Machine Without Horses

by Helen Humphreys

  “Not here,” hisses Evelyn, grabbing Megan by the lapels of her jacket and hauling her into the farmhouse, kicking the door shut with her foot. They wrestle for a moment in the front hall, trying to kiss or avoid kissing, their bodies suddenly burdensome and unfamiliar after so many days apart.

  While Megan was seated on her motorcycle, the angle of her body kept the mousetraps secure beneath her jacket, but now that she is standing in the front hall of the farmhouse, the traps start dropping out from under her clothes, one by one. The women giggle and bend over to retrieve the traps, their heads banging together with their nerves and clumsiness. But then they are kissing and everything is all right again. The world has adjusted to include this, adjusted to include them.

  They pick up the traps. Megan follows Evelyn into the kitchen. She has not been in the farmhouse before, and she is eager to be in Evelyn’s home, to see where Evelyn spends her days.

  The kitchen, even though it is the family gathering place, is also the space that most belongs to Evelyn. She prepares food here, washes up, sits at the big wooden table, drinking tea and listening to the wireless in the evenings.

  “I had my last baby on this table,” she says to Megan as they enter the room. This is actually not a detail that Megan cares to hear, so she doesn’t reply. She mostly tries to think of Evelyn as separate from her family, because to think of her as securely attached to them means that she also has to think about what she and Evelyn are doing as a trespass on that family.

  “Where do you want me to set the traps?” she says, suddenly businesslike.

  “Under the sink to start.” Evelyn puts a hand on Megan’s arm. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s just that everything’s mixed up together here. I don’t know how to keep it separate.”

  Megan gets down on her hands and knees. “Do you have a bit of soft cheese?” she says.

  She baits the traps under the sink and then they move into the parlour to set traps behind the bureau.

  On top of the bureau is a framed photograph from Evelyn’s wedding day. She looks so young and beautiful, all smiles outside the church, her arm linked in her young husband’s, flowers in her hair.

  “Oh, God,” says Megan. “You look so lovely.” She studies the photo. “And you look so happy.”

  “I was happy.” Evelyn shifts uneasily from foot to foot, a habit left over from childhood when she was trying to keep her feet warm on cold mornings in the milking barn. “But couldn’t I be happy now with you and happy then? I was only twenty-two in that life. Just starting out.”

  “Yes. Of course.” But Evelyn’s early happiness has thrown Megan. It’s not that she can’t believe it was true, but she hadn’t expected the evidence to be so powerfully moving. “You’re so lovely,” she says again.

  The house is a minefield. There are details everywhere of Evelyn’s marriage and family life: a child’s marble under the bureau, the weekly wash folded in a wicker basket on the stairs.

  Megan can’t bear now to go upstairs and see the bedroom where Evelyn sleeps with Dan, has slept all these years with Dan. She shoves the remaining mousetraps at her lover.

  “You’ll have to do the rest,” she says. “I have to meet some toffs at the hotel for dinner.”

  Evelyn takes the traps. It was only a pretext anyway, having Megan come over to help her set them. She is perfectly capable of catching mice herself and has done so since she was a little girl.

  “Will I see you later at the dance?” she asks, for there is a ceilidh tonight at the village hall.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll be there.” Megan pushes past Evelyn in her hurry to get to the front door. No stopping for a kiss. No sweet words. She can’t get out of the farmhouse fast enough, rushing into the yard and climbing aboard her motorbike. She’s half-way down the lane, tears streaming from her eyes, before she realizes that she’s not really crying, she’s just forgotten to put her goggles on.

  Because here is the secret to Megan Boyd. Here is the kernel at the heart of her, what I have learned from these weeks of thinking so much about her. She cannot connect one thing to another. She cannot see that the salmon fly will kill the salmon. She cannot fully comprehend that having an affair with a married woman means that there are a whole set of people who can potentially be devastated by this affair. Megan knows that Evelyn is married, but she never thinks of Evelyn’s family.

