The Hollow Tree, page 21
“So, Shona,” Viv said. Her voice was hard and high.
“Hi, Viv . . . I—”
“You’re selling my fucking story to the papers?”
Shona took the phone from her face for a moment, and gulped a dry gulp. Then she returned.
“Out with it,” Viv snapped.
“No, I’m not.”
“Aye, you are. Shona. Jesus fucking Christ.”
“I am trying to—”
“Write me up. Write my family up. Sell it to the papers, Shona! Jesus.” Viv choked and seemed to gulp a cry.
“Viv, I’m not. Listen to me. Listen,” Shona found herself pleading.
“Can’t believe it, to be honest. Cannot fucking believe it.”
Shona stood up. Alone in the dark.
“And to think you were going to read my poem!” Viv said, spitting.
Shona closed her eyes tightly. She balled up her strength and purpose. “Viv, listen—I’m not writing a single word about you. Nothing. I’m trying to find out about Dan. I was commissioned. Someone asked me to. So, I’m looking into—”
“I’m not a fucking idiot, Shona. I’m not as clever as you. But I’m no fool. A pal of mine has seen you in the town. She said you were looking into what happened to Andrew. What happened to our Andrew! And you’re going to write it all up again, and hook it on Dan’s death. Drag it all up again. What’s the peg, Shona—what’s the fucking peg? My fucking wedding! That never was. My wedding. That’s the peg. Or, as we both fucking know, without Dan topping himself like a twat, there’s no story. Because we both know my poor brother’s vanishing act is not news now. Not interesting. But Dan fucking offs himself and suddenly Andrew is there again for you to rake up. I know he’s gone. I know it. But there you are—in Ullathorne, my hometown—scraping around for a story. Fuck’s sake, Shona. I can’t believe it.”
There was a silence for a while. Shona opened her mouth.
“Writing about my family. The worst thing that’s happened to me. To my mam and dad. And you’re there, asking questions. Dragging it up.”
“Viv . . .”
“And if you dare speak to Mam I will find you and—”
“Viv, I am not going to do that—look—”
“No, Shona!” Viv shouted. “I don’t want to hear it. I can’t fucking stop you. I know that, God help me. I could try but I couldn’t stop you. I’ve seen what you do, and how you do it. There’s no stopping you. Even if the bodies start fucking piling up.”
“Viv . . . look . . . Maybe you can help . . .”
“Shona! Get to fuck, seriously. No. I don’t want to speak to you again. Never a-fucking-gain.”
“Viv . . .”
“You going to write about the money as well?” Viv suddenly shouted.
“What money? No . . .”
“What money? You know fine well what fucking money. You make me sick, Shona. Make me sick.”
The call ended with a sudden, sharp click.
Shona sat down and was quiet and motionless for a while. She took her stick and kicked it. It skittered on the tarmac of the path, and then fell softly on wet grass.
She dumped the rest of the fish and chips into a bin in the cold dark, as the brown river ran in the night. The castle ruins glimmered. The moon, yellow as a scab, appeared behind ragged, sick clouds.
Shona stood up, and walked slowly alone back to the warm emptiness of her bed and breakfast, along the silent streets of the town, in a senseless fog as if drunk, as if she was concussed.
23.
But she did not get there. A car drew up alongside her as she walked across the main road.
Terry wound down her window, and stuck her head out. “Howdy, stranger.” She grinned. “Fancy a drink?”
Shona stood still. Her hands were greasy, and she smelled of vinegar. She realised she was shaking. Or she felt that she was shaking.
“You all right?” Terry said. Her car was humming, and warm. Lights were gold on the dashboard.
“Yeah, fine,” Shona said. “Drink where?”
“I know a place?”
“A pub?”
“A place. I have some booze in the car. It’s been a long day, let’s have a drink.”
Shona’s stick rapped on the car door as she got in. The car was warm and the seat soft beneath her. She felt tiredness soak her body.
