The Angel in the Stone

by RL McKinney

  ‘Come here, sleepy Cat.’ He bumped his lips roughly onto hers.

  ‘Kyle … ’ she pushed him away. ‘How long was I sleeping?’

  ‘Hours and hours! Is it past wee Kitty Cat’s bedtime?’

  She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. He looked like a demented clown. His lips were red with someone else’s lipstick. She was bursting for a pee. She tried to squirm off his lap, but he held on, his fingers digging into her waist.

  ‘Come on, Kyle, let go.’ The words came out in a breathy gust.

  ‘No. I’m not letting you go. Anything could happen to you in this den of iniquity.’

  She thought she might be sick. ‘Kyle, I need the toilet … please.’

  ‘I’ll take you to the toilet.’ He gripped her more tightly and stood up, cradled her in his arms like a toddler, bashing her knees off the doorframe as he staggered out of the room. She wrapped her arms around his neck. At least he was hers again. Just hers. Whatever those other girls thought they were going to get, he had come back to her.

  They went down a long corridor, bumping against walls. Bedrooms on the right and left, writhing bodies in various stages and combinations of intercourse: two, three, more people in a bed, girls and boys, legs and breasts and arses all tangled and layered. None of them seemed to care about being seen, but she didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to connect any of these bodies with the face of someone she’d have to sit beside in a lecture. She stopped struggling and turned her head into Kyle’s chest. In a large, entirely white-tiled bathroom, he fumbled for the shower door and dumped her inside. Her legs collapsed under her and before she could stand, he turned on the water. She screamed as the cold stream hit her.

  ‘Kyle!’ She struggled to her feet but her legs were so wobbly. ‘What the fuck? You bastard!’

  He was leaning on the door so she couldn’t push it open, laughing madly and stripping off his remaining clothes. ‘Let’s have a shower, Cat. We’re dirty. We’re so fucking dirty. We need a shower.’

  Catriona managed to turn off the water, but Kyle kicked his boxers aside and stepped in, pressed himself against her, pinning her to the wall. He hit the tap again and the water cascaded over both of them, now warming.

  ‘Cat, my love, relax.’ He kissed her and petted her hair. Blue paint ran in streaks down his body and pooled around his feet. ‘This is good, baby. Trust me, you want this. Come on, let’s get your clothes off. What are you playing at, having a shower in your clothes, daft girl.’

  ‘I don’t want to do this,’ she moaned.

  ‘Of course you do.’ He caught the bottom of her dress and pulled it over her head, then unhooked her bra. ‘Jesus, girl, look at those peaches. So sweet. Cat, you’re beautiful, what are you afraid of? I won’t hurt you.’ He pressed his face into her breasts and his dick against her belly. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down to her knees.

  ‘Have a taste, Kitten.’

  She closed her eyes and gave in.

  She’d held it in and held it in and held it in for so many weeks, and now it came out like a fully armed torpedo. The most overused word in the English language, or at least in the Scots one. It rolled off the tongue so easily most of the time that it became meaningless. But that’s what Kyle did: a deed, not a word. He fucked me. He. Fucked. Me. He did that. To me.

  She couldn’t look at Calum to tell whether he had winced or closed his eyes or paled with paternal fury. He was so still beside her, he might have been holding his breath or he might have become petrified and cracked and turned to ash. He didn’t speak. There was half a minute of poisoned, droning silence. She stared at the ground, and out of the corners of her eyes she could see movements in the woods: birds and insects moving, brave because of their stillness, gathering back into the space. If they stayed still long enough, the insects would crawl over their skin and lay eggs and hatch out, and their clothes would rot away and fungi would grow from their damp skin. They would be subsumed into the moist bed of leaves and moss like those people who had lived here long ago and left only rectangles of stone behind as evidence.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Oh Cat.’

  She swallowed hard and wanted so badly not to cry.

  ‘Did you report it?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I mean, how could I? We’d gone out before. How could I make anyone believe he forced me? I couldn’t face that.’

  ‘Your mum doesn’t know?’

