So she walked. Lucy left the ferryman’s house, went into the moonless night and down to the shore and walked. Even now the farrier will tell you there were three that stood and watched as she started onto the water as if it was no more than a dry path. And they say she walked barefoot, shoes in her hand; that her mouth moved and she prayed as she went. All the way to the other side and the island shore.
She went to the house where the girl lay in the last throes of fever, babbling words of nonsense. And Lucy’s hand smoothed her forehead and she spoke soft words over and over, like the dripping of cool water, till at last the girl was still. But she was not dead, she slept.
*
The boy had been the third son. He had almost not survived, came into the world like a bundle of lamb that slips into the sleet-white grass with the tiniest cry. Born a month early and it was his sister who watched over him until at last he was stronger and the flags of the daffodils blew triumphant in the spring wind. Only five she was and she watched over him, for their mother could do nothing that first month, so ravaged was she from the long birth. That set a bond between them for ever, a bond that ran deep and strong. He was often ill in those first years. He struggled to breathe, to climb the hill of each new-drawn breath. It was she who sat with him through the long hours of the night, drawing the forefinger of her left hand across his cheek, slow and gentle, whispering the name she’d given him.
She would not let him be scolded. When the birch rod was raised by a mother half-mad with tiredness in a house with too many children, the girl shrieked and implored her to stop. That only maddened the mother the more, and set her against the girl. In summer the two escaped into the hills behind the house like leverets, laughing; the tin pails they carried for berries clanking against their thighs as they ran.
Their mother called them outlaws; she carried the washing out shouting at them still though they were far beyond hearing. They came back home, barefoot and weary, when the moon was orange in the river and the windless skies were all but dark. There was no point raising the birch rod then; she knew it was far too late.
Was she punishing the boy by sending him to the monastery or thanking God for the miracle of his birth? By that time his sister had gone to work as a servant at the big house of the landowners from Petersburg. She did not want to go, but there was no choice, and she sent home one silver coin every second week to her mother, despite all the years of the birch rod. The boy found the world strange without her, and in those first days he struggled to sleep at all. He said nothing aloud; did everything he was asked as always. But her absence was in his face, and nothing his mother said could hide it. When he went to the monastery he knew he was travelling in the opposite direction; he felt his sister growing distant behind him, though it was dark and starless and the road twisted many times. It was she he missed, not his mother.
*
It was when he was out by the well that he knew she was ill. The wind rushed through the autumn trees and he thought of them running in the thrill of it as once they’d done, and as he dipped his bucket into the stars on the surface he knew she was ill. Not just that she was ill but that it was something on her right side, and he touched the place with his free hand as he set the pail down with its shining.
He knew he should pray for the world, for its suffering, but he prayed for it somehow through her. When he knelt and words poured through him like a wild stream’s babble it was her face he saw beyond him. He even prayed something of his strength might be given to her, that he might give it back all these years later.
And so he was told he could go to the island. As if by magic, the days froze and the eye of the lake glazed a strange white. He heard the ice crystals in the trees at night, the high song of them playing in the darkness. The sun climbed into the sky but it was a snowball, weak enough to look at full. And there were wolves; somewhere in the hills their voices held and echoed. He thought of them as the living sound of the northern lights; he told no one yet that was what he thought.
She was weakening. She had fallen and was weakening but he was kind to her. Those were the words he woke with, one morning when he rose and went to the window and six slow geese beat a path into the light. It was only six days till St Lucy’s Day, until they went to the island.
*
And so they walked across the ice. They held their shoes, in memory of St Lucy, and walked in bare feet. At first the pain was almost too much to bear, until he realized that he felt nothing at all. He looked at his feet and thought they were like marble, and remembered the one time he visited the Winter Palace and saw the sculpture of the angel.
The men who walked with him now were old. He felt that as they walked they carried not only their shoes but their stories. They had lived through the story of Russia and grown old, and knew now that this was the last time they might visit the chapel. They wore white robes and they were the only things in the night’s darkness, and the only sound that of their feet and their breathing. They did not talk; they looked ahead towards an island they could not see, and that itself was a kind of metaphor. The chapel must be in darkness when they came to it; as though they could not even be sure as they crossed it was there at all. Light and fire were only to be found and made later, once they had reached the other side.
He knew somehow that he loved them even now, those men, although he had been with them only days. He did not understand the meaning of years as they did. The one who fed the birds at dawn, who held fragments of bread in his cupped hand until they came and ate without fear. The one who was all but blind, but who sang in the morning with a voice as sweet as a child’s. The one who did not talk any more, who had gone so far into silence words were not needed now. He had found a place where there was no more fear or anger.
