The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales Read online

  Miss! I shout out, Miss, he’s putting me off my test! and even though Miss McConnell patters right over she’s not listening to me, she’s – what a cheek! – she’s shushing me, like I’m the one causing a ruckus.

  But Miss, I say, it’s Coll, miss, his tail is –

  And then I stop talking because Miss McConnell’s jumped back as if I’ve slapped her. I’m not looking at Coll but I can see in my peripheral that he’s leaning back in his chair with a big grin across his chops.

  You can’t, sputters out Miss McConnell, it’s not –

  And I know what she’s mad about, it’s because no one ever mentions it directly –his freakishness, his malformation, his ‘special difference’ – but I’m sick of having to go to another room for no reason when I’m meant to be doing my stupid Maths exam.

  So I look her in the eye and I say exactly what I know she’s thinking: Coll’s a weirdo, miss!

  And Miss McConnell’s eyes aren’t looking at me. They’re moving up my forehead, past the top of my head, up-up-up and I know exactly what she sees. She looks at me and she sees a weirdo, just like Coll. She’s put us in here together not just because we’re distracting to everyone else, but because she thinks we belong together. She thinks we should be friends because to her we’re the same. But we’re not the same. I pick up my pen and I throw my test paper at Miss McConnell (even though I know half the answers are total bumf) and I storm out of the room, and the whole time I’m thinking: Coll Bailey, I will never be your friend.

  COLL

  Una Geddes was a right laugh today. Shouting at Miss McConnell then pure storming out of the test room. Nice for me to get a bit of peace to finish off the test, anyway. Question Nine was a right pain in the bum. I took the long way home today so I’d go past Una’s house, just to get a look at what she was up to. I had to walk practically round the whole island – in January, and all, with the snow all crunchy-solid and the sky as grey as your granny’s knitting – but I didn’t see Una.

  She used to be all right, Una, when we were kids. I liked that she wasn’t fussed about her antlers. When you’re wee it’s okay because kids just get on with it, but you know what it’s like when you get older. Any little difference gets pounced on and picked apart – and we had some pretty big differences, me and Una. For years I asked my Mum to sew special bits on my trews, like wee zip-up pockets in the bum area or a channel of fabric going up my back to tuck it in. It was no good though; I couldn’t sit down properly, and everyone knew it was there anyway. After I while I thought – screw it, everyone knows I’m a freak anyway, so I might as well just carry on with things like it doesn’t exist.

  But Una, she wasn’t like that. Well, there’s not much you can do to hide bloody great antlers stretched a foot out of the top of your head, but still. She never bothered with that awkward phase. It was almost like she was proud. She’d wrap coloured scarves around them and hang necklaces off the curly ends. All the other girls fussed around her, painting patterns on them with their nail polish and that. She was so friendly, Una. She’d be pals with anyone. Except me, obviously.

  Mum! I shout as I open the front door and dump my school bag on the couch. I’ll be in my room!

  I thump up the stairs and jump from the doorway onto my bed – I can do some epic leaps, cos my balance is better than most people’s. While I pull off my school tie I soak up the applause, bowing to my imaginary audience.

  I put my feet up on the radiator and wonder what Una’s up to right now. I’ve got big plans for the night: beans on toast in front of Corrie, then a Halo marathon with my wee bro. Oh aye, rock and roll. I bet Una doesn’t watch Corrie. Actually, I bet her Mum makes her wrap wire round her antlers and stand behind the telly to get a better reception! Nah, that’s harsh. I wouldn’t want her to know I thought things like that about her. But she called me a weirdo, and I’d never call her that.

  Everyone thinks we should be friends, me and Una. Because we’re alike. Because we’re different. It’s a shame she’s such a cow.

  UNA

  I don’t really know why I hang around the whisky sheds. They’re unheated, and there’s no one to talk to, and if I get caught my mum will go totally mental. The whisky sheds are these massive low buildings made of dark wood, with tiny wee windows. They’re surrounded by barbed wire and there’s never anyone around. The whisky casks get stacked up in there and left to mature for years and years. They’re sort of creepy, actually, and maybe that’s why I like them.

  It’s bloody freezing though, and it’s literally impossible for me to wear a hat. My nan used to knit me special hats – they were more like a band of wool to go around my ears, really – but she died a few years ago, and I don’t like to look at those hats any more. So instead, I just have to hunch up my shoulders in a tragic attempt to keep my ears warm. My toes went numb ages ago and it’s difficult to get my boots into the gaps in the fence, but I manage it. It’s stupid to come here. But you know the worst bit? I can’t stop thinking about that stupid Coll Bailey.

  He’s such a pain, always distracting me when I’m just trying to get on with my work. I hate how people think we’re going to be Best Friends Forever and get married and have weird little babies. Ugh.

  But I suppose it was just a tiny bit sexy, the way he leaned back in his chair, and when I ran out I could feel his eyes on me, that big grin . . .

  But oh my god, gross, never would I ever. This is COLL BAILEY we’re talking about. I shiver, and not from the cold.

