Matters of Life & Death

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘I told you,’ said the youngest guy. ‘She’s lonely – up there all by herself.’

  ‘He nearly missed the boat,’ the skipper waved his thumb at the boy, ‘running to get her cat food. To get in with her.’

  Day 10.

  Swimming in my swimming pool is a real treat. It’s only about twenty yards away. There are a series of flat rocks jutting into the sea like a natural pier. The first one is like a slightly tilted raft which is great for sunbathing. At high tide the rock rises a couple of feet above the sea. The water is turquoise green because of its depth and the immaculate sandy bottom. I’ve seen grey fish moving down below – mullet maybe. It is also sheltered because the next outcrop of rock shields it from the open sea. The whole thing is a wonderful rectangular-shaped gully. If I was a geography teacher I’d take a photo as an example of a fault – you can see the strata. I might even put it on the classroom wall labelled – ‘My fault’. You can dive straight in – it’s like a diving board. I can’t touch the bottom, even when I do. It’s a freedom like no other – swimming in your pelt. I feel like an otter, a seal. The water cradles me, soothes me, caresses me, cleanses me. You feel clothed in it except for the fact that it’s freezing. The first plunge is the worst. But that’s the way it has got to be done – no testing the waters here – it gets all the pain over in an instant. If the midges get really annoying this is the best refuge.

  He climbed the next headland and when he reached the top lay down. Beneath him the sandy bay was full of black rocks with cliffs at the back. His stomach tightened. There were footprints all over the place. Someone hadn’t bothered to hide the fact that they were there. He scanned the beach with his binoculars but could see no sign of movement. There was a river cutting across the sand and emptying into the sea. Further inland he saw a network of grey tumbled walls where houses had been. Suddenly in the lenses a flash of blue. He backtracked. A blue tent. Her place. A half-hour passed and still there was no sign of movement. He would venture down.

  He walked on the flat table rocks. They were fissured and creased like old skin. He had to go the long way, leaping from rock to rock, so as not to leave his prints. When he reached an area where the sand had been churned up he left the rocks and moved as quietly as he could across the sand. Near the tent was a dead fire among some slabs. On a rock were three pairs of women’s pants which had dried in the sun. They were the same shape. Two white and a black. Each was pinned down with a fist-sized stone.

  The tent was pitched in the shelter of two old stone walls. Further back against another tumbled wall was a wind-break of the same blue material. There appeared to be no one about. He moved the flap of the tent which had been left open. He put his head inside. It was damp and smelt faintly of plastic and fungus.

  There was a red rucksack with a sleeping bag rolled on top of it. A pot, a kettle, a large Winsor & Newton sketchbook, some tins of Heinz beans, some packets of dried cat food, a small Primus stove with blue canisters of gas. A used tin held paintbrushes and pencils beside packs of Polaroid film. He stepped outside and looked all around. No sign of anyone. Inside again he went to the rucksack. The zipper was already undone and he just flipped the top open. There was a black purse, which he opened. A handful of coins, bank cards wedged into their sections, a library card. In the wallet part there were three ten-pound notes which he folded and slipped into his pocket. He put the purse back where he found it – on top of a mauve jumper – and unzipped one of the side pockets. A box of tampons. Other pockets contained – a face-cloth, a book called The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, a washbag with a toothbrush and stuff in it. The only thing of any interest was a half-bottle of brandy with very little out of it.

  There was a hardback notebook. He spun through the pages with his thumb. It was blank except for the beginning pages. Here her writing was very neat and in straight lines even though there were no lines to guide the writing. The white paper took on a faint blueness from the tent:

  Day 12.

  I can hardly believe that three weeks ago I was in Art College. How awful that place was – spreading the new barbarism. They substitute randomness for creativity. They use the camera and the video now instead of brush and charcoal. The more clumsy and amateurish the result the better it’s liked. Pass the responsibility for art onto the viewer (I know I have a Polaroid but it’s useful for documenting work – they can even be works themselves).

  Mum and Dad were both painters so when I went to Art College I expected something better . . .

