Rise (43 page)

Clatter, car noise from beyond. Then nothing.

No trace. Just the rolling silence, like the hills. How often, if Michael’s honest, has he ever heard God’s voice? Oh, he hears thoughts, yes, and attributes them to God. He feels unknown joy, and attributes it to God. As a young man, fierce in love with the drama of cassocks and holy wine, pan bread from the supermarket that you bless yourself, of the fact that your words have hidden portent – and better yet: your silences have profundity. For a shy, bookish boy, that was the ultimate saving grace.

Hannah keeps biting the inside of her mouth, to check she’s still here. Salty blood affirms she is. A rubbery callous has formed in the web of skin behind her cheek. Occasionally, she’ll bite it off entirely, swallow. Start again. The ventilator makes her focus on her own breath, on the unconscious movement that is keeping it going, which becomes self-conscious, laboured. If she could scissor out her lungs, give them to Michael, she would do it. Mhairi’s taken Euan for a ‘wee hurl’ outside. She is anxious when he’s gone; and glad of the way she can let her face slip. Through the half-glazed door, she can see the room opposite. Exactly the same as this, but empty. Waiting quietly for another soul who is, right this moment, making toast or phoning home, who has no idea about the speeding car, the gun, the trip, the fall, the fire.

Michael has lived deeply, quietly. But it has been a self-conscious act. His rock has been rules and rituals, the fervent truths that leave no space for doubt.

The peace that passes all our understanding. But he doesn’t understand it.

‘I don’t think you can, pal.’

The noise on the monitor changes gear; it is a different pitch, a glimpse of change at the edge of Hannah’s vision, which is vanished by the time she reaches her husband’s side. Imagined, hoped. Hallucinated. She calls the nurse, red buzzing button, thirty seconds, max.

‘What? What is it?’

‘Can you check . . . I thought it made a different noise. Can you check the readings? Please?’

The nurse smiles. Tired. She fiddles, presses, reads. ‘Nope. I’m sorry. No change.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive. I’m sorry.’

Hannah slumps into her chair.

‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

‘Will you do another CAT scan?’

‘Mrs Anderson, there’s really no need.’

‘What if I said I saw him move?’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’

The woman pats her shoulder. ‘I’ll get you some tea.’

Then, a tut. A scrumple.

‘Is this – are these all for the bin?’ Handfuls of Hannah’s notes in her hands.

‘Yes.’

‘Budge up.’ The Ghost sits on the rock beside him. He is paler, thinner. Yet the blue of his tattoo is sharp. ‘You canny understand. I think that’s the point. You either feel it, or you don’t.’

‘Did you?’

‘Nah. Felt love, mind. Too much love. And I guess she didn’t feel it back.’

Hannah watches the ventilator in Michael’s mouth. His lungs recoil as the positive pressure withdraws, and the corner of his mouth moves with it. Automatic, but it is movement. She undoes the sidebar of the bed, so she can lean her head alongside his. It’s not as if he’s going to fall. With one finger, she traces the outline of his jaw, feels the stubble. ‘Michael,’ she whispers. ‘Michael. It’s me. I’m touching you, the side of your mouth. Can you feel me? Your mouth can move when the ventilator goes in and out. Can you feel it move? Concentrate. If you can hear me, can you make your jaw go tight? Feel where I’m touching you, baby. Can you touch me?’

The muscle continues to quiver in and out, synchronised with the false hope of the machine.

‘Here, Mrs Anderson.’ The nurse cuts between Hannah and her husband. ‘There you go. Drink your tea.’

‘Thank you.’ The tea’s sweet. ‘Have you heard from my nanny yet? Did she get back to you?’

‘Not yet.’ She tuts, fixes the bed-guard into place.

‘Could you try the manse again please?’

‘Of course.’

Hannah waits until the nurse is gone. Wets her finger in the tea, smears it on Michael’s lips. ‘You thirsty? Can you feel it warm? It’s tea.’ The smell of outside seems to fill the whole room. It’s green; like leaf-sap. She pulls down the bed-rail once more, so she can get as close as possible to his skin. There are seven different tubes attached to various parts of his body.

