The Gloaming Page 9

  Stooshie

  THE BRIDGE WAS coming, and it didn’t matter what Mr Pettersen thought, or what anyone else on the island thought. The work had already begun, most of which consisted of men in offices drinking bad coffee and arguing over large sheets of printed paper. Plans were drafted and redrafted, contractors were selected, costs were lowered and negotiated and lowered again. The planning had been slow and expensive, as it usually is, but now things were moving. Soon diggers would grumble to life. Cranes would stretch their necks to the clouds.

  Peter and Signe discussed the bridge over breakfast. Mara was still in bed; she’d been so distracted lately, and Signe expected she’d wander down sometime after ten, scuffling along in slippers while humming off-key, and funnel some toast crusts into her mouth before scuffling out again. If they were lucky, she might find the time to say good morning, though Signe wasn’t holding her breath.

  Signe had made a pot of strong coffee, a tower of toast, and bacon the way Peter liked it: so crispy it snapped. ‘The bridge is happening then,’ she said as she slid the food onto Peter’s plate.

  ‘Hmm,’ replied Peter, his eyes still on the newspaper, which was unnecessary as he’d already read it. ‘Too late to lodge a protest now,’ he said.

  ‘Why would anyone protest it?’ Signe poured herself a large cup of black coffee, the same breakfast she’d had for the past thirty years. ‘It will be wonderful for the island. And the guest house! Just imagine. We thought we’d be scraping by with ramblers and foodie types and people tired of the city, the only people who cared enough to get onto a fishing boat to come here. Soon we’ll be open to the whole of the mainland. Thousands of people – tens of thousands.’ She sipped her coffee, shivering at its pleasant bitterness. ‘Think of it, Peter! We’ll be full every night. I’ll need another washing machine to keep up with the sheets.’

  ‘But the building of it,’ said Peter, finally looking up from his paper. His neck creaked and he was sure he felt stone snow onto his shoulders. ‘What will it cost us?’

  ‘Well, there might be a few downsides, when I think about it.’ Signe paused to show that she was thinking about it. ‘It could affect the fishing, with all the machinery cluttering up the place and making vibrations. It will be noisy for a while. And messy, I suppose. But aren’t we used to that? And won’t it be worth it in the end?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Peter. ‘There always needs to be a bargain. We can’t know what this bridge will cost us.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The bridge is a good thing – a vital thing. It will save us all.’

  Signe stared at Peter. Why didn’t he want them to make a living from the guest house?

  Peter stared at Signe. Why wasn’t she adding up the only things they had left to give?

  Bareknuckle

  PETER COULD NOT remember ever having a dinner that wasn’t stewed meat and over-boiled vegetables. Sometimes, just to shake things up, his mother would serve up turnip instead of potato, or pork instead of beef. Peter didn’t care; food was just a way to not be hungry.

  But one night, to celebrate something – Peter didn’t know what, a bet or a fight or an argument won – his father brought home lobsters for dinner. Live lobsters, their whiskers twitching, their slowly waving claws held shut with blue elastic bands. Peter’s father set them to racing across the kitchen floor, and Peter’s brothers yelled and cheered and placed bets, and Peter joined in because he knew he was supposed to. Looking around at their faces, gleeful at the lobsters’ slow creeping, his stomach lurched. But he made his face match his brothers’, and it was only later that he wondered whether they were all doing the same, the row of falsely happy boys increasing in height like a set of Russian nesting dolls.

  The prize for the winning lobster was to be cooked last. Peter’s mother had filled their biggest pot – big enough for Peter’s smallest brother to fit inside, had they wanted to put him there – and brought the water to the boil. Peter didn’t know why, but his father chose him to take up the tongs and lift the lobsters and drop them in one by one. As the middle brother, Peter rarely got to do anything special; his older brothers just hit him when he tried to follow them, and his younger brothers were too small for Peter to hit in revenge.

  Peter lifted the last-place lobster. It waved its claws helplessly. Its eyes were like peppercorns. Its insect legs twitched. Slowly, Peter lowered it into the boiling water. He knew it didn’t scream, but he imagined it did. One by one, he lowered the rest of the lobsters into the pot. Each one twitched. Each one screamed.

