Rise (4 page)

‘Och, that was rare fun!’ The Misses Campbell and Grey, bless them, are full of smiles. He doesn’t mention the egg on Margaret Campbell’s hat. The Sunday School are on a chocolate high, from the mini-eggs he’d brought. Would have been nice for his own boys to be here. Folk expect it. Ross would have come, if he’d nagged him, or looked sad. Still, a good sermon. A good one.

When everyone has gone, Michael sits a while in the chancel. He flexes his gammy knee. Simple primrose walls, peeling slightly where the rain’s come in. A carved wooden font, some old stone crosses at the back of the nave. It’s a nice wee church. He feigns the contentment of a well-fed man; a wee bit oomph about himself again. Immediately, it melts to worry. Should he have stayed in the pulpit, reinforcing the convictions of the convinced?

No. He picks at a splinter on the altar table. No. He’s been put on a different path.

So many paths, but then all things happen for a reason, don’t they? Skittering like a numpty on ice skates, towards one bright certainty. A referendum looming – and there’s him, been given the chance to be at the heart of it. Finally. Scottish Independence. Think on that, man. Be glad of the good things, of the very words, which had become so stale, and are now buzzing with lifeforce, and that he is alive to see it. It’s been such a long-held dream. All through his teenage years, the ‘nationalism’ his father spouted was a dead word, the preserve of a few tweedy eccentrics, and, in the broadest, brutish sense, of young men with shaven heads – which wasn’t the same thing at all, but you tarred yourself with that brush if you even tried to explain. But here, now, in Scotland in these early decades of a new century when the world is fluxing anyway, it feels like a brave word. It feels like you’re opening up to something bigger, not barricading yourself in.

Michael has always found it difficult to articulate how proud he is of his country. You can explain the mountains and the heather fine; all that glorious spread; that’s allowed. You can be ginger, mean and drunk, and wear a tartan bunnet. That’s acceptable. But to be properly proud? To trust the fact of it? It saddens him when being pro-Scottish is seen as anti everything else. Being Scottish is no attack, no implicit insult to the status quo. It
is
the status quo. He is Scottish, that is fact. Why does saying he’s a Scot make him part of an argument he never started? That his country, his language, history is made other breaks his heart. For three hundred years, the Scots have tholed this. Whining from their grubby teenage bedroom: it isny fair. And with every whinge and finger of blame, they collude in the Scottish cringe.

These last few years have been a miracle. (Aye, they’ve been a nightmare too, a horrible, terrible shattering, but that’s personal – and it’s mended now. It’s done.) Michael’s been in the dirty roots of nationalism so long, he’d forgot about the possibility of flowering. But the climate changed, the rain coming softer. A self-determined sun coaxing Scotland to grow tall. And for him to be amongst it, properly part of the drive and the decisions, when all he’d done before was collect subs for his local SNP branch. Oh, that has been a balm for his weary head. To say ‘I am a politician.’ It gives the snap to his spine the dog-collar once did. And it’s a chance to do it right. To start again, if they’ll all let him. His wife and his sons and his God and his Ghost. Independence. He wonders, occasionally, if it’s he who is the ghost.

A good sermon, Michael? Really? From a man who is demented?

Christ (apologies, Lord), he has spent the best part of his professional life urging people to believe in things they cannot see, divining truths from unseen voices. And now one of them is answering back. The hairs rise on his neck. Soon, he’ll have to go outside. What if it returns? When does this stop being sporadic and become permanent? He’s safe with people. A shepherd with his spindly flock. Michael touches his nose. The normal bump and flare. But he feels like a veil has been stripped away, and he is seeing everything too clearly. Next will be the bones inside his face, the pumping heart, the liver purpling under the skin.

‘Please Lord.’

He says it louder.

‘Please Lord. Make it go away.’

This is not a reckoning, this ghost. Is it some form of transition, like a chrysalis? Michael raises his hand, checking for threads. There are none. He is a good man, he tells himself. Not mad. You do what you can.

What you can.

Oh the wind, up there. Would be fierce. And the swing of it, the concrete, the cables, the graceful arc. Did you look out and across? Down? Did you shut your eyes? Was your last conscious act unconscious?

