The Distant View

Tanya Sutherland. I always wondered why she didn’t change her name. An author thing, I supposed, when I first discovered she wrote – and that did come as bit of a shock. I mean, first she muscled in on my boyfriend, and then my dream career path. Granted, the two were in no way linked, and it had been years since she took up with Luke. As for the likelihood of her stealing my readership, there was about as much chance of that as a drayhorse winning The National. That tagline of hers said it all. ‘Poets don’t cry, they reserve the shedding of tears for their readers.’ Head over heart. Ha!

It was during lockdown that I stumbled upon her works. Small time, two collections of verse, self-published, although she did have some poems and stories dotted around the net which had been taken up by various literary publications. Literary. Such a pretentious, self-indulgent genre. Wouldn’t pay much either, but I didn’t suppose she was in it for the money. Luke, who she’d been married to for the past twenty years – and involved with well before then - had, like his predecessor, the late John Sutherland, always been a workaholic, so, regardless of whether or not he’d been furloughed, chances were that she and the couple’s two teenage daughters wouldn’t be queuing up at the foodbank any time soon. Oh, to live up Curlew Hill in that fancy four-bed semi and scribble away as and when it suited without even thinking about earning a living! Rumour also had it that the elder girl, Louise, who I’d seen with her mother on occasion, nose in the air, strutting around like a fashion plate, had no intention of getting a job, while the young one, Ria - well, did she even go to school?

I’d served them in the supermarket once or twice. Mannerly enough, but otherwise oblivious. Pricey products too. Yes, Ms. Sutherland was quite aware of the cost of those cherries. Looked at me as if to say how dare I ask? Had a friend with her once, strolled right by me to join the queue at the self-checkout, and even Luke avoided me. A pat on the head to look forward to? The dishing out of a treat? Good boy! Not that I cared. Lynne Beaumont, wife of Greg, the mother, the grandma, the woman on checkout nine, the daughter, the ex-wife, the friend, had long since laid Luke Hepworth’s ghost to rest, had cast to the back of her mind how Tanya had snatched him away from her – and right under her husband’s nose! Lovely, jokey John who’d worked in the bakery beside me. Lovely, lonely, forty-eight-year-old John who’d been so happy with his pretty young bride only to suffer a heart attack and die eighteen months after their wedding - largely, people said, due to the stress of her alleged infidelity. No, Lynne Beaumont did not think of this anymore. Lynne Beaumont had moved on. L J Beau, the author, on the other hand...

I’ve never told Greg this, but apart from one or two later-life romances in which I once based a character on him, and once ensured that John received his happy ending with a far more appropriate partner, every book that I’ve written to date, and every handsome, sensitive, male love-interest in them, has in some way been inspired by Luke. And all for a man who rejected me when I was barely out of my teens. I suppose the writing started – a bit like my disastrous rebound first marriage - as a way of getting him out of my system. Closure, people would call it, but, typing ‘the end’ is in no way akin to a death, for as readers and writers all surely know, as one book closes, another one opens, and often well before then.

With pandemic restrictions in place, fewer shifts, no babysitting the grandkids, no days out with Greg, and no lunches with the girls, meant I could work on my latest novel to my heart’s content. On checkout-free days, I’d write in the morning, then take my exercise after lunch. With my son-in-law’s words ringing in my ears that this lockdown would soon sort the hunks from the chunks and the drunks, a two hour walk around the near-deserted streets of Gilly would not go amiss, better still if I tackled a couple of the town’s more challenging inclines, Curlew Hill being one of them. I even put my make-up on, dressed up a bit. And no, I didn’t need Greg to come with me. He did enough traipsing around in his nightshift security job, so let him rest his legs while he could. Silly old fool that I was.

The day I saw her – Tanya – I’d bumped into Pam, a pal of mine who lived a couple of streets further up. She’d just been to the corner shop for her ‘essentials’. Not the government endorsed ones, I hasten to add, but then, who was I to judge? And, since our meeting was in no way prearranged, surely no harm could come from us walking together whilst maintaining our distance.

Ah, Lynne, loved yer new book, by the way. Can’t beat a guid easy-read romance, and I like how ye made it much the same as yer last.

My face undecided as to whether it should grimace or grin, I half-acknowledged the compliment. Aye well, thanks, but I dunno. My youngest, Jade, thinks they’re all a bit vanilla, not real enough.

Ach, they young uns dinnae ken whit they’re talking aboot.

We’d barely set foot on the hill when we heard the sirens, saw the blue lights flashing towards us, two ambulances, large and small, speeding by in the direction we were heading.

Hey, they’ve stopped up there, wonder whit’s going on? Not Covid, I hope. That’s aw we need, it taking a hod round here.

They came to a halt right outside Luke’s house, but on the other side. Still, my heart began to pound.

Slow down, Lynne, will ya? That hill’s a bugger, and in this heat…!

