by Rob Ewing
Now Elizabeth says she wants to be alone, wants to go to one of the other rooms. Me and Alex are left behind.
We swirl on chairs, play stone-scissors-paper. Alex invents a new category: fingers waving for fire, which burns paper, melts scissors, cracks stone. Fire is the all-time winner.
‘You play games,’ Calum Ian says, ‘while the rest of us have to go through fucking bloody hell.’
We try not to look at him. Alex pays attention instead to the scab he has on his knee. He picks it off, and I watch the red dot grow into a red bead.
Me: ‘Does it hurt?’
Alex: ‘Not if you’re brave. Injections make me brave. It’s easy. I used to hate it, but my skin went strong.’ His eyes go blurry through thinking then he says, ‘Even so, I don’t mind not getting my injections.’
Me: ‘But you’ll get sick.’
Alex: ‘Don’t care. Then I might get to see my mum and dad. Because I’m not scared. Not any more. Fact, not opinion – when you’re dead you’re zero.’
I get him in a friendly kind of head-lock.
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘The only obstacle is us. It’s better to believe in being alive than what the opposite might be. It’s infinity better to believe that.’
Alex: ‘So why d’you talk to your mum?’
I didn’t think he’d noticed. Now I feel shy about it, not knowing at all what to say.
‘Gave your mum a fright once,’ he tells me.
‘My mum. You know about my mum? I want to know all the facts, tell me.’
Alex looks worried, or surprised, like I sounded too keen. Then he says, ‘When I was little. Four, maybe three? Your mum was delivering letters. Mum saw her on the path coming. It was very funny.’
‘Keep going, keep going!’
‘We waited by the door. Just before she got there I shoved my whole hand through the letterbox.’
‘What did she say!’
‘Em … My mum, it was her that told me to do it. She wanted to give your mum a letter to post. Your mum took letters as well as bringing them, didn’t she?’
‘Anybody knows that! She was a postwoman.’
‘Well, so I gave it to her. Said, Hullo! She took it and gave me hers. I heard her go away laughing.’
Because it’s about Mum I can’t find it normal like any other story, or even boring: I’m instead hungry to know every last detail.
‘Didn’t see her,’ Alex admits, in the end. ‘But she was laughing. She took my letter and she went.’
It’s when he says this that I get my best idea.
Elizabeth is on her own, in her mum’s old doctoring room. Her eyes look red like she’s been crying, but that’s impossible, because Elizabeth is way strong and never cries.
‘Go away,’ she says.
I hide behind the door – nearly leaving, wondering if I barged in, wondering if she’s in a crabby mind.
In the end she calls me back – makes me stand straight at the desk in front of her like a soldier.
‘Only wanted a few stupid seconds alone,’ she says.
I don’t know if this means she’s already had them: so I count thirty in my head in case she didn’t, then begin to tell her about how Mum used to pick up letters from people, even letters without stamps. But then I notice the room around is a mess: too much of a mess for Elizabeth to have made it on her own. Cupboards open, books on the floor. The bin overflowing with plastic aprons, gloves.
She stops me talking. Instead, she shows me a framed picture. Of Elizabeth with her mum and dad.
In the picture she’s making her eyes go squint. I didn’t know she could do it – make a squint, be funny. She looks daft, happy even.
‘Just after we came.’ She rubs a smudge from the glass. ‘We were at the beach, Traigh Eais. This was Mum’s favourite because it was early days. Dad had a beard then, see? And I didn’t have any scars.’
She puts a finger on her picture-cheek, then on her real cheek, to feel the new hardness there.
‘What I don’t know is what to do. Usually I think: what would Mum do? What would Dad do?’
‘What would they?’
Her voice cracks with – I don’t—
I start to tell her about my idea. It begins with how Mum didn’t just deliver letters, she collected things as well. And one group of things she collected were the squares of paper from old people, or ill people, which she took to the practice and exchanged for white bags of medicine.
‘She delivered the drugs,’ Elizabeth realises.
‘Which makes her important, right? So maybe we should look for the squares of paper?’
