A Changing Land (21 page)

Robert Macken gulped down the rest of his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘A fine breakfast, Maggie. Fine indeed.' He pushed the wooden chair back roughly. The legs caught on the rug beneath and he swore softly under his breath. ‘Have you heard from Jim?'

Maggie collected the empty cup along with her husband's plate as he stood, stretching his back out. She shook her head.

‘I accepted the lad as my own. You know that, Maggie, and I have no problem with him not being mine. I don't know why I tell you this now after so many years.'

Maggie left the dirty breakfast dishes on the end of the wooden table to place a small white hand on her husband's chest. She looked up into his pale eyes.

‘I want the lad to get the money that's owing to him and come home,' Robert stated as he brushed her hair with his lips. He lifted his cap from the peg on the wall, flicking at the brim as if new.

Maggie moved to rest her head on his chest. Since Jim's leaving she'd refrained from arguing against the lad's inheritance. What was the point? He'd gone despite her protests. Now her nights were filled with anxiety as she wondered why she'd not done more to stop him.

‘There's much we can do with the money.' Robert rubbed his hands together. ‘A new sty for the pigs and a John Deere tractor: Aye, not a big one mind. I'd clear that field behind the milker's shed and we'd have to move those rocks.' He adjusted the cap, hitched up his trousers. ‘There's a few days' work in that.' He rubbed his lower back at the thought of it. ‘Wouldn't I love to see the look on Lord Andrews' face when I tell him that I've no need of his contract?'

Maggie busied herself wiping imaginary crumbs from the table into the palm of her hand.

‘You all right then, lass? You're looking a bit peaky.'

Maggie brushed her hand against the floral cotton of her dress. ‘Never been much of a morning person, Robert. I expect my age is catching up with me.'

‘Rubbish. Steady as a black-faced ewe climbing a rocky hillside you are, my Maggie.' He rumpled her hair, rested a large hand briefly on her shoulder and gave it a shake. ‘We'd have enough produce to sell direct to the supermarket. And I was thinking eggs, laying hens. Just enough to sell in Tongue first off and then we'll see how it goes. Once the lad's back we'd be able to manage the feeding of them, and the gathering. When we're established we'll get one of the Childers' girls in to help with the sorting. That would be good for you too, Maggie,' he clucked her under the chin. ‘Bit of female company eh?'

‘That would be good, aye.'

‘Well sound a bit keen about it, lass.'

Maggie untied her apron. She needed some fresh air. ‘They're grand plans, Robert.'

Robert winked at her, picked up his wallet. ‘I'd add a room to this house too.' He surveyed the tiny crofter's cottage. The ground floor served as kitchen, living and dining area. ‘I'd build a new bookcase.' He scraped his socks on the threadbare rug, ‘and carpet –'

‘You'll be late,' Maggie gently reminded him. Robert was meeting Mr Levi, the solicitor, in Tongue. There was an accountant arriving from Edinburgh to discuss the tax implications of Jim's impending fortune.

Robert kissed her on the cheek and she helped him with his tweed jacket. Although it was summer the breeze from the loch was cold when she opened the door and Maggie shrugged her shoulders into her homespun cardigan as Robert stepped from the threshold.

‘It'll be the most pleasure I've enjoyed in years, telling Lord Andrews he can stick his measly wool contract up his ill-gotten kilt.'

Maggie watched her husband drive away in his old pick-up. The vehicle made a grating noise and puffed dark smoke from its exhaust as Robert changed gears to drive up the slight hill to the left of the house. She smelled diesel and added a new pick-up to her husband's list of improvements. She supposed she should be grateful for his excitement, yet she didn't think she could live with someone else's money, especially this money. It was wrong.

The air carried a whiff of moisture as Maggie left the whitewashed cottage. The loch rippled at the pebbled shoreline as she turned from the east and followed a low stone wall that ran past the house up the side of the hill. In her youth Maggie dreamt of being a famous athlete, a long distance runner. She
would tuck her skirt into her knickers, and run the length of the loch bordering her parents' small block that lay some miles to the east. She had no running shoes then. Her brown lace-ups sped her around the loch as she slithered on pebbles, slippery with the misty breath of the night. If the wind was behind her on those dawn-lit mornings she would lift her arms in freedom, feeling the crick of her ankles as she stumbled with joy. On the weekends when school was done and she could wangle time away from her mother, she would add a scramble up the hill next to the loch as part of her running course. From this vantage point she would catch her breath amid the tangle of green and purple vegetation.

Maggie walked the hill of her home these past twenty-five years, stroking the stone wall that breasted the hill. It was a pleasing aspect, for Robert was a fine crofter. Not one stone wall was in disrepair, not one shingle loose on the roof of their house. Their few sheds were weatherproof, their new potatoes were soft and buttery and there was always a neatly stacked heap of peat for the fire. The cow always gave milk and Maggie still churned their own butter, though their neighbours laughed at her domestic tendencies when a trip to Tongue could supply most of what Maggie grew or made. If she were to ask herself if she were happy, her answer would be yes. Although she also comprehended that she knew no better. How did one judge a life if there was nothing to compare it with?

At the top of the hill Maggie paused by a cairn and collected her breath. Her forty-seven years were now presenting themselves in the form of swollen ankles and a stiffness that did not abide with the passing of winter. Even her breath seemed shallow now, as if her lungs were shrinking with age. Shielding her eyes from the sun, Maggie looked back across their loch. It was a fine view. The water stretched out like a wide yawn to disappear at the foot of another hill. Summer brought a shimmer of heather to the
landscape and as the breeze picked up, the landscape shimmied with the vibrancy of a young girl at her first ceilidh. It was a far different atmosphere to the memory of her childhood.

