The Gloaming Read online

  ‘Well,’ said Signe, surprised, ‘if that’s what you all want.’

  Peter knocked back his whisky in a single gulp and put his glass on the arm of his chair, perfectly aligned with the white ring. Islay got as comfortable as she could on the horsehair couch. J sipped his whisky and did a terrible job of hiding his grimace. Mara arranged herself beside her boyfriend and pulled Bee onto her lap. Signe began her story. She’d read it aloud so many times over the years that she knew it by heart, and did not need a book.

  ‘There was once a handsome young fisherman,’ she said, ‘who could not find himself a wife. The island girls were pretty enough, but he felt something missing. Every day he took out his boat and set his lobster pots, and every night he sat alone in his cottage and watched the peat fire rise and fall.

  ’One evening he heard soft laughter over the dunes. His footsteps silent on the sand, he crept closer. In the moonlight he saw a trio of women, all silvery hair and long limbs, dancing on the damp sand. One woman in particular captivated him. Her eyes were black as the night sea and her hair was starlight. He felt quite bewitched.

  ‘As he watched, the women stepped over to the rocks, where sat a pile of greyish skins. They slid the skins up over their own pale limbs – and when the fisherman blinked, the women were gone, and three seals slipped into the water.’

  In Mara’s arms, Bee began to fidget. ‘Finished,’ he signed. Mara held him around the waist, making shushing sounds into his ear with the rhythm of her breathing, and he settled.

  ‘The next night,’ continued Signe, ‘the fisherman was waiting. When the women began their laughing dance, he crept to the rocks and snatched up one of the skins. He ran and hid it in a wooden box under his bed. When he returned, two of the women had disappeared, but the black-eyed selkie woman was still searching for her skin. She begged the fisherman to let her go home. But desire made him selfish. He promised that if she became his wife, he would love her and care for her and make her happy each day of her life. You may love me, she replied, and I may even love you back – but I can never be happy here.’

  Bee arched his back and tried to prise Mara’s hands away from his middle. ‘Finished,’ he signed again. Mara stroked his hair and tried to soothe him.

  ‘They married,’ went on Signe, ‘and had seven fine children, all happy and strong and full of life. The fisherman loved his selkie-wife, and in time she loved him in return. But every night she slid from her marriage bed to stand on the shore, gazing out at the water and mourning the other world now lost to her. The fisherman lay sleepless in the empty bed, the stolen skin beneath him.

  ‘One day their youngest son was exploring the house, and found the sealskin under the bed. The seventh child, you see, is always closest to the other world. He brought it to his mother and asked her, what was this strange thing, so soft and smelling of the sea? The boy knew nothing of his mother’s history; he was simply curious. The selkie –’

  Bee began a wordless wail. Mara tried to hold him, but he made his body rigid, his head thrusting back to hit against her chest. She let him go with a gasp of pain. He thudded to the carpet and wailed even louder.

  ‘Bedtime for bees,’ announced Signe.

  Bee wailed louder.

  ‘Now,’ said Signe.

  Bee stayed on the ground, his body still rigid. His hands, his arms, his legs did not move. His chest did not move. His face grew pink.

  ‘Bee, stop it!’ said Mara.

  Bee was silent. His face went from pink to red.

  ‘Bee, little love, don’t do that,’ said Islay. ‘If you go upstairs now, you’ll get a story.’

  ‘Och, leave the lad!’ said Peter. ‘He’s fine. Just stubborn.’

  Bee was still silent. His eyes began to bulge.

  ‘Oh, Bee,’ sighed Signe. She scooped him up, his body stiff as a doll, and carried him out of the room. Everyone held their breath. Finally, from upstairs, the wails resumed at a quieter volume. And they breathed again. Since Bee was born, none of them had heard the end of a story.

  ‘I remember this story,’ said J. He sipped his whisky and, this time, managed not to grimace. ‘My mum used to tell it. The selkie takes her skin and puts it on, and she goes back into the sea. Her husband and children never see her again. Sometimes the husband wanders the shore feeling sad and missing his wife. I remember I didn’t like the story when I was a kid, because it was too sad and I –’

  ‘No,’ said Islay, indignant. ‘That’s not how the story goes. Who told you that?’

