Cala Page 19

  26And after my skin has been destroyed,

  yet in my flesh I will see God;

  27I myself will see him

  with my own eyes – I, and not another.

  How my heart yearns with me.

  He could not have known that Aram had pored over those verses in the castle. Watching the minister from a folding chair near the crucifixion mural, Aram felt wounds open that he thought had closed for good. His loneliness was vast and swift, and it brought him to a place of great vulnerability, which on a day like today would have to double for that inspired, floating state. Minister Macbay introduced Aram to the congregation. I bet you’ve noticed this handsome fellow around town, he said. He is our friend Aram, our son, really, and he will share a few words about his life that we may do well to hear.

  Aram walked to the pulpit. Minister Macbay enfolded him in his enormous form before sitting in the seat Aram had vacated. Aram stood, straight-backed, before the congregation. He was relieved to see Euna, Lachlan Iain, and Muireall, still in the final pew. He noticed Aileen on the other side, wedged between Carson and Mrs Macbay, who was also the organist and director of the church choir. Mrs Macbay beamed her reassurance at Aram. Even in this town, where it seemed any moment a shrub could reveal itself to be a sleeping sheep, or a lovely old farmhouse a site of confinement and cruelty, he could always trust her sincerity.

  I want to talk to you today, he said, about the maidenhair tree. He tried to project, hoping the elderly woman whose hands he had held would somehow be able to hear him, or at least feel the vibrations of his voice.

  Mrs Macbay did not lose her smile, though his statement may have seemed random. He continued, It’s sometimes known as Ginkgo, from a misspelling of the Japanese words for silver apricot. A beautiful species called Ginkgo gardneri grew here in the Paleocene of Scotland, sixty million years ago.

  Someone had brought a cough into the sanctuary. Was it the owner of the guest house, or maybe the herbalist rumoured to live in a home of uncaged rabbits? Someone, anyway, was coughing, and for a moment Aram was thrown. He could see the villagers in front of him losing their concentration. He began again, more assertively, raising his words as high as the roof beams.

  I learned about this unusual tree, he said, while I was in prison. At that, everyone returned their focus to him. A man in the front row waved his hand as if to encourage Aram to continue on this route, rather than with the maidenhair.

  Aram said, And you might be interested to learn that there is only one living Ginkgo species, biloba. The others have gone extinct because of their unusually slow rate of evolution. The maidenhair tree evolved in an era before flowering plants, but when those came along, they adapted better to disturbed environments and gradually replaced the many types of Ginkgo.

  There is a reason I mention this particular tree, here in Pullhair, in your beautiful church, he said. The room was quiet. The cougher had stopped coughing. The waver had stopped waving.

  It was very kind of Minister Macbay to invite me to speak, he said. But now I’m here, I don’t know what more to say. He looked from face to face. He wanted to share more of his thoughts on evolution, about the dangers of stagnation, really, but in that moment he realized he was still speaking to them from a distance. And no one wanted to have their ways dressed down by a guest, a non-member – he had seen how poorly that worked on his visit to Gainntir.

  Aram was ready to get off the stage, or at least stop talking. He feared the judgement not of God but of the congregation. But he might never have Euna’s attention again, so he could not be silent until he had addressed her. He said, While on the inside, I had one special visitor. He hesitated, wanting to name Euna, but not wanting to out her to the villagers. If I could do one thing differently, it would be to tell her how much it meant to me that she came. I know she walked away from her haven.

  He was quiet for a full moment. He wanted to gesture the choir in, to hide him as Euna’s hood hid her, but he did not. He stood exposed in the silence. At last, Mrs Macbay stood and faced the five-boy choir. She lifted her hands in the air, and the boys breathed in together, then began to sing ‘Angels we have heard on high’. He was grateful for their voices, blanketing his talk, as wildflowers used to blanket the ground in this part of the Outer Hebrides. There were holes in their song, too, patches unreached by the flowers, but those were barely perceptible among such cream and bloom.

  He glanced at the family in the final row while the boys forged ahead with their song. Euna was still invisible beneath the tunic, while beside her, Muireall had a slight and calming smile on her face. Lachlan Iain was standing on the pew, drumming his torso in a style Aram related to his own father, playing the bodhrán.

