When the World Was Steady Read online

  It was also true that since Virginia had thrust her life into crisis, Melody Simpson had been relieved of the peculiar preoccupation that had plagued her all spring: she hadn’t been listening to her heart. Not in the same way. She was too busy. Not, of course, that this rendered her any less certain that her end was nigh, and she had not lost sight of the purpose behind the trip to Skye, but considering the circumstances Mrs Simpson thought things were proceeding much better than they had been.

  She thought of Emmy, away in her extraordinary exotic place, doubtless much better off than when attending to that boring husband. The girls could never see it, either of them, when something good slapped them across the face. In their different ways—although they would hate to be compared—they were both afraid of change. Like their father had been. And look where that had landed him: dead as a dodo, rest his soul. If he had one. If anyone did.

  Melody Simpson remembered her two daughters as children, playing with one of his model aeroplanes, never disposed of after his death. It was chubby-kneed little Emmy who guided it in for its crash landing, unwilling to throw it to the wind and let it fall where it might. And after the plane’s choreographed nose-dive into the pinks, it was Virginia who insisted on digging a shallow grave beneath the camellia bush in order to bury a peg doll she pretended had been the pilot. To top it off, she had held some vile, earnest little ceremony. A morbid child. Melody Simpson remembered the late summer day exactly. She had hung up the washing and was reclining in a deck-chair, still in her pinafore, trying to read a novel. How acutely her frolicking daughters had annoyed her! Their loud play had distracted her, all the more so because it was punctuated by ‘Mummy, look!’s and ‘ooh, Mummy!’s. Strange how such prickling irritation could feel, when minutely recalled, like a moment of pure and intense maternal love.

  Her own spare little case packed and locked, Melody Simpson went to check on Virginia’s progress. To her dismay, Virginia hadn’t even begun to prepare, and was perched on the edge of her bed wearing an unlikely expression that looked two-thirds of the way to laughter or tears and probably, thought Mrs Simpson, signified the cusp of some tiresome hysteria.

  ‘For God’s sake, wipe that foolish look off your face,’ she snapped. She derived a certain satisfaction from the fact that Virginia obeyed. Virginia even smiled politely.

  ‘Sorry Mum. I was off in the clouds.’

  ‘Will it take you long to get ready? It’s getting on, and if we’re to get away this afternoon—’

  ‘Well, actually, that’s one of the things I was thinking about. I know you’re in a hurry, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘There are a number of things I really ought to do before we go. I’ve got to tell the church. I was rude to Angelica the other night and I must go round and apologize. And I have clothes at the cleaners.’

  If Melody Simpson had waited all this time to be certain of the trip, she supposed she could wait another few hours to depart. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We pay for the car by the day. And it costs. You didn’t even come to the window to see it. Sporty little thing.’

  ‘I’ll pay for the car. I always pay.’

  ‘Fair enough. But you don’t drive. And as I’ve got to drive the whole way myself, surely I should dictate when we go?’

  ‘Mother, please.’ Virginia was suddenly firm, her old short-tempered self. ‘Don’t make me lose my temper.’ She stood, and seemed her usual height and her usual age—no longer strangely small and young.

  ‘Fine, fine. Bullied by my own daughter. Have it your way,’ hissed Mrs Simpson gleefully.

  Just sitting, on this Monday morning, Virginia could sense the vague breezes ruffling the hairs on her arms. Every object in the flat seemed precisely placed, and appeared to have a fine tracing of light around it, giving it depth. The world seemed substantial, Virginia thought. It seemed matter-of-fact. Which was just as well because she was tired of being tired, and tired of being confused. Skye, as her mother insisted, might be just the ticket: by the time she came back, Virginia thought, life might look more like itself. The abstract—relationships, work, religion—might regain the substance of the concrete. If they didn’t, of course—she reflected with a sigh, and then stopped. She was tired of thinking, and she had a new dictum, adopted as she had lain on the wet grass hiding from the ubiquitous night, trying not to hear or see anything. The new dictum was: no more lies. And she would follow it if it killed her.

