The Applecross Spell

by Wendy MacIntyre

  And now there was this new element he must face when he trawled through his own sore heart. This totally unexpected desire for his father’s third wife. He had agonized over his feelings since he first saw her come into the outbuilding, looking like a proud and stunning Gypsy woman. This was all so terribly mythic, Oedipal almost, and he had racked himself with brutal questioning. Was he attracted to Suzanne because stealing her away would be tantamount to killing Murdo? Did he want her simply as a means to perpetrate an act of vengeance?

  He thought not. He truly thought not. His first sight of her had indeed struck him dumb. The old language was back. He was babbling and at her feet. And he was there because that was exactly where he wanted to be. When he had stoked her bare foot. Well, for the moment, he did not dare think about it.

  Yet he must. Almost the instant he saw her, he wanted to photograph her. From the waist up, in a black silk shawl, with a long fringe of dangling tassels. That would be all she would wear, so that the inner rounds of her breasts showed beneath the fall of black silk. And then another portrait of her, full-length, the shawl floating on her shoulders, the rest of her gloriously naked. It was dusk and she stood beside a fire on a shoreline by the sea. The flames danced in obeisance to her beauty. The mountains around her were a dark purple. He knew this place. He knew it was in the North. He thought perhaps it was in the Hebrides. He knew the place and he knew her.

  He had grown hard with desire, picturing himself going up to her and kneeling down and putting his arms about her hips and his face...

  This was most perilous ground, he knew. More perilous than that first time he had put the needle in his vein and sunk into the deep blanketing warmth that preceded the nod into bliss. More perilous than walking a ridgepole, five storeys up, daring gravity to take you down and silence your heart forever.

  But whatever happened, they had all three agreed. They must do what they could to encourage her to leave Murdo.

  He must somehow spirit her away. What a wonderful verb, he thought. And how fitting in this case. His spirit would liberate hers from the bone crusher, the heart eater, the wretched smothering cloud that was his father.

  He had a plan. And when she woke he would tell her everything.

  15

  Walking the Ridgepole

  She dreamt of a full lip pressed between her own, as lusciously plump as a peach. She dreamt of lovemaking so fine, so drawn out, that it verged on being unbearable. She dreamt that she was Thomas the Rhymer, gone underground in a suit of green silk. She dreamt she was the Queen of Fairyland, riding Thomas to a fine point of ecstasy. Then she was the two-in-one, that mystical state her girlhood had yearned for.

  Then she had an anvil in her head and a throat parched and sore and she thought that perhaps she had drunk too much wine. Or mead. What exactly had she drunk in that place underground?

  When she opened her eyes, there were two blond angels leaning over her, their faces watchful and concerned. Had she died then?

  It was Clara who spoke first: “Oh, are you all right? We’ve brought you some Paracetamol and a pitcher of water.”

  Suzanne recognized the voice but could not immediately place it. The person who spoke belonged to some long-ago past and the utterance came through a tunnel in time. Then Clara made one of her characteristic skipping motions up to the bed. And so Suzanne emerged into the present. Here were the delightful, bubbling Clara and the strange and beauteous Callum. And there had been Jeremy too. And all three had told her tales of Murdo’s behaviour...

  The anvil in her head began to rock and press its edges into the most tender parts of her brain. She groaned aloud.

  “Oh God,” said Callum. “Oh my God, I am so sorry. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

  “Shut up, Callum.” Clara hissed. “Suzanne, take this Paracetamol, please. It will help, I’m sure.”

  Suzanne swallowed the pills with a little water. Breathe deeply, Suzanne. Visualize an opening in the pain. What has been done can be undone. Visualize an opening. A milk-white dawn is pushing back the night.

  She sat up, and Clara helped prop the pillows behind her head.

  “Shall I heat you up a little chicken broth, Suzanne?”

