Sahara Desert

 

I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his abilities.

(Oscar Wilde)

 

Angus moved across the broad expanse of the desert sands with an urgency that was being dictated by the event that had taken place directly up ahead earlier in the day. His wife Charity had begun to haunt him, again. The image of her was inside of his brain at this right good moment and refusing to leave. Distracting him at a time when he could quite definitely not afford to be distracted.

She was taunting him with their Dante;

 

'I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,--

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at the swallow's soar

Your neck turned so,

Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time's eddying flight

Still with our lives our love restore

In death's despite

And day and night yield one delight once more?'

 

It echoed inside of his skull inflicting pain whenever the sound of it hit bone. He had chosen to recite this to her once upon a time when their expended passion had rendered them incapable of any physical action other than speech. Back then, both naked, she had been brought to tears of joy. This had been at the very height of it. The zenith. Now, years later, she was returning the complement just at the moment when he was least in need of it.

Now she was no longer physically with him but unfortunately wherever he went the memory of her involuntarily came along for the ride but it was usually more natural for her to be hiding somewhere down there in the darkness of him in a vault where hurtful memories could remain safely locked away. At the right good moment in time he was doing his utmost to expel her back into that dark pit. But being true to her nature Charity was resisting like mad.

What lay a mile or so away up ahead was too important and too urgent for such distractions. What lay up ahead of him was hell on earth. Charity had been with him, Charity was no longer with him. He had accepted this intellectually but on an emotional level it seemed such implausibility. Eventually and with iron discipline Angus managed to banish the memory of her beauty back down into the darkness where it belonged. He then pushed on, time was of the essence.

But like a piece of jetsam, or like one of those old world war two mines, that had been temporarily trapped beneath the sea, Charity made her way up to the surface once more, just for the hell of it. Christ, but that woman could be hard-nosed whenever she wanted his attention.

 

I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by man.

(Meredith)

 

He did not want to be here. His rescuers had managed to convince him that not only did he need to return the favour but that only good would come from this, that it was God's work. After what he had been through Angus was unsure not just about being able to complete such a weird task but about there being anything close to a God of any kind in existence this far out from the centre of the universe.

Until only a few months past his life had been not only normal but mundane. He had been a fourth generation deerstalker on a shooting estate up in Sutherland in the north-east Highlands of Scotland. The only sand that he had previously seen had been on the seashores of various holiday resorts, now here he was in the middle of the Sahara Desert having just been dropped off by a helicopter. He was completely unsuited for this sort of thing. He was so far out of his depth that it could do little else but go wrong.

It would go wrong because it was insane. They had been ripped from their comfortable life in the Village of Drymen just north of Glasgow in Scotland by an internationally renowned religious order who had contrived to place them into hiding for their own safety. If it were not for this group Charity would be dead and him with her. Why they had been chosen for assassination in the first instance remained a complete mystery to one and all.

They had been innocents living out their lives. Both in their early twenties. Angus with his deerstalking, Charity with her acting. They had bothered no one. Movies, theatre, books, no interest in politics. Church on a Sunday not out of devotion but simply to keep up with the local gossip. Now here he was, not only a fugitive but well out of his depths.

Charity was now, having written a one woman show about Dorothy Parker for herself and performed it at the Edinburgh Festival, trying out her Dorothy Parker voice on him;

 

'Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live'

 

This brought an involuntary smile to his lips.

Their first meeting had been a dilly. It had been by accident. Most people still have the wrong idea about deerstalking. Deerstalking was not what it had been. Angus often like his great grandfather lived out on the hills completely cut off from the rest of the world in the physical sense.

The herd has to be followed because the clients have no patience, they must be treated as though they own the world, which most of them do. But these days Angus went out there with his Microsoft Tablet and his mobile phone, the internet, flash-drives full of the latest movies, media information and Skype companionship.

Alone he was not, cut off he was not but magical it still managed to be. He had the nights beneath the stars, the Aurora Borealis and Orion the Hunter in the winter and utter silence all the year round. He had the privilege of seeing the world as it truly was. Angus craved to reach out and touch it, the Divine, but thus far he had been limited to the position of onlooker.

On this occasion he had been watching the old black and white movie version of A Midsummer Night's Dream beneath the stars and immediately ordered himself a ticket on line for a new production of the Dream at the Citizen's Theatre down in Glasgow. When he did get there it turned out that this particular production was too modern for him. It was set in a mansion in the centre of Athens rather than a wood beyond it.

And then it happened. Charity as Titiana wearing only three of the tiniest of leaves in the appropriate places. This lady was tall, almost as tall as Angus himself who was six-three. She was unbelievable. She towered. She dominated. She hypnotised.

Angus found that he was no longer bored. He was enchanted. He knew instantaneously that his life would never, ever be the same again. He had only ever been enchanted by one girl in his lifetime and she was dead. He had been to Loch Ossian half a dozen times to climb Ben Schehallian but before doing so he would just pause to gaze at the surface of the water and imagine her there, swimming in the moonlight with her eyes glowing and that seraphic smile dancing across her lips and, much to his embarrassment, tears would actually form before being quickly wiped away.

Since then it had been a series of mutually satisfactory one night stands. Mostly with the daughters of the visiting deer hunters. Enthusiastic girls who were seeking a highland experience before returning home to parade it before their envious friends. Angus was as much a prize to them as the deer were to their fathers. They did all of the running. As Angus was still slightly shy at this stage in his life, this proved something of a bonus.

Now, here, watching this astonishing woman acting on stage Angus quite literarily stopped breathing. Christ, she was magnificent. He had never seen such grace in a human being. She had gone beyond any grace that a human being should be capable off and moved into the animal kingdom, she moved with all of the grace of the Highland Wildcats he often saw move through the gloaming.

What he did know, instinctively, was that this particular girl was his soul-mate. Where this information came from he had no idea but what he did know was that it was undeniably true.

Then he came to his senses. Who was he trying to fool? He knew danger when he saw it. If he went hunting here then he was the one who would find himself bound and gagged and hung out to dry as a trophy. This creature was way out of his league.

In the next instant he was off on one. This was it. She was the one. He had been waiting for a relationship. A permanent, reliable lady that was always available. No searching. No going without, always there, always certain.

Angus was in shock. Where had all of this come from? He had not even known that he had been waiting for anything. He had thought he had been doing fine without any so called semi-permanent lady in his life. Tied to one girl as a life partner, was precisely that, volunteering to become a prisoner. He would have to be insane.

He was not yet ready for anything beyond a casual commitment. He did understand that for sex to be translated into love it would require the involvement of the soul and he was not willing to risk this, no way. Not something as precious, that would come in about ten years' time, when he was about thirty or thirty-five, he thought. Even then he would require a lot of forward planning before entering into it.

 

Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul,

That you never knew was missing.

(Torquato Tasso)

 

As Jacques Lecan would have it, fantasies are extremely useful things. Practical. Essential but they should never be brought into the light of reality. If held up to the light they will, like Gremlins, immediately turn destructive. A fantasy was an extension of your own ego, it belonged in the imagination and nowhere else. If he made a grab for this one and managed to eventually get into her bed she would shatter. This was a look but don't touch situation if ever there was one.

Angus fought well but he could not get Charity out of his head. And then she found her way into his dreams. He argued with himself. He cursed his lack of self-discipline. Next thing he knew, after having hesitated for more than half an hour after the end of the performance there he was standing in her dressing roo