I’m woken by shards of glass being driven repeatedly into my brain.
The telephone.
I pull the duvet over my head but the noise is still unbearable. Hauling myself out of bed, I stumble towards the door and stagger down the stairs clutching the handrail, wondering where the hell I left the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Good morning. I was about to hang up. I thought maybe you’d died of alcohol poisoning. Sorry if I got you out of bed.’
‘Who is this?’
‘Calum Morrison.’
‘Oh, Calum! Sorry.’ I rearrange my scowling face. As if the damned man could see.
‘I was ringing to ask how bad, on a scale of one to ten, your hangover was, and to ask if you could come into school next Wednesday?’
‘School?’
‘Aye. We talked about it last night - d’you no’ remember? Showing your work to my pupils. To help them with their creative writing.’ He pauses. ‘Maybe it wasn’t such a grand idea - the whisky talking. I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
‘No, Calum, don’t hang up! I remember! I'm just being rather slow. I do remember, and yes, of course I’ll come! Wednesday, did you say?’
‘Aye. I’ll meet you in Reception - about ten, if that’s okay? I’ll give you a hand unloading your stuff.’
‘Thanks. And in answer to your first enquiry: my hangover is pretty bad - six going on seven - although I have to admit I haven’t actually puked yet.’
‘Well, that’s a good sign!’ he says cheerfully. ‘What you need is a bowl of porridge to settle your stomach.’
My innards turn over in protest. ‘Like hell I do!’
‘No, honest to God, nothing better. Come on over and I'll make you some.’
‘Is this some weird local custom - ringing people up and inviting them for breakfast? The ceilidh-after-the-night-before?’
‘Well, it’s almost midday, so I suppose sophisticated urban folk like yourself would call it brunch.’
‘But the menu is still porridge?’
‘Aye, ’fraid so. But cooked by my own fair hands.’
‘How can I resist? Look, I need ten minutes to shower and drink several pints of coffee. Where is your caravan exactly?’
‘Are you on a cordless phone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stand outside your front door and face left.’
‘Calum, I’m in my nightie!’
‘It’s okay - I won't be able to see you.’
‘I mean, I’ll freeze. It’s January!’
‘Oh aye, sorry. Well, if you stood on your doorstep and turned left you’d see in the distance a caravan standing beside a dilapidated croft house. That’s me.’
‘Dilapidated?’
‘Very.’
‘Okay, I’ll see you in ten minutes. But Calum, I don't think I even like porridge.’
‘You’ll like mine.’
Yes, I probably will.
At the sound of shuffling feet the man in the kitchen looks up from his frying pan. A thin, pale girl of maybe eleven or twelve stands in the doorway, inside a pair of plush polar bears. She isn’t smiling. Gavin, veteran of many a bar-room brawl, smells trouble.
‘Hi! I’m Gavin. I thought I’d make breakfast. Would you like a bacon sandwich?’
The child winces. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Fried egg sandwich?’
‘No, thank you.’
There is an awkward silence. Gavin switches on the radio and tunes in to Radio 1. The girl walks over to the worktop, pours herself a bowl of cereal, then re-tunes the radio to Classic FM. ‘Mummy prefers soothing music in the mornings,’ she announces.
‘Oh, yeah. Right... Does she drink tea or coffee?’
‘Tea. Earl Grey.’
‘Would you like some? Or there’s coffee in the pot.’
‘I drink orange juice.’
‘Naturally,’ says Gavin under his breath, filling the kettle and putting a tea bag into a mug. He sits down at the table with his bacon sandwich, keeping a tactful distance. The girl eyes his plate with disgust. ‘Pigs are very intelligent animals, you know. Much more intelligent than dogs.’
‘Yeah,’ says Gavin, his mouth full. ‘They taste better too.’
The girl gets up from the table, would perhaps have flounced had the polar bears allowed it. She pours herself a glass of orange juice and sits down again. Gavin breaks a long and painful silence with, ‘So you must be Megan!’ and then wishes he hadn’t. She looks up slowly from her cereal, narrows her eyes, then looks down again. Increasingly desperate, he adds ‘Your mum’s told me a lot about you!’
‘She hasn't told me anything about you.’
‘Well, what would you like to know?’
‘Nothing in particular. I just thought she might have mentioned you. For all I know you could be a burglar. Or a child molester who’s broken into the house.’
‘I can assure you I’m not!’
‘Well, you’d hardly tell me if you were, would you?’
Gavin can see the logic of this and feels he is losing ground. ‘I’m... a friend of your mum’s. I stayed over last night. I... missed my train.’
‘What time’s the next one?’