The view from the hill of Maggie's youth took in a wedge of flat country and the village of Tongue. Usually she would reach this hilltop after scrambling up its grassy sides, her calves burning with use. It would be then that the dreadful sameness of her life stared back at her. The thousands of rocks which some cataclysmic event had spewed up from the ruins of the earth; the stagnant pools of water lying dank across the flat country, the B&Bs that signalled the yoke of the English and the measly four acres most crofters were expected to survive on.

Maggie would breathe then, a great lungful of unpolluted air, and cast her eyes across to the adjoining hills at the cairns topping each successive high point, until the furthest mound of rocks looked like an unlit candle on a poorly made cake. The urge to run this route of ancient markers would be so great that Maggie scarcely acknowledged she had made the decision to be punished again by her weary mother. Her feet would take her to one and then two cairns before her brain bargained with her pumping heart to return home.

Was it so long ago?
Maggie asked, stooping to place a fallen rock on the crumbling pile. With a sigh she turned downhill. There were still the breakfast things to be tidied, a pair of Robert's socks to be darned and the fish man would be calling. They would be having haddock tonight, probably breaded, for being a Friday Robert would call at the local for a few ales and be wanting a bit of a fry up for his dinner.

She looked at her watch, wondering at the time in Australia. Hoping her boy was with friends; wondering if the getting of the money would be as easy as everyone expected. Jim's silence from the far side of the world set Maggie's memory in motion and her ulcer to flare. Inside the house she poured herself a long glass
of milk, her hand only briefly hesitating before pouring a good measure of whisky into the glass. She gulped the liquid down, feeling the fresh cow's milk glaze her tongue and gums with a fatty coating. She hoped Jim would return home soon. With a sob Maggie lent on the kitchen bench, her hands cradling her forehead. The waiting was proving too much for her.

How had all of this happened when she had only wanted a pair of running shoes?

The night dripped with the heat of a long day lingering. There was a closeness in the air; a tight constriction existing beyond the mantle of discomfort left by the sun's blaze. Boxer felt the constraining pressure of the unknown in the droplets of sweat beading his neck, arms and chest. The moisture tracked a path to pool at his stomach, while the wadded blanket cushioning his head from the dirt beneath grew wet from the water seeping along the wrinkled coils of his neck. His hands swiped irritably at the sheen covering the dark skin of his body. The spirits wanted to make their presence known, regardless of Boxer's inclination.

Leaving the woman by his side, he crawled awkwardly from the bark humpy. His knees cursed at the clash of bone against bone, nonetheless he managed to stand, his aged slowness masked by the night sky. As his muscles warmed, Boxer's feet traced the dirt track. He walked nimbly, skirting the edge of the camp, weaving through trees and grass tufts until the creek snaked its scent into his nostrils. When his cracked soles finally sank into the cool, sandy
mud he sniffed in recognition. Here, in the dank still of the creek, he breathed in the cloying odour of stagnant water, oozing mud and rotting vegetation. Layered within hovered the remnants of campfires, and the tangy fish scent of mussels. His splayed toes clenched at the sinking softness. The water ebbed at his ankles. If he walked to the left, Boxer knew his feet would be ripped by the mound of opened shells that supplemented the white's food the tribe was given monthly. To the right, further up around the second bend in the creek, was the women's sacred place. Directly opposite across the water was what he'd come for.

Lowering himself to the ground, the skin of his thighs sagged into the sand beneath as he sat cross-legged. Above him the depth of the sky seemed to angle downwards, the glow of the spirits flickering with differing degrees of intensity. He longed for the guiding path of the moon, for the brightness that allowed safe passage in the dark, for fair hunting of both land and water creatures. This night was not that time.

Boxer narrowed his eyes, his gaze directed across sluggish water to the far bank of the creek. There was a deeper darkness there. A murky crevice between the trees beyond that beckoned through wisps of unknown movement. His lips moved in unspoken speech, his mind calmed. They had awoken him with the sweat of their need. As he closed his eyes his skin prickled, the wiry hairs standing upright on his sinewy arms. He nodded then, ready. Once one comprehended their presence, their breath of life in all things, fear borne of ignorance settled like the embers of a fire turned to ash. Boxer breathed with the land in and around him. The great heart of mother earth steadied his vision like a soft caress.

Boxer pictured the great sweep of land that was Wangallon. Far beneath him Hamish Gordon rode on horseback flanked by his men and one black, one of Boxer's own. They were crossing the big river from the land of the Gordon's to another. A chill wind
swept along the mighty waterway. Boxer felt the gust as surely as he rode beside his Boss.

He awoke to the scurry of feet and the screech of laughter, to the flick of sand on his face. Women were stoking fires on the creek's bank. Children were rushing into the water, screaming with delight. Great streaming curls of water flashed in the muted greens and browns of dawn. The first tinge of light smeared the space above the tree line red with heat. Boxer scraped the sand of the creek from his drooping cheek before scrambling to his feet. Brushing gritty crusts of sleep from his eyes, his filmy sight followed the smear of red as it grew in the lightening sky. It was true then, he thought despondently as he retraced his steps back to his humpy.

There would be blood.