9781784630645body-21

Janice Galloway

Distance

The deer came down to the road at night, slipping through the bracken just before dusk. By sundown, more beasts than seemed natural would reach the tarmac, sure-footing their way across to the narrow beach. They were there that first night, pallid in the headlights as she rolled off the ferry, turning to watch her as she slowed to a stall. Every night since, using petrol it would probably have been wiser to save, she had come back to see them do it again. They paid little attention to her, just went about their business, picking their way to the sand, their young close beside them. Sometimes, they turned and sniffed the air, then ambled slowly on. Something primitive, she guessed, was drawing them. Her too. Deer did not judge, did not speculate about her motives: they simply were. And so, they decided, was she. Gentle things made bolder by the dying light, they met her eye to eye, their pupils huge, absorbent in the dark. This was their element, not hers. But she had permission to stay.

Martha had not expected to be so struck by any of it. That the island would be beautiful she had taken for granted. That was what Scottish Islands were, after all: heather and bracken, tumbledown crofts and Highland cows, solitary eagles, hovering over rugged grandeur. And water: streams to waterfalls, crashing waves – a lot of water. That the place was entirely as perfect as expected surprised her nonetheless. Even late in the year, the lushness was heart-stopping: a small continent of greens and russets, clumps of bramble, fern and rush grass fringed by seaweed, scrub and scree. The window of the hotel bedroom framed a tethered boat that never seemed to move, red hull twinned against the mirror-surface sea. Most mornings, a seal twisted his way between the scattered rocks of the Small Isles. That she could not identify the birds that hung like dancers over the harbour did not matter: they’d be there tomorrow, and every day after that whether she knew what they were or not. She was superfluous. Harmless.

Peter was three when he split his head on a sheet glass table. She had been serving soup from a pot on the stove, heard him pattering closer in his socks and from instinct, looked up. The whole thing played before her eye in mere seconds in the shiny backboard of the cooker. He was running towards the table, laughing, then without warning came a dreadful crack like gunshot as the child stopped in his tracks, raising his hands to his face, his mouth wide. He crumbled to the floor as the howling started, the pain. Kneeling, trying to understand, she saw the blood: like paint from the lip of a can, thick and scarlet. A towel pressed to his forehead soaked as soon as it touched, blood forcing up through the fibres. As though the wound beneath had been made by a cutlass. She cradled his face, hands running like a butcher’s, as his eyes rolled and the screaming went on, and on, and on. If he was dying, she thought, bracing his little body tight, smiling down at him out of sheer terror; if he was bleeding to death, her duty was reassurance. As she pressed the right numbers slowly, carefully, into the phone with one hand, the other clutched him close, not letting go. As she spelled out their address to the operator, her voice clear, she kept her gaze steady, point to point on his. He would not be afraid because she was afraid. He would not be afraid.

It’s all right, she crooned, as he shook, barely containable between her arms. I’m here. He rattled against her chest. Let mummy take it, she whispered. Let me take it instead.

After, it soothed her he could not have heard her. It would have been impossible for him to have heard what she had said.

At hospital, things were more detached. Cuts to the forehead, the nurse said; they always barked worse than they bit. She meant there was always lots of blood, often no lasting damage. They stitched him back together so gently, he fell asleep the minute it was done. Next afternoon, he woke woozy, heavy-lidded, but more or less himself. The table survived with only a minor crack and three stained towels were thrown away; Peter’s torn skin mended behind a Cat in the Hat plaster and everything fell to rights again. Everything but Martha.

It started with dreams; formless things in empty rooms, black shapes worming towards her as she slept. More than once, a sensation of falling woke her sweating, fearful, as Riley slept, oblivious, beside her. Before long, she had taken to taping the empty slits of the electrical sockets in the skirting, shifting ornaments and glassware from reachable shelves. Toiletry bottles in the bathroom are swapped for plastic containers. She fit a brass lock on the cupboard full of bleaches, acids and cast fluids; removed the tea-towel hooks from Peter’s eye-level at the sink. She put rubber bumpers on the edges of their softwood dining table, threw out a set of toy screwdrivers and long-handled paintbrushes as asking for trouble. Riley’s pen-knife was removed from his key ring; the ancient tube TV – too big, too heavy – now sat on the floor. When she began waking Peter at night, checking more than once if he was breathing, Riley drew a line.

You’ve had a shock, but for godsake. He paused, softened his voice. You’ll make Peter paranoid at this rate. The last thing we need is you being—

He looked at her, let his shoulders slump, then smiled, limply. Just don’t go turning into your mother, eh?

The mention of her mother, even as a joke, was something Martha hadn’t seen coming. For all that, she knew what he meant. He thought she was being – what was it he had always called her? Neurotic Nancy. Neither of them ever called Martha’s mother mother, but Riley, more often than not, attached the adjective. He had also called her – the words formed in her head as she looked at her husband now – a selfish old bitch who ruined your life. Under her gaze, Riley flinched.

Look, he said. I’m not trying to blame. He brushed the fringe out of her eyes. But it’s time to get a grip, Martha. To move on.

Move on. Martha only realised she had said the words when she heard them out loud, her own throat, working.

You have to let him live a normal life, he said. He kissed her fingers, breathed out. Let it go. His eyes, she noticed, were shut.

Toxic Bonds surfaced in the Oxfam shop. Its embossed silver title glittered across from the Fairtrade Coffee stand. On the cover, three short sentences, ranged like lines of poetry, sat beneath a cartoon heart. The heart was chained. Fear is Toxic. Clinging makes a Prison. Love means Letting Go. Embossed so they rose from the book’s crimson background, these lines frazzled under the strip-light, sending a cold-water shiver down her neck.