‘Umm... I’m not sure.’
‘Don’t you have a timetable?’
‘I lost it.’
‘You don’t seem very well organised. The number of the station is on the board by the ‘phone. It’s under S’, she adds. ‘For station.’
The kettle comes to the boil and Gavin springs to his feet, glad of an excuse to avoid his inquisitor’s stony gaze.
‘She drinks it black. No sugar.’
‘Right. Thanks. You've been very helpful. It must be great for your mum to have such a helpful little girl.’ As the adjectives fall from his lips, Gavin realises biting off his tongue would have been a better idea. ‘I mean - I bet you do a great job of looking after her!’ He turns his flashiest smile on her, a smile that has been the ruination of many a virtuous woman. Megan isn't looking. She is scraping her cereal bowl, noisily.
‘The man who was my father ran off and left us when I was a baby. Mummy and I look after each other.’ She pushes her bowl away and stands up. Drawing herself up to her full height she says, ‘We don't need anyone else.’ She turns abruptly and the polar bears carry her back upstairs.
Gavin scowls and lights a cigarette. ‘Bloody hell. Give me the north face of the Eiger any day.’
It’s like walking into a mobile library. Calum’s caravan is full of books and on the few surfaces not colonised by books sits the sordid, accumulated clutter of a single man living alone in a very confined space. I step gingerly over several piles of exercise books and laugh.
‘It looks as if you’ve just been burgled.’
‘Och, you should see it when it’s in a mess! Clear yourself a space and make yourself at home. Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please.’
‘With or without aspirin?’
‘I’ve already taken some thanks. Are you hungover too?’
‘I was feeling a wee bit fragile earlier on, but I went for a run on the beach and that blew the cobwebs away.’
‘I don’t usually drink whisky. Actually, I don’t usually drink.’
‘You’ll get used to it. It’s part of island life, especially in winter.’
I sit down next to an overflowing box of books while Calum busies himself in the kitchen area of the caravan. There are ominous bubbling sounds coming from a saucepan, which I take to be the porridge. I wonder briefly why I am here and then decide not to pursue that line of enquiry. ‘I see you’ve got a lot of poetry in your book collection.’
‘Aye. Do you like poetry?’
‘Very much. I used to read a lot when I was convalescing... after my illness. I told you about that last night, didn’t I? My memory’s a bit hazy.’
‘Aye, you did.’
Suddenly nervous, I scan the books, asking randomly ‘Do you like Ian Stephen?’
‘Aye, you’ll find his books there somewhere. Do you know Providence II? It’s illustrated with some of his own photos - colour and texture studies. Your sort of thing, maybe?’ Calum puts a mug of coffee on the floor beside me. ‘Porridge is on its way.’ He looks down at the jumble of books and shakes his head. ‘There’s no’ much system to it, I’m afraid.’
‘We could do with Aly.’ Calum looks at me, puzzled. ‘You know - Lost Property Office. He’d be able to find it for us.’ A slow smile. I remember now why I am here.
‘Did Aly tell you about the game?’
‘No, Shona did.’ I rifle through a few more volumes. ‘Your sister thinks the world of you, you know.’
‘Aye, well, the feeling’s mutual, but don’t tell her I said so.’ Calum returns to porridge-stirring and my eye is caught by a familiar-looking paperback. ‘I see you're a fan of Malcolm John Morrison.’
‘Fan?’
‘Well, you’ve got one of his books.’
‘I’ve got them all. You know the poems?’
‘Oh, yes. Is he any relation?’
Calum laughs as he spoons porridge into bowls. ‘Aye, in a manner of speaking. I'm Malcolm John Morrison.’
‘Oh...’ My mind changes gear as I reject my image of an elderly Hebridean bard with a passion for geology and substitute Calum in jeans and red and white striped rugby shirt. ‘Why do you use a pen-name?’
‘It isn’t really, no more than any English name is for a Gael. My name is Calum Iain Moireasdan. That translates into English as Malcolm John Morrison. As I was writing in English I preferred to publish under an English name. Here’s your porridge. Don't look so worried - I haven't salted it. I even added some sugar in view of your enfeebled state.’
‘Thanks. Do you write in Gaelic as well?’
‘Aye, but there’s no’ much of a market for Gaelic poetry, as you can imagine. Well, any kind of poetry in fact. I’m always fascinated to find out what kind of person pays out good money for books of poetry.’
‘Me.’
‘Well, on behalf of all poets, struggling or otherwise, I’d like to thank you for throwing your money away in such a reckless fashion.’
‘On the contrary, it's me who should be thanking you. Emotional Geology was a book I read and re-read during a very dark time. It really spoke to me.’
