Lights out (1)

Twenty minutes after the train had stopped in the tunnel it gave a sigh and a lurch, and the lights went out.

‘Bleedin’ Nora’, muttered the man sitting diagonally across from Marcie.

‘Arfur!’ His wife sat on Marcie’s right. Her knitting needles momentarily stilled, then recommenced their twittering but more emphatically. She hadn’t stopped knitting since they boarded the train – a Fair Isle pattern in four colours.

‘Four colours’, Marcie registered silently, ‘in the dark.’

The incongruity also occurred to Arthur.

‘’Ow can you possibly keep on knittin’, Doris? You can’t see what wool you’re usin’!’

‘Well I can’t do nuffink else, can I?’ Doris retorted, and Marcie heard the whisper of colour in motion.

There was a rustle in Arthur’s vicinity, a muted crack, and a peremptory swish. Marcie was almost certain that Arthur had followed Doris’s example and continued with what he was doing before the lights went out. This meant she was hemmed in by a couple who’d elected to settle at the only occupied table in the carriage, and who were now sitting opposite each other in complete darkness, one opening the newspaper at the crossword and the other knitting in four colours. She fought hysteria.

A growl, swiftly followed by a roil and a gurgle came from Marcie’s right.

Doris said, ‘Let’s ‘ave somefink to eat, Arfur.’

‘Righty ‘o’, Arthur replied, and suddenly the bag Marcie remembered he’d placed on the seat next to him seemed to contain small scrabbling animals. She heard a light metallic flutter and was assaulted by the aroma of raw onion with a bottom note she couldn’t quite place – something earthy and frowsty. She felt a dig in her ribs.

‘Tuck in, love’, said Doris, ‘You must be dead ‘ungry too. There’s beef ‘n’ onion, ‘n’ cheese ‘n’ beetroot.’

‘Oh!’ Marcie replied, astonished. This was the first intimation that either of them had noticed her. ‘Thank you very much.’

She slid her hand across the table towards the onion. Her fingertips navigated an archipelago of grittiness and a broad sticky lagoon, before running aground on a reef of crumpled foil. She traced the corrugations up a stack of pan-loaf slices, pressed her fingers lightly into soft springiness at the top, and drew a sandwich towards her.

She inhaled. Was it beef or cheese? The onion wasn’t strong enough for it to be beef, but she couldn’t smell beetroot. She took a bite.

At exactly the moment Marcie thought ‘There’s no filling’, she tasted sweet yet tart citrus with a tang of onion, and Doris said, ‘I fink there’s a lemon curd on the top.’

The hysteria won, and Marcie dissolved into noiseless laughter.

In memoriam

Unsung but not unnoticed; talked about but never spoken to; you lived on the rim of my childhood, and when you died, people noted your absence, but not immediately.

You were other, alien, not quite human. You were too different even to threaten a fate I and other children tempted when misbehaving.

I haven't thought about you for years. But in those years you have become a woman with a story, and I have become curious.

How did you choose your route when you pushed your battered pram through the town? (And what was in those tattered carrier bags it held?) Were you taking the path of least resistance; one that allowed you a bench to sit on undisturbed in the morning sun, and a wall on which to lean and catch your breath without inciting the fury of a fastidious shopkeeper? Or did you trace over and over the last walk you took with your sweetheart before he left for France?

I can't remember your face, but one evening in the bus station, I watched your hands brushing invisible crumbs from the front of your filthy gaberdine. Your fingers whisked against the navy fabric. They were nut brown and engrimed with dirt. They were long and they were shockingly elegant. They didn't deign to pick up the coin I left for you.

Hogmanay

There's a thrum of excitement in the pit of my stomach which threatens to escape as laughter. Eileen's on my left, unclipping straps to free her concertina. I catch her eye and we both grin broadly. Dave springs up the steps to join us on the stage, tunes his fiddle to my flute, and we race each other through a slip jig. Now we're ready, and as soon as Rab reappears we can start. Rab's our caller, the one who guides the dancers through jigs and reels, who gives good craic to break the ice, who weaves the magic of the ceilidh.

Tonight, for once, I'm playing on home ground. There are very few unfamiliar faces. Morag Stephen from the bakery has just arrived, raising an arm in greeting before bending to unpack her two young daughters from hooded, pink, down-filled jackets. Earlier, auld Jim Robertson, unusually trig in his dress tartan kilt, but still wearing his bunnet, dandered across the hall to join Bruce and Irene from the post office. A group of volunteer workers from a nearby organic farm swoop into laughter; their waistlength dreadlocks and patchwork trousers mark them as incomers as surely as their English accents.

Rab climbs onto the stage, turns to us and beams, then faces the hall which has suddenly hushed in anticipation. In a clear voice, he says simply, 'The Gay Gordon'. People are expecting this. They hurry to form sets. They know what to do. Eileen counts quietly 'two, three, four', and I fall headlong in love with a lonely, liquid, Galway hornpipe.

It's later - perhaps an hour, perhaps much less. The music is a wind rollicking through my heart and soul. Grace notes flick unbidden from my fingertips and the hall is a whooping, stamping, birling, whirling, swirling, skirling rainbow.

