A Superior Spectre Read online

  The airport was quiet. Only about four planes leave per day, and they’re often cancelled if under-booked. Selling the flat had given me enough money for the trip, and for accommodation and food to get me through to the end. I left in the morning. I had been due for an appointment at the hospital that evening.

  I checked my bag at the machine and then sat at the gate and read the Caravaggio bio, pausing frequently as panic struck a small, sharp tap to my head, just above my left eye. I don’t think I was panicked about what I was doing; it’d been meticulously planned and I was long resolved to it. The panic was about getting caught, and about being made to go back. I’d read carefully about how to remove the ID chip when I got there. Thank God the legislation never went through for ID chips to be placed in the head. Though cutting into my own double-chinned face might not have been much of a problem.

  I knew I’d be scanned leaving the country, and arriving at my destination, but I hoped after that I would manage to slip away. Scotland is perfect because in patches it is still wild and remote, and cash is widely used, since the Scots are smart, or maybe just suspicious, and have seen the banks fall in so many other places, including of their former oppressors in England. And, you can still arrive in England and quietly cross the border into Scotland (or so I’d been told). As long as you are de-chipped and avoid any places where that might be noticed, you can hole up quietly in the Highlands.

  In Edinburgh I had an apartment on Canongate, above a shop, for two nights. Enough time to stock up, and an apartment small and dark enough to feel I could hide, when I became afraid. I didn’t know whether my paranoia was logical, whether the Australian government, or any government, would have spies, or satellites seeking chip-free warm bodies, marking them as suspicious. But entire countries didn’t have the implant ID-systems, and citizens of those countries were allowed in as tourists, so it wasn’t probable. Still, there would have been phone calls by then. To the people who knew me, to Faye, to Henry. A knock on the door at my old place, where they’d find new people, clueless as to where I’d gone but puzzled at all my stuff still being there. Perhaps they would have reported that straight away, after trying to call me.

  That first night in Edinburgh I stayed inside, with these unanswerable questions. I struggled with the decision to have a day off the drink. It had always made sense in my old life, to refrain. I guess old habits die hard, to put it lazily. I caught myself in the mirror, a world away, and I still worried about putting on weight, about feeling (more) disgusted with myself. I found it hard to adjust to the fact it didn’t matter anymore.

  I went to bed early and had to have a little giggle at myself, for being so typically human, when my thoughts strayed to how it all began, how I began. The dying man reflecting. I’m sickened at the typicality. And so I cannot speak it now. Except, maybe a glimpse of the enduring image … He haunts me like Tadzio, the young love object of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Though I was not Aschenbach, and have resolved never to be: an old man leering at youth. I was young, too, when it happened. He had black hair and was thin and hunched, a fringe in his eyes, eyes that held ironic knowledge. He was my girlfriend’s younger brother. She dared us to kiss once (her own erotic curiosity, I suppose) and our teeth and tongues clashed. I felt too large and soft, too sensitive – the Brian Wilson of the trio. They could cut me with their disapproval of a film, a song. After the kiss, we three took shots of stolen gin and curated retro music on our screens. My heart pumped with nervous inadequacy every time it was my turn to choose. I made out with my girlfriend, and behind us Tadzio rubbed the crotch of his black pants, his eyes slinted at the TV. He knew I could see. His name was Eric, like the Disney prince.

  Often we don’t realise until years after a taste has developed what the formative moment could have been.

  Is ‘taste’ the right word? I think it might be. Taste can be bodily: I feel a song or painting through a quickening of blood, the hairs on my arms raising, a clenching in my abdomen. At the same time, there can be a sublime departure from the flesh. The combination of the two – flesh and not – lodges the sensation as a development, to be built upon. Taste is fed and fattens.