‘Aye, I suppose it would. Our experiences have been similar... in some ways.’
‘You know, this porridge is actually rather good once you get over the unappealing colour and texture.’
‘You overwhelm me.’
‘Sorry! Can I ask a silly question?’
He shakes his head. ‘The recipe’s a closely guarded secret.’
‘I’d like to know why you write poetry.’
‘Why I bother, you mean?’
‘No, of course not! You know what I mean. Or is that a closely guarded secret too?’
He pushes a spoonful of porridge round his bowl, silent for a moment, then he announces, ‘No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modelled, built or invented except literally to get out of hell.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Antonin Artaud.’
I consider the probable truth of this statement. ‘What was your hell?’
He rests the bowl in his lap and is silent. He rubs the stubble on his chin with his fingers. I hear the rasp in the long silence. He is rubbing a thin white scar, three or four inches long, which runs under his chin, following his jawbone. I remember words from last night. A fight. A pupil. A knife. When Calum finally speaks his voice is thin, barely audible. ‘Mindless violence... The death of idealism... The deaths of friends.’
‘Climbers?’
‘Aye. Five in two years.’
‘Jesus. I'm sorry.’
‘No need. They knew the score.’ He shuts down again, putting up the screen of his usual composure. ‘More coffee?’
Gavin puts down the phone. He does not look at her.
‘Please don't go, Gavin.’
‘Rose, you might as well ask me not to breathe!’
‘Not this one, Gavin, please, this one’s a death trap, you’ve said so yourself! You don’t need to do this one - you’ve been before, for God’s sake!’
‘But this time it’s a different route! A first ascent, Rose! I can’t turn this one down! And I can’t disappoint my mates.’
‘But you can disappoint me.’
‘That’s not fair! You knew what I was when we got together. I told you how it would be. Didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘But you thought you could change me, make me settle down.’
‘No, I wasn’t that naïve! I just hadn’t realised the extent of your... obsession.’
‘It is an obsession, I admit it. And it means more to me than you, than Megan, than anything.’
‘I know. We can’t bloody compete.’
‘Nobody could! If it’s any consolation, I do feel bad about going. Your miserable weeping face at the airport will definitely take the gilt off the gingerbread. But I can’t not go. You have to accept that, Rose. Accept me as I am.’
‘If you really loved me you wouldn’t go.’
‘Well, if that's your definition of love, then no, I don’t love you.’ She flinches, as if he has struck her. ‘If you really loved me, Rose, you’d let me go. It would mean a lot to me to have your blessing.’ He puts his arms around her. ‘I’ve always hoped that the times we’re together compensate for the times when we’re apart.’
‘What could possibly compensate me for your death?’
He is silent for several moments. ‘Knowing I died happy. Doing what I wanted to do.’
She struggles out of his arms. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? I don’t want you to die happy - I want you to live! Live and be miserable - like the rest of us! Stay alive, Gavin!’
He shakes his head slowly. ‘This isn’t alive for me, Rose. It’s just... a different kind of death.’
‘Why poems? Why not novels? Or plays?’
‘Good question.’ Calum pours himself another mug of coffee. ‘I suppose because I’m a sprinter, not a distance runner. A novel would not be my natural form. It’s a question of scale, too, I suppose. I’ve never been an Everest sort of climber. I’m happiest climbing the Cuillins on Skye. They’re technically challenging, world-class mountains - if a bit on the wee side. And they’re never boring. Folk die every year because they think the Cuillins are some kind of climbers’ playground,’ he says scornfully, ‘A warm-up for the real thing. But any experienced climber will tell you that Everest is just a long, boring slog. And now there’s rich tourists and company executives queuing to pull themselves up on fixed ropes, breathing bottled oxygen. If you can afford the guide and you can jumar, you can climb Everest. But what's the point?’
‘Well, forgive me, but I always thought climbing was the ultimate pointless activity. I mean, it's heroically pointless, isn’t it. Mallory summed it up for all time.’
‘Because it’s there?’
‘Exactly. Rather Zen, isn’t it?’
‘I preferred Sherpa Tenzing’s comment.’
‘Which was?’
‘We’ve done the bugger!’
I laugh, perhaps more than the remark merits and Calum relaxes a little. ‘You know about climbing, don’t you, Rose?’
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
‘But you’re not a climber?’
‘No. I’ve been hill-walking and scrambling, but not serious climbing. How did you know I know?’
‘You don’t ask questions. You didn't ask what jumar meant.’
‘No need. I've lived and breathed climbing without ever doing it myself. The man I lived with for five years was a serious climber.’