  ‘It is,’ persisted J. ‘It’s the only way it can go. The selkie can’t be happy on land. That’s not her true nature, and even if she loves her kids it’s not enough.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Mara. ‘It’s a love story. How can it be a love story if they’re not together at the end?’

  ‘I’ll tell you the end,’ said Islay. ‘The selkie decides she doesn’t want the skin after all, because she loves her husband and her wee ones too much. She gives up her other life and stays with them. Happily ever after.’ This was the version that Signe had told Islay and Mara before Bee was born, back when stories still ended. Islay smiled pityingly at J. ‘Sorry your mum told you a weird version. When you get home you can tell her the right one.’

  ‘I can’t tell her anything,’ said J. ‘She went up to the cliff last year.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Islay. ‘I forgot. Sorry, I – whatever. She’s still wrong, though, the way she told you it.’

  ‘Well!’ said Peter, getting up to refill the boy’s glass, the slosh and clink filling the silence. ‘Let’s agree to disagree. It doesn’t matter anyway, now does it? It’s only a story.’

  Entrelacé

  ONCE, AND ONLY once, Signe told her daughters how she had met her husband. What she didn’t tell them is that there are two versions of the story, and both of them are true.

  The version she told her daughters is about a swan maiden whose feathered cape is snatched by a man who she then marries. They have children, and love them, and the swan maiden never misses her old life or her old freedom or the feeling of spreading her wings and flying high over the trees without being bound to anyone or anything. She chooses her family and forgets everything else. Happily ever after.

  The other version, the one she didn’t tell, is about a dancer and a boxer who meet in a bar one night after a performance. Both of them are in jeans and shirts – no pointe shoes, no wrapped hands – so they meet as total strangers, and don’t know until much later that they are a dancer and a boxer.

  At least, as far as the boxer is concerned. Because the real story inside the real story is that the dancer had seen the boxer before. On television, which was a thing she often watched and always enjoyed, sleepless and secretive in hotel rooms. The only channel with clear reception showed a boxing match: a replay from that night’s fight. Its staccato thuds were almost lost under the excitable stream from the commentators. Fists connected. Blood spattered. Signe jolted up in bed and stared at the screen. Then she stared at the man: not the one who bled, but the one who caused the bleeding. His face split into a grin, triumphant – but for a moment it faltered, and she was sure she caught regret. She leaned so close to the TV that the image dissolved into pixels. She wanted to crawl in beside him. She wanted to lick the blood from his fists. That night, in her dreams, the boxing match replayed at quarter-speed. It was a brutal dance, but a beautiful one.

  She woke in her own personal pool of blood: her period, missing for years, finally returned. Leaving the hotel sheets to soak in the bath, she dressed and went to find out where the boxer would be that night. A theatre round the corner from her theatre. His name was displayed in lights. She made note of the nearest bar.

  That evening, after her show, she went there with her fellow dancers. She made sure to sit in the middle of the room, under the brightest light. When he arrived, he wouldn’t fail to miss her. She knew that out of costume, the dancers still commanded an audience: their sharp cheekbones, their wi
de deer eyes, their endless limbs. But he didn’t come that night, or the next night. Still she went. Still she waited. And then, finally, he walked through the door. Happily ever etc. etc.

  The thing is, there is another real story inside that real story inside the real story, which is that the boxer had seen the dancer before.

  He wasn’t a fan of dance, but was trying to show the girl he was seeing that he wasn’t just a meathead with scarred knuckles. So, the ballet. From the moment the lead dancer appeared on stage, he was bewitched. She played two roles that night, the good swan and the bad swan. He had to resist the urge to chase her backstage and fling her over his shoulder like a caveman. After the show he ditched his date and lurked near the stage door. Even out of her swan costume, she was easy to recognise: the bones of her face were strong and sculpted, each movement as graceful as a bird opening its wings. He watched which bar the dancers disappeared into. He went to follow, then stopped. Although he’d won last night’s fight, he’d ended up with a lumpen, purpled eye. He couldn’t meet her like this, the beast to her beauty. So he waited until he looked mostly human again, and then he went to the bar, and found her there under the brightest light.