Martha took the book home and read it the same night. It told her things she already knew, but with fewer caveats. A good mother was not driven by fear. A good mother did not limit the growth of what she loved. A good mother did not cling, for clinging was a curb upon joy. The good mother wished only to set free.

There were pages of exercises: mantras, deep breathing, checklists, a slew of limp phrases encouraging letting go. Spend today without consulting your watch and see what happens! Imagine a perfect beach, your child free from danger, playing separately in the sand! It was trite and predictable. It was embarrassing. But it was compulsive nonetheless. She went to the spare room in the small hours, sleepless, and read it all over again, this time marking it with highlighter pen. Near dawn, she dozed enough to imagine a huge animal with heavy paws had come in the room, strolled twice round the bed choosing its moment, then pounced, silent, onto the quilt to place its paws on her chest, pressing till she couldn’t breathe. Even struggling to wake, she knew no beast was there. Of course not. Her eyes scanned for shadows in any case, so she unfocussed her eyes, stared at nothing instead. Since the sound of her own breathing was frightening, she took the book’s advice and spoke out loud. Let it go. The ghosts of passing cars travelled as lights along the ceiling cornice. Let it go. She had to understand what that meant. Let it go. There was no danger. No broken glass, lurking electric cables or razor-edged crockery. The beast in the dark was, and she knew it, only herself.

A trip to a counsellor recommended by a work friend of Riley’s was not a success. The counsellor, a sad-eyed, unhealthily overweight single parent, offered chocolate biscuits. Martha had trouble meeting her eyes.

Do you do that on purpose? the counsellor said, creaking in her chair.

What? Martha asked.

That – detachment thing? You don’t look as though you really want to be here.

Martha looked away again. The counsellor prodded Riley instead. That seemed more fruitful.

In the second session, Riley’s Canadian origins declared themselves. He missed the open space, he said, its place in his heart. Some day, he’d go home. The word home did not mean their house: it meant the place his mother lived, the place from which she sent dried autumn leaves every year, pictures of her allotment.

Peter would love it there, he said. I did.

He tried for a smile, failed. The counsellor touched his hand. She liked Riley, Martha thought. Down-to-earth, reasonable-to-a-fault; everyone loved Riley. Her too. Maybe it was the easy-going suggestion of Irishness about his name. Her own made people think of Jesus and domesticity if they knew the biblical stories. These days, a lot of people didn’t. Riley, as a name, seemed unlikely to date. At the end of the session, Martha handed over the suggested donation while Riley made a fresh appointment. After three, she called a halt. Riley asked what in god’s name she thought they should do instead and Martha told him straight. His mouth fell open.

What do you mean, separate? he said. You mean live apart? Martha waited.

I thought we were trying to work together? I thought—

Divorce, Martha said. The words had come out no one else’s mouth. I think I mean divorce.

The words surprised her, but only slightly. That was what separate usually meant: a cowardly, slow-death route to definite distance. She saw no reason not to call it by its name.

It’s only fair, she said. I can’t live with me either.

Riley was exasperated. There’s no getting through to you any more. You’re completely – he raked his mind for the right word – cut off. He kicked the skirting. What is it you actually want, Martha? Apart from endless fucking patience and permission to fall to pieces whenever you are overcome by the horror of normal life? What do you want?

She watched him struggle to regain control of whatever it was he was losing, looked at the square smudge on the wall, at a place where a picture had been taken away but had left its shape behind. She wondered what it had been a picture of. She did not say, I want to let you go. He would not have the faintest idea what she was talking about. I want you both to be safe. She barely understood it herself. The square on the wall seemed to pulse in the dim light.

I’m not leaving, he said suddenly. If that’s the idea. I’m not going to be the one who packs his bags and strolls off into the sunset. He was indignant, his voice rising. I’m not abandoning anyone. It’s not me.

No, she said, gathering herself. She kept her voice soft. It’s not you. I didn’t say it was.

Riley looked at her as though she had just stepped out of a human skin and shown a terrible, alien self. It was, she knew, the beginning of something unstoppable.

I won’t ask for a thing, she said. Least of all Peter. She cleared her throat. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you. Either of you. It’s me.

There was no bargaining or even shouting. He took it, Martha reported to her sister in Melbourne, on the chin.

White silence came down the line, a crackle of static.

Jesus, Sarah said. You can’t just cut your own kid out like a tumour. Christsake, Martha, you’re his mother.

I’m not cutting him out, Martha said. What’s being cut out, if you must, is me. I’m – the word toxic skipped through Martha’s head like a black lamb, disappeared – I’m a drain on him just now. Both of them.

She heard Sarah’s intake of breath.

Don’t talk to me as though I’m stupid, Martha pressed. Surely I need to acknowledge what I can’t do?

There were a few seconds of nothing, of thick, underwater silence.

Martha. You know what Nancy always called you? Are you there?

Martha said nothing.

She called you her rock. Martha’s such a bloody rock.

Martha looked at her nails. She should have washed her hands. Let it go, Sarah, she said. Trust me. I’m your sister. Make a leap of faith.

Jesus, Sarah said. Jesus H Christ. Faith in what?

Martha heard her sister sniff, tried not to admit she might be weeping.

You really want out of it, don’t you? That’s what it means. You’ve had enough and you’re cutting loose – is that it?

It’s for Peter, Martha said, trying to keep anger out of her voice. And for the best.

Yes, I know, the phone said. It’s for the best. Now where have I heard that before?

