A fairy tale. These two stories are running in my head, converging, separating again, but one seems remote and unreachable now, slipping away from me even as I recall its details and write them down. The other, the one that began with the Stone and is not yet over, is the one that feels real and true.
I was tired when I got back from the Moffats’ house that Sunday evening, after telling them about the Stone, so I went to bed early, but I did not relax. Usually I slept well – ‘the sleep of the just about eight hours’ Jenny had called it. She’d been a good sleeper too. We would hardly move all night. Only for a few weeks after she died had I suffered from insomnia. I’d reach for the shape of her and find myself awake, clutching at space. The feeling had reminded me of my childhood sleepwalking phase, and, like that phase, it had passed. But that Sunday night I was restless, waking every hour or so to find the Stone massively present in my mind.
At three o’ clock, mouth a little dry from the whisky I’d drunk, I found myself mulling over John and Elsie’s different responses to what I’d said. John’s had been typical of him. He was Monimaskit born and bred. He had stepped out into the wider world for a while, then come home again. He’d worked with Catherine Craigie for a couple of years, fully expecting to take over her job in due course. Not long after Jenny and I came to Monimaskit, Miss Craigie had taken early retirement because of her increasingly debilitating ill health. John had applied for the principal teacher’s post, but hadn’t got it. Gregor Wishaw had. They were friends of sorts, and some difficult days had followed. Then John seemed to overcome his disappointment, shrugged his shoulders and got on with doing what by his own account he enjoyed most, classroom teaching. He developed a jauntiness in his step, a barely disguised disdain for educational policy, and a reputation for encouraging his pupils to be outspoken and awkward. The open-ended nationalism he had espoused in the 1970s seemed to me to have shrivelled into something less wholesome. After years of political frustration Scotland had at last gained a Parliament, but when John mentioned it now it was to sneer at its cost and the uselessness of its members. He had the bitterness and boldness of a home-grown boy on his own territory; but under that boldness was insecurity and a sense of failure. So John’s response to my story of the Stone was entirely predictable – friendly but dismissive. But what about Elsie?
She’d been more open-minded, and that was typical of her too. I knew that things weren’t always good between her and John: they saw the world differently, and he didn’t appreciate her as I thought she deserved. I ran a little fantasy through my head, of telling Elsie about the Stone when we were alone together. She’d listen, her hand would come over my hand, those long, graceful fingers like the fingers of a pianist. I’d tell her about the Stone and she’d picture walking up there with me, and then I wouldn’t stop, I couldn’t, I’d go on to tell her how I felt about her. Her fingers would touch my cheek. I’d be looking in her eyes, still speaking, she’d put her fingers to my mouth and then she’d start to kiss me, soft and hard and long. Elsie, Elsie, Elsie!
It was three-thirty in the morning and the minister of Monimaskit, lying on his back in the double-bed he’d not shared with anyone for eleven years, had an erection. I told myself I was needing a pee, it was bladder pressure that was causing it, but it wasn’t, it was Elsie Moffat.
The blood in my penis beat like a drum. I tried to think about the Stone instead. Who else could I speak to about it? Telling my mother hadn’t achieved anything, not for either of us. Who else? Amelia Wishaw was too straight. Gregor Wishaw would ridicule it, do Twilight Zone theme music at me. John Gless or Peter Macmurray were complete non-starters. There was, however, Lorna Sprott.
Lorna’s rural parish, adjacent to mine, is actually composed of three former parishes – Meldrick, Easton and Kingallie – amalgamated into one as a result of the decline of population in the glens. She manages two dwindling congregations, taking services on alternate Sundays in the tiny kirks at Meldrick and Kingallie. She is always guaranteed an attendance of at least one, because her very friendly but irredeemably dim black Labrador, Jasper, accompanies her and lies on a cushion for the duration.
What can I say about Lorna, that won’t sound patronising or disparaging? She means well. She does her best. She is brimful of faith but entirely lacking in confidence, which makes her, for example, the worst driver I’ve come across. She is always in earnest, a constant worrier. When people meet Lorna in the street they tend to address Jasper first. This is not because they find Lorna intimidating, but because they feel sorry for her, and in these circumstances it is easier to make a fuss over her pet. Without God and the dog, they feel, this rather shapeless, untidy person would cut a very lonely and sad figure indeed. And there, I have patronised and disparaged her as I knew I would.
