Anna’s.
He was so cold and wet now that he hardly felt it. The rain ran down his face like tears, and as he stared out at the water he could scarcely see through the night and the heavy curtains of rain, he remembered again, as he often did, that cold winter’s day standing on a rocky beach overlooking the Mediterranean with Anna; how she’d taken his hand and played with his fingers and then, while he was still paralyzed with confusion, how she’d reached up to touch his face, then pulled his head down to kiss him. Her warm, soft, open mouth. How she’d guided his hand to her breast, and the suggestions she’d whispered in his ear: the instructions and promises. And, a little while later, making love with her for the first time in the backseat of her car.
That was the real Anna; the warm, passionate, half-naked girl trembling with desire, clutching and clinging to him; that was the Anna he’d always remember and believe in, not the cold, older, respectably married woman who spoke so coolly of her “concern” about his “inappropriate attachment” to her, pretending she had never shared it.
The rain drumming on the cars behind him now sounded like mocking laughter.
She never loved you, fool. She used you. Forget her.
He shoved a hand into his jacket pocket, closing it around the little bottle. It was a vodka miniature he’d found in the street in front of the chip shop a week ago, empty and missing its cap, but whole. It was filled now with a tightly rolled-up letter to Anna, and sealed with a piece of whittled-down candle and a piece of strapping tape. He’d been meaning to throw it out to sea for days, but between the bad weather and his changeable, rotating shifts, he’d kept missing the tide. He thought it should be going out now, but he wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t see well enough to guess.
But did it matter? Whether the tide was going in or out, the chances of this little bottle—or any of the others he’d launched in previous weeks—actually reaching any Mediterranean shore in his lifetime must be vanishingly small. He wasn’t worried about some local lout reading it—how many people around here could read Italian?
It didn’t matter. It was a meaningless gesture; he was going through the motions of unrequited love for nobody’s sake but his own. He might as well burn the letters after he wrote them as throw them in the sea.
He brought his hand out of his pocket, hauled back, and threw the little bottle as hard as he could into the darkness, toward the unseen empty west. Then he turned his back on it and, head down in the blinding rain, unable to see where he was going, retraced his steps, heading for his uncle’s house. He’d so often thought, since he came here, that he couldn’t get wetter, or colder, or feel any worse, and still it seemed there were new depths of misery and further extremes of bad weather to be experienced. He didn’t think he could bear to write and throw away another yearning love letter to someone who didn’t care, but he also didn’t know how he could survive without that last, small pretense at communication.
Later that night, when a small seismic shock woke him abruptly out of shallow, unhappy sleep, he dreamed for a moment that what he’d felt was his own heart breaking.
From What Grows in Scotland
by Mairi Smith and F. B. Lockhart
(Baillie, 1991)
Apples
A LTHOUGH the native crab-apple (Malus sylvestris) was known to the Celts, who associated it in their mythology with love, fertility, immortality, and the existence of an earthly paradise, it was the invading Romans who planted the first cultivated orchards in Britain. This tradition was revived and expanded by the Church, particularly Benedictine monks, who planted apple orchards wherever they settled….
…An exception to the connection between monasteries and established orchards lies on the west coast, not a location usually hospitable to fruit trees, in aptly named
He was so cold and wet now that he hardly felt it. The rain ran down his face like tears, and as he stared out at the water he could scarcely see through the night and the heavy curtains of rain, he remembered again, as he often did, that cold winter’s day standing on a rocky beach overlooking the Mediterranean with Anna; how she’d taken his hand and played with his fingers and then, while he was still paralyzed with confusion, how she’d reached up to touch his face, then pulled his head down to kiss him. Her warm, soft, open mouth. How she’d guided his hand to her breast, and the suggestions she’d whispered in his ear: the instructions and promises. And, a little while later, making love with her for the first time in the backseat of her car.
That was the real Anna; the warm, passionate, half-naked girl trembling with desire, clutching and clinging to him; that was the Anna he’d always remember and believe in, not the cold, older, respectably married woman who spoke so coolly of her “concern” about his “inappropriate attachment” to her, pretending she had never shared it.
The rain drumming on the cars behind him now sounded like mocking laughter.
She never loved you, fool. She used you. Forget her.
He shoved a hand into his jacket pocket, closing it around the little bottle. It was a vodka miniature he’d found in the street in front of the chip shop a week ago, empty and missing its cap, but whole. It was filled now with a tightly rolled-up letter to Anna, and sealed with a piece of whittled-down candle and a piece of strapping tape. He’d been meaning to throw it out to sea for days, but between the bad weather and his changeable, rotating shifts, he’d kept missing the tide. He thought it should be going out now, but he wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t see well enough to guess.
But did it matter? Whether the tide was going in or out, the chances of this little bottle—or any of the others he’d launched in previous weeks—actually reaching any Mediterranean shore in his lifetime must be vanishingly small. He wasn’t worried about some local lout reading it—how many people around here could read Italian?
It didn’t matter. It was a meaningless gesture; he was going through the motions of unrequited love for nobody’s sake but his own. He might as well burn the letters after he wrote them as throw them in the sea.
He brought his hand out of his pocket, hauled back, and threw the little bottle as hard as he could into the darkness, toward the unseen empty west. Then he turned his back on it and, head down in the blinding rain, unable to see where he was going, retraced his steps, heading for his uncle’s house. He’d so often thought, since he came here, that he couldn’t get wetter, or colder, or feel any worse, and still it seemed there were new depths of misery and further extremes of bad weather to be experienced. He didn’t think he could bear to write and throw away another yearning love letter to someone who didn’t care, but he also didn’t know how he could survive without that last, small pretense at communication.
Later that night, when a small seismic shock woke him abruptly out of shallow, unhappy sleep, he dreamed for a moment that what he’d felt was his own heart breaking.
From What Grows in Scotland
by Mairi Smith and F. B. Lockhart
(Baillie, 1991)
Apples
A LTHOUGH the native crab-apple (Malus sylvestris) was known to the Celts, who associated it in their mythology with love, fertility, immortality, and the existence of an earthly paradise, it was the invading Romans who planted the first cultivated orchards in Britain. This tradition was revived and expanded by the Church, particularly Benedictine monks, who planted apple orchards wherever they settled….
…An exception to the connection between monasteries and established orchards lies on the west coast, not a location usually hospitable to fruit trees, in aptly named
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