A Superior Spectre Page 3

  ‘It’s an entirely new breed of retriever,’ Mr Wink said, ‘developed near Glen Affric on Baron Tweedmouth’s estate. But maybe that doesn’t interest you.’

  ‘Oh, it does,’ she said. ‘I think dogs are the most wonderful companions.’

  ‘Well, so do I,’ he said, ‘loyal and hard-working, but they also know how to have fun. Roo just loves the water. If he has to fetch fowl from the middle of the Avon, all the better.’ When he smiled, Mr Wink looked younger than his age, which Leonora knew to be about two and twenty.

  She loved the image of the dog splashing and wading out, returning with a bird among his teeth, the edges of his mouth turned up.

  ‘You should really come out to Dearshul to watch him in action, when it suits you.’

  Leonora was torn between what was proper (surely he was just being polite) and a genuine wish to see the dog in action while walking the grounds of Dearshul.

  She answered, ‘Thank you very much, that’s so kind,’ which left an answer vaguely open. ‘Now, I must let you eat, and continue with my tasks.’

  He smiled warmly at her and she walked away, with an awareness of the blood reaching every corner of her body, and feeling every part of her skin against her clothes: her shin, her hips, her chest. When he left he tipped his hat at her and told her he would see her soon. She did not want to admit it, but she hoped that would be true.

  I had decided on the West of Scotland because it was where my mother’s family were from, but also because of its character: still remote, wild. It took a day to get there, via Inverness, on two buses. The second one had vinyl seats, like an old school bus, and no toilet. It wove among an increasingly dark and looming landscape, the edges of the bus threatening to tip over into glens and lochs, barrelling toward sheep on the roads and sending them scattering onto hillsides. There were only five people on the bus: a family who looked like they’d been to Inverness for a big shop, and a man slightly bedraggled, hair too long like my own.

  We came into Gairloch as the sun turned the wide sky a breathtaking coral. And from here, at the time of recording, I’m reluctant to tell you where I continued in a taxi and boat. I haven’t decided whether this recording is something I’ll arrange to be sent back to Australia after I’m gone. A last hurrah, a confession, something to explain the terrible things I’ve done. If so, I want to keep this place a secret, for others like me to find. Though I do hope there is no one like me.

  Or perhaps I will just destroy this. Take no responsibility. Life is chaos; people are all the time causing minute fluctuations that will change history’s path. Or creating a language to describe the past which then changes its meaning. Academia of course posits this as a good thing; history looks different now that we understand that everyone had thoughts, feelings, voices.

  The animals. I’ve been thinking more about them, since the trips I’ve had with Leonora. They have become a part of me, too. The tits and robins on this small island, the eagle that circles, the seals that frolic on the far side of the island. They are all still here. In existence, I mean. Maybe that’s enough. For those animals to have survived.

  So I made my way here, and Bethea, the landlord, met me. She was a little hunched, but agile, with long grey hair and layers of light knits over her body. She took me and my bag in a small boat over to the island, even though I assured her I’d be fine on the long rickety footbridge – the only other access point to the mainland. The island is inside a kind of cove, with a small village on the opposite banks, and no businesses besides a pub, which is just around the cove and out of sight for me. Bethea didn’t say much; the main sounds were the whirring of the boat’s motor, the shimmer of parting water, and, carrying from the village, the sound of a lone fiddle.

  ‘Tha’s McGregor,’ she said. ‘He plays this time every night.’

  She didn’t ask me any questions about what I was planning, or why I was there; she simply pointed out landmarks – a wooden sculpture; the site of a drunken wreck – and then jumped out to tie the boat and reach over a hand to help me step up onto the rocks with my wobbly, unseaworthy legs.

  ‘Closest shop’s on the way to Gairloch. There’s a bike in that outbuilding y’re welcome to borrow. There’s also a community car, goes at certain times. ’S’all by the phone for ye.’

  I thanked her, and paid her the balance for three months ahead.