Sarah, you’ve no right—

As though topping herself did us all a favour. That was for the best according to that stupid bit of paper she sent. The back of a petrol receipt, if I remember correctly. And you got that. I got a fucking photocopy. Nothing personal, no apology. It’s for the best. You’re can’t even muster the gumption to be original, Martha. You’ve got this from her.

Martha held the phone tight. Nancy has nothing to do with it, she said slowly.

Not any more, she hasn’t. But that’s some legacy she left behind. You can’t even see it, can you? It’s for the best. She sounded drunk. Well thank god for that. Thank god for a catch-all get-out clause and good old mum.

Martha felt struck. What Nancy had done bore no comparison with her own situation. She could have reminded her sister that she, the younger sister, had been the one left to deal with their mother’s death; the shock, the police, the unanswerable letters; the one who, at seventeen, had arranged a funeral and dealt with the legal mess while Sarah had sat tight in Australia, finalising her fucking wedding plans. But what was the point? Sarah had gone native. She swore all the time. All she knew was how to get on a high horse and ride into the distance.

Yes, Martha said. Thank god mum killed herself. Thank god for family.

Martha heard one of her nieces wailing in the background, needing attention. Sarah just held the line for a full thirty seconds. Then the voice creaked back down the line, dark, deliberate.

One thing, Martha. You’re still a bitch.

The flat had white walls, a spare room and a fridge that made rock-fall noises at random intervals. Martha woke a lot in the night but that was to be expected. It was adjustment. She cried at the ceiling on and off for two days, then asked for tranquillisers from the new GP who asked very few questions. She needed full time work to be occupied, and better useful, so supply was the obvious choice. High demand, nothing local, nothing permanent, nothing personal. No one paid much attention to who filled for a teacher off sick and not much attention was exactly what Martha wanted: no questions about family, what she did on weekends, just gratitude she had turned up at all. Supply was perfect.

From Peter’s very first weekend with her, he brought photographs: Riley’s idea. There was Peter sitting on a rug she did not recognise; eating breakfast from a familiar plate, but playing with an unfamiliar kitten on the old kitchen floor; reflected in the bedroom mirror, showing off his new school tie. Riley was showing he could fill the gap. They were good pictures, but curiously disquieting, and questions – does the kitten have a name? are those your new shoes? – irritated Peter enough for her to ask fewer as the months progressed. Riley did not phone. He needed the break to be clean, he said, to get his head around things. He hoped she would give him that. Martha understood. She understood completely.

After nine months, Riley had his head around all he needed. A hand-written letter, complete with a brochure of a trim little school and a photo of Martha’s mother-in-law watering fruit bushes in her garden, said he wanted very much to go back to Canada. Peter would love having his grandmother there all day, the wide open spaces. Unless Martha wished to raise an application for sole custody, he hoped she would meet and talk it through, hear what he had to say. This was his new voice for her, between formal and informal. It was optimistic. It was strong. The terrible surge of tenderness and loss that rushed upon her at its close, at her husband’s signature written more legibly that she’d ever seen it before, made her sit for a moment, compose herself, pour a drink. Surely he did not think she would object. She had put the most valuable thing in her life in his care already. That was the point. It was for her to adjust, Riley to do all the right things. Because he would. He always had. Her job now was not being difficult, or getting in the way.

She waited till evening before calling, then couldn’t speak. He waited. Eventually, she read the important thing she had to say from the card she had written out before dialling, just in case. He was grateful. He hoped it would be a relief, in time; a way for her to have space. If she wanted to write, he would pass her letters on. His mother, he said, asked after her kindly. There was a catch in his throat for a moment, then a more familiar tone, the Riley she had lived with, came down the line.

I wish you could see the school, the voice said. They’ve got a jazz band, a mountain survival team, British-style soccer. And there’s some kind of whizz-kid Art teacher who – then he was silent. He was silent so long Martha thought he had gone. Eventually, the line crackled.

Well. It’s a good place, he said. You get the picture.

The line was breaking up again. Not sure he could hear her, Martha said yes. Yes, she said, I do. Her words seemed to vanish into white noise.

Whatever’s best, she shouted. Ellen is a wonderful woman.

Then Riley knew that already. It was a stupid thing to say.

Whatever you think, she called, hearing only an echo of herself. I know you’ll do the right thing.

When all hope of Riley’s voice resurfacing disappeared completely, she hung up.

For his last visit, Peter brought a drawing – a house in the woods with a wolf outside, the forwarding address and phone number in Riley’s handwriting. Riley had used a ruler under his writing to keep it controlled, so the words were flat-bottomed, like little boats. Martha kept the visit routine; shared TV with a picnic on the rug, the park to see squirrels, colouring, what-if games. What if we could live on an island cropped up, stayed safe. They’d find animals, Peter said, make friends. Routine things, Peter off-guard, was what she wanted to remember. They watched a plane cross the clouds from the kitchen window, but he did not raise the subject of leaving. Provoking him to reveal his feelings, whatever they were, seemed crass. It mattered not to load Peter with emotions he didn’t need, namely hers. For now, there he was, in the kitchen. She wished only to seize the moment, to drink him in.

After, she put the drawing with some family snaps, a left-behind jumper, and sketches her son had made in a shoe box. She fished out a file of legal, household and financial stuff, not all of which she clearly understood, and set it alongside. Last, she foraged what Riley had always called that fucking casket – a black jewellery case, light enough to pass for empty – from the bottom of the wardrobe and settled it beside the rest. Her life – proofs of ownership, property, existence – done, dusted and not much when it came down to it. The half-bottle bottle of cheap malt she had bought for emergencies (her mother’s phrase) when she first moved in seemed justified. Tomorrow, she’d clear up, lock the papers away – in the airing cupboard maybe, beneath the bed. But not tonight. She couldn’t do it tonight. Tonight was for sitting on the carpet beside inanimate objects, pouring till the bottle stopped delivering.

