Highland Fling

by Anna Larner

  *

  “I thought the hotel was that way.” Alice grabbed Roxanne’s arm, stopping her in her tracks.

  “It is. I need a drink, Alice, and I’m guessing you could do with one too.” Roxanne continued walking in the direction of her favourite watering hole.

  Alice shouted after her, “You had wine at the restaurant.”

  Roxanne called over her shoulder, “Yes. That would be what I call a warmer-upper. Come on, it’s a great pub, you’ll love it.” Roxanne disappeared inside the scuffed brass and dark wood doors of The Brewer’s Arms.

  “What on earth?” Alice followed Roxanne to the bar. “One drink. I am staying for one drink only.”

  Roxanne nodded, straight-faced, and said, “Absolutely. We’ll definitely start with one drink.”

  “Hi, Roxy.” A tipsy Belinda leant heavily into Roxanne, pretty much smothering Roxanne in her cleavage. She then planted a long, lingering kiss on Roxanne’s lips.

  “Hi”—Roxanne cleared her throat—“gorgeous. Erm, let me introduce you…” Alice’s face had completely drained of colour. “Alice, Belinda. Belinda, Alice.”

  “Hi there.” Belinda gave Alice a wink.

  “No.” Alice gasped in horror.

  “No what, honey?” Belinda gave a curious smile, intrigued by Roxanne’s guest.

  Alice looked around the bar. Men leant against pillars talking to other men. Women were playing snooker, drinking pints, laughing. A tall beautiful female figure languished elegantly on the arm of a sofa.

  Alice snapped accusingly, “This is a gay bar, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. We are all very happy indeed. Good luck with this one, Rox.” Belinda mock punched Roxanne on the arm.

  Roxanne watched Belinda curve her way over to a group of women, who all turned and looked at her and Alice, and laughed.

  “Why would you bring me to a gay bar?” Alice’s voice trembled slightly.

  “It’s where I drink.” Roxanne rested her hand on Alice’s very stiff shoulder. “It’s who I am,” Roxanne said gently, watching a flicker of realization pass over Alice’s face.

  Alice said quickly, “And Eve? Is it who she is too?”

  “Yes, it’s very contagious.”

  Roxanne’s deadpan mockery was met with an emphatic, “Go to hell, Roxanne.” Alice swung her bag over her shoulder and made for the door.

  Roxanne grabbed her arm. “And Moira—can she go to hell too?”

  Alice wriggled out of Roxanne’s hold and stormed off, calling over her shoulder, “I don’t know what on earth you mean by that, Roxanne, really I don’t.”

  Roxanne caught the door before it banged and hollered after her, “It’s this way to the hotel. And Alice, I think we both know that you do know what I mean.”

  Alice stopped. When she turned around it was as if someone had let the air out of her; her whole body seemed a little deflated. “No. Moira’s not like that. She wouldn’t do that.” Alice looked at Roxanne, her eyes pleading.

  “I know it’s all a bit fucked up,” Roxanne said with a sympathetic shrug.

  “But what about my dad?” Alice asked anxiously.

  “Let’s take you to the hotel, yes?” As Roxanne walked Alice to the hotel, she checked her phone; there were no messages from Eve.

  Alice’s phone bleeped. “She’s staying a bit longer with her. Apparently, I’m not to wait up.” There was a defeated blankness to Alice’s tone.

  “They need to talk, Alice.”

  “Does Eve know she’s married?”

  Roxanne slowly shook her head.

  *

  It was obvious to Eve that Moira was troubled. Whatever she had on her mind, however, she was evidently finding it difficult to express. If they were to talk that night then Eve knew she would be the one who would have to begin.

  “I was wondering, have you…” Eve paused. Eve knew she needed to know more about Moira, that this was her chance to ask the questions that had waited in the wings like an understudy longing for an audience.

  Moira walked away to retake her seat on the sofa. “Have I…?” Her head tilted, waiting for Eve’s question.

  “I mean…” Eve shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She sighed heavily and filled her kettle. A cold drip of water drizzled down her shirt sleeve, dampening the edges of her cuff. She shivered.

  “Leave the coffee. Come and sit with me.” Moira gestured to the seat next to her.

