Cala Read online

  She spent the next few hours on the daybed in the library, reading. Her nausea returned with great force and she rushed outside. She did not make it as far as the latrine, heaving instead beside their massive compost drum. She had forgotten to eat before tasting the potion. The vomit was serous, and she was revolted that her body could produce such a colour and consistency.

  Kneeling in the dirt, she was reminded of just how non-fish she was. How woman. She had all of these parts, stinking, leaking parts, ruled by inner drives, never by sheer will. She was ashamed to be this creature. Though she had learned to bear the other women’s earthiness, hair under their armpits, herb stalks stuck in their teeth, she had been raised by a father obsessed with neatness, restraint. And that had yet to leave her.

  Down the flagstones to their door, she heard footsteps. They were too heavy to be Lili’s. Euna did not want anyone to see her in this shape, so she crouched low behind the drum. She could not see the person, but she could tell by the sound of their footsteps that they were significant. A congregant from Pullhair had come a few months prior to proselytize, and she wondered if he had returned.

  A knock. Some stomping inside, a pot dropping, Muireall’s voice hushed by the unopened door. Can I help you? she asked.

  I’d like to come in. The voice belonged, unmistakably, to Aram. Euna dry heaved silently. The drum was twenty metres from the door, so she managed to do this without being noticed. A secret, sour taste clung to her tongue. Though she longed to spit it out, instead she swallowed.

  Is this a practical joke? Muireall asked. Even when the proselytizer had come, she had treated him delicately, maybe bearing in mind what had happened to Cairstìne. Euna wondered why she was not kid-gloving Aram, if what she recognized in him was essential decency or weakness.

  I’m sorry, he said. I need to speak to Euna.

  Keep that name out of your damain mouth, Muireall said. The door swung open so hard it slammed against the home’s stone exterior. How do you know her?

  This was the moment for Euna to reveal herself. She knew her world would be distorted by her failure to intervene, and yet she could not let Aram see her looking so pale, undesirable. She tried to stand. Aram was already speaking with great assurance, not realizing how ruinous his words were. We met a week ago, he was saying. She stopped by the Salmon Company. She was looking for some seafood to share with you all, I think.

  Muireall was silent. She was a passive listener, and even after years Euna could not decipher her hush. Sometimes it meant she was heeding the words quite deeply, and other times it meant she was far afield, yielding to some unrelated thought. And then she came back to my hut yesterday, Aram said. I found her sleeping on the cot, poor thing.

  What did you just say? Muireall asked.

  Lili came skipping back down the flagstones, bless her, little tattie. She was singing to herself an aria, eerie in its creep across the cold noon. Una macchia è qui tuttora! Via, ti dico, o maledetta! This was Verdi’s version of Lady Macbeth – they had the sheet music in their library. A stain is still here! Go away, I tell you, or be cursed! Euna thought of her bloodied underwear, folded in a careful triangle at the bottom of their communal dresser. She had scrubbed and scrubbed the previous evening, and still.

  Oh, no, Lili said. Her footsteps stopped. I didn’t see you there, Muireall!

  Euna was so sorry for everything. Her heart was begging pardon, her stomach, the branch between her hip and her thigh – she was envious of Lady Macbeth’s unruliness, and Lili’s, and in her own way Muireall’s. Only Euna was bitch enough to succumb to her base self, and then to hide from the consequences. The earth below her was full of ground beetles, godless things. She belonged among them.

  Lili, my darling, Muireall said. Do you mind getting me some tea?

  It would be my pleasure, she said, curtsying. And then, Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met. My name is Lili.

  Aram introduced himself. He asked her, Do you know where I might be able to find Euna?

  Lili laughed. She’s very sick today, she said. Spewing the way my mam used to before she had my little brother. Then a pause, possibly a look from Muireall. So then, she said, I’m going to put the kettle on.

  Euna heard the door close behind Lili. Muireall lowered her voice. You need to tell me why you’re here, and then you need to leave.

  I came here to warn Euna we have sea-lice on the farm, Aram said. I didn’t know, or I would have told her at the time. If she got any of our salmon from the women in town, you shouldn’t eat it.