  Peter held the lid on the pot, hearing the water bubble and thud. His hands looked so small next to his father’s, his hands that had never held anything except gently. The things he knew his hands could do now. The pain they could cause while causing him none at all.

  Peter hated boiling the lobsters. Making a game of their deaths. Watching them die slowly. Cracking their bodies open and sucking them clean.

  He hated it because he hadn’t hated it. He’d liked it.

  Cabriole

  BEE WAS NEW to the island, new to the world; nine months inside her body and only two outside it. Signe settled him in his Moses basket and thought about leaving.

  She was already running late for her dance class at the town hall. Over the past year she’d built up the numbers, though she’d had to pause in the later stages of her pregnancy. Now she had five pupils: tiny girls, hip-high, hair curled in ringlets, dressed head to toe in pink. Sherbet fairies, a Victorian stage dream. She would lead the girls through the alphabet of ballet: always the same pliés, grands battements, battements tendus, développés. The key to ballet is getting the outside right, and then the inside will follow. The dancer can’t start by trying to decide which muscles to use to achieve a movement. She must learn to do the movement correctly by observing and mimicking. When her movement looks correct, the correct muscles are in use. Tomorrow there were more classes: all-ages aerobics, barre stretches, beginners’ yoga.

  If she was honest, she didn’t need to do the classes. But she’d always used her body to earn her living, and she didn’t want to stop now. Peter had saved almost all his income over his fighting years. He’d always had lean tastes, and his prize money had only needed to cover his one-bedroom rent and more eggs and organic protein than Signe had thought a single person could ever consume. He’d tucked it all away for a rainy day – another of his ways of trying to control the world’s vagaries, like knocking on wood and wishing on eyelashes.

  During Signe’s pregnancy, he had told her not to let moonlight touch her bare skin. It was sweet at first – a silly excuse to keep her warm inside the house while he went out to get more wood for the fire. But soon his superstitions irritated her. When Bee was newborn, Peter had pressed a silver coin in his tiny hot fist for luck. Signe, exhausted after ten hours of labour, didn’t find it at all cute that he’d give a newborn a choking hazard. It was even less cute when they got back to the island to find that Peter had left all the drawers and cupboards in the house wide open, to make sure they were unlocked – locks, she assumed, being bad luck.

  But Peter said he’d done these things for their girls, whether Signe remembered or not. Together they’d ushered their girls from babyhood to childhood, and so it was their duty to do them all over again for their boy. The strange old things his mother had taught him as a child – and he’d done them all. Suckling the girls from his pinkie dipped in crystallised salt to purify their blood. Not saying their names aloud for the first month. Leaving open scissors near the cot to keep away fairies – though Signe drew the line at suspending the scissors directly over their pillow. The bargains he tried to make with the world.

  Wanting to squeeze as much time with her baby as possible, Signe leaned over the Moses basket as she did her feet stretches. The feet are vital. A dancer’s feet must be strong, supple, and as sensitive as her hands. When standing, a dancer’s foot holds her weight at three points: the back of the heel, the big toe, and the little t
oe. Each is vital to the proper stance. To be steady, the dancer must get her foundations right. This is all that really matters.

  Signe finished her stretches and leaned over to kiss Bee goodbye. His forehead was as soft as feathers and he breathed as fast and light as a mouse. On her way out of the door, she paused. She reached up and carefully patted the highest shelf. Sure enough, there was a pair of open scissors. She started to take them down, then stopped. She’d leave them be. Let Peter have his superstitions. It hadn’t done the girls any harm to believe in a little magic.

  Thrawn

  MARA AND PEARL were ankle-deep in the loch at the middle of the island, contemplating their next step. Their fingers were intertwined like weaving. The water in the deep centre was black with secrets, and the rest reflected the silvery clouds. But the shallows were clear enough for them to see their own numb feet.

  ‘We could try this in summer instead,’ said Pearl. ‘When it’s not, you know, utterly fucking freezing.’

  ‘You’ll be gone by summer. And if I’m ever going to learn to go underwater, I have to start somewhere. Maybe someday the sea, but –’

  ‘Mara, you don’t have to go in the sea if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I know. But I don’t want to be forever unable to. You know?’

