by RL McKinney
‘I was afraid of heights before that, but it didn’t help. Can we talk about this later, Catriona, please?’
She cringed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine. I will tell you about it. Just … later.’
‘Look at the state,’ Mary muttered, lowering herself onto her knees beside her husband’s grave. John ‘Jack’ David Macdonald was overgrown with dandelions. She arranged her small cluster of wildflowers – the subject of much protest and disgruntlement – against the headstone and began pulling out tufts of grass and weeds. ‘When was the last time you paid your Da any attention?’
It wasn’t the brightest of days, but Calum had on the mirrored sunglasses that he wore when he wanted to keep out more than the sun. He turned them on Mary.
‘We were here not that long ago. A month maybe. Just before the fire.’
‘What fire?’
‘Your kitchen fire, Mum.’
She stared at him, puzzling over this. ‘There was no fire. I’m having a new kitchen in.’
He pressed his fist over his mouth and turned abruptly, stalked away from both of them, and stood against the wall that separated the churchyard from the copse of woods beyond, arms over his chest.
This was more than just her memory problem. Whatever it was between them, Catriona thought she recognised it as the same thing – the same fundamental fear – that existed between herself and her own mother. It was the reason she couldn’t tell Jenny about Kyle. It was the fear of being exposed as weak or careless, or maybe just stupid. Families were the ultimate lie, she decided. The pretence of love was really just judgement. It hurt badly, whether it was spoken or only implied in a look or a shake of the head. Maybe she should go, she thought. Away somewhere, anywhere that nobody knew her. She could find some total stranger, in a bar or on a train, and she could tell them about what Kyle had done to her, and they would only be kind, not disappointed.
The church bell began to ring and she looked back towards the road. Parishioners were arriving, a slow procession of the grey and the dowdy, wee women with fat ankles and bad perms. Mary hoisted herself from her knees with a grunt, dusted her stockings and stowed her little spade in her handbag. ‘He is lost to God,’ she said to Catriona, nodding in Calum’s direction, ‘but you would be very welcome, dear.’
‘Oh. It’s not my thing.’
‘Your mother raised you Protestant, I suppose.’
‘We didn’t go to church at all.’
‘Oh aye.’ She had no need to speak her disapproval. ‘You make sure he doesn’t forget to come back for me at the end.’
‘He won’t.’
‘He’s done it before.’
‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t, Gran.’
Mary only jutted her chin. From the other side of the churchyard, Calum watched her make her way over the damp grass and take the arm of another elderly lady who had just arrived. When they had disappeared behind the grey granite edifice, Catriona stepped towards the two graves, Jack’s now tidied and Finn’s still harbouring weeds. She knelt and began pulling the long grass with her fingers.
CIRCLES
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Calum said when Mary went into the church. He watched Catriona rip tufts of grass and dandelions from around Finn’s grave. Her jaw was clenched; she seemed to need a physical task to fill her mind.
‘I don’t mind weeding.’
‘If that’s true, I’m happy to put you to work at home.’
‘Aye, sure.’
‘I’m just going to sit in the car and make a phone call. Back in a few minutes.’ He placed his hand on her shoulder, just for a moment. ‘Thanks Cat.’
She looked up at him, eyes full of ambivalence, then went back to work.
He shut the graveyard gate and sat in the passenger seat of the Land Rover facing out so he could see Catriona coming, and brought up Jenny’s number. It seemed impossible to speak to her in the house without running the risk of being overheard. His breath quickened as she answered.
‘I wondered when I’d hear from you,’ she said. Cool but not hostile.
‘How are you, Jen?’
‘I’m surviving, Calum. As I always do. You?’
‘Well … ’ He wondered how much to tell her. ‘Okay. Surprised by the sudden appearance.’
‘Surprised? You didn’t know she was coming? She told me she spoke to you.’
He rubbed at his forehead. ‘She didn’t tell me.’
‘The lying wee minx! I’m sorry. Send her back if you want to. I know you’ve got your mum with you as well.’
‘I don’t mind having her. I do mind the fact that she’s not well.’
‘Depressed, you mean?’
‘Aye. Depressed. Distressed. Anxious. I take it you’ve seen it too.’
‘Of course I have. She’s been like that since she came home from uni. Before that, even. She was all right all year. I don’t know what’s kicked this off, but I hope it’s not … you know … a family thing.’
He laughed softly. ‘Thanks Jenny.’
‘I don’t mean it that way.’
‘I’m sure you don’t.’ He couldn’t quite manage to keep the spite out of his voice. ‘She’s never been like this before?’
‘Not really.’
‘So something’s happened.’
‘Probably, but she hasn’t told me what.’
‘She hasn’t told you anything at all? Because I’m a bit desperate here, Jen.’
‘This is new. I find it interesting you’re so concerned all of a sudden. What’s it about, Calum?’
‘Oh don’t start, for Christ’s sake. I’m calling you for help, not an argument.’
There was a pause. He could hear her sighing into the phone. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. There’s a boy from university called Kyle. He called the house a few nights ago, looking for her. When I told her, she got all agitated and told me not to tell him where she is.’
‘Why?’
