‘Where is he now?’
‘He just went on. To the north.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No.’
‘You’re lucky to be alive, by the sound of it. Did you speak to him?’
‘A bit. He said he was on the boats.’
‘Everybody here’s been on the boats. Except red-haired women.’ The doctor put up his hands defensively when she looked up at him. ‘Apologies. It’s one of the fishermen’s superstitions.’
Even though it was after eleven the bedroom was filled with a milky light. Things could be made out – the mirror reflecting the not-completely-dark sky, the Victorian picture of cattle drinking, the wardrobe and fireplace. There were still slivers of light in the west. It had been the longest day recently but she couldn’t remember how long ago. The window was open an inch or two at the bottom and the net curtains furled and unfurled in the draught. The whisky was not doing the trick as the doctor had promised it would. Despite having had no sleep the night before she found it difficult to get over. She kept seeing him. Him. The fucking thug. To wrench herself away from such images was difficult. And the young men of the town did not help – gunning their engines and squealing their tyres as they cornered into the Square. When they drove off, in the silence which followed, she could hear the sound of geese. They were somewhere in the sea loch and the racket they made was halfway between lamentation and laughter. She’d never heard anything like it. Images of him kept leaping into her head making her angry. Sick, as well. She kept swallowing hard, keeping things down. It was hard to get rid of. His eyes. That upper lip. His stupid boy’s knife. The pain he caused her. Maybe the urge to throw up was the tablets – or the alcohol – she wasn’t used to the taste of whisky. She remembered it from childhood – from her mother’s remedy for toothache. Whisky painted onto the hurting tooth. The doctor had urged her to a second drink and she knew she shouldn’t have taken it because he poured them large. But when she’d seen all the paintings on the walls – abstract landscapes by Barbara Rae, still lives by Elizabeth Blackadder and Anne Redpath – she felt at home, expected maybe to see some work by her own parents there. And all the pills he’d shoved into her. And that injection. What was it? When she closed her eyes the bed raced backwards and she had to snap them open again to stop the sensation.
No, she wouldn’t tell her mother – not a word. It would be too distressing for her.
The way he undid his belt with a kind of smirk. And set his binoculars on a rock. She jumped out of bed and closed the sash window, pushed it down with both hands. Thud. The sound of the geese lessened, the curtain was still. She got back into bed again. She smelt of something she did not recognise. The T-shirt belonging to the doctor’s youngest. It had been laundered but somehow when it was against the heat of her body it took on a smell of its own. A foreign smell – a maroon smell – a smell whose source was now at the other side of the world. It wasn’t offensive, just someone else. A woman. Having been raped and finding herself wearing another woman’s clothes she felt somehow representative. One size fits all. She endured the condition of women across the world. That buckle sound of the belt opening and her incredulous oh no, he’s not after that. There is no shame about being raped. If somebody punches you in the mouth or glasses you in a pub you’re not ashamed. You’re injured. It’s not about shame. As he was taking off his jeans she made a run for it but he easily caught up with her on the flat rocks by her swimming pool and dragged her to the ground.
Gut knots again at the very thought. The cigarette smoke from his breath, from his clothes – and afterwards the chlorine stink of his seed.
‘We can do it again. The other way round.’ And he did, just as soon as he was ready. She lay as still as she could in the hope that he would not hurt her beyond repair and kept repeating that she did not consent, she did not consent, she did not consent to any of this until he punched her violently on the back of the head and her forehead struck the rock so hard she nearly went unconscious.
‘Just fuckin shut up.’
Then she just cried with the pain.