  ‘I know,’ said Pearl. ‘I know, crazy lady.’ The water was cold, but Pearl wasn’t shivering. Her underwear was black and lacy, pushed out taut with honeyed flesh, and Mara was trying hard not to stare. Her own body felt meagre in its skintight wetsuit, but she could feel Pearl snatching glances at her, and that made her warm. She took another step, and the water chilled up her calves.

  ‘It’s better to do it fast,’ said Pearl. ‘If you creep into cold water slowly, it hurts. But if you dunk yourself all at once, body and head and all, your temperature adjusts.’

  ‘I don’t think I can –’ Mara could hardly speak for shivering. The cold was so cold that it felt hot, burning her from the feet up.

  ‘That’s fine,’ soothed Pearl, stroking her thumb across Mara’s palm. As her hand stretched, Mara could feel the soft scarring between Pearl’s fingers. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.’ Pearl led Mara deeper into the water, their steps skittering on the stones.

  ‘Is your name really –’ Mara chittered through her teeth. The water was creeping up her thighs now. ‘Is your name really Pearl?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s a secret.’

  ‘So it’s not Pearl?’

  ‘We should never give away all our secrets, Mara. You have to keep some here.’ Pearl touched her first two fingers to her forehead, then to Mara’s lips. Without thinking, Mara kissed them.

  The water was past Mara’s waist now, and she stumbled on a loose pebble and the water would have swallowed her up but Pearl had hold of her hand, so although she pulled Pearl with her when she slipped they both were only devoured to the shoulders. The cold sucked Mara in and her breath tightened and her heart raced and her skin burned and she wasn’t even cold any more, she wasn’t anything, she couldn’t feel a thing.

  ‘Now, Mara. It has to be now. I’m here, I’ve got you. Take a deep breath. We’re going under now. One, two –’

  ‘Wait! Wait. Have you –’ Mara’s words came out in gasps. ‘Have you – done this – before? With others?’

  Mara thought of Pearl’s past lovers, all their different textures and shapes and tastes. She imagined Pearl wearing them like a string of coloured beads. Mara’s own throat, still dry above the freezing water, felt cold. She wanted to pull Pearl close and hurt her, mark her: teeth dimpling blood to her wrist, a bruise blooming on her arm. Some evidence that Pearl was real, that Mara had really touched her, that they had really waded into a loch in the middle of January.

  ‘No,’ said Pearl. Under the water, she got a better grip on Mara’s wrists, shifting her feet on the unsteady stones. ‘Only you.’

  ‘How did you know that this was what you were? What if someone is struggling and working, hoping someday it will come together – how can they know if the struggle is just the process, or the struggle means it’s not right?’

  ‘If it’s right, then you know,’ said Pearl. ‘You feel it.’ And she reached out and placed her hand on Mara’s wetsuit just below her collarbones, where her breasts began their swell, where her heart beat fast. ‘Here. Now stop playing for time. We can get out of this freezing water and wrap ourselves up in all those towels and go back inside, or we can dive. But we can’t stay in between forever.’

  ‘Will you show me?’

  Pearl sighed. ‘For you, yes. Though I don’t know how much you’ll be able to see from above the water.’

  And Pearl let go of Mara, and took several steady breaths, and dipped her head under the water, and swam away. Mara could see the shape of her, the blur of her body as she swam and swam and swam, turning circles around Mara, disappearing into the darkness at the centre of the loch, slipping shallow through the silvery edges, and still she swam, and shouldn’t she have come up by now? Shouldn’t she be breathing? Mara began to panic – but she could see the flip and angle of Pearl’s body, still swimming. Finally, she emerged in front of Mara, so slowly the water barely made a sound. Her dark hair was flat to her head, her eyes bright, her cheeks round and smiling.

  ‘How do you stay under for so long?’ asked Mara.

  ‘I’ve worked my whole life, and you know what I have to show for it? Nothing but this. My breath, and my control of it. You understand?’ She reached out and took Mara’s hand.

  Mara nodded. She breathed in, breathed out, breathed in. She was ready.