‘She just said that he was creepy. He’d stalked her a bit or something. She swore to me that he has nothing to do with it, but I’m not sure I believe her. Trust me, if I knew anything else, I’d tell you.’
‘Okay. You said his name was Kyle?’
‘Aye.’
‘I’ll ask her.’
‘If you get anything out of her, please call me.’
He softened. She sounded alone and fearful. ‘I will. Thanks Jen. Look, I’d better go. You … keep well, okay?’
‘You too. Calum?’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry I snapped at you.’
An apology from Jenny. That was new. ‘It’s okay. Listen, I’ll talk to you soon, all right?’
Ending the call, he sat sideways in the car for a few minutes more, watching Catriona work her way around the grave. She was steady and meticulous, and certainly not handless. He’d worked with plenty less careful roustabouts over the years.
Jenny’s question resonated around the vehicle’s greasy interior. What’s it about, Calum?
What was it about the day Finn died, he wondered. He could still hear himself saying, ‘Not on my watch,’ as if to say, ‘Go ahead and kill yourself but don’t make me watch you do it.’
What was it about now? What if the situation was reversed? If Jenny had phoned him and asked for help, would he give it? Had he ever done it before, when she’d asked?
The answer to that last question was so obvious that he didn’t even want to think the word.
Life went around in such tight little circles you barely had time to untangle one disastrous mistake before you made it all over again. Jenny was right to ask what it was about. It couldn’t be about himself anymore. He had to make it about Catriona. If he wanted her to give up her secrets, he would have to give up his.
He went back to the graveside and squatted beside her, lifted his fingers to the headstone and let them move over the engraved letters of Finn’s name. ‘I never thought he’d make twenty-one.’
THE WORST THING
Mary watched stained-glass light playing on the church wall, pink and blue patches slowly following each other across grey stone like dying butterflies. She remembered so clearly the way the last beautiful pink tinge subsided from Jack’s cheeks. Father Daniel prayed. Mary’s mind drifted from one question to another.
Did your soul rise immediately from your body when you died or did it emerge slowly like a snake shedding its old skin? She’d often wondered this. Would you be aware of your journey to heaven or simply wake up in the house of the Almighty? Or some other place she hated to imagine.
Jack had never been a believer. He’d turned from the church at a young age, and had succeeded in turning Calum. But still, she prayed that God had seen his goodness and claimed him anyway. He was a good man. He was the best of men in every way but one: he had not died in the grace and friendship of God. Surely a merciful God wouldn’t have condemned him to eternal damnation for that.
Then there was Finn, who was always faithful but never the good man Jack was. He had made so many bad choices. He had sinned against God, possibly in the worst way of all, by going too willingly to his death. And yet, at every Mass she was reminded: He gave himself up to death, and, rising from the dead, he destroyed death and restored life. Just like Jesus. How could you square it? She knew she shouldn’t question, but lately she did. What would God have done with Finn?
Mary tried to pray but all she could do was remember the things she wished she could forget.
The worst thing about the day of the accident was facing Calum. She had seen Finn first, on the slab in the hospital, still in his climbing gear. What she remembered most was his absolute stillness. The twitching mouth, the exploratory eyebrows, the busy eyes. His bonny, uneasy face, which had never stopped moving, now inert and white as her mother’s china. It would have been very quick, they told her, and perhaps there was consolation in this. He’d been in pain, her child. He’d been carrying the weight of his own being like a cross on his back for so many years now. You could see it in the hollows under his cheekbones and in the grey hairs that had already started to appear amongst the crow-black.
In this private, frozen moment, she might have experienced the faintest sense of relief. She might have whispered a prayer of thanks, that He had lifted Finn’s burden. Perhaps she had, but now, sitting in the chapel in Arisaig, she couldn’t remember. All she remembered now was how she had begged Calum not to let Finn climb.
She also remembered that when she saw her remaining son, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to beat him with her fists, drag him from the bed and throw him down the stairs, and with the strength of her anger she might have managed it. He was deep in a drugged sleep, his leg splinted, his face swollen and badly scraped. The nurse said his knee would take some fixing but he wasn’t in danger.
She had pulled the curtain and stepped towards the bed, stood beside him, her hands hanging by her sides.
‘Wake up,’ she said sharply. She couldn’t say his name or bring herself to touch him. His eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. She waited a moment and tried again. ‘Damn you, wake up.’ Receiving no response, she had turned and left the ward.
The light coming through the stained glass dulled, turned from pink to silver. She moved her eyes to the left and saw gulls flying through the clear glass, rising on a draft above the churchyard where Jack and Finn lay. Where did she go that night? Where did she sleep? Was she alone? Did she cry? Did she pray? What did she pray for? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember any of that.
Why did she lose the details? She was so cloudy. They were giving her something to make her cloudy.
Father Daniel prayed.
Mary asked: Are you with your Da, Finn? Have you told him the truth about what happened that day? Maybe you’ll tell me when I see you.
HEADSTONE
Catriona looked at him, chewing her lip and waiting for the story. Anticipation jangled around inside her and brought out moisture on her hands. ‘You don’t have to tell me now.’