That night the moon did not shine. There were stars, yet not as he had seen them before. Now they were like breath across the sky; a mist far beyond counting. The monks did not look back as they walked; that was also a part of their pilgrimage. And the ice was strange and patterned; he thought of the northern lights, and it was as if they had been imprisoned there, a moment of their fire frozen for ever.
It was only when they reached the other side he knew how cold it was.
*
Two days later, when they had returned to the monastery, he woke from a dream and knew he must go. He dressed in the dark, hands trembling, and fled down the stone steps as though the dream had not ended at all. It did not even occur to him to ask if he could leave.
It had snowed in the night and the silence left behind was bigger almost than silence itself. When the spines of dawn came, it was as though a bonfire burned somewhere ahead of him; a conflagration setting fire to the trees. When the sun had all but risen into the woods, its brightness was so great his eyes could not bear it. But he knew he was walking the right way; he knew he must walk into the sun.
He had no sense of time. He had walked countless miles with her all those years of his childhood; they had not known what time meant. For hours now he walked straight on; no path except the one his feet found. But he knew he was right; he knew without a shadow of a doubt, there was no other way but this. He came at last to the road; looked left and right and listened. He held his breath and heard the rustling of birds in the trees. Everything was dry; made of tinder-dry fragments.
He turned left and knew now he was not far away. And it was only then he seemed to waken and wonder what they would think and where he had gone. Then he saw a house and forgot everything as he began walking again. He could not walk but had to run, so hard his chest seemed burning and about to burst. He staggered on because he knew it was there, that she was there, that he must get there. And a beautiful garden and a long drive and the scent of woodsmoke and at last, after however many hours, a doorway and his fist on the hard wood, hammering and hammering and hammering.
She answered, for she was a servant there. And her face smiled, even though she cried.
>
‘Sasha,’ she said. ‘I knew you would come.’
The Miracle
It had been a long night. Rangers had thrashed Celtic the day before. The whole of Glasgow had echoed with shouted songs and smashed windows. The last goings home at four in the morning. And the morning itself grey and ragged as if the city was hung over. The distant rattle of a train. A newspaper unfolded itself and blew into pieces on the edge of a wind that came and went.
Sonia Macpherson walked, her collar up against the cold and her hands buried in her pockets. She might have been the only one alive. She could have been still in bed; it was a Sunday morning, for God’s sake! But she had to go and see Marie. It was two weeks since she’d managed to go and see her last. No, that wasn’t quite true. She hadn’t been able to face it. Sometimes it was just too much going in there. It stayed with you, the memory of the place – the memory of Marie.
*
Marie O’Brien, a wee Irish woman who lived three flights up a tenement in Ibrox. How on earth had she ended up in Ibrox, in that bit of Glasgow that was home to Rangers Football Club, that had only hatred for Catholic Ireland and all it had brought with it?
For thirty years they had thundered on Marie’s door and stuffed every piece of filth they could find through her letterbox. Her name on the door was enough for that.
Now she was dying; she’d been dying for a long time. Some people went in a second, others slid away inch by inch. Sonia started up the steps, the only noise the scuffing of her feet on the stone. Somewhere a door boomed; no voices, just a smell. It was that that haunted her; she felt it in the pit of her stomach, had to force herself to keep going. Everything was in that smell.
She rattled the key in the lock and went in, thudded the door behind her. She started speaking Marie’s name at once, her voice soft – almost songlike. She went through into the bedroom and swept back the curtains, still speaking her name, not expecting any answer, as much to comfort herself as anything else. It was fear in a way – that was it, fear of all this and fear of what she might find.
She turned round. Marie was curled away in the bed, curved into the clothes. There was nothing of her. She made noises to herself that were pieces of words, the memories of words. Sonia went over and brought her up against the pillow. She felt breakable; she had the frame of a bird, her bones brittle, her arms spindles. As she brought her up Sonia spoke in a bright voice all the time, about the weather and the cold days there had been in England, about her friend Janette who was off in Portugal. Then she looked up and caught the face of Ciaran, his picture on the bedside table, the picture of his smile. Ciaran, Marie’s only son, who hadn’t come to visit in years. When Sonia started coming, however long ago that was, Marie had never stopped talking about him. How he had a fancy house in England and was going to take her there – a fancy house with a garden and a stream. But he never came and gradually Marie stopped talking about him and Sonia didn’t ask. The talk had faded like the picture.
She glanced behind the picture at a card, an Easter card. The picture of a grinning rabbit with huge teeth, gold and shining. All at once she remembered this was Easter, Easter Sunday.
‘Happy Easter, Marie!’ she said, turning round to crouch beside the bed. The eyes were there, just and no more – fragments of faded blue. Sonia nearly asked her how she was and then stopped. What was the point? Did Marie even know her now? She caught that smell again and felt sick. She ought to be gone, out of this place and away. She wanted to forget every last thing about it; she wished she wouldn’t ever have to come back. There was a sudden thundering on the outer door and she jumped, was torn out of her thoughts. Expletives and a thud and a group of young men thudding down the stairs laughing. How had Marie survived thirty years of this place?