  Megan exists in moments. This is why she is fundamentally a happy person and well liked by all the villagers and by those who travel to Brora to buy her salmon flies. She fully inhabits the moment she is in and then moves on to the next moment. She doesn’t consider the long game. She doesn’t dwell on the consequences of her actions.

  This would make it seem as though Megan is simplistic, childlike, but it isn’t like that at all. She has trained herself to be the way she is by the type of work she does. We all become what we do. It’s inevitable. How could we expect Megan Boyd’s character to be separate from the repetitive actions of her daily life?

  Megan sits at a kidney-shaped desk in a tin-roofed shed behind her cottage in Kintradwell and ties salmon flies for fourteen to sixteen hours a day. One fly after another. Some simple and some complex. Thirty minutes. An hour. Two hours. Each fly a process that is entered and then completed, a moment that is rendered, with another moment preceding it and another that follows. How could someone who spends their life—their whole life—like this be able to think long term, be able to exist other than moment to moment, salmon fly to salmon fly?

  Living in the moment is supposed to be what we all aspire to. It’s how animals mostly live, and they seem fairly contented. It’s the leading advice given to dying people—try to live in the moment—because there aren’t many moments left to them and if you’re firmly planted in the moment you’re in, you don’t notice the lack of future as much.

  But living in the moment has its drawbacks, and Megan is now experiencing one of the major ones. Relationships are progressive. They move from somewhere to somewhere else and they depend on this momentum. Begin an affair with a married woman and it either has to move towards disclosure or closure. It can’t stay where it is. Everything evolves.

  So, after she has stopped to put her goggles on, Megan roars down the coastal road towards the hotel and feels the terrible knowledge of Evelyn’s family move through her like fear. The hard fact of the family, of that marble under the bureau, the basket of small folded shirts on the stairs, makes her feel as though she has to do something. And what it makes her feel that she has to do is to run away, to leave the family intact and make an honourable exit.

  Megan takes a bend too fast and has to put her army-booted foot down hard on the tarmac to avoid skittering into the ditch. She is breathless when she arrives at the hotel bar. Her head is full of Evelyn and she can’t remember the names of the men from the magazine. One interviewed her and one took her picture. One had red hair and one was dark.

  She finds them at a corner table near the fireplace. They rise together when they spot her hurrying across the floor.

  “So glad you could make it,” says the ginger one. “But I’m afraid we’re a pint or two up on you at this point.”

  “Can’t drink much anyway,” says Megan, sitting down beside the dark-haired man. “I’m on the motorbike. It’s trouble enough when I’m not drinking. I went into a patch of thistles last week.” She looks at the half-empty pint glasses on the table. “But a short whisky wouldn’t go amiss. And we are eating.”

  The ginger jumps up to get her a drink. The hotel bar is busy, full of people having a bite of supper before the dance tonight. Megan recognizes many of the patrons. She’ll have to eat quickly, then go back home to feed her dog and let him out before she heads over to the village hall. It’s all a bit tight today, and there is always that pile of orders on the shelf behind her desk, growing higher with each passing day. Not to mention the notebook and pencil on the bench outside her door. Every time she leaves the house, at least three people drop by to write down requests
for salmon flies in that notebook. She will never get caught up. And that is a truly terrible feeling.

  The ginger comes back with her whisky.

  “It’s hopping in here tonight,” he says.

  “There’s a ceilidh.”

  “Too bad we’re on the 8:00 back to London,” says the dark-haired one.

  Damian, thinks Megan. That’s his name.

  “Yes, that’s an awful shame, Damian,” she says. But she doesn’t think it’s a shame at all. She would hate the magazine men to show up at the ceilidh. It’s one thing to have them poking around her work shed, but quite another to have them gawking at the village dance. They are probably both terrible dancers and would spend their time sneering at the locals to make themselves feel better about their inadequacies. Megan has seen their kind before. There are always men like this at the dance competitions at Inverness. Forced to be there because their wives are competing, but dismissive of the whole enterprise.

