Luke Williams - The Echo Chamber

The radio announcer was explaining how Haydn had come to write the symphony. Evie was about to speak. I told her to shush cos I wanted to listen and she gives me this funny look. You like stories, don’t you? she said. Who doesn’t?

Woke up to Oban at sunrise. Drove up to Ellanbeich where Evie turned off the engine and slumped over the wheel like we’d crashed. Exhaustion. Slept for a couple of hours then stood on the dock by our bags, waiting for the first ferry, drinking bitter black coffee from styrofoam cups. Just the smell of it when you’re wrung out with tiredness! And the smell mixing in with old fish and wet rope and the slapping waves … We’re at the cottage now. My room is right at the top, under the eaves. Ha! So why come here? To get away from him, from the others, to be taken somewhere I’ve never been before? We’ll sleep a little and then explore.

21 June

Not writing so much as dragging my pen across the page. Out here the salt air comes at you from everywhere, this being an island and a tiny one at that. It leaches your energy and turns your blood to porridge. Eyelids at halfmast. All I want to do is sleep. But I have to write about today. After the tour, it’s no surprise I’m exhausted. But this air! By the time we came back this afternoon we were sleepwalking. Maybe the air made us mad. Maybe we were dreaming. I would pinch myself but there are scratch marks from the bushes. And the light! So late here and so light. It won’t leave us alone. Maddening and magical and not like daylight but like night with the darkness leached out of it.

We started off fresh enough. A clear morning, like a kid’s crayon drawing, green lawn, blue sky, white cottage, red roof, yellow gorse. We ran outside, down the springy grass to the path. Two dogs came, a sheepdog and a black labrador. Dogs sometimes look like they feel an excess of joy, so much it confuses them and they almost seem in pain with it. The sheepdog and the lab bounded on ahead, looking back every now and then to make sure we were following, as though they’d arranged to take us on a tour. We let them. They took us through tangles of wildflowers, over hillocks and hummocks and down to the rocks, where the air became damper and saltier as we approached the sea, turning, eventually, to seaspray. Then we could get no closer as the waves got high and snatched at the rocks and whatever might be on them and we shouted and laughed and scrabbled back to a safe distance as fast as we could. She is clumsy, I’ve noticed, and looks like a puppet when she runs. Not a puppet, no, one of those Victorian children’s toys, paper figures with jointed limbs that swivel stiffly. The dogs wandered off, and with them went Evie’s energy. Before, with the dogs, she had run with me, not saying much, just laughing, almost hysterically, harder and harder, as if her laugh was something funny which made her laugh even more. But now she was quiet. With the dogs gone she seemed to feel more alone with me. We came inland a little, into the open, where there was nothing else to focus on except each other. Whenever I made some comment, she only mumbled. When I looked at her, she turned her eyes away, seemed to struggle not to turn her head away. She’s the shyest person I’ve ever met. There was something about her nervousness which provoked me. We came to an abandoned quarry which had been flooded. We stood on the edge and looked down. Sunbeams reaching right into the water. Up went my dress, down went my knickers, off came my shoes. Come on! I said to Evie. She couldn’t look at me. She shuffled around, trying to unhook her bra under her t-shirt and slip off her knickers under her skirt. I leaped out over the edge. Water so cold, it stung. She asked me what the water was like. Refreshing! (teeth chattering). In she jumped and up she came, gasping and laughing. We swam. The ruins of a roman bath. Water slate blue, smooth, calm, shadowy. The walls sheer rock flecked with gold. When I got tired of swimming I started on Evie. She’s easy to tease. I ducked down underwater and she started thrashing around, trying to cover herself up. She needn’t have bothered, all I saw was a greenish white glow. I grabbed for her feet, she kicked out, I came up, pretended she’d hit me in the face, she swam up to me all concerned then I splashed her. It was fun. When we got tired of that we thought about going back. And then she realized. How are we supposed to get out? I pointed to some rocks and laughed when I saw her realize we would have to climb them naked and walk all the way round to fetch our clothes.

The sun was bright but we were cold. The best thing to do was run out quick and warm yourself like a lizard on one of the rocks higher up which got the sun. That’s what I did. When I looked down to find Evie she looked so funny I had to ask her what the fuck she was doing. What do you mean? She was cross. You look like some creature crawling out of the primordial soup. It was true. She was crawling over the rocks on her belly but with arse and legs tucked under. Trying to show as little of herself as possible. So I stood high up on my rock and stretched my beautiful arms out to the sun and lifted my breasts to the sun and turned up my beautiful face to the sun and said, Here, this is what a woman looks like, and she looked up at me from the rocks below. That is what you look like. And what do you look like? I said. She slowly stood up from her horizontal crouch. Long, white feet, strong white legs, flat hips, a fluffy, tea-coloured bush, concave belly, long waist, small low breasts with large pink nipples, wide shoulders. I can’t say she has a body I want, but I’ve had people with bodies I wanted less. And I cannot say I wanted her because she was nothing I wanted, not sassy or cute or strong or sly or ironic or teasing or searching or dangerous or pure or delightful or feral or any of the other things that have made me look past a body I don’t want to the force of the person within. She is clumsy, awkward, bizarre, self-absorbed. But I like the way she looks at me. And there is always one thing. One thing to want about someone. Her sides, her long waist and flanks, like a boy’s, I liked, I decided. And so I reached out my hand, and she climbed up the rocks, upright this time, and took it.

We must have looked like a painting to him, the young guy out walking his dog who saw us in the distance, me and Evie holding hands. Another woman would have squealed instead of the sound Evie actually made, a kind of surprised bark like a seal. Before I knew it she had shoved me into a bush and fallen in on top of me.

I was held in suspension. It hurt to move.

When the knowledge of the branches became old I became aware of Evie’s weight on my back, her breasts pressing into me, and a softness, her bush, on my arse. And close to this, suddenly, barking — the dog. Honey! Away home! A smile in the guy’s voice. The dog yelped with disappointment as her master dragged her off, whistling. We stayed there a while. Evie’s breath in my ear, first a sound, then a warmth. Then, very slowly, she started to move on me. The branches needling but she didn’t care. Slowly, I felt her getting wet, slippery, faster, her breath hot in my ear, her lips not quite touching me, and me suddenly wanting to feel a kiss and what I got then was a lick, she was licking my ear and she was grinding, pressing me into the needles, and then that sealbark again and she was still.

What a joy! To copy Damaris’ diary, to type out words no longer my own, leaves me feeling calm. My whole being throbs sweetly. Every now and then I pause to gaze around the attic, at my skylight, which gives off a white luminousness, and then at the piles of papers, of which Damaris’ diary is just one among many, barely distinguishable from my other objects. And yet those papers, which until recently I have thought of as just another kind of object, decaying in the moist air, like the rest, seem to take on an enormous importance. They seem to emit a special kind of radiance. I can think of nothing better than to take them in my hands, spread them out on my desk and rifle their precious contents — not so much because of what they say, but because they contain thousands of words to transcribe.