‘I should have told you a long time ago.’ He took a deep breath. ‘My brother was a drug addict. He was also manic-depressive. Bipolar, they call it now. Do you know what that is?’
‘Sort of, yeah.’ She’d heard the term, but it was a bit of an exaggeration to say she fully understood what it meant. She could look it up later. It was embarrassing to make him explain any more than he had to.
‘He was up and down his whole life, but he got really bad after Dad died. He was fourteen then, and by the time he was eighteen he’d become a total speed freak and tried to kill himself twice. He stole stuff from Granny, he stole stuff from me, he was a total disaster.’
‘Why was he like that?’
‘Nobody knows why. Losing Dad so young was a massive part of it, obviously, but I’m not sure it was all down to that. He was always a bit vulnerable. He might have gone that way regardless. But then, this one time, I took him climbing and he could just … do it … like he’d been doing it all his life.’
‘Probably because he was too crazy to be scared.’
Calum glanced at her, then nodded. ‘Maybe. When he was really hyper, he thought he was invincible. The thing about climbing is it takes such concentration and focus, you can’t think about anything else while you’re doing it. So I took him climbing because it brought him out of his own head. When he was climbing, when he was up there on the rock and for a few hours afterwards, he seemed happy. He was calm, like his mind had finally cleared. And he was just so bloody good at it. Complete strangers used to stand and watch him. By the time he was your age, he was properly making a name for himself.’
‘You must have been good too.’
‘I was okay. He was a lot lighter than me, longer limbed, perfectly made for it. I was like a gorilla clambering up after him. The stupid thing was, the route that killed him wasn’t even that hard. Well within both our ranges. It was summertime in the Cairngorms, a warm quiet Thursday morning. He was agitated, the way he often was just before one of his downswings, and we were pissed off at each other. We’d completely fallen out a few weeks earlier.
‘The whole walk in, he was muttering to himself and I should have known he wasn’t in the right state of mind for climbing. I should have bailed on that climb before we started, except it would have caused a stushie. So, as usual, I let him lead … I thought … I believed I could keep him safe from himself. But he took off like some kind of weird phantom, sprinting up this chimney of rock on his fingers and toes. He never liked being belayed … he’d have preferred to free climb without any protection. He had this delusion about a guardian angel who lived inside the rock. Anyway, I’m shouting at him to chill and slow down, but he’s like fifteen feet up before he places his first cam.’
‘Cam?’
‘It’s a safety device you wedge into cracks in the rock and clip onto. They work fine if you place them correctly so they can’t slip, and if you have a whole line of them. He didn’t. We were both too complacent; he never fell. It happened that fast, he … reached up for a hold and missed, but his body was already committed to the move and he peeled off. The cam pops loose and he decks hard, right on top of me. I broke his fall to a certain extent. If he’d been wearing a helmet he might have survived, but his head cracked off a stone. I’m battered all over, concussed and my leg’s bent the wrong way at the knee and he’s just … lying there, not moving. And that was him … in the blink of an eye. When I look back I realise that day changed everything. Sometimes something happens and it sets your life onto a new track forever.’
‘Aye.’ She wanted to tell him she understood. Instead, she forced herself to imagine how the scene must have played out. How did they get down from where they were? Were there other people around? How long did he have to wait there with his dead brother before someone came to help? Questions that were too graphic to ask.
‘It must have been just … horrible.’
He nodded and placed his hands flat in the damp grass at the base of
the stone, as if feeling for vibrations. ‘I’ve always told my mother it was an accident, but actually I’m pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to die. And my mother wonders why I won’t go to Mass with her.’
She couldn’t look at him. His voice was deliberate and steady, but something was screaming just out of her earshot and she was frightened of it. ‘I don’t blame you.’
He acknowledged this with a grim smile. ‘It properly messed me up but I pretended it didn’t, until I couldn’t pretend anymore.’
‘That was when you came back here.’
‘Yep. After I’d lost my marriage and my career.’
‘But that was years after the fact.’
‘Aye. The human brain is remarkably capable of saving up bad shit for a long time.’
‘So would you have stayed in California if you hadn’t got ill?’
‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘Probably. Can I ask you something, Cat? Just … answer me honestly. Do you think there’s a chance you might be pregnant?’
‘No,’ she said as forcefully as she could. Her face flushed. It was bad enough being asked by her mum. Staring at the ground she said, ‘I’m not.’
‘Were you worried that you were?’
If she said yes, she’d be admitting to having let someone between her legs.
‘No.’
He looked like he was trying not to appear relieved. He dusted his hands and stood up. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Catriona followed him, away from the gravestones and onto the road, down the hill towards the village. A west wind drove whitecaps onto the shore, and beyond the harbour the water undulated like a blanket shaken by a giant. A band of rain obscured the islands. A few tourists wandered up and down the small promenade. She wondered whether Anna had made it to John O’Groats yet. They had exchanged email addresses. Anna had invited her to visit her in Denmark, and perhaps it was a genuine invitation and perhaps it could be a sanctuary, a bolthole with a safe expanse of sea separating her from Scotland. She could make an excuse. She could ask Calum for enough money to get there. Maybe she could find work.
