And the Land Lay Still (70 page)

He saw plenty of himself in Billy – the same desire for fairness and equality, the same respect for other people – but there was something new with this generation: they’d ditched an older morality and they were quick to protest against what they didn’t like but they’d no fixed ideas about what they valued. That, Billy would tell him, was the point. Theory and analysis told you more about human behaviour, about how people
really
worked, than any priest or judge or politician ever could. You learn, you adapt. And this made sense to Don, it wasn’t so far removed from the way he’d always thought, and he only had to think about how he felt about Billy and Barbara living together to see the truth of it. And yet he worried. If you ditched the old morality, what would be left? If Billy
and Barbara were good people, decent people, what about the bad? What about Charlie? He felt himself torn between envy and suspicion. For everybody’s sake, he didn’t want it to go any more wrong than it already had.

§

In the mottled days of Bloody Sunday, Idi Amin,
The Godfather
and Jane Fonda in Hanoi, Billy and Barbara stripped sex back to their primal urges, then built it up again. This happened as Barbara was entering the zone of what Billy later thought of as deep feminism. Trembling a little, he followed her in. For a while there were two manuals by their bed:
The Joy of Sex
and
The Second Sex
. Billy was more turned on by the De Beauvoir but he didn’t put it like that, it wouldn’t have gone down well. They had promised as teenagers that nothing between them would be concealed, but he found he was keeping small, insignificant matters to himself, and was sure that she too had her secrets.

But meanwhile they did sex. They did it because they loved doing it and then they did it through and beyond loving it till their sexual organs were red-raw and aching, till there was no intimacy, subtlety or spontaneity left in it. They analysed touch till they couldn’t feel it any more. He worked and worked at bringing Barbara to the fullness of her sexual being, and he did it in a spirit of generosity and apology, as a drone, tireless in the service of his queen. Beyond the bedroom, they made equal shares of housework, cooking, shopping and anything else that needed to be done. If children came along they’d share those responsibilities too. He didn’t have a problem with any of this. How could anyone seriously or coherently argue against women being free from unpaid drudgery, from fear of rape or from actual rape and male violence, from not having control over their own bodies? Sometimes he felt like he was righting the wrongs of untold generations of misogynists, and this was okay, it was the historical moment he inhabited, it was the task given to him and men like him. They could not liberate women because only women could liberate themselves, but they could stop being the jailers.

Here was a difficult one: all men are potential rapists. After lengthy debate and thought he accepted this. He understood that
his capacity to rape was a condition of being a man. Barbara assured him this was nothing personal. It was just how it was. Future generations would be different. They read as widely as possible and the argument was convincing. (Years later, he would meet a woman who would be appalled when he revealed that he believed this, and would challenge it, and he would suddenly realise that he didn’t believe it after all, not about himself and not about many other men, and that deep down he never had.)

Barbara tasted her menstrual blood. In an act of solidarity, sort of, he tasted his sperm. These were necessary acts of self-discovery.

She stopped shaving her body. Billy grew a beard. Three months later, in the staffroom toilet mirror at his school, he saw the spitting image of the guy in
The Joy of Sex
, and took up the razor again. Barbara said it was different for men, it wasn’t a principle thing. He schooled himself not to find the thick down on the backs of her thighs unattractive, nor the black sproutings in her oxters. They were natural, therefore good.

They became vegetarians. They verged on being hippies but it wasn’t sustainable, they were newly into responsible teaching jobs and weekend hippydom would be as hypocritical as subscribing to bourgeois codes like marriage and mortgages. Anyway, Barbara said, the Age of Aquarius was self-indulgent astrological bullshit. Women who mixed that stuff with core issues like domestic abuse and equal pay and opportunities were handing ammunition to the enemy. She was a mathematician, with the logical brain of a mathematician. She did not need that kind of delusion in her life.

