pastels, with a ring of wet and grime around the bottom of her skirts. Her thick bronze hair has been mussed by the wind, her hat askew. She notices me, and smiles.

  ‘This is my dear departed sister Isabella’s daughter, Leonora Duncan,’ Ailie says. Miss Taylor moves to clutch my hand. ‘Her poor mother died when she was a child and she’s been stuck in the wilderness with her father, so I’m taking her on.’ Ailie looks proud.

  ‘That’s very good of you,’ says Miss Taylor. ‘A pretty face with such intelligent eyes should be shared with society.’

  ‘Oh …’ I duck my head in an attempt to hide my blush. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ I say.

  ‘Now …’ says Ailie.

  ‘Shall we sit first?’ says Miss Taylor.

  Ailie gives me a look.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say, and move out of the room. I am curious about Constance Taylor, though, as Mr Stewart indicated she’d caused a ruckus at Aunt Ailie’s second-last gathering. I stay in the hall where I can hear.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Miss Taylor. ‘I really had no right to insult you in your own house.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ says Ailie.

  ‘Everything you do … it is all well intended, and effective, I’m sure.

  And I’m sorry I brought dear old Charlie into it.’

  Ailie is quiet. Then she sighs. ‘It was just … in front of the party …’

  ‘It was arrogant of me.’

  ‘You do like attention.’

  ‘As do you.’

  Ailie clears her throat. ‘Would you like tea?’

  ‘Please.’

  Ailie calls for Edith and when Edith brushes past me, tea tray in hand, we nod shyly, an acknowledgement that we’ve both been eavesdropping.

  ‘Tell me about your young charge, then,’ says Miss Taylor.

  ‘Oh, isn’t she beautiful?’

  ‘The stuff of Burns.’

  My cheeks burn again. I am not used to people so frequently discussing my appearance.

  ‘She has a melancholy disposition, though,’ says my aunt.

  ‘She surely misses her father, her home.’

  ‘An obsession with animals, and reading in solitude,’ Ailie says. ‘She’ll stop and bend down to pet a rat.’

  Miss Taylor laughs. ‘Compassion and curiosity, you must see these as good traits. She will come into her own.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose,’ says Ailie. ‘I just sometimes find her difficult to engage.’

  ‘Perhaps I should take her on an outing.’

  ‘No, thank you very much,’ Ailie says abruptly. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She does need to meet people her age – educated ones.’

  ‘Men, you mean. Potential husbands.’

  There’s a pause. They seem to be considering the prospect.

  ‘Most women find it natural to settle, Constance.’

  ‘It wasn’t for me.’

  I am shocked. I haven’t heard a person say that. Isn’t there no other option?

  ‘I haven’t much time for romance … what with running the press, finding new books to publish.’

  They are quiet, sipping. Two older women without children. By accident? By choice? What is behind their words?

  ‘I know some interesting young people Leonora might like to meet,’ Miss Taylor says. ‘She is intelligent, you say?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘A trainee physician working under Thomas Laycock approached me about a book he wants to write, something about the nervous system. It isn’t right for the press but we’ve kept in touch; he’s introduced me to some of the young men and women of his acquaintance.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ While Ailie wants me to socialise, it seems she wants to supervise the process as well, wants to choose the company or at least approve of the choices.

  ‘Why, you could have a small soiree here, introduce Leonora to society. You do love giving a party.’

  I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I am just a Highland girl; I cannot hope to know what to say, how to act, with people my own age who are educated and fit in comfortably with city life.

  ‘We’ll discuss it,’ Ailie says. ‘Thank you for the apology.’

  ‘Very well.’ Miss Taylor sighs as she rises. ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  Beating, buzzing, pressing against my clothes. I have a strange melody in my head: it scratches, warps and wanes, like nothing I’ve ever heard. I go to sit in my room.

  Bethea and I talk about the weather, the wind, the cold. I don’t ask if she’s come by knocking on my door. I am trying to hide the pain but it is impossible.

  ‘Just how ill are ye?’ she asks. ‘Ye’re nae gonna die on me out here?’

  There’s a pang of guilt. It is a horrible thing to do to a stranger, to anyone. But I’ll make sure you tell her, William, the moment it happens. So I am … fresh.

  I tell her it’s just a toothache. She looks at me sceptically, pushes a grey lock of hair behind her ear.

  ‘You don’t have any oil of clove, do you?’ I say. ‘If it’s not too much to ask.’

  ‘Aye, I do,’ she says, and walks off to her boat. ‘Back in a minnie.’

  I call my thanks. This minor conversation has been exhausting. I am used to talking, but not responding or reacting, not performing. Do you think every conversation is a performance? I want you to like me; you want me to like you. Okay, not always. Maybe some people want you to respect them, look up to them, or be intimidated by them, not ‘like’ them, necessarily. Maybe they want you to want to be like them. I don’t know how to come across, now, except to reveal as little as possible to Bethea. To you, William, I reveal something closer to the truth, in that moment of speaking.