  Eve settled herself into the opposite edge of the sofa, facing Moira, and tucked a cushion in her lap.

  “Ask me what you need to, Eve.” Moira’s voice was calm, serious.

  “Well, I guess I’m kind of curious, just nosy really, whether you’ve been with a woman before me. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, obviously.” Eve hugged the cushion tight against her. She wasn’t sure why she felt so nervous of Moira’s reply.

  Speaking hesitantly, Moira said, “I met someone when I was at college.” Moira looked at Eve. “I was in my last year.”

  Eve nodded. “Right, of course.” Of course you’ve had girlfriends. I can’t believe I thought I was your first.

  “She was a singer. In a band, The Bells.” Moira’s voice was flat, emotionless. “She was good, she toured.”

  Eve asked, hesitantly, “Was she your girlfriend?”

  “Yes. We were…we were inseparable.” Moira took a deep breath. “When we left college we rented a flat in Inverness. We shared it with her band mates, three lads.” Moira smiled to herself. “It was fun, lots of music, parties, and lots of alcohol. I’d begun my teaching at the local college, I was doing well.”

  “I bet,” Eve said, her heart full of admiration.

  Eve’s appreciative response made Moira blush. “And then…” Moira shrugged. “She went on tour with the band and I couldn’t go with them, you know, work and everything.” Moira stood and went to the window. “Does this open?”

  “Oh yes, just release the clip and push, that’s it. Not too far, mind. Rox nearly fell out the other day.” Eve shook her head.

  Moira leant heavily against the frame. It looked as if she was about to light a cigarette.

  Eve waited for Moira to begin her story again. She wanted to hear what happened. She felt she couldn’t ask.

  “It was probably just as well,” Moira mumbled into the street below.

  “You no longer loved her?” Eve asked, with a shamefully hopeful tone.

  Moira’s voice hardened slightly, bitterness seeping like black oil at the edges of her words. “It didn’t matter whether I loved her or not. The early nineties, they weren’t like today. Only the bravest of people came out, lived openly. You felt very unprotected…exposed. And then there was Section 28.” Moira looked at Eve, who nodded. “I was teaching, I couldn’t risk my career. You see, being a lesbian, announcing to the world that the person you wanted to be with forever was a woman, well, it just didn’t feel like an option for me.” Moira returned her gaze to the pavement outside.

  You wanted to be with her forever? Eve pressed her cushion into her lap.

  Moira continued, “Whenever we were out together, it felt like I was being watched, judged, that any minute someone would say something hurtful. It didn’t bother Iris, but it bothered me. My private life is just that, private.” Moira looked across at Eve.

  Eve felt herself blush. Okay, are you directing that at me? Wait a minute—did you say Iris? The Iris in the McAlisters’ photo? Eve tried to recall the detail of Iris. All that she could remember was that she was beautiful, really beautiful. “So are you still friends? I mean, were you able to stay in touch, when she’d finished touring maybe?”

  Moira shook her head. “I moved out, I came back to Newland. My father had become ill so I came home, nursed him. And then when he died, I took on Foxglove.” Moira walked back towards Eve and sat on the single chair opposite the sofa.

  Eve’s heart thumped in her chest, as she dared to ask, “So there’s been no one else since?”

  Moira looked bla
nkly across at her.

  “Of course,” Eve said quickly. “I mean, I understand you’ve found it hard. I completely understand.”

  Eve worried for Moira’s heart and felt sorry for her, sorry that she had fallen in love at a time when loving a woman openly would have felt almost impossible. She didn’t blame Moira for thinking that she had it easy. In truth, Eve never felt complacent; she shared Moira’s mistrust of society in general. It took no imagining to grasp the anguish when the joy and pride of your relationship was so easily overshadowed and diminished by an ever-present sense of menace.

  “So what about now? How do you feel when you’re with me, do you feel okay?” Eve asked, gently. Gauging Moira Burns’s feelings was, for the most part, like gauging wind direction with an empty flagpole.

  Moira nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “Then stay the night with me. Please.” Eve felt emotion tightening at her throat. She knew she couldn’t bear it if Moira said no.

