And the Land Lay Still (74 page)

She did a quick estimate: she was way over her target length, but surely she could find three hundred words to chop. She felt quite pleased with herself: it hadn’t taken that long at all. Then she slumped: what she’d written seemed pedestrian and false, she’d nowhere near finished the story and, anyway, knocking that out shouldn’t have been much of a challenge for someone of her experience. So what was it she was trying to achieve?

She hadn’t appreciated how exhausted she still was. Feeding Kirsty, changing Kirsty, bathing Kirsty, playing with Kirsty, just generally being with Kirsty took it out of her. And Kirsty was easy, according to her own mother, who came to stay for a few days. ‘No like you, Ellen. Ye didna want tae come oot and when ye finally did
ye liked the world ower much. Ye never seemed tae sleep. By, ye were hard work.’ Kirsty was, apparently, not hard work. She slept through the night and a good proportion of the day, and when she was awake she was usually happy and placid. Nevertheless, Ellen felt permanently tired.

Her mother had something to say about the bairn’s easy nature too: ‘She’ll just be storing up her badness for later, I doot.’ She was only half-joking. Thankfully, Mary was miles away to the north most of the time. Ellen admired her mother, doubtless she even loved her, but you could take only so much doom and gloom. Even if you too were filled with Borlanslogie blood and Borlanslogie brains, Borlanslogie fatalism could wear you down after a while. As it was intended to do.
What’s for ye will no go by ye
was a philosophical jibe impossible to disprove.

Mary liked Robin, however, even if his sunny Englishness was quite alien to her. She’d taken to him instantly. People did. Where Mary expected the worst to happen, he had an unshakeable faith that things, sooner or later, somehow, would be all right. Unshakeable, that was Robin. Solid as the Bass Rock. Ellen loved him for that and was constantly surprised at herself. The way things were working out went totally against any script she’d ever imagined for her life story. And yet she felt at ease, more so with every day that passed.

Equally surprising had been her mother’s attitude. Mary had been understandably taken aback at how swiftly everything had changed – one minute her daughter was single in Edinburgh, the next she was living in Joppa with a man she hadn’t seen for eight years, expecting a bairn. When Mary was told that Robin wasn’t the father she’d demanded to know who was, but Ellen had said with all the firmness she could muster that that was not her business. There was a stand-off. Mary came at it all ways but Ellen wouldn’t give in. Eventually, Mary gave up and never asked again. She could see that Robin was good for her daughter, was a good man, and maybe that made her decide to keep her own counsel. ‘And he’s willing tae bring it up as his ain?’ was all she asked. ‘No,’ Ellen said, because she and Robin had talked it through. ‘He’ll no bring it up as his ain. It’s no his. If we have another, that’ll be his, ours.’ ‘But then …’ Mary began. ‘It’ll no make any difference,’ Ellen said, with conviction.
Mary pursed her lips, drawing deep from the dark well of her scepticism. But when Kirsty arrived, Robin took to her at once and she to him, and he and Ellen shared the responsibilities as far as his time allowed, and at once they were a family. His not being her natural father was not an issue. There was Ellen and Robin, and Ellen and Kirsty, and then there was Kirsty and Robin, thirty years between them but the best of friends right from the start.

Ellen loved Robin for other things too. For the warmth and safety of him in bed. For the gentleness of their lovemaking which, gradually and quietly, they were learning together as Kirsty slept in the cot next door. For the fact that he cooked great vegetarian meals and yet didn’t object if she sometimes cooked meat for herself. For the fact that they shared household chores and neither of them was bothered that the house was never immaculate. For his fantastic collection of jazz and blues records. For his dedication to his work. For his eclectic reading and astonishing range of knowledge. The way she felt about him was like a cheesy version of that Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet. For his comforting blandness, which defused her anxieties. For the way he treated her, always and without question as an equal. For the way, when he came home that evening after she’d written her story, she was able to show him what she’d done and not have to hide it away. She’d only got as far as meeting Charlie Lennie and she was out of time and space, but it was enough. Robin read it through and said it was fine but there were too many hints of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll for
the People’s Friend
. He didn’t think they’d take it. She agreed. ‘It gets worse,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to write the rest,’ he said. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I will. Maybe one day.’ Then she put away what she’d done and said, ‘I need to write something that pays.’ Robin said, ‘You will,’ thereby demonstrating that he had faith in her just as she did in him.

