Flood

  'Cup of tea?' she repeated. He was plunged back into the dream for a moment, and at the same time was aware of an erection beneath the bedclothes. He sat up, concentrating on the tea and the new day, feeling the throb easing.

  'Thanks, Mum,' he said. She began to leave the room.

  'Don't bother going back to sleep now. There's new bread and jam for breakfast. I forgot to get bacon yesterday.'

  He could smell the bread. His erection was dying. Hunger and the need to pee redirected his thoughts. He swung out of bed and began to dress, sitting on the bed when finished to dip the ginger-nuts in the milky tea and suck the flavour from them. He had no plans for today. Unless his mother had anything arranged, he would go for a walk later and see who was around. Perhaps Colin would be in the park. He would not go to the mansion. He had not the courage yet.

  Downstairs, the ritual of Sunday breakfast was waiting like some seldom-visited aunt. On Saturdays he would usually be out of the house before his mother could call him back to eat something. Saturday was the exciting day of the week. Everything else was build-up or anticlimax, but not a minute of Saturday could be wasted. During the weeks prior to the holidays breakfast had been the rush not to be late for school, a hurried, near-involuntary thing. He would cram toast into his mouth while moving from kitchen to bathroom, bathroom to bedroom. Inevitably, along the way his mug of tea and some piece of vital written work would be lost, and a trail of minute crumbs would show the steps taken to locate both.

  Sundays, however, were different. On Sunday there was nothing to hurry for, no school to be late for. On Sunday Sandy had to sit through a lengthy interrogation by his mother while she fed him and poured out mug after mug of tea. She would ask him about his week, and they would discuss important things like potential holidays and television and work. He would answer patiently: she deserved nothing less. He could see how much these mornings meant to her. It was as if she were trying to pretend that they were a normal family, cramming all the mundane details of the week into one overlong morning. She seldom complained on those odd Sundays when a game of football took him careering out of the house, slamming the door on breakfast and conversation and her loneliness. Sometimes when he looked at her across the table he would notice something insignificant in itself such as that her hand shook as she poured the tea, or that she seemed tired, or that she had blistered the back of her hand on the iron leaving a raw red scar against the purer white, and on those occasions something would well up in him: pity and love perhaps, but those words were never adequate.

  She was his mother, and one day she would die. It was a chilling reality. He fended it off with thoughts of Rian.

  Perhaps they would marry one day. On this particular Sunday morning his mother seemed sombre, and he contemplated telling her that he had a girlfriend to cheer her up.

  But having said that, what else could he truthfully tell her?

  No, he could not yet bring himself to share his secret love with anyone - especially a love so strange and uncertain and the knowledge of this isolation caused him to fidget in his chair as his mother leaned over the table with her plate of new bread, heat rising from it even in the warmth of the kitchen.

  'Are you going to church this morning, Mum?' he asked.

  She stopped stirring her tea. She contemplated the bread before her.

  'I don't know,' she said. *Yes, I thought I might go along to welcome the new minister. And then I thought I'd go visit your gran.'

  'Oh yes?' he said. 'Gran and Grandad?' He was losing himself again, this time to the warm, soft wetness of the bread, the saltiness of the butter, the sweetness of the jam.

  He sucked on the paste in his mouth for a long time until the blend of flavours was only a memory, then swallowed and drank some tea and bit off another piece to repeat the process.

  The longer they sat, the brighter Mary became. Her eyes at last took on a truly living look. Sandy looked at the clock.

  'Is it good bread then?' she said. He nodded. She tipped her head a little in agreement. There was a short silence, not uncomfortable. 'And are you still intent on not staying on at school, Sandy?'

  His heart sank.

  'It's important,' his mother continued. 'With jobs so short these days you've got to get as many qualifications as possible. You listen to some of the men down the street.

  They'll tell you. They could kick themselves now for not having stuck in at school. They're all on the midden now that the pits have shut and there's nothing else around here except computers and things that they're not trained for.

  Brains over brawn, Sandy. That's the way of the world. More and more. The world revolves around intelligence. It's the only way you'll escape this place. So you stick in, and if you need any help, well, I'll see what I can do.' She was eating now.

  Tfes, Mum.' It was his best defence. After a few more minutes he looked meaningfully at the wall clock and she caught the trick and followed his eyes.

  'My God,' she said. 'I'd better get dressed if I'm going to the kirk. You finish your breakfast.' He was nodding. She rose from the table. 'I'm away upstairs.'

