Cala Page 13

  When Aram’s father did not come home, rumours went round that his wounds had gone septic and, to avoid the same fate, the others had thrown him overboard. This was gossip, of course, but still Aram’s mother blamed herself. She had not cleaned the wounds properly. She had let him carry something foul and contagious to sea, where he had died for her sin.

  Aram dreamed about his father’s last goodbye. He saw the man’s face in the night, on the deck of the trawler, windblown and brave. Disfigured by a brutal life, but not ill. His father waved from the growing distance and was gone. Aram woke with stunted breath.

  You okay, sailor? Fenella asked from across the shack. Sounded like you were choking there.

  I’m fine, he said. Then, after a bit more thought, I may need to borrow your horse.

  We’ll talk about it in the morning, she said.

  He found it hard to believe there would be a morning on the other end of this night. He heard the mutt walking around, and though it normally slept at Fenella’s feet, now the creature came to lick Aram’s fingers. He leaned over the side of the cot and picked up the dog, then let him lie down on the duvet. He climbed under the blanket beside Aram, and though he still reeked, his warm body was a kindness.

  In the morning, Fenella made some cowboy coffee and said, without hesitation, This is the part where you leave me.

  He had expected her to be forward when she, inevitably, asked him to move on, and she was. Consistency was a gift she had given him. Harder than the loneliness at Dungavel was the arbitrary way rules were applied. You never knew how your actions would be rewarded or punished – the same thing could get you released or sent to ad seg, depending on what the guard had to eat that morning.

  Was I that obvious? he asked.

  You want to borrow the horse. They always want to borrow the horse when they’re ready to go.

  You’re right, of course.

  That bookmark. I want you to find your kid. But I can’t give you my mare. I’d be stranded and dead here if I gave her to every man I cared about.

  His throat felt tight again. It bothered him that he should have trouble breathing here when he had been fine through five years of inferior air, especially during the dirty protests, during which the other men in his block refused to use the latrine, instead rubbing their excretions on the walls.

  If you want, I have an old tricycle. Thought I should pick it up in case a man tried to steal my horse one day.

  He smiled. I’ll have to swallow some amount of pride. But I’ll try the damn trike, why not.

  Sadness passed briefly across her face. You’ve been my favourite one, she said.

  Tug in the gut. He asked for her address. She looked as if he were a bampot for thinking a shack would have a postcode. If it’s all right with you, she said, maybe we can leave this as it was – a lovely episode.

  She unlocked the shed for him and produced from it a rusted red tricycle. It was adult-sized, with a wide basket between the back wheels. He did not have enough gear to fill the basket, but he put his rucksack in there, and the syrup, and a few more snacks that Fenella provided for him: salted crisps, gourds in brine, strips of beef jerky. She peeled off many pound notes and tucked them securely into his waistband. Then, maybe most importantly, she put in the basket a feedbag of books.

  He gave the horse and the mutt a thumbs-up. These farewells were wearing on him. He had left everyone at the castle without fanfare; that was just how it was done. Now he sat on the saddle of the tricycle and started to ride toward the road. When he reached the shoulder, he heard Fenella call out, Your trousers fit much better now.

  The wind picked up and he had to pick up with it. He did not turn. He could not see her charming smile, or the gloam of lamplight through the shack window. He would then have stayed forever. And his child could not be raised by women alone. He knew too well how that went.

  *

  On the long ride north, Aram kept his mind occupied. He had become remarkably good at that. At Dungavel he had studied Gaelic with one of the dirty protestors, holding his nose as he learned words for flowers, lus-taghte, cuiseag rosan. Now he cycled through all the man had taught him. He would be fluent by the time he reached the Highlands. It was, after all, Euna’s chosen language.

  Any time he stopped to rest or ask for help – which he did often, as a man who valued comfort – he tried to use this Gaelic first. To pass as a son of native soil, more Scottish than the Scottish. He was still not a citizen, but if he tried hard to disappear, maybe he could avoid being outed.