‘Maybe.’
It takes us a minute to find them. They’re in five big bundles done up with elastic bands like money, in a back drawer of the dispensary.
Elizabeth counts through twenty. She lays them out on the desk, then goes and fetches Alex’s medicine-pen from her rucksack.
The insulin inside it is called Mixtard.
In another minute we have the names of two people who had the same stuff. Then Elizabeth, after checking a book, writes down some more names.
We look through the piles of paper, until we find three more that are definitely a kind of insulin.
‘One address – see, it’s here in the village, nearby,’ she says, ‘it’s really not far. But after that … how are we going to find all these other places?’
Feeling a happy rush of pride I reply: ‘I know the answer to that as well!’
I’m thinking of the laminate cards that Mum used for her deliveries: the ones she gave for people who were doing the post round and didn’t know the island as well as her. And I think I know where they are.
Back Bay
When you’re alone mist and rain only makes it feel worse. You can’t see where the sky stops and the sea starts.
Every house, every postbox could be the shadow of someone standing still.
It gets me nervous: so I pull the curtains and go into my sleeping bag and begin to count from where I left off—
Seven thousand and one … two, three …
I remember how Mum used to take a breath in when she was listening. The Gael’s Breath, she called it. She did it when other adults were talking: a gasp to say: I’m still paying attention. Like she had to drink as well as hear what they were saying.
Now when I close my eyes she’s there.
She’s doing her talk to the stand-in postman. I go down deep into my bag, down to the crumbs and sweet wrappers and old socks at the bottom, covering up my ears so I can hear her, only her—
‘You’ve the name given by the registrar,’ she’s saying. ‘Likely a Protestant from the mainland, olden days. Mary for Mairi, James for Seamus and so on. Official letters will bear these names. If the letter’s sent local it might have a familiar name – with reference to the father, mother. Seumas Nèill – Neil’s James, for example. This helps to distinguish him from all the other Jamie MacNeils.’
Mike, the stand-in postman, is trying to write everything down. He has red hair, brown freckles on his hands which are a blur as he tries to write all she says down exact.
‘Just as likely the envelope may bear a nickname. This could relate to appearance, work, habit, even something the person did as a child. For example: I am Mairi a’ Phosst – Mary the Postwoman. Ailean Còcaire – Alan the Cook. My daughter here, Rona Aonranach – Rona on her own. Likes her ain company does this one.’
Mike the stand-in chooses one letter from all the bundles yet to be sorted.
‘Doo-tang MacLeod. What is this word Doo-tang?’
Mum wrinkles her nose. ‘Unluckily that’s not a perfect example. It doesn’t mean anything at all.’
‘Oh?’
‘No, it’s a nonsense word.’
Mike, frowning, writes down: nonsense word.
‘So, names covered, we will move on to addresses. As everybody knows everyone there are no house numbers. Equally, no house names. There are some streets numbered, sure – but not many. Accordi
ngly, even if you do find numbers they are often not in the right order. The sequence might be obscure: order of construction, left or right of that wee stream, even peculiar to that street. Perhaps no one knows why some of the numbers are the way they are. To sum up: it isn’t always clear-cut.’
‘Of course …’
‘Also, do not assume that a street exists in one piece. Our forbears liked to name things according to the contours of workable land. For our purpose this means that a village or street may have two halves – two strands – existing either side of a hill or watercourse. You have to imagine following the doors underground. Consider the lie of the land and not what the map wishes to tell you.’
‘Not the map.’
‘Lastly, our letterboxes are often sealed against the wind. In which case you will need a key, available by application from the householder in advance.’
His pen stops moving.
Mum hands over her postbag. ‘I should say it took me ten years to fathom the intricacies of all the doors. Sure I imagine you’ll have it licked by noon.’
He looks at Mum. Back at his notes. At Mum.
‘In case you don’t’ – she goes into her bag – ‘here are some laminate cards that I made giving the names, nicknames, numbers and the lie of all the streets, so you can’t go wrong. Each village set out on a new card.’