  She got back in the boat, and it hummed away, and the fiddle stopped playing. I looked up at the arc of the sky, for this was the kind of place where you could see, clearly, the way it curved.

  I opened the unlocked door of the two-storey cottage and took my shoes off in the entrance. To my right was a kitchen and living room, and to my left was a winding, carpeted staircase. I brought my bag up to the second storey, where I found my bedroom and a bathroom under the slope of the roof. Just like Leonora at the inn, I thought, though I had much more room. The bedroom did have a pervasive, greeny smell of damp, and though it was cool I cracked the windows to air it out. I paused to take in the view from one side of the cove. A couple of boats were anchored, one wooden and old, one white and new. It was a view I’d grow very used to, being able to note the variations in the positions of the boats and track the weather by the stillness of the water.

  I placed my bag and box – the andserv – on the bed. I would get to it soon. First, I went down to the kitchen, cheaply updated sometime early this century, a messy mix of glass and formica and steel. There was a layered, trapped scent of oily fish – slightly urinous – and something more meaty, such as lamb fat. A large red switch sat above the sink for the generator. There were detailed instructions beside it, I noticed with relief. The fridge motor kicked over, startling me, and I took a peek inside. Bethea had provided mylk, coco-butter; in the cupboards there were oats and barley bread, plus cans of protein. Bless her, I thought. On closer inspection, to my dismay, the mylk smelt sharp and the bread had patches of mould. Perhaps these items had been left over from the last guest.

  I made a plain porridge with oats, coco-butter and water, and sat at the table in the bright kitchen, unable to see anything but darkness outside.

  The night was still and it was so quiet you could hear the blood in your ears, as when you’re immersed in water.

  I was here.

  What did I think I was doing?

  I could have lived a long time more. I could have tried harder to be better. I could have sought help. I could still go back. I could make it up to everyone I’d hurt. I really had loved Faye.

  No. This was where I was meant to be. Far away, alone. The experience was meant to be difficult. It would force me to go to these places in my mind, and I couldn’t, now, escape myself. But I had managed to escape everyone else, hadn’t I? Was I cowardly? Or was it right to separate myself, to not use up their time, their resources, when they could be used on someone who’d been a good person?

  And yet I had shown self-control, hadn’t I, in my life? Others didn’t. They sickened me. Yes, this was right – my last bastion of control, complete control over the self; taking the sick self unto death. With dignity.

  But I am sorry, if I’ve ruined everything.

  It would be so like me.

  So I sat for a while and then I went back upstairs to open the box. The andserv was folded in half with the head unattached. I put it together on the bed. When I plugged it in, the head rolled to the side, as in sleep, and I felt the need to put a pillow under it. The body was slim, with a synthetic overlay much like skin, and simple clothing. The andservs were supposed to be non-threatening, but the designs had changed a little lately after people realised that the more they looked like us, the more we were disturbed – by the idea of replacement; obsolescence, perhaps. They returned to being appliance-like. I tried to tell myself that the only reason I’d tracked down this earlier, more human-like model was because I wasn’t afraid of the way it looked, that I was curious about it.

  It – he – had blond hair, like Leonora’s William Wink. I laid down n
ext to him and found he came up to my shoulder, the size of an adolescent. I touched his cold hand, protruding from a rubberesque jumpsuit like something out of Star Trek. That reminded me of Faye introducing me to that show, the Next Generation series, and the way young Wesley’s jumpsuit was all one colour, which revealed more, or seemed to, than the red and black of the rest of the crew. I still felt the guilt, thinking about it there on the bed; I couldn’t get past the sick feeling that accompanied the desire as I became aroused, with the sleeping robot beside me.

  Afterwards, I wanted to throw the prone andserv out of the window, only because needing him there seemed like a caving on my part, that I hadn’t quite managed to meet the challenge of being completely alone, of suffering alone. That was what I should have been doing.

  I hated that the appliance helped me to feel less lonely: just the human-like mass of it on the bed.