One of the things she liked about maths was its purity. It worked or it didn’t work. There was an extreme school of feminism that said maths was just like everything else from philosophy to flatulence: it had been systematically appropriated by men. A feminist mathematics wouldn’t aim so aggressively at proofs, it would be less hard and more fluid, consequently it would have a very different shape. Maths and science, the argument ran, had been deliberately defeminised by men in order to keep women out. Barbara thought – it was one of the reasons Billy admired her, her ability to cut through the crap – this was a cop-out. Women who took this line were out of their depth, they literally couldn’t do the maths. This didn’t mean there couldn’t be a feminist mathematics, but it wouldn’t be
soft-edged, soft-focused. She needed to do more thinking on this. Billy deferred to her yet again, partly because maths wasn’t his area of expertise.

When it came to his subject, on the other hand, everybody was free to wade in. It was open season on
his
tory, and not just because of the scope its name provided for puns. History was 90 per cent propaganda and even Billy, who’d seen the light, was still a cog in the education machine that delivered it. Where were the women in history? Take out the queens and duchesses and witches and a few missionaries and nurses and you were left with an anonymous, invisible horde. Or hoard. The hoard of herstory. The past needed to be reclaimed as much as the present. Billy agreed, but why did he have to agree so vehemently that he felt he was disagreeing?

He went to work and taught the kids history, always taking opportunities to insert Marxist or feminist viewpoints. He felt that he and Barbara were in the progressive vanguard so how come when he taught history – the French Revolution, 1848, the First World War, Stalin and Hitler – how come he couldn’t dispel the depressing feeling that human beings didn’t make forward progress, they went round in circles? That you could raise the barricades and oppose hypocrisy and tyranny and repression all you liked, but it had been done before and would have to be done again? He’d always thought of history as linear, heading towards something, but maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was just chasing its tail.

§

There were no big secrets between them. But of course there were. At least two subjects were off-limits. The men not in their lives. Her father, Jack Gordon; his brother, Charlie Lennie.

Early on, back in their first summer, he’d asked about her father. He was staying the weekend in Glenrothes, and they went for a big walk, through the old town of Leslie, up the Falkland road and on to the Lomond Hills. A day of sleepy cows, bumblebees droning like military-transport aircraft, crusty peat underfoot and a light westerly breeze to ease the heat. Barbara’s bare arms in the sun. Kisses and feels among the scratchy heather. Bliss …

They lay on a hill overlooking a reservoir and he asked her. How had she felt when her father disappeared? How did she feel now?
Each question was met with silence. He didn’t need to know but he needed to ask.

‘What aboot your mum?’ In those early days he still forgot, had to correct himself. ‘Sarah. She never mentions it.’

‘Why would she mention it?’ Barbara said. ‘He deserted her. He deserted us. I was only three years old.’

‘So you don’t remember it?’

Sometimes a furious light flamed up in Barbara’s eyes. It happened now. ‘Oh yes, I remember. I remember him not being there. I remembered it at the time and ever since. That’s what I remember about him, him not being there. Not because he died or was killed or because they divorced but because he walked out on us. I can’t ever forgive him for that.’

‘And Sarah? Has she forgiven him?’

‘Yes, she has. That’s her choice. One of us has to take a stand.’

‘My dad was his pal. I asked him aboot what happened.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t.’

‘He disna like tae talk aboot it.’

‘Good.’

‘But he did say he thought it was because of the war. Your dad being in a Japanese camp and that.’

‘So we can blame the Japanese for him walking out on us?’

‘Well, it must have been hell. It must have affected him.’

‘Of course it did. But that’s still no reason. He wasn’t the only one. If he’d committed suicide I could just about accept it but he didn’t do that. He just left.’

‘Maybe he had tae. Maybe he couldna, I don’t know, adjust.’

She had turned slightly away from him. She said, ‘Adjust to us? Maybe he just didn’t want us. Maybe it was as simple as that. Well, not good enough. He had a duty. He had responsibilities.’

She turned back and he looked for tears in her eyes but there were none. There never were with Barbara. ‘I’ve lived my whole life without him, Billy, so I’d rather not talk about him. And please don’t say anything in front of Sarah. It upsets her.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Can I ask one last question, then I’ll shut up?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think he’s still alive?’

For a moment he thought she really would cry, but again no tears
came. ‘That’s why I don’t like talking about him,’ she said. ‘If I talk about him, it means he might be alive. I don’t want him to be alive. I think he’s dead. I really hope he’s dead.’

They sat a little longer. A gust rippled the dark water of the reservoir. It looked like a shiver. She jumped to her feet. ‘Something’s biting me,’ she said. ‘Let’s move.’