  ‘No. Don’t lecture me, okay, I know I should have told her. I should have told you. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why are you apologising?’ He stared at her, his face almost childlike in its disbelief. ‘Dear God, Catriona, why are you apologising to me?’

  ‘Because I’ve ruined the way you’ll think of me forever.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ His hands were in his hair, tufts emerging from between his fingers. Did he put his hands to his head to keep something out or hold something else in?

  ‘That’s why I came here,’ she said. ‘He kept trying to call me and I was afraid if I stayed at home this summer he’d find me.’

  ‘Tell me his name.’

  ‘Kyle. Kyle Hunter. Why?’

  ‘Because if he ever shows up here I will do something to him with that axe, I promise you.’

  She knew that he meant it, if only for the moment. ‘It doesn’t make me feel better to hear you talk like that.’

  ‘Well it makes me feel better.’

  ‘He won’t come here. He doesn’t know where I am.’

  ‘You can’t hide here forever.’

  ‘Why not? I like it here, and I’m not hiding any more than you are.’

  ‘This is where I live. What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because I can see that thing in you too. I can see you the way you were five years ago. It’s like … a shadow sitting beside you. You know he’s still there, and you’re scared of him.’

  ‘I can live with him. He reminds me not to take anything for granted. This isn’t about me. You shouldn’t have to live with what this bastard did to you. You shouldn’t have to live with letting him get away with it.’

  ‘I have no choice. Things happen. They happen to girls all the time, you know that. And they always will.’

  ‘There’s no justice in that. He should face the law.’

  ‘I can’t go through that. It’s too late now. Can you just accept that, please?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve failed miserably at keeping you safe, and now you’re asking me just to accept it, and I don’t know if I can.’

  She lurched to her feet and put three long strides between them, before turning around and shouting, ‘You were never there! You were away my whole life! You know nothing about me. Don’t you dare say anything about keeping me safe, like you ever once cared about that. So you have no right to tell me what to do, Calum. That’s what you have to accept, because that’s the choice you made, and at least you had a choice!’

  There were so many more things she could say. Things she could scream into the woods about lies and broken promises and how things that looked so shiny from far away always turned out disappointing. She could hurt him with these things, perhaps irreparably, and maybe she wanted to, but she didn’t want to have to leave.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, very quietly, and his voice was on the verge of breaking. He threw his tools into the trailer and the gloves on top of them. ‘Let’s get this put away.’

  He pulled the trailer out of the woods, and she walked several feet behind him with the axe over her shoulder. They stacked the cut logs in the woodshed and he began cutting up the smaller branches for kindling. He worked without looking up, a horse turning a wheel, keeping his thoughts to himself. What would he do with the thing she’d just told him? She didn’t want to be responsible for him getting ill again.

  ‘Dad … ’

  He paused, mid-cut. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m fine, all right? I don’t want you to worry about me.’

  ‘That’s
bullshit.’ Calum left the saw twanging deep in a log and glared at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fine is the disguise.’

  ‘Honestly, I am.’

  ‘No you’re not. Fine is what you say you are because if you say I’m in pain, everyone runs a mile. We live in a world where people take Prozac in secret because it’s too embarrassing to say to anyone, no, actually, I’m not fine. Don’t tell me you’re fine, Cat. Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘What do you want me to say, then?’

  ‘Tell me something real. Tell me how you really are.’

  ‘Okay!’ she almost shouted. ‘I’ll tell you then. I feel disgusting. I feel like something died inside me. I feel like if I ever slept with anyone again, they’d smell it, and all this … rotten stuff would come out of me.’ She stopped short of saying out of my cunt.

  He waited. Did he really want to hear more of this?

  ‘I feel like I’ll never be able to have a normal relationship with anyone now. I feel like I hate everybody in the world except you and Granny Mary. I feel like I’d rather die than go back to university and have to pretend I’m fine.’

  He paused for a moment, chest rising and falling as if he couldn’t quite get his breath, cleared his throat and said, ‘That’s better.’