She must try and think positively. Practically might be easier. Later in the summer she could contact the skipper and get him to pick up all her gear and her work – the drawings and the paintings, the Polaroids and the notebooks. She should be able to salvage something out of this disaster. She had no fears for the cat. She’d seen it kill and eat – voles or mice, she didn’t dare inspect them too closely. What she hated was the way it played with its catch – letting it almost escape so many times before killing it. At night it was breathtakingly fast catching and eating moths drawn by the light – once she was appalled to hear fluttering inside the cat’s mouth before it chewed and swallowed. ‘Oh cat how could you?’ She’d never got round to giving it a name. When she’d left, it had been curled up by the fire, asleep. But would it get ticks in its fur – be weakened and eventually die? Or when she’d go back with the skipper would she meet this feral panther patrolling the place. Seeking whom it may devour.
The guy’s face kept stabbing into her – the way he moved his upper lip as if he didn’t believe a word she said. After the second time he got dressed and moved off by himself. He kept an eye on her from a distance. She cried herself out, then got dressed. What was she going to do? The stones which had pinned her washing to the rock were the right size but they were a long way off and there was nothing of a similar size here. And he was so strong and so fit. He would overcome her immediately. After a while he got to his feet and came closer, squatting in front of her.
‘I bet you enjoyed that?’ he said. She didn’t say anything. He talked a bit. What amazed her was that he seemed to make so little of it. She hadn’t consented – at the beginning, he seemed to say. What was all the fuss about? Why was she so bloody upset? Did she know how that made him feel? It was all natural – people fucked all the time. Day in, day out. Implied that it should make them feel closer. She would consent the next time. That’s the way it happened in the movies. How long would that be? How long had she got? He’d done the sneering lip movement when she asked if she could take a photograph of him. One side of his lip went up. A bit like Elvis.
‘Fuck off,’ he said. He smoked a cigarette as he stared at her. ‘You must think I’m a stupid cunt.’ Then the lip movement. ‘But it doesn’t work that way. All I have to say is you were dying for it. Out here on your own, for fucking ages. With nothing but your thumb. And then daaa-dahh! I arrive. You become a raving knob jockey. Fuckin Miss Posh panting for it. So yeah – take my photie. Readers’ boyfriends. You’re so fulla shit it’s coming out your mouth. And by the way, your art’s bum cheese – I could do stuff like that – fuckin dire, man. I hope you can take better photos.’
The souped-up cars roared back into the town and parked by the square, their stereos pounding. Bub-bub-bub. Wailing rock guitars. Heavy metal screeching. Getting deep into her. Almost hearing with her stomach. Then they drove off again bub-bub-bub and she heard the tyres yelp distantly as they cornered and zigzagged their way out of town.
The pillow was soft at her face. Sleep was close. Then all possibility of it disappeared.
‘You fuckin stay where you are,’ he said and walked back for the Polaroid.
‘Don’t think I’m going anywhere,’ she said. Why did he think she could go anywhere? Her legs were like jelly and she could hardly move with the pain he’d left in her. But it might work. It would have to work. She was utterly convinced this guy was going to kill her when he finished with her.
He set the camera down in front of her. She got to her feet trying not to show her pain as she moved. She was sure she was bleeding at the back. He stripped off his T-shirt to show his lean and muscled upper body and stood with his back to the sea and sky, his knuckled fists on his hips.
‘I like the body graffiti,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The tattoo.’
He turned his forearm to the camera and tensed it.
‘I can do a close-up of that, if you want,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’
‘Fuck – who’s giving the orders round here?’
‘Me,’ she said. ‘Put your top back on.’ He put the white T-shirt on and sat down, leaning back preening himself. She went close to him, looking at him through the viewfinder. Would the blood show? But she kept her face simple. He lay back on his elbows with his knees wide open. She was shaking. She clicked the shutter and waited. The camera zizzed out a white print and she tucked it under her armpit.
‘Lemme see?’
‘Wait. The heat makes it quicker.’ She counted. After about a minute she dropped it onto the rock in front of him. Head and shoulders with the blue sea behind him. He looked down at it but made no comment.
