Island (20 page)
I was crouching down, I don’t know how long for but my legs ached. I tippled over onto my knees. It was difficult to breathe, the weight of the atmosphere was pressing on my lungs.
When it happens everything’s different. Real. How it really is.
Appalling.
I twisted myself to look behind me. Blackness. The yellow street lamps of the village in the distance. Those two women in the pub sane and
intelligent and blessed, organised, controlled, with one another to hold onto. I saw how the thin one glanced at the plump one as she talked, the little flicker of warmth running between them. Neither of them would ever be here. Prostrate in the road in the dark on their own. Gasping like a fucking fish on dry land.
I made myself get up. It hurt. Every bit of me ached. I had to move forward through the darkness to get to the witch’s house. When I lifted up my foot I didn’t think there was anything underneath, it was as long and giddy down to the ground as an astronaut spiralling on the end of a cable an umbilical cord in space. I am not even attached. I am floating I am falling I am not screwed down. There’s no cord.
Lift – push forward – lower. Is the movement. Make each leg do it. When one foot is down, lift the other. Lift, push forward, set down. I am moving like a radio-controlled robot along the road. Slowly. With zigzags.
There was a moon. It’s gone. I have stopped. I am looking at the appalling sky which is leaky with light with pinpricks and little gashes of light someone on the other side has been stabbing and poking to get through to get at us.
Aah. Haar. Aaah. I can hear my breaths groaning and crashing through my throat good god it’s a terrible noise will no one stop me? And where’s the moon? When I came out I saw a moon and now it’s gone it’s been taken away plucked off the sky like an apple and eaten gone away to nothing.
When I get into the room it will be rustling and breathing she may be in it lurking. She
will
be in it because she knows where I am and what I’m doing she’s watching me she’s a
scientist with an experiment. Watching the rat go through the maze. She’s watching me and she’ll be waiting for me there but if I don’t go back
If I turn around and go all that dark way along to the lighted pub again–
What then? It’s no use. It won’t be any use.
I steer myself, I am an alien vehicle, along the path of blackness to my mother’s house where muffled light shines through the curtains and my hypersensitive ears distinguish the voices of the characters in the film on TV and the sound of her shifting in her chair and the rasp of pulling wool and soft clicking of her needles as she knits.
I can go round the back. But this gasping tearing noise must stop. Stop it now or she’ll hear. I close my mouth the noises and breaths gulp at my throat like fish trying to leap out of deoxygenated water. The ache in my head looms so big it fills my vision and swamps my other senses quite mercifully, I unlock the door and get inside without seeing or hearing a thing. I lock it behind me, stand in the deeper dark, listening. Stand completely still. Take shallower breaths. Slow my breathing.
I am here. I can hear the TV very clearly even the words they are saying. And I think the sighs of her breathing.
I am grateful for the removal of outer space. The ceiling gives me relief. There is less to deal with. Best to stand perfectly still and listen. I am back to the door hands against it chin raised. Time passes. I am breathing shallowly and regularly. Night will pass.
She is getting up. She moves to the TV. She switches it off. I hear her
moving stiffly around her room. Rattle of fire irons, scrape of fireguard. Click click as lamps go off. She shuffles to the door. I breathe. I am still breathing. She moves down the hall to the front door. Puts on the safety latch. She shuffles along the hall towards my door. She hesitates outside, my breath is caught in my throat and won’t go in or out I keep my eyes fixed on the oblong of darkness with the crack of light beneath it I think I see the shadow of her feet. She shuffles on; click; the crack of light beneath the door vanishes. She is moving slowly a step at a time up the stairs. I must kill her.
But she has planted in my head every move I might make and is controlling me even now holding me pinned here with terror up against the door while she shuffles her way up the stairs. Does she know about Calum? Is he here? Or is he hiding too – from her, from me?
I break away from the door. How can you break away when someone else is controlling your mind? How can you think a single thing they don’t want you to think? Does the thin lesbian in the pub know the answer?
Know
to be suspicious of anything that comes into her head quickly, spontaneously –
know
that she can only be
herself
, not manipulated, if she takes that pause to be calm and deliberate?
Know
that her first reaction to anything is not to be trusted. Is planted by a controller; a mind reader; a mother?
I have got to the bed and I am sitting on it, which gives physical relief. There are shooting pains in my legs. I can sit on the bed and by staring forward at the window (which needs to be watched anyway) also keep both doors (on opposite sides of the room) in peripheral vision. I find I will sit like this for the night, because it is possible to keep watch in this way. There is deep silence in the house, only a floorboard
creaks from time to time contracting perhaps in the cold of the night, I imagine the roof beams supporting the rafters and the tiles all lying one overlapping the next I imagine the weight and structure of the house above me which is sheltering me from the sky. It is extraordinary that something holds me together in one machine as the separate bits of wood brick and tile cohere into a house it is extraordinary that things hold together and impossible to understand why they should, why they shouldn’t spin off into the chaos of blackness and sparks throbbing above us, why should they cohere?
I am holding myself together. I am holding my skin around my blood to stop it all gushing out and falling in rivers on the floor. She cannot destroy me unless I
allow
it.
I must hold my head very still. A slight tilt either way takes one door out of sight. All entrances must be guarded constantly.
SaltWhen the shape of the window begins to lighten I
am very very cold. It is quiet everywhere. The day is beginning. Nothing has come to either door. She has remained upstairs and silent. The greyness makes it, what, 5.30? Now it will get lighter. Nothing will come in daylight.
My body is so stiff it can hardly move, I let myself topple sideways on the bed and pull at the covers so they are half wrapped around me. I curve myself, facing window and door. It is getting lighter all the time. The covers create the beginnings of warmth. I close my eyes.