  She had told her mother that she would go by the church, but Virginia did no such thing. Not yet. She made her way directly to Angelica’s house, and when she got no answer from Angelica’s bell, she rang Nikhil’s without thinking twice.

  Nikhil was alone, and stiffer than ever. As he showed her in, he said, with a slight bow, ‘I must thank you.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Your help.’

  ‘Help? I’ve been ill.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He looked at her as if seeking the location of her ailment.

  ‘No need. A purgative illness. It clears the decks.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I won’t keep you. I won’t stay. I wondered if you knew where I might find Angelica?’

  ‘She’s having the car serviced.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So she’s told you? I am so glad.’

  Virginia raised an eyebrow in as convincing as possible an imitation of the way she might have raised an eyebrow the week before. ‘Told me?’

  ‘About our trip.’

  ‘My trip?’

  ‘Are you coming too?’

  ‘Surely I should ask, are you? Is this something Mother and Angel have cooked up?’

  ‘I was not aware. Angelica and I are to take a trip.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s not the way you think. It’s a trip with a mission.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We’re going to find Rupica.’

  Virginia almost asked who Rupica was, and then remembered. The sister. The prodigal. ‘So you’re going to Scotland?’

  He nodded. He was very young. His face was gawkily disproportionate, at once sweet and ugly.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Just for a few days.’

  Virginia smiled an exhausted smile. Perhaps she was less ready for the world than she had thought. ‘How very pleasant. Maybe—Mother and I are going the same way. I’m not sure—I don’t know what you—but perhaps we could all have supper, if we do wind up in the same place.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Scotland is big. You don’t know where?’

  ‘The Isle of Skye. Near somewhere called Portree, I think.’

  It was Virginia’s turn to say ‘Of course.’ Of course. ‘Well then, maybe we will? Do tell Angelica I dropped by. If she has a moment, before you go, she could phone; or if not, well, tell her I’ll see her in a while. And to drive carefully.’

  ‘I will.’

  Virginia felt Nikhil was as eager to see the back of her as she was to leave, although he ran after her moments later—to return her Bible, about which she had completely forgotten. She had thought, the other night, that she had fallen to a safe place, but still the ground beneath her shifted. And the movement caused her almost physical pain.

  She didn’t go home. Nor did she go to the church. She went instead to the park, to the summit of Primrose Hill, and she surveyed the city.

  She was surprised to see the landscape unchanged, all of its monuments still planted in much the same configuration as before. Perhaps the quality of light was slightly altered, but not significantly. She shivered despite the sun, disappointed. It was the trial of Job, to have seen signs and yet not to know their meaning. Not yet. Circling, bound for Heathrow, a plane cut the haze to the south, catching the light with its silvery wing and creating a swift, brilliant flash. What was a sign, anyway? As Virginia watched the plane slide away, out of sight, she said aloud, to the kite-flying children and the galloping dogs and to the Divine if he was list
ening, ‘Well, there we are.’

  THE ISLE OF SKYE

  WHEN SHE GOT out of the car on the port in Portree, Virginia Simpson was drenched and miserable. The rainclouds had rolled back into the long evening and were visible far out to sea, but the earth they had left in their wake was a vast puddle. The drive had been awful.

  Or rather, the second day had been awful. The first, Tuesday, had been relatively calm: Mrs Simpson and Virginia had set off early beneath a golden sky and had covered the miles to Edinburgh in comfortable silence: Mrs Simpson had not gloated over her victory, and Virginia had chosen not to see the trip as a capitulation to her mother.

  They had arrived in Edinburgh in time to stroll amid its sombre magnificence, and had dined in a lively Italian restaurant where fellow customers sang with the waiters and danced around the tables. For Virginia, this experience was alien and discomfiting (she had never moved in rowdy circles in her youth and found the clutch of powdered secretaries at the adjacent table deeply suspect), but Mrs Simpson tapped her fingers busily in time to the music and jigged her head back and forth with pleasure. Ginny thought that had her mother been alone, she might actually have pushed out her chair and joined the fray. Back at their bed and breakfast, Mrs Simpson had slipped out of her teeth and into despondency, whereas Virginia had only then been able to relax.