  Is Dan like that? Evelyn’s husband has never attended a dance. Evelyn said he has no interest in it, but if he did come, would he lean against the wall, smoking and sipping his pint, making fun?

  It’s an awful thought. Megan takes a gulp of her whisky.

  “We should have a proof of the article by the end of next week,” says the ginger. “We’ll send you one. You might like to have the extra photographs for your scrapbook.”

  “Yes,” says Megan. “Thank you.” She doesn’t have a scrapbook, can’t tell if he is mocking her or not.

  They had come to her cottage yesterday afternoon. She made them tea. She had put on lipstick to have her picture taken. They laughed at her little dog sitting on a stool beside her in the shed, watching her tie flies.

  “We must have a photo of that,” said the ginger.

  They laughed. They were friendly. They wanted her to like them for the afternoon they were there so they could get the best story out of her. Megan is no fool. She knows how these things work. And yesterday afternoon, she did not begrudge them any of it. But tonight, she wonders why she has agreed to have dinner with them at their hotel. Because these men are not her friends. They do not know her at all, even after asking her all those questions and watching her tie a Jock Scott and a Popham. Journalists are all about what they’ve learned that day. Someone said that to Megan once. She thinks it might have been HRH.

  “I’m sorry.” She stands up. “I can’t stay for dinner after all. I have to get home and see to my dog.”

  She bolts from the bar, not waiting for their well wishes and goodbyes. The BSA is still warm from the ride in. Megan holds a hand above the engine, feeling the rise of heat from the cylinder. Sometimes on the cold days, she rides with one hand on the handlebars and the other one held above the engine block like this to warm it.

  The cottage is drafty. The dog barks his disapproval at being left alone for so long. Megan slaps a bowl of food down on the tiles, closes the windows in the kitchen and the parlour. There’s leftover shepherd’s pie in the larder. She eats it cold, standing up at the sink, looking out the window to the flat of the North Sea, lying like a grey shelf beyond the garden.

  As she’s standing there, she feels something on her body, a tug near her waist. Looking down, Megan sees that there’s a mousetrap clipped to the hem of her khaki jacket.

  She changes for the dance, shedding her khakis for a man’s shirt and tie, and a tweed skirt. She had planned to take the car, but when she gets out to the yard, the motorcycle engine is ticking softly, losing its heat and sounding like an insect in the darkness, like a living thing. So, Megan takes the motorbike, even though it’s a bit awkward to ride in the skirt.

  The village hall glows at the end of the lane, all the lights on and the doors wide open. Megan parks the bike under a tree, leaves the goggles dangling from the handlebars. She smooths down her skirt on the walk across the dirt.

  Evelyn is not in the hall, and Megan pretends not to care, dances the first few dances with gusto. She is a very good dancer. It was not something she ever did as a child, she has come to it late, but she is one of the best dancers in the area, can glide effortlessly across the floor. Consequently, she is popular at the dances and is never without a partner.

  Evelyn shows up just before Megan’s favourite dance of the night and the one she is best at: Machine Without Horses. So, they are able to dance it together, and despite her earlier ambivalence, Megan is glad about this.

  Machine Without Horses refers to a steam train and is a dance from the eighteenth century, when the steam train made its first appearance. The dance, a thirty-two-bar jig for four couples, has a pattern of circles and lines, a loose interpretation of the wheels and tracks of the train. The couples move down the floor, circling right and then left with the couples on either side of them, then breaking apart and moving on to take up a new position. Eventually, the first couple ends up as the fourth couple.

  Megan likes to start at the head of the line, as part of the first couple. It makes her feel like everything is in its proper order if she can begin there and end up in the place of the last couple, her small journey made and completed. She likes the combination of both the circular and the lateral movements and the constant motion satisfies her need for speed. Sometimes, in the twirl and the flourish, Megan feels like she is flying.

