Rise (39 page)

‘But I am not hungry, Mummy. Can I have it for later?'

‘Of course you can.' She rubs her nose on his. ‘Eskimo kiss.'

He holds his cheek up to her eyelid, so she can flicker her lashes on him. ‘Butterfly kiss.'

‘I should have told you . . .' Michael begins his spiel as Ross chuckles like a wee old man. She knows what's coming next, dodges her head out the way as Ross pretends to lunge. ‘Glasgow kiss!'

‘Oi, you wee toe-rag!'

‘I keep trying, but all our times are the wrong times.'

Can Michael not see his son's still present in the room? ‘OK. Off you go, baby. I'll be through in one wee minute.'

Michael plonks down on the chair opposite. ‘Where to . . . I don't know how to do this. She says I've to be honest . . . God, you know, there are times I can see inside my own veins but I can't even
look
at you properly . . .'

‘Michael, please. You're going to make yourself ill.'

He looks at her, amazed. ‘I
am
ill. Can't you see that?'

She takes Michael's wrists. ‘What is it you want to tell me? You can tell me anything, you know that.'

Removing his hands from hers. ‘I couldn't – I
can't
– bear it. You were perfect to me, Hannah, always perfect. Too good to love a boring bastard like me. But I built my world on that. You were the foundations; the point of it all. And you ruined it.' He looks anywhere but her; angled glances at walls, at hands, at light. She hears the pulse too fast in her head. ‘I've tried to . . . I've been so angry. I try to forget it, you and
Gil
; I kept scrumpling it up and pushing it down until it was a hard wee lump inside me. Like cancer.'

‘Why didn't you tell me this before?'

Michael ignores her. He crushes his head into his fists. ‘Oh God. No wonder I see . . . My whole job was to make folk believe in a thing they'll NEVER BLOODY SEE!'

‘Michael. Did you sleep with Justine?'

‘No!' He is fast and wounded with his answer. ‘It was . . .' He tries to shake the redness off, the way Buddy shakes when he's wet. ‘It was just the night you walked out—'

‘I did not
walk out.'

‘What would you call it?'

‘I was upset. Does that mean any time we have a fight, I'd better watch in case you screw one of your waifs and strays? Jesus, Michael. How many other times? What about the woman from the Sunday Supper Club in Castlemilk?
She
had the hots for you.'

‘Hannah. You're not listening to me. I did not sleep with Justine . . . I was really losing it, and she was comforting me, then she started crying too, saying she . . .' He literally raises his eyes heavenwards, and Hannah wants to slap him. Her life is a nasty joke. Some puppetmaster God is. Is there nothing good on celestial telly . . . see this,
this
is why she can't do this any more; all this being a patient dog and waiting for a pat— In the hall, their phone is ringing.

‘Justine isn't a nursery nurse,' he says.

‘What?'

‘She's a . . . I think she ran away. I think that's why she came to Kilmacarra. Someone hurt her, and she ran away.'

‘From where? Who is she then?'

‘I don't know.'

‘But you thought you'd kiss her better? Christ, you know nothing about her, and you let her stay here. With my son?'

‘I didn't . . .' he holds his breath. ‘Hannah. I didn't. But this isn't about Justine. It's not even about Gil, is it? It's about you and me. Do we want . . .' Michael waves his hand aimlessly, spinning a helix round their misery ‘. . . 
this
.'

Air sucks from the space between them. She sees her life fall away in scales and gentle layers. Before she can speak, Michael says, ‘I don't. I want to start again. With everything. I want a clean slate.'

‘With me too?'

The door creaks open. ‘Daddy. Mrs Ailsa's big boy Terry says to tell you she is died.'

Chapter Thirty-one

As dark outside the window as in. Michael pulls the blanket closer, the green one from the couch. Go. Please go. He should have gone. Ailsa Grey is dead. He never went; he needs to go now, her son will need succour, practical help. He will need an explan-ation. It is happening again, the globe slipping through his fingers. Spinning. He has let his parishioners down, his family, his constitu- ents. Hannah has taken Ross away from him. She is furious again, about Justine. Go. Please go. Telling
him
to calm down. She will get custody of Euan too. He’s let Justine down as well, exposed her to ridicule. He wanted to tell Hannah everything, but she wouldn’t listen. Nobody ever listens.

