The Angel in the Stone

by RL McKinney

  She washed four carrots, topped and tailed them, and chopped them into small cubes. They went into the pot with the onions and turnip. She poured in hot water and crumbled a stock cube with her fingers, watching the yellow powder dissolve into the liquid. The smell of soup filled the kitchen. She put the lid on the pot, poured herself a thumb-width of whisky and added water and an ice cube. She’d never cared for the taste of whisky but it stopped her mind tumbling around so much. It helped her to relax. It was only a tiny dram and surely Calum wouldn’t miss it. He drank too much of it himself anyway. He was his father’s son that way, and in many others.

  Both of the boys were far more like Jack than they were like her. They had inherited his extremes: his wild joys and red rages. His busy legs and his busy mind. As children, they could never sit still. The worst behaviour always happened at Mass: poking, kicking, bumping around like monkeys, sliding down onto the floor, making rude bodily noises. Arched eyebrows and disapproving looks came from every direction. Jack, God rest his soul, was no help. He refused to come. He said if she was going to insist on subjecting his sons to that weekly torment, she would do it on her own. Finn was only young but Calum should have been able to control himself. Around his brother, he seemed to regress.

  She tried banishing them to their rooms after Mass, but within a couple of weeks they found a way to rig up a rope and climb out the window. Off they’d go with their dad, the three of them, away into the hills for the rest of the day. Jack must have given them the rope. He was a wicked man. ‘Incorrigible’ was the word her mother used. He had the devil and too much whisky in him. She’d been well warned from the first time Jack came courting. He’s not for you, a ghràidh. All the little sayings. The finer the musician, the poorer the husband. You will never be done saying goodbye to him.

  The warnings had come true after all, but not in the way her mother had predicted.

  The sound of the pipes entered her ears. Mary closed her eyes and listened. Sometimes her imaginings were so real it seemed like she could reach out and grasp them, except when she tried she found out they weren’t there.

  Sometimes imaginings did actually become things. She imagined Finn’s death, many times over, before it happened.

  She followed the sound, through the garden and around to the front of the house, over the road onto the beach. Calum was standing on the stones at the end of the beach where Jack always used to play, the drones over his shoulder, the Black Watch tartan bag under his arm. Jack’s pipes had been lost or stolen years ago, but from a distance these looked just like them.

  And Calum, standing there with his feet slightly apart like that. If she let her eyes fall out of focus he became Jack. They had been the best times, those long light hours of early summer, mild evenings with just enough breeze to keep the midges from flying. She would sit with a book and Jack piped, out there on the rocks so the sound went out to sea. The boys dove around the water like seals or disappeared into the woods. They could be out of sight and out of mind for a little while. That respite had always been her precious time. Perhaps she had been selfish that way. A mother wasn’t supposed to be grateful when her children were out of sight, but she was.

  Jack had wanted to move to Glasgow, where the work was more plentiful and the children would have opportunities they’d never have here. But they wouldn’t have this, she said. A grey terrace somewhere, broken tarmac to play on, the noise of city traffic day and night. She would look out across the bay and tell him, not for my boys. Not for any money. So they would grow wild and they would be fine.

  Except they weren’t.

  She returned to the present and focused on Calum again. The tones were punctuated by squawks and wrong notes. Jack never made a noise as awful as that. Catriona was sitting on the rocks behind him with her fingers in her ears. She looked over as Mary began to pick her way over the rounded stones.

  ‘Stay there, Gran,’ she called, skipping over on her toes. ‘It’s too slippy. You’ll fall.’

  ‘Where did he get those pipes?’

  ‘They’re my granddad’s.’

  ‘Your granddad’s pipes were stolen.’

  ‘No they weren’t, Gran. He found them.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mary said.

  Catriona shrugged but didn’t argue. They stood together on the sand and Calum started to play a march. Mary watched his fingers flicker over the holes. The sound was wrong. They couldn’t be Jack’s pipes. She scowled and remembered her soup.