‘Now one standing,’ she said. He got to his feet and she moved in on him, close. ‘To the left a step.’ He did as he was told. She was giving him confidence in her. Hypnotising him. Holding up her hand for him to look at. She was trying out stuff she had seen other photographers do in the College. At one point she was doing so well she behaved as if she liked him. ‘Eyes to the camera.’ There was something terribly vain about him. Raising one eyebrow. She pressed the shutter and the camera expelled another print. She set it down on the rock to develop. Everything seemed to take ages.
‘Why no armpit this time?’
‘We’ve got all day.’
‘You never spoke a truer word.’
When the print was ready he looked down at it.
‘All right, man.’
‘Now both of us,’ she said. She set the camera on a waist-high rock and framed up the shot on him. ‘Back a bit. Leave room for me. Watch the red light.’ She clicked on the self-timer and began counting as she moved to where he stood. ‘Ten, nine, eight.’ His eye was on the camera watching the red light winking, arranging his face. The last couple of steps she ran. ‘Six, five . . .’ and she pushed him full in the chest with both hands. He grabbed onto her instinctively but she carried them forward with her momentum and they were falling. Toppling together. Both of them plunging deep into the water. She opened her eyes in the green depths to see where he was but saw only her own wake of white bubbles. Something touched her foot and she kicked out as hard as she could, scissoring her legs. The moment she surfaced she struck out to sea, swimming her fastest crawl. Then she turned and looked back. He must have kicked at the same time as the swell surged because his head and shoulders appeared and she thought for one horrible minute the sea was going to deliver him up onto the rocks again or that he had lied to her when he said that no one up here could swim and in fact he was actually a good swimmer – a strong swimmer. But the moving sea closed over his frantic head and he disappeared.
Next she was filled with a fear that he could swim to her underwater. And grab at her ankles. She waited treading water. The pain was still in her but now there was something else. The minutes passed. She continued to tread water – frog’s legs. She waited and waited. He was nowhere to be seen.
‘Yes,’ she said to herself. She set out to swim to the beach.
On shore the first thing she did was to retrieve the Polaroid and the two pictures. There was a third picture hanging from the camera. It was of empty rock and sea. An absence. Two absences. Then she saw the binoculars. She flung them as far as she could into the sea. She left dark footprints and splashes as she moved over the rocks. She went back to the tent shivering. At this time of the evening the midges were beginning to annoy her. Her cheek-bones and the soft parts of her ears itched. To chase them she made the biggest fire she’d ever made and sat staring into it. She kept glancing behind her. If this was a Hollywood movie he would come back. Somehow he would be behind her the next time she looked around. Or the hand on the shoulder. Against all the odds he would have survived and would now be looking to punish her. Cut her throat. Sparks flew up into the sky and the burning wood cracked and spat.
Now, to do anything seemed the most enormous task. It took ages for her to unbutton her clinging shirt and take it off. She hung it on a stick. Steam began to rise from it almost immediately. She towelled herself dry and sat hunched and shawled by the fire, utterly weary. She felt she could not move. Even slightly. She daren’t change any more. She daren’t look to see if she was losing blood. She had ceased to exist from the waist down – except for the pain. Feed the fire. It’d get all the wood used up. She’d leave the next day. At some stage she summoned up enough energy to flick the two photos of him into the fire. They curled and burned with a pure blue fame. The picture of rock and sea and sky she kept. Towards morning she became cold and put on the dried shirt, and then was driven to get her mauve jumper and sleeping bag from the tent. The clothes she had on her were now dry partly from the fire, partly from her body. She remembered it as a night without sleep, yet she must have dozed with her head on her knees. Her memory of wakefulness and sleep became mixed with what was happening to her at present. Sleep was very far away, yet very close. Move a leg, rest her cheek on her forearm, turn on her left side. Towards the window, away from the window. A bed of soft nails. She might make the Polaroid the centrepiece of her exhibition – a picture with some rock and some sea and some sky. You never knew when sleep was close. Sleep was gradual. But it must be close because she hadn’t shut her eyes for forty-eight hours. The human body needed sleep the way it needed food. Some shut-eye. It just could not be put