  Sandy relaxed when she left the kitchen. He could hear the creaking of the floorboards above him, locating for him his mother's exact whereabouts. He could picture her every action from this succession of sounds: she was searching in her chest of drawers for clean bra, knickers, tights. She was over by the wardrobe, selecting and taking out her dress, hanging it up. She was gathering the lot together and was walking across the hall to the bathroom. In the bathroom she locked the door for some obscure reason of propriety, then took off her dressing gown and her nightdress. She squatted to pee, tore off some paper with which to wipe herself, and flushed the toilet. She stood at the small sink and looked in the mirror while running the water, then gave herself a good wash, water splashing the floor and the toilet seat. She then dressed quickly, zipping things and clipping things. Snap, the door was unlocked and she padded in her tights to the bedroom. She sat down at her dressing table and again wasted a minute staring into her mirror. Perhaps she was examining her hair. This she would then brush, using long, slow strokes. Perhaps she would dab a little make-up on to heighten the colour of her face, would spray a tiny amount of perfume on to her neck and her wrists, shaking the wrists to dry the spray, then would pull her dress on, bring her shoes out from beneath the bed and slip them on to her feet. Now her feet made great tapping noises on the floor, like a carpenter at work on a roof. Sandy's eyes fixed themselves on the kitchen ceiling. A moment of stillness now from upstairs, a moment he could never explain, then she was descending with her coat over her arm. He rose from the table.

  Tour tea's getting cold,' she said. Sandy took her coat from her and helped her into it. She thanked him. 'Quite the gentleman this morning,' she said, smiling, though he did it every time she went to church. 'Not that you're keen to see me go or anything.' She checked in her clutch-purse. 'Right.' She looked around her. 'I've got my key, so if you're going Out, lock the door.

  And please wash the dishes, all right?' He nodded. 'See you later.'

  She bent down and he offered his cheek to her kiss. Perfume surrounded him, embraced him

  with its curious strengths. He was smiling all the time. She looked so different when dressed up: so cultured, so otherworldly.

  She might be beautiful. Sandy had a guilty peek at her legs as she walked to the front door. The boys at school had said that she was a bit of a ride, so she might well be beautiful too.

  Iain Darroch stood in his puffed vestments and welcomed his congregation one by one at the porch. Some of the older ones looked him over obtrusively, as if they were planning to buy him like beef at market. Many, indeed, had come solely to inspect the new minister. Some of the younger women stood together gossiping in the kirkyard. They looked at him occasionally, and straightened their backs when doing so. It was a curious sign, and Darroch, though he had some knowledge of human behaviour behind him, was at a loss as to its meaning. He thought perhaps
that they were admiring his stature. He was a good inch over six feet, and his chest and shoulders seemed broader than usual due to the unwieldy amount of cloth over them. His stomach sagged only slightly - unnoticed under the robes in any case.

  The little old women in their little old hats had trouble climbing the few steep stone steps to the doorway. They puffed and croaked then extended greetings to him, smiling with rows of stained false teeth. He smiled back. His teeth were, excepting two crown fillings, exclusively his own. He was as afraid of dentists as he was of damnation, sometimes believing them to be one and the same thing. He checked himself, raised his eyes briefly and, he hoped, piously to heaven, and begged forgiveness for the flippancy.

  A breeze was blowing cold enough to chill his handshake.

  The men who shook his hand were members, almost to a man, of the Masonic Lodge. He returned their greetings cordially. The church was filling. He had spent the morning going over his notes one last time. Today he knew that he might have the sympathy vote behind him. The real test would be sustaining the momentum over the next few Sundays. Ideally, he should start off strongly, yet get stronger in the weeks that followed. The butterflies in his whole trunk danced a fandango. It was like being at the dentist's.

  The single bell was pealing, activated by an ingenious electric system. No need for a bell-puller in this day and age, unfortunately. A tall well-dressed woman was now treading carefully over the gravel of the kirkyard in her highish heels. Some of the gossiping parties looked at her and then spoke quietly among themselves. He was struck by her dark features, her air of distance from all around her, her white hair blowing out behind her as she moved into the breeze.

  She climbed the steps and took his hand.

  'Mary Miller,' she said. 'How do you do. We live down by where the colliery used to be, at the foot of Cardell.'

  He looked into her eyes. They were hazel, but could almost have been black, hidden as they were under a canopy of darkest eyelash and eyebrow.

  'I'm very pleased to meet you, Mrs Miller. My name's Iain Darroch, newly arrived from Edinburgh.' He knew that she had a son. The resemblance between her and the boy of whom he had asked directions was stunning: the same dark aloofness, the same bearing of isolation.

  'It's actually Miss Miller, though I don't much go in for titles,' she said, smiling. He blinked. Surely he could not be wrong. Discretion was needed here. He bowed his head slightly, but kept silent, smiling also. The striking woman moved into the church, her heels resounding until they reached the carpeted aisle. Having met with most of the congregation, Iain Darroch slipped around to the back of the church quietly, opened a little door there, and prepared himself for the service.

  Climbing a few wooden steps, he

  would come to a small door which would take him into the church proper and only a few steps away from his pulpit. He would walk solemnly to the base of the pulpit, climb the stairs to its small, paunch-high door, push it open, and enter the lap of the Lord God to preach His words. Prior to this, the session clerk would have placed the large, heavy Bible open on the rim of the pulpit. He was waiting now for the clerk to come and collect the Bible. God, please be with me this day as I face my trial by jury. Please don't let me bungle anything or seize up. Please, dear Lord, don't let it be like the dentist's.

