Lauchlin of the Bad Heart

by D. R. MacDonald

  “No, it’s not like that. She’s not like that. You can’t really hide anything from her, I think. She sees into you.”

  “If she’s seeing into you, she’s got plenty to look at. Eh?”

  “Did I say I felt that way about her? Did I?”

  “Easy.” Frank patted him on the shoulder. “I was kidding—but not about what she’d see. You’ve been around, Lauch.”

  “Maybe.”

  The sound of water broke loudly into the cave, carrying upward cool, excited air. Lauchlin felt it on his face, his neck.

  “We got some rollers coming in,” Frank said calmly.

  “Maybe we should get out of this damn hole.” But neither man moved. Water pattered faintly from their clothes, puddling thinly at their feet.

  “Wet, wet, wet,” Frank said, squeezing the collar of his shirt. “How does her husband feel about you and his blind wife, Lauch? What’s his name, Clement?”

  “I told you we’re all friends, all right? Jesus. What’s this damn drumbeat about me and Tena MacTavish?”

  “It’s not her and you so much…you see, I’m the man on the other end now. You’ve never known how that feels, I think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My wife is having an affair with another man, Brother. How many poor bastards have uttered that prosaic line, eh? She might be with him right now. Amazing how that fuels the imagination, and memory. I don’t know if I’m remembering anymore or embroidering things, but I was thinking it might’ve started way back, with you.”

  “Me? You’re not making sense, Frank.”

  His brother eased back on a stone while the noise of a swell welled up in the cave and retreated, trailing a chorus of trickling water.

  “Remember that day Momma and me went off to Louisbourg and you and Elaine were at home? She seemed different when I came back, she had that air about her, alive in that certain way we get after sex. A…rosiness? It’s hard to pin down.”

  “If she had it, she didn’t get it from me, Frank.”

  “No?”

  “No. I was in the store. You’ve seen that sexy backroom, the beat-up old bag hanging there?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of there. Lots of beds in the house.”

  “I don’t know where you’re getting this, Frank. From Elaine?”

  “I’m just remembering looks, glances, things said. Oh, I knew she liked you, that didn’t bother me, but…”

  “We’re talking what, twenty years ago?”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m running back over things, lots of things I must have missed.”

  “Elaine never wanted me that way, Frank. You can forget that.”

  “Well, she wanted someone that way.”

  “Sometimes they just want to know what another man is like in bed, you can’t expect them not to.” Was that any of what Tena wanted? Sometimes he hoped it was, other times he disgusted himself in thinking so.

  “But how far back does it go?”

  “Not to that summer in St. Aubin, Frank, I don’t care what you thought was in the air.” Maybe if his brother had confronted him there, that day, that night years ago, Lauchlin might have said yes, sure, I did it, we did it. Right then he might have liked to put that hurt on his brother who was riding so high and confident, shown him he could take his woman away for a while in an afternoon, all they had to do was share the same space, things could happen that were mysterious and beyond even a surgeon’s ken. But he would not tell him that now, never. “Frank, we should make a move out of here.”

  His brother reached up and touched the rock overhead. “A lot of weight up there, eh?”

  “You okay?” Lauchlin offered his hand and his brother took it, grunting as he raised himself to a crouch. Clear of the tunnel, they both stood up. “What are you going to do?” he said.

  “I’m fleeing, Lauch, you might say. Getting some perspective.” He felt his brother next to him, the timbre of his voice in the space of the chamber. Outside, in the grey light, a wave was breaking over the rock wall, pouring white through the archway, higher up into the cave mouth. They watched the water fall back, roiling the pool. They would have to go through that unless they waited for low tide.

  “How long?” Lauchlin said.

  “Long enough, I hope. Don’t ask me what I’m going to do afterward. ”

  A spent wave sucked back below them, brightening the chamber as it slackened out the cave mouth, and then behind it another swell rose higher and surged inside, all scrambling foam and dark water that seemed, as it seethed back through cuts and crevices, to draw the air away with it in a long liquid hiss.

  “We might have to wait this out,” Frank said.

