Rise (5 page)

There is fringing, lace fringing. Apples. She is under the canopy of her pushchair, plump bare toes wriggling in front of her, and beyond: more toes, a tartan Thermos flask, red stones. Her mum’s rings clink on the metal handle of the pram; she is crying, or was that later? Her father is present too. He has toes like hers, round and naked in open sandals. But hairy. They are there, distinct at the edge of her limited vision. The toes, some apples. A long line of marching stones.

This is what she remembers.

Justine pushes her hair from her eyes. Stares harder. It seems random, but each cairn, each cluster of standing stones, is in alignment with the one in front and behind. To her right, she can see a group of bigger standing stones, rising in spikes at the base of what she’s christened Plook Hill. Up there. What were those bobbing folk doing? No sign of them now. She makes her way towards these big stones, sweeping nearer to the village. From this approach, the hill separates her from most of the houses. She’s coming in the back way.

Up close, the stones by the hill are four, five times her height. Simple spears of rock, macho lines and columns, like they are flanking an avenue. Justine huddles by the largest two. They soar above her head, would make you dizzy if you stared up too long, like looking up a stairwell. She thinks about putting the brolly up now, before the deluge which is surely coming. As a compromise, she rests it, unfurled, on her neck. The air begins to curdle. Growl. If there’s lightning, should she come out from behind the stones? It’s dangerous with trees, she knows that much. Maybe go further up the hill? Where those folk were? A single yellow light clicks on in a Kilmacarra window. Or she could just go to the village, like any normal person would.

Justine watches clouds dance cheek to cheek. If someone had been with her, she could impress them.
Look – there’s some cumulus nimbus. I’m smart, me. I have many skills. Did you know I can fit my whole fist inside my mouth?
But the valley is wide and bare. There’s nowhere to hide. Rain patters. Panic pits. Here is actually very big. Open. Everywhere is eyes: sheep, hills, trees, drilling in like hungry worms. Worms.
Put you where the worms live, doll.
Justine sticks out her tongue. Nice clean drops. She counts them, slowly, until her belly settles. The rain slaps her face, faster, harder. Man, she hates when her jeans go claggy on her thighs. Makes her itchy; she doesn’t like not being clean. She climbs a little further up the hill. There’s a flat stone there set against the hillside, like an altar, which rises slightly at one end. The stone is bedded with earth or rock underneath as well, but where it rises, it protrudes. Enough, perhaps, to shelter under. She crouches to get beneath its lip.

Which is a mouth. The overhanging stone is actually the rim of a lid; squared-off edges. She reaches up, feels along the top of it. Man-made smooth. Finds a handle. Stands. It’s an iron staple, set into the flat stone. She sees there is a gap, the altar-top is actually an entrance; a piece of concrete made to look like stone, which slides on rusty runners. Justine hauls the handle, pushes it with her foot, then feet, until it gives. Insistent rain, stinging her skin where it’s already sore. Inside is a hollow, maybe four foot by three, stretching backwards into the hill. Sufficient for a body to curl up and wait. Justine leaves the brolly outside, then clambers over the edge. She inches into the space, literally hunkers down. She is not a stranger to hiding in small spaces. As long as something solid’s at her back, she’s fine. Here, she has rock and earth and the soft press of her leather bag. A grass-framed window on the world, watching churning skies. There’s a funny, sulphur smell close by. Crushed eggshells and half a hard-boiled egg yolk lie at the entrance to the hollow, level with her nose. Is it some country-bumpkin cult? Children of the Corn? Then it dawns: those folk were rolling Easter eggs. Huh. It’s Easter, so it is.

Snickers, she thinks. If someone were to ever get her an egg, she’d like a peanutty Snickers one. She pulls the tramp’s brolly closer across the grass, leans it upright at the entrance. She can use it as a windbreak. Could squat here all night.

There are layers of earth and rock all round her. Streaks of yellow clay, of glitter. A band of red, and seams of dark. This is lovely. This is the safest she’s felt in ages. You could, you know. You could just give up and roll over, feel that weight of earth swallow you so that you and the money dissolve. It would be quick and clean. She’d like that.