  I creep silently down in between the row of sheds, and then I straighten and walk properly, scrunching my feet through the new snow, because there’s no one here anyway. I’m just getting into that idea – that it’s just me, totally private, alone with my noble thoughts – when I see movement in the very furthest-away shed.

  S-l-o-w-l-y, the door wheezes open. Not like that fake squeaky sound that doors make on telly, more like a cough that’s been held in for ages. I shouldn’t be here. I should NOT be here. They’re going to catch me and they’re going to prosecute me and my mum is going to go totally, absolutely, literally mental.

  But peeping out from inside the shed, bright against the snow, I see the tip of a tiger tail. And that’s when I explode.

  COLL

  Coll bloody Bailey, what the bloody hell are you doing? Una speaks in this sort of whisper-shriek, like she’s really mad but doesn’t want to make too much noise. I feel like the cold has frozen my jaw solid, but it can’t have because I’ve only just got here and wasn’t really outside in the snow long before sneaking into this shed. It was a bit warmer than outside, but with Una standing in the doorway the temperature seems to have dropped fifty degrees. I’m not sure whether I should lean on one of the casks with one elbow, like in a suave Don-Draper-from-Mad-Men sort of way, but I don’t think it’ll look right in my parka and bobble hat.

  I traipse across half the island to find you, I say, and this is the thanks I get? Too late, I realise that is NOT what Don Draper would have said.

  You bloody well did WHAT, Coll Bailey? whisper-shrieks Una, and she puts her hands on her hips like she’s someone’s mother. She has to let go of the door to do that and it whacks her on the elbow, but she doesn’t flinch. Then she marches towards me, arms akimbo, with a face so angry it could scare off a storm.

  She gets right up in my face, all ready to scream at me or bite off my nose or something, and just to stop her I lean in and press my mouth against hers.

  Her lips are the warmest, softest things I’ve ever felt.

  She jumps, and I count one-two-three, waiting for her to pull away, but she doesn’t. And then, weirdly, she’s smiling. Her lips are still pressed to mine and so it makes me smile too.

  I’ve always thought that Una moved more slowly, more gracefully than other girls – maybe because she’s got to carry that extra weight on her neck – and now I see how that grace is in her kissing too.
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br />   After some time that feels like forever and also like a millisecond, Una pulls away. Then she pecks her head back towards me and dots a kiss right in the centre of my lips.

  Tomorrow, she whispers. Here. And then she’s off, striding ankle-deep through the snow. I run to the doorway and catch the door before she slams it, so that I can watch her go. She glances back, and the beginnings of the sunset gleam colour into her cheeks.

  Coll Bailey, she shouts back over her shoulder as she scales the fence, I will never be your friend.

  The Gracekeeper

  The graces are restless today. They pweet and muss, shuddering their wings so that the feathers stick out at defensive angles. I feel that restlessness too. When the sea is fractious like this – when it chutters and schwaks against the moorings, when it won’t talk but only mumbles – it’s difficult to think.

  I spend a little time, an hour or two perhaps, sitting by the house and watching the clouds. Many boats passed yesterday so the sky is cluttered. I watch a shiny red tug pass, coofing smokeballs up to join the other clouds.

  There’s a Resting due this afternoon and I must go inside to prepare. The grace is ready; when I enter the house he’s huddled in the corner of his cage, head under his wing, feathers puffling around the wrought iron prayers of the bars. He knows that this is the closest he’ll ever get to the sky again. I know the feeling, I tell him, and drop five sunflower seeds into the cage.

  Before the Resting party arrive I take the raft out and feed a few of the graces. I’m not supposed to, of course, but some people deserve a longer remembrance. I’ve seen their families – the quickness in their smiles, their relief when it’s a small grace. Real grief, and I don’t feed the grace: I know those people don’t need the grace’s death to tell them when mourning is over.

  I eat bread and honey, drink a bone cup of milk about to turn. Supplies will arrive with the Resting group. A large box of body, a small box of milk and socks and soap: this is all the world sends across to me.

  I should go and visit mother, I know. But the last time I visited she barely knew me, and I fear that the next time she will not know me at all. It will not matter to her whether I come today or tomorrow. It will not matter to her whether I come at all. I must prepare for the Resting now, and there is so much to do.

  The Resting was brief. I whispered the words and brought out the caged grace, moored it to the wooden box as the family watched from their craft. The children clutched their pockets and the widow gazed at the grace as if willing it to live forever. I will not feed this grace; they will not sail back to check if it still breathes. When the grace dies, they will be allowed to forget.

  The widow thanked me afterwards with her damp swollen hands too tight on my wrists, speaking in fummels and haffs as if she could not get enough breath. Her wedding ring dug into her finger, making the flesh bulge out at either side, and I wondered whether she would wear it until it was engulfed: her own secret totem, shined black tefillin lashed tight to arm and thigh. I watched from my window as they sailed back to shore.

  Sometimes when the boats sail away, I feel that one end of a fine thread is tied to the boat’s bow and the other to my ribs. With every beat of the oars I feel something over my heart stretch, and stretch, until it might break. A string like the one between the wooden box and the grace. At those times I take care to turn away, to busy myself with moving supplies onto the shelf, to hum so loud my throat burns, to remind myself that I am here.