  I cleaned myself up in the bathroom, washing my face as well. What did it matter now, that I had given in? Orgasm is a private act, anyway, because no one knows what is inside your head, what will tip you over, and no one ever has to. Crying is the same. There’s always some sorrow in the hollow of your gut that gets expressed when you tear up. But I’d always felt like those deeper thoughts of mine oozed from my skin; I could never justify them as pure fantasies, which don’t harm anyone – there was always intent.

  L eonora had opted to walk back to Chapeltown, because it wouldn’t be this warm for much longer, and after a few busy days at the inn she’d barely touched tree or grass, or felt the sun on her skin. Her small case had gone on ahead with the coach. The journey would take more than two hours if she followed the road but she chose to cross through moorland and forest. The trees were coated in a webby, pastel lichen. She turned at the crack of a branch and spotted a pine marten, sniffing at the air above her. About the forest floor there were small, quick-moving birds. She had to lift her skirts high to avoid tears, and her arms and legs were both soon tired, so she stopped to rest against a tree at the edge of the woods.

  She was suffering a specific ache in her head that she did once a month, after the bleeding. It was inside the very marrow of her skull, from the roots of her teeth to the bone of her brow. It felt hollow and cool, like the rod of an iron gate in the snow. She yawed her jaw and rubbed her temples to try to displace the feeling, though she knew it would persist for days, sapping her energy and mood, making her want to close her eyes.

  In the woods it was quiet, and that was soothing. She was also gloriously alone, something the women in the novels she’d read hardly got to be. It seemed the higher your standing, the less free you were. She often wondered about the girls who laid out their mistress’s clothes, swept out her fireplace, cooked the dinner in a room below the house. Were they free to walk in the woods? To play with the animals and get their dresses dirty, so long as it was out of sight of the ladies and gentlemen? Though Leonora’s father had some idea of her moving up in the world, there was only so far she could go without money and a large estate. Though he had told her it was changing, in places like Edinburgh and London, where the gentry and the poor might all be in a building together (albeit on different levels). Where doors were edging open, as long as you dressed and spoke well. Where you may not exactly marry a lord, but perhaps someone with decent blood in a noble profession, such as a surgeon.

  Leonora’s father had failed at planting these dreams into her head. She was too happy, here, lifting her feet in a kind of prance across the moor, stopping to bounce a little on the spongy ground, despite her exhaustion, heading back to the small cottage where she had everything she needed and wanted.

  Her father was picking in the garden when she arrived home. He smiled to see her, and handed her a cluster of bright green leaves with a tiny white flower.

  ‘Chickenweed,’ said Leonora.

  ‘Aye, I just swapped a bunch of it, and some fruit, for a trout caught by Anderson in the Avon,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll cook the fish up for supper,’ she said. ‘I just need tae have a sit first.’

  ‘Tell me how it was?’ her father asked.

  ‘Over supper,’ she said, touching his arm and then turning toward the house.

  ‘Oh, Lae?’ her father called, as she was at the back door. ‘Miss Cruikshank will be joining us again this e’en.’

  Leonora nodded through an unreasonable dark cloud. She went inside and brewed lady-of-the-meadow tea, hoping it would soothe her head a little so she could make conversation with the woman. It seemed an effort after being around so many people over the past few days. She would rather be alone with her father and early to bed, reading a few pages of a book before her eyes grew tired.

  She sat on the wooden stool by the fire and drank her tea, which had a sweet, toothy heat in the nose and on the palate. She noticed that the room was swept, the pots in place, and the dishes clean and stacked.

  She frowned. The exhaustion was overwhelming; she felt at the edge of tears. She swallowed them down with the tea.

  Still feeling heavy, Leonora stood and sighed and unwrapped the fish. She washed the slime off with water left in the kettle and then patted it dry with a cloth. She laid it on a bench by the fire and knelt in front of it. Once she’d pulled head and guts away, she threw them with a slap into a small bucket. She would cook it whole, stuffed with herbs and butter, and serve it with tatties.