Yet Lorna was the only minister I knew who was also a friend. Naturally I associated and worked with other ministers, but at a personal level I kept them at a distance. I did not want to be sucked into a whirl of Kirk get-togethers. Jenny and I had avoided that, and after Jenny’s death I wanted it even less. But Lorna was different. She didn’t fit either.
She had a lot of spare time on her hands, and especially since Jenny had died she’d spent much of it in Monimaskit, her nearest town. John Moffat used to say she was stalking me. ‘She’s wanting into your Presbyterian pants, man,’ he insisted. It was true that I did see a good deal of her at Presbytery meetings and community events, and she’d participated in some of the charity work as well. She often called at the manse, seeking my advice on anything from the failure of her car windscreen washers to an interpretation of a passage of Scripture. But I wasn’t convinced that John was right. I thought she might not be interested in men at all; or women for that matter; I thought she might be asexual. Whatever the truth was, I didn’t want to confuse the issue, for me or her.
I liked her, but her bulk and her tendency to knock things over were oppressive indoors, so we’d take her dog for walks, usually on the beach, sometimes in the woods along the Keldo, two or three times a month. I imagined myself talking to her about the Stone on one of these outings. We could even go and look at it. But the scenario wasn’t appealing. Lorna would never laugh at me, she’d listen with a sympathetic ear, but she’d be too intense, too concerned, too damned nice. I didn’t want her mooning all over me with her big cow eyes. Because even if the Stone were there in front of her, even if she actually touched it, she would not understand. She’d want us to pray to God together, seek his views on the matter. She wouldn’t deal with it until she’d had a message back from God. The trouble was, Lorna was always receiving messages from God. She believed every one of them, but they didn’t enable her to act with any more efficiency or clarity of purpose. God simply muddied the already murky waters for her.
I needed someone quite unlike Lorna. Someone who wouldn’t pussyfoot around, and who knew, when it came to standing stones, what she was talking about. There was, in fact, only one person to speak to. I’d looked up Catherine Craigie’s book when I’d got in, and sure enough there was nothing in it about a stone in Keldo Woods, but there must be a reason for that. Catherine would set me right. That she would doubtless take the opportunity to pour dismissive disdain on my story was probably why I’d been trying to think of someone else to talk to instead.
The Stone slid away from my mind again. Someone was beside me in the bed. I half-turned. It was Elsie. I sat up, wide awake, alone, turned the pillow, and lay back down again.
Be grateful for Elsie, I told myself. Beautiful, down-to-earth, warm, kind Elsie. And be grateful for John. They’d made me stay with them on the night of Jenny’s death and again after the funeral, when we came back from Edinburgh, which was where, at her parents’ request, it had taken place. For two nights John had supplied talk and whisky, and Elsie talk and cuddles and food, till I began to feel ungrateful because I was drowning in their kindness. On the second morning I said I wanted to go back to the manse. They came in with me, made sure I was all right, and in the following days dropped by with so many cooked meals that I had to plead with them not to bring more or I’d have to start throwing stuff out. And, ever since, they had remained loyal (leaving aside recent times). I hated the way my imagination wormed its way between them, but I couldn’t help it.
Weeks or maybe months after the funeral, I don’t remember exactly, Elsie had made me an offer. ‘Gideon, whenever you feel like sorting out Jenny’s things, her clothes I mean, I’ll help if you like. If it would make it easier, just ask me.’ I didn’t take her up on it until later in the summer. One weekday afternoon, for no particular reason – certainly not because I’d planned it – I’d found myself taking black bin-bags up the stairs and staring at the chest of drawers, the wardrobe and the press, wondering where to start. It was late August, I think. I know it was summer because the bedroom window was open, the air was hot and making me feel lazy, and a lawnmower was going in the distance. I stood in the middle of the room and said, ‘Time to go, Jenny. Your clothes, I mean.’ I went to her dressing-table and opened one of the wee drawers under the mirror and a fat bumblebee flew out, bumped into the mirror twice, hovered for a few seconds and then droned across the room and out through the window.
