Watch Over Me (16 page)
She ok?
Yes just need advice about something.
Sure. Will speak nxt wk.
Will speak next week? That is not like Shona. Normally, she’d be on the phone at once. I wanted to ask her what she thought about those ballet classes, if I should talk to Jamie about it or if I’d better leave it.
Ok. Night.
I frowned.
‘Everything ok?’ Peggy and I were sitting together, watching
Eastenders
. I
love
the soap operas. I love spending an hour thinking of nothing but the entangled life of its characters, like some sort of suspended reality.
‘Mmmm, suppose so. Just Shona being a bit strange.’
‘Yes, she looked funny last Friday, you know, when she came down for the opening. She dropped by for a minute on her way to Jamie’s house to get a few things and she looked a bit tired. Well, very tired really.’
That’s Glen Avich for you. You can’t as much as sneeze without everybody knowing. My mum loves telling this story: once, on her way to secondary school in Kinnear, she had got off at the bus stop before her usual one to look at the window of a clothes shop that was a bit out of the way. When she came home from school, Flora asked her why she had stopped there and not at the usual bus stop, closer to the school.
‘How did you know?’
‘May told me.’
‘May? But she lives in
Canada
!’
‘Well, Sharon saw you and told her mum, Agnes mentioned it on the phone to May and May phoned me from Canada to tell me. They were all wondering why you got off at the wrong stop.’
So there you are, Shona wasn’t feeling great on Friday. She looked ok at the opening, though I did notice that she was wearing a bit more make up than usual.
On the TV screen, a woman in a leopard-print mini dress was standing at a market stall, screaming and shouting at someone.
‘Dearie me. They’re always arguing, aren’t they?’ laughed Peggy, taking a sip of her tea.
‘So they are, it’s a miracle the actors have any voice left by the end of the week. Anyway. There’s
New Tricks
tonight, Auntie Peggy, you love that,’ I said, looking at the TV guide.
I loved this sense of domesticity. It felt … safe. Settled. Like nothing bad could happen ever again. Like I was a wee girl again, sitting with Flora, the room dark but for the black and white TV in the corner, watching some variety programme while having our cocoa and biscuits.
It couldn’t last forever; I knew that. But for the moment, it was making me strong again. I looked out of the window and I wondered if Silke and Fiona were meeting tonight. Silke was lodging with a local family and Fiona was staying with Mary – there was no privacy for them. I was rooting for them.
From
[email protected]
Gay liaisons in Glen Avich? Fire and brimstones! What were you doing wandering at night anyway? Having illicit rendezvous of your own?
From
[email protected]
No, just couldn’t sleep. Silke and Fiona are keeping it a secret. I hope it all works out for them.
From
[email protected]
Keep us posted. And how’s you? How’s the dashing Scotsman? That raven hair … He’s the perfect height, bet you fit perfectly. Doug here is dying to come and visit. Since we got that pic of Maisie with Jamie in the background, he talks of nothing else
From
[email protected]
Please stop guys. I really don’t want to hear any more of that. Do come up for New Year. I spoke to Peggy, she remembers you both from my wedding and says she’d love to have you.
From
[email protected]
Sorry, didn’t mean to upset you. We know you’re very raw. All we’re saying is, don’t shut the world out. Will def be up for Hogmanay, ach aye! Prepare yourselves for an awesome sight: white hairy English legs sticking out of a borrowed kilt. Doug is hearing the call of the ancestors. Ps We know you’re allergic to new technology and we should be grateful you can actually switch the laptop on, but when will you get Skype? We want to see your face. Kisses XXX H&D
I smiled and switched the laptop off. I wondered what they were all doing, all my friends and my family back home.
I wondered what Jamie was doing.
That night, I had a strange dream. I’d heard my mum and my gran talk about local women having the Sight, but it runs in families and none of us has it. I certainly don’t. And still, that dream was like a vision, a vision of the past. Except it wasn’t
my
past.
I saw a wee boy, no more than two, toddling on a wooden floor. I was kneeling on the floor in front of him, but I wasn’t myself – I was someone else. I could see my own legs, in beige tights and a woollen skirt, and a ray of sunshine coming in from the window, a million dust particles dancing in it. Somehow, I knew that the wee boy was Jamie. I opened my arms to him and he wobbled on towards me and into them. I held him and he looked up into my face. Our eyes met and I realised that in the dream, I was Elizabeth and Jamie was my son. I woke up with a sense of loss.
THAWING
I don’t know what possessed me the night of the opening. It was crazy.
I
was crazy, high on relief from what I’d done the night before, having kissed the drink goodbye.
