Burning Down George Orwell's House (15 page)

Painting was different from reading in that there was only so much Molly could accomplish each day before she needed to stop and let the oils dry. She got restless when cooped up in the house too long. She spent hours sunbathing nude in the rear garden, and he tried not to notice.

Molly had been at Barnhill for over a week when, one afternoon, she barged into Ray's room without knocking and interrupted his reading. “Why are you indoors on a day this lovely?” she asked.

“You can see that I'm reading.”

“I'm bored. Let's take a walk. I need to get out.”

“So get out!” he said, but was already putting his bookmark in place.

“I'll pack a lunch.”

It did look like a perfect day and with the blisters subsiding he was long overdue for some sightseeing. He put on a pair of cargo shorts and tall, burr-resistant socks. Molly was in the
mudroom shoving two stained and threadbare mackintoshes into a military surplus backpack. “Raincoats?” he asked. “A little overprotective, aren't we?”

“I'm not going to argue with you,” she said. She removed one of the coats and placed it back on its hook. “Mind you, I really don't care if you get drenched.”

Ray opened the door to peek outside. Sunlight tickled the endless field of pink rhododendrons. Bees buzzed in the warm afternoon air. The sheep suffered in their winter coats. He looked at Molly, then at the cloudless sky, then at Molly again.

“Who are you going to believe?” she asked. “Me or your own lying eyes? It is going to piss down in, oh, three quarters of an hour.”

“Fine,” he said. No need to stir up an argument. “Give me that raincoat. Anything else? Maybe some scuba gear?”

She removed the mac from the hook again, crammed it into the backpack, and handed him the whole thing. “The next time you're at The Stores, pick yourself up a decent pair of wellies. I threw away those ugly boots of yours.”

Sure enough, his boots were missing from the mudroom. “What do you mean you threw them away? Those were very expensive!”

“I put them in the bin. They're shite at any stupid price. They might be right for the grueling conditions of inner city Chicago, but on Jura they're as useful as nail polish on a snake.”

“What am I supposed to wear in the meantime?”

“What am I supposed to wear in the meantime? Jesus, do you listen to yourself? It's not my problem—your plimsolls, I suppose.” He looked at her blankly. “Trainers? Sneakers?”

“I have a better idea,” Ray said.

The garbage pail at the back of the house overflowed with over a month's worth of refuse. He needed to take it to the dump somehow. He retrieved his boots from the muck.

As much as he wanted to climb the Paps, they were way too far away to reach in one afternoon. They headed in the opposite direction, up toward Kinuachdrach. The air was aromatic with sage and wildflowers and hay. They walked in silence, but it became clear that Molly had something to get off her chest. He didn't push it.

For the first time in months, his muscles seemed to be loosening. Was this what it meant to relax? It had been a long, long time. Every so often he and Helen used to get in the truck and drive up to the woods in northern Illinois or Wisconsin. They could walk for long, tranquil hours. Being on Jura brought back some of that joy, but with Molly there existed a different and tenser variety of shared silence.

After something like forty minutes or an hour, a damp breeze kicked up. He really had gained a new sense of time. His body felt more responsive to the natural environment than to the lumbering journey of an hour hand around the face of a wristwatch. The wind sent the grasses rippling in long waves. The cool air mitigated the heat beating down on his face and the part of his neck not covered by his beard,
which had again assumed an unruly life of its own. Molly had remarked that he looked like a second-rate hippie guru capable of mass murder or a millionaire jam-band guitarist trying to resemble his unwashed fan base.

They arrived in Kinuachdrach and he knocked on Miriam's door, but she didn't answer. A cat stirred in the window and the dog growled at them from its barbed-wire cage. “Too bad she's not in,” Molly said. “She bakes the best scones in Scotland.”

The pickup truck full of pig shit was parked next to another house, one crumbling and half boarded up. “Who lives there?” Ray asked.

“That's Mr. Harris. He keeps to himself.”

“He gave me a ride to Barnhill the other day.”

