Working At It by Nicola White

There's a ball just beside the path. A manky tennis ball - flourescent once, greying now. How did it get out here?

I stop and scan the miles of tussocks and heather, like an idiot, like I might catch sight of someone in white reaching up for a serve. Dougie walks on. I toe the ball out from its mucky hollow and kick it along the path towards his heels. He ignores it at first, stubborn eyes  held to the horizon, but I keep on knocking it ahead of him until at last some reflex flips in his head and he draws one foot back slowly then flicks the ball far up ahead, sprays of water winging from it. After that we take it in turns to kick. I know we'll be talking soon, and allow myself a smile behind his back. The rain keeps coming, but it's soft.

Dougie and I had been going out for maybe two years, but we hadn't really gotten anywhere. Going backwards, if anything. I was really trying to work at it, that's what I told my sister. She said I shouldn't have to, that love shouldn't be such a bloody effort. Maybe she's right, maybe she's just showing off.

By the time we get to the little loch the rain has gone off, but our matching Oxfam raincoats are damp through, obscure smells rising from the material.

We'd seen this spot many times from the A9, a place that looks like an arrangement in a child's drawing book of a tree, a pond and a house. Just one of each thing, set slightly apart as if to avoid overlap, but in the nothingness of the rest of the landscape they were a magnetic cluster - the oak tree wide and sheltering, the tiny loch like a pewter mirror, the house symmetrical with peeping dormers. And there's something odd about this house. It's got no garden, no path or gate, like it's been transported from somewhere else, dropped onto the grassland like a brick. The windows are opaque black, glassless.

We always said we'd come here. Today is the day. Today we've run out of every other thing we might do.

There's a small rowing boat at the lochan edge, even though three pulls would have you across to the other side.

'We could have our picnic in the boat,' I say.

'What?'

'You know, floating on the loch.'

'There's no oars.'

'So? We're hardly going to drift away'

'Don't be daft.' Dougie turns his back to me, studies the house. At least we're talking.

'You know they do this deliberately,' he says, ‘the estate owners. They let a house go to ruin rather than have the trouble of letting it. A house that's probably stood here for two hundred years. Selfish bastards.'

I don't respond. I've heard versions of this speech already, and I don't disagree with him, so there's nothing to say and there's nothing he particularly wants me to say except perhaps that's so true.

He keeps on about the crimes of landlords while trying to force the porch door, rattling at it until something behind it drops and it gives way. Meantime I'm dribbling the tennis ball up the slope to the door.

'Stay' I say to the ball, rolling it into the angle between wall and ground and giving it a pat with my toe. Dougie laughs.

The house is emptied out, bleached-looking. Peeling wallpaper hangs in cones from the corners. The floor is covered in bits of glass and flakes of plaster, bird shit too.  We sit side by side on the windowsill. I bring the sandwiches out of my coat pocket and Dougie takes the small flask of tea out of his.

Our sandwiches are cheap orange cheddar with Hellmans. It was the best I could do with what he had at the cottage. Back home my mother used to make the most elaborate picnics - salmon wrapped in puff pastry, meat pies with a boiled egg in the middle, perfect meringues kept safe inside a napkin-lined tin box. Things inside things. A whole shelf of the kitchen cupboard at home was given over to picnics; to plastic plates and glasses, a selection of squat and tall thermoses, tiny cruets, bundles of mustard and sauce sachets squirreled from cafes. It's no use telling Dougie about these picnics. He'll think I'm trying to make some kind of point about the gap between my childhood and his, the old argument of who had and who hadn't - as if fancy eating guaranteed extra love and I somehow owe him the difference.

I don't want to be my mother, but I don't want life to feel this paltry either - this glum man, two pasty sandwiches in a bread wrapper. This is all I have carved for myself in this world. A poor thing, sir, but mine own.

'That's a beautiful fireplace.'

He grunts agreement.

'That alcove probably had bookshelves.'

'Aye.'

'Wouldn't it make a lovely room? Imagine a table just here, you could sit at, look out and write. I'd love a house like this.'

'They're just going to let it fall.'

