Too Near the Dead Read online

  It’s a smart little boutique with glossy white paintwork and shiny windows, incongrously chic between two shabby-looking shops. McBryde’s says the fascia, and underneath in smaller letters: everything for your wedding. I wonder whether the name is really the proprietor’s, or simply a truly terrible attempt at humour. At any rate the window display is beautiful, showcasing a gorgeous gown with a fitted bodice and full skirt made of ivory raw silk, with a tartan sash across it in soft shades of blue, green and grey. The bride’s outfit is centre stage, but slightly behind it is a matching outfit for the groom, the kilt in the same tartan as the sash, and the sporran covered with silvery grey fur.

  I look at these things, and for a moment I hesitate. James is the one with Scottish ancestry, after all; I feel like a bit of a fraud looking at tartan wedding gear.

  The woman in the shop is reading a book when I come in. She puts it down before the door has even swung closed behind me, but with my bibliophile’s eye I’ve already noted that it’s a copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps, and an old one at that, with its orange and white cover design.

  “I know,” she says, seeing me looking at it. “I should probably be reading Brides magazine or something.” She grins at me, her face freckled under a corona of russet curls. I warm to her already. “I’m Seonaid McBryde,” she tells me.

  “Oh. So the shop is really–”

  “Named after me, yes. My friend said I should go the whole hog and call the shop McBride’s with an i, but I thought that would be cheesy.” She puts her head on one side. “And what can I do for you?”

  “I’m getting married next year.”

  “Ooh, congratulations.” She sounds as though she means it, even though she must hear this from every single customer who comes in. “Are you getting married locally, then?”

  “Yes,” I say, a little self-consciously. “We live here. Well, we do now. We’ve bought a house a couple of miles out of town.”

  I end up telling her probably a lot more than she really wants to know, about our plans for Barr Dubh House and our old life in London and the jobs we haven’t entirely left behind but hope to carry on up here, with me freelancing rather than commuting to an office. James has only been away a few days and I’ve spoken to him, and to my best friend, Belle, on the phone, but I’ve missed having proper human contact.

  “So your fiancé’s a writer?” asks Seonaid. “What’s his name? Maybe I’ve heard of him.”

  “James Sinclair,” I say. “He wrote The Unrepentant–”

  “The Unrepentant Dead?” Seonaid finishes for me. “Wow, so he’s that James Sinclair? He’s famous, then.”

  “Not really,” I protest, but I’m quite pleased anyway on James’s behalf.

  “I loved that book,” she says.

  “Me too,” I tell her. “I mean, not just because he’s my fiancé. I worked on the book as a copyeditor before I even met him, and I thought it was amazing.”

  “Please tell me you’re going to let me dress you and your bridesmaids,” said Seonaid. She grins. “There’s not another wedding dress supplier for twenty miles around, anyway.”

  I laugh a little at that. “I’m only having one bridesmaid,” I tell her. “And we’re not having a huge wedding. We wanted something...” I think for a moment. “Understated but tasteful.”

  It’s almost comical the extent to which her face falls at this. She says. “At least tell me you’re planning to wear a long white dress, and not a dove-grey trouser suit or something.”

  “Not a trouser suit,” I say. “A dress. Maybe even a long dress. Only not white. White just makes me looked washed out. With my dark hair and eyes I just look like a vampire in it.”

  “Ivory?” Seonaid suggests hopefully, but I shake my head.

  “I was thinking of a more definite colour than that.”

  She looks at me with a critical eye. “Blue? I could see you in blue. There are some styles that would look fabulous made up in cornflower blue.” She considers. “But what about your fiancé? Is he going to wear a kilt? We should check what colours the Sinclair tartan has.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “We haven’t one hundred per cent decided about that.”

  “I can check for you just in case,” she suggests. “You wouldn’t want to clash, after all.”

  “Well actually,” I say, “I did have an idea about the colour.” It’s true, I did, and I might have had to think for a moment before putting a name to it, if I hadn’t seen something that exact shade already today. “I was thinking about lavender.”

  There is a silence.

  “Lavender?” Seonaid says slowly.

  “Yes,” I say. “I love that colour. I guess it’s my favourite colour.” And I go rambling on about how it’s a little bit warmer than blue somehow, and it reminds me of the flower, and I love the smell of that too. Gradually I realise that Seonaid isn’t saying anything, and she isn’t nodding or smiling either. She looks perplexed.

  “What?” I say. I raise my eyebrows. “Don’t you like lavender?” This surprises me, because I think any purple shade would look stunning on Seonaid herself, with her masses of Titian hair.

  “No,” she says, “It’s not that.”

  “You think it’s not my colour?” I can feel the warmth rising into my face.

  “No, no,” she says quickly. “I think you’d look good in any shade of purple, and anyway, I’d never try to tell a customer what she should or shouldn’t choose. It’s just...” Her voice tails off.

  “It’s just...?”

  After another long pause, she says, “It’s unlucky.”

  I stare at her. Unlucky?

  Seonaid lets out a long sigh. “Look,” she says, “I know it’s totally illogical. It’s just superstition, right? But nobody likes that colour – you know...”