  Suzanne nodded. Then suddenly she remembered. The body with the dagger in its neck, a piece of horn where a horn should not be. A whipcord of panic seized her body: “Murdo?” she gasped. “Where is Murdo?”

  “He’ll be here,” Clara responded. “Tomorrow.”

  A dream then, thought Suzanne. Only a dream.

  “Ugh!” said Callum.

  “Do shut up, Callum. Stay with Suzanne while I make the soup. And don’t upset her.”

  He put on such a hangdog expression that Suzanne almost laughed.

  As soon as Clara was out the door, he came and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Is this all right?” he asked, and gingerly, he took her hand in his own.

  “Yes.” In fact, his proximity was helping. She felt her headache lift as he stroked the back of her hand.

  “I must have had a hallucination,” she told him. “I saw Murdo dead on the floor of the dining hall with a dagger protruding from his back.”

  “My God,” Callum said softly. “You had my dream.”

  “It’s my fault, you see,” he went on. “There was powdered opium in that thermos. I’d forgotten I put it there a couple of summers ago. Or maybe I didn’t really forget. Maybe unconsciously I wanted the wretched pater to take it. Any visions he had would certainly be of the tormenting variety. Oh, I don’t know.” His face twisted in anguish. “I am so sorry it was you who found the stupid thermos. I’m so terribly sorry. Was it very awful for you?”

  Without thinking what she did, Suzanne caressed his cheek. “It’s all right. It’s over now,” she reassured him. “I’m really quite resilient, you know.”

  She saw that he was crying. And so it seemed wholly fitting when he lay his head between her breasts and she began to stroke his hair. “It’s really all right, Callum.” She could feel the patch of wetness spreading on her T-shirt.

  He lifted his head. “It’s not just the opium thing,” he said. “It’s everything. It’s dredging up the memories, but we had to do that for your sake. And it’s the horrible thought of you with him and the damage he might do to you.”

  She went on stroking his hair, just as she wanted to do when he knelt before her in the outbuilding. “I can look after myself, you know.”

  And then there it was, even as it had been in the dream before she woke into the presence of the angels. Lips that touched hers with the softness and scent of grapes. Then his full bottom lip pressed deep between her own. And under the thin sheet that covered her, her whole body blazed with a desire to feel his nakedness against her, to have him inside her. Sweet Mother, she thought, I am bewitched. And then: But of course I am. I am my mother’s daughter.

  Yet she had the sense to push him firmly away. “Callum,” she said firmly. “This is all rather too complicated.”

  He sat back, immediately complying. His huge eyes were still wet. The artificial one looked red-rimmed and sore. Murdo did that, she thought. Murdo did that. Her stomach knotted.

  “Clara is coming,” Callum said. They both heard the old stair creak as Clara made her way up to the bedroom.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s a lovely day. Why don’t we take a walk this afternoon?”

  She started to speak. Callum put his finger to his lips.

  “Nothing will happen, I promise. The fresh air will help you. Believe me, I know about curing opium hangovers. And there’s more I absolutely must tell you. Will you?”

  Callum left as Clara came in. Suzanne watched him go and he turned to look at her just before he went out the door. The tenderness of his regard confirmed all that she feared. He believes he is in love with me. And what is worse, I believe I could only too easily reciprocate. Have I gone quite mad?

  She looked up to find Clara watching her intently.

  “Yes,”
Clara said, setting the tray with the bowl of soup on the bedside table. “I know. He told me.”

  “The question is,” Clara continued. “Will it make matters better or worse?”

  Suzanne ate her soup. For the moment, there was nothing more to be said.

  What mysteries families are, thought Suzanne.

  They walked. Callum had not tried to touch her. She had not taken his hand. He walked ahead of her and kept silent. She knew without his telling her that they were making their way to the outbuilding with its flowering roof.

  “Let’s climb up to the loft,” he said, once they were inside and had lit the old lamp.

  She followed him up the ladder, where she settled on a thicket of straw. Callum sat a few feet away, his elbows propped on his knees. He rubbed his eyes and began.