  When the song was finished, Mrs Macbay sat down and motioned for the choir to do the same. Again, Minister Macbay and Aram switched positions, the minister behind the pulpit and Aram in his seat on the side of the stage. As they passed one another, Minister Macbay looked at Aram with eyes so blue they seemed stolen from a man of the Minch. He whispered, You did well, son.

  The rest of the service passed in a blur, the benediction, the lighting of the Christ candle, the Communion. Before Aram knew it, they were all joining together in their final hymn, ‘There is a happy land’. He remembered this same song from when the congregation was more full-bodied, its sounds wider. But today its strength was in its starkness. How gorgeous it was to pick out individual voices warbling, Come to that happy land, come, come away;/Why will you doubting stand, why still delay?

  After, Minister Macbay invited everyone to the basement for fellowship. Aram considered bolting right then, but he was too great with gratitude toward Minister Macbay and indeed toward the whole congregation, who had listened to his attempt to communicate, to offer a sermon. So he went to the basement with everyone else. Everyone, that is, except Euna, who had evidently ducked out of the building after the service.

  He first saw Lachlan Iain, stack of oatcakes in hand, and Muireall. They were meeting Carson and the three Macbays, and the exchange seemed simple and harmonious. Of course it was not Lachlan Iain’s first time meeting Aileen, but either he had been young enough then to avoid forming memories of her, or he had already learned the fine art of affectation. Aram hoped it was the former.

  Minister Macbay knelt and kissed the boy on both of his freckled cheeks. And who is this handsome child? he asked.

  His mother used to live here years ago, Aileen said. Euna and I were quite close for a while.

  And where is Euna today? Mrs Macbay asked.

  She’ll join us later, Muireall said. She just wanted to take a spin around her old hometown.

  Funny, Minister Macbay said. I don’t remember her at all. I thought I knew everyone in Pullhair.

  Mrs Macbay knelt by the child. It’s wonderful to meet you, she said. And then, looking up at Muireall, We’re praying Aileen gives us a grandchild of our own one of these days.

  Muireall smiled her same consoling smile, while Carson left to collect a plateful of black cookies. Aram took that as his opportunity to enter the conversation. He came into the circle, hand extended, and even Lachlan Iain shook it.

  Beautiful words, Muireall said.

  Thank you, he said. Sincerely.

  We’re happy to have you here, Minister Macbay told Aram. Breathing new life into the congregation.

  Muireall leaned in and spoke to him, semi-privately, of course knowing their exchange was audible to the others. He was relieved when she told him Euna had gone onto the heath – despite the strange weather, he preferred the air out there to that of this basement, gummy, dense.

  Minister Macbay asked, Do you know this Euna, son?

  I do, Aram said. I did.

  The minister said, winking, We’ll save you some shortbread.

  Aram nodded and said his goodbyes as politely as he could. In his flight from the basement, he took the stairs two at a time. He hurried through the side door onto the heath. A fine mist had started to settle on the heathe
r and low sedges, forming a sheer film, as if gossamer. Aram climbed over small hills, looking for her, into a stone enclave, looking for her. Euna had in that short time gone a long distance. Then he saw it, a small teardrop in the grass, her pearl earring. Whether it was the missing one or the one he had seen, hours earlier, clinging to her ear, he could not know. He stopped to pick it up, tiny and wet, delicate. He brushed the damp dirt away, polishing the treasure with his thumb.

  No more than a hundred metres from him, on turf somehow both dead and overgrown, he saw Euna lying on her stomach. The tunic was tented over her head, skin only showing on her fingers, adorned with runic rings, and her ankles, poking out from under her gauzy dress. She gave the impression she was lifeless. Aram cantered to her. The ground was cold, a punishment even through his soles. From up close, he could see the velvet tunic lifting, ever so gently, when she breathed.