She sat quietly as Terry drove into the darkness. They moved down the Bank, the broken mill sombre in the darkness, and out along the river. Listening to the radio burbling, but not really listening, they crossed the pounding Tyr and moved through black fields and trees in parallel to its wide slow course. The town drifted like an illuminated ship in the dark behind them. They eventually pulled up alongside a large gate to a field. The dark field sloped down to a silhouetted copse, and the river.
“Here we are,” Terry said, “hop out.”
They left the car, its lights clicking off, plunging the gate and the wall, the field, back into the waiting natural dark. The stray bugs and darting dust that had swarmed temporarily in the car’s light blinked back into their hidden minute lives.
Terry climbed over the gate, with a clanking tote bag of tins and other, undefinable, items. Shona stood, stick in hand, satchel over her shoulder in front of the gate. She felt for a moment, afraid, here in the rural vastness, and with an obstacle before her. A long way from home, and from her father.
“Ah, sorry,” Terry said, and fiddled with the gate’s fastening for a moment, and it swung open.
“I can climb you know,” Shona said.
“Well . . .” Terry began to say something, and shrugged. She looked away, and pointed down to the river. “There’s a beach down there.”
“I think I prefer an old boozer,” Shona said, peering down the field, plum-purple in the dim light.
“I am an old boozer,” Terry said, laughing, and, swinging the tote, started tramping down the field to the river. Halfway down the meadow she reached into her bag and pulled out a squat camping light. She clicked it on, and like an archaic cleric led the way, by light, to the water.
Shona looked up. There were no clouds, and the moon was encircled by a dim silver aura. The stars were arrayed in chaos and constellation, and a faint arc of the Milky Way could be seen.
She followed Terry, followed the swinging light. When it suddenly dropped out of sight, Shona picked up her pace, her calves damp from the grass, until she could see the light again, stationary on the riverbank. There was a short drop to the beach, but a smooth route had been gouged from earth and sand and grass, and she followed it down to the shingle beach.
Terry was already sitting cross-legged, leaning over a circle of blackened stones. “I think we might borrow this old fire,” she said. From her bag she pulled some kindling and fire lighters.
“I hate barbeques,” Shona said.
“Why’s that?” Terry said, smiling, her face suddenly lit by a cigarette lighter. Her cheeks orange, her eyes flashing yellow.
“If I wanted explosive food poisoning, I could just go lick a door handle,” Shona said.
“Fine. But I’m just lighting a fire for us to sit beside. To keep us warm. I’m not going to rustle up a tea.”
Shona nodded. Terry asked her to help look for dry sticks, and in the near dark they gathered twigs and river driftwood.
Shona moved slowly. Her eyes adjusted to the light, and she saw curved pale twigs, dropped from the trees above. They were jointed and smooth, like parts of a dismantled tiny skeleton. She gathered them one by one, moving hesitantly, her stick resting by the fire, which Terry was lighting with gusts of breath and handfuls of kindling. She could smell the river, its swirling soil and deep brown water and carried life.
The fire began to bloom, and it licked light onto the beach, and flickered gold and scarlet on their faces. They opened green cans of premixed gin and tonic and watched the river pass by in near silence, the flames now crackling on blackened spindles of twig and stick, rose-orange at its heart where the fire lighters burned hard, gusts of sour smoke rising on the windless air.
“So, a big day,” Terry said.
“Average,” Shona said, after a long pause. “Did you get general views of the town, of the mill?”
“Yes, boss.” Terry nodded. “How’s your dad?”
“Fine.”
“Can he save his allotment?”
“I have to. I’m not sure what he will do if I can’t. It’s his world. I will need to get back to Edinburgh and sort it. But instead I’m stuck here, sitting in the middle of the sticks where no fucker lives.”
Terry chuckled and threw a handful of snapped twigs onto the flames.
“What?” Shona said.
“You have a way with words.”
“If I didn’t, I’d be fucked. That’s all I have.”
“Come on now.”
“No, seriously. You must know journalists.”
“I do indeed.”
Shona drank a gulp of gin. “You’ll know, then. We’re refugees from society. Some are desperately trying to be important: trying to get in. Showbiz for ugly people, as someone said. Some are trying to escape, to get out of normal life. To view it all from a safe distance. Others, they just cannot do anything else. Clever misfits, the disenchanted, smart-arse oddballs, and misshapes—like me.”