Glossary

auld – old

birl - spin

bunnet - bonnet, soft flat hat

craic - chat

dandered - wandered

trig - neat, tidy

Breathing

‘Take up the T’ai Chi stance and connect for nine breaths.’

I do not want to connect with the earth. I don’t want to be here at all.  It’s too cold.  Too damp. Too early.  Well, look at that!  Up, dressed and marching a double buggy round the park by 6!  That is impressive – unless, poor soul, she hasn’t been to sleep.  Yeuch! They’ve mown the lawns - icy clods of wet grass cuttings caught between my toes.  Don’t you dare allow your dog to pee on my shoes, sir!

‘Raise the chi; breathing in and lift.’
The fog must be impenetrable at sea  - all these gulls.  Just look at that haar snaking up river.  It’s even muffled the weir!  I’m going to run out of dog food this morning.  And eggs.  I hope the supermarket by the prison opens at 7 on Sundays too.  Half moon circle left.

‘Inner circle right.  Breathing out.  Step to align.’
And shampoo.   Should have made a list.   For heaven’s sake, Marguerite!! What kind of person makes a shopping list at 5.30 am?  That’s easy: the same kind of person who does her housework in her underwear. Oh no!  I’m going to giggle.  Breathe in; breathe out; breathe in; breathing out.  Breathing in.  Pause.

‘Breathing out and offer.’
This is such a gentle sequence.  Slow.  Smooth.  Your hands drifting across like clouds.  Hold for three breaths. 

‘Inner circle right’
Inner circle left; body weight right; step left; push.  Breathing in; my hands are warm.

Breathing out.

Breathing out.

‘Dragon tail to the right.’
Step left.

Breathing out.
Extend the dragon tail.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

Breathing.

Alter ego

 

Alasdair and Ishbel stood side by side on the path waiting for someone to open the gate to the dog pound.  Alasdair fidgeted with the knot of his tie and quelled an urge to buff his brogues against his calves.  Ishbel had been quite scathing about his decision to wear a shirt and tie, he thought.  ‘Unwarranted’, she’d said.  And when he’d tried to explain why the occasion merited a degree of formality, she’d sniffed derisively and muttered about foolish sentimentality and crying at weddings.

Alasdair breathed in slowly to pacify the butterflies in his stomach, and as he did so, he was surprised to discover that Ishbel was wearing perfume.  Aha! So this afternoon’s visit had moment after all – as important as a bowling-club tea or their wedding anniversary. He was debating whether to risk complimenting Ishbel on her choice of scent, when the pound gate was opened by a thickset, sandy-haired man in shabby corduroys and wellingtons.

‘Ishbel McCortachy’, Ishbel said, circling her right hand like a royal.  She gestured towards Alasdair, ‘My husband’, and continued ‘I rang this morning. We’d like a dog. Are you Drew Sinclair?’

‘Aye’, said the sandy-haired man, and invited them to follow him to his office.

An hour later, Alasdair was in despair.  There were scores of dogs to choose from. He couldn’t single out just one; he wanted to take them all.  He squatted in front of an empty kennel and cooled his forehead against the bars. 

A large greyhound sauntered out of the shadows at the far end the kennel.  The dog was thin and haughty.  It had tattered ears and baldness speckled its grubby, lilac-grey coat.  The dog looked Alasdair over dispassionately, then turned and strolled back into the shadows. 

Alasdair stared after it for a few seconds, then scrambled to his feet. He needed to find Drew. He wanted that greyhound. He’d name it Kenneth.

He set off almost at a run, and narrowly avoided a collision with Ishbel, who was holding a lead attached to what appeared to be an animated hearthbrush.

‘Isn’t she just too sweet’, Ishbel said.  ‘She’s called Fleur. We’re going to take her.’

Fortitude

 

Alasdair eased himself up from the kitchen table, and crossed to the window.

It was wild out there! Clouds fled across a low gibbous moon. The wind skirled through the garden, bullying the rowan tree, flattening lilies, producing peal after discordant peal from the wind chimes.

The wind chimes. They fostered harmony, Ishbel said; balanced the yin and the yang. Alasdair had only to glimpse them for his hackles to rise. Now they were keeping him awake. It was 3 am. He was close to tears.

Alasdair didn't trust yin and yang. They'd been in Ishbel's macrobiotics course. He'd failed to understand why his very yin - or perhaps yang, Ishbel said - home-grown tomatoes wouldn't balance his very yang - or yin - home-grown potatoes. Ishbel had been quite short with him. It wasn't a question of arithmetic but of emotions, she said. And, as she frequently reminded him, her counselling homework had shown Alasdair was no good at emotions.

He'd grant her that. But he knew what he liked. And he liked his garden.

Now the garden was under threat. Ishbel's feng shui course worked outdoors as well as in the house; in fact, Ishbel said, without the garden bit, the house part was a complete waste of time. Alistair had been sure she'd start indoors, and, since indoors was a big project, he'd counted on the course finishing long before she was ready to move outside.