  But then – the weight of a small body under her arm. Kicking for shore. Eyes rolled back, all white. Skin clammy. Blood clotted black. Her breath caught in her throat and she panicked, limbs flailing, the water fighting against her. The pulse she’d felt had only been her own. But what if it wasn’t? What if he was still – and she had left him – and – and –

  ‘I can’t,’ gasped Mara, unbalanced, feet skiffling on the rocks, arms cuffing the water. She clenched her back teeth hard, trying to keep her jaw from chittering. Her feet felt warm, and she wondered if they were bleeding. ‘I’m sorry. The water – I wanted – but I can’t, I –’

  ‘Shh,’ said Pearl. ‘Shhhh, it’s okay. Stop fighting.’ The water was unsettled, moving a quop-quop around them from Mara’s struggles. Pearl held Mara still until she and the water calmed. Then she tugged on Mara’s wrists, pulling her feet out from under her, letting her float in the water. She began to draw Mara towards the shore.

  Mara’s face hadn’t gone under the water, but it was wet. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her breath hitched in sobs.

  Pearl kept her grip on Mara’s wrists, kept pulling her ashore. ‘You can want something,’ she said, her voice soft, ‘and also be terrified that it will hurt you. And maybe knowing it could hurt you –’ She kissed Mara on the forehead as they reached the shallows. ‘Maybe that just makes you want it more.’

  Divertissement

  WHEN HER DAUGHTERS were little, Signe entertained them by pretending to be a bird. She strutted around their old house, hands on hips and elbows cocked out gawkily, squawking ‘bu-uuu-uuuuk’, knocking apples to the floor and picking them up with her feet. She hadn’t danced, or properly trained for years, but her feet could still bend into the curve of a C, toes halfway to heels. The tips of her toes, if she wanted them to, could still support her entire weight. Bee, newly made and still unknown, was the size of a kidney bean, and added no extra struggles to the feat. After so many years of dancing, Signe had no toenails on her big toes. Her girls didn’t find this strange; it was just a thing that happened to mothers, some lack or injury that they never thought to question. All grown-ups had scars, and there was no reason to ask about them. Their mother was a bird, and that was that.

  All of the Ross children had delighted in collecting up the small remains of birds and making things from them. Things that need small hands to make and sm
all eyes to see.

  Once Mara spent the whole summer making a diorama of a dead baby bird sailing in a boat made of mussel shells, spackled blue and grey with their pearlescent innards. The boat had oars made of fishbone and a flag made from a scrap of rabbit fur she’d found in a hollow, its surface so soft her fingers could barely feel it. Signe exclaimed with delight when Mara fanfared it into the kitchen, even though she was on her knees scrubbing under the cooker and couldn’t see what her daughter held. Together they put the diorama on the windowsill of the front hall, so that it could greet any visitors to the house. After summer, when the Ross family schedule of home-schooling started up again, the diorama got in the way of the autumnal wax-paper leaves they wanted to put in the window. It was moved to the dresser in the kitchen, where Signe felt it wasn’t quite hygienic, what with it containing dead things; then to the coffee table in the living room, where it kept getting knocked over by accident; then to Mara’s bedside table, where she got sick of it and moved it somewhere else, just temporarily. Where it ended up, no one was sure. For all any of them knew, it lurked still in some forgotten corner of the house, the mussel shells fuzzed grey, the bird’s ball-bearing eyes watching, watching.

  Islay preferred feathers. Long white-grey ones with barbs rough enough to skelf into your fingertips and pull out drops of blood. Tiny blue-black-green ones, with a shimmer to them like oil on water. White ones so soft you could stroke them across your cheek and use them as a powder-puff for your make-up, probably, if you wanted to. She mingled them all together in a heart-shaped pillowcase from which she’d removed the cushion. It had a little satiny pocket on the front, which was meant to be where you put your tooth for the tooth fairy, who would take the tooth and leave a coin in its place. It was years since Islay had lost a tooth, but still she kept the pillowcase, and still she collected the feathers from wherever she found them. When she left, she took the pillowcase. Sometimes, in the night, in the dark, she unfastened the pearl buttons and slid her hand inside the pillowcase to feel the soft barbs and jagging shafts of the feathers. She fell asleep easier like that, being soothed and hurt at the same time.