  I will visit mother tomorrow.

  Every night I lie awake from the pale blue of dusk to the pinkening of dawn, and my eyes will not close. Finally, in the darkest part of the night I get out of bed and lie with my feet in the water, feeling the waves lick up my calves. Somewhere between sleeping and waking, between floating and sinking, I slip into the water. I float among the graces, watching the toenail-clip of moon reflect off the cage bars. Lying back I let the sea hum into my ears, stroking at my hair, telling me stories in a series of takas and whooms.

  I imagine my mother in her tower room, landlocked, swaddled in blankets. Her skin crinkled soft as paper folded, unfolded, refolded a thousand times. I wonder if she even knows me any more, or if I have become just another confusing memory. Perhaps the thought of me is a spiderweb: too thin to be gripped, just shreds clinging to her hair.

  I imagine my mother imagining me, and just for a moment I feel the nudge of her fingers against my knuckles. Opening my hand, I feel her take it. We float there in the hush of night.

  When I was a child I talked of chunks of land floating on a globe of sea, held by road-thick ropes fastened to anchors the size of castles. I asked my mother what would happen if the ropes were to wear away, if the countries were to bump and jostle one another – if one might attach to another, if bridges might be built where only sea had been before – or if the edge of one would tip under another, upending it like a toy tug carrying too many pebbles at one end. Your brain is upside-down, my mother said. Land does not float on sea; the earth is a solid mass like a rubber ball, and oceans sit in cups carved out of land. Land decides water, not the other way around.

  Lying on my back among the graces, limbs spread wide as a starfish, I feel I will fall up into the clouds. I reach out for something to hold on to, but there is no other hand there: nothing solid in this gap between earth and sky.

  Weeks have slipped by on my chunk of land and today is the Resting I have been sickening over for months, for always. I choose the biggest grace I can find and rub at its cage until it gleams like fresh pennies, but tears are salted and I must repolish three times before it is ready. I did not visit and now I cannot look at what is in the box, to see her eyes misted over and her jaw sunken back. Instead I say the words over and over in my head until they lose all meaning.

  I wonder now why other Resting parties let me say the words. They let me recite them like poems learned at school, knowing that I do not apply them to the scrap of person in the wooden box or to the burning star of their loved one’s memory.

  So I look down at the box, and I say the words, and for the first time I understand them. My last link to the world has gone. I know what it means to be a stranger.

  In the pinkening dawn, I swim out to mother’s grace. I open the door of the cage and watch the grace spread its wings, watch it sputter out until it is nothing more than a comma among the clouds. I duck my head under the water and swim for shore.

  Sleeping Beauty

  THREE

  A few months later, queuing for cinema tickets with her new boyfriend, she sees him. He’s walking down the street – headphones on, eyes down, click-clacking a Zippo. The sight makes bile rise hot in her throat. She pretends to examine the cinema posters and blinks until her eyes stop watering.

  By then, she’d already decided not to tell. Silence is easier, that’s all. She has no proof and wants no fuss. It’s not even a crime, not really. Nothing would happen except that she would never be herself again. She’d be That Girl. Did you hear? She was asking for it.

  Besides, she tells herself, she’ll forget. Like she forgot how long to cook a soft-boiled egg, the nickname her dad used to call her, where she’d hidden her journal. Any day now, she’ll forget.

  TWO

  She wakes with his fingers inside her.

  She stays perfectly still, her breath sleep-slow. She’s not scared. More curious. The room is still spinning and half-dreamed thoughts argue behind her eyes. Her body feels heavy, numb. His breath is hot on the back of her neck.

  She tries to breathe. Slower. After a minute he presses himself closer, pushes his fingers further.

  Maybe he doesn’t know she was asleep. Maybe he thinks that’s why she invited him over.

  But it isn’t.

  This isn’t.

  She’s going to say something. She’s going to sit up and punch him in the jaw and tell him to get his dirty fucking hands the fuck awa
y from her. She’s going to scream right in his face that she’s not a piece of goddamn fucking meat. She’s going to. She’s going to do it right now, and before she even stops doing her fake sleep-breathing he rolls away from her and he slides off the bed and he goes into the kitchen. She hears the tap running, a glass filling, and he comes back into the room and he lies down on the floor and pulls his coat up over himself like a blanket. She stays awake until she hears his breathing slow.

  ONE

  What’s your favourite fairytale? he says, passing her the joint. Another night, another stupid question. His random statements, his tired attempts at quirkiness; everything about his personality bores her.

  Who’s your favourite Beastie Boy?

  Would you rather eat shit or vomit?

  What’s the best kids’ TV show?

  Sometimes she invites him over to watch DVDs or listen to music, but this time it was just because he has hash. If she can just get a bit high, then it’ll be worth having to talk to him. The last time she invited him over, he stayed for a whole weekend, asking her stupid questions and drinking all the milk. She can’t be bothered with that tonight. She’ll try to get rid of him quickly, just as soon as this joint is finished. And maybe one more, for luck.