‘Here. One more and you’d be an octopus.’ She kisses his forehead. Careful. She has watched the nurses at their work. She knows this one is for draining, while this clear snake is what keeps his fluids up. Knows too an alarm will trigger when the oblong switch is flicked. She was there when they tried him off the ventilator. Stood watching, till they hurried her outside. Loud voices. Failure. Disobedient vitals. Attempted reintubation. Alarm bells ringing, a flurry of white, like wings round Michael’s bed.

‘Do you wish you hadn’t?’

‘What? Jumped? Or loved her?’ The Ghost smiles. ‘Both, I suppose. But I’m no sad I loved the wean.’

‘Can you – do you go other places as well?’ says Michael. ‘To them?’

He shivers. ‘I canny.’

‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you.’

The Ghost takes Michael’s hand in his. The cold is spectacular, liquid; he is all chill water and that darting blue tattoo. ‘Down to me, pal. You didny do anything.’

Hannah climbs on the bed beside him. Raises his sleeping head on to her breast, freeing him of as much encumbrance as she can. The wires are all the lines of a balloon, tethering him to earth. She lies with her husband in the curtained room. One by one, she strokes his fingers.

‘Sing yo-ho, boys.’

Both her children love this lullaby.

‘Let her go, boys.’

Gently, she soothes him on her breast, where he will smell her.

‘Pull her head round. Now altogether.’

It sounds like a sea shanty, but it’s not. It’s a plaint, a love song for home. Hannah sings it low, in her mother’s accent, which is hers when she sings, and her mother’s song is her grandma’s and it’s not Glasgow, but the isles, those aching Western Isles that lift it up.

‘Sailing homewards, tae Mingulay.’

Silence. Michael is holding on to silence. And then, it is another hand. A warm hand which is reaching down to pull him up, and he hears it, faint like birds.

‘I’ll keep singing,’ Hannah whispers, and she rocks him harder and her heart is thumping. ‘Don’t leave us.’

His sleeping face, not sleeping. Her tears running in his mouth, and there’s tears coming out his mouth, running bubbles, singing bubbles under the mask.

And he feels a weight slip off him.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Imagination is a fine thing. The way it links pictures and people you have seen, and morphs them into new distortions, more vivid and obscenely bright. How is it Justine’s never noticed that rock before, the one with the eyes and the chin? How it looks right at them, wherever they move.

‘Come on, baby. Just a wee bit higher.’

She has packed her clothes, her money and the toasting fork. She has left a note and then she has ripped it up, because it is a trace he could find Charlie could find them she is a headless chicken panicking hiding waiting for the bus going mental staying calm.

The cloud, which from the ground was merely wisps, begins to curl in. It’s not thick, just damp. So much for stars. ‘Put your hood up, Rossie.’ They are scrabbling up Mary’s Brae. From here, they have an excellent vantage point. There’s a green canvas tent beside the soaring stones and the chambered cairn, flap open, a pile of shovels and buckets inside. The archaeologists must leave their stuff in here each night. She can see a giant sieve, a steel, dirt-crusted ladder, a grid, pickaxes, some seed trays full of pebbly finds, but no people.

‘Can we have a sleepover in the tent?’

‘No.’

Ross is not impressed. She’s surprised the men haven’t dug round the chamber itself. With its sliding man-made lid, it must be sterile ground. Done, dug and dusted. Should she have said about that tooth? Doesny matter now, nothing matters except hiding here, waiting for the bus, first bus if it’s up or down, it will take them out of here. She will return the money. She would have taken Michael’s car but she cannot find the keys, canny find a way to think or stop her teeth from chattering. Give Charlie Boy the money and pray for mercy; that’s all she can think of to do. She’s not crazy obviously, she will post it back or put it through his door or something but she needs to get him away from here, from these people who are her friends and she’s offered them up as sacrifice; her stupid shield.

They move from the zig-zag path, climbing directly up the scree. Justine thinks she hears a crunch behind her. Turns. Looks.

