And the Land Lay Still (80 page)

Nevertheless, he did.

What Sir Malcolm used to refer to as ‘the staff of life’ was making a menacing tent of his pyjamas. He closed his eyes. He knew where this was leading.

The other great unspeakable. What he did, imaginatively, when he was alone. What he did for real in London when he had the opportunity. Not Edinburgh. There were places in Edinburgh, he knew there were, but it was too risky. It was a village. Too easy to be recognised. London was big enough to be, relatively speaking, safe. But how safe was safe?

Nothing was safe. That was part of the excitement. The risk. The absolute fucking insanity of going to see her. She Who Must Be Obeyed.

In Edinburgh it would be even more insane. Perhaps even more exciting?

He closed his eyes. His prick was hot in his hand. He leaned forward, grabbed at the box of tissues. He had to do this or he wouldn’t sleep again. He had to do this or he’d go back
there
again. He had to do this or he’d betray Melissa, the kids. Jesus Christ. Damned if he betrayed them, damned if he didn’t. He loved them, he loved them, so why did he have this bastard thing lurking inside him, wanting to destroy him, destroy them? Why?

He’d go back anyway.

He imagined her hand, somebody’s hand, making him wait, making him get down on his knees, making him wait, making him, letting him, making him letting him kiss

her

cruel

high

heeled

SHOES!

It came spurting out of him like a confession extracted by torture. He captured and sealed it in a wodge of tissues. In the aftermath he became aware of the sudden grunt merging into a long
loud groan that he made as he came. He listened for a few seconds, but there was no movement upstairs. There never was.

He pushed back in the leather chair, stretched his legs, allowed his pulse to slow. Yes! Rumblelessness. Pure, blissful silence. Over and out. For the time being.

§

She’d never quite conquered her aversion to showers, especially ones with curtains rather than doors. Seeing
Psycho
all those years ago really had made an impression on her. There was no shower at home, although Don sometimes muttered about putting one in over the bath. In the Cotters’ house there were three, all with doors, which she had to step inside to clean. Somehow this was fine with her clothes on, or without the room getting steamed up. There was the other important difference that the Cotters’ house was bright and happy, completely devoid of the brooding menace of the Bates Motel.

In fact, the Cotters’ own bathroom was so luxurious and comfortable, and the shower in it – a spacious chrome-and-glass rectangular cabinet – so much part of the luxury, that sometimes when she cleaned it she imagined standing naked in it, the flow of hot water cleansing her body. In the same way, she often imagined being Mrs Elaine Cotter, speaking like her, dressing like her, having her grace and confidence. She didn’t want to
be
her, but she did wonder what it would be
like
.

The Cotters were on holiday in France for a fortnight. It was July, and Elaine had given her a key and asked her to pop in once a week to water the house plants and also the tubs outside if it was dry. Liz had been coming in every second day. Don, now retired, said, ‘What are ye needing tae go up there so often for? There canna be that much tae dae.’ In fact there was nothing. One reason was to get away from Don, whom she wasn’t yet used to having around the house all day. Another was because she didn’t think she’d be there much longer, and she wanted to make the most of it.

Don was reading
Great Expectations
. She’d read it years ago, when she was a lassie, and when he said, ‘Dae ye mind this bit, Liz?’, and then read a passage to her, as excited as a boy, she remembered, and her heart seemed to fill her chest. She would listen and smile, and he
would smile back, and she would quickly have to go out of the room for something, before the tears came.

In the Cotters’ drawing room she sat at the piano and pressed keys and wished she could play. She stretched out on the three-seater sofa and dozed for half an hour, then woke, refreshed but guilty, and spent an hour needlessly dusting immaculate surfaces. She listened to the silence. She crunched round the house on the gravel paths and watered the plants. The weight of the watering can tired her again. As she watched the light catching the threads of water arcing from the rose, she thought of the shower inside, upstairs. Why not? No one would ever know.

