Sandy sat on the step. He boiled like an egg in a simmering pan. It was an unpleasant heat. It made him tired and unable to think. He had to squint at his book because of the sun, and that gave him a headache. He could not win. He was reading a quite funny American novel. He guffawed at a few of the jokes. That was as far as a laugh could force itself from his body. He thought about Rian. He fantasised about her, and always in his fantasies she was not the Rian he knew but some wilder, more animal figure. She bit and scratched and connived. Robbie looked over her shoulder into Sandy’s face as Sandy pulled her to the ground and she laughed. These images scared him, and made him uneasy about the true relationship between sister and brother (he remembered the rumours about his own mother and her brother), but at the same time he was gloriously in love with the new version of Rian, a girl who would know things he needed to know and who would teach him the rules of new games. She pulled on his hair as she twisted his face towards hers. He champed like a tethered horse to go to the mansion. His exams had kept him away at first, and then he had been made to visit an ill and very old grandaunt in Leven. He might have gone today, but something held him back — the self-imposed tether. Tomorrow he was going to Kirkcaldy on the expedition planned a few days ago. He had taken some money out of his small bank account for that.
His mother brought him a glass of lemonade, though he had not asked for it. She placed it on the doorstep, while his body tensed.
‘There you are,’ she said. He stared at his book. He thought for a second of ignoring the glass, of not drinking it. She was always doing things like that for him. Then he gave in.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said, listening to the ice-cubes tinkling as he lifted the glass. His mother was smiling as she stepped back into the kitchen. She thought that perhaps a small victory had been won.
Sandy sipped the sweet drink and felt his teeth going grainy immediately. Plaque, that was the enemy. He did not want false teeth. He tried drinking without letting the liquid linger in his mouth, and coughed when some fizz went up his nose. He examined his breath by breathing out through his mouth and then in through his nose very quickly. His breath did not smell too bad. He had some spots, though. He would have to start shaving soon, and then his spots would get worse. Thankfully, he did not have any trouble with his hair. It was dry and thick. It never ran to grease like Colin’s or Belly Martin’s, which was a miracle considering the amount of chips he ate. He had read in a girls’ magazine at school about the causes of acne: fatty substances, sweets, not washing properly. The same things did for the hair too, apparently. He washed often, yet whenever he scratched with his fingernails across his face he would find grey grime beneath the nails. This he would scrape out with the edge of a tooth and spit on to the ground. He would look in the mirror. He would look sparkling clean. He would scrape his nose with a fingernail. There would be dirt beneath the nail again. It astonished him. How did Rian wash? Did she ever? She did not smell, except for the sweetish smell of grass, so he supposed that she did. Perhaps down at the edge of the river, or from the stand-pipe at the golf course. Yes, that seemed obvious. Then it struck him: she must wash either early in the morning or else late at night so as not to be seen. Someone hiding in the gorse could watch her, could meet her.
Could watch her washing.
Another fantasy revolved in the hot sun, and in it Rian was the Rian he hoped for, and Robbie was nowhere to be seen. He left his book and his lemonade and returned to his room.
Mary lifted a stool out of the kitchen and on to the doorstep. She flopped down on it and raised her head towards the sun. She closed her eyes and felt the rays on her skin, burning and tingling and soothing. She opened her eyes and looked at the garden. It was in need of some work. She would ask Sandy, but not now, would tempt him with a pound. She used to give him threepence to go to the corner shop. That was a while ago now. Her mother had tempted him with biscuits and bread and butter and gooey strawberry jam. Times changed. It was a phrase overused but true. Times changed and people changed with them. She could have done with a man around the place when Sandy was younger, someone who would have taken him fishing or for long walks. Too late for that now. Now she needed a man for herself, alone as she would be in a year or two. It frightened her, but if Andy stayed it would be fine. It would be heaven. Tom was right: she needed a good man and she wasn’t so old. The older you got the more you needed them in some respects. She smiled but the smile quickly disappeared, like a young animal in strange territory. Poor old Mr Davidson had died, and him such a fit-looking man usually. He had been good to her, had listened to her in the very worst times. He had given her the Church as a solid rock of fresh life, and she had clung to it ever since with the frantic scratching fingers of one who is near to losing her balance and falling off. To hell with the sneering congregation. She spoke to her God.
The Church mixed uneasily with some of the ideas handed down to her by her mother and her mother’s mother, but she held both sets of beliefs dearly and would part with neither. Sandy had no religious sense at all. It saddened her. He had reneged on going to church when he was twelve and had not gone since except to weddings and funerals. When Mary looked around her on a Sunday she could see why. The pews were quarter full, and then with predominantly elderly people: the women in their ageing Sunday coats and 1950s hats; the men mouthing the hymns while their wives sang shakily. It was a drab spectacle. There were only a few young people dotted around. The young men sang lustily. Their cheeks were ruddy with righteousness. Some of them would glance at her bitterly. Now Mr Davidson was dead. Who would replace him? Someone younger, certainly, and someone who, being young, would please the older churchgoers less. If the congregation grew any smaller it would be embarrassing.
It was a good day for a walk, but Mary knew that Sandy would not go with her, and a walk by herself was a lonely thing. Andy had promised to drop by in the afternoon, school drawing to a close for the summer, and take her out. Perhaps he could be persuaded to go walking. They would have to drive some distance from the town before it would be possible for them to walk together without embarrassment, without the whispers and stares from the women in their long old-fashioned coats, bags hanging heavily from their arms. They would have to drive into the country, way out by Kinross. A car made all things possible, even escape. She would take a bath after lunch in case she had been sweating. The lavatory flushed upstairs. The pipes gurgled and the liquid ran into the underground system of sewers. There were countries worse than Scotland. If only lives could be made better through decent plumbing and housing. But life wasn’t quite that simple, nor was it as concrete. Dig beneath the surface and you would not find a system of pipes and taps to be switched on and off; you would find, rather, wild depths, guilty feelings, an ever-changing geography. Mary shivered a little as a wind blew across her from the garden. Goosebumps appeared on her bare arms. She heard Sandy padding about upstairs and decided to go in herself.