  His eye trailed away from the words and he closed the book. He lifted the sketchbook and looked at the first page. It was fucking awful. So was the painting on the next page. And the next. Like somebody was cleaning different colours off their brush. Greens, purples, browns. If her mother and father were painters she was fucking adopted. Black scribbles were like what he’d done in school trying to wear down the lead of his pencil.

  He set the sketchbook down where he found it and ducked outside the tent. The only thing stored in the wind-break was firewood, dry driftwood. He went back to the tent and unzipped the pocket of his anorak at his waist. He set a can of Super lager on an oval rock. She could take that two ways – either as a gift or else it would scare the shit out of her.

  And he was away jumping from the churned-up sand at the camp-site to the flat rocks and then up the hill to a position where he could watch for her coming back. It was late afternoon and there was a drop in temperature with the breeze coming off the sea. He spread his anorak on the grass and lay down. With his elbows resting on the ground the binoculars were steady and he could see much more through them. He kept his T-shirt off to get tanned by the breeze but after an hour or so he began to feel cold and put it on again. Various trails of her footsteps led nowhere in particular. He looked again at the knickers drying on the rock. He began to get a hard-on thinking about her. If he pulled himself off now it might spoil things. He had held off for so long he might as well wait a bit longer.

  He imagined her walking up the hill behind him and surprising him when he was doing it. Might be good that – turn her on, maybe. He was hungry and tried to think about food to distract himself. New potatoes and butter. A fish supper. Wagon Wheels. Chocolate was good for energy in survival situations.

  A pair of oystercatchers were creating a racket further up the beach – peep – peep – peep – peep. They were swooping and diving, going mad because somebody was approaching their nest. Something bad was going to happen. Was this her coming? He focused his binoculars on the birds, then on the landscape beneath where they were creating the fuss. Maybe it was a stoat or something like that. He saw movement and tried to keep the binoculars as still as possible. It was a black cat. Strolling out of the sand dunes. It was followed by a boy – walking – carrying a board or something. What the fuck was he doing here? Nobody mentioned him. He banged the binoculars down onto the grass. Keep watching – the girl is probably with him. In the vicinity. He looked again at the boy. About a mile away he looked young, around fifteen or so – walking barefoot carrying this board in one hand and his sandals in the other.

  He tried to remember the conversation in the pub. He had been overhearing it – not taking part in it. Maybe he’d missed something important – one of the times he’d gone to the gents. Or had they said something he forgot because too much drink had been taken? Without the binoculars he watched the tiny figure and the cat approaching. The cat did not walk to heel like a dog but ran this way and that, towards the sea, into the dunes. It sat and got left behind, then caught up. The boy paid no attention to it. He approached the tent and set his board on a rock. Through the binoculars he could see the boy was wearing khaki shorts – bare-chested, his shirtsleeves knotted around his neck, his shirt protecting his back from the sun. He disappeared into the tent.

  Almost immediately he came out again. He now had his shirt on. Then he spotted the can of Super lager. He looked all around, scanned the bay and the hills. He looked towards where he lay with h
is binoculars. The boy must have had good eyesight because he spotted him immediately and waved. Fuck it. Maybe the binoculars had flashed – maybe his stupid head had been sticking up. He felt he had to wave back.

  He got up and slung his anorak over his shoulder and decided to go down. When he got there the boy was sitting on a rock sipping the can.

  ‘Hi – was this meant for me?’

  It was a girl. Jesus. Her red hair was cropped very close. He had been looking at her tits through the binoculars and hadn’t even noticed – hadn’t even paid attention to them. She’d been walking half naked.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘It was very thoughtful of you. Cheers.’ She saluted him with the can. English, by the sound it. He pulled out the other can and jerked off the ring-pull. It exploded but this time he had the can aimed away from himself.

  ‘Sláinte.’ He returned her salute.

  ‘Oh yes – slanchay.’ She smiled and tilted the can up to her mouth. He had a small tattoo on his forearm of the word Mother. The heart was red, the rest of the design, navy.