§

‘You don’t have to write the rest,’ Robin said. No, she didn’t. It was imprinted in her memory for ever.

Denny wished her luck and said, ‘Keep in touch.’ Maybe there was a warning in the way he said it but she either didn’t pick up on it or ignored it, and he left her with Charlie Lennie, and she was happy to be left. She could look after herself. But now she discovered
weaknesses in herself she’d never even suspected. Charlie was the antithesis of the kind of man she
ought
to have found attractive: he was predatory, manipulative, chauvinistic and had more than a hint of violence about him. At D. C. Thomson she’d derided the sub-Heathcliff creations of their various women’s magazines, and the readers, the credulous fools, whose fantasies they fed. Now some madness came over her, and with Charlie she abandoned every personal and professional rule she’d ever lived by: she was disarmed by his good looks; she allowed herself to be duped by his lies; and she slept with him when she knew he was the story, or a key player in the story. She took no precautions, not even the obvious ones, and neither did he. She acted, now she was in deep water, as if she carried a charm against drowning. Even as she was trying to dig up information and he was obstructing her while ostensibly trying to help, she knew it was happening. He kept her close when he didn’t have business to attend to, and at a distance when he did. She knew that whatever he was involved in wasn’t just about fighting with rival gangs. There was money being made, out of protection, resetting stolen goods, drugs. He played with her, letting her see just enough to tantalise, not enough for her to walk away with a complete story. He kept saying, ‘Ye’re gonnae write aboot us, are ye? I’ll show ye some things. You stick wi me.’ And like a fool she did.

A woman like her, he said, a woman with strong opinions who wasn’t afraid to express them, was exciting, a challenge. She was different from most of the women he’d been with. He got bored quickly but not with her. She was flattered: they challenged each other, and there could be mutual benefit in that. He wasn’t like the others, liberal on the surface, flawed underneath. Charlie’s flaws were as visible as his tattoos. But she also knew he was lying, she just wasn’t sure which bits were lies. All of them, she’d discover eventually. She didn’t have the nerve or the wit or the fear to extract herself. Or the desire. If she’d been seventeen she’d have slapped herself and walked away. But she was twenty-nine and old enough to know better, so she stayed.

He had a two-litre Ford Capri – another sign she chose to ignore. He liked to drive her around Drumkirk and out into the surrounding countryside, but despite his promise to show her things she saw very little. She met some other guys but their relationship with him
wasn’t clear except that they deferred to him. If she questioned him too hard he clammed up. ‘Plenty o time for aw that, Ellen. I want ye tae masel first.’

He lived alone in an anonymous flat in an anonymous block in Granthill. Outside was the jungle. Inside was clean but barren. Not much furniture, few comforts. Some locked rooms too, which she never had an opportunity to look into. Bluebeard’s palace only without the palatial. Obviously she was not the first woman he’d taken there. She went anyway.

Everything happened on his territory, on his terms. He said he didn’t like Edinburgh, it was too stuffy and snobby. She knew this was ignorant prejudice, yet because it connected with some deep-rooted small-town prejudice in herself, and with the way she herself was feeling about the city, she excused it.

Then one winter’s evening she found out who she was with, who she was
really
with. She’d been working all day in Edinburgh, and had taken a late-afternoon train to Drumkirk with no journalistic purpose but solely to see Charlie. He’d picked her up at the station and driven her through the dark streets to the flat. They were on the floor in the living room, in front of a too-hot gas fire. She was flushed from the heat and drunk on white wine, and although he seemed to have been keeping pace with her she vaguely came to realise that he was sober; also that she was naked and her clothes scattered around the room yet he still had most of his on. Until this moment she had felt free and relaxed and
in
the moment. Now something jolted as he teased her with his fingers, and suddenly she didn’t want him touching her. But it was too late, he’d brought her to the precipice and then as he tipped her almost over she heard the whisper in her ear. ‘See this story aboot us? Ye’re no gonnae write it, are ye?’ She froze, not even sure she’d heard right. He shifted his hand and his weight and undid his trousers and then she felt him going in. ‘Ye dinna hae a story but even if ye did ye’ll no write it. Will ye?’ She gave a gasp, but the pleasure had vanished and now there was only shock and the threat of pain. ‘Or ye’ll get hurt
.
’ And he drove into her with the violence she’d guessed but never witnessed, and his hands gripped her wrists and pinned her down and he was so strong she couldn’t fight, couldn’t squirm her way out from under him, and he rammed again and she cried out and he
said, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ and backhanded her across the jaw, the same hand he’d just been using on her, it was like walking into a wall and her whole face seemed to blow up to twice its normal size and she thought of her stupidity and her lack of precautions and her weakness and it was as if – and how she hated even momentarily thinking this – it was as if she had invited him to rape her. She felt theory and philosophy and ideology and rights shatter in the storm of his violence. The script torn up. Everything in her mind rebelled against everything her body had allowed to happen, and everything in her body was ashamed of the idiocy of her mind. He hit her again and she heard herself cry out and knew he had total control, and that he was right, if she got out of it alive she would be so scared and so compromised that she wouldn’t write the story, she would just be grateful to have come to her senses. He hit her a third time and then he turned her over and raped her again.