  He went into a corner shop to ask for a toilet instead of going by the road. Lots of cock’s-foot to piss in, but he was too good for that grass. If a mutt would water it, he would not. Inside the store, he noticed a telephone behind the counter and asked in Gaelic if he could make a few calls. The cashier said, Whit the buck ur ye sayin’?

  Aram asked again, this time in English. The man lifted the receiver and hand-dragged it across the counter. Aram turned his back on the man and phoned his womenfolk one at a time. A half dozen picked up. Only a few were happy to hear his voice. With the cashier on the other side of the counter, he could not seduce the cranky ones as he normally would have. He couldn’t recite poetry, or say with gravitas how much he’d missed them, how long his lonely nights had been. He wondered, if the cashier had not been standing there, if God’s presence alone would have stopped him.

  Eventually the cashier put a hand on Aram’s shoulder and whipped him around. What’s wi’ aw the callin’? Ye jist gie it ay jail?

  Aram had been dialling the church in Pullhair, where he had last seen Aileen, but now he put the phone back into its cradle. You’d think so, he said. I lost my power for a few days and needed to let some friends know I’m doing fine.

  Ur ye gonnae buy anythin’?

  Not today, Aram said. I just want to use the toilet.

  The cashier pointed to a door behind a rack of magazines and a chiller cabinet of drinks. Ower thaur, he said. Dornt flush anythin’ weird doon th’ lavvy.

  Aram stopped briefly to thumb through the magazines on his way into the toilet. He had a satisfying piss and rinsed his hands with water. He stepped out of the little room still buttoning his trousers, which did, as Fenella had said, fit him more tightly now. He could barely tuck his clag all the way inside. While he had his head down, a group of teenaged boys hurried up and surrounded him.

  There were five in total, four white and one black. They stank and had pocked skin. They punched Aram in the jaw. One kicked him in the back of the head, then struck his right kidney. The clerk stood silently outside the circle, looking a bit shaken. No one at the castle had ever tried to beat Aram, despite his fears of that happening. He would have fought men, but these were not men. He protected the organs he needed and waited for the boys to get tired. They were riled that they couldn’t get a rise from him. Witless fucking cocksplat. Shitgibbon. They spat on his sweater, now sullied with blood. Shunted him onto his knees, knocked a tooth clean from the gum.

  One smashed his hand through the chiller cabinet and took out a few cans for his friends. The cashier said, Cannie noo. That’s mah merchandise.

  The store went blank. A minute later, the scene appeared again to Aram, but without any depth. When he was these boys’ age he used to fight for money, and it was common for an eye to swell shut like this. Above his one seeing eye were Catherine wheels, a few clear floaters. These kids had hazed his brain and halved his sight. They could have killed him.

  Isaiah 56:10. Israel’s watchmen are blind, they all lack knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they lie around and dream, they love to sleep.

  The cashier got a broom from the toilet and swept up the broken glass, then with a wet mop cleaned the gore and drool. The boys seemed to be in light spirits, laughing and grabbing magazines from the rack, saying obscene things about a singer on one of the covers whose name Aram knew well: Euna. He stayed on the ground.

  The boys, bored, turned to leave. At no point
did they break from jeering and hollering, calling each other worse names than they had called Aram. Everything to them was a put-on, a prank, a future story. On the way out the door, one of them turned back to look at Aram, still on the ground, heavy as a buck carcass. The boy did not say anything. But no divine witness could deny. He, at least, had looked back.

  *

  That night, Aram slept twenty paces from the road in a little copse of gorse trees, with a rock thick enough to crack a skull beside his head. Even perfect Gaelic, it seemed, would not be enough to protect him. Words would only hold weight if he were precise in his use of them. If he could politic his language, sharpen it into a fillet knife. And not just with women who already wanted him.

  Isaiah 42:16. I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth.