  The next morning, Edinburgh was perfectly autumnal. The sky was grey and a mist hung about the castle. I walked up winding Canongate, past whisky shops and museums, turned left at North Bridge, and followed my crumpled map for another half-hour, puffing despite the cool morning, down a few turns until I arrived at a large stone block, with a tavern on the corner and a couple of ornamental red phone booths. I pressed a buzzer by a tall studded iron door, painted blue, as per the instructions. I saw a large green mass, Arthur’s Seat, rising out to the right of my vision.

  A voice finally came through the speaker. I said the code word and was buzzed in.

  I entered a small enclosed courtyard with chequerboard tiles covered with plastic and dust due to maintenance. Ahead of me was an iron staircase, which I took to number six.

  A barefoot man in denim overalls and a white T-shirt waved me in. ‘Jeff, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He led me into a sitting room with boxes piled on and around an antique settee, all wrapped in cheap Christmas paper. There were three screens on the walls: two playing the same music video and one playing porn.

  ‘Gimme a minute,’ he said, and sucked on an electronic cigarette while shifting boxes here and there, mumbling my name. ‘An andserv and an unregistered screen, right?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Aha.’ He found my items beside the settee, and I pulled out a wad of cash. ‘Now, as you probably know, this particular model of service android was pulled off the market and the designer was laid off. I’m not gonna judge – just keep it out of sight, right? You were never here.’

  ‘I know all that.’

  ‘I move on a lot, anyway; you won’t get ’em onto me.’

  ‘I don’t plan to.’

  ‘Okay.’ He looked me in the face for probably the first time. He seemed to take a breath, relax a little. A woman’s mouth made an Oh, Oh, Oh in the video behind him.

  ‘Well, cheers,’ I said. I picked up my package – surprisingly light – and left.

  The next day I was heading west.

  L eonora was on her knees, sprinkling wet tea leaves over the ashes to stop them flying into the air, before brushing them onto the shovel. The fire was too far gone to be stoked. She hoped that her setting skills would be adequate for the Horseshoe Inn. She added paper, dry wood, and peat from the scuttle, enabling space for air. She set it well back in the grate, so the smoke would not come too much into the room. She struck a match to the paper and was pleased by how fast it took.

  Afterwards, she beat the cushions on the sofa, replacing one of them neatly over a wine-dark stain. The sitting room was bathed in grey light from the street-facing window. She paused to watch a well-dressed man and his large golden dog walk by. She recognised him as William Wink, the young laird of Chapeltown, but she was just as interested in the dog: glossy and energetic. She’d met the handsome laird before, who would come to discuss land matters with her father, but never the beastie. It looked enthusiastic: a pup, perhaps, raising its nose to follow the laird’s hand through the crowd. Children with dirty faces stopped and lifted their hands in excitement. I am one of them, she thought, and then got back to neatening the room for those guests who might like to sit and overheat with drams of whisky by the fire instead of being out in the mild summer air.

  Penuel’s brother, the innkeeper, was Archibald Cruikshank, a portly man with a papery waistcoat clinging to him like a bottle’s label. He had looked Leonora up and down, told her she’d do, and then showed her to a tiny room at the end of the upstairs hall with an iron-framed bed, a set of drawers, and a small square window in the slope of the roof. Since the room went to another woman for the other days in the week, she was not to leave anything there, he said. The neat anonymity of it was daunting to Leonora, a half-burned candle the only sign of life.

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p; ‘You’ll eat before the guests at two, and then start at six on the morrow,’ he’d said, before closing her in. Since it was near two, she presumed she had no duties before then. She sat on the lumpy bed, furrowing her brow. She then knelt on the bed to look out the window. She gasped at the proximity of a tiny orange-breasted chackie, its body upright in chirpy, clicky song. She watched it until it flitted off. The bird had returned to her some sense of calm. She unpacked a few belongings into the drawers, and sat the book she was reading, Cosmos, about the ‘natural sciences’, on the bedside table. She could see the bird as a sign that this job would be tolerable.