  “I…” Moira’s words failed her, just when she needed them the most.

  “You’re tired,” Eve said, with an understanding nod. “Absolutely. I totally get that. But we don’t have to…I mean—”

  “No, Eve.” Moira shook her head. “It’s not that.” Moira joined Eve on the sofa, taking Eve’s hands in hers. “There’s something I need to tell you, that I should have told you.”

  Eve looked at Moira as a baby lamb looks at the butcher.

  Moira stroked Eve’s cheek.

  Eve blinked. “Moira, what is it? You can tell me anything.” Eve watched Moira take a long, deep breath.

  “Eve, I’m married.”

  Although Eve heard the words Moira spoke, the impact, the emotional consequence of Moira’s confession seemed unreal, remote, like the approach of something in the distance, just out of focus.

  “Eve, did you hear me?” Moira gently squeezed Eve’s hands.

  Eve freed her hands from Moira’s and stood up.

  “Eve?”

  “I think you’d better leave.” Eve looked at her front door.

  “Eve? Eve, please, please.”

  Eve just stared at Moira—her face so familiar and yet so unrecognizable.

  “I’ll call in the morning, first thing. We can talk properly then, yes?” Moira sniffed hard, as if resisting tears that badgered and threatened. “We’ll talk then, Eve?”

  “No, I’ve got work.”

  “Well, before work then. Please, I need to explain.”

  Eve mumbled, “No, it’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

  Moira gasped. “Don’t worry about it?”

  Eve shrugged.

  Moira held Eve by both arms. “It’s not what you think, please, let me explain. I care about you, Eve, I care about you.”

  Eve, looking down, said nothing.

  Moira dropped her hands from Eve’s arms and turned away. She silently gathered her things and left, as the stranger, Eve now realized, she had always been.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Come on Eve, let me in. Roxanne strained her neck to look up to Eve’s window. Come on, mate. She checked her phone again. No messages.

  She pressed her finger on Eve’s buzzer, causing it to ring continuously, while she redialled Eve’s mobile number.

  “Eve Eddison, you’re scaring the shit out of me. Open the fucking door. Now, Eve.” As Roxanne shouted into her phone, she kept looking up, pulling furiously at the handle of the entrance door.

  “Rox?” Eve appeared around the corner, holding a brown bag of groceries. “Oh my God, what are you doing? I went to get some milk. Wait.” Eve opened the main front door. “You were about to pull the bloody door off its hinges. Oh my God, what’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” You don’t know I know, do you? Okay, that’s good. Yeah, probably best if you don’t find out about me outing Moira to Alice either. Nope, you don’t need to know about that. Okay. Take a breath. “Nothing, nothing’s wrong. It’s just, well, I’ve been worried, a lot, all day. It was really selfish of you. Why didn’t you reply to my text and calls?”

  “Worried?”

  “Yes, about you and Moira. How it went last night—whether she, whether you…you know.”

  Eve shrugged her way out the lift and inside her flat. “Soz. I couldn’t find my charger. I mean, I had it yesterday.”

  Eve stood in her hallway, her groceries at her feet, her arms folded in front of her, as Roxanne rummaged in the rucksack hanging from Eve’s coat peg. A brolly, scarf, lip balm, out-of-date cinema timetable, and a browning banana were thrown on the floor. Roxanne pushed the missing charger into Eve’s chest.

  Eve faked surprise. “Oh right, that’s great. Thanks, Rox, I’ll just—”

  “Plug in a fully charged phone?”

  “Tea?” Eve filled the kettle, flicked on the switch, stuffed two tea bags into mugs, and grappled with the milk carton.

  “Leave it, sit,” Roxanne said with a tone that made it clear that Eve had no choice in the matter. “You just have to give me a one word answer to this, right? It’s not hard, okay?”

  Eve nodded.

  Roxanne asked, “Are you still having a Highland fling with Moira? One word reply only—yes or no.” Roxanne watched Eve’s eyes flood with tears.

  Without answering, Eve stood and returned to the kitchen and filled the two mugs with the boiling water.

  Roxanne took a deep breath. “Well? Eve?”

  “No, okay, no.”

