When the World Was Steady Read online

‘Not a Scot and not a Christian. So what is he?’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t exist,’ said Angelica. ‘Maybe he’s a blank space.’

  ‘Maybe he’s a sign,’ said Virginia, thinking this a very profound comment. ‘Mother and I will do anything we can to help. Won’t we?’

  ‘I think we should start by ordering a bottle of wine,’ said Mrs Simpson.

  ‘With lunch?’

  ‘Why not? A big one, because we’re four.’

  ‘I don’t drink alcohol,’ said Nikhil.

  ‘Mother, never in the middle of the day,’ said Virginia. ‘It will put us all to sleep.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say no,’ said Angelica brightly. ‘What a fun idea.’

  Mrs Simpson looked Angelica up and down with a narrowed eye. And then she smiled, and Virginia realized that lunch would be all right after all.

  Neither Melody nor Virginia Simpson found it easy to return to their bed and breakfast on the waterfront, particularly because they were leaving Angelica and Nikhil behind. For Mrs Simpson, this was shaming: ‘Where does that girl get her money?’ she asked at intervals, to which Virginia could only shrug and say, ‘She’s always had it. I don’t know.’

  Their room looked smaller and dingier after their outing, and the view of the port struck Virginia as a shabby, narrow view, littered with greasy bits of paper and petrol drums, gulls circling overhead. She sat on the end of her bed and looked out in silence.

  ‘I’ll just have a little lie-down, I think,’ said her mother. ‘And then maybe some television.’

  It was only a matter of minutes before Mrs Simpson was asleep. Her chin went slack, leaving her mouth slightly open. The whole area rippled as the air came in and out, like a sail heading into the wind. When she breathed out, Mrs Simpson made little ‘pooh’ noises.

  Virginia tried to read her Bible, but the light in the room was very dim, and the print of the Bible was very small, and attempting to read proved a divine trial of itself, so she decided to go out.

  The pub was not empty, like the evening before. Virginia was intimidated and almost turned back, but there was really nowhere else to be: the breakwater was wet, the sky still ominous, and, short of sitting in the car, she could see no alternative. She went in with her Bible clutched close against her chest.

  The room was filled with large men. The smell, of beer and smoke and wet and sweat, was overpowering but not unpleasant. All the men were looking at her—she could feel it. Like a teenager in a mini-skirt, she felt at once terrified and delighted by the stir she caused. Mostly terrified.

  She stepped up to the bar. ‘Half a pint of cider, please.’ Her voice came out with an unexpected assurance, which in turn gave her the courage to look at the sailors and fishermen. ‘Good afternoon to all of you,’ she said, politely but without smiling. She could see that their faces were neither angry nor lascivious—nor anything really. Large though they were, they had the open, expressionless faces of sheep, or cows.

  She clasped her slippery cider glass with both hands, tucking the Bible under her arm, and made for the table nearest the window and furthest from the men. It was light there, and when she spread her Bible on the sticky table, she could see God’s words distinctly. Sweaty, a bit shaky, she lowered her head to read, taking tiny sips of her cider.

  She found it hard to concentrate, in part because of the hubbub and in part because she felt as though she were waiting for something. She kept looking up, between Godly sentences and earthly sips, to monitor the pub around her. She felt agitated, it was true, but somehow impressed with herself as well.

  Melody Simpson was alone in the blue bedroom when she opened her eyes. Her elder daughter had, it appeared, gone off on her own. Shown some initiative. It was something of a relief, because there was work to be done.

  Melody rummaged in her handbag for her glasses and a pen. She also looked for paper but found she had none. The bed and breakfast was not the sort of establishment that provided such items, and an unscrupulous dive into Virginia’s suitcase did not turn up any there either. Eventually she tore out the endpapers and the title page of the mystery novel that served as her bedtime reading, and, using the volume to rest upon, she propped herself against her headboard and began to write.

  Dear Emmy,

  Thank you for your letter. I hope you don’t settle on that peculiar island because I don’t have your address there. Perhaps Portia will forward your mail.