I do.

Go. Please, please go.

The ache in his head pushes outwards, until it crams his breast, his bones. Michael has prayed and prayed. He has prostrated himself on stone, has bargained, reasoned. Railed. And still the dull silence rolls, still the shadow carries him. What is it that’s to be revealed? More shadow, glory, the rock? Or to see the silence for what it is.

Silence.

Killing Ailsa – like she prayed – would have been murder. It would have been a merciful release. Wasted, trapped in her own misery and pain, but her lungs worked. Of their own volition, they kept pumping her with air, and she was judged fit to stay alive; until they filled with fluid in the end. And the Ghost? He chose to fill his lungs with water. His was a wilful sin.

You think?

I think.

He thinks of his friend Dennis, the padre, swilling his brandy and telling his truth. Killing and dying on the battlefield, where there is no judge and jury, only healthy, running lungs, and good rage and right. Charging wilfully into bullets. Well, that is heroic. That’s what they told Johnny Green and his mum, when his daddy choked on his own blood.

Michael’s head is roaring.Those two skeletons at Crychapel with their heads chopped off: a glorious sacrifice, for the greater good, so the sun would rise and the crops grow strong? Who knows? You think your thoughts. You try to make words to say your thoughts. You wonder why you have thoughts, where they came from. What you should do with them. You should
give
, of course. Give, give, give. To whom? To what? Where do they go? Beyond. You wave a hand vaguely. Outside, up there. To a tree, a rock, the sky. If you’re Hannah, to a book. You make prayers of the words of your thoughts, so they have purpose as well as form. You make a purpose of your prayers, for there is a
reason
, now, for your thoughts, and you work harder and you write harder or you pray harder and you find more words to fill the gaps, the gaps and the silences and the non-sense that keeps appearing and you find more trees or stones or symbols; you pray for grace, for perfection, for escape from these thoughts, for rewards for these prayers. A wee bit higher – faster – harder, harder – you’re not trying hard enough can you feel it there, just out of reach, faster, faster, higher, do you feel it? No? Pray longer. Sing faster. Give more, bleed that bleeding heart, blood of Christ, kill a goat, a kid – yes a real kid, why not, c’mon, c’mon, you’re almost there, you’re on the right path, harder, faster, angrier, higher you would do
anything
, anything for transcendence, for givegivegive.

Do you fake it too?

Michael’s head is pulsing bigger than his body, the pressure of the Ghost bursting in and out, in and out. The dark loom of the church is only yards from here. If he sprints, he will attain it in seconds. But he thinks he’s locked the door, will have to stop, unbolt, as the darkness lingers behind him. As it creeps up his spine. Where is Hannah, Justine? Any of them? They should be here.

He slips outside, unlatches the church gate. The gravestones hum with brightness, the whole scene is gently throbbing. Over by Farquhar Moray’s angel, a shadow grows, pale moonlight spilling on its shoulder. The shadow is brighter than its effigy as it turns and forms its folded arms. Face carved and blank; the eyes are stony orbs yet the hair streams across and behind, giving it dreadful movement. Michael steps inside his churchyard.

The standing stones are luminous. They hurt his eyes. The gate has disappeared. The wall is huge, and rising. Michael is overwhelmed by an incandescent moon, a fierce white light flowing upwards from the ground. Another tombstone seems to answer the first, dissolving slightly as a figure emerges. Then another and another, until the whole graveyard is filled with these forms. He sees a woman wrapped in plaid, clutching the hands of two children. Staring at him. He sees a tattered man in uniform, he sees old and young, men with rifles, girls with creels. He sees winding-sheets blow in terrible sails, sees ancient pennies fall from eyes. A fellow cleric with a bandaged jaw, trails of scattered leaves blowing through him, does not move, yet Michael sees his head incline. An acknowledgment of this, of all these see-through stones that glimmer whitely, and do not look, cannot look, yet consume him with reproach. On the roof of the church, a pale figure waits. It is a young man. Translucent.