From the linen cupboard she selected one of the enormous white fluffy towels that she’d always wanted to wrap herself in. She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature so it was hot enough. It was a warm day but she wanted a hot shower. Then she went back to the Cotters’ bedroom and undressed, calm in the utter silence, folding her clothes and placing them on the upholstered chair where Elaine sometimes left her own clothes. She walked over to the wardrobe with the full-length mirror and looked at herself: the veins on her legs, the slight sag of her backside, the doughy greyness of her skin. She lifted her arms and felt in the hollows, looked with suspicion at her breasts and felt for the lump in the right one. A ripple of nausea went through her. No more putting it off. Then she turned and caught herself at another angle and in spite of everything she wasn’t looking bad for sixty-two. Elaine, though only a few years younger, no doubt still looked wonderful in the nude. But this wasn’t about Elaine Cotter, it was about Liz Lennie, about to conquer her fear of showers.

She had a sudden, brief vision of Janet Leigh, the knife stabbing into her flesh. She dismissed it – history, ancient history – and went barefoot, as if on grass, across the carpet and into the bathroom. She laid the towel on the edge of the bath. The tiled floor was cool. She slid open the shower doors. Nothing could be as fearful as what she would have to deal with later. She stepped in and pulled the door to behind her. The gushing water welcomed her. She went in under, all of her, hair and everything, and gasped at the hot force of it. And then she let it, let it, let it run all over her.

Later she would sit on the cork seat of the stool, wrapped in the white softness of the towel, like a child waiting to be rubbed dry. Later she would find a hairbrush and dryer and sit at Elaine’s dressing table and blow her hair dry. Later she would dress again, go downstairs and put the towel in the washing machine. Later she would go home and talk to Don, and no doubt she would cry, and maybe he would too.

But for now she was safe in the shower, letting the water run all over her for ever.

§

From the kitchen window, as she dried the coffee mugs, she watched Don down on his hunkers, pulling a few weeds. He was looking great, tanned and fit and handsome. Retirement wasn’t doing him any harm. He read the paper a lot, had finished
Great Expectations
and returned it to the library and now was deep in
David Copperfield
. He kept reading out what Mr Micawber had to say about things. The perpetual optimist. And there was always the garden. Twice he’d even cooked the tea. He hadn’t made a bad job of it either. She’d not been hungry but she’d eaten what she could, so as not to disappoint him.

He looked up and gave her a wave. She waved back. He’d only gone out twenty minutes ago. They were shyly, slowly, getting to know each other again. But how much time would they have? And was this why she still hadn’t managed to tell him that she was ill? Because she didn’t want to have the answer to that question?

He came back in. ‘It’s a braw day. Dae ye fancy gaun for a wee walk?’

She could actually have done with a sleep but she thought, again, that she didn’t want to disappoint him, and he was right, it was a beautiful day. ‘Aye, all right. Where will we go?’

‘I thought we could go tae the ferm,’ he said. ‘We’ve no been oot there for years.’

So they set off for Hackston’s Farm, the old familiar route, and as they went they reminisced, talking of Liz’s parents and what it had been like when they were first married and staying out there with them. The road out of the village had a few new houses on it now,
built in the 1970s, they weren’t bonnie but they had wonderful views over the open countryside.

Liz said, ‘Probably one day there’ll be hooses aw the way tae the ferm.’

‘That’d be a shame,’ Don said.

‘D’ye think we should buy oor hoose?’ she said.

‘If ye’d asked me that five years ago I’d have said no,’ he said, ‘but noo I’m no sae sure. Maybe we should look intae it.’

‘Aye,’ Liz said, ‘maybe we should.’

Because everything was changing. He hated the great sell-offs of publicly owned companies and utilities that the Tories were pushing through. BP, British Aerospace, Cable & Wireless, the National Freight Corporation (he remembered how he’d half-hoped Byres Brothers could have been included in it when, as British Road Services, it had been created as a nationalised business after the war), Jaguar, British Telecom. The list stretched out into the future. The Gas Board, British Airways and British Steel would be next. For several years now people like themselves had had the right to buy their council houses. Selling off public housing went against all his principles but where were principles nowadays? They’d been shredded. He and Liz had built up some savings and it wasn’t so much a question of could they afford to buy the house as could they afford not to? With a deposit and the discount it wouldn’t cost them any more than paying the rent.