In the early hours, knees creaky, she wandered to the kitchen. The motorway lights made bright clusters. All day and all night, cars travelled this road. People went about their business with no let-up, driving. It was what people did. Sour fumes rose from the glass, nipping at her eyes. Peter was out of harm’s way. She could not touch him, perhaps, but he was free from danger, open to joy. All she had to do was bear it. I’m here, she said, watching the words fog on the window pane. And so she was. Still here. She stood till morning, forehead pressed against the window, watching cars on the slip road veering sharply for the fun of it, taking corners way too fast.

Martha wrote to Peter once a week, a recitation of school stuff, animal stories, fragments of silly conversations she had overheard. When he wanted, Peter wrote back. He developed a wild flourish under his name, more even handwriting, a talent for cartooning. Now and then, Riley enclosed a snap in which she could see her son’s face changing; his hair turning longer, darker, blurring out his eyes. Insomnia apart, her own new life continued without much to remark upon. Supply teaching was steady and largely self-directed. She took poems into Chemistry classrooms, conducted debates on animal welfare in Physics, played Philip Glass in Maths and bet they couldn’t count the notes when left no other instructions. Few asked what she had done. They expected her to be on the sidelines. On one occasion, a shy Religious Studies teacher invited her on a field trip – an unrepeated adventure. On another, she joined a fourth-year trip to see Romeo and Juliet, astonished by the level of ready embarrassment sixteen-year-olds could muster. She was not part of the natural catchment for Retirement Dos and Nights Out. She went alone to concerts, leaving early if the music seeped too far beneath her skin. She experimented with photography, Modern Architecture and Ancient Greek at night-school till there was no space left in the week and she realised she preferred to be alone.

By Peter’s twelfth birthday, the letters arrived once or twice a year: hers went weekly, as before. Afraid of email, horrified by the overfamiliarity of social media, she stuck with pen and paper, guessed his tolerance for it was fading. He was still recognisable from the pictures Riley sent on, had the makings of solid shoulders, astonishingly white North American teeth. That Riley accepted the money she still sent by wire made her grateful. What else did she have to give? Now and then, she wondered how she would respond if asked to visit, but no invitation came.

On her fortieth, the small group who shared her lunchtime crossword surprised her. In tentative party mode, they cracked open a bottle of something fizzy and Grace from Home Economics made tray bakes. Fifteen more years and you can do what you like, she said, raising her glass for the toast. People made jokes about their ambition to be a former teacher one day. The age where life began, they said: she should make some plans. Tom, an Assistant Head with a thing for snazzy ties, gave her a gift: a coffee-table book, its cover showing Table Mountain, a palm-strewn beach, a scatter of ruins under a Turkish sky. 101 places to see before you die. General laughter. Everything worth seeing before you died was too far away, Martha said, and they laughed again, gave her an unaccountable round of applause. Life begins before you die – she saw the joke. Then her eyes became treacherous, her nose threatened to run. The wine, she thought, blinking; an unexpected act of kindness. Then the bell rang to remind her a class were waiting at the other end of the corridor. No rest for the wicked. No indeed. Everyone seemed relieved.

The class knew too – HAPPY BIRTHDAY chalked on the board in the hope of banter instead of lessons, and a cupcake from the school shop studded with jellybeans. Martha shelled out the extracts of Orwell she had brought for discussion, refusing to be deflected. She didn’t like his stuff, but it was syllabus, an instruction from the absent teacher. Dutifully, she praised the author’s tenacity, regretted the flatness of his characters, then asked for opinions. Fifth year concluded that Orwell was a creature of duty rather than passion. One, finding a photo on his phone, said Orwell looked repressed enough to implode.

His son almost drowned, Martha said. They looked at her.

They went out in a boat were caught in a whirlpool. The little boy was only four years old, but Orwell took him out into danger, then had to save him from drowning.

The class looked at her, then each other, wondering what point she was making. Martha had begun to wonder herself.

Sometimes, she said, there’s more to people than meets the eye. Repressed and paranoid and dying is not a whole picture of anyone. Maybe he was passionate too. Maybe he was more passionate than he looks.

The boys hooted, pointing at his haircut, his stupid toothbrush moustache. Nobody in their right mind would ever fancy him – he had piggy eyes.

Martha was glad when the period was done.

The blood came and went for a year before she thought twice. The GP advised a hospital check, and Martha sat in the waiting room of the same building she had been with Peter all those years ago, thinking how terrified she had been. Not now. This was a fuss about nothing. The hospital noted her weight loss, nausea, spotting between periods. Only the sudden bursts of pain seemed unexpected. The probes and scrapes were not more bearable because they were the right thing to do, but they did not last long. When no one volunteered a cause she did not push. The word cancer popped into her head, and she let it, texting how it felt. She had been waiting for something, but illness had never been a fear. That ache in her spine that faded only when – if – she slept was no more than poor posture. More than likely, the care and time they were spending on her now was a waste of valuable NHS cash. On the other hand, the word cancer came back, almost flirting. She was, she understood, not frightened. An echo, some long-lost bird from another life entirely, seemed ready to fly home to roost.