  He lay down flat beside her, near enough that he was touching her least finger with his. He felt a rounded shape pushing into his spine and reached under his back to recoup an apple, bruised though whole in his back arch. He was, after fellowship, too full to eat the fruit, but he remembered an old method of divination his mother had taught him – he twisted the stem in his hand, reciting the alphabet, until it gave way. E. He did not put stock in that kind of prophecy, and yet.

  Euna rolled over at the sound of the stem separating from the fruit. Her cheekbones caught what light leaked through the grey sky. What are you doing? she asked.

  Just an old game my mother taught me.

  I know it, Euna said. She was flushed now. Cool, reticent Euna, icon of control, betrayed by her own face.

  Have you played? he asked, moving his least finger on top of hers.

  A few times, she said. After you and I met. I was locked in the goatshed most days. Grace would bring me apples.

  Aram did not want to open any wounds that Euna had taken care to heal. So, sensing it had been a place of pain, he tiptoed away from the goatshed. What did you do with the apples? he asked.

  You’ll think it’s silly, she said. But there are a hundred ways to read the future with an apple. This was before I got your postcard, of course.

  This was teenage Euna talking. For a precious moment, her feelings were plain as primary colours, and for once she allowed him to see them. I think that’s lovely, he said. I’m flattered.

  At that, Euna hardened. Her flush had gone deep, the blood now so near to the surface. I wasn’t trying to flatter you, she said.

  He reached over and carefully clipped the pearl earring he had found onto her lobe. It was the absent piece. Now she had a set.

  Her interest in him was indistinct.

  Her lips were blue from cold.

  Their son was in the holy house, an acre away.

  There were many sound reasons for him not to kiss her, and only one reason for it – his one generative reason, overriding all else, as if a sea change. When he told others that God gave him reason to wake up in the morning, was this not what he meant? Was he not talking about love, or more precisely, agape?

  He pressed his red to her blue. All his thoughts stopped and for a spell he lived through her lips. They were a portal to a world in which grass still grew greenly, and gannets still flew overhead, in the right season. One hand on his chest and the other in his hair, Euna bonded him to her body, the land.

  The mist around them had turned to snow, burned grass to fresh meadow. All the days of deprivation, not only his, but his mother’s, his father’s, his beloved Euna’s, seemed to have converged in this vital end. All this time he had carried a flame for her, she had kept hers fuelled, too.

  Aram, he heard. He thought at first the voice was coming from Euna. But no, it sounded furious, and Euna was anything but furious right now, her gaze gentle as the mist. How could you do this? the voice asked. Then he saw Aileen, full of a separate kind of flame, hustling up the tall hill.

  We cooked for you, she was yelling. We gave you your own bedroom. You disgusting dìol-déirce.

  Euna scampered away from Aram and curled into a stone, the tunic over her head again. Aram sat up, attempting to face the harm he had done head on, though he was at the same time dreaming of the warm portal. Aileen had tears in her eyes. Snow on her lashes enhanced their shine. She went over to stone-small Euna and removed her hood. Why are you acting as if you don’t know me? she asked. Even in Aram’s state of enchantment, in which all edges seemed so smooth and conforming, in which the hills could well have dissolved into level meadow, her tone was hard with sadness.

  Euna looked at Aileen and then away from her, at her own runic rings, the bare and tapered ends of her legs.

  The camper van, the library, Aileen said. She crouched in the bell heather beside Euna, thumbing the filigreed hem of her tunic. The way we slept every night.

  I shouldn’t have come home, Euna said, vacantly, from the same lips Aram had just been kissing.

  Aram wondered about the legitimacy of Aileen’s interest in Euna. He wondered if, in part, this performance was for his benefit. He was troubled by the thought – surely Aileen was not so mercenary. Maybe this thought was his way of safeguarding his love for Euna, by making sure it was unusual, a sentiment unshared by any others.

  Aileen said, Aram, you aren’t supposed to touch her any more.

  Aram was still planted on the ground he had been sharing with Euna. He peered down into the frosted clover and saw her body’s imprints, the troughs of her thighs, the stabs of her elbows. He said to Aileen, I didn’t realize you had made rules.