  ‘So what brings you all this way?’ he said.

  She laughed, ‘I’m an artiste.’ She made fun of the word. ‘Trying to be creative. And what brings you here? To the world’s end?’

  ‘I live here.’ He nodded to the south-east. ‘Over by.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘As little as possible.’ Seeing her look concerned he said, ‘Naw – I’m on and off the boats – but it’s not regular.’

  She was in her early or mid-twenties. It was hard to tell exactly.

  ‘That’s miles away. I meant what brings you to this place.’ She gestured all around her.

  ‘They said there was an old village.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And that there was somebody here.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘In the pub. The guys in the fishing boat from the north.’

  ‘Oh, did they come back?’

  He nodded. ‘They sheltered for a bit last night. Did you get that storm?’

  ‘Yeah, for sure. Horrendous. My tent nearly took off.’ She laughed. ‘They were lovely – especially the skipper. They couldn’t do enough for me. So friendly. And you came all this way . . . ?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He stared at her.

  ‘How sweet of you.’ He looked away. She called the cat, ‘Psh-wsh-wsh,’ rubbing her fingers together. But the cat hung back.

  ‘It’s wary of you,’ she said. ‘Wary of strangers.’

  ‘It’s you that’s the stranger.’ She looked hard at him for a moment then smiled. He said, ‘What’s your excuse?’

  ‘For being here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Oh – a lot of reasons,’ she said. ‘I wanted to be on my own for a bit. Completely. And . . . I’ve just finished College. Art College. And . . . I wanted to do some work. And . . .’ She looked all around her as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. ‘And to be in this place. It’s the most beautiful place I have ever been.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yes – I never knew there was so much sky. If you live in a city you just never see it. And the stars at night. But I’m not here to do just landscapes,’ she put inverted commas in the air with her fingers, ‘but to register my feeling for landscape.’ She smiled at him. He looked up at the sky. It was beginning to cloud over from the west. ‘It’s so remote. A great-uncle of mine was stationed up here with the RAF during the war – and he never stopped talking about it. He said this whole area was the most underpopulated land mass in the whole of Britain.’

  ‘Because everyone living here’s a bastard.’ At first she smiled at this. He sat on a rock of his own. He took a long swill from his can of beer. ‘English?’

  ‘Born in England.’ She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Brought up in Edinburgh. You?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ She waited for an answer but he just looked over his shoulder out to sea. Then he finished his beer and bent the can in the middle and set it on the rock.

  ‘That was quick.’ She was still sipping hers, barely tilting it. She pulled her knees up to her chin and encircled her legs with her arms.

  ‘Do you have moles?’ He was looking at her legs.

  ‘No.’ She laughed at the directness of his question.

  ‘What’s those?’ He pointed. She looked down at the underside of her thigh and reached out a finger to touch the black thing on her skin.

  ‘Not again.’

  ‘Ticks,’ he said.

  ‘Nearly every day now.’

  ‘There’s another one.’

  He pointed to the back of her ankle.

  ‘I hate them.’

  ‘You’re their dinner. Any nail-polish remover?’

  ‘Forty miles from nowhere? Does that kill them?’

  ‘It gets them off your skin.’

  ‘I just pull them off.’

  ‘I bet they like that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She looked hard at him, not sure of what he’d said. Whether he meant it or not.

  ‘Never mind. Doing that leaves the head in you. Then you get diseases and everything. They’ll scar you for life if you do that. Want me to get them off so’s they’ll not leave a mark?’

  She seemed unsure, but nodded. He pulled out his knife and watched her face.

  ‘Relax,’ he said. She became flustered and straightened her legs so that her feet touched the sand.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘They’re no big deal.’

  He came and knelt in front of her.

  ‘Stand up then.’ She balanced her can of beer on the rock beside her and slowly got to her feet. He was still kneeling.

  ‘Turn around. Put your hands on your knees.’ She did as he told her. He took a cheap plastic lighter from his trouser pocket. His hand was shaking badly. He tried to get it to light. She was conscious of him looking up her legs.