Calum hesitates. ‘Is he dead?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I say briskly. ‘I threw him out and he never made contact again. I know he was alive for about a year after that. I heard through... another source.’
‘Why did he climb?’
‘Oh, to escape, I think. He loved the big mountains, the snow, the whiteness, the purity of it all. He said he found it cleansing. It was his penance and his absolution. But it was also a very effective way of avoiding people, family life, commitment - all the messy stuff he couldn’t cope with down here in the real world.’
Fuck you, Gavin.
Fuck you and thousands of others who littered the pure white holy wastes of Everest (and countless other mountains) with your empty oxygen bottles, your abandoned tents, your lost ice-axes, your broken ropes, your unwanted rucksacks, your cameras, your film canisters, bog roll, faeces and the odd unclaimed dead body.
And for what? What did you achieve? You fucked the mountains - so fucking what! You got off on getting higher, faster, quicker, better than your rivals, than yourselves, high on adrenalin, your risk-charged, pumped-up bodies screaming, throbbing, swelling with oedema, and for what?
Thrills. Expensive thrills. Deadly thrills. An addiction.
You messed up the mountains, Gavin, and you messed up me...
Trails of blood in the snow.
Snow white.
Rose red.
‘Why did you throw him out?’
‘He was sleeping with another woman and I found out. Usual story. Oh, when you put it like that it sounds so... banal. It wasn't really like that. I mean, I didn’t think he’d been faithful to me all those years - in fact I knew he hadn’t. But, this was... too much. I couldn’t cope. It had to end.’
Calum is silent for a while. ‘So you’ll be giving climbers a wide berth in future then?’
His gentle irony pulls me back from tears towards laughter. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For not taking me too seriously. It’s all ancient history. Very painful at the time. But I’m over it now,’ I say brightly.
In the long silence that follows we both hear the lie.
You were the rock I clung to, Gavin, the tree that rooted me to the ground, stopped me from blowing away, floating into the stratosphere, buoyed up by panic and my own hot air and the limitless, terrifying possibilities of my ideas. You contained me, stopped me from shattering into a thousand fragments, tiny, sharp as glass.
I believed it was possible, it was simply a question of effort, of work, of crystalline honesty, of giving, of openness. For fear and defensiveness can only corrode, corrupt.
I gave you all myself, Gavin, and that was more, a lot more than you bargained for. And far more than you ever wanted.
Calum is watching me. Waiting. My mug is empty but I don’t remember drinking. I dread him asking more questions, know I will have to leave if he does. I don’t want to leave, I want to sit here, cosseted by the cosy fug of the caravan, exposed to this man who is not Gavin, who is nothing like Gavin, who is dragging my mind and my body away from Gavin to another place if only I have the courage to go.
Eventually he speaks, carefully, after a lot of thought. The incision is gentle, not very deep. ‘Do you mind talking about your work?’ The slight emphasis on the last word tells me he has understood. No doubt my face reflects my relief. Encouraged, he pursues the enquiry. ‘It’s such a different medium. How do you get started? A visual idea presumably, not verbal.’
‘Oh, no, it can be both. But I think I translate verbals into visuals automatically. I think I experience everything visually. I feel emotions in terms of colours and textures. I see music - I mean I hear it - like that too. I used to think everybody saw things that way.’
‘No, they don’t, but folk who do tend to agree on how they see things - what colour the key of C major is, and so on.’
‘Really? How amazing! But verbal or visual, it's all much the same to me. But the traffic is one way. I suppose if the traffic is going the other way you’re a poet?’
‘Aye, I suppose so. The brain must be wired up differently. Tell me about your creative process. I’m fascinated. Do you start with a grand design?’
‘Good Lord, no. I’ve never had the time or the space to work big - or even think big.’
‘Or the confidence? I'm thinking of how women’s art has always been sidelined. Still is.’
‘That’s true. I’ve always worked in small chunks, pieces that can be put together to make something bigger. I started with patchwork quilts when my daughter was born, traditional stuff that developed my love of textiles and then I moved on from there. But it was always ‘portable’ art, something I could pick up and run with if the house caught fire - baby on one arm, work on the other. It also had to be concealable. I didn’t really want to make a statement about what I was doing, I wanted people to think it was nothing serious, just a hobby.’
‘Like Jane Austen writing novels in a corner of the drawing room, hiding pages under her blotter.’
‘Exactly! Nothing I had to say was important enough to be said loud. Or large.’
