One Good Turn

compliant. The Lyudmilas and Svetlanas and Lenas looked like women, women who knew what they were doing (selling themselves, let’s face it). They had a startling range of attributes and talents, they liked “disco” as well as “classical,” they went to museums and parks, they read newspapers and novels, they kept fit and were fluent in several languages, they were accountants and economists, they were “serious, kind, purposeful, and elegant,” they were looking for a “decent man, pleasant dialogue, or romanticism.” It was hard to believe that their poignant CVs could translate into living, breathing women, yet here they were-the Lyudmilas and Svetlanas and Lenas, or their equivalent, behind a large wooden door on the (rather frightening) streets of St. Petersburg rather than simply floating in virtual space. The idea made his insides flutter with terror. He recognized the feeling, it wasn’t desire, it was temptation. He could have the thing he wanted, he could buy a wife. He didn’t think they were actually in the building, of course, corralled inside its peeling walls. But they were close. In the city. Waiting.

Martin had an ideal woman. Not Nina Riley, not a bought bride looking for economic security or a passport. No, his ideal woman came from the past-an old-fashioned Home Counties type of wife, a young widow who had lost her fighter-pilot husband to the Battle of Britain and who now struggled bravely on, bringing up her child alone. “Daddy died, darling, he was handsome and brave and fought to stay alive for you, but in the end he had to leave us.” This child, a rather serious boy named Peter or David, wore sleeveless Fair Isle jerseys over gray shirts. He had brilliantined hair and scraped knees and liked nothing better than to sit in the evening, making aircraft kits with Martin. (“This is like the one Daddy flew in, isn’t it?”) Martin didn’t mind being second best to the Spitfire pilot (Roly or Jim), a man who had sliced through the blue, blue skies above England like a swallow. Martin knew that the woman was grateful to him for picking up the pieces of a bereaved life, and she would never leave him.

Occasionally she was named Martha, and very infrequently she went by the name Abigail (in the imaginary life identities were less fixed), but usually she was nameless. To assign a name was to make her real. To make her real was to render her impossible.

It was best to keep women locked inside your imagination. When they escaped into the chaotic mess that was the real world, they became unstable, unfriendly, ultimately terrifying. They created incidents. He felt suddenly queasy. “Something used in carrying out suspended sentences.” Five letters.

10

Jackson climbed aboard the 41 bus on the Mound and thought, okay, if she wanted him to take a bus, he would take a bus. The 41 covered a long route that ended up at Cramond. He knew “Cramond” as a hymn tune, not a place. Or was it “Crimond”? So many things he didn’t know. The Lord is my shepherd. Was he? It seemed unlikely somehow.

An old woman waiting at the bus stop with him said, “Oh, it’s very nice out at Cramond, you can go to Cramond Island from there. You’ll like it.” He believed her, years of experience had taught Jackson that old women tended to tell the truth.

He sat on the top deck, at the front, and felt for a moment like a child again-some boyhood memory of sitting up there next to his big sister as a treat. Those were the days when the top deck was for smokers. And a time when life was painfully simple. He often thought about his dead sister, but she was usually an image in isolation (the idea of his sister). He rarely had a sharply focused picture of something that had actually occurred, and this sudden, unexpected memory of sitting next to Niamh on the bus-the smell of her violet cologne, the rustle of her petticoat, the feel of his arm resting next to hers-tied a tight knot in his heart.

The old woman was right, it was nice out at Cramond. It was a satellite of Edinburgh but it seemed like a village. He walked past expensive houses, past a nice old church, down to the harbor, where swans were swimming idly. The smell of coffee and fried food wafting from the kitchen of the Cramond Inn mixed with the salty scents of the estuary. He had been expecting to catch some kind of ferry out to the island, but now he could see that it was easily reachable along a short causeway of rocks. He didn’t need a tide table to tell that the sea was shrinking away from the rocky spine of this causeway. The air was still damp from this morning’s rain, but the sun had put in an unexpected and welcome appearance, making the newly washed sand and shingle glitter. A host of different types of waders and gulls was busy beachcombing among the rocks. Exercise and fresh air would be just the ticket, as Julia would have said. He needed to blow away the stale thoughts that had accumulated in his brain, find the old Jackson that he seemed to have lost sight of. He set out along the causeway.