“Are you having a laugh?”

“He said he knew who I was.”

“He stops by The Stores and even the lounge from time to time, but hasn't spoken more than a sentence to anyone in two years. We're best to leave him alone.”

They followed the path up to a summit, from where they could see the mainland and make out several of the neighboring islands. It was Ray's first real view of his surroundings. A lighthouse or bunker of some sort stood vigil on one of the islands. The shadows of clouds spotted the land with fast-moving shapes. He stood at the centermost point of the entire universe and understood, finally, that he was on the Isle of Jura, that his physical experience of the natural surroundings
and his mental image of the map were one and the same. He stayed put for a moment while Molly marched ahead; then he jogged to catch up. Beyond the summit, a path plummeted toward a gulf where she pointed to something in the water. “See that?” she asked.

A series of wooden docks housed some small boats, which looked perfect for fishing or even for a short jaunt over to the mainland. “Not really.”

“See where the water's a bit darker? That's the Corryvreckan.”

They went down to the quay and sat with their legs hanging over the water. Gigantic seabirds screeched at them and broke the surface of the water in perilous dives. Ray wanted to ask Molly a million questions—about Jura, about who might still remember Orwell, about her black eye most of all. They watched the sunlight sparkle on the water until the smell of the air changed and became almost metallic. Molly pulled a raincoat from the backpack. She put it on, but it was several sizes too large so she had to roll up the sleeves. When she stood it hung to her knees like a dress. He pulled the other jacket on. It felt like wearing a second skin of plastic wrap. Sweat poured into his eyes when he sat again.

The rain came at once and from nowhere. Every drop sought his attention. The sky still teased them with sapphirine clarity, but rain fell like it wanted to submerge the island again until the tips of the Paps protruded from the sea to form three smaller and even less populated islands. He thought that the
weather would frighten Molly off, that she would turn around and return to Barnhill, but no. She stayed seated, impervious to the weather, watching the sound absorb the deluge until he couldn't stand her silence any longer. “Is there something bothering you, Molly?” he asked. He was full of stupid questions.

“What could possibly bother me about spending my entire life trapped on a medieval island completely devoid of culture?”

He didn't know what to say. He had felt the same way, at her age, about living in the Illinois cornfields, but there was no way to explain that. She would have to figure it all out on her own. “You're only seventeen, and you're probably not as trapped as you think. Your father—and I will grant you he is a raging asshole—in his own messed up way he has your best interests at heart. There's no reason you'll need to stay on Jura forever.”

“I knew you would take his side!”

“Here's the thing,” Ray said, hoping that something helpful and encouraging would come to mind. He waited. “Thinking in terms of sides is never useful—there really aren't any binary oppositions. Nothing is entirely black-and-white or good-and-bad.”

“That sounds to me like lame relativism.”

“Let's go back,” he said. He needed nothing more than a tall glass of single malt to warm himself up with. They started the return trek to Barnhill. “It's not relativism, it's specificity. Every thing needs to be considered in itself instead of
in relation to some false negation of it. Try to think of your situation from your father's point of view. I'm not saying he's right—I mean, look at your eye—but terms like
right
and
wrong
are beside the point sometimes.”

Their boots splashed in the mud. Ray's toes grew wet and sent a cascade of prickles up his leg.

“Aye I get all that, but what if he
doesn't
have my best interests at heart? I have every reason to believe he is a selfish arsehole who will do everything he can to satisfy his own needs. This island and our traditions are more important to him than I am, so where does that leave me?”

“It leaves you stuck on Jura, I guess, until you decide you're ready for art school or whatever it is you want to do. As much as you want to moan and complain, I know that a part of you loves it here. A big part of you.”

“That doesn't mean I can't hate it too—you said so yourself.”

“Right, so tell me what you love about Jura.”

“The history, I guess. People have lived on this island since the Stone Age.”

“What else?”

