| |
Early next morning Caitlin awoke to the sound of Scott returning from the outhouse. She dressed hurriedly and joined him in the kitchen. He scooped a ladle of soup into a bowl, his eyes puffy with sleep. Caitlin got the kettle boiling and made a pot of tea. She stoked the Aga to ensure there was still enough hot water. Scott ate and then Caitlin broached the subject of a bath.
“Why, do I smell that bad?” Scott said in between mouthfuls of soup.
Caitlin raised her eyebrows, nodded, and began to run him a bath.
The bath was hot and deep. After shedding the clothing he had worn for the week, Scott sunk deeply into it with obvious delight. Caitlin no longer averted her eyes. She would enjoy him, all of him. Caitlin picked up the clothes from the floor with the finger and thumb of one hand and exaggeratedly held her nose with the other, as she carried them out to the laundry. Scott chuckled and then stayed in the bath for a while.
“So, did you see all the medicines I brought back for you?” Scott called from the bathroom.
“Yes. Quite a collection there,” she answered from the laundry.
Scott moved in the bath and caused what sounded like a tidal wave of water to spill over the edge and splash on to the wooden floor.
“Ye have nae put my shirt into the water, yet have you?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Noo! There’s something in my shirt pocket for ye.”
“Stay calm. You’re flooding the bathroom, Scott.” Caitlin returned to the bathroom and stepped gingerly into the flood. “I emptied your pockets before I put your clothes in the Copper.”
“Would you kindly bring the contents of my pockets in here, lass?”
The paper bag she retrieved from the laundry had long strips of plastic and were bumpy through the brown paper, like it held strips of tablets. Scott had sunk back into what remained of the bathwater. “That package is for you. I got it off the black market pharmacist.”
Caitlin opened the bag. In her hand were ten strips of tablets—the contraceptive pill. She gasped at the packet in her hand.
“Knowing you as I do, Caitlin Murray, you’ll need these. My experience of you is that you are a very fertile woman.” She didn’t respond to his comments. “I thought it might be part of your hesitation...in well... ye ken...having sex with me.”
Caitlin held the packets of the contraceptive pill, mouth tight.
“Sorry, I could only get ten month’s supply,” he added. “They should all still be ‘in date’. It seems to concern you, about medicines being ‘in date’. I bought all she had.”
Caitlin lifted her gaze from the packet of pills. He was lying back, naked in the bath, waiting for her response.
“Actually, I haven’t even considered the possibility of getting pregnant. I’m quite touched that you have.” Caitlin took her gaze from him and returned to stare at the strips of contraceptive pill and swallowed. “In fact, I’m a little scared of my first time.”
“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows.
“What do you mean ‘Oh’? You know I’m a virgin? Don’t you?” If he knew her, he’d know that, wouldn’t he?
“Well, all I ken is, on our weddin’ night, well, ye were nae. And,” Scott had a satisfied look on his face, “you kenned what to do all right!”
Caitlin’s brow tightened as her eyebrows raised. What? Confusion buffeted her.
“So, you weren’t the first? Who was?”
“I dinnae ken, as ye wouldn’t tell me.” He tilted his head.
“Oh.” She blinked a few times.
There was a short, embarrassed silence between them. Caitlin didn’t know how to respond to that piece of information.
“Ye ken there are things you can do to make your first time easier?” Scott broke the silence. “Less sore, I mean.”
“How?” The word elongated as it left her mouth.
“Well, positions and such.”
“Yes, go on.” Her voice sounded strangled.
“Well, if you come on top o’ me and ease yourself down—”
“Oh, I see.” It was slightly too graphic for her.
“Or,” his suggestions came easily now, “we can do it lying side on. That way, I don’t get in so far and ... For the first time, you see?” Scott was on a roll, obviously used to speaking about such things to her. Caitlin kept quiet, her face heating the more Scott spoke. She focussed her eyes anywhere but on Scott. “Well then, I could come in from behind and you ease yourself—”
“Wait a minute! From behind?”
“Aye. You know, doggy style. You can then just ease yourself back until you’re happy like, with your level of discomfort. Ye ken?”
“Doggy style! You mean, like dogs do it? Really?” Caitlin’s nose screwed up and her mouth also, she couldn’t prevent it, nor stop imagining what he was describing.
“Aye Caitlin, you ken what I’m saying. It’s your favourite position.”