  First she took the bucket and called Duff to the back door to feed her the head. Duff snapped it in her mouth from Leonora’s outstretched fingers, crunching the eyes like barley sweets. Leonora buried the rest at the corner of the garden, as Mr Anderson had taught her the innards may carry parasites that can be transferred to dogs, not just humans.

  Ever since Leonora had begun helping with the lambing, Mr Anderson had taught her a lot about animals: their workings, their health, and how humans and animals can have a mutually beneficial relationship. She’d tried to talk to her father about this, and he would nod and listen, but would also from time to time tell her she need not think about these subjects too closely. It was the same when she would talk for too long about the plants and herbs in the garden and all their possible combinations and uses, which she had begun learning in the short time she’d had with her gram, and which she now tried to teach herself. ‘The natural world is God-given, and we can appreciate and work with it,’ her father would say, ‘but we needn’t understand every little aspect.’ Her father believed mystery was to be preserved, in order to maintain respect for God’s work. But Leonora was fascinated by the way that inquiry brought knowledge while it also unearthed new mysteries. Mr Anderson had recently loaned her the book by Alexander von Humboldt on the natural sciences, Cosmos. It was, he said, translated into English by a woman, a Miss Otte. Leonora hadn’t shown the book to her father, preferring to read it by candlelight in bed after supper.

  Nature is a free domain, and the profound conceptions and enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly delineated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of the creation.

  Herbs, potatoes and fish – enjoyments from nature, Leonora thought, as she served them to her father and Miss Cruikshank, whom her father was now referring to as ‘Penny’. Leonora began to feel a little better as she ate, and her father and Miss Cruikshank quietly enjoyed the meal.

  Miss Cruikshank rose again to clear the table, but Leonora’s father put his hand on her arm. ‘Why dinnae we talk first,’ he said, with a pointed look at his Penny.

  Leonora pushed her plate away from her. ‘What is it, Da’?’

  Her father was visibly wrestling different emotions, both frowning and smiling. ‘Penny and I have something to tell ye, Lae, and we hope ye’ll approve.’ He took Miss Cruikshank’s hand but kept his eyes on Leonora. She resented the reluctance she felt, her inability to embrace further changes, knowing this woman was slowly easing her out.

  Miss Cruikshank took over. ‘Your father has asked me tae marry him, Leonora,
and I have said aye, but … I’d like your blessing.’

  There was a swell of sadness in Leonora’s chest, and a distinct sense of dreid. She knew her mother was long gone and that her father might desire a companion, other than his daughter, but she was so content with her life as it was. This scenario would force her to invent her own wants, outside this small patch of land. Father, I want you to be happy, but don’t do this to me.

  ‘Of course you have my blessing,’ she said flatly, and managed a small smile, before looking down at her hands clutched on her skirts. ‘Excuse me.’ She began taking the plates over to the tub by the fire, covering them with water from the kettle. Her father and Miss Cruikshank remained quiet.

  Then Leonora went into her room and lit a candle, hearing their murmurs. She tried to ignore the noise by reading, but her eyes slid from the page as her ears engaged with the sound.

  Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet strengthening influence on the wearied spirit, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths.

  When her father walked Miss Cruikshank home, Leonora went out the back of the cottage and sat with Duff’s head in her lap, stroking her and gazing up at bright clusters of stars.

  I woke slowly, blinking the stars from my eyes. I felt tired and heavy, the ache in Leonora’s head seemingly transferred to my own. I breathed deeply but the damp made its way into my lungs and I sat up coughing, my ears ringing. It was still dark.

  ‘May I be of any assistance?’ came a voice from behind me, sending a shiver of terror through me before I remembered the andserv. His voice was a young British man’s, both friendly and officious.

  I continued to cough. ‘No,’ I managed.

  ‘The time is 3:34 am,’ he said. ‘Would you like me to leave you to rest some more?’