HISKITH (my one chance to use the working title), by Catriona

Out 4th June. Details here.

I'm ducking out of the question this week, because I've had a book come out on Tuesday and that gives any writer a free pass for a bit of BSP* The book is called DEEP BENEATH US, although the working title was HISKITH, and for the first time ever, I've attempted a POV character who is a . .. man! I wonder if I've written a plausible man. I hope I find out. For now, here is Barrett Langholm, fifty-ish, divorced, beleagured father of teenage girls, as we meet him at the start of the story . . .

(I should say, I always have to do a "wee-ectomy" as part of editing. No book could withstand having as many instances of the word "wee" in the dialogue as Scottish people use in real life. This time I also had to to a "Jeez-ectomy" on the girls, Sorrel and Willow. I've got a sneaking suspicion this draft precedes it. Jeez!)

If pressed, he would call himself a man’s man. He likes a pint, works with his hands, and his pals are all men. To be more accurate, both his pals are men.. So when his wife left and took his daughters, he never dreamed of arguing. He missed them quietly, then he bought a house big enough to give them a room each when they visited. He took them to Ikea and stood like a horse asleep on its feet while they chose sheets and rugs and something like long Chinese lanterns for keeping shoes in.

‘Daddy! Open your eyes!’

He paid up, packed the car, wielded the Allan key, adjusted castors, left them to the rest of it – the soft things, went downstairs and rang for a Chinese. Those were the days when they’d eat a takeaway.

‘Rice, Dad? White boiled rice? Jeez.’

It wasn’t until the dog that he cried. A full eight months after the decree absolute, when he’d missed a birthday for each of them, it was the night he lost Bess that his throat formed cracks like old mud in a dry bed and his mouth trembled like the flank of a cow on a flysome day. Water, sharp as spikes, squeezed out of his eyes and he stared at the wet patch on the pad of his thumb as he wiped it away trying to remember when had he last shed a tear. It might have been when his old dad died, and he was locked the tiny toilet cubicle of a Co-op Funeral Home, clearing his throat and thumping his fists on his thighs until he mastered himself.

He hasn’t cried for Bess again. He does his job, priding himself on being dependable and thorough. He transfers cash to his girls, all three of them. He walks the hills in head-to-toe Gortex and good leather boots, dark with Dubbin and watertight as ships’ hulls. He rinses his flask with baking soda and leaves it airing with the stopper out, re-uses the foil from round his sandwich if it’s cheese, throws it away after ham, for hygiene.

‘Ever heard of M&S, Dad? Does the word ‘Greggs’ mean anything? Jeez!’

He diesn't let any of it trouble him. He spends his quiet evenings happily oiling tools with a podcast on, or having a cold bottle of lager in front of Storage Wars.

‘Jeez, Dad, you’ll watch anything with ‘Extreme’ in the title!’

Only, he’s too worried for soothing chores tonight. They don’t live on their phones like a couple of kids, but Davey usually picks up the landline and it’s rung out unanswered twice now. So, at bedtime, once Barrett has brushed his teeth and tied the top of the bin-liner ready for the morning, he puts a jerkin on over his sweatshirt, changes his slippers for a pair of rubber clogs and sets off.

Hawthorn tree showing effects of prevailing wind

If he’d a fourby he could head straight up the hill behind the house but as it is he takes the main road down to the outskirts of Sanquhar then peels off onto the two-lane, past the wee pony paddocks with their corrugated iron and tarpaulin shelters. There are letters in the Standard sometimes, complaining about the state of these not-quite stables, but it makes Barrett happy to think the Sanquhar weans can have a horse if they want, that folk like him can keep a few sheep or some chickens. He hears all of them as he drives past: whickering, bleating, a soft cluck from inside a huttie as the birds notice a car in the dark then resettle themselves. He passes a cottage or two with their lights on, a farm with the men still busy in the sheds – autumn calving like they all do now – then he takes the Hiskith turn, onto the single-track with the drystane on either side, his headlights picking out the soft green of the lichen at the foot of the dyke, the sharp green of the moss on the lee of the stones, that egg-yolk yellow of the hawthorn leaves that only lasts a week till a wind clears the lot. It’s lonely up here but there’s no denying it’s bonny when the sun shines or on nights like this when the moon’s like a great big gong hanging in the sky.

He clicks his headlights off, checking, and right enough the moon’s bright enough to drive by, its cold light making the mica glitter in the copestones and turning the stalks of dead grass to silver. Beautiful.

But it’s not safe to keep driving like that. Even on this road to nowhere. To Hiskith, which is the same thing nearly. And it’s a waste of a journey that’s a bugger in the daytime, far better at night when you can see headlights coming miles off, round the blind bends.

Soon enough, Barrett bumps over the cattle grid and the walls fall away at either side of the track, revealing an open moor stretching ahead as far as he can see, with blots of black trees here and there and dabs of white sheep hunkered in about them for shelter.