They’d gone about a mile. The road narrowed to a single lane between scrappy hawthorn hedges. Wee birds darted in and out of the hedges with unconscious urgency, and in the fields on either side fat, silky cows grazed. They paused at a gate to watch them, and Liz recalled helping her father bring the herd in for milking, but these weren’t dairy cows, these were stirks being fattened up for slaughter. They hadn’t milked cows at Hackston’s for twenty years.

‘Will we go on?’ Don asked, and she said, ‘Aye,’ and then as she stood away from leaning on the gate an excruciating pain shot up her spine and she cried out with the suddenness of it. She clutched at Don and he was there, his arm was there, strong as anything but there was horror in his face.

‘Liz, Liz, what is it?’

She felt the sweat on her face and the tears starting from her eyes and she knew all the colour must have gone from her.

‘I dinna ken,’ she said. ‘I’ll be aw right in a minute.’

‘Take your time,’ he said, and she did, shallow-breathing till the pain began to ebb away. It did but it left her exhausted.

‘Can ye walk?’ he said.

‘Aye, but no yet. I think I’ll need tae go hame. You go on if ye want tae.’

‘Tae hell wi that. Just take it easy. We’ll get ye hame.’

They walked with infinite slowness back to the village, pausing when she felt the tear-inducing pain coming on again. And she knew that this was it, the beginning of a new phase. She saw him at these moments, his face full of kindness and concern where for so long she’d looked and not found anything, or not even looked, and she felt his anxious, muscular support and this too made her want to cry. She thought what a bloody mess, what a bloody stupid mess we make of things, and then she determined not to think like that, and at last they reached the street and then their house. She lay down on the sofa and he took off her shoes for her and arranged the cushions and she dozed for a few minutes, hearing his voice distant on the phone. Then he was beside her, bringing her a cup of tea. He sat on the floor against the sofa and took her hand.

‘I’ve called the surgery,’ he said. ‘I’ve made an appointment for this efternoon. Half-five.’

‘God, Don, how did ye manage that?’

‘I tellt her if she didna find a space for ye I’d bring ye onywey and the deputy editor of the
Drumkirk Observer
would be wi us tae. For a useless bugger Bulldog still has his uses sometimes.’

She smiled briefly. ‘Thanks,’ she said. Then: ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What hae you tae be sorry for?’

‘I’m no weel. I should hae tellt ye months ago.’

‘That disna maitter,’ he said. ‘The main thing is tae find oot whit it is and get it sorted.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I’m no sure that it can be.’

‘Dinna say that,’ he said, a new fear in his voice. ‘For God’s sake, Liz.’

She sipped the tea but it was too hot and he took it from her. She closed her eyes again and drifted off and when she woke a few minutes later he was gone.

‘Don?’

A bulky haze moved towards her, frightening her for a moment till it came into focus and she saw it was Don.

‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I was just in the kitchen. What is it?’

‘Dae I look terrible?’

‘Ye dinna look great.’

‘I’m feart.’

‘I’m feart tae.’

‘I’m gonnae hae a sleep.’

‘Go ahead. I’ll be here.’

‘If ye’ve things tae dae ootside …’

‘I’ll be here,’ he said. ‘I’ve my book tae read. You go tae sleep. I’ll be here when ye wake up. Then we’ll get a taxi tae the doctor’s.’

§

The papers, billboards, the television were full of sleazy, side-of-the-mouth advertisements in the run-up to privatising the Gas Board: IF YOU SEE SID, TELL HIM. Building a shareholding democracy, they were calling it. Don called it theft on an epic scale. Sid was anonymous, a punter about to miss one of the bargains of the century.
Pssst! Spread the word.
To Don, Sid was some English wide boy into dodgy wheeling and dealing. He refused even to contemplate buying shares in privatised utilities. They belonged to him already. Why would he pay to own a bit of what was already his? He’d baulked at getting the house on the cheap too. There was a principle which he could not betray. Thrawn and stupid it was, no doubt, but he couldn’t help himself. Besides, he had other things on his mind. His wife of forty years was dying.

The gas sale went ahead without him. British Gas plc was born. Don read
Barnaby Rudge
,
A Tale of Two Cities
,
Oliver Twist
and
Bleak House
. He read during the day when Liz was sleeping, he read aloud to her in the evening, he read through the night when sleep would not come to him. He silently thanked Dickens for the size and number of books he had written.