  ‘I feel ridiculous,’ she said and straightened up. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Coax them out. Burn their arses off. Wait,’ he said. ‘Don’t move.’ He got the lighter to spark and turned the flame down. He held the jet close to the black bulb of the tick’s body trying not to burn the skin of her thigh.

  ‘Aaaah.’ It was a cry of the fear of being burned more than anything else as she felt the heat. The tick moved and he pulled it away from her skin with his fingers. The touch was brief. Her hand came round her thigh to touch the place. There was a trace of blood on her fingers.

  ‘They crawl up the grass and wait for something to pass – a deer – you – then they jump and hang on. Like grim death.’

  ‘But in a place like this they could wait for ever.’

  ‘Yeah – some of them can survive for years. Anything up to four years, they say.’

  ‘You’re a bit of an expert.’

  ‘That cat is probably covered in them.’ It was grooming itself on a wall near the tent.

  His voice had a shake in it. She could see his knees shivering as he squatted behind her looking up. He held the lighter flame to the other tick behind her ankle. When it was out he rubbed the place. Her skin was hot.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked. There was a long pause.

  ‘I like the view from down here.’

  She whirled round and stared at him.

  ‘Did you say what I think you said?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why don’t you go for a swim and cool off?’ She turned and walked quickly towards the tent, her limbs stiff and straight.

  ‘Just kidding,’ he called after her. The cat ran to her but she brushed it aside with her foot.

  He pocketed the lighter and followed her. She was tidying up. She dropped his buckled beer can into a plastic bag. Then set the rest of her beer on the rock in front of him.

  ‘Ta,’ he said, swigging from it. ‘I thought Art students were more broad-minded than that. Nudes and that kinda thing. Always in and out each
other’s beds.’

  She didn’t answer. The cat came to where she stood and began to criss-cross in front of her, rubbing its back to and fro against her legs.

  ‘Anyway – nobody up here can swim. Nobody teaches it. The boys on the boats say if your boat goes down, it’s better that way.’

  She was busying herself doing nothing – lifting things, putting them in the plastic bag – moving items within her living space.

  ‘I would like you to leave,’ she said.

  ‘I fuckin live here – you don’t.’

  She walked past him out of the tent and lifted her washing. Each rock, when she threw it away, bumped heavily on the sand. She rolled the pants up and stuffed them into a side pocket of the rucksack. Without looking at him she said, ‘I thought I told you to piss off.’

  ‘Huh!’ He mocked her. ‘Ladies don’t use words like that.’

  She refused to answer him again. Eventually he shrugged his shoulders in an exaggerated fashion and wandered off.

  He found himself a seat in the sunlight on an outcrop above the beach facing her camp and sat watching her. She ignored him and, sitting outside the tent mouth, attempted to boil a small pot on the Primus. He took out his knife and began stabbing it into the mixture of sand and grass he was sitting on. Again the noise – sheath, sheath – as the blade sank in.

  ‘Fuckin snobby ginger bitch,’ he said. The bright flick of a reflection on one of the stone walls reminded him of something. He angled the blade to catch the sun and directed the beam into the open flap of her tent. A circle lit up the darkness of the back wall. As a child he’d done this with a mirror directing the sunlight into bedrooms along the main street – a disc flicking across flowery wallpaper – intruding into rooms – any room he wanted. What was odd was, even though the mirror was square, the light was always a circle. A woman might be taking off her clothes and see a bright spot on the wall and think nothing of it. But it was important to him, down on the street, directing the power of the light. Now he aimed the reflection into her space and the image was still round even though it came from a long narrow blade. He realised what he was seeing was an image of the sun. He had the power to aim the sun, to aim it into her tent – to flick it over the walls, at the girl’s face, down between her legs – anywhere he liked. She became aware of the flash when it struck her face and she tried to wave it away like an irritating insect. He kept it trained on her. She looked at where it was coming from and pointedly turned her back on him to eat from her dish. The next thing she knew he was behind her.