  “Lavender,” I say flatly.

  She nods. “I know it sounds completely nuts. And I mean, I could make you a dress that colour. I don’t keep fabric that colour here, but I could order it in. It’s just...it might not be comfortable for you. If you get married anywhere around here, and people see you, they’ll talk about it.”

  I shake my head. “I’ve never heard of any superstition about getting married in that colour.”

  “Well,” she says reluctantly, “I guess it’s kind of a local thing.”

  For a few moments I cannot think of anything to say to this. We look at each other and it passes through my head that perhaps she is having a bit of fun at my expense. I’ve never heard of any shade of purple being unlucky, for a bride or for anyone else. Married in red, wish yourself dead, I’ve heard that one, not that I’d take any notice of it, if I really wanted a red dress. And then there’s Married in black, wish yourself back. But purple? I don’t think there’s even a rhyme for that one. Did she make it up, this local superstition?

  Of course, I gave myself away as a newcomer the moment I opened my mouth, but then I went one better and told Seonaid all about my old life in London too. Maybe she thinks I’m just a daft townie with all sorts of romantic ideas about Scotland, ripe to believe any old nonsense.

  “I guess I’ll have to rethink this,” I say awkwardly. “Thanks anyway.”

  “I’ve offended you,” she says, looking stricken. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Please don’t leave.”

  I glance away, hesitating.

  On the other side of the plate glass window, the autumnal sunshine is gilding the Victorian facade of the building opposite. A couple of older women are standing on the pavement chatting, in no particular hurry to go anywhere. One of them is accompanied by a black and white collie, which sits at her feet looking up hopefully. A red post van drifts past but otherwise the street is quiet.

  This is a small town, where everyone knows everyone, where people look each other in the face and greet each other as they pass. That’s one of the reasons we came here, after
all: because London, with its great mass of anonymous people, was stifling me. I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot here – the touchy incomer who can’t take a joke. The city girl with an inflated idea of her own importance. No; that’s not who I want to be.

  Then my gaze falls on the battered copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps lying next to the till and that decides it for me.

  “I’m not offended,” I tell Seonaid. “I’ve just never heard of lavender being unlucky before.” I do a good imitation of shrugging unconcernedly. “I could look at some other colours.”

  She’s so pleased that any lingering feelings of pique melt away. Out come swatches of cloth in all different colours: oyster, champagne, eau-de-nil and other, stronger shades like raspberry and cornflower blue. She digs out a book of tartans too, and shows me two different Sinclair tartans: a red one and a blue ‘hunting’ one. I try and fail to imagine James in either of them, but it’s fun looking.

  I’m in the shop a long time, but at the end I still haven’t come to any conclusions.

  “I like the blue, and that very light green,” I tell Seonaid. “But I want to think about it.”

  “Of course,” she says. “You shouldn’t rush it. It’s a big decision.”

  All the same, I feel she is disappointed as she shows me out of the shop. She’s afraid I won’t come back because of what she said earlier and I can’t think what to say to reassure her. I get back into the car and drive back to Barr Dubh House. On the way I think about the colours she showed me, and how beautiful the fabrics were, like jewels.

  But what I really wanted was lavender.

  Chapter Five

  James is due home after midnight. I have a long hot bath in the brand new claw-footed tub, listening to music that echoes tinnily in a room with no soft furnishings – we still have to buy curtains and rugs for it. A dining-room chair stands incongruously next to the tub, so I have somewhere to put the glass of wine and the book I brought upstairs with me. Some more elegant solution will have to be found in future, but for now the main thing is to have the book and the wine at hand. Everything is a bit like that at the moment: temporary solutions cobbled together until we have finished decorating and unpacked everything.

  I lie in the tub and stare at the ceiling. The bathroom is huge and beautiful; it even has an opaque stained glass window. The whole house is huge and beautiful. It’s perfect. Our life here will be perfect.

  The incident in the town this morning is still on my mind. Things feel out of kilter. I want to draw a line under all of it; I want James to come home.

  I pick up the book lying on the chair and look at it. It’s a really ancient paperback copy of Jane Eyre. I’ve read it loads of times already and I don’t think I’ll ever be bored with reading it, but right now I can’t seem to settle to anything at all – except the wine, and I’m not having any more of that either or I’ll have a headache in the morning. I put the book down again and reach for my towel.

  When I’ve finished in the bathroom I go downstairs to wait, wrapped in my robe and with damp tendrils of hair sticking to my face and neck. It’s completely dark outside now and I imagine how the house must look from a distance with its illuminated squares of window. But probably nobody sees it; there is a barrier of trees between us and the distant road.

  My phone is lying on the kitchen counter so I check for messages but there’s nothing. I chew my lip, running my thumb over the screen to check there’s nothing I’ve missed. No news is good news, I suppose; if James were running late I guess he’d let me know. I don’t want him to be held up because I don’t want to have to go to bed without him; I don’t want to lie down alone in the place where I awoke last night, struggling and fighting for air. I’d rather sit up all night than do that. So I wait, prowling the half-finished rooms, and eventually, impatiently, I open the front door and stand there, looking out.

