THE MUSE (PART TWO)
Lorna turned the key to the door of her bedsit. She never invited poets back here. If ever she spent the night with one, they did so at the poet's home, when a wife was away visiting relatives. Rarely, when one of them had a success he felt like sharing, she might be taken to a B&B in the countryside. She’d lived in the bedsit, above Patterson’s greengrocer, for nearly five years. In that time the only change was the spot of mould in the bathroom growing steadily bigger.
Lorna tossed her jacket on the living room settee, then crossed the threadbare carpet to the drink’s cabinet. She paused. No, if she was going to write a poem, she’d better do so now, before the notion left her. That's what MacDade always said - grab the Muse while she's hot! Ego bubbled within her. MacDade’s advice that she become Billy’s breadwinner was tactical; he feared her genius. If the Muse turned poet who was to say she wouldn’t eclipse the Makar?
Lorna didn't have a writing desk. She wasn't a writer; she was a Muse. Nor did she have a moleskine notebook. Even poor Billy had one of those. She made do with a biro and the small notepad she used for shopping lists. A smaller page was preferable, she reasoned, less space to fill on her first attempt. Lorna flopped onto the settee, tucking one leg beneath her.
After five minutes she cast the notepad down. Poetry was harder than she thought. How could she write a word when every time her pen touched paper, MacDade or the Makar or Billy's voice came out? She didn't want to write about modernism or Marx. Those topics were vast and tricky. Did she really know what she was talking about?
She retrieved the notepad and tried to write something dark and mysterious about nature but Billy's trembling lips got in the way. Whenever she scratched out her previous work and started afresh, the poets loomed over her like stern fathers ready to take away her toys. She tried one last time, and thinking about Arthur wrote a limerick. Lorna threw the notepad across the room. Childish, utterly childish!
MacDade’s words echoed in her ears: “Christ, we’ve enough poets already.”
She leapt from the settee, falling upon the notebook and ripping its pages into tiny pieces, which she tossed in the sink. She fished in her cardigan pocket for a lighter. The paper wouldn't catch, so Lorna rooted in the cabinet and found a half bottle of Bell's. Cheeks burning, she doused the torn pages until the ink bled. The doggerel caught fire this time, shrivelling to ash. Lorna stood guard over the incineration, swigging the remainder of the whisky. She wouldn't normally drink so much, but her jaw ached after the extraction. She wriggled her tongue into the soft, fleshy spot where her tooth had been. In her mind, the faun-eyed stranger skirted up the stairs behind the bar. She realised she’d been trying to suppress any thought of him, and a silly anxiety trembled through her veins. Maybe Arthur was right; it was a wisdom tooth, after all.
She checked her watch. Five pm. The bar wouldn't close for several hours. Lorna pulled on her coat, quickly brushed her teeth and headed to Hyde’s. If the poets hadn't already venerated the molar beyond reach, she would demand it back. Surely poets, of all people, could appreciate unreasonable superstition.
* * *
“You’re back early,” said Arthur.
“My water’s been shut off,” said Lorna.
It wasn’t exactly a lie; her landlord had been threatening to do so all week.
“Uisge beatha it is then,” said Arthur. “I’ll have a double.”
The Makar had fallen asleep in his wheelchair, hair wild as a wind-blown dandelion. MacDade’s crafty profile lowered over his pint glass as he imparted ancient secrets to the young poets gathered around his stool. Billy sat apart, nursing an indescribable look. Between calloused forefinger and thumb, MacDade wielded her wisdom tooth. Lorna turned away. She didn’t want anything from MacDade, not anymore.
Lorna squinted at the artist’s sketchbook. The page was covered in trees.
A slight smile parted her lips. “You gave up,” she said.
“Turns out, poetry’s harder than I thought,” said Arthur. His tongue poked between his teeth. The pencil he ground into the page was nearly a stub. “For hours now I’ve been trying to draw your fairy, but every time I try to capture his likeness this is all I get.”
He gesticulated at the wild mountains and fir trees filling every corner of his sketchbook.
“You mean he was here, in the bar?” Lorna asked, scanning the room.
She knew if she could just get a closer look at this fairy-man, she’d have enough inspiration to write a poem. Maybe the Review would publish it, and then she’d be eligible for a writer’s bursary. Billy had managed to extend his stay in Edinburgh with his grant, but she’d use hers to get away. Or at least settle her rent, with enough left over to replace the bottle of Bell’s (for toothaches and such).