  She learnt her duties over a salty bowl of soup and tough bread: tend the fires and tidy all common areas before breakfast, then help with the breakfast service, clear the breakfast dishes and clean the guests’ rooms entirely if they are leaving, or tidy if they are staying on. It was a small inn, of six rooms in varying sizes. Depending how long the cleaning took, Leonora might have an hour to spare before she was to help prepare and serve dinner, which rolled into a cold supper. She would then help clean up afterwards. Mr Cruikshank said it all very seriously, with a frown, but she noticed that as he sipped at his ale with more vigour his face began to relax and spread out.

  The only men Leonora had really known were older, authoritarian, but familiar. She had known them since childhood: her father, Mr Anderson, Rev Moggach, Mr Grant. Of other men she’d only really had glimpses, and her only tool in interacting with them was politeness. She wasn’t sure if something extra was required in a relationship with an employer.

  But she had no more time to consider her situation, as she was sent straight to the kitchen – which, to her, looked as chaotic as the Avon after a storm – to help auld Cait with the dinner. Leonora tried to make herself useful but her cooking knowledge only extended to one pan over a fire, with time to contemplate and prepare a meal. Cait called out things like, ‘Salt the tatties’, and Leonora didn’t even know where they were, and couldn’t find where to drain the water as the tubs and buckets on the cramped central table were full of dirty dishes and old, grey water. Cait threw plates at her and told her to take them into the dining room, and Leonora was aware that to the guests she must look dirty and red-faced. She trembled as she set the plates on the table, feeling an intense inner dread that this was what life was; this was what was meant by moving up in the world.

  By the time she got to bed, after finding the tipping place in the alley outside and refilling the tubs with hot water to scrub her way through a substantial pile of dishes, her head was ringing with Cait’s cutting and desperate voice, her yells, and her mix of insults and encouragement: ‘What, were ye born yesterdee?’ ‘Dinnae worry, Lass, ye’ll pick it up!’ Leonora fell quickly asleep, and in the morning felt more tired than she usually would. She dressed in her room and then crept downstairs and outside to tip her pot in the privy. She gave her face a good scrub in the sink in her room, and used a wet rag to dab at the spots of food on her dress from the night before. She needed to wash yesterday’s underclothes, but the window was too small in her room for them to have any chance to dry, and she wasn’t sure where else they might be hung out of sight of the guests. Maybe she’d work up the courage to ask Cait.

  O n the third morning at the Horseshoe, Leonora was tidying the common areas and working herself up for the breakfast service. Mr Cruikshank had assured her it would be easier than dinner, and she had found that it was: fewer menu options, and pots of coffee and tea from which the guests could top up their cups if necessary.

  She had her hair back in a low knot, parted in the middle. When she came into the kitchen she felt cleaner and calmer than on the previous two mornings; the room was just that bit more familiar. Plus, she was closer to going home. How she longed for it. Cait was quiet, in that way Leonora’s father was in the mornings, especially after a night of drinking. Leonora respected the quiet, the guests’ low murmur and the clink of cutlery.

  Guests began to settle into the leather booths with high oak backs across one wall, and the smaller tables and chairs in the centre and by the window. Leonora poured the first round of strong black tea and coffee into their cups, and brought out bowls of steaming porridge from Cait’s big pot. She noticed a tall, well-dressed gentleman unscrew a flask and pour a careful measure of whisky into his porridge, before stirring it gently clockwise three times, then tapping his spoon on the edge. Like the dog that rises and stretches facing the same direction every morning, she thought.

  Her face grew warm when the young laird of Chapeltown entered the room, the last to come down, carrying some semblance of sleep in his eyes. She hadn’t seen him again after spotting him on the street and she hadn’t known he was staying at the inn.

  As she said good morning and poured his tea, he looked up and his eyes widened in recognition. She caught the scent of his barley-coloured hair with its sheen of oil.

  ‘Why, it’s Miss Duncan,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you had come up to town.’ Though his family’s Scottish blood ran deep, the laird’s words were precise and pronounced, with only a gentle Highland lilt and burr, indicating an education abroad.