  “I don’t want to spend another minute here.” Had not Elaine come on to him of her own will? He’d thought at the time that it concerned only her and himself—an incident between the two of them, all the anticipation and the execution and the pleasure had been theirs alone. Neither of them had intended harm to anyone, but maybe Frank was right—a ripple could turn into a wave. The sea seemed to pause. “There’s a lull now, I’m going.”

  With that he started down the rocks to the cave mouth. They were slippery and he waited until a wave washed through his legs and subsided, then he was out the mouth and into the disturbance of the pool. The cold water stopped him and he weighed his chances of climbing up to the strung line instead of going back through the archway, but that cost him time and another swell pounded white over the wall, through the opening, taking him off his feet, onto his back, an unpleasant sensation of floundering, he was a swimmer but that was no use, he had to get his feet on bottom rocks. As the water fell away he pushed along with it, paddling awkwardly, and then he was through, staggering, aware of water rising fast toward him as he fixed his eyes on the shore they’d left, and then the next swell pulled him high off his feet and slammed him back into the rocks of the wall. Pain shot through his hip but vanished as he gasped and flailed his way free, groping through the slatch before another swell could hit him. He was choked with saltwater, his clothes heavy and cloying as he waded stumbling into the shallows, shoved to his knees by a wave before he could get clear on the beach. He got up coughing and then dropped onto the sand, closing his eyes. He did not turn around for a few seconds, fearing his brother would be forced to retreat into the cave, stranded there, unable to clear the exit. But Frank, his bulk in his favour, had ridden a swell free of the wall and was plodding through the shallows, barely staggered by a wave breaking around his knees.

  “Ten more minutes,” he said, sucking air, “and we’d be flotsam, Lauch. You okay? You’re pale.”

  “Swallowed some water, I’m all right.” He had bruised his hip, he’d feel that by the time he got home, and his elbow was scraped raw. Still, he was glad, almost elated, that he’d been gripped by the sea and wrestled clear of it, he felt stronger. He barely noticed the soft rain until it dripped salty into his mouth. “We’ve got a long hike, Frank. Are we ready?”

  “I’ve got some ready right here.”

  Frank had fished out the flask from his pack. He took a gasping drink from it and held it out to Lauchlin who raised it to his own lips. A shot of heat, restoring, welcome. He wagged it like a bell before handing it back to his brother. “She’s about finished.”

  “More where that came from.” His brother watched a wave rise, darken, and break onto the beach. “By this time of life, you begin to know what doesn’t matter, what you needn’t spend time with. Am I right?”

  “You’re always right, Frank.”

  AFTER HE CLOSED UP THE STORE that evening, Lauchlin phoned Clement’s house even though he had vowed he would not. Have you been out in your garden? he asked Tena when she answered. I was, she said. He had called to tell her why they’d have to cross the Fairy Hole off her list of hoped-for excursions. But if Clement had answered the phone, that was okay too, he’d told himself, he would feel no guilt then and he’d tell him about Frank and the cave and shoot the breeze a bit. But it was her so
ft and tentative voice he was after, that he needed to hear (On the telephone, she had said once, I’m just like anyone else). The house rushed into his mind, her voice pulled him into its spaces, to the slow ride up the driveway at night, the moon-washed buildings, the scrawny poplars massed in the front field, their silvery leaves in the headlights trembling like alarm. He listened to her leave the phone, hoping she’d not gone to find Clement, and soon she was back.

  “I had to shut the door, it’s windy. You can hear the trees going, and we’ve a loose window upstairs.”

  “Things are okay around there?”

  “I don’t want to complain.”

  “We all do that, Tena. How is Clement doing?”

  “He doesn’t say much about himself, Lauchlin.” She paused as if she might leave it at that, but when he said nothing, she went on. “He’s up at the milling site. I feel something bad is in the air, I can’t explain it. Oh Lord, I miss the signs, you know? The look of his face, how he’s carrying himself, even the way things lie around that he’s put his hand to. I have so little to read of him now. And I’m uneasy, I guess.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh…I was out by the barn yesterday and I felt there was someone around there. I told Clement later but he got upset. What can I do about what’s in your head? he told me, he doesn’t think there’s anyone. I’ll spend more time with you when I finish this job, he said, that’s all I can do. And he’s right. I’m worried about him, he’s too silent lately, working hard at two jobs, and I’m not helping him any.”