  ‘The soup will be boiling over.’ She turned away from Catriona and went back to the house. The pot lid was rattling and spewing steam. She turned down the heat, lifted the lid, stirred the contents. She could smell that it had burned at the bottom. Tears came to her eyes. She couldn’t keep track of anything, couldn’t even focus her mind long enough to make a pot of vegetable soup.

  Calum and Catriona followed her in.

  ‘You’ve made me burn the soup with all that racket.’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’ He didn’t even look at it.

  ‘It won’t taste good.’

  ‘It will. Don’t worry, Mum. See, I found the pipes.’

  ‘Where were they?’

  ‘Just where you said. In the suitcase, in the eaves.’

  ‘Whose eaves?’

  ‘Yours, Mum. In your flat.’

  ‘Who put them there?’

  ‘You did. Look … come here.’ He showed her the instrument.

  She touched the frayed black tassel at the end of the chord. ‘Jack’s pipes were stolen.’

  ‘No they weren’t. They’re right here. I’ve had the reeds replaced.’

  It was impossible to know whether he was telling the truth. ‘They don’t sound the way they did when your father played them.’

  Calum laughed. ‘That’s because I can’t play them. I haven’t lifted a set of pipes since before he died.’

  ‘Finn was always the better piper.’

  ‘I know he was. I never liked them, to be honest.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘No. You look upset, Mum.’

  Her eyes were watering again, but she couldn’t explain it to him. It felt so new, all this loss. She shook her head, trying to dislodge it. ‘I’ve burnt the soup. It won’t taste good.’

  Catriona dipped a spoon into the pot and sipped a little. ‘It tastes fine to me.’

  She was a sweet girl, Mary thought. There was a kindness in her, underneath all that silly get up. ‘Will you have a bowl?’

  ‘Yes please, Gran, I’m starving.’

  ‘Calum?’

  ‘Aye.’ He put the pipes into their case.

  ‘It’s burnt a wee bit. I heard the pipes and I thought … well … I got distracted.’

  Calum sighed. ‘It’s fine, Mum.’

  AXE

  Life moved at a different speed in Glendarach. Nobody rushed for anything, nobody cared about being late, nobody checked their watches or their phones. It was the light and the land that reminded you of the hours and the weeks passing. Catriona counted the yellow leaves and knew that the time for a decision was coming: stay or go. Aberdeen or Edinburgh. Back to university and to hell with Kyle, or quit and let him win.

  They worked most of the day in the woods, removing low branches, clearing excess undergrowth, creating space and allowing light to reach the young trees. Calum turned his axe on a dense thicket of rhododendrons, merciless in a way that made her almost pity the bushes. Why he had to bust a gut with the axe when there was a perfectly good chainsaw in his shed, she had no idea. If she asked, he’d probably lecture her about the virtues of doing things the hard way. Catriona decided that sometimes it was better not to ask.

  She’d been cutting smaller branches with a bow saw and loading them into the trailer to drag back to the woodshed. She was weary but satisfied by her expanding stack of firewood. It had taken her a while to find a stance that gave her enough purchase with the saw, but now it was feeling more comfortable and her cuts were long and smooth. He
r arms didn’t ache as much as they had when she’d first arrived and she’d lost some of the weight she’d gained at uni. It happened so effortlessly when you did physical work. Your mind cleared and your body took over. Hours could pass and you could think about anything you wanted, or nothing at all. Edinburgh was dreary student rooms and interminable lectures, waking up sticky after half-forgotten nights out and everything coloured with the dark red shadow of threat. But from here, those things were irrelevant. Waking up was easy here.

  Maybe this was the point of not using the chainsaw.

  She paused, picked a couple of blackberries and ate them, watched Calum swing the axe with brutal efficiency. ‘Remind me not to fall out with you when you’ve got that thing in your hand.’