“He ordered rum, a seaman’s drink. He seemed sad,” said Arthur.
“What do you mean?” Lorna asked.
Arthur could either be straightforward or irritatingly mystical. Today he chose the latter.
“Skin grey as old china, lips pulled back from the teeth like a shroud from the—” the artist’s lips puckered, as though he’d bitten a lemon. “No use! I’m no more a poet than an artist. Back to stick trees.”
Lorna patted Arthur’s shoulder. Though it wasn’t the portrait the artist intended they were the most beautiful trees Lorna had ever seen. “What room’s he biding in?”
Arthur levelled disapproving, enlarged pupils at her. “I’m only going to tell you because you’d find out with or without my help. Room seven,” he said. “"But I’m warning you, he had a melancholy disposition, and that never bodes well.”
Lorna marched upstairs, grasping at the banister to steady herself. She stumbled, blaming the rickety handrail, and found her way along the landing. She loitered outside room seven. What pretext did she have for knocking on a stranger’s bedroom door? Hello, my friend and I are bored, blootered and we think you’re a fairy.
Could she pretend she was visiting her lover but had confused the room numbers? It seemed a plausible mix-up, so Lorna chapped on the door. No response came. Lorna pressed her ear to the keyhole; muffled music creaked under the door. Suddenly she was a child again, on a boat trip from South Queensferry. The seals had been numerous that year. Their haunting song had risen like a mist from the glinting water, surrounding her, voices from another world.
Lorna chapped again but received no reply. She tried the handle, expecting it locked, but the door clicked open. She thought of her tooth, pincered between MacDade’s subtle fingers. Oh well, too late now. She eased the door open a fraction more.
“L-Lorna?” said a voice at her elbow.
The door fell shut and the music stopped. Lorna straightened and confronted Billy. He possessed a face as spare as his poetry.
“I wondered where you’d gone,” he said. “MacDade took your tooth and won’t give it back.”
“I know. You’re bottom of the heap again.”
“No—” the force in Billy’s voice set his dark eyes blinking. “I beat him, that’s what he can’t stand. MacDade’s a spent force. He’s only capable of greedily snatching what doesn’t belong to him. But I…I want to give you something.”
He opened a big-boned but smooth hand. A delicate yellow-gold band, set with a dusky cairngorm stone, glinted in his palm. For the briefest second, Lorna forgot the stranger behind the door.
“You’ve probably had one too many of these,” the young poet said. “But I love you more than the others, Lorna. Will you be my wife?”
“You’re a poet,” she found herself saying. “It’s a muse you’re after.”
“Leanan sidhe,” Billy said. “I’m a man, too, and you’ve bewitched me. But it’s true, I’m a poet first. I don’t have a penny to my name yet, and I can’t offer you anything other than what I might be.”
Lorna’s arms stiffened by her sides. “How old are you, Billy?”
“Twenty.”
Twenty. Ivor MacDade had only become a household name four years ago. And the Makar was touching seventy. Thirty years purgatory was just at the limit of what she could stand. But then, could she go on living as she was, haunting the bar of Hyde’s Hotel, for even two more years? Things might remain unchanged, but for how long?
“Alright,” said Lorna.
Black eyes bright, Billy brushed his lips against hers. She still hadn’t taken the engagement ring.
“Keep it for now,” said Lorna. “They’ll be blootered downstairs. We’ll announce it when they’re sober enough to protest.”
Billy pocketed the engagement ring. “But we’ll have a dram of the twenty-five year old Macallan, and they’ll just have to wonder why.”
They walked in silence along the landing, Billy’s fidgeting hands never meeting hers. At the head of the stairs Lorna glanced back. Sad music drifted under the door again.
“What’s wrong? Was there someone special in room seven?” asked Billy, with the unconcern of the newly betrothed.
Lorna frowned into the gloom. Evidently, Billy couldn’t hear a thing.
“Arthur said a fairy’s biding in room seven.”
Billy’s face darkened. “Leave him alone, Lorna. Fairies travel here from their own lands on their own business and it’s best we don’t interfere.”
“What would a fairy want in Edinburgh, though?”
“I once heard of a seal-man who studied English at the university. They don’t speak a word of it where they come from, you know,” said Billy. He bowed his head, smiling slightly. “He’s a bit like me. Almost a foreigner.”
“Maybe he’s come to find a wife,” said Lorna.
Billy’s colour drained. He stumbled down the stairs towards the bar. The melancholy notes faded, and Lorna followed him.