History. You can’t get away from it. What the bee made me think of was one of those things that is half-myth, half-history: Archbishop Sharp, dragged from his coach on a moor in Fife by nine vengeful Covenanters, pushed to his knees and slaughtered.* When they ransacked the coach they opened the dead man’s snuffbox, and a bee, his supposed familiar – for Sharp, they believed, was not just their enemy and persecutor but a warlock who counted Satan among his friends – escaped from it and drifted away over the heather. Why would a man keep a bee in his snuffbox? How had a bee got into that closed drawer? I sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, Jenny’s side, and wondered if there was a message in it; any kind of meaning at all. I thought, this is going to be hard, maybe I should have called Elsie. And at that moment the doorbell rang.
I knew it would be her even before I reached the foot of the stairs. It was about three o’clock, she’d just finished a half-shift at the library, and as it was such a fine day she’d come by to see if I fancied a walk. ‘So long as I’m not interrupting anything,’ she added. ‘Well, you are,’ I said, ‘but it’s all right, I was just thinking about you. Come in.’ And in she came.
She was wearing a khaki cotton skirt, calf-length, and a white tee-shirt, and her arms were brown from the sun. I explained to her what I’d been about to start. ‘I didn’t think I’d need your help, but I do,’ I said. ‘Part of me just wants to stuff everything into bin-bags and take it to the charity shops. But it seems so final.’
Elsie said, ‘I know it’s a cliché, but this is about moving on, Gideon.’
‘Aye, but I feel there should be something more to it than just emptying the drawers out. A ritual of some kind. Anyway, maybe I was subconsciously looking for some kind of signal to get started, I don’t know, but this strange thing just happened.’ And I told her about the bee.
Perhaps it was inevitable: the fact that I shared that story with her; the fact that she’d appeared at that moment on the doorstep; the fact that the day was hot and still; the fact that her arms were so brown; the fact that I took her hand as I led her upstairs; perhaps all these things combined and made what happened one last unavoidable fact. Perhaps it was inevitable; but it certainly wasn’t planned.
We went into the bedroom. ‘Maybe there are clothes you’d like,’ I said. ‘Jenny would have wanted that. You’re welcome to anything.’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t. Anyway, I’m not the same size. Her stuff would be a bit big for me.’ ‘Scarves,’ I said. ‘Handbags. Things like that.’ I felt clumsy and ignorant and out of my depth. I wanted her to take the responsibility away from me and she saw that. She said, ‘Look, you bring things out, and I’ll sort them into piles on the bed, then we can get them away.’
I started with the wardrobe. She’d not had a lot of clothes, Jenny, we didn’t have much money and she made things last, but I was still surprised at what came out. Coats and dresses I’d never seen her in or forgotten she had; shoes she never wore; pairs of jeans and shorts she probably couldn’t have got into any more; jumpers still heavy with her scent; I took them from the hangers and the shelves of the press and passed them to Elsie, who folded and piled them and then started filling the black bags with them. The clothes I didn’t recognise were like surprises, and as I checked the pockets of one coat I thought, will there be any secrets in this surprise? But there were none, and I said nothing, while Elsie kept up a quiet commentary from beside the bed – a dress she remembered some occasion by, a top Jenny had looked good in. I listened and looked and nodded and sometimes laughed. And all the time as we were working together my hands were shaking, and I thought at first it was because of the task, the emotional difficulty of it, but then I realised it was Elsie’s presence in the bedroom, her handling of the clothes, her moving around the bed. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I was half-erect. What on earth was I thinking of? But it was involuntary, I wasn’t thinking of anything. I had a pee, washed my hands and face, checked in the mirror that it was really me. Then I went back.
Elsie had run out of clothes and had started on the chest of drawers. She was sitting on the bed surrounded by Jenny’s underwear. It was mostly white: bras and pants and a suspender belt she hadn’t worn for a while; balled up tights and stockings and a couple of nightdresses. Elsie was holding a slip with a lacy hem and delicate shoulder-straps. She had shaken it out and was holding it draped across her arms, looking at it almost as she might look at a sleeping child. She brought it to her face and breathed in. ‘Oh, I can smell her,’ she said, and she started to cry.
I knelt down in front of her and lowered my face to the white slip and breathed in its smell. My dead wife in the arms of her friend. My hands found Elsie’s through the material and they gripped. I thought, I cannot stop this, only she can stop it. Elsie leaned towards me and began to kiss me. I shifted on my knees to come closer to her and felt my erection straining so hard I thought my trousers would burst. Elsie’s hands, one of them still holding the slip, came round to the back of my head and she pressed her mouth down on mine. I felt the cool slide of the material on my neck and the hot softness of Elsie’s lips and tongue. I pulled away from her and she looked surprised and yet not surprised, her eyes were wet but she was smiling.