“Like you,” Terry said, nodding. She tipped back her gin and tonic and opened another one with a hissing clink.
“Wait a minute, you’re driving, aren’t you?”
“Ach, yes. But we’ll be fine.”
“How far is it to walk from here? Ullathorne.”
“Half an hour?”
“I think I’ll walk back, then, if it’s all the same.”
The flames popped and spat. Terry leaned over and blew into it. They were on an island of fire and light in the watchful dark. Nearby, the broad river ran silently over rock and stone. She turned to Shona.
“What’s your story, then, Shona Sandison?”
“What’s your story, Theresa Green?” Shona said.
Terry’s eyes were very clear. Her hair swept back from her ears, away from her temple. She looked sleek, like a water creature.
“Nowt to tell,” Terry said, shrugging. “Grew up in Richmond—the original Richmond, down the road, not the one in London. Edinburgh art school: it was fun. Did some travelling, did some newspaper work . . .”
“Where?”
“The Mirror, Daily Record for a bit, and then some right daft bugger convinced me to live with him in Newcastle—so the Chronicle, Northern Echo, Teesdale Mercury, the Tyrdale paper. Yorkshire Post. Guardian—northern edition.”
“Nice. Good work.”
“Has its moments.”
Shona looked out over the river. It was glossy and black now, rolling like a dark plastic. A smooth rock at its centre stood out, and the water turned white as it flowed around it, and gently slopped over it, grinning suddenly like a smile, and then disappearing into the black again.
“The daft bugger saw through me in the end, though,” Terry said, now poking the warm fire with a stick. “So, I’m freelance in more ways than one.” She stared hard into the fire. Her eyes became tigerish with flame. “The North. It’s beautiful, it’s bleak. It’s a bit broken down. It can be lonely. It can be lovely. I moved around. Lived in Durham. Spent quite a lot of time in and around Hawes.”
Shona burst out with laughter. “I beg your frickin’ pardon?”
“It’s a wee town in Yorkshire!” Terry said. “Hawes, not whores.”
“Maybe I should visit Hawes,” Shona said.
“You should. You’d love it. There’s a cheese factory. Anyway, what about you?”
“Nothing much to tell,” Shona replied, and pulled her legs up to her body. She drained her can, and opened another. She looked up. The stars were resplendent. The river ran. The trees, whispering, listened. Nothing moved apart from the high branches, and the flames, the water, the two huddled humans by the ancient fire.
Shona breathed out.
“Glasgow born, bred, schooled. Southsider. History at Glasgow. Mam died. Journalism at Strathclyde and Caledonian. Got a job at the Mercury—it went bust. Got injured. Had a time-out. Moved with my dad to Edinburgh—got a job at the Post. Made redundant by their bastard editor. Won the bloody Reporter of the Year nonsense. Freelance. Signed up with Ranald and his mob. Live with Dad, still. Getting old.”
“Tell me about the injury, then,” Terry said. “I think I heard about it. You were doing a story about some weird shit, weren’t you?”
Shona sighed and winced. The fire was red at its centre, the twigs entwined in their slow destruction, and an arch had been formed within, a gateway to the heart of the fire, a holloway to the furnace. The heat bloomed on both their faces.
“Yeah. I was on a job,” Shona said, wearily.
“And?”
“It was complicated. There was this . . . I had been tipped off that there was this fella in Glasgow with all the signs of the stigmata. The wounds in the hands, the feet. The wounds in the side. The crown of thorns on his face.”
“The wounds of Christ?”
“No, of Tintin. Yes, of Christ.” Shona drank more gin and tonic. She crushed the can, and dropped it on the shingle.
Terry handed her another, its green and silver glinting in the firelight. “Go on.”
“He was an old priest, before he had become this mystic, this prophet. And anyway . . . to cut a long story short, I found him. He was hard to find.”
“Where? Was he being hidden?”