Caitlin squeezed her eyes tightly shut and put both hands in front of her like two stop signs.
“Tsh tsh no... no... no... no more! Too much information for me at the moment. Okay?” She exited the bathroom.
Behind her, Scott got out of the bath, the sound of water swishing echoed through the open bathroom door. Caitlin glanced back at him. A grin encompassed most of his face. He had wrapped a towel around his waist. He then put fresh hot water in the sink and began to shave off his beard.
Caitlin spun and strode to the kitchen to prepare food, trying to process that conversation. Scott entered the kitchen once he finished his shave and stood eating the last of the bread, still wrapped only in a towel. She washed the dishes in the sink while he cleaned his teeth.
“Haven’t seen toothpaste in a tube for years. We make our own, ye ken.” Scott walked right up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, resting them at her waist at the front. He breathed against the side of her face. “Nice, eh?”
“Yes.” She jumped slightly when he first put his arms around her but then relaxed into his embrace. Scott was warm, and his firm abdomen and chest contacted the length of her back. He kissed her neck. Caitlin shivered. They were nice shivers.
Scott held his right hand closed in front of her and then opened it to reveal two gold rings, one larger than the other. He gave her the larger ring and splayed the fingers of his left hand, inviting her to place it on his ring finger.
“Where did these come from?” she hesitated.
“From my finger, and yours.” He spoke into her ear from behind, his breath warm on the nape of her neck. She placed his wedding band onto his finger. There was a dent behind the knuckle and the ring fitted back into its home. He then held the smaller ring in his right hand and poised. Caitlin stood straighter, then offered her hand certain of the meaning of her action. He slipped the band onto her finger. It fit perfectly. Caitlin clasped his hand with hers.
“Are you saying we are married now?”
“Aye, Caitlin, we’ve always been married as far as I’m concerned.” His warm lips brushed her neck.
“You said, in the future, there was a minister.” She turned around in his embrace and faced him directly. “Well, if we are to be married now, there has to be a minister. It’s got to be legal this time as well.”
Scott opened his mouth, his expressions reflecting thoughts flitting through his mind all too quickly. “I don’t know where to find a minister to make it all official. The legal system is in the process of falling apart. I’m grasping at straws here, but would a Justice o’ the Peace officiating do? He could give us a licence of some sort. That’s all I have, Caitlin.” He spoke softly, his shoulders lifted a little.
“How do you know a JP then?”
“You mind my uncle at Bridge O’ Orchy? The one who does nae ken I’m his wee nephew recently born to his sister Margaret?” Caitlin smiled and nodded. “Well, he’s one. We can go back there and see what he says about it.”
“But Scott you’re tired and only just returned.”
“Aye well, ‘strike while the iron’s hot’ as they say.” He tilted his head. “I’ll finish getting dressed and we’ll go as soon as we can, aye?”
Scott sped away leaving Caitlin standing at the kitchen sink.
***
THEY DROVE TO BRIDGE of Orchy, where Scott found his uncle in the Inn. His Uncle Robert took them into his small office behind the reception desk. He was a man in his fifties and a similar colouring to Scott. Scott explained their wishes to him.
“Och, well noo’,” Scott’s uncle began, “It usually takes six to eight weeks to get a licence and have the ceremony done at the Registry Offices in Edinburgh or Glasgow. But as ye can imagine, with things the way they are the noo’, the system is nae operating.” He eyed them both carefully. “Tae do it that way will be nigh impossible, at present, ye ken. Ye look rather disappointed, lass,” he asked Caitlin directly. “Care to tell me ye troubles?”
Caitlin stood taller. She trusted Scott’s Uncle Robert was made of the same stuff as Scott himself, so she took a chance he would be an understanding man and open to the truth.
“Sir, I love this man and dearly wish to be married to him. I don’t want to live with him as his wife, unwed. So, I ask you, at this present time, how are we to be legally married?”
Uncle Robert scratched his whiskered face for a while, the room silent apart from the rasping sound it made. He eyed them both.
“I can make you legal. If ye will sign a marriage contract, which we’ll draw up. I’ll officiate and put my mark to, with my wife and one other witnessing,” he explained his offer. “That will suffice until they restore law and order and ye can replace this contract with a licence. Would ye be happy with that?”
