He put on a clean shirt and jeans and sat in the chair by the parlour window. Many times he had driven over the mountain on a night like this, up the west coast where Morag lived. Yet he felt that he had dressed for Tena MacTavish somehow, absurd though that was—no way would he encounter her tonight. Maybe it was just the two quick whiskys that primed him for her company. Good for the heart anyway,
old Dr. Fraser had told him, whisky in moderation. Lauchlin avoided younger doctors and their contemporary advice—Fraser had seen him fight, he understood the limits of medical solutions. So Lauchlin nursed a third glass, turning it in his hand as the set sun became a slow, red river of ingot along the ridge, the mountain’s green darkening down to the strait, the water a faintly shivering black.
At the store below, Clement’s truck pulled up and he dashed inside with the engine running. What would he and Tena talk about when he came home? Ordinary things, or would she tell him something that only her blind eyes could see? A day different from those of other wives, even the way she baked, feeling velvety flour in her fingers, the sweet grit of brown sugar. After Clement drove away, Johanna doused the store lights, flipped the Open sign to Closed. She’d stay down there a while, checking stock, pencilling a list of goods for him to pick up in North Sydney tomorrow. The livid red sky ebbed into gauzy pinks, died to cool aquas, and then the first shade of night.
“
YES
?”
MORAG SAID
, a little out of breath. The phone there was back in the kitchen and she had probably run down the stairs.
“It’s Lauchlin, Morag.”
“Hello, Lauchlin.”
Their voices struck the familiar notes, it would not have mattered what words they used, how dull or ordinary, it was all voice at first, feints and dodges, an old tune of reunion and evasion. When had she come down? How were things with him? How did she find being home again, alone in the house?
“Why didn’t you tell me Nell died?” he said, when the small talk got smaller.
“It’s not like we were still in touch,” she said.
“Jesus, you were home for the funeral, weren’t you? What does that really mean anyway, in touch?”
“I think you know. I was here for three days, Lauchlin, that’s all I could get at the time. I’m back to settle her estate.”
“Estate. She’d get a laugh out of that. She buried at St. Margaret’s?”
“They took her up there, yes.” They listened to each other’s breathing. Morag sighed. “Lauchlin. I didn’t want to start it again. It was an emotional time for me.”
“Of course. Bound to be.”
“Do you want to come up?”
“It’s nearly dark. It’s late and I’m feeling a little unsteady. Tomorrow I have to go into town. But I’ll come up before long.”
“Strange to be here alone,” she said. “Auntie was everything here.”
“I was fond of her too, you know.”
“And she of you. I’m sorry. I should have let you know. But Lauchlin, there’s…”
“Yes?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter for now. Come up when you can. I’m not home for long.”
ON HIS WAY TO TOWN
Lauchlin detoured up the backland road where he knew Clement was working. He passed the Philips’ old farm, the house long burned down, then a partially logged field with stumps and slash where he stopped at the ditch. Clement was rooting in the bed of his pickup, parked on a crude logging road not far in. Cooper’s truck, almost spotless, was down at the road. The portable bandsaw mill sat in the field with a timber run halfway through it, the band blade broken. A small pile of freshly milled boards was stacked beside it, and beyond a rough pile of spruce logs. Further back, his partner Cooper was limbing a felled spruce with a chainsaw. Clement waved and came down to Lauchlin’s truck.
“How’s the business?” Lauchlin said.
“Nothing but problems, Lauch.” He leaned into the passenger
window, his sweating face twisted with exasperation, sawdust blonding his eyelashes, giving him a startled look. “The blade just busted. More lost time.”
“Who you milling for?”
“Harvey Philip’s young fella, he wants wood for a house.” Clement looked back at Cooper who had left off limbing to light a cigarette, gazing toward the thick woods as if he were expecting something to appear there. “Sometimes I think I’m milling for that man, or for nothing.”
“He was in the store the other day. I couldn’t say I like him much.”
“He’s okay when it suits him, but he turns like a rabbit. Talks a good game over a few drinks, another thing to get a whole day’s work out of him now. Sometimes he doesn’t show.”
“Get yourself another man, can’t you?”