It was the end of my lonely drinking sessions and the fuzzy-headed mornings that called for more whisky. Had I not stopped, how long would it have been since I’d answer that call and had a drink before breakfast? Just the thought made me shiver, to think of the abyss that would have opened in front of my Maisie’s feet.
But I made it stop and I felt anew. That, together with the success of the evening, made me feel like I could reach out, made me fearless.
I know it’s a cliché, but … it felt right. It felt like it couldn’t go wrong.
But it did.
It was only that night that I’d realised the depth of Eilidh’s wounds. When she came into my arms and I held her, I felt as if I had come home. And then she went away.
I’m going to leave her alone. That’s what she asked of me, or something along those lines: leave me alone, why are you tormenting me? And the last thing I want is to hurt her. But I couldn’t believe that awful, awful thing she’d said, ‘I’m no good.’ It just seemed so absurd to me that she could say something like that about herself. She’s so precious to me and still she thinks she’s no good.
I didn’t see her on Sunday and then spent the whole of Monday bumping into things and breaking delicate moulds, until I gave up and went home early. There they were, Eilidh and Maisie, sitting on the sofa, doing Maisie’s reading for the next day, their heads close and Eilidh’s arms around my daughter’s wee shoulders.
She blushed when she saw me and hurried to leave. I wanted her to stay but I was afraid she’d think I was trying to put pressure on her, once more. That she’d think I was some kind of … I don’t know, that it was easy for me to put myself forward, that I played the field. First with Gail, then with her. When really, it was Gail that came forward, not me. As for Eilidh, it had taken me a huge amount of courage to lead her out into the night like that and open my heart. But how could she know that? A man with a daughter from a woman who disappeared. A man who needs to fill his solitary nights.
Never again would I speak to her that way, never again.
When I came in, she threw her jacket on hastily and moved toward the door. I put a hand on her arm, to stop her for a second. I had something to say.
We stood on my doorstep, the twilight lilac and pink behind her, the pinewoods black against the sky.
‘Eilidh, I just wanted to tell you … if you want to stop looking after Maisie, I understand.’
She looked up at me, her eyes full of dismay. ‘Do you want me to?’
‘No, not at all! Not for a moment! Maisie is so happy with you and I … I am …’ I stumbled. Shit. Whatever I say now, I thought to myself, it’ll come out wrong. I know it. Words are clumsy, they build barriers, when a touch, just a single touch, can reveal the truth in a moment. But I couldn’t touch her, no matter how much I wanted to.
‘I really, really want to keep looking after Maisie,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I enjoy Maisie’s company very much.’
The way she said it, I had to smile.
I love the way she speaks, all dramatic. I love the way she says ‘very much’. And the way she says ‘so’, as in, ‘I’m so,
so
hungry,’ or what she said last night, ‘It’s soooo cold!’ I love the way she looks at people straight in the face, straight in the eye, and the way she smiles, because it feels like the sun has come out …
I realised I was standing there, staring at her like a fool. I shook myself.
‘I’m sorry I embarrassed you.’
‘It’s ok. Bye.’ And she was gone. That’s it. She practically ran out.
I felt a wave of despair, in spite of me. Like … like life was passing me by.
‘Daddy, can you listen to me reading?’
‘Of course. I’ll listen to you reading and then I’ll make us some dinner.’
‘Our dinner is the oven, Eilidh and I made shepherd’s pie, she put a apron on me and I mixed the potatoes and made them soft!’
Big breath. You won’t be sad, Jamie McAnena, your life is thawing.
‘Come on, darling, let me hear how well you read.’ And we sat on the sofa and cooried in together, until I noticed: on the worktop, beside the kettle, a carton of milk and just one mug. The one that Maisie had given me last year for Father’s Day, after Shona took the girls out to get gifts for Fraser and me. Eilidh always has that mug out and ready when I get home, she knows it’s my favourite. But normally, she has another one beside it, for us to have a cup together before she goes. Since that awkward day when I practically threw her out, the cup of tea at the kitchen table has become sort of a tradition.
That is, until tonight. Only one mug. Looking … well, looking like half of something.
The night of the opening, after Eilidh had left, I just wanted to go home. But I couldn’t, because Silke was counting on me to schmooze the guests. I’m not very good at schmoozing at all. I even hate the
word
. But I wanted to help Silke. She had made a success of the opening, and though my business didn’t really need more advertising, I was happy to be part of it, for her, and for the other local artists.
So I went back in, feeling thoroughly awful, and hid it well.
There I was, networking – well, standing silent and smiling, really – when Emily Simms came looking for me.
‘Would you be so kind as to tell me more about your work?’ she asked skilfully, leading me towards one of my sculptures in a slightly secluded spot. I realised she wanted to speak to me alone.