§

Later he sat smoking, fully clothed, while she crawled around, snuffling and snottery, collecting her things and having to dress in front of him. ‘Ye’ve put blood on the carpet,’ he said. ‘Clean it up
.
’ She went to the kitchen and found a cloth and a bowl which she filled with hot water and she came back and sponged the blood out of the carpet. Maybe there was bleach under the sink or a knife in a drawer and maybe she’d have tried something but she didn’t dare look, she had no hope in weapons, only fear of what else he might do. He knew this. He sat and smoked and when she’d finished he said, ‘That’s better,’ like a compliment, and she felt pathetically grateful for that, for the fact that he didn’t hit her again. She thought, how can he have reduced me to this, in a matter of minutes? From the woman I am? But it wasn’t just minutes, it was days and weeks, he’d stripped her of her defences without her even noticing, but of course she had noticed. He looked at her with total disdain and said, ‘Now I’ll take ye hame.’

She said she had a train ticket but he sneered and said, ‘Look at yersel. D’ye think I’d put ye on a train in that state?’ He made her get in his car. It took an hour to drive to Edinburgh, an hour during which he spoke with cold deliberation of what would happen to her, or her mother, or that fucking hillbilly Denny Hogg or anybody else
she cared about, if she went to the police or wrote a word or said or did anything about him, or passed the story on to anyone else to pick up because he’d know, he’d fucking know it was her and he’d hunt her and today would be a dolls’ tea party compared to how it would be if he had to do that. The rest of the journey took place in silence. If she tried to speak he told her to shut her fucking mouth and she did. She couldn’t think of what would happen next, only of what had occurred. She thought she would lie about the street and try to fool him by walking up to the wrong door, but he drove her straight to the flat and parked directly outside it and this terrified her, the fact that he already knew. He left the engine running. He said, ‘This is where you and me part company, Ellen. We’re no right for each other, and that’s the truth. Sad, eh? Better this way, though. You stay oot o my life, right?’ She nodded, her throat so dry she thought she would choke. ‘Because if ye dinna, I’ll be back in yours, right?’ She nodded again. ‘Say it,’ he said. ‘Say, “Right, Charlie.” ’ She managed it, a faint whisper. ‘Right, Charlie.’ ‘Now get oot,’ he said, and she scrambled at the door handle and he pushed her from the car and the wheels smoked on the cobbles as he took off.

She should have gone straight to the police, bruised, bloody and unwashed, and maybe she would have but there was more to come and then she knew she wouldn’t. The woman she rented a room from was waiting for her. She fetched a basin so Ellen could bathe her swollen face, and she fetched her brandy but when Ellen tried to tell her what had happened she stopped her. ‘I don’t want to know
.
’ Ellen stared at her. The woman looked as terrified as she felt. ‘There was a man here earlier.’ ‘When?’ ‘This morning. After you went out. In fact, as soon as you went out. Is he your boyfriend?’ ‘No.’ ‘He said he was. He said you were moving out.’ ‘I’m not.’ ‘Yes you are.’ ‘I’m not.’ ‘I want you to.’ ‘I don’t have a boyfriend and I’m not moving out.’ ‘I want you to.’ ‘I’ve been raped.’ The woman turned even paler. ‘That was him, wasn’t it? I don’t want him here again.’ She sounded on the verge of hysteria. ‘He’ll no be back,’ Ellen said, trying to calm her. ‘He said he would be.’ ‘No, he’ll no be.’ ‘He said he would be if you hadn’t gone by the end of the week. I want you to go. I’m sorry.’