He nods. ‘My ex-wife was an art teacher, did I tell you? She used to give her pupils huge pieces of paper to draw on. She said if you gave them a piece of A4 cartridge they'd do a careful, matchbox-sized drawing in the centre of the paper. If you gave them a giant sheet of coloured sugar paper and a stick of charcoal they’d loosen up and let go. They didn’t believe in their drawings until it was ‘play’ and the quality supposedly didn't matter. It’s the same getting kids to write poetry. They’re all writers at primary school, they know what they think and how they want to say it, but gradually all that shrivels up and dies. It’s really sad. And it’s bloody difficult trying to resurrect that confidence, that belief in what they want to say and their ability to say it.’
‘But you manage to do it?’
‘Aye, sometimes. It's a question of building up their confidence, so I use Alison’s trick. I give them big pieces of coloured paper and felt-tips and get them to work in groups, make word collections, then write a group poem. No problem. You can’t hear yourself think for the arguments! After that experience, they mostly want to write their own poems because they’re fed up with having to write by committee.’
‘And what are their poems like?’
His eyes are alight, excited. I watch his mouth, want his mouth, know what he is going to say.
‘Pure dead brilliant!’
The rain is horizontal and the caravan strains at its guy ropes occasionally, threatening to topple the columns of books on the floor. While Calum washes up I re-read some of his poems. They are short and dense, as if each word stands for many more. I have to read them slowly so that I can absorb them, bit by bit.
I’ve never read poetry written by anyone I know. It’s a strangely intense and intimate experience. I feel as if I have seen Calum naked, but in an unerotic context. He makes toast and Marmite and we picnic on the floor by the stove. The windows weep with the condensation that was our words, our breath, the warmth of our bodies.
Calum waves his piece of toast. ‘So when you’re working, do you have a blueprint in your head?’
‘No, not really. I don’t need to know how it will all end, I only have to be able to begin, to see an opening. It might not amount to anything or it might become huge and important, it doesn’t matter a great deal. It’s the detail that matters to me as much as the overall concept. More than the overall concept. There is only detail really, if you look properly. The beach is made up of shells, pebbles and grains of sand, bits of driftwood, rubbish. It’s only when you stand back that you see a coastline. Stay uninvolved, uncommitted - that’s a climbing term isn’t it? With the same sort of meaning?’
‘Aye.’
‘But I can’t stand back from my work. If I do, it disappears. I have to be right in there with it... You’ll see me peeping out from behind a scrap, some threads, a smudge of colour - I’m in there! I’m not sure I exist anywhere else, apart from inside the work.’
‘And you’ve come here to find out.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ My breathing is too rapid and I detect a familiar metallic taste in my mouth that has nothing to do with the Marmite. I should leave. Peace of mind is sitting, forgotten, in a bottle on my bathroom shelf.
‘Does it matter to you what the whole looks like, in the end?’
‘Yes, of course, but it doesn’t really matter until the end, until you stand back and see what you’ve made. It’s the making that's important to me. Process, I suppose. Sounds a bit posey.’
‘No, I know what you mean. For me it’s a question of imposing order on my thoughts, selecting particular words out of thousands, to make a poem. I’d like folk to read it, for sure, but it doesn’t really matter if they don’t. The poem exists. I've made it exist. That’s the main thing.’
‘And the meaning of the poem?’
‘Well, that’s not for me to say. It means whatever you want it to mean. My meaning won't be the same as yours and mine is no more valid. Once I've written it, a poem has a life of its own, I have to let it go, like a child... What about your work? What does Dunes, Luskentyre mean?’
‘Do you mean what does the title mean or what does the work itself mean?’
He smiles. ‘Chinese boxes! It’s harder for visual artists isn’t it? I hadn’t realised. The encumbrance of words...’
Something bursts, pierced by his words; a stream of images gushes into my brain and out of my mouth and I speak, not looking at him. ‘What a brilliant title for a poem! Or a series of poems... An exhibition even - of textiles and poems!’ My hands flutter in the air trying to channel my thoughts into words. ‘The textiles could have poems to explain them and the poems could have pictures to explain them. Except that they wouldn't explain exactly - they would just be sign-posts, clues... or maybe just translations into another medium, another language, you know, like those captions you get for tourists, in French and Italian and Japanese... The Encumbrance of Words... The poems and the textiles could be chained together in some way - linked! Oh, God what an awful pun... But each link could be made of a word and so the chains themselves could be poems. It could be interactive maybe! There could be a textile-poem at the end, lots of different pieces of fabric with a word on them, you know, like fridge poetry and people who came to the exhibition could make up their own poem and hang it up on the wall!’ I clutch at Calum’s hand, his bony fingers, his knuckles cool and smooth, like pebbles in my palm. ‘We could do it together, Calum, at the Arts Centre in Lochmaddy, it could be a joint exhibition called The Encumbrance of Words... What do you think?’
