‘Part from that; everything okay, aye?’ Ash said, putting her arm round my shoulders.
‘Help me, Ashley,’ I said, closing my eyes and putting my head on her shoulder. ‘What am I to do?’
‘You must think of her on the toilet,’ Aline said, and giggled.
‘Off-white woman speak truth,’ Ash said, lowering her head to rest it on mine. ‘The hots rarely survive an intense course of imagining the beloved on the cludgie.’
‘No,’ I sighed, opening my eyes as a series of splashes announced another chaotic event on the spillway. ‘I’d probably only develop a fetish for coprophagy.’
‘Pardon?’
‘That as unpleasant as it sounds?’
‘Unpleasanter.’
‘Merde!’
‘Yup.’
‘You’re a hopeless case, Prentice, so you are. Have you contemplated suicide?’
‘Yeah; soon as it’s finished, I’m going to throw myself off the Channel Tunnel.’
Ashley’s shoulders moved once under my head. ‘Plenty of time to set your affairs in order, then.’
‘It’s not my affairs I’m concerned with.’
‘Ach, she wasn’t your sort, anyway, Prentice.’
‘What; you mean not good enough for me?’
‘No, Prentice; I mean too much taste. You never stood a chance with a woman that choosy.’
I pulled away and looked dubiously at Ashley, who smiled sweetly. ‘What is this?’ I said. ‘You auditioning for the Exit chapter of the Samaritans, or what?’
Ashley took my hands in hers. ‘Ah, Prentice. Dinnae worry; maybe it’s just an infatuation; hers, or Lewis’s ... or yours. Whatever. Maybe she’ll come to her senses. Maybe she wants to work her way through all the McHoan brothers in order of age -’
‘Or weight.’
‘ - or weight. Maybe she’ll get married to Lewis but have a lifelong affair with you.’
‘Oh, great.’
‘See? You don’t know what might happen,’ Ashley said happily, spreading her hands.
‘Anyway, Prentice,’ Aline said in her sing-song voice. ‘There are plenty more fishes in the sea, yes?’
I looked over at Aline. ‘Hey, can I quote you on that?’
Aline winked at me, tapped the side of her nose. ‘The toilet,’ she said conspiratorially.
I started to get up. ‘It’s no good,’ I sighed. ‘You two are cheering me up too much and I can’t stand the excitement.’ I got wearily to my feet, muscles aching from the effects of drink and walk.
‘See you down the Jac tonight?’ Ash said.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I keep trying to drown my sorrows but they appear to be marginally more buoyant than expanded polystyrene.’ The water cascaded down the face of the spillway again, the noise like a million stamping feet heard from a long way off. I shrugged. ‘Fuck it, though; worth another try. Gotta start working some time.’
‘That’s my boy.’
‘See you, gals.’
‘Bye-bye, Prentice.’
‘Try not to fall in love with anybody else before tonight.’
‘Yo.’
An hour or so later I saw my mother’s green Metro, just about to turn out of the drive-way of Hamish and Tone’s house. She stopped when she saw me, wound the window down. ‘Here you are,’ she said.
‘Here I am,’ I agreed.
‘I was waiting for ages there.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh well. Getting in?’
I got into the car; we started to reverse the fifty yards back up the drive. Actually, my legs were so tired I was quite grateful for the lift. ‘I brought what I could find of Rory’s stuff.’ Mum nodded. ‘Your dad thinks there’s more, but it’s buried in the filing.’ I looked at the back seat, where a folder lay. ‘Not that you deserve it,’ she added.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said. I picked the folder up; CRII said the lettering on the spine. It looked similar to the folder I already had, but perhaps a little thicker. I vaguely remembered reminding mum last night that I was looking for the rest of Uncle Rory’s papers.
‘Well?’ she said.
I looked over, yawning. ‘Well?’ I repeated.
We drew to a stop outside the door of the house. ‘You don’t remember last night, do you?’ mum said, turning the ignition off. She was dressed in angora and chunky cords; new perfume. She looked slightly unamused and not a little worried.
‘Not... in its entirety, no,’ I confessed.
She shook her head. ‘God, you were drunk, Prentice.’