  At that word, Euna looked up with a start, returning her full attention to the conversation. She seemed unsettled. Having glimpsed Gainntir, its ugly, strangling rigidity, he was not surprised by her response. He wished he had thought of its impact before he used the term. Aileen said to him, Kindly keep quiet. You’ve hurt her enough.

  Aram chafed the scruff under his chin. He was exasperated. He wanted to place all his focus on Euna, on darning the holes between them, and instead he had to contend with Aileen, turned bitterly backward, lording the past over him. Are you going to be like this forever? he asked Aileen.

  You expect to be forgiven so soon, Aileen said.

  So soon? he asked. I’ve done a lot of time.

  Aileen peered from side to side, the way a trapped animal sometimes does, in search of an escape route. Euna offered one instead. She started to whimper from the cold. She was so self-contained it was possible, sometimes, to neglect even her essential needs. But the fact was, she had been out on the heath, nearly bare against the rudiments of winter, for the better part of an hour. Her skin had been drinking all that cold, and now her cheeks were going greyish, her lips scaling as if belonging to a fish.

  We need to get her home, Aram said. I’ll carry her.

  You’d like that, I’m sure, Aileen said.

  Aram felt his anger mounting at this tiny, petty child posing as an adult woman. He saw himself slapping her, her falling to her knees, subservient in the wild grass. He pictured the blush on her face, the chastised look in her wide, suddenly powerless eyes. But he held back, and without much work. He had learned along the way to control himself. He had not known this until Aileen had tested his bounds.

  We both want the same thing, Aram said to her, as gently as he could. We both want Euna to be safe. Please, let me carry her.

  Euna swallowed with some effort, forcing her trachea down its iced column. Yes, she said. Yes.

  Fine, Aileen said. Take her.

  Thank you, Aileen. I know that wasn’t easy to say.

  Hurry up, she said.

  Aram stripped his fisherman’s sweater and drew it down over the high neckline of Euna’s tunic. To see her nuzzle into its folds, pull the sleeves to cover her slight, trembling wrists, filled him with affection and, in some muted way, hope. He knelt beside her and asked permission to lift her. She granted it, and he scooped her into his arms, now covered only with a long-sleeved jersey.

  You know, Aileen s
aid to him, this doesn’t make you some hero.

  I know, he said. Believe me, I know.

  This tempered Aileen a small bit. She nodded to him, then trotted off toward the church. Clearly, the stress was affecting her deeply. When Aram climbed from his knees to his feet, it was with great, prayerful attention, as if ready for the final, most vital hymn.

  IV

  A few weeks had passed since Euna’s homecoming, since the scene on the heath and its attendant emotional hangover. After that morning, Aileen had grown gradually withdrawn, while Euna, who had made a full recovery from her bone-chill, tried in brave and unobtrusive ways to integrate herself into the community. She, Muireall, and Lachlan Iain had come for meals at the Macbays’ on several occasions, and they had helped to bake oatcakes for fellowship. Muireall had even taken little Lachlan Iain to the home full of uncaged rabbits, where he had brushed their long ears and washed their dusted tails back to their original white.

  Then, just like that, it was Christmas. For Aram, the holiday had always seemed narrow. When he was a boy on the boat, his mother would pick a day at random and say, Wake up, son, it’s Christmas! They would pray together for a life of lovelier things, plush red seats at the cinema, abundant pot roasts, recordings of the most sublime operas. Then they would embrace, eat some scallops, and return to the repetitive, if peculiar, reality of their era at sea. And that would be that, until the next year.

  Only at the castle had Aram realized that Christmas, like many other spiritual holidays, was not narrow at all. It was wide, alive; it was a day, for some people, that made further days possible. But he had never been around enough people, let alone enough people of one shared faith, to understand what it meant for a room – or a detention centre, or a village – full of them to observe a holy day together. The sense it fostered was close to sàimh, though of course mightier, more formidable, held as it was not by one person but by many.

  Today, everyone in Pullhair had been invited to a Christmas potluck. Aram had been asked to bring salmon in whatever form he pleased. He chose to bring jerky, as then he could do all the preparation beforehand, reducing the margin of error. He had vowed to never make a mistake again, no matter how minor. This was one of many ways he was pressing himself to repent.