When I finally stop speaking, his face comes into focus and I think at first that he is giving me a blank stare but then I notice that he is scarcely breathing, that he is thinking, considering. He narrows his eyes. Brown skin folds into tiny, delicate pleats as he looks into an imaginary distance.
I let go of his hand. ‘You think it’s a stupid idea.’
‘No! I think it’s... fantastic! It would be beautiful. Colours and pictures and textures and text!’
‘Textures and text! Oh— oh— I can see something using calligraphy there. No - words carved on tombstones! But the stones are eroded and encrusted with lichen.’
Calum shakes his head, laughing. ‘I’m never going to be able to keep up with you - my mind’s on overload already!’
My heart is thudding now, my throat tight. ‘You think we could do it?’ He nods. ‘Do you think we should?’
‘I think we must!’
Curled up, hugging my knees, rocking back and forth, my mind still racing, I cannot contain the excitement. It escapes as a kind of groan: ‘Oh, this is better than sex!’
The words tumble into a gulf of silence. Calum appears to be studying the laces of his trainers. When he looks up he isn’t smiling any more.
I gabble. ‘That’s just something I used to say to my girlfriends. We used to list all the things we thought were better than sex. You know, hot chocolate fudge cake with ice-cream, buying hardback books, breast-feeding, Mahler’s Tenth. You know...’ I am laughing. He isn’t.
‘I’m not sure I do. Sounds to me like you and your friends were having sex with the wrong men.’
‘We were. Our husbands mostly. Occasionally each other’s.’
‘Ah.’ Calum is thoughtful. ‘I don’t see it as an either/or proposition, necessarily.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You seem to think working together, our exhibition, would be better than sex. The two are not mutually exclusive.’
‘Oh, that was just a manner of speaking. It was a silly thing to say. I’m sorry.'
‘So that would be a “no”?’
‘No?’
‘No, you don’t want to go to bed with me.’
I am about to try another evasion but he skewers me with unsmiling blue eyes. Behind his cool, clever words lies need. ‘No, Calum, that would be a “yes”.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes, I do want to go to bed with you. But I’m not going to. Not yet anyway. But I’m terribly flattered that you’ve asked.’
‘No, I’m sorry, I shouldn't have asked, but it just seemed a natural thing to say. Talking like this, about poetry and climbing, laughing so easily with you. It really turns me on, all this bouncing ideas off each other. I’ve hardly ever experienced that... Well, with climbing pals maybe, but never with a woman.’ He answers the question I would not dream of asking. ‘Alison was a lovely woman, a gifted teacher, and she knew her stuff but... I suppose we didn’t talk a great deal.’
‘I don’t think you do if the sex is good. You think you don’t need to. Sex with Gavin was amazing, Wagnerian - God, that man was fit - but he couldn’t hold a conversation. Attention span of a fractious two year old. On the ground anyway. I suppose it must have been different in the mountains otherwise he’d be dead, wouldn’t he? Maybe he is dead by now. Although I somehow think I would know.’ Calum is watching me intently. ‘Oh dear - this is awful! I’ve said I want to go to bed with you and here I am reminiscing about an ex-lover. I’m sorry, Calum.’ He is laughing again. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘You are a piece of work, Rose! I don’t know what it is about you - you seem so vulnerable but at the same time you are totally your own woman. There’s no front to you. You’re so... exposed.’
‘Skinless.’
‘Aye, that’s it!’
‘People like me, they say we have one less skin than other people. It means we are more open and honest perhaps - I could have pretended I didn’t want you - but it also means we are... more easily hurt.’
‘Which is why you’re saying no?’
‘At this point in time, Calum, I don’t know why I’m saying no.’ His face brightens and he opens his mouth to speak. I lift my hand to his face, spread my fingers and lay them on his lips, silencing him. ‘I just know it’s the right thing to say. Right for me.’ He opens his mouth wider and closes his lips around my fingertips. His hot, wet mouth shocks me. I withdraw my fingers and resort to cliché. ‘After all, I hardly know you.’
‘You know my poetry.’
‘Well, you don’t know me, then.’
‘I know enough to know that I want you and that making love to you would be the natural extension of all the things we’ve talked about. It would be another way of getting to know each other.’
‘You make it all sound so uncomplicated!’
‘Do I? I don’t mean to, because I know it isn’t, especially for you, Rose. Och, maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree and you’re just too polite to tell me where to get off!’ The smile is sardonic, but his eyes betray him.