  Like about Eric. It all happened over a few years, when I was seeing his sister. There were agonising months of tension in between each encounter. When we’d see each other but hardly have a moment alone.

  One night my girlfriend did a McDonald’s run and Eric hovered in the doorway a moment, or maybe I hovered in his. And then I remember clutching his head, his dark hair, and we knew we had to be quick but it was no problem. But I always wanted more. I fantasised about long, languid hours with him, in a cove on a beach, secluded and tucked away. Or in a hotel room.

  I once went on a trip with my uncle Dave and my cousins to the Gold Coast. It must have been my first time staying in a hotel. Not a motel but a hotel. We were on the thirteenth floor, and had a dangerous balcony where we could dangle our legs toward the pool, the beach, the world. One day after lunch my cousins were down by the pool – I guess I was about ten – and I was a bit sleepy or sunstruck so I stayed on the shady edge of the balcony, playing my handheld. I heard the door of our hotel room open and shut; didn’t think anything of it until I heard the murmur of a woman’s voice. I peeked into the lounge room and there was
Uncle Dave with a woman I’d never seen before, with long powder-blue hair and tattoos all down one arm, and he was taking off her shirt. ‘We’d better be quick,’ he said. He removed her bra and nestled his moustached mouth into her breasts. He squeezed one and licked the nipple. I still remember the sound. She moaned a little and grabbed at his pants, pulled out his erect cock. I was pummelled by shock at its largeness, its rigidity. Did my own go stiff in my pants? For some reason I can’t remember my first erection. Must have been even earlier. And then she gave him a head job, her breasts dangling with the motion, blue mermaid hair flowing around her curves. He stood the whole time, his buttocks clenched. He said, ‘Oh yeah, oooooh yeah.’ I found it thrilling, frightening, and hilarious. When he came I thought he was in pain; I almost called out. To this day I don’t know if she was a prostitute or a woman he just picked up by the pool. He was a handsome guy. In my twenties I tried to grow a moustache, which I now realise was because of him. With my sandy, gingery hair, it just didn’t match the power of his dark one.

  I’m giving you my sexual memories because they rise to the surface. I think they are my making. Are they yours?

  Bethea is back. She smells of lavender with a hint of sweat; she smells feminine. She puts a small bottle of oil of clove in my hand. ‘There ye go. Now, ye’ve got my number if it gets worse. If anythin’ gets worse.’

  She knows. It must be obvious by now. Thinning, my skin and hair greying like shadows on the moon. I want to reassure her all is well, but I don’t have the strength.

  ‘Ye have a helper?’ she asks, looking toward the house.

  ‘Yes, an andserv,’ I say.

  ‘Good. Don’t trust ’em meself, but good.’ She puts her hands on her hips, stares out at the water. ‘Got enough food?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I lie. It feels good to lie, to make myself panic about the lack of food, how I will suffer. I feel strong for it, like in those periods where I went to the gym almost every day, ate a tonne of protein, felt power in my muscles and had a glow to my skin. I was focused on the numbers going up and down in my phone – kilograms, fat, muscle – and didn’t have to think about anything else, not Faye’s wanting to go off the pill, not my bosses, not young men, or even younger ones. I had control. And now I do again, by doing nothing, saying nothing.

  I need to change the subject with Bethea. But I have no idea what is going on in the world. We’ve covered the weather already.

  ‘Do you live with your family here, Bethea?’

  ‘Husband’s dead,’ is all she says.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She waves her hand to shush me, keeps looking out at the water.

  ‘Well, I’ll be goin’,’ she says. And she leaves me alone.

  I can’t make sense of the image. I am moving, as in a cab, but there are no horses, and there is more space around me within. It is not like the carriage of the train. Outside a curved window are low, flat buildings with squares of yellow-green grass around them. There is a small looking glass above the front window, and when I flick my eyes to it I see the boy in the back seat, dark-haired, in something resembling underclothes. A girl’s voice in my ear, telling me to watch the road. I keep my eyes on the boy, his mesmerising long thin arms, fine hairs. He slouches down, looks back at me, moves his hand to where I like it.

  Where I like it.

  I’ve never seen him before.

  But I wake on the edge of that rush, push my hand down under the covers and press at my pelvis to catch it. I erupt with pleasure. I buck up, feeling the contractions in the walls of my sex, slipping a finger in where it is wet and warm. The pleasure is met with a short stab through my jaw. Both fade to a subtle ache as I settle back in the pillows. Did I cry out? I hope not.

  The image remains quite clear this time; I close my eyes to call it forth and retrace the shape of the boy’s face. I open my eyes and sit up, glancing over to the looking glass in my room. For a moment, over my vision is laid the image of a young man in the small looking glass of that moving vehicle. Not the boy in the back seat but him. Sandy-coloured hair. I close my eyes again and still he stares back at me. Bile rises in my throat.