Did you fly?

With a swoop he dives and it is spinning, his guts are spinning and his heart is in his mouth and up is down and in is out and—

‘Christ!’ Michael yells, in crystal air.

That word pirouettes. Takes a long time to settle.

When he comes out, the churchyard is empty. Except for the Ghost who is swinging from the keystone on the arch above the gate.

‘Woo-hoo!’ he screeches. ‘You killed them, man!’

His upside-down belly (he has hooked his feathery tail round the arch and is suspended) reminds Michael of a crocodile-skin handbag his granny used to have. The Ghost birls round and round, then dismounts, flinging his arms behind him as he lands. ‘Triple salko, that.’ He is definitely larger, or rather, more in proportion. The furriness of his ears has gone, they are consolidated. Alert. ‘Under-fifteens champion, vault and bars. Didny know that, did you?’

Michael swallows. ‘No.’ He struggles for something else to say, a thing that won’t upset it, an opener to going ‘It’s not all bad then, eh?’ and ‘Why don’t you go back and please, please, leave me alone.’

‘You’re awfully . . . upbeat, if you don’t mind me saying?’

‘Is that right, pal?’ The Ghost’s face – what there is of it – darkens. ‘Shall we?’ Offering the crook of his elbow. Michael can’t bring himself to touch him. It. They begin to walk through the churchyard. There was a funeral last week, for old Molly Colquhoun. Still a nice display of lilies and laurel over-by.

‘Am I going mad?’

‘Not yet. Although,’ the Ghost breathes on a flower, causing it to wilt, ‘it’s an interesting question. The very fact you’re engaging with me would suggest that you are, wouldn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’

‘But then, the very fact you’re questioning this engagement would suggest you’re not, eh?’

Michael can’t answer him.

‘I’ve met her!’ The Ghost points at a gravestone. Then another. ‘And her. And him. Smells a bit, that yin. Ooh, see those two. Witch trials, know? The way they go on about it. Wall-to-wall orgies.’

Michael thinks if he heads back to the church and barricades himself in; if someone rings for the doctor . . . A thin drift of ghostliness curls itself companionably round his arm. It feels of nothing. The sky slides a little to the left.

‘It’s a Sunday, pal. You’ll not get the doctor on a Sunday. And those NHS 24 exorcisms arny up to much, believe me.’

Maybe by the stones. There’s a chambered cairn, a hole really, but you can pull the lid right over—’

‘Ho! Michael, man. You kidding? Going underground? I don’t like to state the obvious, but it is kind of my natural habitat. According to the Goo-ood Boo-ook, that is.’ The Ghost gives a finger to the sky. ‘Cheers, Big Man,’ he shouts. ‘Your patter’s pish, by the way.’

Michael tries very hard not to think, or do anything. He will just keep walking until this passes, the way you’d walk off an upset stomach or a bout of cramp. Inspiration could do this. Poets, artists, they all had breakdowns. It was the high of the sermon, he was the gatekeeper to other worlds. Our Father Who Art in Heaven, our father who art in heaven—

The Ghost sniffs, loudly. ‘The communion of souls. I mean to say. Does that not sound a wee bit creepy to you? All those deid folk having a cheese and wine? Can you imagine the small talk?
Ooh, hi, Elsie, yeah. Well, not much really. Just the usual. Aye. Rotting. How about yirsel?
’ Here, the Ghost verges on the slightly camp. Michael is sure he’s swaying his hips.

‘Ho, fuckface.’

A tongue, a hoarse voice rasping right inside his ear. ‘I can be anything you want me to be.’ But the Ghost is back standing by the gate.

‘You know, I could show you anything,’ he shouts. ‘Anything at all. You want to see Hannah? What she’s really thinking?’

‘No.’

The Ghost returns to him, gliding. One of those step-ball-change things tap dancers do.

‘Want a word with your old man?’

‘What?’

‘Would you like to converse with your dear departed father? How’s about a bit of how’s your faither?’

‘You don’t . . . ?’

‘Is he down the stair an’ all? Oooh.’ The Ghost wiggles his fingers. ‘Has the bogey-man got the wee daddy in his scary den? Christ. I was a funny guy. I was, you know. But, naw. If you put it like that, no. But I know a man who knows a man . . . You want to say ta-ta Dada? Say: I’m saaaw-reee—’

‘That’s enough!’