He shakes Mum’s hand.
‘I was scared for a minute there.’
Mum does her straight smile. ‘By the way, that was also a joke about the letterboxes being sealed.’
‘Ah. And a right good one.’
Mum: do you remember when I said before that there were two times where the new world was beginning, but I didn’t know it yet?
The second time came that afternoon: after we left Mike the stand-in to get on with his work.
We were on a rubbish-collect, working the shore with the adults. It’s my last truly normal memory, so we both have to remember it, like Elizabeth always said.
The clouds were way out at sea, not over our island. Tide low on Traigh Mhor. Cockle-pickers, miles out, raking lines for the sea to rub smooth again.
‘Spread yourselves; take a bag each.’ Mrs Leonard points us into spaces. ‘Can we have adult, child, adult, child. Adults: keep the children in order. For the children: remember, it’s not all junk. There could also be treasure.’
Mrs Leonard doesn’t know it, but there’s always treasure, and not only the sweets she hid in tubs.
Crab moults. Smoothed glass. Crab legs. Kelp tangles in the shape of mermaids. Bird skulls. Feathers. Kissing stones. Cowrie shells, rarest shell of all.
We drift apart, together. Mrs McClure has her shoes off – bare feet. She’s the old woman who swims every day, even when the big hill has snow on it.
‘The island salts itself,’ she said to Mum once, pointing at the frost creeping up the hill. ‘Which our council takes as an excuse for never gritting the damn road.’
Bad smells along the beach: usually sheep that fell off the dunes, or propeller-cut seals washed up.
This time it’s a bird: an oystercatcher.
Seonaid Galbraith tries to lift it up, but she gets warned to stand back.
‘Tch, it’ll have germs child, keep your hands away,’ Mrs Grant says. ‘Don’t want you getting sick.’
Seonaid kneels to look close at the bird. ‘Doesn’t look like there’s any badness on it.’
‘Well that’s the rule with germs. You can’t see them, but they see you fine.’
Where the burns run into the sea the sand and peat get mixed into fish-stripes. The river Taing cuts a big channel with crumbling cliffs of sand either side.
Mrs Grant finds me sidling closer and says: ‘Oh here’s the lassie on her own. How is your mother, Rona?’
‘All right.’
Mrs MacDonald asks to see my collected rubbish so far: one plastic bag, one plastic bottle of sailor’s piss, polystyrene block gone round, old glove, glass, glass, bottle-top, float.
‘A ’nighean mar a mathair,’ I hear Mrs Grant saying to Mrs Connolly: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’
She takes the bottle of piss from me with her eyes and nose wrinkled up.
‘Ah why are men such filthy pigs? A whole ocean for their excreta, and still they do it in a bottle.’
She holds up the bottle and shouts across to Mr MacNeil: ‘Ho, Roddy? Is this your handiwork?’
Mr MacNeil, Duncan’s dad, drifts in. He examines the bottle like it’s the rarest treasure.
‘Certainly mine’s more luminous than that.’ He holds it up to the light. ‘And I’ve a preference for cola bottles when I’m passing water.’
Mrs Grant dumps the bottle in his bag.
Follow Seamus Cowan. Can smell his sweat, mixed with the sea and oilskin-reek.
‘Will take him out, soon as he learns,’ Duncan’s dad is saying, to Seamus. ‘Not before. There’s no excuse for the eldest son. Look what happened to my father, eh? So now there’s the swim-pool, he has no excuse.’
‘But you can be too hard on the boy, no?’ Seamus says. ‘Young Calum Ian looks right fed up with himself. Getting out, even on the bay, giving him a taste of it, that would pull him along don’t you think?’
‘I disagree. He needs to learn his swimming first. Then he goes fishing. That’s my choice.’
‘Sure, but you have your ain mind.’
Mum – even this last normal memory told tales about what would happen. The lack of swimming became important for us later on, as you’ll find out.
And I never forgot what Mrs Grant said about germs – you can’t see them but they see you fine – although understanding this, really understanding this was always going to be the one big problem for us.