  I do not often write, as you know. I don’t have the temperament for it. But there are things that now need to be said, and this is the only way. When I am gone, you must think more often of your sister. You and she are not alike except that unfortunately you are both proud. You have not always been good to each other; perhaps this is my fault. I wanted you to get on, but you were born with a thick skin and Virginia with no skin at all.

  You may think you are a more interesting person than she is, and this may be so; but her efforts are just as important. She has taken good care of me. She has had to build a life with very little and that, too, is a noble thing. Her first sorrow, and every sorrow after, have stayed with her in the present; she does not find it easy to make a past, without which it is impossible to make a future. I hope you understand what I mean.

  We are such a little family and have been so long apart. I urged you to seize your life with William when the chance came because I, like you, believe in freedom. And I urge you, now that your marriage is over, to find your self and what makes you happy. So it may seem strange that today I write to say that family is the only thing there is. But it is true: blood is the one tie that binds. I cannot say this to Virginia because although she lives her life as though this were the case, she does not think she believes it. Her God gets in the way.

  But if when I am gone I have a will, or a wish, it is for the reconciliation of my daughters. You, who believe in a past and a future, will understand that the one is necessary for the other. Virginia is your past, and can give meaning to your future. I have in my life wanted everything for your happiness and for hers—

  Here Melody Simpson began to run out of space. She also found herself unsure of how to end her letter. After a while, she wrote: ‘And your friendship would be my greatest happiness.’

  This seemed to her a little selfish, but she thought that Emmy, of all people, would not pass judgement on that count.

  She put the pages down and rested for a minute, and then took them up and wrote, very small, at the bottom of the last sheet, ‘Your new friends sound fun. But dangerous.’ Then she folded the rough papers into a small, thick square, and tucked them into the zip compartment of her handbag.

  Pleased and calm, she opened her mystery novel and settled down to wait for Virginia, her thoughts on what they might have for her last supper.

  The following morning when Angelica woke up, she still felt guilty. She lay sprawled beneath the eiderdown of her broad four-poster bed and listened to the rain slapping at the windows. Her guilt stemmed precisely from the sense of ease that she felt lying there, with an acreage of space stretching about her.

  She had asked for two rooms, communicating if possible, and to her surprise, she and Nikhil had been provided with those in which she and her parents had stayed, many years ago, on the last holiday before the divorce. This time, however, it was she who had the luxury of the huge room with its elegant antique furnishings and its two deep windows; Nikhil had insisted on taking the tiny cell adjacent, no more than a cupboard really, clearly intended for a valet or a lady’s maid, with a sink next to the window and a narrow bed that doubled as a divan in the daytime, as it was the only place to sit. Of course, it had been pleasantly decorated—there was a ruched blind in blue moiré that lent the tiny room an effect of incongruous grandeur—but it was, really, a safe hiding-place for a small girl whose parents were arguing, rather than a proper hotel room for a paying adult.

  When Nikhil had insisted on taking the room, Angelica had suggested that they move to other, uncommunicating rooms, bu
t he had rejected the idea out of hand. Ostensibly this was because he felt more comfortable in small spaces, but in reality she wondered whether he had refused because she was footing the bill or because he, like herself, felt they were teetering on the brink of something—something made manifest by the communicating door. Something that might, were they to move to wholly separate quarters, retreat irrevocably to the realm of the impossible. That, at least, was what she hoped he was thinking.

  But when, eventually and in haste, they met for breakfast, it was clear that romance was far from Nikhil’s thoughts. He was preoccupied, brusque even, indifferent to Angelica’s efforts with her appearance. She did her best to hide her disappointment. Over kippers (for her) and scrambled eggs and toast (for him), she tried to prise out the source of his distress. ‘Are you worried that she won’t be pleased to see you?’ she asked. ‘Have a taste, these are delicious! Or that you won’t be pleased to see her?’

  ‘No, no. That’s not it.’