  “I doubt that he sees it that way,” Lauchlin said, “he understands.” But his defence of Clement was muted, he was not quick to assure her of her husband’s steadfastness, he knew that and, thinking back later, it would trouble him that he wanted her to lean more on him than on Clement, to turn to him for sympathy, a hand, a voice, a means to move beyond her house.

  “I feel like the first time I fell down,” she said. “It was so humiliating, tripping on a sidewalk, falling in a heap. I don’t even remember what did it, broken pavement maybe, but I felt tricked, like something cruel had been pulled on me. Yet there was no one to blame but myself, my blind feet. Clement has enough to handle without my little fears.”

  What did she mean, something bad was in the air? Sometimes she could be vague that way, as if her nerve ends, deprived of vision, were always straining to pick up signals the sighted would miss. Where did that sensitivity end and her imagination take over, deciphering shapes she herself created? But why should he too believe that she was feeling a menace not really there? He could see her standing by the phone, the details of that filled his mind, and he wanted her to depend on him, to know he was on her side. His dislike of Cooper rose in his throat: the man inside Tena’s kitchen door, frightening her with deliberate silence, and he hated him intensely for lurking in her mind, and in his.

  “Has he seen Cooper at all?”

  “I would hope that creature is well gone from here.”

  “No reason for him to be around now, he has no business here.” He desperately wanted to say, Listen, don’t worry, I’ll be by this evening, as if she lived alone, were widowed or single, that it were that simple and he could show up at her door anytime at all and dispel this unease she spoke of, sit close to her, talk. But what could he propose now—that he search the property? Park himself in the driveway when Clement was gone and keep watch until he returned? Turn himself into her bodyguard? He had intended to suggest another drive somewhere, perhaps down south to Isle Madame, but better if she brought it up herself so he could salvage the illusion that he was the concerned friend and that it wouldn’t have mattered whether Clement or she had picked up the phone.

  “Don’t worry about me, Lauchlin. The Mathesons have been over, and some girls I know from town yesterday. Thank you for thinking of me though.”

  He could not bring himself to say he would be over too, not without her asking. “We’ll talk soon then,” he said, feeling inept, uncertain just who he was to her.

  AFTER SUPPER HIS BROTHER HAD continued to drink from a bottle of single malt, and, when Lauchlin came up from the store, he was still at it alone at the kitchen table, two cigars squashed in a saucer, his notebook open, a ballpoint keeping the page.

  “I guess I drove Momma upstairs,” he said. “Am I talking too much?”

  “You’re drinking too much.”

  “I’m thinking too much. I’m not on call anyway, am I, Brother? Not even at home. No calls to or from the little woman. I can drink as I please, for a while.”

  “How much time do you have?”

  “Time enough for the truth to chase me down, over there…” Frank gestured vaguely eastward. “I’m on a leave, but not too long or my job is gone.”

  “Does Elaine know you’re going to quaff your way through Harris?”

  “Would she care? I can pick up where I left off when I get home. Professionally, at least. I’ll miss that stimulation. The trauma is fresh in ER, Lauch, life or death sometimes, minutes is all you’ve got. Lots of people died around here when we were kids because they couldn’t get to a damn doctor in time, or a doctor to them. Never mind a hospital.”

  “Aunt Sadie was one. And she lived in town.”

  “Died at a bus stop from a heart attack. We could have saved her now. Saving a marriage is harder, believe me.”