  Roxanne lay back on Eve’s sofa.

  Eve spluttered, “Are you satisfied now?”

  “Eve, I didn’t mean to—Eve.”

  Eve rushed to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. It was just over two hours later when she re-emerged.

  Speaking softly, Roxanne said, “I ordered us a pizza. It’s in the oven keeping warm.”

  Eve replied with an embarrassed, “Thanks.”

  Roxanne turned off the television. “Grand Designs. We’ve already seen it, that Kevin McCloud’s such a bastard. He couldn’t have been more delighted when they nearly bankrupted themselves, poor sods.”

  Eve bit numbly into her pizza, confessing with a full mouth, “She’s married.” Eve took another bite, even though she hadn’t finished her first. “Not divorced, Rox, married, like right now. I slept with a married woman.” Eve paused and momentarily stopped chewing. “God, what will my parents say? Oh no, what will Esther think? They must never find out.”

  “I’m sorry, mate, that’s shit. She should have told you the minute she suspected you liked her. To be honest, I think you’re better off without her. You’re too good for her, Evie. So how did you leave things? Eve?” Roxanne moved the pizza away. “Is it over for good?”

  Eve shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, yes.”

  “And Moira, as far as she’s concerned?”

  Eve shrugged again.

  Roxanne stared at Eve. “Right.”

  “I feel a bit sick.” Eve’s hand lay against her heart.

  “I’m not surprised.” Roxanne wrapped her arms around Eve and held her tightly.

  “How could she do that? I really thought she liked me, Rox.”

  “She did, I’m sure, Evie.”

  “Did she tell you that?” Eve’s broken expression carried a last glimmer of pitiful hope.

  “She didn’t have to, mate.”

  Roxanne could tell that Moira cared for Eve. But it didn’t change the fact that Roxanne simply hated what Moira had done to her best friend.

  *

  When Moira left Eve’s flat, she wandered the streets, numb to the rain against her face, numb to life itself. When she could eventually face returning to her hotel, she hoped to find Alice asleep. She wanted to tiptoe into their twin room and into bed unnoticed. Instead, Moira found Alice sitting up, her bedside light on, speed flicking through the television channels.

  “You couldn’t sleep?” Moira asked as she took her coat off and hung it up.

  Without wishing for Alice to see her distress, she quickl
y collected her nightwear from her case and hurried into the bathroom.

  “Sleep?” Alice said. “How could I? I was worried about you.”

  Moira looked at her face in the bathroom mirror, at her pink cheeks stained with her tears. Taking a deep breath, she summoned the energy to reply, “There’s no need for you to worry about me. So you got back okay?”

  “What’s going on, Moira?”

  Moira came out the bathroom and climbed into bed. “It’s been a long day, Alice, let’s talk tomorrow, yes?”

  Alice turned off the television. “No, let’s talk now.”

  “Really, Alice, I don’t want to talk right now. I’m tired and need to sleep.”

  “Well, I’m tired too but I need to know the truth.” Alice paused. “You owe me that much.”

  Moira switched on her side light. “The truth?” She felt a terrible sense of panic, her chest pressing vice-like around her heart. “What do you mean by the truth?”

  “The truth about you and Eve. The truth about what’s going on with you. The truth about you.”

  “Please, Alice. I can’t—”

  “Roxanne told me that she and Eve are gay.”

  “Right.” Moira swallowed hard.

  “She took me to a gay bar tonight, would you believe?”

  “Roxanne took you to a gay bar?” Anger flamed up in Moira at the thought of Roxanne’s interference, but then a sudden self-awareness tempered her feelings, for she couldn’t help but realize that she had been the one who had left Alice in Roxanne’s care. She had brought Alice here in the first place. What on earth did she think would happen? Had she lost her sense? How was this terrible night not inevitable?

  Alice nodded. “Have you been to a gay bar before, Moira?”

  Moira shook her head.

  Alice scrambled across the gap between them and sat perched on the edge of Moira’s bed. “I knew it! I knew Roxanne had got it wrong and that you weren’t gay, I knew it. And I bet you didn’t know Eve was gay either, did you? I’m sure she fancies you, you know. You’ll need to set her straight about that.”