  His eye was still swollen shut. He needed to get his vision back before he could lead others, or else they would all fall into a proverbial pit. So he went to sleep praying his sight would restore itself, and swiftly. When he woke up, as the morning came coursing through the gorse trees, he saw its bands with a clear eye. No wheels or floaters. Just pure and faithful sunlight. This was enough to bolster his belief that someone was watching over him. And that called into him a fullness he rarely felt. Only in moments of physical pleasure had he known this vital, holy swell. Silently, he named the feeling sàimh.

  He rolled up the pullover he had been using as a pillow and put it into the tricycle basket. He was still a few days south of the Hebrides, but he had the strong and sudden sense of being close to his destination. He could smell the grouse the women in town used to roast on certain Sundays, feel the moor cold as a witch’s tit under his feet. In the saddle now he pedalled hard and merged onto the empty road.

  Nice day. Pretty birds. A bit of fear buzzed in him from the night before, but not much. He trusted something. And that something was slowly taking shape. It was not a person; or at least, it did not have a body. It was more like the sea, essential, merciless. And no injustice, no deportation or death, would go unseen by it. Nice day. Pretty birds. On that fair morning, the road ahead was clear.

  *

  In Moneydie, in Perthshire, he chose a house at random and stopped by for tea. It had started to rain again, and Aram was cold, his sweater a dead weight. A man with outdated hearing aids answered the door. Aram knew he looked a little unkempt, now with bruises and abrasions on his face. But his charm ran deeper than all that. He asked, Can I trouble you for a cup?

  Miserable out there, the man said. Come in.

  Aram gladly obliged. The house had just a few rooms, one each for eating, sleeping, reading, and peeing. The old man had unwashed dishes on his dining table, and more in a corner sink. In the bedroom, which Aram glimpsed on his way to the toilet, were great tangles of clothing, bunched bedsheets, plants knocked out of their pots. Something wretched about seeing soil indoors, on carpet, no less. The place looked as if an intruder had come in and rummaged, but Aram had a hunch this was not so.

  With the toilet door closed, he took off his dirty sweater and wrung it out, working to get the red down the drain. With soap, he scrubbed and scrubbed, and still a faint spot remained. He hung his sweater over the shower rod and came back to the eating room in his undershirt. The old man was fretting over a hotplate, muttering about boiling water, babbling water, always too hot, never quite hot enough. He didn’t want to put his finger in and burn it, but he couldn’t see any bubbles on the surface, and she always used to do this for him, where was that little tin of tea leaves anyway, and it’s been raining so much but the bloody holly hasn’t bloomed.

  Are you okay? Aram asked.

  The man looked up. Put a shirt on, he said. I’ve got loads.

  Aram noticed a bandage around the man’s hand. A burn on his palm was clearly visible outside of the binding. Why don’t you get me a shirt and I’ll make the tea?

  This seemed to suit the man. Aram waited until he had left the room to turn on the hotplate. While the water warmed, he fumbled in the cupboards for the tin of tea, which he found behind a hoard of expired crackers. He wondered how many people in this country were living like this, with burned hands and soil on the carpet, no one coming to visit or brew tea. From the kerb this place had looked lovely, blackthorn bushes and a rock garden in front. Inside was a whole other earth. Aram looked in the fridge for milk and instead found greening cheese and some jars of mint jelly.

  The man came back carrying a lovely cable-knit sweater and pulled it down over Aram’s head. The fit was snug, but not suffocating. My gift to you, he said. You can’t be going around in a dirty shirt.

  The water had boiled. Aram poured it into a pot with two bags of Assam and let the drink steep. He wanted to lift the man from this sad condition, but without the man knowing. It would take some sleight of hand. Where are you headed? the man asked.

  Up north. I’m going to see my girlfriend.

  In that case, you should probably wash first.

  Aram laughed. If you’re offering to let me use your shower, I’m game. It’s been a while since I’ve had hot water.

  Help yourself, the man said. He took two cups from the sideboard, one that said Alban and one that said Jane. I know you think it’s untidy in here. I don’t entertain much. I watch the six o’clock news and I do puzzles and that’s plenty. Brings a certain peace to know the end is coming.