Last day, Martha took her name off the supply list. There was no need to do anything else. Temps came and went: just the nod to the authority and she was a free woman. All this time at no one’s beck and call, even a little room to extemporise, had been a good innings. Now there were other things to do, and she’d do them alone. They began with clearing: trousers that no longer fit, unloved dresses and unwise shoes, half-used cosmetics and never-opened books – things already overstocked at the charity shop. She gathered every set of class notes, minutes and reminders, keen to burn them in a fire-bucket to no more than ghosts. What was necessary to keep was not a great deal, when it came down to it. It occurred as she ransacked the cutlery drawer set on getting rid, she had not been this calm since late pregnancy. Maybe this was a kind of inversion, a clearance rather than the thing all those years ago they called nesting. It would have been amusing if she had felt less driven. Soon there was only the formal paperwork to go.

Her skin rippled at the spare room’s habitual chill. Next to the bed and the hillock of newly-bagged rubbish, the cabinet – Martha’s filing system, her cache of memorabilia – was still to go. It was important to leave things collated, clean. Not to leave a mess behind. The things in the cabinet, if she remembered correctly, were by and large, already shipshape. A few extras had been added over the years – bank-books, payslips, tedious financial stuff – but the essentials were as she had last settled them, nothing missing. The shoebox, however, should be opened.

The lid came back with a soft pop. Peter’s jumper, tinier than she remembered, his drawings, the bright red NEW ADDRESS card showed all at once. Beneath them, snaps of Riley as a younger man, some Canadian dollars, tickets for a puppet show in Montreal. One shoe no bigger than the palm of her hand, its navy blue leather gone dry as card. All to keep. She set the box aside. The green files full of birth and marriage, assets and confirmations, needed only the merest glance. Then the jewellery box. Without thinking nearly hard enough, she settled her thumbs on the gold-rimmed lid, lifted.

A waft of dust and velvet. Beneath a layer of crushed tissue paper, looking more frail than before, were the cuttings. The folded edges of the first cutout showed acid brown. Opened, however, the photo inside was exactly the same: its grey-dot composition sudden and familiar. The car. Some featureless, hired runabout, square in the middle of the frame, its tyres at a queer angle, half-sunk in mud. No marks on the bodywork, not a single scratch, showed. If it hadn’t been for the shattered windscreen, its open shark-mouth gaping over the bonnet, you’d have no idea how terrible this was, none at all.

Slowly, Martha took in its details afresh, the nothing-much content of the photo refusing to change. A woman walking a dog had found it, they told her. A woman. Martha pictured a unsuspecting soul in a car-coat holding a lead, knuckles knocking gingerly on the window. Then she would look inside. When the paper began to shake in her hands, she set it aside. What looked up from the casket now was her mother’s, face, young and wary and radiant all at the same time. Something in the quality of the photograph, the time of day, perhaps, made her quite ordinary set of features seem lit from within. Her mother in a garden, the leaves on the tree behind her wild with blossom, holding a baby, her first born, out to the watcher like a gift.

Martha settled her hand on the rug to settle herself and the cutting tipped her skin: the car, the mud, the broken-necked angle of the front tyres blatantly on show. Some godforsaken hillside in Cumbria, they said. Did they have a connection with that part of the country? Not so far as Martha knew. No suicide note either, not really; just four words on a petrol receipt, another razor blade (was it back-up?), a bottle of vodka and the car radio, on full blast till the battery gave out. After that, the stranger’s problem, the stranger’s burden to find the mess.

Overcome with shame, Martha pushed the clipping back inside the box, her mother’s picture with it. Trying not to think of blood gone black on cheap upholstery, she settled the lid then she stroked her skirt over her hips, again, again, making it smooth. She was not flustered, she told herself. She was – what? Surprised. She should have known, not opened the damn thing at all. Riley’s voice whispered in her ears – Get a grip, Martha. Throw that fucking casket away. Like an arm around her shoulders. Good old Riley. Get a grip, Martha. He would always be there, true and clear, dispensing restraint and disappointment. Get a grip. She almost smiled.

The consultant repeated himself, asked if she understood. Martha nodded. Endometrial hyperplasia, a short presentation on overproduction of female hormones, thicknesses of some kind where they ought not to be, an overview of statistical probabilities. She had heard every word. Understanding would take a little longer. He smiled, spoke again. There was very slim possibility of carcinoma, but it seemed as likely, in his opinion, as the present political class developing any interest whatsoever in proper handling of the NHS. He’d stick his neck out and say – he paused, looked her in the eye – it was wholly treatable.

Martha said nothing.

Given her age, he recommended hysterectomy, radiotherapy if any risk remained, but, insha’Allah – he smiled – complications were less than more likely.

There was a long, glutinous silence.

Perhaps he had been hoping she would be relieved and was disappointed by her blankness. Maybe other people said things at times such as this, whatever kind of time it was. Martha, aware it was rude, found nothing.

Well, he said. A lot to take in.

He gave her leaflets and a prescription. The important thing to remember was that this was good news. He gave her a thumbs-up. Martha said nothing at all.

The front door looked shabby when she got back, in need of repainting; the brass lock tarnished. The key, however, worked first time. Maybe she had finally got the knack. For a time, she stood at the kitchen window, wondering out of habit where the cars were going, not much caring. She spread her hands on the work top, observed the tracery of veins and tendons under the skin. She put on the radio, found the shipping forecast, turned it back off. She made a cup of tea she didn’t want, then wandered back to the balcony window. She could think of nothing, not a thing, she wanted to do. A walk maybe? The squirrel park with hazelnuts to attract company? Opening the balcony door let the sound of the motorway rush to meet her. Like opening a hive, she thought, a can of bees. The air was welcome, even if it stank of carbon emissions. It was cold. A gentle slap. Boxes and bags, the results of her former tidy-fit, made a ladder at the rail. She had no desire to welcome any of it back. On top, however, was the unwieldy coffee-table book, its glossy colours pocked with rain. South Africa, the Maldives, the fallen city of Persepolis. 101 places to see before you die. If the wind had not flapped at the cover, she might not have seen inside it at all. But she did. Anticipating, as usual: your worst fault, Martha, is the way you shock-proof yourself from surprise, the way you always need to know what’s coming. The image of Canada, all autumn leaves and heady trees, she had made in her head did not show on the pages after all. The book had blown open, not another continent, not even another country. But on Orwell’s island. All by itself, the book chose Jura.