  It was a mild autumn day today, warm even, but now the cold air makes me shiver. Beyond the patch of light from the open doorway it is very dark, the moon a thin sliver. Experimentally, I lean back inside and turn the light off, then look out again, into the night, hoping for distant headlights.

  The darkness is vast and uncompromising. It does not smell like London nighttime does, a mixture of grime and spices. It smells like a river, cold and damp and subtly organic, a scent that makes me think of dank green moss. The blackness is alive with sporadic sounds: throbbing cries and tiny scufflings and something that sounds like a metal blade scraping against a strop. I do not know what any of these sounds are, what makes them, but they are all around me, filling the dark.

  I stand there for a while, but even when my eyes have become used to the darkness, there is very little to see. The land is dark and the sky is simply a deeper shade of black above it, dusted with stars. My hair is still slightly damp and my scalp is beginning to tingle with the cold. There is nothing for it but to go back inside.

  I’m on the point of turning to do that, when lights do at last become visible, some distance away to the north-east, where I know the main road is. So I wait, pulling my robe closer around myself.

  The headlights sweep in an arc and begin to follow the lane that leads towards Barr Dubh House. The car makes slow progress; the lane is eroded with enormous potholes in places. Eventually it comes to the turning into the drive that leads up to the house. There are massive stone gate posts on either side of it, gateless now. They are relics of some obsolete topography; Barr Dubh House itself is new.

  The drive runs at an angle to the house before following a long curve that leads right up to it. The first section is lined with trees and the bright beams of the headlights illuminate each pale trunk in turn as the car passes them. I find myself counting automatically: one, two, three, four, five... Then of course it should be six and seven but instead I’m staring into the darkness that was lit up only a second before, my eyes wide and my hand over my mouth, thinking Did I really see that?

  The brief splash of light against the fifth tree showed someone standing there, pressed closed to the trunk; someone so fleetingly visible that I have only the impression of a twig-thin upper body, and below that, some kind of billowing drapery. I have no sense of what the head was like at all, beyond a dark patch that might have been hair or perhaps just the momentary play of shadows on the bark. I saw enough, though, that my breath catches in my throat.

  There is no chance to look again. The headlights have strobed on along the tree trunks, leaving inky blackness in their wake. I can hear the car now, the rumble of the engine, the crackle of gravel as it turns up towards the house.

  Get a grip, Fen, I say to myself. It was a plastic bag blowing in the wind, or a clump of overgrown weeds. But the image is indelibly imprinted on my mind’s eye: an unnaturally thin arm and torso, the surge of loose fabric. It is an effort to put it aside, but I must, because here is James, James whom I have been waiting for, and I don’t want some figment of my imagination, born of bad sleep and loneliness, to spoil the moment. Instead I concentrate on watching the yellow headlights coming closer and closer until they sweep right across me like a searchlight, and the car stops on the gravel.

  Then the engine dies and the lights go out at the same time, and the car door opens.

  “Fen,” he says in a voice that sounds both weary and amused, “You’ll freeze.”

  It is very, very late before we finally get to bed – so late, in fact, that it might almost be called early instead. There can only be a few hours until dawn. We talk first, catching up on all the things we didn’t manage to squeeze into texts and brief international calls. It’s too late for coffee, even for James, so we have tea, which we drink sitting on the sofa without bothering to remove the dust sheets first; like much of our other stuff, it is newly bought, and like a Christmas present, has to be kept until the decorating is finished before being unwrapped.

  I sit with my legs folded under me, watching James
over the rim of the tea cup while he tells me about Madrid. He has been on television and the radio, with the help of an interpreter. Someone read an excerpt from the Spanish translation of his book and that was strange, he says, because he could see the other people in the room reacting to what was being read, to the words he had written, but he couldn’t follow it himself.

  He’s still wearing the smart clothes he had on for the last interview. The navy blue shirt is somewhat wrinkled now but with his dark eyes and hair and his high cheekbones he still manages to look ridiculously debonair; I think so, anyway.

  I tell him about what I’ve been doing, too. I describe my disastrous attempt to paint one of the bedrooms yellow. The paint was supposed to be daffodil, but once applied it was a nasty shade of mustard.

  “I’m going over it with rose pink,” I tell him. “But I can only do a bit at a time because the colour clash is so awful. The room looks like it’s been papered with slices of breaded ham.”

  James laughs at that, and I smile too. We talk and we laugh, and we hold each other’s gaze in a way that gives me butterflies in the stomach. James puts out a hand and touches my bare foot, running a finger along the instep so that I can’t help shivering like a cat. I think that soon there will have been enough of talking.

  Throughout the entire conversation and everything that comes after it, I say nothing about the terrible nightmare I had: not a word. The memory still intrudes into my conscious mind. I don’t want to think about it – I am determined not to think about it – but it is always there in the background. It’s not even the dream itself that bothers me, because I know that it is meaningless, a freak of the imagination. It’s the fact that I have not told James about it, and that I am not going to tell him. It feels wrong to have a secret. I say to myself that it will soon be forgotten and that if I am not thinking about it, I am not hiding it from anyone.