I lift one hand to his head, cup his ear and bury my fingers in the tangle of dark curls. ‘Calum, don’t move. Please.’ I lean forward and press my lips gently against his, then slide my other hand along his thigh, registering the sudden, involuntary clench of muscle and on into his lap. There I cradle the mound in his bulging jeans.
‘Christ, Rose!’ As his mouth moves my lips are grazed by stubble and I inhale his breath. I feel him tense, about to move in response, then he remembers. He mumbles something in Gaelic.
After a long moment in which we are both quite still, I release him and lean back. ‘Thank you for not jumping me.’
‘It’s me,’ he says faintly, ‘who should be thanking you.’
‘Well, I think I made my point. I’m not saying no because I’m not attracted to you. I wanted to feel you... taste you... ’
‘Please - any time,’ he says in a hoarse whisper. ‘Don’t bother to ask.’
‘It’s been a long time, you see. There’s been no one for five years. Not since Gavin. I’ve spent five years murdering what I felt for him, starving my need for him, purging my memory. But somehow it still feels... too soon. They say time heals, but—’
‘They lied,’ he says simply, then shrugs. ‘Geological time, maybe.’
‘You wrote a poem about that, didn’t you? The slow healing process?’
‘Aye.’ Calum looks uneasy.
‘Stalactite?’
He nods. ‘You’ve done your homework... Tell me why you came to Uist of all places. I’m curious.’
‘You’re trying to change the subject.’
‘No, I am changing the subject. Why Uist?’
‘Gavin was never here.’
Calum laughs softly. ‘No mountains.’
‘That’s right. No mountains, so no Gavin. Just Gavin’s ghost... Calum, if - if we did go to bed, I’d like to be certain it was about you, and nothing to do with him. I don’t want there to be three people in the bed.’
‘Is he here for you now?’
I actually look around the caravan, as if he might be. ‘No. There’s just you and me.’
‘Well, that’s a start.’ He takes my hand, tentatively, checking me with his eyes to see he is not off-limits. ‘The thing I don’t understand - I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense to me - why would Gavin want to sleep with another woman? The man was obviously an eejit.’
Tears start into my eyes but I’m laughing. ‘Oh, Calum, you don’t know the half of it!’
Rose sits up in bed. ‘You’re lying, Gavin.’
‘Why would I lie for Christ's sake?’
‘You wouldn’t do this to me... Even you wouldn’t do this.’ She slowly shakes her head from side.
‘Well, I fucking did!’ Gavin throws back the duvet and starts to get dressed. Rose watches his naked body, tries to feel revulsion and fails.
‘Did you do it in this bed?’
‘For God’s sake, Rose - what does it matter? It’s done.’
‘Is it over?’
‘Between us?’
‘Between you two.’
Gavin’s head is bent over socks and trainers. He doesn’t answer.
‘Gavin... Is it finished?’
He sighs, straightens up. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Christ, Gavin!’
‘I just don’t know, Rose! I didn’t plan for it to happen. I didn’t set out to - to betray you. It was just one of those things.’
‘How could you?’
‘Because I’m a bloody selfish bastard, that’s how, because I’m a man and therefore a lower form of life! And because I can’t bloody say no if it’s offered on a plate - which it was.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You want more details?’ he says nastily.
‘No! I just can’t believe... that you... I can’t—’ Rose starts to cry. Gavin yanks a holdall out of a cupboard and begins to throw clothes in, randomly, savagely. Rose gets out of bed and stumbles towards him.
‘You’re going?’
‘Well, I can hardly stay here, can I?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Dave’s. Or Simon’s. I don’t know.’
She grabs his arm. ‘Why did you do it, Gavin?’
He wheels round on her, his eyes blazing, glittering with tears. ‘Because she was there!’
‘I mean why did you tell me?’
His chest is heaving as he tries to steady his voice. ‘Because... I was angry with you. And because - oh, Rose, you’ll love this! - because I felt such a shit lying to you.’
‘But you didn’t feel a shit sleeping with her?’
‘Not at the time, no. I had other things on my mind!’ Rose recoils as if he has slapped her.
‘I didn’t deserve that.’
Gavin is pale, his mouth moving as he struggles to retract, apologise. ‘No, you didn’t. You don’t deserve any of this. I’m getting out, Rose. I’ve done enough damage.’
Gavin lifts the holdall and stalks out of the bedroom. Rose follows him downstairs, into the sitting room. He gathers up maps, correspondence, his address book. A fat stone Buddha sits on the desk, Rose’s Christmas present to Gavin two years ago. She studies the Buddha, notices how his smile has turned into a fatuous smirk. She moves away.