Two trains and a ferry; obligatory car hire, another boat. The cloud stayed low. Missing the second boat was a three-hour wait, inside the car near the water’s edge, the island floating and not floating, hardly any distance away. At the other side, the deer were already waiting. Thirty for every human being on Jura; man, woman, child. The island was named for them and full of them, leaseholders of all they surveyed. The rightness of seeing them that first night called her every night thereafter with no need to find them out: they just arrived, in lines and clusters, family groups; now and then a solitary young male, chased away to make his own arrangements.

After a few days of simply watching without having to analyse a damn thing, Martha felt no pressing need to watch her step. No one intruded, no one demanded explanations. She spent the time taking pictures, sleeping a lot, identifying flowers and seaweed, shells, droppings. She found things: a broken gate behind which a mob of pheasants gathered every night at dusk; the cemetery just outside Craighouse, its skulls and anchors, its flat-faced stones facing out so the dead might enjoy the view; a warehouse where the distillery stored its ancient casks, reeking of alcohol; a thicket of fat blue-black brambles. The territory was resilient: to be taken as found.

Her drive explored the single-track road a little longer each day, heading past the Highland cows and sheep that sat squarely, possessively, on the warmth of the tarmac. At night, she went out to whatever stretch of beach took her fancy, leaving the torch behind and picking her way by the low light that seemed to lurk always behind the dark. Now and then, the cry of a solitary raptor sounded from nowhere; a fox cub, keening. Other than that, only the sound of her own footfalls, waves – there were always waves – and wind, whipping at nothing. Her fingertips throbbed with cold and she let them. She inched out of the car near cliff drops, places where the road seemed almost to disappear over a sheer edge to the open sea; she rolled down the window for the pleasure of hearing the unseen blackness of tide beneath. I am perched, she thought, on the edge of the world. It was not frightening.

On her last evening, a passing-place she had not used before allowed her to leave the car and wade over boggy ground to a sheer fall of quartzite, a place to look out into the lighthouse flares, enjoy the sour hiss of the sea. Since the moon was high, the huge white breakers rising vertically beyond the safety of the strand showed clearly, standing upright before they melted like apparitions. For a second, she thought she saw a seal in the down-rush, but it might have been seaweed. Or nothing at all. Martha waited. She waited till she was too cold to wait any more, looking out at the battering wash, the rocks splintering whatever came, impervious. There was no hidden code, no message, no meaning. What happened out there was random, wholly without blame or favour. In the end, nothing hinged on human decisions, nothing demanded retribution or just deserts: what happened was just what happened. How things fell out. She imagined Orwell in his stupid little boat, imagining he could spite the sea, getting away with it by chance. That boy. That terrified boy.

A stag made its low, calling bellow on the road behind her as she scrambled back to the car, leashing in the herd. Even this late, gulls were screaming at the tide. Everything seemed violently fresh, and she noticed for the first time a damp fog rolling closer, ready to blanket everything, even the webs in the hedgerows. Her jacket sleeve was already furred with droplets. Mushroom spores.

Godknew what was watching, its night vision clear, as she fought back to the car through blackness, her soles heavy with peat, but she knew it meant no harm. The night looked more dense when she flicked on the headlights, showing the mosquito net of water on the bonnet. Rather than turn, she chose to drive ahead a little further, find a side-track, then reverse: the single track made a clean turn impossible. There was no rush. Martha wiped her eyes and settled behind the wheel, her feet slipping on the pedals as she clasped the belt. She turned the ignition, acknowledging the fact of it. It was time to go back.

The turn-off wasn’t far. She backed into a clump of heather, its hard roots scraping at the tail lights, made the circle in three reverses. The way back was exactly that which she had come. One road. It was still something to come to terms with: this island had one road. Behind her, if she had kept going, was Barnhill, the remotest place on earth: after that, a petering out into broken scree, rock and sweet FA. Ahead now were the settlements, the new build, more fertile land, the tumble into Craighouse. Then burned fenland, the road down to the sea. For company, she pressed the radio button and found Mozart. It wasn’t a choice, just what came. Sometimes there was nothing but white noise. It was a kind of miracle, finding Mozart first time, some gorgeous voice at the top of its range bring Queen of the Night. Too beautifully. Her singing held no anger: it was sheer, edgeless – a glass tower into the sky. The car dipped, bouncing off a pot-hole and the firs closed ranks into the downward slope. The world reduced to the headlamp path, veils of drizzle on either side. A branch scraped the window, making her flinch. She was driving too fast. This road was poor in the best of weathers and here she was, not behaving. She braked, cranked into second, felt the exhaust scrape. It would help to turn the radio off. As she reached for the dial to remove all distraction, the stag was already turning. She caught a glimpse of his eye, his hooves, rising. Then the thud. Sudden. Grinding. Loud.