  Come now, Aram said. That’s a bit morbid.

  When I watch the news I don’t have to stew too much about it. You worry about the rising sea levels and failing crops and all that. I’ve already got one foot in another place.

  Aren’t you lonely?

  I wasn’t unhappy to see you. But this is how I live. No need to get precious.

  I’ve always liked having people around, Aram said. Actually, I kind of wilt without them. I was just in a spot without friends for quite a long time, and it made me crazy.

  So you’d be lonely in my place. Good thing that I’m in my place, then, and you’re in yours.

  The tea was sufficiently strong. Aram filled both cups and took a drink from Jane’s. I’ll be honest, he said. My girlfriend doesn’t know I’m coming. Actually, I’ll be meeting my first child, whose mother is another woman.

  Oh hush, the man said. I’m not interested in you young people and your sex triangles.

  Nobody mentioned sex.

  I worked forty years, he said. Earned a little privacy.

  You see worse things on the news every night.

  That, I can turn off.

  Aram drank the rest of his tea in silence. He had expected some sage advice from the old man, some reassurance on his long journey. Instead he had received judgement. The tea, at least, was good. He fixed on that. By the time he reached the bottom of the cup, he was less upset. The insult had after all been minor.

  The man went to find a towel in his bedroom and came back to give it to Aram. It was a plush bath towel, neatly folded. I have limited hot water, the man said. Enjoy your shower, but bear that in mind.

  Aram nodded. In the shower he was careful to turn off the tap while he lathered his hair, angled his hands into his recesses. The old man had set out a razor in its original packaging, so Aram got to shaving. He ignored the pain that came from grazing his bruises and bumps with the fresh edge. Discipline, he knew, led to righteousness. He shaved his shoulders and the back of his neck best he could.

  When he was presentable, he put on the cable-knit sweater and his own trousers and returned to the room intended for reading. The old man was there in a rocking chair, an afghan around his shoulders, halfway through Macbeth. In the corner a small television was showing the news. He asked if Aram would like him to read the play out loud. Aram reclined on a sofa beside the rocker, his feet hanging over the armrest as if he were a gangly teenager. Yes, he said. I love it when people read to me.

  The old man stood and went to mute the tele
vision. He sat back down and carefully arranged the afghan about himself. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather/The multitudinous seas incarnadine,/Making the green one red.

  When he read, he affected a deeper voice, a lovely, resonant tone. Aram watched the images on screen while he listened to the script. A woman in a headscarf, a man with Odin’s Cross tattoos and a finger in her face, a police officer. The words of the play went a bit foggy, difficult to understand. Maybe Aram was getting sleepy. He forced himself into the room, into his body, again.

  Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,/And prophesying with accents terrible/Of dire combustion and confused events/New hatched to the woeful time.

  On the back of the sofa was a tartan blanket, and Aram covered his body with its welcome weight. The man kept reading, and the news kept reeling on, until it was finished and deposed by a gardening show. A nice nannyish type, pulling hemlock by its roots. Aram was sure now that he was drowsy, and that was why he was feeling overwhelmed. That had to be why. He was a man of God and men of God did not worry that evil had prevailed; they trusted that there was a greater plan. He asked the old man if it would be all right for him to turn the lights off and get some rest.

  The man shelved the play and said, You can stay the night. Happy to help a tired traveller back onto his feet. But just the night. I like my solitude.

  Perfectly fair, Aram said.

  The man stood and turned off the television, tucked the tartan more tightly around Aram’s shoulders. If you get hungry, he said, leaning toward him tenderly, toughen up and go back to sleep.

  Aram laughed. Get to bed, you old dingleberry, he said. The man flashed his teeth and turned off the floor lamp. In the near dark, Aram could hear him shuffling out of the room and into the next, knocking some furniture over in the process. He felt, briefly, sad, or maybe guilty. Then he remembered what the man had said, about not needing to get precious. And so a certain peace came over Aram.