Sun slices cloud, projecting Justine’s shadow on the ground in front. She sees an outline, dressed in bulky coverings, something slim beside its shoulder, with a fierce fierce tip. The stones’ shadow makes a pathway over grass. At the end of the glen, a rainbow spreads. Rainbows spook Justine. She’d seen a rainbow at night once; black and white and grey, the way animals see. The rain is pouring, coming under the stone lip, seeking her out. She burrows deeper, as far into the hollow, into the side of the hill, as she can go. Her jeans are filthy, soaking. Less daylight now; she can only see a strip of sky. But there are glimmers on the wall inside. Little chinks of quartz, fine drifts of mineral which move in spirals like firelight. Half-closing her eyes, letting the firm wall behind support her. She is in her own earthen recliner chair.

Until the wall behind her breaks.

Plunging backwards, only inches, yet it feels like miles. Her skull cracks, finding solid rock where the mud has slipped away, the mud she thought was firm and helpful. Fucksake. It all slips away, she can’t help it. Justine bursts into tears. Her head aches back and front, and her neck where it’s been jarred, and her breastbone and her spine. She reaches to cradle her battered head. A sharp edge scrapes her knuckles; she tugs away, sooks skin. Now her hand’s bleeding too. What if the roof falls in? Justine struggles to turn round, to see what is behind.

Where the earth and twinkly quartz was is black mud and roots. And the edge of rock which tore her hand. It’s a long, thin cave, stretching deep into the hill. The light’s bad. All she can make out are some dull, broken pebbles, and the glint of wall at the sides. Shiny, like slate. A curving scratch gleams dully on the slate. She slides on to her stomach, puts her hands inside. Using her thumbs, Justine wipes away more of the mud and roots, twisting fibrous clumps until they break. Moving through the pebbles, pecking her head from side to side as she tries to squint in the gap. She just wants to . . . Not stop. Her perpetual downfall. Reaching in up to her elbow, one shoulder. All she can make out is the one curved, scratched line. It seems to continue upwards in a spiral, but it’s hard to see. She can feel pitted grooves under her fingers. Feels it warm. Damp. There’s a soft wssh behind; like breath moving. A rustle. Just a bird, settling on one of the standing stones.

Justine’s not sure how long she hunches there. At least until the rain stops and the rainbow fades. Her belly rumbles. Man, she only wanted to keep dry. She rubs some of the earth off on her jeans. Using the umbrella as a kind of spade, she begins to push bits of rock and mud, so it covers up the hole she’s made. She can hear the locals already.
Sheer vandalism
. Scooping and patting handfuls of disturbed earth to make it smooth. Her skint knuckles graze on something hard. Again. One of the quartz stones poking out. Blood and soil and stone; she’ll need to give that cut a wash. Her mum used to take a scrubbing brush to gritty knees, whenever Justine fell. Which was often. Dettol and the hard brush she used to clean the stairs. Apparently it was for her own good. Justine’s fingers close on the tiny cube, easing it from the soil. She tastes grit inside her mouth. A perfect square of ivory. Then she realises what it is, and drops it. Milk-white unmistakable. It’s a human tooth. Man, she’s seen enough of them knocked out to know a fucking tooth.

Justine stamps it into the soil, clambers from the hollow. She doesny want the blame for breaking stuff. Drags the lid across. It’s nothing to do with her. She slithers back down to the bottom of the hill, away from all the stones. Walks the line of the burn round the base of the hill, and heads into the village. Keeping to the road would be infinitely more sensible, but creeping feels right. Her jeans stick uncomfortably to her legs. She climbs where the ground slopes up again towards the church. It’s a small square building, surrounded by a wall and sloping gravestones. Justine’s starving. The bus driver said there was a hotel . . . she can definitely smell bread. At last, she goes on to the street. It feels like her whole body is yawning. This dislocation of thought and purpose, the luminous possibilities of being free to do anything, means she’s in thrall to doing nothing at all. Jumping on, then off, a bus: that is decision of the day. She’s had her spontaneous combustion already.

A jumble of harled cottages faces the church: single, two-storey, all joined together. Next to the cottages is what appears to be the only shop, one of those tired places that sell milk and fishing tackle. Bread and cheese; she has an urge for bread and cheese. Sunday. It’s shut.

