Bone Deep: Episode Eight

“I get up from the table, and he has to step back. We stand a little apart, gauging each other’s reactions

Reuben’s eyebrow perks up. Any mention of something quirky, something unexplained, and that eyebrow twitches like it’s on a thread.

His eyes gleam with a fierce curiosity.

That’s one of things I love about him; it makes me smile.

“Research?”

“Fiction. She’s rewriting some local legends that fall into the category of things that are ‘beyond the civilised circle of light.’ Fascinating stuff.”

It’s my turn to gleam, and he smiles at me. There is appreciation there, love, and I feel a little bit of me melt.

I can’t allow that to happen.

“There’s a story with a blind fiddler and a woman who hurls herself off a waterfall.

“I don’t know if she survives. It’s not finished yet.” His eyes bore into me. “No. No, it’s not finished yet.” “We can’t do this.” My voice is a bare whisper, and even I can hear the tears, not far away.

He gets up from his seat. Don’t get up. Please. “You can’t just walk away from this.”

Soothing

He comes round to my side of the table. I lower my head to my arms. The tablecloth is cool against my cheek.

I don’t want to look at him, to think about this. His hand finds my hair.

His touch is soothing but makes my system jump at the same time.

The oilcloth turns damp beneath my cheek. “Look at me.”

His voice is lower. He’s crouching down, his hand on the back of my neck, not moving, just warm, gentle.

I don’t want to turn my head. I turn my head.

I don’t know who kisses who first.

It just happens. No logical explanation.

I want to stay here forever, close up against him, my lips on his, breathing him in.

He breaks away to thumb a tear from the soft spot under my eye. My smile is shaky.

We knew this would happen.

As soon as I opened the door, we knew this was inevitable, but I suppose I had to turn on the chill, make both of us suffer for a while, because it’s too easy. There lies the problem. It’s always been too easy. I get up from the table, and he has to step back. We stand a little apart, gauging each other’s reactions.

I’m not quick enough to hide mine, and we end up clinging together – so tightly my ribs feel bruised. My heart is bruised. I can’t let him go.

I loop my arms about his neck and stretch against him, catlike.

He’s shaking, and the vibration bleeds through us and suddenly this is all that matters, just this.

There are things I want to tell him. I want to rage at him: I can’t go home because of you.

My mother thinks I’m a whore and my sister is always just one heartbeat from learning the truth.

But the things I want to say fall out of my head. I don’t say anything.

Whispers

I press against him, and whisper in his ear: “You missed me then?”

He whispers back: “Let me show you how much.” I have a lost place deep inside me.

I feel it when I lie down and press my palms beneath my ribcage.

It seems to go on forever; a deep, oozing loneliness that only I can feel.

Reuben, who has touched every part of me, can’t feel this. Even if he could, he’d never manage to fill the gap.

He’s still asleep, breathing deeply and evenly beside me. I love the sound of his breathing.

My thigh is warm and slick where it’s pressed up against his, but the rest of me is shivery.

My hands are splayed across my naked midriff, searching for the lost place, examining it. Loss moves in me and makes me want to cry.

I turn my head on the pillow.

Reuben is nearest the window and sunshine is spilling through the gap in the curtains, illuminating his nose, his chin – as familiar to me as my own.

His lashes are spidery black, fluttering slightly in sleep.

I wonder if he’s dreaming, and what he’s dreaming about. Who he’s dreaming about.

Mac

I’d found the old book I was looking for: Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

It was like sitting down with an old friend – the feel of the dusty linen boards beneath my fingers, thick yellow pages.

Historical and Romantic Ballads, proclaimed the subtitle. A line engraving of a knight emerges from behind a tissue paper flysheet.

I’d skimmed through the index: “Lady of the Lake”, “Fair Helen of Kirkconnell”, “The Cruel Sister”. Flicking to page 352, I’d begun to read.

Scott had collected the tale from a lady who, in turn, had heard it from an old woman.

Such is the nature of such ballads – a fragment here, a line or two there, and you have an entire picture stitched together from scraps.

I grew up with a homespun version of this narrative, but I hadn’t thought about it in years, not until Lucie walked through the door carrying her untold story like a suitcase.

Now, I long to revisit it. Reacquaint myself with those other long-ago sisters who played around the mill.

Shimmers

I close the book, invite the pair to run through my imagination once again on bare, sturdy feet.

But there’s a blockage somewhere, sticks jammed across the mill lade. The words won’t come.

There’s something stopping them, and I think it’s because I know the ending. The truth.

It shimmers at the edge of my vision like the dart of the kingfisher on the burn.

Yes, I can picture those two little girls, even though I’ve never had a daughter myself.

I’d thought about having another child; company for Arthur.

Jim was keen, but the boy had been a handful. Always on the go, demanding attention when I had none to give.

He always loved to bake, Arthur. School holidays were the worst.

He’d get up at first light, and somehow the sound of him tripping down the stairs would filter through my sleep-fogged brain.

Immediately I’d be imagining scalding water and electric sockets and matches and all the usual perils we mothers torture ourselves with.

More tomorrow.