  He backed out of the devastation and straightened up, rubbing his right shoulder as he came over to the trailer and looked in. He didn’t look displeased, and she’d learned to take that as a compliment. Then he held out the axe. ‘I call this the Mood Adjustor. You want a shot?’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She slipped her fingers around the handle. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Swing it hard.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ At least he didn’t patronise her by reminding her to keep her body parts out of the way. She walked around the far side of the thicket and found a stretch of clean, smooth trunk. The rhododendron had grown into a bonny tree, but Calum was determined to keep the invaders off his land. She supposed that centuries ago, the Macdonalds of old would have been swinging their axes at less inert enemies: Vikings, Campbells, Redcoats, others she had no idea about. She knew nothing of their history, but she thought the name was one you could be proud of. Catriona Macdonald sounded good. Better than Smith, which had always felt so workaday. Macdonald evoked something – this place, the language he and Granny Mary spoke, a kinship with all of those people in that graveyard. It would be an almighty slap in her mum’s face if she decided to take Calum’s name now. Jenny didn’t deserve that.

  She faced the wood and fingered the blade, remembering. Remembering Calum the way he’d been five years ago. Remembering the way she’d treated him that day. Remembering Edinburgh, and that house in the woods. The laughter of those girls at that party. Their horrid, high-pitched laughter. Remembering the shock of the cold water hitting her.

  Then she clutched the handle with both hands, touched it to the trunk, drew it back and swung as hard as she could. The blade embedded itself deep in the wood and sent jarring reverberations up her arms. With a grunt, she pulled it out and swung again.

  At first the axe bounced and refused to hit the same spot twice, and it seemed like the wood had some impervious inner core. Her arms hurt and felt too weak to keep swinging. She had stopped fighting Kyle because she’d been too tired, too wasted by the stuff they’d both been smoking. Maybe she’d stopped fighting because she’d thought it would be easier just to let him have her at last and then forget about it. Like a child pestering for a toy, he’d play with her once and realise how boring she was. It was only sex.

  Eventually the axe began to land cleanly in the same cut and small chips began to fly out. She chopped until her muscles turned to liquid. A wedge opened up and the giant shrub began to creak as it leaned toward her. She stepped to the side, then pushed on the trunk and watched the rhododendron subside, its shiny green foliage rustling and crushing under its own weight. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she lifted the cut end and dragged the full trunk out of the thicket. Calum was sitting on the back of the trailer, whittling at a stick with a pocketknife, singing under his breath.

  ‘Glad one of us is working, anyway,’ she said, and dropped the axe at his feet. ‘You knackered, auld man?’

  ‘Just on my break, boss.’ He poured tea into the cap of his flask and handed it to her. ‘Tell me you don’t feel better.’

  ‘Aye, I was pretending the tree was somebody’s neck.’

  ‘Pity the poor bastard who gets you as an executioner. It’d be a long, painful death.’

  ‘Excuse me, I cut that thing down in ten swings.’

  ‘Fifty swings, more like.’ He held up a rough-hewn implement that might eventually resemble a spoon. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Aye, great, if you want a muckle big skelf o’wood in your tongue with every bite.’

  He laughed and swung it toward her face. ‘Good for beating insolent teenagers with, though.’

  ‘Don’t even think about it. I’ve still got the axe.’ She picked up the handle and danced away from him, notes of laughter escaping when she opened her mouth. They subsided and the forest gathered around them again. She thought back on that scene at home five years ago. The way he couldn’t look at anyone and seemed so humiliated by himself. He’d been ill and she’d been cruel. ‘I wish I’d come here before now.’

  He looked at her curiously. ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess I felt ashamed about the things I said to you last time.’

  ‘You were fourteen.’ He shrugged. ‘You were right. I wouldn’t have been fit company for you or anyone else.’

  There was little relief in this, only more shame. ‘I never understood what happened to you. How did you get like that?’