Eleven days ago
It took us a day to pluck up the courage to leave. With our school lessons, and shopping, and our homes, we’d made a bit of life that felt normal. So now the thought of going away: to the places we don’t know, past the safe edge of our village, makes everyone worry for what we’ll find now that we’re forced to go and see.
We’re nearly ready to leave – when Alex goes missing.
I find him hiding under his bed, in the thick of a mess of dusty toys. Only he’s not playing: he’s just looking up, at the wooden boards holding up the mattress he sleeps on.
‘Wonder what it’s like to die,’ he says.
I try to reach him, but he just shuffles further in.
‘Don’t know,’ I answer. ‘Never did it. Not even when everybody else did.’
‘I think it’s like your DS. When you take out the game, and the screen freezes. It’s like that in real life. Your eyes keep seeing their last thing for ever.’
It’s strange – like another idea of his, that lava is just beneath the pavement. This one sounds half-true.
Me: ‘What if you saw a bit of dog shit then you died? You’d see dog shit for ever.’
His eyes warm up to an almost-smile. ‘Or if you saw a fat man with a fat arse?’
Me: ‘A famous person farting in the bath.’
Alex: ‘The Queen?’
Me: ‘Good choice. You have to be careful what to see.’
Alex: ‘Our mums and dads?’
Me: ‘Best choice. You just have to get the choice right, see? Then everything’s OK.’
We bunch together in the gap by the beds. I see the broken rim of Alex’s bedside cabinet. There’s still a red smudge on his carpet from the spilled food dye.
Alex must be looking at this too, because he says: ‘I get unwell without my injections.’
He lets me link my arm in his. ‘We’re going to get some. We could be at your home by tonight even.’
His eyes go bright when I mention home. But the brightness of them goes out just as quick, so I’m left noticing how dirty around his mouth is.
‘Do we have to go to my old house?’
‘You don’t want to?’
I remind him we need to look for insulin. He gathers up a ball of dust and sa
ys, ‘Don’t think my mum and dad are alive. And you know what else? I worry really about finding them when we get to my old home.’
He comes out, brushing off his trousers. Then he brushes his hands, as if he’s showing that we settled the business. Still, he looks unsure.
‘What if you stayed seeing a bad thing?’
‘You worrying again?’
He kicks the wooden stump of our bunk beds. ‘To see a bad thing for ever – that would be the same as going to hell wouldn’t it?’
I want to argue against this – but Alex only smiles, the way adults did when they were just pretending to agree – and we have to be leaving anyway.
Mum’s van is where it always is. Like every other car there’s bird shit and cat shit over it, and the tyres have gone flat.
She must’ve stopped using the car, because she wouldn’t have let standards slip so far. She liked to keep things clean, shipshape.
Mike the stand-in postman left Mum’s laminate maps in the van before he left us.
He went back to Oban, so we didn’t get to go to Glasgow, and we didn’t get shopping for Christmas. At the time I thought this was the worst thing to happen, but now it’s become small beside all the other stuff.
The van door’s stiff and creaks loud. There’s still letters, undelivered. Old elastic bands on the floor. The seat has Mum’s smell, sadly gone quiet now. I find a scrunchy on the floor which smells so much of her I can’t stand it.
Calum Ian and Elizabeth whistle at the laminate maps as if they’re treasure, which I suppose they are.
I try to tell Elizabeth that Alex got sad – but she shushes me. While they get busy puzzling the streets and places I whisper an ask in Elizabeth’s ear.
‘All right, but be quick about it,’ she says.
My home once-upon-a-time already has a P sprayed by me on the door. You get to spray your old home, that’s the rule. So I sprayed P for perfect, because it was my real home in the world before.
Houses are G for Good if they don’t have a smell or a dead body. B for Bad if they do. It lets us know where we’ve been, and if we have to go back there, what we’ll find.
Except for the curly G that I sprayed on Calum Ian and Duncan’s home. That broke all the rules, even though I wasn’t thinking about rules or anything when I did it.