“Can’t. We’re partners. He’s into me deep, as far as the money goes, and if I break it off I’ll never see a cent of it.” Cooper was too far off to hear them, but he had shifted his gaze in their direction, his eyes lost in dirty goggles. He and Lauchlin and Clement seemed stilled in mutual appraisal. Lauchlin lowered his sunglasses. Cooper flicked his cigarette into a whirl of sawdust the wind had lifted. Then he yanked the cord of his chainsaw and revved it loud, turning back to his work.
“How’s the missus?” Lauchlin said.
“Fine, good,” Clement said vaguely. “Look, since you’re here, Tena’s been wanting to try out those books they have on tape. The ones you can listen to off a cassette player?”
“Audiobooks. Sure.”
“I don’t know where to get them, and I don’t have the time, not lately.”
“I could find her some. I used a few when I was teaching. What does she like?”
“Don’t ask me, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Suppose I stop by and ask her, see what she might want?”
“You do that, boy. She’s alone too much anyway.”
“Good luck with your woodcutter up there.”
“I’m past luck with him. Let’s have a drink sometime, eh?”
“Just that. Talk to you later.”
This mission seemed to Lauchlin exactly right, a legitimate errand, he could do something for her, he could see her. As he drove the Southside road heading east for the highway, he mulled over what she might like in books. He’d bring her a tape or two, a gift to start her off. He didn’t know her, after all, she might want escape, detective stories, mysteries, even romances. He guessed not, there was more to her than that, and she was blind—that might call for a different journey into a book.
But his attention swerved when two red marker posts approached at the roadside, the invitation of a certain driveway, of a cottage he knew. He slowed down, trying to resist its pull, there were errands to run. He had no idea if Maddy were there now, this day of the week, he hadn’t seen her since last fall, and he had things to do. But still, she might be there, down on the shore of St. Andrews Channel, a prospect too sweet to pass up, and always had been.
It was chancy, unless they had planned it ahead of time, taking this long, twisting driveway down through young hemlocks and old spruce. A getaway cottage, it had no phone, but he had liked that risk, tossing the dice for Maddy, they both had. The small clearing was hidden close to the shore and he couldn’t know if her husband were there or not, he might even meet him on this narrow roadway with no ready excuse for showing up, but a blustery exchange of ironic platitudes—Making house calls now, are you, Lauch? Only when you’re not here, buddy—would get him through that. The truck rocked through mudholes lazily.
When she’d been a younger colleague at a high school years ago, almost from the first they had traded stories and jokes, some mildly off-colour. Then it seemed that she was turning any topic in a sexual
direction, whether it was the food in the cafeteria or a newspaper item or whatever Lauchlin mentioned about himself, and he liked to let it go where it might, teasing it here or there. I’d ask you out, Mad, he said at one point, if you weren’t married. Well, she said, I guess we can’t go
out
together, but we might find a way to stay
in
together. Ah, Maddy, I don’t know what you’re getting at, too subtle for me. I think you do, she said. She enjoyed discussing anything sensual with him, and her candidness grew. She asked him straight out at lunch one day if he liked oral sex, I mean its sophisticated varieties, she added, not what these kids are up to. Students were milling around the grounds and Lauchlin glanced at them. Don’t worry, Maddy said, they’re too absorbed in each other to listen to us, they think teachers never do such things, let alone talk about it, so why would they eavesdrop? Our lives are dull fare, eh? Leaning across the table, she took a bite out of an apple and narrowed her eyes at him. I’m thinking about you right now, she said, about a certain part of your anatomy. A good student from one of Lauchlin’s classes walked past and he smiled pleasantly at her. If they only knew how your mind works, Maddy, he said. If they did, she said, I’d never get a speck of algebra past them, would I? Lauchlin said, Just what part of my anatomy did you have in mind, Mad? She picked up her leftovers with finger and thumb, pinching them with exaggerated fastidiousness, and dropped them in a paper sack. She slipped on her big sunglasses and regarded him. If you’d like to find out, I’ll see you tomorrow night. It’s Friday. And Ralph? he said. She whispered, Out of town. I’ll leave a note in your mailbox. And she did just that, though he hadn’t dared open it until he was home and could stare at the address of her house. Morag was long gone to Boston by then, he had yet to accept that his heart had limits beyond the ring, though he had stayed away from women for a while, more out of depression than any medical fear. But with Maddy he’d got past that—she loved having sex with
him,
and all its pleasures.