  Calum sighed, folded his knife and slipped it back into his pocket. ‘I don’t know. There isn’t always a reason. Since Finn died, or maybe before that, I felt like I was just … play acting at being normal. Like I was wearing the costume of a sane person, and actually beneath it I was this big messy ball of … barely contained stuff, like a reactor core, and I went through my life shit scared of being exposed.’

  It was as if he’d peeled back her own skin and described what he’d seen. The air cooled against her damp shirt and made her shiver. She wanted him to know without having to tell him. Why couldn’t somebody invent a way to transfer information from brain to brain, like you could between computers? It was the saying of it that hurt. She glanced towards the treetops.

  ‘I feel like that all the time.’

  ‘I thought you might.’ His look was sharp, full of intention. ‘It’s not nice when you melt down, Cat, trust me. I should have got help after Finn died, but I didn’t. I was pretty near the edge then and someone managed to pull me back.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mum. I don’t think she fully realises.’

  So why didn’t you stay, she wondered. And why didn’t you tell her? And why didn’t you tell me? Questions opened like wrappers onto more questions, a never-ending game of pass the parcel. How would you know when to stop? What if you kept asking and unwrapping until you ran out of questions and found out there was no answer?

  ‘What about now?’

  ‘It’s an easier act now.’

  She sat beside him. The woods whispered and creaked, and the breeze brought the smell of low tide into their clearing. There was a cooler edge to the air today, a moist autumnal smell on the breeze. She propped her elbows on her knees and pressed her sticky hands over her eyes. ‘I’m scared about going back.’

  ‘What are you scared of? Is it this boy?’

  ‘Yeah. And I’m afraid … of myself … that I won’t be able to cope with things. I’m scared I might … do what you did. Lose my disguise.’

  Calum’s hand fell onto her back and rested there, a broad, reassuring warmth. ‘Catriona, what did he do to you?’

  ‘He … ’ she took a deep breath. If she was ever going to name the thing, it had to be now. ‘He raped me. I was drunk, at a party, and he carried me into the shower and made me suck him off. And then he held me against the wall and … you know. Fucked me.’

  Edinburgh, May 2014

  Kyle wasn’t just drunk. He’d taken something, some kind of tablet that she didn’t know the name of, and it made him crazy. Wild, horny crazy that was hilarious and terrifying at the same time. He held forth in the kitchen, proclaiming Scotland’s forthcoming liberation while two girls painted his bare chest blue with their fingers. Enjoying the job enough
to call it foreplay. Catriona didn’t know where the paint had come from, or the tablets, or the girls. Somebody was laughing, freaky shrieky laughter, a girl or a high-pitched boy. It might have been that they were laughing at her, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It might have been coming through the air vents like gas.

  She didn’t know whose big modern house this was, in the woods at the end of a long, dark drive. Somebody’s parents were loaded, and clearly absent. She wanted to leave and walk home, but they’d come in a taxi and she didn’t know where they were. Kyle claimed these were ‘his people’ but she had never met them before. He hadn’t bothered to introduce her to anyone.

  The combination of vodka and hash had tipped the whole world to one side. She had to concentrate to stay on the sofa and re-order her surroundings. While the world keeled, the party continued, a dark and sweaty scrum of bodies and music. She tried to focus on what Kyle was doing with those girls. She leaned into the sofa cushions and tried to think herself back straight, but strands of her mind kept spinning off out of control. There was something wrong with gravity. It felt better when she closed her eyes, but she was so sleepy and you couldn’t go to sleep at a party. Nobody was bothering her, though. It was like they couldn’t see her. Maybe a wee doze would make her feel better. Just for a minute.

  A girl said, ‘Aw, bless! Look, it’s Sleeping Beauty.’

  Another said, ‘Sleeping, anyway. Don’t know about Beauty.’

  More squawking laughter, looming music, a jolt as a body dropped onto the sofa beside her. Catriona opened her eyes and realised it was herself they were talking about. Kyle, now with half his face painted, shoved his hand between her back and the cushions and hauled her onto his lap.