But there were advanced complications in the house Ishbel said. The front door needed moving; at least one bedroom wall was in the wrong place. She'd be better starting with the garden. The obstacles were smaller and, if necessary, she could always re-landscape.

The lions turned out to be obstacles. Sitting on top of the gate posts, they created a negative energy vortex on each side of the drive, Ishbel said. They had to go.

Alasdair needed those lions. His heart lifted when he walked between them.

He became a man of substance - 'gravitas' he called it, when he was sure no one could hear.

The wind gave another screech and buffeted the side of the house. There was another percussive outburst from the wind chimes. Iron entered Alasdair's soul. The lions would stay. He was going to have it out with Ishbel. Now.

He turned from the window and walked purposefully towards the stairs.

Skein o' geese

The sky was lightening.  I pushed my hands deep into my pockets for warmth,
and watched a bloom over the burn swell and thicken to a mist.  The hills to
the west were indigo, the grass underfoot was wan as lichen, and a leafless
silver birch etched a silhouette against the lavender of fading night.

It was still too early for blackbirds to hop and scurry through fallen
leaves rimed with frost.  A silent drift of swans had settled in the reeds.
Here and there, untidy piles of freshly cut cedar sneddings laced the air
with pine, and in the quiet half-light the scent was as startling as a cry.

The lambency of daybreak broadened behind the Black Law, and it seemed the
ancient mountain bent more closely over the town it cradles.

But there's an agitation over the Law head - a twisting scribble in the
silvering light.  There's a whispering - a witching.

The scribble churns, becomes a helix, lengthens, blackens, unfurls its wings
and grows into a mighty chevron.  Heading south, the chevron shifts and
tilts. It curves, and in an undulating garland spans the sky.  It flexes,
yaws and breaks in two.

The sky is a clamour of geese - hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of geese.
They whiffle and gabble, they honk and yawp, they rise and fall.  They jink
from side to side.  Jostling, they deepen the garlands to wedges, surge
again and rickrack to a single swallow's tail.

The skein of geese flies over, trailing fraying threads of stragglers,
singing out its hauntings, till they vanish to a whisper in the silver grey
of dawn.

Spanish Leather

 

Stephanie stood with her feet together and considered the shoes in the shop’s low, angled mirror. She needed a navy-blue court shoe with a modest heel, but she’d fallen in love with these – with their metallic sheen, their peephole toe and their high fluted heel. She knew she was going to buy a pair,

was just a question of which colour. Holly green or violet?

She slid her left foot forwards, then swivelled it sideways and admired the shoe in profile, imagining its green against barely black stockings.

She turned her attention to her right foot. Violet was totally impractical. She had nothing at all to wear with shoes this colour. Why was she still undecided? She tapped her foot in annoyance.

Her foot tapped back.

Or, rather, the violet shoe did.

Stephanie froze. For several seconds she was too shocked to breathe. She glanced round to make sure no one was watching, then cautiously tapped her foot again.

And again, it tapped back.

She slipped her left foot out of the green shoe and into the other violet one, then very deliberately raised and lowered, first one heel, then the other.

There was a thud from the other side of the shop, and Stephanie located a tall, middle-aged man in a dark suit gaping at his boots. They were burgundy leather tooled with roses, and had stack heels two inches high. As Stephanie watched, he gingerly lifted his heels off the ground, then dropped them smartly. When the violet shoes tapped in answer, he span round and stared at them, then raised his head and holding Stephanie’s gaze, stamped his right foot.

Stephanie’s right shoe stamped back.

He stamped his left foot and Stephanie’s left shoe replied.

He crossed the floor, stepping with precision, heel first. The violet shoes pattered out the rhythm of his walk.

Burgundy Boots stopped a yard from the shoes. His eyes smouldered. Stephanie was mesmerised. Her heels began to tap a flamenco.

CLICK click click CLICK click click CLICK click CLICK click CLICK click.

Burgundy Boots joined in.
CLICK click click CLICK click click CLICK click CLICK click CLICK click.
Stephanie spread her arms and started to turn on the spot, circling her wrists as her heels and his tapped faster, and more loudly.
CLICKclickclickCLICKclickclick.
She tossed her head, and stamped, then wheeled away across the floor, flicking and snapping her toes and heels, Burgundy Boots her shadow, step for step. They stamped. They rapped. They clapped in syncopation.
clickCLICKclickCLICKclickCLICK.

She was sinuous; she was sultry; he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
CLICKclickclickCLICKclickclickCLICKclickCLICKclickCLICKclick CLICKclickclickCLICKclickclickCLICKclickCLICKclickCLICKclick
CLICKclickclickCLICKclickclickCLICKclickCLICKclickCLICKclick
CLICKclickclickCLICKclickclickCLICKclickCLICKclickCLICKclick

Stephanie dropped onto a chair, shaky and exhilarated, and gazed adoringly at the violet shoes.
‘Is everything all right, madam?’ a shop assistant asked.

‘Yes, thank you. I’d like the green pair, please’, Stephanie replied. A man passed carrying a pair of burgundy boots, and she felt a tremor from her shoes. ‘As well as these, of course.’

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