The Lady of Mannby Stefan Brenner |
Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 appear in this issue. |
| part 3 of 4 |
That night was an unmitigated disaster. After an evening meal we had decided on a drink at the ‘Groudle’ near Onchan. This could be a lively night-spot, but on that Thursday it was quiet enough. A couple of hours later, when conversation still appeared to be at a premium, Siân suggested home and an early night. Agreeing, we climbed wearily to our feet and filed out.
Entering the car park, with its cool, damp atmosphere, I caught sight of a familiar figure: Cathy McCree. “Go on to the car, I’ll be with you in a minute,” I told the others, and followed her back inside.
Catching up with Cathy, I pulled gently at her sleeve to get her attention. She turned and almost spat “Sunday, I told you!”
“But I won’t be there” I flashed back.
“Oh, you will.” She seemed so certain that I began to doubt my ability to decide for myself. Then I had an idea.
“Aren’t you forgetting something? What about Ruth: what do you think she’ll say?”
“I don’t reckon she’ll even notice that you’ve gone I think you’ll find that she’s other fish to fry.” She laughed, suddenly sounding just like her brother. Like him, the mere thought of her own superiority seemed to lighten her mood appreciably.
“What do you mean, fish?”
Her pale green eyes regarded me with a sort of amused disdain, tinged by something that was almost pity. “You know, you’ve a lot to learn. I must go; Jim and the lads will be here any minute.” The thought of Jim finally got me moving.
“Needed the loo,” I explained hurriedly, apologising for the hold-up.
We drove back in silence, all four of us seeming preoccupied with our own thoughts.
Back at ‘Hill View’ I resolved to speak to Ruth and sort things out; Cathy’s words echoed in my head. But when I asked to talk, she shook her head, saying “please, not now, Michael. I’m shattered. Let’s just go to bed, leave it to the morning.”
Ruth undressed quickly, climbed under the covers and I followed, snuggling in beside her. But she rolled away from me, presenting me with an unfriendly back. For a while, I tried gently stroking her see if she would respond, but she remained unrelenting. I lay awake, thinking that I would never get to sleep, but sleep I must have because the next thing I knew it was morning and Ruth was already up and gone. The clatter of crockery from downstairs informed me that breakfast was on the go. However, I felt relatively calm as I summed up the situation.
So Ruth was a bit edgy about the racing. This was surely something to be expected: after all, it had been my idea to bring her along. Jim I should simply ignore. He was evidently a skilled wind-up artist with an obvious strategy and I’d made it easy for him so far. Cathy was different. I would go and see her on Sunday and put her straight. I’d just tell her I wasn’t interested in her or her snide comments. No, that would be idiotic. Telling her to get lost would simply provoke retaliation, and I still had something to hide. Instead, I would apologise for what had happened the other night, explaining that I’d been drunk and stressed-out. Ruth was too important to risk over some momentary infatuation.
* * *
Sunday morning, and Tom was in the workshop, hands immersed in the Duke’s innards. I suggested that Siân take Ruth up to see the great Laxey Wheel, once used to pump water from the old mine-workings. I started up the trail bike and set off down Bray Hill, heading out along the course to Sulby Glen.
I pulled into the Celtic Craft Centre, parked the trail bike on its side-stand and walked around, looking for any sign of Cathy, but there was none. I returned to the bike, poised between waiting and leaving. Then, faintly at first, I heard the puttering noise of an off-road bike approaching along the twisting road that led up from the Sulby straight. Within a minute Cathy arrived on a battered old British single, her dark auburn hair swinging freely below the rim of an ancient ‘pudding-basin’ helmet.
“See, I was right. We’ll go for a walk, leave the crash-hats, I’ve a lock here.” She set off purposefully towards a little bridge and I followed meekly, turning over in my mind how best to deal with the situation. It was obvious that it wasn’t going to be as easy as it had seemed back at Hill View. We crossed the bridge and turned left, walking back in the direction we had come along a narrow and winding path that followed the course of a stream.
The watercourse had been created by rainfall from Snaefell, which, coalescing into a single body of water, had carved its way through rocky Tholt-y-Will and down into Sulby Glen. The landscape was miniaturised, a lush gem of natural beauty, crystallised by a chance combination of micro-climate and geology. On either side of this tiny valley, dark, massed regiments of conifers marched upwards to the tree-line, covering the slopes with a carpet of spiky needles. They reared skywards, grasping at the life-giving sunlight.
The chilly upland water bubbled and gurgled happily between the boulders of the stream’s bed. Its banks were covered by strange ferns, and weird fungi colonised the dead and dying branches of its deciduous trees whose trunks sprouting almost horizontally before curving to spring vertically upwards.