One car, hers. He stopped in the grassy clearing. The shore was no more than fifty feet behind the cottage and two slack lounge chairs lay opened out back. The swimming was poor here but she liked to lie out in the sun. A strip of sand gave out into shingle at the waterline, the stony beach dropping quickly into rocky depths. A grease-blackened barbecue on legs had seen recent use, but like all run-down cottages, the place looked forlorn in sunless weather like this, drained of mirth. The wide channel was grey and choppy in an east wind, the hills of Boisdale low in the distance. A door latch turned behind him.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I thought you were the milkman.” She leaned in the doorway, her head tilted against the jamb, her dark brown hair mussed on one side as if she’d just woken. She was chubbier than he remembered but it didn’t change her much, and she still looked good barefoot in a long, loose blouse and that little sideways smile that could say a lot of things.
“Hello, Maddy. You were expecting Ralph, were you?”
“Not really. I wasn’t expecting you either. You didn’t happen to drop from that helicopter buzzing all around here, did you?”
“I never heard it.”
Maddy yawned, shaded her eyes at the sky. “You wouldn’t know what’s going on by any chance?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. I was hoping we could change that.”
She shook her head and looked down at her toes, wiggled them, their chipped red polish. She’d been wading in those stony shallows. She was smiling but some issue lingered behind it. “I’m going to put a big word on you, Lauchlin. Presumptuous. Eh?” She looked at him, not angry, but skeptical, puzzled.
“I was never good at big words, Mad.”
“Haven’t heard a word from you, have I, big or little. I’m still at the same location, you know. Same phone number.”
“I’m getting old, Mad. I don’t get around like I used to.”
“I bet.”
“I never liked phones anyway. I like it face to face.” He nodded at the Christmas-tree lights still strung along the eaves of the cottage. “Do you light those up?”
“Not often,” she said. “Not wise to advertise, as we used to say.”
They stared at each other, neither moving, Lauchlin with a slight smile, teetering at that moment when pride might make him leave as gracefully as possible. But he didn’t want to leave, not now that he’d seen her.
“You look chipper,” Maddy said.
“Do I? Must be you.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m here to see you. That’s all. I was driving by.”
“Oh.” She took a crushed packet of cigarettes and a lighter from her breast pocket, pulled a crooked one out and lit it. “It’s a mess inside. We had a party last Saturday.”
“You always had good parties, you and Ralph.”
She blew smoke above her head. “They were better when you were here.” She stared at her cigarette, then at him before tossing it away: he’d never liked tobacco in a kiss.
In the kitchen sink there was a heap of dishes to which she added a few more from the table and swiped a sponge over the oilcloth.
“Don’t bother about that,” Lauchlin said, pulling out a chair.
“It’s dreary in here, though, isn’t it? I was about ready to leave, you know. It’s funny, I had a feeling. I don’t mean it was about you, but something slowed me down, made me hang around here a while. Now don’t think I was waiting for
you,
mister. You’ve been awful scarce. I was just reading a book, and you weren’t in it.” Lauchlin glanced at the romance novel splayed on the counter.
“Pity. You ought to write these, Mad, you’ve read enough of them.”
“I couldn’t be that silly, not on a page. They’re just soft drinks. I
pop one now and then, take a few gulps.” She rinsed two glasses and poured into one of them red wine from a near-empty bottle. “Some Chilean red?” she said.
“A little whisky or rum for me, please.”
She sighed and found a bottle of rye in the cupboard, measured him two fingers’ worth, and sat across from him.
“Like old times, sort of.”
“They’re not that old, Mad.”
“You’re a devil, you know that? Jesus, when was it you came by? When Ralph was out west? A year ago.”
“Less, I think.”
“Oh, God, and the two of us. Me on the downhill to fifty, and you racing ahead of me. What’s going to become of us, Lauchie?”
Her green eyes shone in the windowlight. Her face had softened some, a fondness for wine had taken its measure.
“You mean now, or down the road?”
“I don’t want to think of down the road. I never had to. Okay?”