'I'd have friends come all the time. A big table outside.'

'Once the roof goes, that's it.'

'It hasn't gone yet. Maybe we should just ask at the estate office. No harm in asking.'

He looks at me briefly then stands up. I hear him on the stairs and manage to stop myself calling to him, shouting Why bloody not? Why is it so impossible to think of us living together, having friends. Maybe not under this roof, okay, but...

It took up so much of my head, always thinking of ways to get round him, how to steer him towards what I want for us. Dougie is like a knot I'm only half way through untying.

I find him in an upstairs bedroom, holding something rust coloured on his hand. I think it might be something nice he's found and walk over to him. It's a dead robin.

'Bastards,' says Dougie to the bird.

'Must've come in the window.'

The ceiling of the room is slanted and the walls panelled with narrow strips of wood, painted a flaking yellow. I go to look out the window. Shards of glass cling on in the corners of the frames. The robin could've got back out, easy. Across the railway track and up the hill I can see vans passing on the main road, the soft waves of engine noise making me feel suddenly sleepy. Dougie comes up behind me, and I flinch, thinking he's going to do something stupid with the bird, but he must have got rid of it because he just puts his hands on my shoulders, kisses the side of my neck.

'I'd love a house out here, wouldn't you?'

'Some day,' Dougie says and moves away. I make myself not say anymore.

We walk around the oak tree, throw pebbles in the loch. We've seen it all now. I'll think about the house later. I'll lie in bed and let myself furnish every room.

'Let's go down to the railway line.'

'Aren't you forgetting someone?' says Dougie and points towards the porch. I run back to the house and picked up our raggy ball, give it a kiss and called it my darling before throwing it to Dougie who heads it into the air then sets off with it at a fast skip to the railway line.

There's a break in the fence where a farm road leads over the tracks. There are no barriers, just a couple of warning signs with yellow lights on top.

A patch of blue opens in the clouds and the sun shines off the rails for a moment. Dougie puts his head to the metal, says he can hear something far off to the south.

I take some change out of my jeans pocket.

'What do you think would happen if we put a coin on the track? Do you think it would squeeze it flat?'

Dougie looks up at me.

'You serious?'

'I'll bet it'll flatten it - maybe push it right into the rail.'

'It'll just flick it out of the way.'

'Let's see.'

There's a thick short line on the horizon, moving.

'Do trains drive on the left?'

'Don't kid about, c'mon.' Dougie stands up, brushes his hands over his coat and repeats his order.

'Nessa, come on.'

He never uses my name much, except as a caution. I pick my rail and put a penny on it.

'Bet you fifty pee it'll squash it.'

Dougie shakes his head like a disappointed father, but comes to stand beside me at the fence as the warning lights start flashing and we watch the train grow bigger.

'I'm not happy about this.'

'A penny can't harm a train.'

'That'll be the quote in the paper won't it? Hey? After the crash. '

'Okay, I get it.'

I stomp back to the track, watching the train out of the side of my eye. I know I've plenty of time, so I linger a little picking it up, and sure enough, he's suddenly upon me, grabbing my neck and arm hard to pull me back to the fence line, and I think we should embrace then, saved from danger, but Dougie's face is not wanting to be kissed. He's looking away from me, breathing hard, watching the train bear down.

I want to laugh as the train rattles by a full half minute later, no danger at all. The pressure of its passing is like a door slamming into us, and Dougie's shouting at me now, but I can't hear a thing over the train. I really want to laugh. There's never enough laughing. That's the problem with my life.

Dougie's at the side of the path now and he's bending down to pick something up and I think, it's so clear, he's going to throw a rock at me. And at the same moment that I think that, I think - If he throws a rock at me I can leave him. I think all that in the time it takes for him to straighten up.

It's not a rock. It's the ball, and he turns away to throw it, leaning way back and flinging it with a grunt so that it flies far and I know I'll never find it again in the rough ground. Our ball. Almost a little creature, it was, or a rehearsal of a little creature we might have one day.

It begins to rain again on the way back. My coat is heavy with it. Dougie'll be annoyed for hours now. I wonder what we should do tomorrow.