The path we trod was cut into one of these banks, so that vegetation grew both above and below us, in a profusion of odd shapes and subtle colours. Cathy stepped before me: the swing of her hips and the roll of her shoulders under the auburn crown of hair conveyed a powerful sense of purpose.
Without warning, Cathy appeared to vanish mid-step. I paused, unsure of my next move, then turned aside up a narrow path to my right and continued on up the zig-zagging track, following what was surely the only route she could have taken.
By now, despite having removed my leather jacket, I was sweating profusely. The glen trapped the sun’s warmth and the confined air felt damp, almost viscous. Clouds of tiny midges flitted around my face, obscuring my vision. Then the leafy deciduous trees gave way to a rank upon rank of conifers, tightly packed, hemming me in from all sides, blotting out the light, their pungent scent filling my nostrils. Just as I slowed, beginning to feel truly claustrophobic, they retreated, and the track opened out into a little grassy glade, set about with the shapes of weather-worn boulders, torn, aeons ago, from the hillside above. There, in the centre of the glade, sat Cathy McCree.
Breathing in short gasps from the effort of the climb in the stifling atmosphere, I confronted her. “Why did you disappear? Anyway, how the hell did you get up here so quickly?” She seemed utterly at ease, untouched by any exertion.
“For someone who thinks they’ve all the answers, you do ask a lot of questions.” She giggled softy, as if this was a private joke of hers, and, then, her mood seeming to switch abruptly, said, “I suppose that now you’re going to tell me you know about Ruth and that you don’t care.”
This both surprised and disconcerted me in equal measure. That I knew what?
“Know what, exactly?”
“So you still haven’t twigged it! You’re even dumber than I thought.” This game had become infuriating, and my patience finally snapped.
“Just who do you think you are?” I shouted. “Call me dumb!” I glared, and took a few steps towards her. I felt an odd sense of well-being at this release of pent-up anger, but my carefully-laid plans to resolve the situation were going horribly awry. I had come to tell her that I had no time for her insinuations about Ruth. Too late, I realised I didn’t even know what they were!
Cathy was smiling: she seemed to exude self-satisfaction. I felt my hot anger evaporating in the chilly green blaze of her stare. I stood immobile while she advanced I felt her mouth lock on to mine, her tongue suddenly hot in my mouth. I slowly subsided on to the lush grass beneath her as, deftly, she began to loosen my belt. I had been undone.
* * *
Long after she had gone, I retraced my steps; back down the zig-zag track, along the winding path to the Craft Centre and the trail bike. When I reached the course, I turned right again. I should have gone left, back towards Douglas, but I didn’t. Instead, I continued until I reached Kerroomoar. There, where the giant interlocking hands of the trees squeezed the daylight from the road, I turned up a muddy side track whose entrance was almost hidden between two thick hawthorn bushes. At the end of the track, I came to a halt and left the bike. I stood, and waited for the night.
The silence, and the dim twilight under the trees felt strangely soothing. Calmed by the sounds of birds settling down to roost, my swirling thoughts slowed their crazy rotation. In the steadily deepening dusk, they finally came to a halt. I felt light-headed, floating suspended between the elemental rock and an empty sky: gradually, I became increasingly aware of an eerie impression of eternal stasis; an empty nothing. I suddenly realised that I had almost gone too far, that I stood on a threshold from which there was no return. I screamed noiselessly, but the scream remained trapped within. Teetering on the very brink of madness and ruin, I was saved by a vision of Ruth, her violet-blue eyes clouded with tears. In that moment, the spell was broken and I turned and ran. Clumsily, I managed to start the trail bike and rode like madman back to the course, Douglas, and safety.
* * *
Tuesday dawned cool, damp and cheerless, but I slept on oblivious. But by the time the Newcomers race became due, the grey pall of cloud had lifted considerably and a few stray shafts of sunlight started to pierce its veil. As I listened to the race’s progress on Manx Radio, I sat at the kitchen table, becoming more tense and irritable by the minute.
McCree led his class by the end of the first lap. By the start of the third lap, he was ahead on the roads, setting a new lap record for the race in the process. He finished streets ahead of the field to win in a record time with the commentators struggling to outdo each other with superlatives.
I felt faintly sick. The prospects of beating this guy were receding faster than light. The idea that he might have been somehow tired or overawed by racing appeared faintly ridiculous. No, they seemed positively insane. Young and fit, he would have no trouble recovering. Buoyed by his win, he would now be yet more confident.
I endeavoured to chastise myself for this obsession with Jim. Beating him didn’t matter. I just needed to concentrate on my own ride. After all, I was starting well ahead of the man. I’d probably never see him; never know which of us had gone the better until long after the race was over.
* * *
Copyright © 2007 by Stefan Brenner