The house that’s joined to the shop has a YES sign in its window. A Saltire flies from a flagpole in the tiny garden three doors down. There’s a Union Jack above the door of the trim cottage in between, red, white and blue bunting spilling over the fence. None of the public buildings – the church, the shop – are displaying their allegiances. Right next to the shop is a faded sign, pointing across the road and down a wee lane that she’d missed: Trinity Hotel. Justine squeezes herself past some bins and an empty gas canister, follows the lane down, round one dog-leg, before it comes to an abrupt dead end. A tatty pink-painted building, net curtains the colour of sand. Tri . . . y H . . . el.

Sunday. It’s shut. But the view from here is immense. As the glen unrolls, Justine regards the standing stones for the third time. Imagine having this on your doorstep, every day. Her lungs can’t cope. Single stones lurch in a field, clusters group in huddles. They’re all over the place. A few cairns touch the village itself. The burn she’d been following meanders past the church, then disappears behind a garage where the bank slopes steeply. Kids have pushed crisp pokes through the wire fence at the edge of the burn. They flutter like weathered flags. In the distance, a massive, bright balloon bobs over the valley. A mini-Zeppelin. She hadn’t noticed it from the valley floor.

‘All right?’

Justine tenses, half-turns. A man, mid-twenties, with sandy eyes, sandy eyelashes, sandy hair, stands behind her. He has those Celtic freckles that refuse to sprinkle neatly on your nose, but spatter your eyelids and lips as well. ‘Beautiful, eh? You all right? Look like you’ve been in the wars.’

She doesn’t answer. His smile, which was open and inoffensive, sets awkwardly, until it fades and he looks away. He passes on. She returns to her view.

See guys that just think they can? That you’re just there for them to talk to, like you’re a convenience, not a person who might be tangled up in your own thoughts, might be busy and intact.
Cheer up, hen. Might never happen
.

Oh, it has, pal. It has.

Again, she gets a whiff of bread, or a smell-mirage brought on by starvation. The smell of baking is very strong. Is it coming from the church? Or the long white house next door? She imagines a family inside, settling down to Sunday roast. The drifting scent leads her to a shed or an old barn, separated from the white house by a lawn. But when you walk round the other side, it dips to two storeys, and there’s a big conservatory; not the tacky white kind but twisted green oak, growing in easy catapult shapes to cradle great handfuls of glass. Or it looks like that, anyway; it looks as if it’s growing cleanly out of the ground. She knows it isn’t. But when Alice stepped through the looking glass she accepted her various stages of altered reality. It’s no use struggling: just go with the flow. While Alice had her
Drink Me
, Justine has her
Take Me
, and she could have slipped the money in her bag but the penance, the appropriateness of a thousand tiny paper cuts slicing up her groin, ach, she can’t remember if the bottle was in Wonderland or behind the mirror but here she is. Trusting. One door stands open, the curved-wood handle beckoning her in . . .

Oh man, the smell. A pile of fat scones sit on a countertop. China plates spill with cakes – the lopsided, squidgy kind.

Take me.

She hears a woman’s voice say, ‘God, I know. But it’s turning out far more erotic than I meant.’

Justine’s hand returns to her side. The conservatory houses a café: five wooden tables carved in the same curvy chunks as the oak frame. Wholemeal and earnest, all natural wood and hingy things with feathers, beads, brown earthenware plates stacked on the dresser. She picks up a menu. Pumpkin soup; mushroom risotto; Stornaway black pudding and potato scone.

‘And a bit worthy too, you know?’ the woman goes on. ‘I’d a whole chunk about arranged marriages I just deleted. Any road, I need to go and fetch Ross. I’ll leave these with you. How many we got coming?’

‘About twenty.’

‘Twenty? Is that all?’

The voice grows louder as a slight and golden woman gleams from behind the scenes. She is the kind of girl boys want to tuck under their arms and cherish. Justine hates her.

‘Oh – Mhairi . . . ? Customer.’ The golden woman smiles, with perfect teeth, snaps up the collar of her padded jacket to touch her golden earrings and shimmies past. Her perfume is divine.

There’s movement from the open kitchen; a white shoulder, an arc of head.