Nothing.

She has made a bargain with fate. If Ross’s gran gets here first, or if Mhairi comes back, she’ll leave Ross in Kilmacarra. If it’s the bus for Lochallach – which comes twice a day, and she doesn’t know if they’ve missed it yet – she’ll take Ross to the hospital, to his mum. She has tried phoning Hannah, but you canny have mobiles in intensive care, and she has tried to get the number, but they keep putting her though to orthopaedics, and Hannah’s never even phoned to say if Michael’s awake, and if the Glasgow bus comes first, then they’ll both get on. Her and Ross. Only twenty minutes. It is due in twenty minutes. That is the most they need to hide for now. They’ve lasted an hour and a bit already, and nothing bad’s happened. In twenty more minutes, she can take Ross legitimately. For his own good. She will be a hero. And it will not be abduction; it’s just for a wee while; how can Hannah cope with Euan and with Michael; she will be saving them . . . Justine veers her thoughts from Hannah, because she’s developing this skill; it’s really good. You can direct your thoughts like a lightbeam. If you focus intently (she does, in fact, imagine a lighthouse for this bit), you can see them fall back into darkness, and make new thoughts appear. Just like that. Or not think at all, and only focus on bright light.

‘Ross!’

‘Am not doing it!’ Ross drops the pickaxe he’s playing with.

‘Leave that alone. It’s jaggy. Come out up here where I am. Chip-chop.’

He skulks towards her on all fours. A grumpy little bear.

‘Now sit there, on that rock. You keep watch, all right?’

‘For pirates?’ he says hopefully.

‘Yes. Pirates.’

He nods, his wee jaw jutting out. Justine thinks again of Hannah. The mist’s beginning to settle. Her eyes flit across the valley. No traffic. No stour or exhaust clouds rising. She takes a long breath in. They are fine.

Justine unfocuses her gaze. Imagines the view peopled and full of busyness. These long glens used to be full. Right behind her loom the biggest of the megaliths. Beyond her lies the church, more knots and pillars of standing stones. Beyond that, Crychapel Wood, Cardrummond, the hills, the gleam of movement. A smudgy mist. The turbines with the same white-grey as the colour of scudding clouds. But the digger which is working up on the test turbine is yellow. It makes a bright flash against the mute colours of the earth. The various clangs of metal on metal sound out across the glen; the call, the echoing response. She saw this programme once, about the isle of Lewis. Man, what a boring place. Long Sundays spent listening to the precenting: unaccompanied psalms sung in Gaelic, where each line is put out by the precentor for the congregation to join in, gradually, singing their trills and words and speeds all different so it comes like lapping waves. These researchers had done a study. The chanting on Lewis was the exact same chanting of the Appalachian Hills, and of the south, the Deep South. Worship that was remembered by settlers and by the descendants of African slaves, who were taught it by their Scottish owners, who were taught it in the distant islands, who all sang the song, kept it coming in waves.

She tries to count all the standing stones. It is impossible. And these are nothing compared to Stonehenge; or the ones in France on that postcard in the kitchen. Some pattern was working its way across the world, thousands and thousands of years ago, when folk were meant to be savages. If you spent every day searching for food, fighting to stay warm, stay alive – why would you waste your time in monuments?

Justine woz ’ere.

Her J on the church pew. The tattoo on her thigh. The war dead above the gate and the gravestones with their etched-out names which are made of absence, not presence. All the sad landscape below her, aching with what it no longer holds. In the faded distance, the yellow truck chunters back and forth. Hairy-arsed men and beating windmills. Aye, that’ll add some mystery to the place. They should move further up the hill. This is too exposed; she remembers seeing the egg-rollers all the way up here from the road. But it’s fine: she’s being an idiot. Johnny never said he was coming. Still. He will come, she knows this. If not today, then soon; this won’t be one of those times when Charlie leaves his victim to drown in paroxysms of their own sweat. There’s a trench near the top; they could hide in there, till the bus comes. She needs to be under something safe.