“I don't know. In many ways, this may be the strangest place on earth. When I leave—and I am going to leave—I'll miss the eccentricity here. We get all the telly programs from London and America, but we've also managed to maintain a unique way of life. I do love that about this place, but I also hate it. Is that okay?”

“Definitely.”

They walked for another hour, long enough for the rain to stop and the sun to dry their hair and clothes. Wet blades of grass stuck to his soggy boots. Back at the house, they stood on the stoop. The stain of animal fluids hadn't washed away in the rain. Molly took off her wellies and socks, but didn't stop there. Just as Ray had done on several occasions, she unbuttoned her pants and climbed out of them. Her legs were pale but looked exercised and uncorrupted by age or high-fructose corn syrup. She removed her shirt and then her undershirt and bra. Ray stood transfixed. Although he did his damnedest not to notice, she had a beautiful body.

Molly raised her arms and stretched with a loud groan in the breeze, soaking the atmospheric conditions into her skin. Her white underpants were the only thing standing between this girl and the full frontal nudity of the painting upstairs. She was so comfortable, so at ease with herself: a living, breathing sheela na-gig. Her nakedness had nothing to do with him. It was like he wasn't there, or like she didn't care that he was. The self-assurance was wondrous. “I'm going to take a long bath,” she said, “then I'll see about something to eat. I'm famished.”

The water started running upstairs. She was singing a song Ray recognized, but couldn't make out. He poured a large dram—he didn't notice the age—and drank it in one long go. As far as Molly was concerned, he was so old, or now so familiar, so beyond the realm of sexual desirability, that in her mind there was nothing unusual about stripping naked in his presence or sunbathing topless outside his window.

In the weeks that followed, they fell into the habit of picnicking at a different spot every day. He would bounce ideas about Orwell off Molly, and she would fill him in about the history of the island. They visited the sites of Jura's Iron Age settlements and ancient battles. She taught him about the Viking blood feuds that spanned generations, pitted neighbor against neighbor, and still got voiced in the sternly worded letters to the editor of a newsletter over on Islay.

The more he heard about Jura's history—true or not—and the more he saw of its natural splendor, the better he came to appreciate the hardships Orwell had experienced. Molly also got him up to speed on the marital, legal, and pharmaceutical problems besetting the entire population. They found traces of old footpaths on which their stravaigs, as Molly called their walks, grew longer and her stories wilder. One afternoon, they followed a deer trail off into the wild. “I had an interesting conversation with Farkas not too long ago,” Ray told her. “He wants me to believe that he's a werewolf.”

“Are you suggesting he isn't?” Molly asked.

“So everyone on Jura just plays along, is that it?”

“You still don't understand the ways things are here, do you?”

“I like Farkas, don't get me wrong, but he needs a good psychiatrist.”

“As opposed to a bad psychiatrist?”

“As opposed to being surrounded by people willing to play along with his delusions.”

“Now I understand that you're the sophisticated advertising executive and we're all a lot of backwards Diurachs, but can't you even consider the possibility that he's not delusional?”

“You want me to believe that Farkas is a werewolf?”

“No, but I do want you to believe that it might be possible.”

“Do you think I'd be allowed to join the next hunt?”

“So you can shoot Farkas?”

“It sounds too strange and wonderful to pass up.”

“It's also barbaric. Did you know that the preparations begin months in advance? Everyone on the island is supposed to contribute to the feast, but the women aren't even allowed to attend. I sneaked out there once to watch them. Luckily they didn't shoot me.”

“What goes on? Is there really a wolf?”

“Mostly the men just let off a little steam. They build a bonfire and go off in small groups to follow each other around in the dark and piss in the bushes. It's not as interesting as you've been led to believe.”

“What is interesting is that you think Farkas might really be a werewolf.”

“Well he's very hairy.”

“I'll grant you that. It's hardly conclusive evidence, however. Do you think he gets hairier when he transforms? Is that even possible?”

“Aye, I see your point,” Molly said, “but it is true that when he was a wee baby he was left here by Gypsies.”