  ‘But there is something. Do you think you won’t like the look of him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you tell your parents you were coming? Do you think they disapprove?’

  ‘Please stop asking so many questions.’ Nikhil pushed the egg around on his plate.

  Angelica sat back and dabbed at her chin with a napkin. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘can I at least ask where we’re supposed to start looking?’

  ‘At the post office in Portree, I suppose.’

  The woman at the post office on the square in the centre of town—or Oifis a’ Phuist, as it was marked in bold Royal Mail lettering—was only moderately helpful. ‘Aye, that’s a box number here, indeed. But who they belong to, it’s confidential you see.’ She was unsmiling, a woman of Virginia’s age with a pale sprinkling of freckles.

  ‘I know who it belongs to,’ said Nikhil. ‘I just want to know where they live.’

  ‘Are you from the police or something?’

  ‘It belongs to my sister. My sister and her husband.’

  ‘If she’s your sister, how is it you don’t know where she lives?’

  ‘If she didn’t want me to know, why would she give me her postal address?’

  ‘I suppose. Just a minute. Charlie!’ she shrieked over her shoulder. ‘I’ll let my husband take care of you. There’s people waiting, right enough.’

  There were two women queueing behind Nikhil and Angelica. They, like the postmistress, were unsmiling.

  ‘How can I help you?’ asked Charlie, a small man with a profusion of wrinkles. Nikhil proceeded patiently to recount his exchange with Charlie’s wife. ‘Aye, I know who you mean. Aren’t many Indian girls on the island. A pretty lass. And the man with her, long hair and a beard. A sort of hippy type. Never imagined they were actually married. He’s not the sort we islanders like too much, you know. Not that he’s ever been anything but polite, mind. Your sister too. And such a pretty lass.’

  ‘He’s a religious man.’

  ‘I see. Not our sort of religion, I don’t think. Looks a bit like Jesus, of course, with the hair. Is he your sort of religion, then? A swami or a guru or whatever they’re called over there?’

  ‘He’s a Christian, I believe. Do you know where they live?’

  ‘Oh, we don’t need to know that, you know, for a box. People can just rent a box.’

  Angelica could see that Nikhil’s patience was wearing thin. He was drumming with his fingernails on the counter. ‘Have you got any idea where they live?’

  ‘Out of town, I know that much. Because they only came in once a week for their mail.’

  ‘Came?’

  ‘They haven’t been for—it’d be over a month, now. Not that you’d know—they don’t get a lot of post. Never have.’

  ‘Can you please tell me where they live?’ Nikhil was now agitated.

  ‘You might want to try Mrs MacKinnon in the newsagent’s over the road. She was more friendly with them, I think. But me, I don’t know where they live.’

  Nikhil was very upset as they left the post office. ‘Maybe this man is very wicked. Maybe he has killed her.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Angelica. ‘Maybe they’ve started having mail delivered to their house. Maybe they’ve just moved.’

  This was not the right thing to say. Nikhil’s composure all fell away and he looked at her despairingly. ‘What will my parents say? Here I am, on the same continent, and I have lost her.’

  ‘But I thought they’d disowned her?’

  ‘It would never occur to them that I would lose her. Britain is so small and Scotland is so empty. Not like Delhi, or Bombay. You can’t just lose somebody. In India, we would find her.’

  ‘You’ll find her here, too. Don’t worry.’ Standing in the drizzle, in the square, she put an arm on his and he didn’t remove it. ‘God is on our side,’ she said, and kissed his cheek.

  Mrs MacKinnon was a bit more helpful. A bit. ‘They drove a sort of lorry, you know,’ she said. ‘Open at the back, and their provisions’d get wet in the rain. People didn’t like how he looked, but he was the kindest man. He’d help anybody. He was older than he looked, and she’s young, and that always gets people talking, of course. Your sister, is it? A lovely-looking girl. Of course there are more Indian people up here than there once were,’ she smiled, ‘but that’s not saying much. So we all noticed her. He’d been here for some time before, maybe a year or two. Maybe only a year? And then he went away for a while and came back with her.’