  ‘I am working half the week, Mr Wink, at the Horseshoe, and am back to Chapeltown to help my father as usual for the rest of the time.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad to hear you haven’t abandoned us completely; you always have been a very good help in the lambing.’

  Leonora hadn’t realised that Mr Wink had ever taken particular notice of her. When his father had been alive, young Master Wink never really did say much at all, just stood and nodded behind him as rounds were done of the tenancies. But Leonora, and the people of Chapeltown and the braes, had much warmth for the Winks as landlords, because the Winks had always worked with them and respected clan systems, been satisfied with the income from rents and the harvest, and accommodated sheep while not forcing them off their land like so many others around Scotland in recent times.

  Leonora was happy that he’d mentioned the lambing, a time when she was able to be of help to both her neighbours and the animals. Her hands were small and she was known to have a certain skill at recognising whether the nose and front legs were in position, and whether the birth canal was expanded enough for unassisted birth. She had successfully aided delivery of many lambs, with only a couple of distressing failures.

  The first birth, when she was eight years old, was one of the most difficult. Mr Anderson, who lived at Barnsoul, had asked if she would like to help, as she had been sitting on the grass watching the sheep’s struggle.

  ‘Ye’ve got nice small hands,’ he said.

  Mr Anderson rubbed Leonora’s hands and arms in butter and told her to reach inside the sheep and feel for the shape of a lamb, telling her the way all the limbs should be facing.

  ‘I think the head is backwards,’ she said.

  ‘Good, Lass, all ye have to do is push the whole body back into the roomy part – nae the part where yer arm is squeezed – and gently bring tha’ head aroond sae head and feet are all facing toward the road tae freedom.’ He spread a gap-toothed grin.

  ‘Right then,’ Leonora said.

  ‘Best nae to push on the jaw, as it might hurt the lamb’s chance of feedin’. The eye sockets can be a place to grip.’

  Leonora felt a little horrified at that, imagining someone’s fingers jammed in her eyes, but she trusted the old farmer, and so pushed and carefully manoeuvred the head, the mother bleating and warm, until the lamb was in the correct position.

  ‘Right, just move that creature forward noo, so she’s comin’ toward tha’ road,’ Mr Anderson instructed.

  Leonora did so, and then slowly edged her arm out of the mother. The lamb was very soon to follow, tiny and coated in fluid, which the mother immediately began to clean off with her tongue, their black faces together.

  Leonora smiled with delight up at Mr Anderson and ran home to tell her father. ‘It’s p’haps not the best occupation fer a young lady,’ he said.

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nbsp; But over the years he bit his tongue as he saw how much it pleased her to help. She wondered too, as she got older, whether her father had been worried about her knowing, too young, the functions of animals: the blood and heat, the humping and the bodies swollen with young. She was an intelligent enough child to realise that it must be a similar process for people, though they were much more secretive about it. That they saw themselves as loftier beings, blessed with the knowledge of God, she thought.

  ’Tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.

  She heard Cait calling from the kitchen that the breakfast plates were ready. ‘Please excuse me, Mr Wink,’ Leonora said, ‘I’ll be back with your breakfast.’

  She served the earlier patrons first, who had finished their porridge, with the plates of beef square sausage, eggs, bannocks, tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon links and fried bread. She cleared their other plates and topped up their beverages.

  She took porridge to Mr Wink and refilled his tea. He continued to engage her, and she was polite but strained. She wasn’t quite sure where she stood with people of a higher social standing, as she hadn’t had much chance to interact with them, and so found conversation difficult. She was also aware that she had a reaction to him, a physical one. She could feel the heat and size of him, smell the sleep still on him, and it made her hot in her cheeks and sent blood to her lips. But she didn’t want him to think her wanton, so she was awkwardly polite, and continued to excuse herself, as she did have work to do.

  When she brought his cooked plate, she did, however, ask about the dog. They called him Rua-reidh, he told her, named for his rusty colour and smoothness. He’d spent the night with the horses in the inn’s stable.