Instinctively, she pressed the brake, heard the sound of the engine dip. The car was ignoring her, making an inexorable, slow-motion skid as if the bitumen beneath her tyres had turned to water. Aquaplaning. The word occurred as she tilted toward the passenger side, saw branches and distant lights panning past the window, vaguely aware she should release the brake. You were supposed to release the break. Then, without apparent cause, without her doing the right thing at all, the car lurched to a stop. It took a moment for her to realise: it was facing the wrong direction. The Queen of the Night, shocking against the stillness, was still singing.

For a moment, Martha thought she saw something moving in the rear-view mirror, but it was just the near-side indicator, sending a signal, an absence, with no one to warn. Her neck hurt. But she wasn’t dizzy. She was, to all intents and purposes, fine. Shaky, she sprang the seat belt and opened the door, scanned the horizon. She had hit something, but what did not show. Not a rock fallen from one of the crags, it had absorbed too much impact for that. But something big. The stag. It had to be the stag. Able or not, it would have run. It would at least have tried. Carefully, tripping against the thick clumps of grass that forced their way through the road surface, she walked to the rear of the car to check immediate damage, work out what to do.

The whole nearside wing was crushed, bent on itself like a worn slipper; one headlight pointing drunkenly into the trees. The radiator grille was squint. But no smell of petrol, nothing, apparently, leaking. At the bottom of the valley, a glowing window showed what was most likely a farm building, but it was too far to walk, too dangerous to leave the car like this. Someone else might come round the corner without warning, find the damn thing straight ahead. They might be on their way even now. A crow flapped from behind an open gate, the field beyond it thick as pitch. Then, by the steady, orange beats of the indicator light, she saw something move. Into the field and churned earth beyond the fencing, a beast struggling in a ditch. He was huge. He was desperate. He groaned, rose, fell back again.

Martha stepped over the ditch and onto the sodden peat, her stomach tightening. The beast, aware she was coming, kicked and tried to stand again, crashed heavily back down. She saw him rocking in the hollow, knees buckled, tilting his head and lowing. The shape of his antlers, small and new, flashed in outline against the fringe of rushes. There was no one else here. No one to help, no one to advise. It was her dilemma. Hers alone.

Trying for calm, she reached one hand, repeating what came into her mouth unbidden. I’m here. I’m here. Toughing his flank made him shudder; he twisted his head to see what she might be, eyes rolling white as he struggled, failed. A deep gash showed briefly under one of his back legs, and under his belly, something solid unfurling, glistening like oily rope. The iron smell of blood was unmistakeable. This needed a gun. It needed a gamekeeper. She was too clueless to kill a living thing, could not imagine how. There would be a jack in the car maybe, but dear god. Not now. Not, she suspected, ever. She fought the sudden, awful desire to embrace him, wrap her arms around his neck and weep, but didn’t. It would only make things worse, frighten him more if it was possible. And there, on the road behind her, was the car, a more-than-threatening hazard slant-wise on the single-track road while she looked on, spineless and stupid and out of place. Something slithered over the gate beside her, a hard black outline, claws scraping. All the time, the stag was shivering, heaving terrible, rancid breaths. She could not abandon him now.

I’m here, she said, reaching. Shhhh.

His back was thick, viscid; the bloody heat of him warm as soup. Kneeling on the grass, she felt rain seep through her jeans, spreading like shock. Gently, she placed her cheek against his flank, felt him flinch. His legs kicked instinctively, but their power was gone. Beneath her skin, however, his lungs pounded, ricocheting against her. He had no option but to fight.

Martha closed her eyes, leaned into him. This was all she had. She was Martha. A rock. She was forty-one years old. And despite herself, still here. Incapable of letting go.

Dislocated bars of Mozart were gusting like feathers in the night air, ceding to an announcer who didn’t belong here. Who had no idea what listened.

I’m here, she said, her words bouncing off the surrounding rocks and rising, furious, into the solid dark. I’m here.

I’m here.

Contributors’ Biographies

Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of Pond, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. She was born in Wiltshire and currently resides in the west of Ireland.

Neil Campbell is from Manchester. He has two collections of short stories, Broken Doll and Pictures From Hopper, published by Salt, and two poetry collections, Birds and Bugsworth Diary, published by Knives Forks and Spoons Press, who have also published his short fiction chapbook, Ekphrasis. Recent stories have appeared in Unthology 6, The Lonely Crowd and Best British Short Stories 2015. His first novel, Sky Hooks, is due for publication from Salt in 2016. @neilcambers.

Crista Ermiya was born in London to a Filipino mother and Turkish-Cypriot father. Her stories have been published widely in magazines and anthologies and her story in the present volume comes from her debut collection The Weather in Kansas published by Red Squirrel Press. Crista Ermiya is a winner of the Decibel Penguin Short Story Prize. She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with her husband and son.

Stuart Evers is the author of two short story collections, Ten Stories About Smoking and Your Father Sends His Love, and a novel, If This is Home. He lives in London with his family.

Trevor Fevin worked for a number of years as a counsellor in the National Health Service. He was awarded a distinction for his MA in creative writing at Edge Hill University. His stories have been shortlisted in competitions with Chroma and Synaesthesia magazines.

David Gaffney lives in Manchester. He is the author of several books including Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), Never Never (2008), The Half-Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). He has written articles for the Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Prospect, and his new novel, All The Places I’ve Ever Lived, is due out in spring 2017. See www.davidgaffney.org.

Janice Galloway is the author of three novels and four collections of short stories. She studied at Glasgow University and has worked as a teacher. Her awards include: the MIND/Allan Lane Award for The Trick is to Keep Breathing, the McVitie’s Prize for Foreign Parts, the EM Forster Award (presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Creative Scotland Award, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year for Clara and the SMIT non-fiction Book of the Year for This is Not About Me. She has written and presented three radio series for BBC Scotland (Life as a Man, Imagined Lives and Chopin’s Scottish Swansong) and works extensively with musicians and visual artists.