  Frank shook his head and went on about the emergency room. Tired and sore, Lauchlin wanted to go upstairs but he felt he owed him his attention, his sympathy, so he agreed to one drink, a little send-off. ER was high-pressure work, of course, Frank said, but the hours were good and when your shift was over, you went home, your day was wrapped up, no patients, no calls, no office. Time to write, reflect. Time with the family. The wife. He laughed. He’d wanted to remain a surgeon, he said, that was a sexy profession, wasn’t it? Women loved surgeons. All the romance, the priestly cleansing of the hands, the esoteric techniques, the tense, understated drama, blipping monitors, masks and monosyllables. They, the best ones, were like fighter pilots or star athletes, weren’t they, Lauch, with those reflexes, that hand-to-eye gift, eyesight that could appraise coordinates in an instant, their driven, lasered focus, their discipline, their ego, oh, you had to have that goddamn ego, you can’t cut people open unless you know you’re fucking good.

  “But mine? It took a hit.” Frank emptied his glass, poured another. “I thought I was as good as any surgical jock, I could take the g’s, get it done, coolness under fire, perfect landing, all that stuff. But even the top dogs make mistakes. I’d hung around too long at a party one night, I took that third whisky, got to gabbing, joking around, reaching for those jolly refills, it was so easy, I like that, as you know. I didn’t walk out of that house, finally, I rolled out. How I drove home I still don’t know. Had to operate at seven a.m. Used up every sobering trick I knew, but I had a tremor in the old hands, a blinding headache. My brain was just a step or two out of sync. At a critical moment, just a nod, a slip, punctured the bowel. Oh, I sobered up lightning fast, but there it was.”

  “Fatal?”

  “No, but I couldn’t risk that again. I knew another morning like that one might come, sometime. Don’t mention this to Momma. But, hey, look at movies and TV, ER’s a big deal, gurneys bursting through doors, everybody yelling medical commands, some gasping fool getting his chest thumped because he’s OD’d, it’s like a war zone, and of course I still do operations. I work in an intelligent chaos at times. I want to write it down, not the melodrama so much as…Anyway, it cost me something with Elaine, I think. Prestige, something.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “She lost respect for me in some way, had to, to do what she’s done. Because I’m not a big surgeon now? Because I am obviously older, unexciting, imperceptive of her, blind to her needs, incapable, uncaring, cold? I don’t know. Something happened I did not see. I feel like I’ve got this stone in my chest. But maybe in the Hebrides…” Frank peered at him. “You could come too, you ba
stard. That would be something good we could do together, you know? Right now, I need that.”

  “Jesus, Frank, I’d like to, I would.” He wanted the simple pleasure of crossing over to his brother, giving him a lift that would dispel any suspicion about that summer afternoon with Elaine so long ago. “Any other summer I’d do it.”

  “This Tena woman, is it?”

  “No. But even in St. Aubin, things can get complicated, Frank. You know?”

  His brother smiled wearily. “Sure, what the hell then.” He raised his whisky, and Lauchlin his and they touched glasses.

  “Safe journey,” Lauchlin said.

  “You too, Brother.”

  Lauchlin went quietly upstairs to his room and undressed, treating his bruised hip gingerly. He pulled himself straight as he moved about. Too easy to fall into old man ways, into the baby-step shuffle, the hunch. After he showered, his brother came into the room still talking and sat in the only chair, his pyjama top unbuttoned, the silver of a Celtic cross visible in the grizzled hair of his chest. Lauchlin had always hated pyjamas—they had an air of illness about them, of being sent to bed too early in the day, like a kid, and they did Frank no favours either, his big frame slumped in them, the conviviality drained from his face. Lauchlin sat on the bed in his shorts, dabbing alcohol on his sore elbow. The bottle in Frank’s hand still held some whisky.

  “I’m going to need something hallucinatory over there in the old place, I think,” he said, “something…transporting.”

  “Whisky won’t do it?”

  “Not if the it isn’t inside me already. Am I on ‘the Celtic ray’ as Van Morrison’s song puts it? We’ll see. Yeah, I’ve been away from the ray too long. Eh? But I’m a man of science, Brother. I’m not wired for that stuff like you are. I’ll have to work harder for those ancient vibes, won’t I, the spirits in the stones. I’ve got to get my mind off certain things, and on to others. That’s the trick of it. Nothing brilliant there. But I’ll damn well let you know what you’re missing, I’ll be writing it down and I’ll post it off to you. Like I used to. If I run into any fairies, you’ll be the first to know, Lauch. The first.”