  Get out!

  I pull the covers down and rise slowly, dizzily, and splash my face with water, now avoiding the looking glass. A scratching at the window makes me jump. He is clawing out of me now. This thought comes unbidden. I am shaking, as though cold or sick. The scratching comes again but I see now it is the tabby cat.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ I ask. The sight of the animal relaxes me. I suddenly remember Ailie’s story about the children killing cats. This adds to the worry pressing down upon me. What is it called when you think some force is out to get you? Out to get everything that is good? It is some kind of condition. Maybe I caused it, or it has simply happened to me. It is time for me to do something about it. It – I want to say he – is weighing upon me.

  I open the window and let in the tabby. With the cat comes a rush of cold air, as jarring as my visions. He meows and rubs his head against my chest, at window height, before he leaps down onto the dresser and laps at my water. I run my hand across his fur and he lifts his back end, giving assent. I relax further.

  Maybe Miss Taylor’s acquaintance, the young medical man who wants to publish a book, would have some insight into these happenings. They are internal but they feel as though they arrive from somewhere else. How could my own mind create such images? But that is the only rational explanation. Though brought up to believe in the possibility of a realm beyond our own (because without that, how could you have faith?), I err on the side of the physical world being all that exists, rich unto itself.

  It is easier to imagine that you are possessed than to face the possibility your mind may be fooling you.

  No, I will first visit the druggist, someone impartial who might offer advice and give me something to calm the visions. Ailie need not know; I will sneak out to the old town, where no one should recognise me, when she is visiting an acquaintance or at one of her social betterment meetings.

  Having decided to do something about my situation, I feel calmer. Or maybe that is the effect of the cat. I wonder how long I can keep him in here before Ailie discovers. I pick the cat up and recline in bed, placing him next to me. Though I closed the window I hear the world waking up. Shouting, clanging and clopping. The smell of a stoked fire, and then breakfast, creeps under my door, and I realise I am ravenous. I am faint with hunger; I ache all over. I am hungry but my body is leaden. The cat shifts away and when I reach for him he looks into my eyes and hisses.

  I t is not entirely my fault, I’m sure. The paranoia had already begun in her, from the shock of the move to Edinburgh. Suspicion of her aunt, curtness. I have only given it some kind of form. The way nightmares often do. There’s another reason I keep returning to her, I think. My whole life I have been compelled forward, lying awake and planning even the most banal futures: trips, workout structures, where to hang that picture, how to get out of the relationship. No doubt partly to avoid thinking of my thrumming blood. But Leonora has never thought this way – within her mind is a pool of calm stasis. The Highlands. Home. Her dog. The burns. The woods. Even in her distress, this remains there. And it ties in with the silence around me, here, on my tiny island. It is a new way of thinking, of being. A resource of steadiness, and good, that I have never known.

  It is completely addictive.

  Ailie has gone out, and I have feigned a headache. Edith has brought pepsine wine to me in bed, but she is due to top up the stores today – we’re low on cheese and oats – and I know she is usually gone for a few hours. I have planned in advance, with the visions becoming more frequent when I close my eyes, and when I open them, the walls leaning down upon me as if the room is about to collapse in on itself. My head does ache, and it feels as though my corset were wrapped above the breast as well as below, drawn in tight.

  The walls and the dark, sooty city pressing down. Voices I don’t recognise, cries of eithe
r pain or pleasure. Some deep sadness, grief for my mother rising up inside me. I don’t want to be here at all.

  I finish dressing myself when the door clicks behind Edith. I don’t really know where I am going but I am less likely to run into my aunt if I cross through the gardens and maybe over the George IV Bridge into the old town. I hope I have enough coins in my pockets.

  I remember the berry wine that Abby, my closest schoolhouse friend, clutched in her skirts as I followed her, giggling, into the woods. It was her idea to take one of the jars that crowded on the floor and up one wall of the scullery in her parents’ cottage. She said she’d done it before and her parents never noticed. When she opened the jar a tangy, sugary sweetness rose to my nostrils. She took the first sip, darting her tongue out ahead of her mouth. It made me think of a small animal lapping at the edge of a loch. She exhaled and smiled with relish, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and passing me the jar. I took too much in at once, knowing nothing yet about the back-burn of alcohol. It hit me in my chest and I coughed, while feeling light and hot, like I could easily lift off the rock. My head was clear and sweet and breezy, and my fingertips became sensitive as tongues. I stood and drew them over bark and moss and leaf; I put my hand in Abby’s, mirrored her flushed laughter.

  That was the opposite of the weight now in my head as I leave the building, with the sky clouded as a heavy-lidded eye. I seek some semblance of that lightness, a gust of Abby’s berry-sweet breath in my ear. A bolt of green in this grey.