  EAGLE

  Calum left a note on the kitchen table, I HAVE GONE FOR A PADDLE in black capitals, and went out the back door, a bottle of water, a flask of tea and a cheese roll in his rucksack for later. His stomach wasn’t ready for food and his eyes stung at the brightness of the morning. Nausea hung around, the taste of whisky lingering at the back of his throat. A shadowy memory of hurling into a gorse bush halfway home from the pub, rinsing his mouth, falling into bed. He’d slept badly, drifting between nightmares before waking in sweaty clothes, the bed listing port and starboard.

  Eejit.

  This shit’s hard enough without a hangover.

  He tried to swallow but didn’t have enough saliva. The hangover hadn’t even started yet; he was still hammered.

  He needed to forget. He needed to bail. Everyone had to, some time or other. Julie’s bed would have been a better escape, but she was away back to Glasgow and would be there until she finished the Simpson commission. It might be weeks.

  He’d been sick. Then he had crumpled onto his knees at the side of the road and told Abby and Johnny everything about Cat, and about Finn and his mother. ‘I can’t do this, Abby. I can’t deal with this shit. I’m gonna lose the plot, I know I am. I can’t go there again.’

  Abby had her arms around him. She rocked him and stroked his hair. He’d been blubbering like a baby. Honestly? Had he really done that? Jesus.

  He dragged the kayak down the drive, almost blind with alcohol and embarrassment, faster than was comfortable for either his head or his body. His knee cracked and crunched with each step. The other one grumbled too, having carried more than its share of the load for twenty-one years. It hurt. They both hurt, more than usual. Bits of himself were grinding together, the structure was weakening, just starting to creak. Nearer fifty than forty, you have to start to expect these things. Nearer fifty than forty and you’re on your knees spilling your guts and a skinful of whisky at the side of the road, what do you expect?

  He needed not to think. He paddled fast away from the shore, pulling against the flood of the early tide, and alcoholic sweat oozed down his forehead, nipped his eyes, dripped from the end of his nose. Leaving the bay, he rounded Bert and Georgie’s headland, eyes seeking the top of the eagles’ tree. One of the juveniles was visible from this distance, hulking on the edge of the platform, an early riser waiting for his breakfast. The other one was out of view. It must have fledged already.

  He forced himself to maintain the pace, and finally ran out of steam far to the south of his normal turnaround point. He collapsed forward, lungs heaving. Whisky-flavoured bile burned his throat and rose into his mouth. He spat it into the water and listened to his own breath. It rasped a bit, but less than his head.

  The water was very still, the breeze yet to wake with the warmth of the day. A salty haze hung low, blurring the skyline of the islands to the west and the long, jutting silhouette of Ardnamurchan to the south. To his left, a stretch of uninhabited coastline, broken by burns that spilled over shell sand beaches, a long way from any road-end. He grounded the boat on a tiny arc of beach, took the rucksack and walked uphill from the southern end of the beach, through a ring of beech trees, towards the rounded hump of the hill. On top, he found a tumble of stones, the remains of an ancient dwelling or fortification that commanded the view of the surrounding lower ground and sea. The scattered slabs of slate poked his feet through the thin rubber soles of his water shoes as he climbed over them, and the combination of alcohol and the sweeping vista made him feel dizzy.

  A small curve of wall remained standing towards the back of the structure. He approached it gingerly and looked for a comfortable place to sit among the stones, stirring up a gathering of crows. As they flapped into the air, he saw something where they’d been, just down the hill, on the grass at the base of the structure. A soft brown heap. Feathers lifted by the breeze from an otherwise motionless corpse.

  He whispered, ‘Oh crap,’ and closed his eyes. His eyelids formed a screen, and on it he could see Finn lying just like that, on his back.

  His heart skittered. He half climbed, half slid down to it, legs almost buckling beneath him as he knelt. It was the second young eagle; there could be no mistaking a bird that might have stood almost half his height. Its massive hooked beak was open, revealing its tongue as though it had been panting. He didn’t dare touch it, but the only injury he could see was the eye, which had been taken by the crows. Blackflies gathered in the socket.