We both stood up together and she dropped the slip on the bed behind her. We kissed again. Then quickly we took off our clothes, there was no time to undress each other, and she lay down on the bed among Jenny’s underwear and I knelt with one knee between her legs. Elsie’s breasts were rounder and firmer than Jenny’s, the nipples were red and hard. I had never experienced an erection as big or urgent as the one I had. I heard myself saying, ‘Elsie, Elsie, Elsie,’ as if it was half a declaration of love and half an apology, and she said, ‘It’s all right, be quiet, come on,’ and I pushed myself into her without needing to be guided, feeling her wet and tight around me, and began to thrust. Her legs lifted about my waist and squeezed and we kissed again, our tongues going deep into each other’s mouths, I could hear myself grunting with effort and Elsie groaning in time with me. I felt myself about to come and some distant alarm sounded in my head, making me hold back, but she felt the hesitation and grabbed my buttocks and pulled me in again. ‘Do it, Gideon, do it,’ she said angrily, and I emptied myself into her in a series of long tremors, my face buried in the hollow of her neck and shoulder.
After a while I came out of her and rolled on to my back. Elsie said, ‘I’m leaking,’ and reached for the nearest thing to hand, which was the slip, and put it between her legs. ‘Would she mind?’ Elsie asked. ‘About that?’ I said, meaning the slip. ‘No,’ she said, and started to laugh, ‘about this,’ meaning what we had done. ‘Would she be surprised?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I think, somehow, she’d approve.’ Elsie said, ‘I don’t think so.’
We lay staring at the ceiling, holding hands, shoulders and thighs touching. ‘Will it be all right?’ I said. ‘I mean, we didn’t use anything.’ ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘don’t you worry about that.’ And a little later she said, ‘This can never happen again, you do know that, don’t you?’ ‘Of course,’ I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
I fell asleep for a few minutes, but woke to the movement of her getting off the bed. She gathered up her clothes and went to the bathroom and when she came back she was dressed. I wanted her naked again, I stood up and tried to kiss her, she returned the kiss but was pushing me away at the same time. ‘Come on, Gideon,’ she said, ‘let’s quit while we can.’ ‘I love you, Elsie,’ I said. ‘No you don’t,’ she said. ‘I do,’ I insisted, ‘I always have.’ ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I love you, too. I love Jenny and I love John. Be kind, Gideon, be fair. Go and get dressed.’
I went to the bathroom and washed quickly and put my clothes on. I wondered if anything remotely like what we had done had occurred before in the manse’s 120-year history. When I went back, the bed was tidied, all the underwear gone. Elsie had folded the slip and laid it apart. ‘I’ll wash it at home,’ she said. I was about to say I’d deal with it but she seemed very definite, as if she wanted to remove all trace of herself, of what had happened, from the manse. She would not make eye contact with me. We went through the rest of Jenny’s clothes without any more reminiscing. In ten minutes we had everything sealed up in bags. I began to take them down to the hall.
‘I’d like some tea, do you want some?’ Elsie asked. I nodded and she went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
The manse has a south-west-facing courtyard at the back door. We took a couple of chairs from the kitchen and sat out in the sun, drinking our tea. There was no danger of being overheard, but we didn’t say much.
‘I don’t want this to come between us,’ Elsie said. ‘Or between me and John, or you and John. It shouldn’t have happened but it did and it was special and lovely. But it can’t happen again. We have to move on.’
‘Yes, we do,’ I said.
‘Don’t feel awkward about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t, really I don’t. It’s a good thing to have happened, a necessary thing. A secret thing we’ll always share. But I don’t want it to change anything.’
‘Hasn’t it changed everything?’ I said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I was lying already. I wanted to tell her again that I loved her, had always loved her, but I saw that she didn’t want the pain and difficulty of that – the awkwardness, as she put it. The sun was hot, but I felt cold inside.
‘I’ll never tell John, and you mustn’t either,’ Elsie said. ‘Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said. She smiled at me, sexy without meaning to be, the way it would always be from then on. And after she’d finished her tea she kissed me on the cheek and went away, and I went indoors. In the gloom of the manse hallway, the black bags containing Jenny’s clothes sat waiting to be taken to Oxfam and Cancer Research.