  Is that what you came to say?

  Well, he told Muireall, I also wanted to see her again.

  Muireall said, Leave right now. If you don’t, I will get the mattock.

  A stand-off, a silence. Then eventually, Aram walked back down the path, and Euna’s stomach hardened into a flagstone. He was leaving for good. Muireall would never send her on another seafood errand, not that there were any healthy fish left. And worse, he hadn’t given any details about the sea-lice. Could they hop to human hair? Had her afternoon with him threatened her well-being? And that of Cala, so carefully cultivated over the years?

  Peeking her head around the drum, she saw that Muireall had gone back into the house. Euna’s skin itched. She clawed at her underwear, convinced there were living things inside, certain the infestation had started. Then she stood, shaking the imagined insects from her insides, inseams, making herself feel inferior. She had gone from Mary Magdalene to Jezebel, sorceress to scum-witch. The build had cost her years, the fall no time at all.

  She imagined herself at a fork in the sea, currents moving from this pass in several directions. She could go back inside; she could go to the Salmon Company hut; she could leave Pullhair entirely. In her jumper pockets were pest-holes, pieces of dried tissue, but no notes or coins. Indigence had never interested her. Nor had isolation. She was already living with lack. Off-grid, ice-cold. She had already sacrificed soul and body comfort for another kind, a simple sort of oblivion.

  She vomited again behind the drum. There was nothing in her belly, so what came out was close to saliva, if a little yellower. She picked a leaf from a nearby alder tree and wiped her mouth clean. She still found nature friendly, despite the dying goats and cattle, the infected seafood.

  Euna looked long at the farmhouse, then turned in the direction of the Salmon Company hut, and farther, the ferry. She wavered. Just past noon, the first-quarter moon hovered above her. If Muireall were not ruling Euna, then that heaven-body would. Like the tawny owls and the weasels and the fallen acorns, links in the same long chain, a woman could never truly be free.

  II

  Six months had passed since Aram came to declare his infestation. Euna had convinced herself the sea-lice were all over her. As keepsake. As relic of the afternoon she upended her simple life. She was certain that Aram had been sent back to Sketimini, or had been scared off permanently by Muireall. Either way she would never see him again, so their afternoon together had blurred into mythology. He had moved softly, soporific with feeling; he had cradled the back of her skull after they made love. He had burned frankincense and myrrh, transforming the hut into a holy place.

  At Cala, it was the first day of fuil mhìosail, their communal period. Spring had started to green the heath again, though gradually, and without glory. Usually on this first morning, they congregated in the library to sit in a Tension Line, in which they would give one another neck massages. Euna tended to be on the end, so she rarely received a rub. Today she came downstairs to find the other three women lying on their backs on the bearskin rug, looking in silence at the exposed beams.

  She did not say anything. She lay between Lili and Grace, her feet a fourth point in their natal star. Through the bear’s skin, she could still feel the cold floor on her back. In another world, the four of them would have been on warm grass instead, just like this, crowns and hands touching, cloud-gazing.

  After some time, Muireall said, This is going to be a painful day for a
ll of us.

  Because Euna was already feeling the stomach cramps, the pale aura that preceded a migraine, she said, Amen.

  She knew as soon as the word slipped that it had been a mistake. Muireall grabbed a handful of the bearskin and pulled its wire-hairs out by the roots. In the last few months, her conduct had grown more and more erratic. She swung from pole to pole, sometimes in a matter of minutes, and not in the charming way Lili sometimes did. If Lili were a goldfish, harmless and distracted, Muireall was a bull shark.

  Euna is so special the Lord himself is cupping her blood, she said. She let go of the wire-hairs and ran her palm along the bare patch in the rug. After we’re done here, she said, she will come to the greenhouse with me.

  Worse than when she gave Euna orders was when she spoke about her as if she were absent. It was hard for Euna to name her emotions lately, and harder still during fuil mhìosail, but she thought of this current one as ouch-ice-vein, or iomagain. I’m not feeling very well, she said. Could we go another time?