‘OK then, what about your wee boys, eh? What about young Ross-me-lad? Did you know his wee soul’s being crushed? Squashed out of him like a tight wee shite? Aye, you’re good at that, aren’t you? Crushing souls. Or ruined Euan? Running by day, wanking by night. All that frustration. Fucksake man. You’ve got sons, you bastard. Your own wee sons and you don’t gie a fuck.’ He thinks the Ghost is crying; his face is strained certainly, like he is pushing out its sharpness from primordial waters. Or something. It is more horrible to see than all the scales and feathers.

‘Stop it!’

‘But I thought you wanted enlightenment? So it all makes sense and you can say the right thing, always say the right thing?’

Michael runs back towards the church. Struggling with the door, the massive heavy stupid latch keeps passing through his fingers. The texture of the latch is changing; it is rougher, scaly. Comes away in his hand, it is waving at him, a hook ensnaring his anorak, dragging him gently from the door.

He is lying on damp grass. Above him, sad eyes, thick sky.

‘Oh, come on, Michael. You know what I’m going to show you.’

The smell is unimaginable: it is guano droppings from St Kilda and the time he’d peed himself in school, it is the sodden carpet on which street children sleep, it is blind fury and spurts of blood, it is rotting breath, want, the sealing of a stone.

It is a boy on a bridge and a hand on a back.

Some dampness drops on him. Salt. Sour.

‘Woopsy. You for the off, then? Hannah’s pie will be getting all cold.’ The Ghost makes a popping sound with his finger in his mouth. Another oyster of saliva, if that’s what it is, falls on to Michael’s lips.

‘What? She’s made a shepherd’s pie. For lunch. But, hey. Tick-tock. You’ve missed lunch. You’ll need to have it for your dinner.’ With strange tenderness, he crouches, wipes the gobbet of saliva deeper into Michael. ‘Duty calls, bud. See ya.’

And is gone.

Chapter Three

Closing over; a thick pewter sky. Justine climbs a stile which takes her on to a track at the far side of the field. She’s in Kilmacarra Glen proper now. Boots stuck in runnels of mud. She could keep to the road of course, but she wants to be in this place. She wants to be at those stones. She wipes her hand across her nose. Her bag’s hooked to the gate, where she draped it before she climbed over, so how come she feels the press of it? Damp pressure along her sinuses too. Rain or sweat; it’s sticky. She wipes more vigorously. Snotter. Yup, she is, she’s crying again. She unzips her jacket, unbuttons her cardi to let the heat out. Looks down at her breastbone, which bears the dull yellow bloom of recent bruising.

Bodies are strange, forgiving things. The crack she took to her forehead on the bus has gone from open-mouth aagh to pursed-tight and nippy already. But that’s good; means it’s healing. She retrieves her bag, follows the rutted track. Crinkle. Squelch. Sniff. Crushed grass. Earth. A freshness under it all. It’s lovely here. Despite the damp, or maybe because of it. It is tender air, washing her. Frizzing up her hair and softening the edges. The breeze picks up, pushing hair and heathery sky in her face. The light comes in stripes, dull one minute then flashing shafts as the clouds shift. Her forehead smarts. Part of the route goes through dense woods, the kind you can imagine being followed in. Hardly any noise here, except the trees, crackling and snapping when there’s no one around. As the wood breaks into daylight, Justine can see two big brown eyes up ahead. She blinks. Observes curled and scary horns. The bearded mouth below it yawns, gives a cough. A Highland cow grins at her, goes back to the business of chewing. The path carries on, winding past a few single trees, then opens again, into the flat, bright landscape.

A sucking breath.

There you are.

The stones she saw from the bus. In glorious monochrome: one by one, the parade of rocks appears again; strewn like a giant has chucked marbles from his hand. She can see five or six cairns at least, with standing stones dotted all the way up the glen. Not a few wee groupings set artfully against the landscape; these
are
the landscape. They quiver infinitely, vertebrae on a spine. Justine shades her eyes, and the movement of her arm is like a gentle blow.