Jessie Greengrass was born in 1982. She studied philosophy in Cambridge and London, where she now lives with her partner and child. Her debut short story collection, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, is published by JM Originals, an imprint of John Murray.

Kate Hendry is a writer, editor and teacher living in Edinburgh. Her short stories have been published in Harpers, Mslexia and New Writing Scotland. She was a runner up in the 2009 Bridport Prize and has been a recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Bursary. Her first collection of poems will be published by HappenStance Press in 2016.

Thomas McMullan is a London-based writer. His work has been published by Lighthouse, Minor Literature[s], 3:AM Magazine, The Stockholm Review and The Literateur. He regularly contributes to the Guardian and is currently seeking representation. www.thomasmcmullan.com @thomas_mac.

Graham Mort, poet and short fiction writer, is Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University. He specialises in literature development work and recent projects have taken him to South Africa, Kurdistan, Vietnam and China. His first book of stories, Touch (Seren), won the Edge Hill Prize in 2011 and his latest book of stories, Terroir (Seren), is currently long-listed for the same prize. A new book of poems, Black Shiver Moss, will appear from Seren in 2017.

Ian Parkinson was born in Lancashire in 1978 and studied philosophy at university before working as a civil servant and insurance clerk. His first novel, The Beginning of the End, was published in 2015.

Tony Peake has contributed to numerous anthologies including Winter’s Tales, The Penguin Book of Contemporary South African Short Stories, The Mammoth Book of Gay Short Stories, The Gay Times Book of Short Stories: New Century New Writing, New Writing 13, Yes, I Am! Writing by South African Gay Men and Seduction, a themed anthology which he also edited. He is the author of two novels, A Summer Tide (1993) and Son to the Father (1995), and a biography, Derek Jarman (1999). Further details on www.tonypeake.com.

Alex Preston was born in 1979. He is the award-winning author of three novels and appears regularly on BBC television and radio. He writes for GQ, Harper’s Bazaar and Town & Country Magazine as well as for the Observer’s New Review. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Kent and regular Guardian Masterclasses. He is @ahmpreston on Twitter.

Leone Ross is a Jamaican/British award-winning writer, editor and lecturer. She is the author of two novels, All the Blood is Red (Angela Royal Publishing) and Orange Laughter (Anchor), and numerous short stories. She won an Arts Council award in 2001. Her short story collection, Come Let Us Sing Anyway, will be published by Peepal Tree Press in spring 2017. She works as a senior lecturer at the University of Roehampton in London and her third novel, This One Sky Day, is forthcoming. Her website is at www.leoneross.com.

John Saul had work shortlisted for the international 2015 Seán Ó Faoláin prize for fiction. Appearing widely in magazine form, in and outside the UK, his short fiction has been published in four collections. He lives and writes in Suffolk. A website with more information is at www.johnsaul.co.uk.

Colette Sensier is a prose writer and poet born in Brighton in 1988. She studied English at King’s College, Cambridge, and Creative Writing at UEA. Her debut poetry collection, Skinless, is published by Eyewear, and her poetry is also anthologised in The Salt Book of Younger Poets. She has completed a historical novel (with the help of mentoring from Bernardine Evaristo during a Spread the Word mentoring scheme) and a dramatic adaptation of a Shirley Jackson novel, and is working on new contemporary prose.

Robert Sheppard is mainly a poet, whose selected poems, History or Sleep, appears from Shearsman Books, and who has poetry anthologised in Anthology of Twentieth Century British and Irish Poetry (OUP) and Reality Street Book of Sonnets, among others. His short fiction is published as The Only Life (Knives Forks and Spoons Press), and is found amidst his 2015 autobiographical work, Words Out of Time, and in several places in his 2016 publication Unfinish (Veer Publications). He is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University, where in 2016 they celebrate ten years of the Edge Hill Prize.

DJ Taylor’s most recent work is The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 (2016). His other books include the Man Booker-longlisted novels Trespass (1998) and Derby Day (2011) and Orwell: The Life which won the 2003 Whitbread Biography Prize. ‘Some Versions of Pastoral’ appeared in the short story collection Wrote for Luck (2015) and has been broadcast on Radio 3.

Greg Thorpe is a freelance writer, DJ, curator and event producer in Manchester. He is a graduate of Manchester University and the Creative Writing MA at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has written for City Life, Time Out, The Big Issue, Creative Tourist, Manchester Evening News, Northern Soul, the Liverpool Biennial, Manchester Art Gallery and Cornerhouse, and has been writer in residence for Islington Mill and Manchester Central Library. He has curated and produced events for Manchester International Festival, the closing of Cornerhouse, the opening of HOME, and the launch of the Meltdown Festival at Southbank.

Mark Valentine is the author of ten short story collections, two biographies and two collections of poetry. As a journal editor he has been responsible for Source, Aklo and, since 2003, Wormwood. He published ‘The Foggy, Foggy Dew’, an early short story by Joel Lane, as a chapbook in 1986.

Acknowledgements

‘The Politics of Minor Resistance’, copyright © Jessie Greengrass 2015, was first published in An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It (JM Originals) and is reprinted by permission of the author.

‘Mrs Świętokrzyskie’s Castle’, copyright © Colette Sensier 2015, was first published in Flamingo Land and Other Stories (Flight Press/Spread the Word) edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, and is reprinted by permission of the author.