Standing in front of the French windows she stares out at the moonlit garden. Snow is falling again. The scene looks like a Christmas card. Rose spreads her palms and rests her forehead on the icy glass. Behind her she can hear Gavin making a phone call in the kitchen.
She wants to sleep.
Sleep in the snow.
Lie down in the soft, clean, perfect snow and forget about all this. Fall asleep as the snowflakes settle around her. The cold will slow her racing thoughts, still her pounding blood. The cold will bring peace, stop the thudding in her head.
She looks down for the key to the French doors but it isn’t in the lock. Panic seizes her until she realises with a great surge of relief that she doesn’t need to unlock the doors. She picks up the stone Buddha from the desk, weighs it in her hand, grips it tightly then swings her arm back. She smashes one of the glass doors. The hole isn’t big enough yet for her to walk through so she smashes more glass.
The rush of freezing air is bracing, exhilarating. Rose squeezes through the doorway, her nightdress snagging on the glass shards, her thighs and arms tearing as she struggles through the opening. Stepping through the broken glass she walks across the snow-covered patio, her bare feet leaving bloody footprints behind her. She walks into the middle of the lawn, kneels and then lies down in the snow.
Rose feels slightly better now. The dreadful pounding in her head has stopped. She feels at peace. She can’t quite remember... There was something, something very upsetting... Something to do with Gavin... No matter. She will sleep now and sort it out in the morning.
But she cannot sleep. There is too much noise. Someone is screaming. Someone is in terrible distress. A man is yelling, sobbing, calling out for help.
Poor man. Rose wishes she could do something, but she really is too tired to move.
Gavin will deal with it.
Gavin is good in a crisis.
Rose and Calum stand awkwardly at the door of the caravan, she huddled into her waxed jacket. Darkness is already falling even though it is barely mid-afternoon. Calum ducks back inside the caravan and emerges again on the threshold with a fleece jacket and a small book.
‘Let me see you home.’
‘No, Calum, it’s okay. I mean, thanks, but there’s really no need.’
‘It’s no bother.’
‘I know, but actually I’d quite like a walk on my own.’ She scans his face for disappointment. There is only a nod. ‘I need to calm down. There are too many thoughts... I have to be careful.’
‘Aye, I know.’ He holds the books out to her. ‘You said you wanted to learn more about geology. That’s a kind of beginner's guide.’
‘Oh, thank you... You've been very kind, Calum. And understanding. I do appreciate it.’
‘Aye, well, as you now know, I have ulterior motives.’
‘You mean you’re really a bastard like all the others?’
‘Aye,’ he grins, ‘But I’m a canny bastard.’
‘I’ll see you at school on Wednesday then? Ten o’clock?’
‘If you need anything - I mean, if you want to see me before then - och, you know what I’m trying to say. I’ll not give you any more hassle, Rose, but I’m here if you need me. My door’s never locked.’
‘Go inside, you’re getting cold. I’ll see you Wednesday.’
She sets off along the track, narrowing her eyes against the onslaught of wind, rain and sand that reduce visibility to a few yards. Resisting the temptation to look back at the glowing windows of the caravan, she wishes she’d left a light on at home to welcome her. Calum’s book digs into her ribs and she steps up the pace, eager to be indoors again.
She opens her front door. At least there is no fumbling with house keys. No one locks their doors here, day or night, and Rose has learned to leave hers open during the day. The night is another matter.
She switches on the kettle and shrugs off her dripping coat, removing the book. She examines the contents briefly but then reaches down from a shelf her own copy of Calum’s anthology, scanning the contents page for Stalactite. The wood-burning stove is still alight but languishing, so she opens the doors, shoves in some driftwood and then curls up on the sofa with one of her anaemic, much-loved antique quilts. She finds the page and reads Calum’s poem of lost love.
When, some time later, she has finished crying, Rose re-boils the kettle, makes a pot of tea and retreats to bed, trying to decide whether she is angry with Calum or grateful. The question defeats her. She swallows a tablet and eventually she sleeps.
I lie straight in the hospital bed, face down, suffocating. My fingers creep out across the coarse darned sheets until they grip the hard edge and sink into the flesh of the mattress. Pinioned like a butterfly, my eyes tight shut, I cling to the cool solidity of the sheets, then lift my head to breathe great gulps of stagnant, antiseptic air.
I roll onto my side, sweating, crushing lacerated arms and legs, glad of the distraction of pain. I am suddenly conscious of the length of my limbs, how they flex, slipping and sliding over each other and across the sheets. I curb them and lie still on my back, listening to the thudding of my heart.
God damn you.
God damn you to hell, Gavin. You should be in my bed not hers.