  But Wednesday had not gone well. They had quarrelled at breakfast, and the tension that hung between them for much of their journey was matched only by the darkness of the day. It had poured, but Mrs Simpson had driven fiendishly nonetheless, swishing along the narrow Highlands roads in a LeMans-like fury, honking at sloe-eyed sheep and pulling out sharply alongside caravans and tractors when the road ahead was not at all clear. And all the way it had poured.

  Most miserable of all, the Ford Fiesta had proven defective: on the passenger side, the window would not rise to meet the doorframe; despite all efforts, a half-inch was left to the whistling wind, a situation which, in sunshine, had cooled the car slightly, but which, over the course of the stormy day, provided passage for more spitting raindrops, it seemed, than the rest of the car kept out. Virginia tried to stuff the gap with a plastic bag, but found the bulk of it trailing across her face or flapping at the top of her head. And the raindrops, seeming to relish the challenge, merely wormed and wriggled their way along the plastic to drip the more effectively on to her lap, her neck or, most unpleasantly, her scalp.

  Virginia stood by the sea rail, plucked at her skirt and blouse and pitied herself while her mother went to park the car. Glistening wet still, the port was shabbily beautiful, and limp and weary though she was, Virginia could dwell on that beauty. The row of multi-coloured houses clustered up against the sea wall; the fishing boats, strewn with nets and traps and other odds and ends, jostled against each other; and at the end of the pier, where the wet asphalt shone iridescent with traces of petrol, two rusty pumps abutted a trim, tidy phone box that looked as though it had been dropped there, by mistake, that very morning.

  Melody Simpson parked the Fiesta in front of the phone box. Virginia watched as her mother opened the boot of the car and hauled out their two cases. She knew she ought to make her way over and offer assistance, but she didn’t move. She saw her mother staggering as she tried to keep from placing either case on the wet ground.

  ‘Don’t just stand there like a bloody lump,’ hissed Mrs Simpson as she tottered past to the bed and breakfast door. ‘Go and lock up the car.’

  ‘I haven’t got the key,’ Virginia protested. But she ambled to the pier end, found the key in the lock and did as her mother had asked.

  She noticed as she walked the hundred yards that what looked like dockside warehouses, in the row that ran perpendicular to the row of houses (and looked eminently less appealing than they) were not warehouses at all. One housed an evangelical bookshop; one, pink, looked like a brothel; and yet another, which had the same smeared windows and mottled paintwash as its neighbours, emitted smoke and sound from its half-open door: the sound of taped music, and of men’s voices. Although there was no sign to advertise the fact, it was a pub, and a lively one at that. And it was only six in the evening.

  It occurred to Virginia that it might not be a bad idea to go there for a drink—with her mother, of course. She knew it was not the sort of establishment they were accustomed to, but from a quick look around the harbour, it appeared to be all there was nearby.

  The room Virginia and her mother were to share looked straight out across the water at the spit of land opposite. Although not a large room, it was comfortably furnished and it had a television. The carpet was a soothing powder blue, thick pile, and the headboards on the two neat single beds were covered with matching Dralon. On the window-ledge sat a porcelain donkey pulling a cart full of yellowy-brown dried flowers, and a china figurine of a girl in a full-length dress, clutching a poodle. Mrs Simpson made fun of these touches, but they were comforting to Virginia. They reminded her of the knick-knacks she had collected in her childhood, when such things seemed to have an innate significance that somehow saved them from being ugly or in poor taste. She liked to think that their hostess still held on to that innocence: that for her these items were talismans of some kind, and that she could not see that the dried flowers were crumbling to dust, or that the paint of the poodle’s eyes had flaked off.

  Virginia stood at the window and fingered the ornaments, looking out at the sheet metal of the sea beyond the port and at the mountainous grey land in the distance.