  Finn had bounced and slid about ten metres further down the hill. Calum launched himself off the ground and collapsed again, his own scream repeating around the walls of the corrie. Pain drew black curtains at the edges of his vision and filled his ears with a droning zoom. He managed to haul himself down to where Finn lay before he passed out, face pressed into his brother’s shirt.

  The crows chattered behind him, little ghosts hopping around the peripheries.

  ‘Go on, fuck off.’ He flapped his arms. They lifted themselves a few feet further down the hill again, but not away.

  He sat down heavily beside the eagle and tried to work out what he was supposed to do, kicking his feet towards the crows that sidled closer whenever he stopped moving.

  ‘It’s poisoned, you idiots!’ he shouted at them. ‘You want to die?’ And then worse possibilities materialised. If one of the parents had brought poisoned meat back to the nest, the whole family could die.

  ‘Oh my God, are they dead?’ A female voice. Geordie accent. Footsteps, scrambling through the scree field, the chuffing breath of the person running towards him and Finn. He opened his eyes and saw Finn’s outstretched hand, fingers open like they’d been reaching for something. He lifted his head and tried to move. A sledgehammer came down on his knee.

  A man appeared at his side, brown beard, red cheeks. A moment later, a woman.

  ‘Help my brother,’ he managed to say. He was fading out again.

  The woman felt Finn’s neck. Her mouth opened but she didn’t say anything. She shook her head at her companion.

  ‘I’ll go for help,’ the man said. He stood up and dropped his backpack beside her. ‘Try to keep him awake. Give him some tea.’

  ‘Hurry, Dougie,’ she said. Then turned back to Calum, her breath shaking. ‘It’s okay. Dougie’s fast. It won’t take him long to get down. Let me give you some tea.’ With trembling hands, she unzipped Dougie’s pack and pulled out a flask. ‘My name’s Alison. Can you tell me yours?’

  ‘Calum. My brother’s Finn. Can you please help him? I’m all right, I’ve just done something to my leg.’

  ‘Your leg’s broken, Calum. Try to stay still. Here.’ She was trying to force the cup into his hand. ‘Drink some of this.’
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  ‘Would you just please try to wake Finn up?’

  She began to cry, tears streaking down her scarlet cheeks. ‘I can’t. I’m so sorry, but I can’t.’

  He learned later that Alison and Dougie followed the ambulance to the hospital. The next week they drove all the way to Arisaig from Newcastle for Finn’s funeral. It had been years now since he’d spoken to them, but their number was still in his address book. If it was still their number.

  There was nothing to do but leave the eagle where it lay and paddle back. At home he pulled out an Ordnance Survey map and found the place where the eagle was. He marked it with a red pen and phoned the police.

  WHEESHT

  You’d think a person had been murdered. Police came and went over the following days, notices appeared around the village, accusations trickled. The eagle and the referendum jumbled themselves together in conversations, so that the fate of the bird began to represent the fate of the nation. Everyone they met had a different spin.

  If we can’t look after our wildlife, we can’t look after ourselves.

  It’s hard enough for crofters already. A bird like that would take a lamb, and do we really want to live in a country that cares more about animals than people?

  This is the work of the absentee landlords who own all of us.

  If we vote Yes, we can kick them out forever.

  If we vote Yes, we’ll be even more reliant on them than ever.

  Catriona grew tired of the arguments and stopped listening. She and Calum worked on a loft conversion and the repair of an old byre. He was quiet, even quieter than usual, scarcely issuing a word beyond necessary instructions or requests, and everything became still except for the sounds of their tools and footsteps. Even when the stillness threatened to freeze her, she found she had nothing to say.

  She lifted potatoes and weeded the garden and cut kindling while he taught fiddle lessons. Bert and Georgie kept a vigil watch on the nest and reported that the parents were still dutifully bringing food to the remaining youngster, showing no sign of illness. It was determined that the fledgling had scavenged poisoned meat, and the investigation into the source continued.