Encounters. Barbara Erskine

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      He knew about broken hearts. He knew about the loss which is too great to bear. He sat all night, her head in his lap, his eyes fixed on the embers of the fire as they died one by one to white ash. The night came through the open windows almost as bright as day, scented, warm, moonlit. Only owls were abroad. His dog lay on the mat, its ear pricked to the night noises, its eye occasionally opening, watching its master and the girl in her grief.

      Then the dawn came; rosy, gentle, feeling with hesitant fingers round the undrawn curtains and she slept at last. He picked her up, laid her on the bed and sat beside her, his lined face sad with the knowledge of generations of death and grief, pondering on the words of comfort he alone must give.

      When she opened her eyes at last she lay purged and dreamlike, and she listened to his quiet voice telling the stories of the centuries which console and heal and she smiled at him at last and reached for his hand. The pain had dulled; the scar inside her mind had begun to heal of its own. Sadness there would always be, but he gave her resignation and a little hope that day.

      When the squirrels came again she looked round for the little boy and seeing him called out. He came, nervous, chubby, a wicked cheerful child and she ran with him down to the water and watched him throw stones that skidded and bumped on the glittering surface and after a while she tried to do it too. And when her pebbles sank with a plop into the water she laughed.

      In the store they noticed the change and were glad for her. People stopped to look at her sketches now and she found she could talk again. The world was no longer hostile, no longer viewed behind a wall of thick black glass, against which she beat with bloodied fists. It was sweet and young and she could breathe again.

      Slowly she found she believed once more in the future. She went to the phone box and dialled a friend. Once he had been more. He understood; he bore no grudges; he came to be with her and gently took her hand. He would be the first bastion against loneliness. The first positive step. She accepted too a puppy from Ruaraidh Macdonald and together the four of them, the boy, the girl, her friend and the dog ran on the sands amongst the ribbons of emerald weed.

      Each night she cried a little less, each day she laughed a little more. The agony was numbed. Her eyes were learning how to shine again; she was beginning to know hope.

      The friend saw that she had fallen to the bottom of a muddy pool wide-eyed and gasping, flailing with arms towards the depths of darkness. Then slowly she had risen, inexorably and involuntarily, the will to survive triumphing over the will to die.

      He slept in the bedroom that had been her brother’s. Each day he saw her opening a little, like a flower. But he kept his distance, watchful, afraid lest he overstep some faint invisible line which would drive her once more from the sun. For him she was a sacred virgin, inviolable and goddesslike in her bereavement, with her delicate blue-veined pallor of the skin.

      By the great rock he would sit, the width of the rock between them, idly throwing pebbles at the setting sun, while she dipped her brush in the carmine-stained waters of a rock pool and traced the scene on her page.

      ‘Shall we take a boat to the Island?’ he asked at last after many days, screwing his eyes to watch a cormorant flop from its perch on a weed-draped rock into clumsy flight.

      She nodded absently. ‘It could be fun.’ Once her eyes might have sparkled. Now they looked at him with quiet detached amusement. She saw him as an overgrown schoolboy, as playful and as harmless as the puppy.

      They hired a boat and he rowed her, pulling quietly with the tide towards the dusky island. Trails of light still crossed the rippled water. The cormorant was back on its perch, its wings outspread to dry.

      ‘The evening is like golden velvet,’ she whispered, her fingers trailing in the cool. She faced him across the oars, watching his corded muscles contracting and expanding beneath the dark plaid shirt. Beads of perspiration stood on his brow. His eyes were over her shoulder fixed on the distance, the pupils small with the glowing sunset.

      ‘Are you watching where we’re going?’ He had felt her gaze and smiled without looking.

      ‘You’re doing fine.’ Her voice still cracked when she spoke from a long silence; cracked and hesitated before it sounded true. ‘Don’t hurry; it’s so beautiful.’ Her toes were bare in the warm greasy water which slopped on the bottom boards of the boat. A strand from the fringe of her shawl trailed in the wet, floated and unravelled, scarlet, unnoticed in the oily black of it.

      When the boat grounded on the shingle he let the oars go, dead wings in the heavy rowlocks.

      ‘Shall we walk or sit and watch the sunset?’ he asked, his voice slightly raised above the rustle of the water on the stones and she stood up for answer, her arms out to balance as the boat rocked and she jumped clumsily to the shore.

      They watched the clouds of midges dancing on the dusky water and whirling in columns above the beach. He slapped his neck and arms but her cool skin stayed untouched and she watched him, faintly amused again. There was a broch to see. They looked for it in the gloaming, amongst long dew wet grasses and listened to the lonely wail of a night bird echoing across the water. She held his hand over the uneven ground and to climb a fence and together they untangled the damp fringe of her shawl from the rusty wire. Their fingers touched by accident and she glanced up at his face.

      He smiled and she felt the night wind cold about her shoulders. ‘One day I must go back to London,’ she whispered. ‘To the flat.’

      ‘I’ll be with you, Josie. You needn’t go alone.’

      They gazed at the stones which had once formed a great tower.

      ‘Was this it?’ she whispered. ‘Is this all that’s left?’

      ‘Josie, please.’ His hand tightened over hers.

      She was gazing at the black stones, thinking of the ancient hands which had built it strong and resilient. They were dead too, those men. ‘What’s it all for?’ She sighed and turned away, not seeking an answer and he followed her, his eyes on the ground.

      Near the boat she spread her shawl on the short turf and patted it as she sat down. ‘Come. Make love to me now. That’s all there is left to do.’ She smiled enigmatically, the evening star in both her eyes. He knelt and held her shoulders, puzzled. Seeking to understand.

      ‘You mean it, Josie? That’s what you want?’

      Slowly she unbuttoned her blouse and his fingers, gently seeking her breast felt a prickle of gooseflesh as the cool night wind stroked the warm skin. Somewhere an oystercatcher whistled down the strand as the man bent his lips to the small hard nipples.

      She cradled his head in her arms and watched the distant loom of a lighthouse in the limpid night. She could still see the outlines of the trees on the opposite shore, even without the help of the silver crescent moon, lying on its back above the hills.

      Quietly she slipped down till her head was resting on the ground and the night was eclipsed by the eyes of the man. She was not afraid any more. She was one with the past and the future, the day and the night. The living and the dead both were within her embrace.

      They rowed home at last in the cool of the dawn, watching the spreading ripples as fish rose to break the surface and seeing the trails of weed colouring the turning tide’s edge. Already she looked on the world with calm maternal eyes, sure of the seed she had desired. Her cool grey eyes met those of the СКАЧАТЬ