Island (19 page)

It was slow as a ballet each move inevitable but not dangerous each move hypnotically sweet. He grazed my upper arm with his fingertips just brushed the skin I felt the ripples in my belly. He raised his fingers to my bruised face and gently cupped the air around it he whispered ‘Kiss it better kiss it better.’ I put my hands on his shoulders to steady myself I shifted my weight so I was kneeling up to bring my face level with his and I could feel the heat of his flesh I could feel his shoulders trembling. He dropped his arms to his sides. Our bodies were facing one another the three or four inches of space between was thick like water it slowed us it pressed us it held us apart but through it each felt the other’s heat. He leaned into it fractionally and my throat tightened so I had to gasp the air in he was close he was so close he was coming closer. Then I drew in breath his chest just touched my nipples and it was still slow-motion, slow and teasingly sweet as creeping to the edge of the highest cliff and slowly peering over it was possible to control to choose and control to delicately move to lean in a centimetre closer and feel his weight against my tits spreading circles of heat he was trembling but he didn’t move just knelt there simply arms by his sides. I put my face closer to his again it was as if
there was a resistance in the air between us a little barrier a current that when we touched it dissolved and there was nothing between us but the tug of gravity.

The slow trance snapped. Our bodies collided. We fell.

It was my fault. I’m perfectly aware of that. When is it not my fault? My fault, or her fault for making me. I egged him on. I drew him in. I was the only one who knew we were related. He was innocent of that knowledge. He did nothing wrong. He attempted only what nature invented him for: to pass on his genes.

True to the hateful contradictoriness of my character, in the moment at which the outcome of our frenzied grappling became inevitable, I realised that I absolutely did not want it to happen. Which made things worse for both of us because I scratched him to bleeding and he ripped my jeans and grabbing me round the neck with one hand pressed my face into the ground and half suffocated me. It was over in a minute. Then he burst into tears and let me go.

I crawled out from under him and went and leaned against the nearest tree. I bent over to vomit I would have liked to vomit myself out – entirely – to vomit myself inside out so that the whole of me got transferred via the circle of my retching mouth into a heap of half-digested matter on the ground.

That would have been the best thing. He was crying and it was entirely my fault but I couldn’t stay near him. I got my trainers and ran as best I could through the trees. Just keep moving that was all I could do but eventually I could see the sea up ahead and that was what I wanted, I got myself to the edge and took off the horrible clothes
and went in, stumbling and slipping on the stones. It was cold at first it numbed my hurts and I scrubbed at myself all over I ducked my head and kept it under until I thought it would burst I scratched and clawed at the dirty skin to scrape that layer off. The salt seared my cut face and the line of the scratches on my arms and wrists, and on my hip where I’d been pressed onto something sharp. The pain brought tears to my eyes and the relief of crying. I crawled out pink and cold and peeled; took my slimy jeans back into the sea and beat them in the water. At least it was on the jeans not in me. When they were clean I put them on – started back into the trees, curled up all soaking wet as I was and fell asleep. I don’t know how I could, but I did.

16
Dislocation

When I woke I needed
a fag. I didn’t have my tin it must be where Calum was. It was getting dark and my throat was sore and parched. I didn’t know where I could go then I thought, the pub. He won’t come there, she won’t come there, I have to make a plan, I have to sit down with a cigarette. I set off through the trees trying to keep my back to the sea. The trees were black and underfoot was treacherous with roots and holes and dead branches; twice I fell, each time I looked back the trees were gathering closer together in a tight dark mass behind me. At last it seemed lighter ahead and I burst out into a field and the sky was open all above me and I stopped and got my breath. Then I crossed the field and came to a road. When I looked back the trees had congealed into solid blackness. I followed the road around two bends and then ahead I could see lights. There was a moon and the clouds were moving across it so there were patches of silvery light. The bare sky was dark blue and I could see the road easily, and the lights of the village ahead.

There were half a dozen wizened old
men in the bar, they all stared at me. I asked for cider and change for fags; the machine was in the dingy corridor that led to the bogs. In the Ladies I stripped off and stood with one foot against the door, washing myself all over again with a sliver of grey soap and a threadbare towel. The reflection of my face looked like a battered plum.

When I was dressed I put my money in the cig machine. Sat down on the cracked plastic chair beside it then realised I didn’t have matches. I sat there for a minute, it was too hard to move. I didn’t want the men looking at me. The door from the bar opened and a woman came past. She stopped.

‘You alright?’

‘Have you got a light?’

She produced a lighter from her pocket. She was staring at me. The first lungful of smoke was the sweetest thing.

‘Yeah. Thanks. I’m fine.’

She nodded and went on her way to the toilet. There were photos stuck to the wall – snaps, rows of them. Some local festivity. Grinning faces, people in costume, men in helmets carrying a Viking boat. I sat and stared at them, gone out. The effects of the cigarette were spreading through my body like stars. When I’m dying of cancer I’ll remember smoking that fag, and how I knew when I smoked it that it was bringing death closer and that knowledge was the kernel of the pleasure it gave me. The woman came back out of the bogs. ‘Have you got a drink? Want to come and sit with us?’

Did I look so bad? I was feeling better. ‘Thanks. In a bit.’ I watched her
go back into the bar. Dyke – I’d seen her before. Yes, the vegetarian café woman. Sensible. Safe. Sally. What would we talk about? Hello, I’ve just been fucked by my brother.

I lit another fag off the glowing butt. I couldn’t make myself think. It was too hard. My concentration skittered off it like drops of water in a frying pan with hot oil. Skittered and spat and jumped off the surface.