And it was that that made her see her again, made her remember why she had come. She looked at the tiny face.
‘Is there anything I can get you, Marie? Anything you’d like?’
She was whispering something now, her voice thin as paper.
Sonia bent to hear; she all but had her ear against her mouth. ‘A service?’
She tried to think what she meant. What service? Again the dry fragments of a word on the old woman’s lips; again Sonia had to come as close as she could to make it out.
‘Oh, the radio – a service on the radio!’
The ghost of a smile. The memory of a smile. The blue eyes kindled.
‘Where is the radio, Marie?’
She couldn’t keep that edge of annoyance out of her voice as she got up again. Marie’s eyes had glazed: she had no idea. Where in all this mess was there a radio? Sonia moved cushions and blankets, unearthed a pair of scissors, coins and crumbs. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to be gone. It was Easter Sunday and it was a holiday; she could take a bus up to Loch Lomond and be as far away from this as it was possible to get.
There was the radio; it must have fallen behind the sofa from the window ledge. She looked back at Marie and she saw her again, her head bent forwards as though she was drifting into sleep once more. What she needed was a priest, not a radio. But how many priests were there in Ibrox? It almost sounded like the first line of a joke.
She clicked the dial of the ancient box and there was nothing. Not even that hiss that meant there might be something. It was dead. It was just an empty box that might have lain forgotten behind the sofa for years.
‘Marie, pet, I’ll go and make you a cup of tea.’
She put the radio into the old woman’s hands tenderly. At least she had found what she’d asked for. In the kitchen she looked out of the window onto the city morning. How was it all the colours seemed to go in winter? It was as if they were washed into the Clyde and lost. Slate grey rain over slate grey hills over slate grey Glasgow. There was a movement on the tiny concrete window ledge. A robin; not a robin with its puffed-out red chest, the Santa Claus robin of Christmas cards, but a thin robin – a spindly thing that was still bright-eyed, with a breast that wasn’t orange but more the colour of dark blood. Yet it stood out all the same, against all that was dead.
She stirred the tea for Marie: milk and sugar. The sweetness of it rose to her face. At least that was something she could give her. She’d done that and she could go with a clear conscience. The carers would be coming in at ten.
She turned to go back through to the bedroom. As she got to the doorway she saw everything; Marie in the middle of it all. The old woman hadn’t moved; the radio was clutched in her hands just as it had been, the curtains were open, the sofa was still covered in all that Sonia had unearthed. The room was filled with thin grey light. It wasn’t crackling she heard in the doorway but footsteps; afterwards she was sure that that was what she had heard first, and she half-wondered if there was someone else in the flat, if someone had got in. The thud of footsteps that got closer and closer, but the sound was coming out of the machine, out of the box cradled in the old woman’s useless hands. Then the voice.
And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
The voice got closer all the time, began as nothing and came close, stopped. Sonia stood there, the heat of the mug burning her hands, unable to go any nearer. There was no more sound than that; the whole city slept outside, beyond them.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master.
Sonia dared to go closer, put the tea down at last on the bedside table. She went on noiseless feet, not daring to make a sound. Sonia was neither a Protestant nor a Catholic; she was nothing. She believed in bricks through windows, she believed in the edges of knives, she believed in lies and betrayal.
But the voic
e went on; the story of a man who had been raised from the dead. A man who had been done away with, who had been murdered in cold blood. But Sonia did not stop; her eyes were on the radio, on that ancient Bakelite box with its creases of dust. She went closer and closer on soundless feet until she was as close to it as she could be and she knelt down on the floor, watching it all the time.
And then the singing began – a flow of voices as if in some ancient place. It brought something back to her – somewhere, a place she couldn’t remember the name of. A red house and a wood and her father laughing. She could smell everything. He was carrying her up steep wooden steps, talking to her all the time and she had been crying. He wasn’t angry any more and she felt safe, and she didn’t want to go to sleep even after he’d kissed her goodnight. She wanted to lie there awake because she was happy and safe, and if she slept it would be tomorrow and a whole night would be lost and wasted.
*
The singing stopped and Sonia lifted her head. She’d put her face down into the bedclothes and closed her eyes, without even being aware of doing so. Now she lifted her head. She stared at the radio in the old woman’s blue-veined hands and held her breath so she could hear everything. And she felt a peace she hadn’t known since childhood, since that last night in the old house. And she looked at Marie’s face, at the light there. It was as if the tiny face was shining.
And she heard steps, just like the steps she had heard when she stood in the doorway, except now they were going away; they were diminishing until they had disappeared completely. And there was nothing left, not even a hiss.
Winter Tales Page 7