And there she was – Tanya –stood leaning over her high concrete wall. Head in the clouds, it seemed. Not in the least concerned when we asked if she had any idea what was happening. Pam knew the old couple who lived in the house opposite, and the paramedics were bringing someone out on a stretcher. Then we heard it – that song – ‘Easy Street’ from ‘The Walking Dead’. The girl’s voice, loud as can be, trilling out from the open window above Luke and Tanya’s front door. So, life was ‘but a treat’ was it? Pam and I shook our heads. Some folk had no respect…

I tried not to let it bother me, but for the rest of the day, I couldn’t rid my mind of that scene. Tanya’s cold indifference. Her daughter as good as mocking her neighbours’ misfortune. Her saying nothing about it. I hadn’t looked her up online before. Didn’t do social media as a rule. Sold my books on Amazon, but relied on friends and family and word of mouth to increase my small following. The ‘old school’ approach according to my daughters, and to my son who’d been on at me for years to set up a website. You’ll up your sales no end, Mum. Could even tell that boss of yours to stick it. Yes, but at what cost? I liked being Lynne from Gilly. She fitted in. L J Beau maybe not so much.

It took me all of twenty-four hours to type Luke and Tanya’s names into Google. Nothing for Luke, and nothing for her at first, then only a Facebook page, not many friends. A post from six months previously, a poem accepted. I clicked the link. Didn’t think much of it, likening a death-bed vigil to voyeurism. Rather a shot than this, rather a mocktail… But there was her author bio and within it a link to her blog.

My first impressions were that it was really quite basic. Minimalist. Black background, no pictures, just screeds of white text and an electric-blue heading – her monogram. TS: The T-Bar and Chain with the Slithery Twist… Seriously? This was why she kept John’s name? And… Oh, my lord…! She’d started a journal, or maybe a work-in-progress. Working title, A Distant View. Now why would she do that? Even if she did have zero followers, surely she knew to keep her writing out of the public domain until its official release. And written in real-time, it was hardly a taster. I scanned the page, past the 'write from your head' poetry thing followed by the quote – that line from The Beautiful South’s ‘Song for Whoever’ about loving from the bottom of a pencil case – and caught Luke’s name, then Louise’s and Ria’s. Their real names! Could she really have been so inconsiderate of her family’s feelings to put this out there for any Tom, Dick and Harry to read? Still, was I to be deterred? I didn’t think so!

I keep hearing sirens, and thrice this week I’ve seen ambulances in our street; they come in pairs, like animals to the ark. Today they’re parked across the road, and as I stand near the top of the steps leading up to my door, I can’t help but lean over the wall and look. Not that I know the people who live in that house, but we are in the midst of a pandemic, so one has to be on one’s guard. Still, I hope no one thinks that I’m prying, or worse, that I’m seeking excitement – there’s none to be found in human distress - so I mask my stares as glances, shy away.

So not the devil that I took her for, unless, of course, this wasn’t the absolute truth. It was easy for an author to kid herself in and out of character. I knew that. Okay, so far so good. She had my attention.

Today the sky above Gillirig is blue with a shrubbery of clouds tapered like the street’s long descent. Curlew Hill with its drop-jaw of concrete, parched hanging tongue and irregular roof-line jutting, is, if you ignore the outrageous gradient, fairly typical of the streets in this town, a mix of private lets and owner-occupied properties interspersed with a smattering of social housing…

Fair description. Good, in fact. I’d never thought of the street quite like that. And, at this point, as the figurative language became denser and more involved, it did cross my mind that perhaps I should inject a bit of metaphor into my own work. Not too much, of course, or I’d lose all my readers like Pam.

So, it’s here, in this mouth-like, semi-rural environ with its crisscross brace of power lines connecting homes on either side, that I, Tanya Sutherland, seldom-published scribe, live with my husband, Luke and our teenage daughters, Louise and Ria, our home a tiny cell inside its ‘buccal mucosa’ made fresh with the scent of narcissi, Greystone-clad and semi-detached. But today I’m not admiring the flowers in my small front garden, or cursing the ever more visible cracks in the wall which our landlord ought to have had repaired long before now, nor am I even thinking in any great depth about what might be going on across the street. Bare-headed, but with my author’s hat on, I look to the overhead wires. Think, Tanya, think. How to proceed. How to start the next chapter. I have a line in mind but it’s no use, and I see the wires cutting black across the sky…

Ah yes. The writer’s dilemma. Surely I wasn’t relating? Next!

How often those slicers of rainbows, spoilers of views, serve to contain my invisible words, unstructured thoughts, part sentences, ideas to expand when it rains, or be scorched should the temperature rise, and how often these literary musings freeze overnight. Best a gust of wind should set them free, for what life could they give possibly the breathless, what breath to those about to brave the steep incline? I shift my gaze to the foot of the hill and watch – a couple of specks, coming nearer, taking form, and then, ‘Thank God’…

And there we were, Pam and I. The specks.