  They never meant to lie to one another. The truth of how they met was just a thing that they didn’t say, and didn’t say, and still didn’t say. The longer it went unsaid, the more it became a lie.

  Dunt

  AT FIRST, MARA and J climbed the cliff holding hands, but it was hard going over the tussocks and rocks, and they soon had to let go. It was halfway between dinnertime and bedtime, and the sky was streaked with pink. It wouldn’t get completely dark, but it would get darker than this. Mara had told her parents that she was going to walk her boyfriend home. She’d said it just like that: I am going to walk my boyfriend home. Signe had hidden a smile and nodded her solemn approval. She’d learned from her older daughter how vital it was to take teenage girls seriously. While the cliff was technically on the way to J’s house, in that nothing on this small island was out of the way, it was a bit of a detour. It was J’s idea; Mara would have been happy with a quick kiss at the end of her driveway, but he wanted something more private. That was fine with her too. Everything J said or did was fine. Never wonderful, never terrible, just fine. As he climbed, J hummed a tune under his breath.

  Mara was distracted, thinking about the selkie story. About how desirable it was to be desired. To be so beautiful and so sad. To never be hasty or clumsy; for all your movements to be slow and elegant with grief. To have a man want you so much he’d steal from you and lie to you every day, just to keep you. If only life could be a pretty story like that.

  This part of the cliff was steep, and Mara’s breath came harder. She tried to wipe her palms on her thighs without J noticing. Finally, they emerged at the top of the cliff. The wind shrieked around them, lifting Mara’s hair, chilling the sweat on the back of her neck.

  The first statue had only been here a few months. Elinor, from the other side of the island. She’d looked like stone even when she was still made of flesh: grey hair, grey skin, wrinkles carved deep into her cheeks. Her every movement was slow, considered, as if she carried pebbles in her pockets. But then, maybe hers was a gradual change, and she’d started to turn before Mara even arrived on the island. Maybe she hadn’t always been the way Mara saw her. Maybe she’d been young and black-haired once, flirting with boys and knocking back whisky and dancing until her feet bled.

  The next statue stood alone, away from the group. This was one of Mara’s favourites, and she took the time to break away from J and touch the stone hand. Caleb, with his forward-slanting forehead and his underbite, as if every part of him was leaning forward, impatient. Caleb was different because although his body faced out to sea like all the other statues, at the last minute he had turned his head to look over his shoulder, back at the island. Before he came up to the cliff, Caleb had a sheep farm on the south edge of the island. The sheep were stupid and stank of shit, but Mara liked to find the fluffs of wool they left in the knots of the barbed wire. They looked like tiny clouds, but felt rough and oily. Now that Caleb was here, Mara’s boyfriend’s dad had the sheep farm. One day Mara’s boyfriend’s dad would come up to the cliff too, and Mara’s boyfriend would have the sheep farm, and Mara would help birth lambs and get used to the smell of sheep shit and have all the oily clouds she could ever want, happily ever after.

  And there was J’s mum, Eilidh, short and curvy and curly-haired, smiling wide to show the gap between her front teeth. She stood like most of the others, but if you looked you could see how her hands were cupped open, ready to hold the hands of her husband and son when their time came. Mara remembered when Eilidh came up to the cliff last year.