What did it matter? He hadn’t
hurt
me. A few bruises. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t put up with stuff I didn’t want before. I knew it was my fault I didn’t even need to think about that. Then I had to get up and go to the toilet to retch again. There was nothing but yellow bile. It made my throat sore.

I’d lost the plot. Taking him off his mother … getting revenge on her … I was going to kill her but the only person getting damaged here was me. I was sitting on the cracked chair again staring at the photos. There was one of a big guy in a Viking helmet with his arm over a Red Indian’s shoulder. The Red Indian was grinning from ear to ear like a turnip. He was young, about fourteen. He was Calum. On the other side of him was a woman in a long cloak with shiny moons and stars and a wizard’s black hat. Laughing. Her.

I went over and knelt to look at it better. The big guy must be Angus. It was a flash, the background was dark, you could make out shadowy figures behind them. Calum was the same. A tall happy kid. The three of them together. A family. Captured in their togetherness moment. A sealed bubble I couldn’t burst. Safely in the past.

Someone came down the corridor
behind me – the dyke again. ‘Oh, you’re still here.’ She stopped and looked over my shoulder. ‘It’s a New Year’s festival they have. It’s brilliant.’

‘Right.’

‘They burn this replica of a Viking boat they’ve built – loads of people come over from Skye, they dress up and get pissed for a solid week.’

‘Right.’ Nothing changes only you have different kinds of crap some are new and some familiar. Recognition. Re-cognition, an again-knowing of my fallen state my state of loss my hollowness. All the New Years of my life I’ve spent with strangers, pointlessly.

I lurched to my feet and she took my arm. ‘OK? Come and sit down. What happened to you?’ She didn’t recognise me, well it wasn’t surprising. She picked up my fags and led me into the bar. The skinny woman was sitting at a table by the wall. She pulled out a chair for me. They already had my cider on the table. I drank it and lit another fag.

‘What happened to your face?’ The skinny one. She was tight and intent, as if she might be able to read my mind. The plump sensible one went to get more drinks.

‘I slipped on the rocks.’

‘Oh.’

I drank my cider and asked her where she was from. There were more men at the bar now, some younger ones too. They were staring at us.

‘London.’ She started to tell me about the market stall they’d run. I didn’t mind sitting with Sally
and Ruby maybe I could even go back with them and stay in their house but it was a pain having to talk to them. There was something happening at the sides of my vision, at first I thought it was just the black eye but then I realised it was on the other side too, things moving past at speed like you’re on a motorbike, I was catching glimpses of high speed movement out of the sides of my eyes.

They talked about their café it was going to attract tourists and they could do catering for outside events. They were doing a naming ceremony in Skye next weekend.

‘Will you get customers here?’ I was able to talk and pass for normal. I drank my cider and later Sally bought me another although I didn’t want it.

‘There’s nowhere else to eat out on the island.’

‘But vegetarian? Isn’t it pretty traditional round here?’

‘It’ll be good for the island, it’ll be an extra incentive for tourists.’

‘This is a special place,’ the calm one said. ‘It’s a spiritual place.’

God help us. I listened with a sliver of my mind. They were such caricatures. I thought what would they say if I told them what’s been happening to me what sensible politically correct ideologically sound advice would they give? The skinny one had to stop and let each sentence past the censor before she could even utter it. What had she built that persona on top of? What awful fucking swamp? They kept buying drinks and I kept drinking, my aches and pains were receding. I had to go and pee and when I was sitting in the toilet I felt my eyes closing. It was all receding, I wanted to be asleep. I didn’t want all those wankers’ eyes flickering every time I moved. Get out
of here get to your bed lock the doors and sleep.

I said goodbye to the women the sides of the room were whizzing past now faster than ever it would take me all my concentration to walk back to the house I wouldn’t speak to anyone never again unless I chose to.

I walked out into the night. It was clear. Stars. Moon. Very very big. I was walking on the lane I could hear my own footsteps. Something … I knew it was a disaster but I had something up my sleeve … I couldn’t remember what it was but at least thank god I wasn’t like those two so scared to be the mess I was I had to construct a new personality-by-numbers. I was honest at least I wasn’t nice or kind or careful or thoughtful I was a fucking horror but at least I didn’t hide from it and pretend to be together at least my purple face was the truth and every dreadful thing was the truth at least I was better than those poor bitches at least I knew my worst. I was walking and there were a billion stars.

Then I lost it. From one minute to the next these transformations these assassinations are inflicted and if it was a film they’d stop shooting now and blame somebody:
Continuity for fuck’s sake!

There’s no continuity. It’s outside my control. First I am functioning: then I am powerless. I am something – no matter how low,
something
: then nothing.

I was walking. There were a billion stars

and then everything was moving the whole lot rather lurching–

the thing the firmament it’s called was shifting its position in an unstable way and that movement was mirrored in my head (how could you hold
the inside of your head still even with superhuman control, when the sky and stars started slipping about and the dark horizon tilted like a sinking ship?) and I felt it all – all–

everything I knew sliding inexorably down to the right into a crashing tinkling heap and my lungs constricting and my pupils dilating and my lenses shifting mechanically like a very expensive camera changing focus automatically and my ears peeling off their nice deadening layers of normality and it is when it happens it really is like the old horror movies when the nice guy turns into a werewolf and he looks down and the hairs are sprouting on his palms and he gasps in horror and his manly nose pops out into a snout

it’s like that I can feel it physically the change I can feel myself transforming and the sky and stars around me the whole physical world dissolving and reappearing sharp

dangerous

Fearful.

I was in the middle of a dark road with blackness on either side, empty fields. Outer space roaring over my head.