“Only by himself. Up a high-rise. A condemned high-rise, that was about to be blown up.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Wow indeed. Most of the high-rises are coming down. So, it was a weird situation.”
“I bet.”
“It’s hard to imagine a high-rise just now. Just looking around here . . . this darkness. The countryside. The trees, the open land, the river. The idea of a high-rise, the idea of boxes of concrete stacked on top of each other for people to be contained in, to live in . . . it seems absurd, doesn’t it? When you’re here. It seems fucking horrific. All the emptiness here. All that crushed humanity, there.
“Anyways. I found him, just hours before the demolition guys were ready to press the button. Pull the trigger. Plunge the plunger. Whatever. And when I found him . . .”
“What was he like?”
“He was wrapped in a stinking blanket. Skinny as a rail. Covered in dried blood. Starving, stinking. He had written this big mad book. A third Testament. There was no glass on the windows of his . . . where he was. An old apartment. So, birds had flown in. Birds everywhere. He was sleeping on this old clapped-out sofa, in his own blood. Dried blood, covered in sheets. I interviewed him, got it on tape for the paper. Then I called an ambulance to get him out of this bloody ticking time bomb. There were literally charges all set up in the tower. This tower in the north of the city, looking down over Glasgow. But then he attacked me. He just flipped.”
“Bloody hell. Mad!”
“Yeah, he had gone mad. He attacked me, I was there on my own. No snapper. So, he went for me. And got me.”
Shona threw her empty can as far as she could. It clinked into the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” Terry said.
“Aye. So, he stabbed me with something—with a long nail. It went into my side. Second stab missed my spine by yay-much. Third one into my hip, did some sore damage. I passed out. I was a goner.”
“Fuck me, what a bastard,” Terry said.
“I woke up . . . I woke up bleeding outside a burning house in the Southside. Don’t know how I got there, don’t know if I ever will. The man was inside the burning house. His body was found there. I was taken to the hospital. I was fucked. But I got the story. I filed it all by phone to the news desk from the bloody A&E ward. That was that.”
“Jesus,” Terry said. “I think I remember some of that now.”
“Well, it was some story.” Shona nodded.
Terry became quiet, contained, and slowly fed the fire with twigs and grass.
“I came out of the hospital with a limp and a stick,” Shona said, quietly, almost to herself. “And a massive fucking desire to leave Glasgow. My dad fell ill, too. Maybe the shock of it all. We needed a change, I was offered a job at a paper in Edinburgh, so we both moved there. That was that.”
“The attack, though . . .”
“I tried to carry on as if it hadn’t happened. I tried to forget it. I’ve been led to believe that’s not healthy.”
“I couldn’t move home again like that,” Terry said. “I like to know my home, know the place where I live. I’m a bit of a homebody. I like my wee place in Newsham. I like sleeping to the silence. Don’t mind the trips to Newcastle and Carlisle and whatever for the papers. But then I need to be back in my cave, my home. Newsham is tiny. It probably hasn’t changed for a thousand years. It has a blacksmith, for God’s sake.”
“Is that why you like getting hammered?” Shona said.
“Nice.”
“Look, Edinburgh’s fine. It’s quiet, it’s orderly. That’s fine. I like the beach at Portobello. My dad has his bloody allotment. Shame my paper made me redundant. Fucking twats. I probably deserved it.”
She threw a pebble into the fire.
Terry looked at Shona sideways. Her eyes pale fire in the light of the flames. “You have anyone else, apart from your dad?”
“In what way? I have a cat.”
Terry sighed and rolled her eyes. She took some dry bark scraps and threw them into the fire. They flared and crinkled at the edges, and tiny flares of steam rose from their scabby backs.
Shona spoke quietly. “My friends are mainly hacks. I know how their minds work. This place, though, Ullathorne? I can’t get under the skin of it. I’ve got half a story, and . . . I suspect that’s it.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Terry said. She had her phone out, and was staring through its camera screen. Looking into the fire. “Caverns of light, cathedrals of flame,” she said, taking images with quick dabs of her thumb.
“Surely the contrast with the night . . . You’ll not get a picture.”
“Leave it to the professional.”
