A Changing Land(145)
Maggie put her feet into the running shoes, squeezing her heels in so that the skin bulged uncomfortably around the top. She ran her finger around the inside, pulling at lining frayed by time, and then tested her weight. The shoes pinched her and shortened her, so that her toes curled under like a hermit crab backing into a shell. Lifting one foot and then another she ran on the spot, briefly lifting her knees as high as possible. She laughed, breathless, at the folly of her exertions.
The running shoes were worn every day by her for two months. She had left off practising in the hills and took to the dusty roads. Every step she pounded went some way to ameliorating her guilt. Every mile run convinced her of her actions. As her strength grew and her pace quickened, she argued less with her sickly mother and ignored her more. How could she be expected to cook and clean for the young ones and work two jobs when she was training to eventually stand on the winner’s dais in Edinburgh? There was just enough time in her self-imposed training schedule to cook up the oatcakes for breakfast, see to her mother’s morning cuppa and send her younger siblings off to school. Maggie spent her lunchtime practising her starting technique outside the general store where she worked, tucking her skirt in her knickers and heading straight as a die down the centre of the bitumen road. She left her job carding wool in order to chop vegetables for tea, leaving the cooking to her poorly mother. The rest of the time she ran. Maggie ran so fast that she overtook the post boy on his bicycle and the milkman in his chugging truck. She even passed Robert Macken in his clapped-out utility, carting sheep back to Lord Andrew’s estate. When the day came that the storekeeper reluctantly agreed to time her with his fancy watch, Maggie exceeded the winner of the previous year’s 400 yard dash in Edinburgh. She was ready. The next day the vomiting began.
Maggie walked slowly about the ruin, thinking of another night long ago.
She was walking down the road from work one spring evening. There were three miles to go before she reached the crossroads that would lead her home and she was tired and annoyed. Having been up since three am with the youngest suffering from croup, she’d then endured the pitiful ranting of her mother as she complained of the leg ulcer which would not heal and the husband who left them all for a job interview and didn’t return. For once Maggie wanted to sit by the fire and have someone bring her a bowl of broth. For once she wanted to hear the wind whistle around the thick walls of their crofter’s cottage instead of the ceaseless arguments and crying and tantrums that filled her siblings’ lives.
When the car slowed Maggie barely hesitated. There was no other traffic, either in front or behind, and as she wriggled into the black leather of the passenger seat, her work roughened hands stroked the soft leather. The car’s headlights filtered the roadside inhabitants, scaring a black-faced sheep whose eyes shone a yellow green for an instant, and then they were accelerating down the narrow road. In Tongue they parked beyond the pub and its wooden shingle and in an instant she was following him.
Maggie began to jog around the ruin. Mr Levi had contacted her today about the required paternity test. The landscape merged into an unending circle of stone walls, uneven ground, and a void of empty air that joined land, sea and sky in an unblinking swirl of night. What she’d done could not be undone. For what could be her excuse? Could she blame the gossips for convincing their village-bound inhabitants of the identity of Jim’s father? Could she seek forgiveness under the guise of wanting more of her life? And what of the family on the far side of the world? Maggie experienced a tightness in her calf muscle. There was a dull jab in her side. Pushing her fingers deep into the pain she continued jogging. She thought of Robert waking from where she left him by the fire. Upstairs he would undress quickly, dropping his clothes on the ground in a crumpled heap and then crawl into bed, kicking at the tucked-in sheets until they came askew with impatience. He would expect her to be there as always: meek and agreeable, grateful for having been taken in by him those many years ago. Maggie was pitied then and she worked the misery of her condition, becoming somewhat defiant of anyone who suggested compliancy on her part. What else could she do now she was faced with the undignified truth? With youthful determination, Maggie pumped her arms and increased her pace.
It was a straight agreement. An understanding based on mutual need and he wasn’t so ugly or so old to make her shudder or reconsider her actions. At the ruin Maggie removed her knickers, resolved not to appear immature or, worse, a virgin.