  “I’ll start with this, shall I?” He put his index finger to the lid of his blind eye. “Clara said Jeremy told you. But I know if you ask Murdo about it, he’ll lie. He’ll tell you it was an accident at school or some such bullshit. But he did throw the hammer at me, and the worst thing was, I gave him no provocation.”

  “I was ten years old. He’d always hated me, as long as I could remember. Probably because Grandmamma (that was his mother) and Kirstie both doted on me. Or so he said. He was quite vicious when it came to corporal punishment, although thank God, he never touched Clara. I was afraid of him and I hated him. When he was at home, I used to come up here to hide.”

  “But,” he sighed deeply. “Back to the day with the hammer. I went into the playroom. I didn’t know he was there, obviously. He never went in there. He took so little interest in anything we did. Except for school results and the drills and observing the most rigid forms of politeness with our elders. I scored rather badly in all these areas. At any rate, I went in and there he was, waiting for me in the playroom. It frightened the life out of me.”

  “I swear to you that I said or did nothing to make him do it. I just came in and there he was with the hammer in his hand. And why? He is certainly no handyman. He’d think household repairs beneath him. One pays the lower orders to do such things. I was standing at the door and he was across the room and I saw this dark object flying at me and then there was just the most awful pain.”

  “So, that’s it, really. That’s the way it happened. Nanny told me long afterwards that Murdo got quite drunk that night after they took me to the Infirmary in Edinburgh. Kirstie was in a state, of course. He told her I’d lunged at him like a mad thing, before he could put the hammer down and that I’d rammed my face right into the clawed end. She must have believed him. I stopped talking for quite a while after that so I never told her. But I did tell Clara. I always spoke to Clara. She can understand my babble talk, you see.”

  “Right?” he said. “Are you still with me?”

  “Yes.” And he can take that however he wishes, she thought. The pictures in her mind were hellish. To do such a thing to a child. But what if Callum were wrong? What if he had reconstructed the incident out of his hatred? Not that he was lying. Only that he had recast what happened to suit his image of the ogre parent. Was it possible?

  He took a deep breath and stared out into the dusky vacuum below.

  “The next thing I’ll tell you happened about two years after Kirstie’s death. So I must have been thirteen.” He stopped again. Suzanne yearned to be nearer him. But thought better of it.

  “He took pictures of her when she did her glides. He would push her to repeat the arc, time after time. She was tired, you know. She had us; we were a handful. I didn’t eat glass then, though. All that came later. But the worst was... the worst.”

  He had closed his eyes. She saw his shoulders tremble. “The worst was that he photographed her after she had fallen. Her mouth gaping at one side, blood running there and from her eyes. And a slackness about her whole body, a kind of softness, as you’d see in a newborn baby. Except with her, it was because all her bones were broken.”

  He was speaking to her still with his eyes shut tight, and he put out his hand to her blindly. She took it; he grasped hers so firmly, she could feel his pulse beating through her skin.

  “How did you come to see this photograph?” she asked him, phrasing the question as gently and quietly as she could, conscious of the shock the image of his dead mother still posed for him.

  “The pater showed me.” Callum’s customary insouciance seemed to have returned. He opened his huge eyes, jerked his chin upwards. Or was this simply the face of defiance he must put on whenever Murdo was mentioned?

  “Murdo?” Of course, she did not want to believe it. There could be no justification whatever for showing a child a photograph of his mother, dead and broken. Such an act was pure sadism.

  “Yes,” he said, and the tremble again in his shoulders told her it was true.

  “But why...?” She was glad that he still held her hand.

  “Why?” he repeated. “Pater’s obscene version of punishment, I suppose.” He pushed his free hand through the mass of springing curls. “I’d been suspended from boarding school. I’d been caught walking the ridgepole. Except that it was the third time I’d been caught. And I was wearing only the school blazer, you see. Nothing else on at all. One gets rather a big erection walking ridgepoles five floors up.”