  'We will now sing hymn number three-nine-six. Hymn three hundred and ninety-six. For those of you with the Revised Hymnary, this can be found in the little pamphlets on the pews. Hymn three-nine-six,

  "The King of Glory standeth

  Beside that heart of sin;

  His mighty voice commandeth

  The raging waves within;

  The floods of deepest anguish

  Roll backwards at His will,

  As o'er the storm ariseth

  His mandate, 'Peace, be still'"...

  Hymn three-nine-six then.' The organist played the tune while the congregation coughed and turned over the pages of their hymnbooks and pamphlets. Now the organ ceased, and the congregation quietly rose.

  The young minister's hearty voice drowned out, to his own ears, much of the muted singing from the pews a dizzy depth beneath him. At the singing of the hymn's second line he saw a few eyes wander from their books towards the dark woman, so erect and contented in her pew. She stood to Darroch's right, alone in one of the side pews. The eyes of some of the women strayed often towards her, and now more than before. The heart of sin. Iain Darroch thought that he knew something now of her son. He knew, moreover, of her isolation, this woman with the eyes of a wounded but indomitable soul. He nearly lost his place in the hymn, but recovered with a quick glance at the next line. The poor woman, and so beautiful. He had wandered into a town of enmity and spitefulness, into a town of age-long memories and the slowest forgiveness. How could he remedy things?

  And dear Lord, should he even try?

  '"To dwell with thee above."'

  The organ ground its way to a stop. The organist, a Mr Bogie, had a painful style and was of limited resources. His face was ruddy with piety, and his hands gleamed as though soaped to perfection. The small choir sat down, followed by the rest of the congregation. Iain Darroch began the intimations. It was a long list. This was the social side of the Church of Scotland, the side most people relished so far as he could tell. The Church was for coffee mornings and bazaars and Young Mothers' groups and whist drives and the like. The Church was for a society of coffee-swilling whist-players, no different from those portrayed so keenly in The Rape of the Lock, one of Darroch's favourite poems. This was a society, moreover, which held hatred at its core, hate and bitter hypocrisy. There would be some strong sermonising in the next few weeks. Pity welled up in the young man.

  Who could he ask about Mary Miller? Perhaps he had one ally: the Reverend Walker of Cardell Parish Church. He would invite himself to the older man's manse. He finished the intimations.

  'The collection,' he said, 'will now be taken.' The organist began some unassuming dirge. Iain Darroch sat himself down and did some thinking.

  He went all the same, drawn by her irresistible magnet. He walked around the perimeter of the mansion, hoping that she would somehow sense his presence and come down from her high prison to see him. He whistled and kicked some stones at imaginary goalposts on the walls of the house. He hacked out interminable thistles with his heel. There was no sign of life around the mansion, only the distant shouts and curses from the golf course.

  He suddenly felt very afraid. What was he doing there, and what could he say to Robbie or Rian should he encounter them? He felt like the dog tied up outside the butcher's shop.

  He crept away from the house and climbed on to the wall adjoining the field of barley. He looked up at the boarded windows, behind which might lie either his girlfriend or else an empty and moaning puzzle. His girlfriend? The word seemed unfit for their strange, queasy relationship. Internecine was a word he had found quite recently in a novel. He had jotted it down in his list of unusual words and had found its meaning in a dictionary. It seemed to fit his situation.

  Internecine. It had a vague sound like nectar and intercourse, and like nectarine. Internectarine. He smiled, still looking at the house. He would write a poem and call it

  'Internectarine', and it would be about two lovers and a peach. He had only the vaguest idea of how to link the two concepts, but then that hardly mattered in poetry.

  He slid from the wall into the crumbly earth of the field.

  He worked his way around its edge, stroking his face with a ripe and broken beard of barley. He might go to the cafe if it were open. He had a little money. He could go to the newsagent's. He remembered with guilt that he had not washed the breakfast dishes, such as they were. His mother would be home from church, fresh and humming, in a little while. He jogged to the far wall, climbed over, and ran all the way home.

  1985

  The Flood

  1

  'Come in, come in.'

  The Reverend Walker was older than Darro
ch had imagined.

  Middle age had waved him goodbye and he was

  settling into a slow, steady pre-retirement stage. He gestured for the young man to go through to the sitting room, then closed the front door with a nervous cough.

  Darroch disliked people's nervous coughs. They made him feel awkward. He studied the elderly man's back. It had been strong and straight once, perhaps as recently as ten years ago. Now, however, it was stooped as if in a constant prayer for forgiveness. Death, Darroch supposed, was a preeminent concern of the old. He thought about it himself often enough with just the slightest tingling of foreboding.

  What price then old age and the clutching of fragile straws?

  'Sit yourself down. I'm sorry we've not been able to meet sooner. I've been in hospital for some tests. Gracious, these days there's not a part of the body that's left sacrosanct after a visit to the hospital. These doctors think they know it all.

  They think they have some kind of divine secular right when it comes to poking and prodding the flesh.' The old man scratched at his rich, whitened hair. 'I don't know,' he said.