  Muireall hastened to her knees so she was facing Euna. Her eyesight had got quite poor, but since they could not go to an optometrist, she tended to squint. Now she was narrowing her eyes at Euna in an inscrutable way, maybe because she was angry, maybe because that was the only way she could see her. I happen to know you love the greenhouse, Muireall said. So don’t be ungrateful when I try to take you there.

  Euna was bound. She regretted telling Muireall how safe and content she felt in the greenhouse. Knowledge in the wrong hands was as risky as a billhook. I’m sorry, she said. Lately Muireall had taken to using low-tech means of surveillance, hiding in the broom cupboard or in the hollyhock beside the latrine, to catch Euna making a wrong – sovereign – decision. And when she did, as she often seemed to, Muireall would tickle the bottoms of Euna’s feet with an egg whisk, or braid milk thistles into her hair, or nibble gently, then painfully, on her fingernails until they were torn uneven and close to the flesh. That morning, Euna saw deference as preferable to those pains and indignities.

  You must learn to be thankful, Muireall said. Then, Grace, darling, would you do some rearranging for me?

  The crests of their heads touching, Euna could feel Grace nod. Yes, she said. What would you like me to do?

  The library is getting too cluttered, Muireall said. Move the two wing chairs to the cowshed and all of the tables and magazines to the pantry. If they don’t fit there, try your chamber.

  Grace asked, Do you want me to do that now?

  Yes, dear, Muireall said. Lili, would you be a good girl and go get Euna’s riding boots ready?

  Euna expected to hear Lili clopping off to the entryway, eagerly cracking open the boot locker. But instead, she stayed where she was. She made a sort of sucking sound with her lips, not a kiss, nor a tsk-tsk. I don’t want to, she said. Euna will do it on her way out the door.

  Just yesterday, obedient Lili had stolen Grace’s rose lipstick, the source of her inmost vanity, and spread it across her younger pout. All the men in the village will bow down to me, she had said. I will stun them inarticulate. Grace now stood and lifted one of the wing chairs, in solidarity with Muireall. She lifted free weights every day, allergic to the notion of getting fat, so her muscles were lean and ready, strong enough to lift the old chair on her own.

  Last chance, Lili, Muireall said. She spoke in an indifferent way, as if very tired, over living.

  Lili said, If you want me to do you a favour, you have to do one for me. I need some willow bark for my cramps.

  Muireall maintained her indifference. Okay, little tattie, she said. Grace will get you some once she is done with the cleaning. Euna, shall we go to the greenhouse now?

  Lili’s nerve stunned Euna. Though it could have inspired the same sureness in her, it instead bent her to Muireall’s will. At Cala, as in any place, there was a tenuous balance. Each of the women had needs, but so too did the group; so too did the rooms they inhabited and the animals they tended to and the plants they turned into tinctures. Euna said, standing, I would like that.

  Together they walked to the entry and pulled their riding boots from the locker, then stepped into them. Euna still had Aram’s cardigan, though the smell of myrrh had faded from it, and she gladly moved into its familiar warmth. She looked back before going through the door. Grace was rearranging the furniture as instructed, while Lili was lying face down, alone in her defiance.

  Muireall took the long way to the greenhouse so they could peek into the outbuildings. Since Lili had given their animals the brew six months before, all of the females had become pregnant. The goats had already given birth, while the cows were a few months from doing so. The chickens had doubled in number. Everyone at Cala was too elated to question what was happening, so instead they ate their eggs and their rugged cheddar and patted their pretty, swollen cows.

  Just a few steps into the goatshed, Muireall stopped suddenly. Lili hasn’t been mucking their beds, she said. They could get sick. They could get sucking lice.

  She was quiet for a moment before starting to cry, which Euna had never seen her do.

  Between the stink of shit and the sound of her crying, Euna felt a rare and deep affection for Muireall. Maybe this sadness had been percolating in her all these years, held below the surface by cultivated cruelty. But here, in the goatshed, surrounded by foul aolach? Neither could pretend to be above their nature.