He passed a couple on their way back, retired middle-class types in Peter Storm jackets, binoculars slung around their necks, yomping briskly back to shore, their breezy “Good afternoons” ringing in Jackson’s ears. “Tide turning!” the female half of the pair added cheerfully. Jackson nodded agreement.

Bird-watchers, he supposed. What were they called? Twitchers. God knows why. He’d never really seen the attraction of watching birds, they were nice enough things in themselves, but watching them was a bit like trainspotting. Jackson had never felt that autistic (mainly) male urge to collect and collate.

The sun disappeared almost as soon as he reached the island, rendering the atmosphere of the place oddly oppressive. Occasionally he stumbled across the relics of wartime fortifications, ugly pieces of concrete that gave the place a bleak, besieged air. Seagulls swooped and screeched threateningly overhead, defending their territory. It was much smaller than he had expected, it took him hardly any time to walk round the whole island. He encountered no one else, something he was rather glad of. He didn’t like to think what kind of weirdos might be lurking around in a place like this. Obviously he didn’t include himself in the weirdo category. Despite not seeing anyone, he had an odd feeling- not one he was willing to give any daylight credence to-of being watched. A little frisson of paranoia, nothing more. He wasn’t about to start getting fanciful, but when a swollen purple cloud appeared from the direction of the sea and made an inexorable progress up the Forth, it seemed like a welcome sign that it was time to go back.

He checked his watch. Four o’clock-teatime on Planet Julia. He remembered a warm, lazy afternoon they had spent together last summer in the Orchard Tea Rooms at Grantchester, the two of them stretched out on deck chairs beneath the trees, replete with afternoon tea. They had been on a brief, rather uncomfortable visit to Julia’s sister, who still lived in Cambridge and who had declined to join them on their “jaunt.” Julia’s word. Julia’s vocabulary was “chock-full” of strangely archaic words-“spiffing,” “crumbs,” “jeepers”-that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls’ annual rather than in Julia’s own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

“Afternoon tea” itself, of course, was one of Julia’s all-time favorite phrases (“Good enough words on their own, but together, perfect”). “Afternoon tea” usually trailed a few excessive adjectives in its wake-“scrumptious,” “yummy,” “heavenly.”

“Warm bakery basket” was another of her favorites, as were (mysteriously) “Autumn equinox” and “lamp black.” Certain words, she said, made her toes “positively curl with happiness”- “rum,” “vulgar,” “blanchisserie,” “hazard,” “perfidious,” “treasure,” “divertimenti.” Certain scraps and lines of poetry-“Of his bones are coral made” and “They flee from me that sometime did me seek”- sent her into sentimental rapture. The “Hallelujah Chorus” made her sob, as did Lassie, Come Home (the whole film, title to closing credits). Jackson sighed, Jackson Brodie, the all-time winner of the Mr. and Mrs. game show.

His phone buzzed like a trapped bee in his pocket. He peered at the screen-having an eye test would be something useful he could do while he was up here with nothing else to do. A text message from Julia read, “How r u? comp 4 r mott 2nite at our box! Luv Julia xxxxxxxxxxxx.” Jackson had no idea what the text meant, but he felt a surge of affection when he thought of Julia laboriously tapping in all those Xs.

He was about to set off back when his eye was caught by something on the rocks, below the remains of a concrete lookout. For a second he thought it was a bundle of clothing that had been dropped there, hoped it was a bundle of clothing, but it didn’t take him more than a skipped heartbeat to know it was a body that had been cast up by the tide. Jetsam, or was it flotsam?