Her father was hardly ever mentioned again.

Then there was Charlie. Because she didn’t go to the Lennies’ house for a long while she didn’t meet him. By the time she and Billy were students in Glasgow and only occasional visitors, Charlie was away, staying with his grandmother in Drumkirk. Barbara teased Billy about his phantom brother. She wanted to meet the mysterious Charlie. Maybe she’d fancy him.

Billy said, ‘Ye might, he’s good-looking, but ye’ll no like him. He’s bad news.’

‘Are you scared of him?’

‘Naw. Maybe I was once. Maybe I would be if I had onything tae dae wi him noo. But I dinna. We’re completely different.’

‘You can’t be
that
different.’

‘We are. I dinna like him and he disna like me.’ There was a silence. Billy was thinking back. He said, ‘One time he had me in a headlock for aboot half an oor until I gave in tae what he wanted. I gave in because we were alane in the hoose and I kent he would have kept it up for as lang as it took. Hours, if necessary.’

‘What was it he wanted?’

‘I canna mind. Nothing important. Disna matter what he wanted. Another time he just kept punching me in the gut every few minutes. He’d punch me, then leave me, then come and find me and punch me again. Like he was on a timer. I shut masel in my room for a couple of hours and when I came oot there he was, waiting tae punch me again.’

‘Did you not punch him back?’

‘I tried that. It just made him step things up a level. It was hopeless. Whatever ye did, he could aye dae something worse back tae ye. He kind of wanted ye tae react, then he could go tae the next stage. I suppose I just learned tae deal wi it another way. If I tried tae please him, or at least no tae aggravate him, I could stop it ever getting tae that stage.’

‘Did your parents not see what was going on?’

‘That’s no how ye deal wi that stuff, when ye’re brothers. Ye’re supposed tae sort it oot yersels. Plus I was the big brother. I couldna go greeting tae them every time my wee brither thumped me, could I?’

‘I don’t know, Billy.’

‘I knew I’d get tae an age when I could get away frae him, so I just waited. Noo I dinna hae tae deal wi him at all. And neither dae you.’

‘If I do, he’ll not scare me.’

‘Maybe no. He can be very self-controlled. Ye might think, och, Billy’s exaggerating, there’s nothing wrang wi Charlie at all, but there is. When he loses his temper, ye dinna want tae be there.’

§

They finally ran into Charlie one drizzly Saturday evening in Drumkirk. They were on their way to the bus station after an afternoon at Wharryburn – their first visit in a year. As they passed the Toll Tavern they had to give way to another couple cutting across the pavement in front of them, aiming for the pub. The man threw a challenging glance at them and then slewed to a halt. The threat on his face changed to a smile and he grabbed Billy’s cheek and gave it a hard pinch.

‘Well, look who it is. Haud on a minute, Renée, this is my brither, Billy. My
big
brither. Am I hurting ye? See, I don’t know my ain strength. How ye daein, Billy? And who’s this wi ye? Ye must be Barbara.’

‘Aye, it is,’ Billy said reluctantly.

‘Glad tae meet ye at last, Barbara. Billy’s been hiding ye fae us. This is Renée, by the way. Don’t walk away, Renée. She hates that song, don’t ye, doll? She likes it when it’s me telling her, but no the song.’

Renée, a bleached blonde in heavy make-up, smiled tentatively, as if her life depended on watching every move Charlie made and reading it right. But Charlie gave her an affectionate-looking hug as he beamed at Barbara and Billy.

‘So,’ he said, ‘where are ye heading the night, then?’

‘We’re just gaun for the bus,’ Billy said. ‘We’re away back tae Glasgow.’

‘Ye’ve time for a drink, though. Ye’ll let me buy ye a drink?’

‘We canna, the bus is at seven,’ Billy said.

Charlie consulted an expensive-looking watch. ‘There’s another bus at eight,’ he said. ‘Ye can get that.’

‘We really need tae go.’

‘Ye’ll no insult me by refusing a drink,’ Charlie said. ‘We never see each other. What’s an hour? Come on in here oot o the rain, this is a great wee boozer. We come here a lot, don’t we, Renée?’