  Euna offered the sleeve of the cardigan to Muireall, whose nose had started to drip. She wiped all the wetness onto its knit. The two women were huddled very close together now. The tip of Muireall’s nose was pink, childlike, and Euna blew her hot breath onto it. Does that feel nice? she asked.

  Muireall smiled in a tense way, unaccustomed to the question. It’s just that everything had finally started to go right, she said. We were all here and happy and the animals were giving birth and for once no one saw me as the bidse of the house.

  One of the goats, a fine-boned Saanen, trotted over and started to circle their feet. The goats were sage, selective with their affections, and it seemed a compliment to Euna that this one had chosen to join them. There they were, a clan enclosed in the shed, sufficient. A fullness rose in her and dwelled for a long moment, something akin to a sacred experience.

  Look at this beautiful doe, Muireall said, leaning down to stroke the animal’s muzzle. Look at her winking those pretty eyelashes at us.

  The doe made a contented sound, then lifted her tail and started to pee on the ryegrass, soaking both women’s boots from tan to brunet. Some of the urine seeped in through Euna’s criss-cross laces.

  Immediately Muireall struck the doe on the skull, her palm making a loud cracking noise against the bone. Euna cringed. The goat bleated. No blood showed through her fur, though she trotted back to her corner of the shed, where only her left eye shone in the darkness. Muireall seemed shocked by what she had done, as if some irrepressible inner energy had moved her hand. But I love those goats more than anything, she said. She looked at Euna. You know I love those goats, she said.

  Euna heard a glass-crash somewhere outside the shed. She pinned it a kilometre away, though it was hard to tell precisely. Sound travelled pure and far in this part of the country, where there were few buildings to break its waves. Euna led Muireall, still crying, or crying again, onto the heath. On the way to the greenhouse, she whispered in the serenest voice she could find, having had few models, You’re fine, bana-churaidh.

  The greenhouse had gone lush with fresh melons, Hami, Apollo, honeydew, beside vines of crisp English cucumbers. Against their bright spritz was the heavy musk of woodchips. Then Euna noticed that the musa ornata, her beloved flowering banana, was covered in shattered glass. Shards shone on its leaves and blushed petals. The fragments made a new beauty of the blooms, though only briefly, until Euna noticed the long rift in one of the greenhouse’s panes. All of their careful tending, their songs and hands and water – it would be undone by the cool air seeping inside.

  Muireall
called out, Who’s there?

  Euna searched the ground for bricks, blown branches, but she could not even find a rock large enough to have caused the breach. She followed Muireall’s lead. Show yourself, she called out.

  No one answered. Euna crawled on her hands and knees, searching for the item that had seamed her seamless greenhouse, her one refuge on an acreage of threats. At last, she found something unusual under a floss silk tree, a cold bird, long dead. In its breast was a bullet.

  Come here, she said to Muireall.

  Muireall obeyed. Is that a crossbill? she asked when she was close enough to see the rigid bird.

  Euna spread his breast feathers apart, revealing the bullet with its corona of blood. He was already dead, so she carefully prised out the silver shell and held it close to her face. Steam was forming around her, as the air from outside began to meet the heat that had gathered, and stagnated, inside the sealed greenhouse for years. Euna knew little about guns, had never seen one in real life, but she knew this bullet had come from a rifle. She could hardly breathe. Her windpipe was a gainntir, a narrow place. We should go back to the house now, she managed to say to Muireall.

  Through the fracture in the wall came sailing a navel orange, half peeled, then a tangerine and a finger lime. These fruits landed in a pail of garden tools, the lime impaled on a sharp set of pruning shears. Muireall had once mentioned that the minister’s wife kept a forcing house beside the church, an orangery.

  From outside, someone started to patch the glass using cellophane and clear tape. Euna could see the hands plainly when they touched the window, though the figure, slightly farther away, was indistinct. The person took great care not to stand in front of the break, where they would have been visible. As it was, between the tricks of glass and light – shadows, shifting angles – this person could have had any number of bodies.