Southern Uplands and moor

As he climbs, feeling the wind buffet the chassis, seeing the last farm lights disappear behind him, he thinks again about what to do if Davey comes to the door. Will he accuse his friend of not answering his phone? What business is that of anyone’s? He’d sound like one of the girls:.

‘She’s not answering her phone!’ Voices hushed and thumbs flying. UOKGF?

‘What does UOKGF mean when it’s at home?’ he asks, reading over a shoulder.

‘“When it’s at home”! What does that even mean, Dad? Are. You. Okay. Girl. Friend. Jeez!’

Barrett could say, ‘Are you okay, boyfriend?’ if Davey answers the door. Through his worry, the thought makes him smile. Maybe he’ll just park up and watch the house, see that the lights are on and check they go off at bedtime. Davey heads up at ten o’clock, usually.

He watches the strip of turf up the middle of the track disappearing under his bonnet as the miles unspool behind him. Then, as he breasts the final hill that hides the reservoir, he lifts his foot and slips the car out of gear, keeping it poised on the brow, looking down to where the track passes the old school, goes on again skirting the head’s house, and then suddenly stops, nothing but a shining plaque of water with a perfect mirrored moon floating in it and the road emerging again at the far side beyond the dam. Barrett isn’t a fanciful man – this expedition is the most he’s indulged a feeling since Bess died – but he shivers to see the truth so clearly laid out before him in the moonlight.

gentle valley with moorland in distance

They didn’t demolish anything before they flooded it. He knows that, but he tries never to think about it. Tonight, though, with the road catching the light that way, it’s too easy to imagine a cart trundling down, past the school and the heidie’s house, on past cottages and a church, past gardens and middens and byres. A smithy, a shop, a bridge. He can almost see the beak counting the bairns coming up for the bell. Would he have worn a black gown and a board? Barrett shakes himself. ‘He’ was probably a nice woman that cuddled them when they scraped their knees and took them out brambling. He hopes so. Bairns need a woman.

Only, this nice woman in Barrett’s mind is wearing a tweed skirt and a jumper but the village was flooded when women still hid their ankles. It’s that daft bat and her tea towels he’s thinking of.

‘You can’t say that, Dad. Jeez!’

He flicks a glance at the old school, all its windows black at just gone nine o’clock, and thinks: Aye, I can.

Maybe she’s why he finds himself lifting the brake and coasting down silently, out of gear, passing the gate without looking, passing Davey’s too, with its warm light behind drawn curtains. He pulls up with only a crunch of shale chips at the water’s edge, turns to face back up the hill, and switches the engine off.

Not exactly Davey's house but not far off

Bess, Bess, Bess. It’s only the wind, finding the slits in his hubcaps and whistling through them, but bugger if it doesn’t sound exactly like somebody saying her name. And just like that, even though he’s staring out at a sheet of silver water and the black velvet mass of the hill beyond, what he sees is a bright day of scudding clouds and the droplets coming off her coat like diamonds as she clambers out of the loch and shakes herself, then sets off lolloping along the stones, snuffling at nothing with her tail going.

He shouldn’t beat himself up for worrying about Davey tonight, he tells himself. He’s a good man, a good dad despite everything, and a good friend. He’s a failed husband, it’s true, and not much of a . . . he’s long past thinking ‘boyfriend’ and he can’t say the word ‘lover’, even in his head.

‘Ewwwww!’

But he cared about his ex-wife while he still could, he cares to a fault about his stroppy daughters and of course he cares about his friend. He lifts his head and looks at his eyes in the mirror. Should he go and knock on the door, he asks his reflection. What’s the worst that could happen? He looks away from his own eyes again and settles down with his hands in his pockets.

Old fool. He’s pushing fifty now and he’s been outside in the air all day, doing a last mowing at the care home, raking it, bagging it up, hoiking the bags of clippings into the back of the pick-up. His last thought as his eyes close is, if he’d known he was coming here tonight he could have brought some big bags of that sweet grass up the hill road and turned them out over the fence for the ponies.

He jolts awake, bucking against the seatbelt with his heart clattering, catching sight of his own wild face in the mirror and rearing back to get away from it, all this before he remembers where he is. What the hell was that noise? Was it in his dreams? Was it out there in the real night?

As he settles, he sees the churned water on the surface of the reservoir just now fading to ripples, and he can’t help a moan escaping him. It must have been a rifle shot, although it sounded deeper and bigger than that. But what else could it be? He rakes the dam and the barrier, passing over something that looks like a figure, but surely can’t be, and then he's on his way, still rattled.

He's miles down the road, almost on the two lane, before he realises that Davey’s downstairs lights were still shining.

You know what? No one likes a big-head and British people are so self-effacing that we end up making more work for everyone who ever tries to compliment us, but I'm going to say this: I like Barrett. I'd like him in real life and I like him as a character in the book.  Which means, since I wrote him, I like something I wrote. There's fifteen years in California, right there! If you like him too , more information here are those buy links again here.

Cx