‘What? What is it you want?’

Moonlight strikes the cleric, his jabot sheerest white against frock-coat black. Marble mouth, unopen. Black with pleading. On and on, they do not stare at him, begging until the heaviness of it bursts.

‘What?
Please.
What?’

‘This is you, Michael. This is it. Can you feel it? All those ashes crawling in your mouth? All the lies you ever told.’ A distant flicker in the cleric’s eye. Entirely separate; the voice snakes out, grows thicker, more unctuous as it speaks. ‘You walk on their bones every day. Constantly. They have to listen to the lies you pimp. Fluffy clouds. Thrones and righteousness. Eating them out.’

‘Stop it! I don’t believe you.’

‘No use sticking your fingers in your ears.’ The slick light that is the Ghost slides on marble skin. ‘No when I’m inside your heart. I’m your tapeworm, pal.’

‘I can’t take this any more. I just . . .’

Michael drops on to his knees. Face first over a tombstone. The imprint of the man who stands on the roof is on his retina when he blinks. Gaunt, close-cropped, he has pit-marks in his skin and a small swallow tattooed on his neck. His wedding ring is a bold half-sovereign, round his neck, a chain called ‘DAD’. His eyes are missing.

‘I cannot do this.’

He is prepared to die. If death is to be quiet ash, then it’s preferable to this.

‘You’d leave them all behind, would you? You arrogant, selfish prick.’

‘You did.’

A bandaged mandible clunks off the stone he’s lying on. Michael’s lips are open; soily crumbs of decomposition roll into his mouth. The Ghost crawls from the cleric’s eye socket. Sits up. No longer animal or bird, he is fully formed. Gaunt, close-cropped. The swallow on his neck. He is crying.

‘What kind of God are you a man of?’

He feels damp fists, damp hands that seize and shake. ‘You lost my soul,’ it screams. ‘Fuck you, you could of saved it.’

A wall of water hits him; flip from front to back to hanging, an infinitesimal hanging; then Michael is falling to the earth as he is shoved from the tombstone, except there is no earth, just the steady sucking wet screaming fall oblivious and miles and miles of rushing fall all mud in mouth and spine in air to twist and lurch and knot his belly sooking out of him, owl eyes scanning circles, sweeping past earth and stone, shock of empty breath, beer on empty breath the pale figure is falling with him, his swallow flying, black hooks and hair all ripped cheeks judderjudder jack-knifing back and whirling, twirling spinningscreamingliving.

Crying.

Falling and crying from the highest place.

Chapter Thirty-two

It is the morning after the night before. Kilmacarra’s street is quiet. Respectful. Justine and Ross tramp round the side of the manse, which has sombre, half-curtained windows, past the kirk and into the warm blast of the café. A beaded plant-holder hits Justine in the face.

‘Rossie! Son!’

Mhairi lunges, grabs. Squashes. ‘Oh, son. I’m that sorry about your daddy.’

‘Bloody hell, Mhairi! You nearly sent him flying.’

Mhairi disentangles herself from Justine’s charge. Sets her hands on her knees. Pinny taut, legs set wide like she’s about to pounce. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting something to eat?’

‘Yes please, Auntie Mhairi.’

‘She no feeding you right? Away you and get a seat, son.’

Justine leans over the counter, as Mhairi goes round, busies herself at the urn. ‘So. How was jail?’

‘I wasny
in
bloody jail. I stayed at my friend Isla’s, that’s all.’

‘Tut tut, Mhairi. Hiding? Isla the posh one or Mrs Dreadlocks?’

‘Posh. Very posh. She’s a spare room the size of ma house.’ They’re both waiting for Ross to clamber on to his chair.

‘I was all set to tie a yellow ribbon round the door for you as well.’