Scott turned to Caitlin and raised an eyebrow in question. She nodded. They devised and wrote a marriage contract and attended to the process as Scott’s Uncle Robert had described. As legally married as possible, they returned home as husband and wife.
After camouflaging the 4WD, they walked back through the copse of Scot’s pines to the cottage. As the back garden of the cottage came in sight, Scott reached out to her, his warm hand enveloped hers and his wedding ring glinted in the pale afternoon sunlight. When they got to the backdoor, he turned and picked her up with little effort and carried her over the back step.
“Very traditional of you Scott.” Caitlin said into Scott’s face. He was so close his blue eyes blurred in her vision. His ropey arms held her tightly to his chest, his body heat flowing through his shirt.
“Aye.” His voice was soft in her face. “One of the older men in the Community, George, told me this is what you do when you bring your new wife home.” Once inside the cottage, he set her feet gently on the floor. “Did it the first time we married too.”
His hand lingered on her leg, then both hands moved to her waist.
“This is the first time we marry.” She whispered back to his face. Oh, so close. She shivered at the warm caress of his fingers now on her inner elbow.
“Not for me, lass.” Scott’s fingers continued their journey to the nape of her neck where they ran through the strands of her long blond hair at the base of her skull. These hairs raised and joined the shivers arising from his touch. Gently holding her head in his hand, Scott recommenced his caresses. With his mouth on hers, Caitlin leaned her body close to his, aided by his other hand in the small of her back.
“Come to bed Caitlin.” He whispered in his husky way. His warm breath was on her neck. Then his warm lips. They moved up to her ear. And down again. His hands moved to cup each breast.
“What are you doing to me, Scott?” Caitlin had never felt like this. Her heart pounded as his touch became everything. She wanted him...more of him. All of him.
“Making love to you, my wife.” His voice rose from her neck where his lips pressed her skin, their velvet touch causing feelings her body had never before revealed to her.
He took her by the hand and led her to his bedroom.
At the doorway she paused. “I’ve started taking the Pill, but it won’t be effective.”
“You’ve taken one already?” He smiled. “I have condoms, too.”
His warm grip became tighter as he gently tugged her into the room.
***
“SO, WHAT IF WE DO SOMETHING now that changes the future?” They sat close together on the couch. “You came back to protect me. What if protecting me from something that will happen causes a change in the future?”
“Good question.” Scott rubbed his chin. It was smooth and shiny, a contrast to the beard he had worn that very morning. “Give me a ‘What if’.”
“Okay,” she glanced up at the ceiling. “You know how people say things happen for a reason? And we are like we are, because of the experiences we go through?”
“Aye.”
“Well, what if, because you are protecting me, I don’t experience what I would’ve experienced and, therefore, I don’t become the person I was when you didn’t protect me?”
Scott blinked with each point she made, mentally following them, and finally nodded after a brief period of quiet thought.
“Cait, I’ve a confession to make.” His tone was serious. She sat straighter. “You remember how I said the scientists had set The Time Machine for human trials,” he bit his lower lip and then continued, “and the engineer had devised a gadget for pinpointing a date? And they set The Time Machine so someone could come and try to prevent things from happening so The Stock Market Crash didn’t occur? Well...” He paused, staring at his clasped hands as they rested on his knees.
“Well?” She prompted him to continue, lowering her head and trying to look him in the eye.
“Well, it was nae meant to be me. I gate-crashed. Like I said, you’d just died, and I wanted to be with you. So,” he shrugged, “I suppose I stole their Time Machine. Well, that particular journey, anyway.” He finished with his lips together in a grimace.
“Oh.” She lifted her head and fixed her vision on the ceiling again.
“Aye.” His mouth made a sucking sound beside her as he resumed biting his lower lip.
“So, we may very well have changed things already?” She removed her gaze from the ceiling and fixed it on him.
“Don’t know about that Cait, you see, I’ve been teaching you skills I ken you know in the future. You have the same strengths of character you display in the future. Ye are learning the same knowledge you had when I met you. So, to answer your question you raised before – in a nutshell, I don’t know.” He blew out; his breath stirred his fringe.
“I suppose, in a way, it doesn’t really matter. Life is so full of possibilities.” Caitlin voiced her ideas, thoughts which had run through her head ever since Scott announced he’d travelled through time. “They’re all determined by every decision we make. Large or small. Important or trivial. Each life lived follows a course that is only one of many possible scenarios.”