  Mrs Simpson, who lay on one of the beds with her shoes off and her spindly ankles crossed (for although she was by no means a slim old woman, she had ankles and calves like matchsticks), said, ‘Too bad there’s no sun. It’ll be light almost all night, you know. Marvellous!’

  Virginia watched the sea ripple; it looked like corrugated iron. She did not see that light in and of itself was a virtue, but refrained from saying so because she knew her mother was excited. ‘Where exactly were your people from?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Oh, a tiny village, a way, still, from here. I took you and Emmy once when you were small, but you probably don’t remember.’

  ‘I remember.’ Virginia remembered the train ride, as far as Fort William. And she remembered rain, and cold, and running across a field that stung her shins. She remembered her mother holding her sister’s hand, and herself standing alone in the roar of the wind. She couldn’t picture a village, or land, or sea, or people. ‘But there aren’t any relatives, are there? Not close enough to speak of?’

  Mrs Simpson shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not that I was ever in touch with. Mother had a sister, but they lost contact early on. I never met her. She didn’t marry.’

  ‘Did your mother bring you back here, then, when you were young?’

  ‘No, never.’

  Virginia reflected that it was odd that her mother should have clung so to her own mother’s birthplace, when there had clearly never been any obvious connection. But aloud, she said, ‘What should we do about supper? I don’t really feel like sitting around doing nothing.’

  ‘No, true, thinking never did anybody any good.’ Mrs Simpson swivelled, with some effort, and put her feet to the floor. ‘My back aches,’ she said, ‘from sitting all that time in the car. I’m not up to going far, to tell the truth.’

  ‘There’s a pub along the pier,’ said Virginia. ‘They might have something.’

  ‘Full of sailors and navvies, on a port.’

  ‘It’s worth a look. I don’t know that there’s much else around.’

  ‘I remember having a delicious meal—when we came that time—where was it now?’

  ‘That was forty years ago.’

  ‘It was more than that.’

  Virginia wanted to take her mother’s arm on the stairs, because from behind Mrs Simpson looked so bent and frail. It crossed her mind that the disruptions of the past week were nothing compared to the rupture that her mother’s death would be. Sometimes, it was true, she felt only a most un
-Christian hatred for her parent, but with her faith wavering, it suddenly seemed that this was the relationship that defined Virginia’s reality, that Mrs Simpson had been the only solid ground in all the years since Virginia had come home to her. And now she was so small.

  Mrs Simpson stumbled slightly on the penultimate step, and clung to the banister with both hands.

  ‘Mother!’ Virginia cried, trying to embrace her and set her aright, finding in this mishap an outlet for her high emotion.

  ‘Damnation, Ginny!’ said Mrs Simpson, regaining her balance and slapping at her daughter, ‘Look what you’ve done to my bust!’

  It was true that on one side the prosthesis had slipped, but Ginny didn’t see that it could have been her fault and she said as much. She tried to set the foam to rights, but Mrs Simpson slapped her away again, grumbling. ‘You’re just making it worse. Absolutely useless. Always have been.’

  The pub was now hushed. Its dim lights were still on, and the tinny music still dribbled out into the evening air, but the customers had vanished. A lone fisherman in an oilcloth jacket sat astride a stool, with three pints lined up in front of him on the bar. Mrs Simpson took a seat by the door and scowled at the room around her.

  ‘It doesn’t look to me as though there’s any supper to be had here,’ she said. ‘So I suppose I’ll settle for a whisky and water.’ She tucked her ankles underneath her chair and straightened her back.

  Even in the dim light, Virginia could see the dark pockets beneath her mother’s eyes, the complicated tracery of lined skin and exhaustion.

  ‘They must be able to get us something,’ Virginia said.

  ‘Fraid not,’ the surly landlord informed her as he poured their drinks. ‘You won’t find anything to eat around here.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘There’s the White Lion on the hill, it’s about fifteen minutes’ walk, but they’ll only be serving another half hour and you’d be lucky to make it, with your companion slow on her feet. Cost you, too, the White Lion.’