The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Bone Deep: Episode 12
I know I must go back, face the empty house that isn’t my home, begin a new day
Ihave to get out of the house. The hurt inside cannot be contained and I need to move, to walk it off. The millpond seems the obvious destination, even though I have an uneasy relationship with water. I’ve always fought it. My old swimming instructor pops into mind: an Agatha Trunchbull in a tracksuit. She’s assuring me I’ll be able to float. Everyone can float! Really?
The water is pressing into my chest, squeezing the breath out of me, and the chlorine stings my eyes, the back of my throat.
As I lunge towards the rail, the water closes over my head. Not everyone can float.
I will never be able to swim. Back then, I resorted to feigning illness. I’d tell my mother I had a verruca, or my period.
I don’t think she ever clicked that I had the world’s most stubborn verruca, and the longest period. I never learned to swim. And now I am drowning.
I follow the lade-side path to the millpond. Mac has explained to me the logistics of the water, and I think, if humans are so smart that they can design all this, that they can use the natural fall of the land to service their technical needs, why are we constantly struggling upstream?
I find a cold timber bench overlooking the pond and sink down onto it.
Reflections
All the action is behind me, a thin strip of shrubs screening my back from where the burn flows down in the hollow by the mill.
I tune in to the soft white noise of its endless rushing. In front of me, the pond is too calm to reflect my mood.
The water level has dropped, leaving a tidemark of reddish mud all around it. I can see the sluice at the far end, where the pond feeds the mill lade.
In my mind’s eye, I follow the lade as it trickles beside the path, all the way down to the now-silent mill.
The trees on the far bank trail their broken limbs in the water. They look like old women’s arms, grey and sinewy, up to their elbows in dirty dishwater.
Their reflections are motionless in the thin morning light. Everything is stagnant, suspended, and I feel the same way myself, now that the first raw pain has passed.
Other water-based memories come flooding in, like Jane’s horrible pool party.
She’d have been 12 and me a year older. Like you really want to be seen in public in a swimsuit at the age of 13. Of course, Mother had insisted I go to the party.
“Don’t spoil it for her.” That had always been the mantra in our house. Don’t spoil it.
Again, I’d pleaded illness, and spent the entire time slouched in the viewing balcony, dressed in black, eating crisps, as Jane and her mates squealed and cavorted in the pool below me.
I didn’t spoil anything, because no one bothered with me, and it became a bit of a pattern, me watching life from the viewing balcony. Until Reuben noticed me, that is.
If I close my eyes I can still be in that first moment of meeting; I can still feel that jolt as we saw each other for the first time.
It’s sweet and painful. I can see the curve of Reuben’s smile, his curiosity. Memories pop in my head like sparks.
I open my eyes reluctantly and I’m back by the millpond, shivering in my thin jacket, on my cold bench.
Hopelessness
Hugging my jacket around me, I get to my feet. My hips are cold and numb. I know I must go back, face the empty house that isn’t my home, begin a new day.
Tears spill from me like spring rain. There’s something cleansing about allowing them to fall, un-wiped.
They drip onto the ground for me to step on. There are no pitiful sobs, no snuffling.
Just a steady stream of hopelessness as I follow the lade all the way back to the cottage.
I can imagine this rawness flowing from me unceasingly, like the mill burn down in the hollow, racing on and on.
There’s a carrier bag hanging on my door handle, and Arthur is just leaving.
“Hey,” he says. “I didn’t think you were in.” “I’m not.”
His smile wavers. Arthur has a cool, Scandinavian look about him: skin, hair and glasses melding together in shades of gold, his eyes a piercing blue.
Sand and sky colours. I wonder if he yearns to work outdoors, rather than being stuck in a hot, sweaty kitchen.
“I was just leaving you some cake. It’s yesterday’s, but I hate waste.”
“Look, I really don’t eat cake.”
“You should. Cake makes people happy.” “What are you saying? That I’m not happy? I’m delirious, can’t you tell?” I push past him, snatch the carrier from the door handle and let myself in.
I glance at him briefly, watch the shadow pass over his face.
“Do you want me to take them away then?”
I feel awful about it. My hands are balled up, nails digging into palms.
I know I should apologise, but nothing nice will come out.
“Whatever.” I hunch my shoulders, stick out a palm. I can see the little red circles my claws have made.
“Leave them. I’ll eat one tonight.” There are two cakes in the bag – fudge doughnuts. Maybe he’s hoping to share them over a cuppa? No chance.
I close the door with a muttered thanks, stand with my back against it for a full minute.
I imagine his round, good-humoured face, marred by the irritation I’d created.
This isn’t me, this bitchy person, doling out cheek to well-intentioned bakers. I feel ashamed of myself.
Sucking in a shaky breath, I open the door to apologise. Profusely.
But there is only empty space. He has gone, taking his poor opinion of me with him.
Mac
“Imagine them. Bella is dragging her sister along by the hand.
“She is taller than is good for a girl, with long limbs and sharp elbows poking out of too-short sleeves.
“She’s dark, with a sallow complexion, quite unlike Elspeth, a year younger, all rosy and blonde and, according to their father, growing into a heart-stealer.
“Cook has always said butter wouldn’t melt in little Elspeth’s mouth, but there’s been evidence of stolen jam around it more than once.
“Only Bella knows that Elspeth is the instigator of all the mischief.
“She is the first to take her stockings off to paddle in the burn and last into bed every night because her fidget-brain will never cease.
“She is full of gossip, spies at keyholes and is always where she shouldn’t be.”
I spent the morning writing, and as the sun warmed the chilly air I decided to venture out into the garden.
This is where Arthur finds me, back again for some reason or other, his second such trip of the day.
I suspect he is inventing reasons to pop in and check on me.
More tomorrow.