off. Nobody died from sleeplessness. Lying there in your coffin with your eyes wide open. Able to die but not to sleep. Sleep and death were cousins. Shakespeare was always going on about it. Three layers – some rock and some sea and some sky. And nobody but her knowing the significance. Like that statement of the theme of a fugue. Variations to follow. Sky and sea and rock. Blue – grey – black. Solid – liquid – gas. And all stations in between. Light – half-light – dark. The doctor in his armchair after a few drams had apologised for being male – and his wife reprimanded him, saying it had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with misguided arrogance and brutality. Then they tried to pinpoint who the guy was. His age – on the boats – the knife. The doctor said his wife was also a doctor in the practice and knew more about the local people than he did. The boy she was thinking of hadn’t far to go to seek his problems. She was almost sure she knew who it was. But then again, maybe not. How charitable. But the girl did not want to hear a name – it would have been too frightening to know a name. She wanted to get out of that sitting room before anything more was said. Before they became any more friendly. Moments came and went when she did not know whether she was asleep or not. Then she remembered the guy had seemed unable to smile – seemed not to know what it was to be amused – the muscles of his face were incapable of it. What a terrible thing to have happened. It had nothing to do with the remoteness of the place – that guy would have hurt a woman eventually – maybe even killed her, whether it was in a town or a city or a village like this. The doctor circling her, stooping and looking over his half gold-rimmed spectacles at her sex . . . a feeling not unlike blancmange or tapioca . . . a solution . . . an urgency . . . she was late for something . . . but the doctor’s wife touched her hand, held it for her and said there, there love . . . however momentary . . . dreaming of insomnia . . . and blue sky and grey sea and black rocks . . . and blue sea and grey rocks and . . .
The doctor, with his wife in the passenger seat, was driving to the town at lunch-time. On the hill they met the funeral of the drowned boy walking behind the hearse to the graveyard. The doctor stopped his car and got out and stood to attention. His wife did the same by the passenger door. He recognised a few members of the family. Others were friends and neighbours. People in such a small place came out to show their respect. The father was pale – he was not crying but you could see he had been crying. Unsteady. He was being gripped under the arm and helped along by his brother. The father looked much older than he remembered him. The doctor had attended the house when the dead boy’s mother was terminally ill with breast cancer. After
she died the father had rolled up his sleeves and taken to the drink with some determination. Looking at him now some twenty years later it was remarkable how he had survived. But it was taking its toll – it was in his face. The doctor had warned him many years ago when he came to his surgery with an infected cut on his hand. And he had spoken to him on the day he had called to see his boy, sick with the measles and in danger of developing complications. In the middle of the day the curtains had been drawn in both the bedroom and living room – and the father was lying on the sofa in front of the television barely able to suck his thumb. With a sick only child in the house. At school the boy was not liked – other children feared him. Even the teachers were wary of him. A law unto himself – going to school when he liked – skiving when he had better things to do. Always getting into fights, and winning most of them. The doctor had inserted more than a few stitches for which the boy, and later the youth, was responsible.
Then there was a period of hope – after school when he talked about wanting to join the Army. People said it would straighten him out, give him a trade. But he was brought before the Sheriff Court for causing a row on a bus and the Army career fell through before it even started. It came as no surprise that such a boy should die young and in this tragic fashion. And then he remembered the girl who had come to him one Sunday evening in early summer to say she’d been raped. The doctor gave a little salute to the tail end of the cortege and climbed back into his car. His wife did likewise.
‘Sad,’ she said. ‘The father looks poorly.’
‘Yes.’ He turned the key and started the engine. ‘Did you do some forensic?’
‘At Dundee – yes.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Why?’
‘How long do you reckon the boy was in the water?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. A month – maybe more. They say they relied on his tattoo for identification. He drifted thirty miles up the coast.’
Collected Stories Page 62