Knocking at the outside door. I am sweating, panicked, searchlight sun in my eyes.
Knock knock knock.
‘What?’ My voice cracked and dry.
No reply. The cover is folded under
my weight trapping me on the bed. I struggle and crawl and stagger to the door. I am drenched in sweat. Turn the lock. Open. Calum is kneeling on the step. His face is red his eyes are swollen.
‘I’m – s- I’m s-s-s-’
The bright sunlight pierces my eyes. The sun is dazzling over the sea. It must be afternoon.
‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’ He is like someone at prayer. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Please.’ The sun flares in my eyes and explodes inside my head the doorpost slices down my back.
A shadow shielding me from the blinding light, cool water tilts against my lips. I swallow. When I open my eyes he flinches, his crouching figure jerks back. I hold out my hand for the cup – drain it.
‘I never – I never–’ He is crying.
I can’t speak only lie dully against the doorpost with the blessed water taste in my mouth.
‘Sh-shall I get my m-mother?’
‘No.’ I haul myself up to sitting. I am faint with hunger. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Shall I make you some toast?’ My head is heavy and swollen it will not nod, I raise my hand. Carefully, giving me a wide berth, he steps into my room. I sit on the step staring at the blades of grass and the grains of dirt between. I hear the cupboard open the rustle of paper the bread slotting into the toaster the scrape as he pushes the lever down. The swish of the little fridge door as he looks for butter the
smell of toasting bread wafting towards me I am drooling I am dribbling with hunger. He puts down a plate beside me the butter is melting into the toast and I cram it in my mouth. He stands outside again. His wrists dangle by his sides.
When I have chewed it all up, there is quiet.
‘N-Nikki?
I am staring at his feet. His boots are soaking wet.
‘Nikki?’
‘What?’ One of his laces has broken and been knotted together. A brown lace and a black lace knotted together.
‘I didn’t mean–’
‘It was my fault.’
‘No–’ He is crying and I sit here with the sun warming me and my stomach growling and clamping on the toast. Just an animal really. A bit of warm meat that takes up this much space. What does it matter.
‘I’ll never – I’ll never–’
‘Alright. Be quiet.’
He breaks away, down to the end of the garden, he’s crouching by the fence his hands clutching on to it. It looks strange, as if something’s pulling him down into the earth. And he’s clinging to the fence for dear life. He’s jerking his head. He’s banging his head against the horizontal bar of the fence. I can see the whole fence juddering as he hits it again and again.
‘Calum.’
My voice cracks. Louder.
‘Calum.’
He stops but doesn’t move. He’s too far away. I can’t shout. Slowly get up. All these pains. My back. My face. My legs. Slowly I can walk to him. I can speak to his back.
‘It was my fault. It was a bad thing. We’ll forget it.’
He doesn’t move.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. Or think about it,
ever
.’
The effort of walking and speaking makes me dizzy. Back to the safety of my doorstep.
I sit a long time. Calum comes up the garden, edges past me into the room. There are noises of water, crockery, cutlery, the kettle. Later he slides past me out of the door again. He avoids looking at me.
‘I made your breakfast.’ He turns away around the corner of the house. I go in to table, sit, drink tea, eat boiled eggs and more toast. I sit at the table staring at the shapes of the eggshells. After a bit I rest my head down on my arms. Time passes.
I am disturbed by something slithering on the floor. It comes under the door from the hall. Something of her. It is white.
For a long time I watch it carefully. It is oblong and white, it pulses with radiant whiteness. It seems likely to spread and grow, maybe to flood across the floor. I could put my feet on the chair. Later it holds its shape – rectangular, flat. I pick it up, it is an envelope. Inside she has written me a letter.
Dear Miss Black, it would be
better for you to find alternative accommodation. You will understand I have my son’s interests at heart. Mrs McCullough at the post office might be able to help you. Please vacate by Friday 29th. P. MacLeod.
The meaning of this letter? I have to sit patiently to study it. Firstly: she is sending me away, again. Secondly: she knows what I am up to. What am I up to? Thirdly: she wants to get me away from Calum. That’s too late. Fourthly: thinking is very hard. ‘Alternative.’ Why that word? Alternative. As if there was an. As if two things might balance equally or there might be a place where you could
choose
. ‘Please vacate.’ Vacate is empty. To vacate = to empty. Please empty myself from this place. Please die. Which is a threat. Calum was a threat now vacating is a threat.
Later Calum is back at the door. The same day? Another day. Standing outside the door looking in but not at me, to the side of me, even with his good eye. Wretched, grey faced. He has put my tobacco tin on the step. I pick it up.
‘I’ve g-given her her lunch.’
I do not reply, it’s nothing to do with me.
‘I th-think you should go out. For a w-walk or something.’
‘No.’
‘You might feel better.’
‘Go away.’
He stands still looking at the ground.
‘Calum! Cal-lum!’ His mother’s voice is calling him from the front of the house. ‘Cal-lum!’ He remains still staring
at his feet. I hear her open the front door and call again. ‘Calum!’ She thinks he has gone up the road. He folds his arms across his chest and stands there obstinately staring in silence at his feet. She wants him to come to her, I want him to go away.
He is not going to her he is staying with me. This is quite funny when you consider that it is what I was scheming to achieve. ‘Go away Calum.’
For answer he sits down on my doorstep with his back to me and his face buried in his arms. We can both hear the half-ring the telephone makes each time she dials a number on it. Four times, a local number, she is ringing him at home. We hear her tut and the bang of the receiver going down. We hear her open the door again and the space of time it takes her to go down the path to the road. ‘Calum, Cal-lum!’ Her distant voice.