  Eilidh had been changing for a few months by then: her movements stiffening, her eyes darkening to grey, her skin flaking grit when she rubbed her hands together. Finally, when she could only just walk, she called the islanders together. People didn’t always come together when someone went up to the cliff, but Eilidh was popular. The islanders, holding candles, lined the path. J and his dad stood at the end of the line, right at the top where the land dropped away to the sea. Eilidh made her slow, jerky way up the path. Her hair had already turned to stone, and instead of blowing in the wind it stayed in neat, solid curls, framing her face. She was so stiff that Mara could hear the creak and crack of her knees as she walked. Mara reached to hold her sister’s hand – but Islay shoved her fists into her coat pockets. She never liked when people went up on the cliff; she said because it was boring and creepy, but really because she didn’t want to think of a time when she would have to stand at the top of the path as one of her family made their final walk towards her. Bee, too big to be held so long in Signe’s arms but accepting nothing else, fidgeted and mewled into her neck.

  As Eilidh made her slow climb, each person leaned in to her and whispered in her ear: a memory they shared, a wish for her happiness, a reassurance that they’d look in on her husband and son. No one tried to convince her to change her mind; it was far too late for that. Finally, Eilidh made it up to the top of the cliff, just as her movements slowed to stillness and the black centres of her eyes faded to grey. And there she stayed.

  It was getting dark now, and most of the daisies had closed. J and Mara spent a while searching for flowers that still showed their faces. Mara tied one long-stemmed daisy around the rest to make a bouquet, then placed them in Eilidh’s open hand. Around them, dozens upon dozens of stone figures, all ages and heights, all facing out to sea. They stood in proud formation, heads high, like soldiers marching into battle.

  J reached for Mara, pulling her down onto the grass. Close to the ground, out of the wind, they could hear one another speak.

  ‘You always touch Caleb’s hand when we go by,’ said J. ‘Do you think you’ll look back like him?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When we’re here.’

  ‘But we are here.’

  J laughed. ‘I know, but I mean when we’re here like they are.’ He motioned to the statues. ‘When we’re here forever.’

  Mara felt her innards swoop to her throat, then back down. Her blood throbbed in her temples. But this was what she wanted. This was all she wanted. Everything was good good good and she pushed out a smile.

  ‘We don’t need to decide now, do we? That won’t be for ages. We’ve got our whole lives to live before then. Travelling, and adventures, and a whole world to see.’

  ‘Travelling?’

  ‘Yeah. Interrailing around Europe. Or backpacking in Australia, or South America, maybe. Like people do.’

  Most young people did leave the island when they were old enough, and rarely seemed to come back. Of the few hundred islanders, Mara and Islay and J were the only teenagers.

  ‘Sure.’ J draped his arm around Mara’s shoulders. ‘If you want to.’

  ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘I said, if you want to. I don’t really care. I don’t see the point in going any
where, when we’ll just come back here anyway. Everything we need is here.’

  ‘Okay, fine,’ said Mara, but she didn’t think it was fine.

  J laughed, lifting Mara’s hand to kiss her palm. ‘You’re so cute, with your plans and things.’

  Mara bit down on her irritation. J was only a year older than her, but to hear him speak you’d think he was an adult and she was a child. He’d been like that ever since he’d seen his mum up onto the cliff. As if not crying was what made a man.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Come on, Mara. I’m only saying. You love living on the island, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t – it’s not –’ Mara let the wind steal her words. There were a lot of things that J understood that she didn’t – mostly to do with sheep – but she knew better than him what it was to love and hate at the same time.

  Six years ago, when the Ross family had bought their house, there was no handover of keys, because there was nothing to unlock. There was no front door and no back door. There were no windows in the downstairs rooms. Dead leaves blew along every corridor. If you stayed quiet, you could hear things skitter. For a month they lived in one room while Peter and a hired crew made the house habitable. Doors, windows. Portable gas heaters in the bedrooms until the electric could be connected. Then Peter got rid of the hired crew and said he’d do the rest of the work himself. Mara didn’t care; she loved the house the way it was. They had a place to eat, and a place to sleep, and they had each other. The longer they all lived in it, the more they moulded the house to their shape. How could anyone else live in it now?

  And so she would live there, and then she would get married and live on a different bit of the island, and she would spit out a brood of babies and be the queen of everything she saw, and before long she would come up to the cliff too, and she’d be majestic and candlelit and loved, and then seabirds would shit on her forever.