Strangers and acquaintances alike, it's the usual phrase, the blessed-come-blasphemous sigh of relief that the long, hard climb is over and they’ve made it to the top, or as good as. Or perhaps it’s just habit, a phrase to be puffed out in passing like ‘Good Morning’ whether you believe it to be so or not, and are simply looking for one to agree. Niceties. Pleasantries. People smile their weary smiles, nod and move on. Or rather, some of them do…

Oh no, I had a feeling I knew what was coming. Did I care?

“Whit’s gawn awn there then?” It’s the older woman who speaks, glancing up at me and nodding towards the paramedics who are currently on their way up the garden path of the hitherto unknown casualty. Townspeak. Slang. Less Soft Lowland Tongue than the rough and ready drawl of your typical rubbernecker. ‘Gilly Gypes’ my friend, Ellie likes to call folk like these, leaning back, hands on hips and gawping, gossip-ravenous. A shrug of the shoulders, a palm upwardly raised, and already I’m turning away. ‘Whae dis she think she is, tae guid fer the likes o’ us?’ I don’t need to hear them say it, don’t need to be reminded of how I refuse to be drawn into their cliques. Tanya Sutherland, anti-social as ever, except now we have lockdown, social distancing, and I have the perfect excuse to do as I’ve been wont to do all along. Thank God. I wonder how I dare even think it…

Well! If this was the absolute truth, then it made one thing clear, Tanya didn’t know who I was. Failed to recognise the girl whose man she’d tempted away. But also, if this was the truth, she didn’t like herself too much either. Interesting. I went back to my novel, swayed by her words into thinking a little more poetically, and hoping, in spite of my old resentment, that she would add to her blog sooner rather than later.

And she did. Day after day, the story continued. I learned that Louise was autistic, too anxious to go out on her own, and only then if she looked what she considered to be 'right', but singing and painting helped her relax. She had an online store and made money from her art. She was also obsessed by ‘The Walking Dead’, hence the song. Ria had sadly been bullied at school. Die ar-Ria, die! Toilet roll thrown down the corridors behind her. Her non-attendance was a concern to her mother, but her main concern was for her daughter’s fragile state of mind…

The pandemic hits, and not only am I pleased the schools are closed, I am thrilled! The online work, masses of it now, is more than sufficient to keep Ria occupied, albeit by night. I tell myself that a better routine will come in time, she may even start taking some exercise as she sometimes says she’d like to go for a walk, then doesn’t – perhaps when the evenings get lighter – but I’ve got to take things slowly, and eventually, eventually, she’ll maybe begin to feel a little more ‘normal’. Everyone else is working from home now, after all, so the longer this lockdown lasts... Hashtag Biblical? I scroll past some youngster’s tweet and think I must have prayed to the devil.

I read this passage many times, thinking how would I have coped had this been one of my kids, and the guilt which consumed me for having so badly misjudged those girls did take its toll. Tanya’s friend was right about her ‘Gilly Gypes’, for I was one of them, so caught up in my twee little fictions, I failed to see the real picture, and that picture included Luke. He’d never wanted me. And Tanya had neither stolen him, nor been unfaithful to John, for there were flashbacks too. All impeccably-worded, but so hard to read.

It’s odd when you get a double image in your head, like Johnson and Sturgeon delivering their conflicting messages, like those people on Facebook contradicting one another with their stated ‘facts’. I remember John laughing after our wedding about that girl from the bakery and her rival fighting over Luke. As if he’d be interested in either. He was ‘living with a bloke, for God’s sake, only dated girls for show’. John told me this in our bedroom, the very same room in which I still picture myself and Luke after John died; those fixed ghostly images superimposed and layered against our twenty-first century, non-intimate selves.

Yes, I remembered that fight. Silly old fool. Silly young fool. And poor Luke. Poor Tanya.

I’d often thought about leaving a comment. Letting her know how sorry I was, except she wouldn’t know why, so what’s the bet she’d simply have me pegged as some crazy stalker? That 'dirty birdie' chick from 'Misery'. Her posts disappeared eventually. Privacy settings finally checked, I’m assuming, for it remained a work-in-progress.

Oh well, time to get back to mine. I’m nearly done, my protagonist left waiting on a bench for the lad of her dreams… The happy ending? Well, I can’t lose that. It’s a romance after all. But I could switch it up. How about this?

But, Maria thinks, that lonely road looks just like a mouth with a tongue poking out. Those trees either side, the hands of a child, fingers rudely wiggling. ‘Nana-ne-nana’. She won’t wait for Bruce any longer. There are nicer boys out there, and she’ll find one someday. Meanwhile, she’s got college to look forward to. Engineering. Her new friend was right. Head over heart.