  While it did not work for her to be in Evelyn’s farmhouse earlier that day, this moment in the middle of the dance is where Megan has dominion. This beautiful, shifting, lively moment is where she shines, clasping hands with Evelyn and swinging her right, then left, letting the music lift her and set her down. There is a pattern to follow and it is a sublime pattern, both the same and different with every rotation. Even though she has performed this dance hundreds of times, it always feels fresh to Megan. It always feels new, and she is new inside it, a blur of legs and arms, her muscles sure of themselves, moving confidently inside the music, the way she imagines the salmon feel, socketed into the rivers that have called them home.

  Afterwards, she takes a break, because Machine Without Horses is such an exhilarating dance for Megan that she needs some space between it and the next dance she enters. She likes to still feel the residue of it in her body for as long as it will linger.

  She goes outside, lifts her face to the night sky, listens to the sound of her own breathing and the bright strains of the fiddles from inside the hall.

  “You left in a hurry,” says Evelyn, suddenly beside her at the bottom of the steps. “Today. At my house. You aren’t tired of me, are you?” She puts her hand on Megan’s arm. “Because I would understand if you were. But I would hate it. So much.”

  “Evie, I could never tire of you. I just had to go and meet the toffs.” The moments of disquiet from the afternoon have long passed, and this moment at the village hall is just glory to Megan. “Shall we leave now?” she says. “We could go back to mine? We’d have an hour.”

  “Or two,” says Evelyn. “Dan will be in bed when I get home. He won’t notice the time. Where’s your car?”

  “I brought the motorbike tonight.”

  “Did you?” Evelyn loops an arm around Megan’s shoulders, bold with the relief that Megan isn’t leaving her. “I’m quite partial to the motorbike.”

  The BSA starts on the first kick.

  One of the best things about riding a motorcycle is having someone you love sitting behind you on the pillion, their arms wrapped around your waist, your bodies pressed together, while the headlamp of the bike bisects the night, creates a channel through which you drift past the darkened fields, the shadowy bars of the trees.

  Megan drives slower at night. She can’t see as well, and she doesn’t want to startle Evelyn. Also, she wants to prolong the moment, because it’s a very nice one. She leans back into Evelyn. Sometimes, all of life seems miraculous and she is giddy with the surfeit of happiness.

  The coastal road is empty and the moon is up, so the sea sparkles on their right and looks more animated than it does in daylight. There’s th
e smell of the salt air wafting up to them and making Megan think, momentarily, of the salmon out there, feeding on the swarms of krill, the schools of herring.

  The low hum of the bike is the only sound in the night, drowning out anything else. Megan shifts down to turn into the lane, and the gears whine in protest, then settle into the new, slower speed.

  For a moment, they turn away from the shiny flat of the North Sea, and the inland world is so dark that when Megan stops the bike, she leaves the headlamp on so that Evelyn can get her bearings as she negotiates her way across the rough ground to the cottage.

  Here I’m going to leave them, as Megan switches off the motorbike lamp and joins Evelyn inside the gate, holds her hand while they cross the grass. I’m going to leave them before they open the cottage door and the dog shoots past them into the darkness, before Megan lights the paraffin lantern so they can find their way to the bedroom, before they take their clothes off and lie naked together on the bed. I will leave them before their murmured endearments, before the slow dance of their bodies in the act of making love. Let them have these stolen moments of happiness all to themselves.

  21.

  ON MY LAST MORNING WITH PAUL, I AM meant to complete the tying of the Jock Scott, which is good in theory. In practice, the fly looks like such a mess, I can’t see how to add to it without making it worse. The feathers are matted together, like the whole thing has been underwater already.

  “It’s so ugly,” I say to Paul. While our flies looked fairly similar near the beginning, his has now far surpassed mine. His feathers are still fluffy and uniform and perfectly placed. His thread and tinsel are wound evenly onto the shank of the hook, not full of small lumps and gaps, like mine.

  “I could tidy it up for you,” he says, “but then you wouldn’t be learning anything.”

  “Are you tempted to tidy it up for me?”

  “Of course,” he says. “It’s really awful.”

  We both laugh.