  He laughed and Suzanne began to see how necessary, how joyful, these acts of rebellion had been. Every caper, every scrape, had been a sweet loosening of Murdo’s control.

  “The school was afraid of being sued, I suppose, lest I fall. And probably the fact I was naked under the blazer shocked the headmaster’s wife. She was quite proper, you see. Unlike matron, who was unshockable after years and years of exposure to her boys.”

  “So, I got sent home. I was summoned into pater’s presence. He beat me on the buttocks till I bled. He had a special cane for discipline, you know. I presume,” he opened his good eye slyly, “that he never used it on you.”

  “Callum!” She had let go of his hand at this last remark, but now he sought the close grip of her fingers again.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I wanted to avoid, put off, getting to the photo... Anyway,” he took a deep breath. “Once I had my pants done up, standing before him, head bowed – that was the required post-discipline stance, eyes to the floor, compliant. If I didn’t assume that position, that guilty expression, he would use the cane on my face. I only risked that once. It’s possible to endure an awful lot of stripes on the buttocks.”

  “Then, Murdo said, ’Come here boy, I’ve something to show you.’ He had the photos in an envelope in his desk drawer.”

  “And he made me look at them. He made me...”

  Callum wept. Suzanne had never seen a sight more piteous.

  She put her around about him.

  When he recovered himself, they both climbed a little shakily down the ladder and out into the light of day.

  He took her hand. “Now you know it all,” he said.

  “Clara and I will both be off today,” he added.

  Hearing this, Suzanne felt bereft.

  “I’ll take her into Edinburgh to catch her train” he continued. “But I’ll be staying with some friends in Innerliethen for a couple of days. I’ll give you the phone number there. If you want out or you want help, just call. I’ll only be half an hour away on the bike. Pack a small bag in case you do want to come with me. Please say you will. We are all of us so afraid for you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s very kind of you.” And I may well need a speedy exit, she thought. And yes, I do not want this to be the last time I see Callum, whatever that may mean.

  He looked extremely relieved. Then he grinned, and did a little impromptu jig.

  “I could take you to the most wonderful place,” he announced. “A place that would purify you of any contact you’ve had with him. Have you seen the Highlands?”

  “No. But Callum, I must speak with Murdo. I must hear what he has to say. I did marry him.” She stopped. The senten
ce made a nasty taste in her mouth. Yet she was the one who had done the deed.

  “I know. I know,” he cried out. “And it’s truly horrible that you did.”

  She watched the twins drive off on the bike. Her sense of loss was acute, like bidding goodbye to her own innocence.

  Clara had kissed her and given her her post office address in York. And a message from Jeremy: “He says he is so sorry he was rude to you and that you must call him when you’re back in London. And that he will definitely read one of your books.”

  “And he will, you know.” She gave one of her emphatic little nods.

  How very exquisite they are, thought Suzanne as she went back into the house to face her own dread.

  And isn’t it odd that I see nothing of Murdo in any of them?

  16

  A Letter to Ada

  Dear Ada:

  The lights have just gone out. A summer storm has torn out of the North Sea. Rain pummels the window. In the light of the candle flame, the pane of glass is a waterfall. The glass has melted. Nothing is as it seemed.

  The night and the wind and the rain press at the window. These were the first gods, the weather gods, as you told me so long ago. The wind batters at the glass and the stone walls. If I were mad, I might run outside to be drenched by that rain, thrown to my knees by the wind.

  As it is, I will sit here in the dining hall, where so much has lately been revealed, writing this letter to you. The movement of the pen across the page helps bridle my restlessness. The flicker of the candle flame is a silent tongue. It reassures me, with its endless thirst for new form. When I am finished, I will feed this letter to the flame.

  Ada, I think now I have made a grave error of judgement. The grave is where he sent two trusting women, according to his children. I am numb still at what they have seen fit to tell me.