Monday 2019

Megan

I had learned early that it was better to drown in silence than to swim in a world of noise. Noise is nothing but a painful distraction from the truth.

Noise is abhorrent.

So I hated to walk out of my beautiful soundless world and into the hot city street and a riot of rabble. Retreating to the quiet was not an option, I was heading out on a journey that I didn't want to start.

The keys to the Merc were in my hand; they were a symbol of the advantages of being a Melvick; the money, the name, the house; here is a car to take you anywhere. And the disadvantage of being me; here is a car so you can always come home and do your duty.

There's no excuse, Megan.

Not now.

At the traffic lights, a couple of kids were screaming on the pavement, their red angry little mouths opening and closing, throats tightened. Mums were laughing, talking, scrolling on phones. Three teenagers were losing themselves in their headphones, bouncing on anxious heels as they wait to cross the road. As I joined them, I felt the constant boom of the bass beat, knowing that the delicate tympanic membranes in their youthful ears will thicken and scar, a revenge kept for later life when all their conversations will become half-heard and half-imagined.

My car was parked across the road, the door opened immediately as I pressed the fob, waiting for the traffic lights to change colour. Then the crowd and I moved, we didn't touch, didn't collide, we smiled and sidestepped in unison.

Glasgow was still that kind of city.

I felt the traffic vibrate the hot air as I jogged across the road, cutting the diagonal to get to my car. A delivery man, driving up the inside, didn't see me and his van juddered to a halt. I smelled his brakes and felt his fury as his passenger rolled down his window and his mouth moved, eyes angry and narrow. Did he realize how stupid he looked as I lip-read the words 'fucking, pavement, stupid, bitches'.

Glasgow is that kind of city as well.

We were warming up for another day in the low eighties, the air already stale and fetid, stinking of sweat and alcohol as if the city had not breathed since the weekend's drunken revelries.

Maybe going home is a good thing.

Home.

Strange word for the place, the sound of it was foreign on my tongue.

I got in the car and slung my handbag onto the passenger seat that had never seen a passenger, the laptop and my small travel bag on the floor.

The Merc was a birthday present. A gift the day I left the Benbrae Estate.

My dad thought the car was fitting only because he had already bought one for Melissa the day she left to go to university. It was the right thing to do.

The fact that I didn't want it, or need it, was neither here nor there.

My dad, Ivan Melvick, the Lord Lieutenant of the County, is like that.

By the time the ferry docked at Hunter's Quay, I was already queasy. The crossing from McEnroe's Point is only twenty minutes. It's a journey I have endured many times but never without that creeping uneasiness as the ground moved under my feet.

Usually, I sat in the coffee bar, concentrating on the horizon, ignoring the holidaymakers in their bright summer clothes, wrestling with wheeled cases and overexcited children. I kept them on the periphery of my vision, mindful of any sudden change in their behaviour, paranoid of an emergency siren that I won't hear. I glanced at the emergency exit. Closed. No flashing lights. Nobody was hurrying.

When they do move, there is a synchronized choreography to it; phones swiped off, newspapers folded, computer games ceased, tablets folded away, everybody rises leaving paper cups and crumpled napkins littering the tables.

Out on deck, the glare of the sun was matched by the ferocity of the chilling wind that raced in from the North Sea. From the top of the stairs, I could see the opening to the Holy Loch, the wide arm of water that ran northwards from the Clyde estuary to peter out onto an ever-changing beach near Kilmun and above that, the narrows that connected to the Benbrae and the faerie pools beyond; the boundary of the Benbrae Estate.

Home.

In the distance, I could see the light-green patchwork of the trees round the Benbrae, the darker fringe of the Tentor Wood beyond, the folly of the Water Tower on the hill. They had belonged to my family for five hundred years and some things never change.

Like I know the rooks, as always, are circling high in the sky, drifting and watching.

Waiting.

For me?

I can't see them but I know they are in there somewhere.

They are as unwelcome as my memories.

It took twenty minutes to drive from the ferry slipway to the intricate wrought-iron gate at the bottom of the Long Drive. My favourite part of the journey was always the sweep round the top of the Holy Loch and then over the narrow humpback bridge; here was the real sense of being home. Then a right turn skirting the waterside again before heading slightly inland. I'm sure the road, and the view, looks the same to me as it looked when horses carried my ancestors up to the grand gates.

I always slow slightly at this stretch of road, it's common for cars to U-turn here, pulling out from the innocuous looking lay-by with its neat recycling bin and small friendly sign indicating the pathway to the osprey viewing site. I am cognizant of that, but much more of the fact that this was also where my mother decided to leave us, driving off into the sunset with some secret lover. My heart still misses a painful beat.

It's been three years. I left soon after her and haven't been home much since; it's too painful. Every time I pass this point I go back to the child I was, a wee girl, one hand on Oodie's collar, my other hand safe in my mother's grasp, waiting to cross the road.

Mum needs to come back now. I have no idea what I will say to her, never mind what words will pass between my parents.

As I passed the lay-by, I saw a red Ford Fiesta parked, a young man in his shirt sleeves, leaning on the roof, casually looking at a map, or maybe checking what the sightings of the golden eagles are today. His right arm was holding a mobile to his ear. His strawberry blond hair glinted in the sunshine. I slow down as I passed him, thinking that the phone signal must have been boosted since my last visit. He raised his left arm when he saw me and I felt that discomfort of stranger's eyes meeting mine, and holding for a moment too long, questioning.

I return his wave. He knows me.

But then, everybody does.

The gates had been opened, especially for me, like the maw of a snare trap, the key pad on its metal post stands idle, its sensor unblinking. The land is protected now, not because of us, but because of the eagles.

Many sensations floated through my body, through my mind, but being welcomed was not one of them. It's more like walking into jail to start a life sentence, although I'd never have to worry about a roof over my head or what I am going to cook for my tea. I might never have to think for myself ever again.

I drove the Merc in and then pulled over onto the lawn, rock hard after six weeks of constant sunshine. The car would now be visible to anybody watching from the house. To stay out of sight I needed to be in the Tentor Wood behind the ten-feet-high boundary wall, or down at the Benbrae, the beautiful pond created by a skilful gardener and the roll of the...