  ‘But where did they live?’

  ‘Out of town, I know that. North, maybe. North, I think. He studied nature, that’s what he did, birds and things. Wildlife. He had binoculars. She must have been a painter or a sketcher or something, because she always bought those sorts of things.’

  ‘I know what she does, Mrs MacKinnon. She’s my sister. I just need to know how to find her.’

  Mrs MacKinnon put her hands on her hips and looked at Angelica and then at Nikhil and then at Angelica again. ‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I don’t know where they lived. North, I think. Just drive north and start asking. Not far, maybe just a few miles. But not on the main road, because I remember him saying that the last stretch was rough on their lorry. I’d bet it’s somewhere by the water, for the birds.’

  Melody Simpson was not surprised to be wakened by rain. She had resolved the night before, in bed, in the half light, that rain or no rain they would go to the ancestral home today. There was no point losing one’s temper over a little water, but she did wonder how her forebears had stuck it out. For the first time she understood why her own mother had never wanted to come back.

  ‘Do you think it rained less, a hundred years ago?’ she asked Virginia, who sat at the end of her bed, already fully dressed, reading her bloody Bible.

  ‘Good morning, Mother. I don’t know. Did your mother never say?’

  ‘She didn’t talk too much, my mother. Not like yours.’

  Her daughter hardly cracked a smile.

  ‘What’s eating you, then?’

  ‘I’m fine. I suppose the weather just gets to me a bit.’

  ‘Don’t let’s let it.’ Mrs Simpson pulled herself up in bed, her flannel nightie falling straight down her front where her prostheses were not. ‘I thought we could go out to Alt-na-Ross today, regardless.’

  ‘You don’t want to see if the others need any help?’

  ‘They came for their business, we came for ours. Surely they weren’t expecting us to hare around after that girl, were they?’

  ‘No. I just thought it would be kind.’

  Mrs Simpson wanted very much not to get annoyed. The working of her plan, if plan it was, depended a great deal on Virginia. Whatever was destined to happen at Alt-na-Ross, and she didn’t presume to guess, she might need someone. Even the swiftest and most true of endings needed a witness. When the two beams crossed—the place and the purpose—there had to be a flash of light. Of this she was certain. Although she thought for the first time that
Virginia might, in fact, be the plan’s undoing. ‘You can help them, if you like. I’m happy to go alone. You wouldn’t need to worry about me—it’s not far, just across to the west side of the island.’

  ‘Of course I’ll go with you. Don’t be silly. I thought that was the point. But I might give Angelica a ring to see if we can do anything for them while we’re over there.’

  Mrs Simpson had made the decision that today she wanted to do nothing for anybody but herself. It was, after all, her last day: she could feel it. She thought that she could feel beneath her breastbone that her heart was already beating less vigorously, although it was difficult to be certain when Virginia kept talking over the sound. Still, along with not doing anything for anyone else, she was determined to stay amiable.

  ‘It’s a shame Emmy couldn’t be here, don’t you think?’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She might have liked it. She has a sentimental streak. She and I have always got on.’

  ‘Whereas you and I haven’t?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ Melody Simpson, although loath to show affection, felt it important on this day to set a few things straight. ‘You and I have been important to each other in ways that Emmy simply has not. We both know that. And I suppose in some measure Emmy has grown unnecessary to our lives—in a day to day way, of course.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Virginia sourly. ‘We’ve hardly seen her in thirty years.’

  ‘Not that long. Now don’t be disagreeable. I’ve always felt that you must stop blaming who you are and who you are not on your sister. You would be much the same person had she never been born. It’s nature. And once I am gone, it’s you who will have to write to her. And it will happen. You must see, dear, that she is the only certain thing. Family is all that’s certain. Now, where was I? Yes, I was just going to say that Emmy’s absence, generally rather than today, has made our lives bigger rather than smaller, and you should remember that.’

  ‘Because she sends us postcards from Australia? For heaven’s sake, what has she ever done for us? What connection could there be?’