‘Umm,’ I said, weighing the folder in my hands. ‘... Yes.’ I smiled my best ‘but I’m still your wee laddy’ smile.
She raised those delicate brown brows. ‘My God, you don’t remember embarrassing Lewis and Verity last night, do you?’
I looked at her.
‘I mean, apart from embarrassing your father and me,’ she added.
I felt the blood draining from my face like somebody had opened a valve in my ankle. Oh-oh.
I swallowed. ‘I wasn’t doing my impression of the Bradford City supporter, the King’s Cross Disaster victim and the guy from Piper Alpha meeting up in Hell, was I?’ (Requires three cigarettes; offends everybody.)
‘It’s not funny, Prentice; poor Verity was nearly in tears. You’re lucky Lewis didn’t throttle you.’
‘Oh my God,’ I said, feeling cold. ‘What did I say?’
(Duck, and cover.)
‘Told her - told everybody - you were madly in love with her!’ she said, eyes flashing. ‘Then, having declared undying worship of the poor girl, you proceeded to slag her off for taking up with Lewis.’ Mum shook her head angrily, tears in her eyes. ‘Prentice! What were you thinking of?’
‘Oh my God,’ I moaned. KYAG. I put the folder down in my lap and put my forehead on the folder.
‘Then you followed that up with some fairly off-colour remarks about Lapland, and what you referred to, I believe, as “the old earth-moving equipment”.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘And I think we all successfully worked out what “doing the Delta Foxtrot” was, as well, before you became totally incoherent.’
‘Oh my God!’
‘I don’t think saying “Oh my God” will make it any better, Prentice. I think you should apologise to Verity and Lewis as soon as you can. They’re up at the castle.’ My mother brought her voice under control with an effort. ‘Though you might also think about saying sorry to Hamish and Antonia, too, as you were their guest and it was their party you brought grinding to an embarrassing halt. Just as well you agreed to go quietly when Kenneth suggested it was time you went to bed; though apparently he and Hamish practically had to carry you upstairs, and the whole way up you were muttering something vile about Lewis being thrown naked into a tub of starving Elephant Leeches.’
And dad put me to bed! Oh no! Dad and the Tree! The shame of it!
‘Mum, I want to die,’ I mumbled into the folder.
‘Just at the moment, Prentice, I don’t think there’d be any shortage of volunteers to help you on your way, if you were serious.’
‘I am.’
‘Stop being melodramatic, Prentice; it doesn’t suit you. Sarcasm’s more your forte.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Prentice,’ mum said, putting her hand on my head and running her fingers through my hair. ‘Prentice ...’
I looked up, straightened. Mum’s eyes looked red. She shook her head. ‘Prentice, why are you so stupid with your cleverness sometimes?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Wish I knew, mum,’ I said, and sniffed, eyes smarting. Best not to say anything about it running in the family.
She took me in her arms, hugged me. I was surprised, as I always was at such moments, how slim and small she felt.
After a bit we let go of each other. She glanced in the mirror and declared I had wrecked her eyes for the rest of the day. Then we went in to Hamish and Tone’s for tea and apologies, and later drove to the castle for what would have been the most e
xcruciating interval of my life if Verity and Lewis had still been there, but they weren’t; they had taken off in the car to visit some friends of Verity’s who lived in Ardnamurchan, and wouldn’t be back until late tomorrow at the earliest.
Mum took me back chez Hamish and Tone; she agreed to pass on my expressions of contrition to my father. She’d wanted me to come to Lochgair and say sorry to him there, but I had begged for mercy, and - rather to my surprise - been granted it.
I had already decided that tomorrow I would take the train back to what was now your official European City of Culture for the following twelve months. In theory, Verity and Lewis were meant to be giving me a lift in four days time, but that was obviously out, now.
I had to promise mum I’d write to each of them, and apologise in person at the first possible opportunity, and also that I’d stop off at Lochgair before I returned to Glasgow, to see dad.
Ashley met me in the Jac that night, listened to my woes, bought me drink when I ran out of money (I’m sure I was short-changed at the bar) even though she probably had less dosh than I did, and listened to my woes all over again when we went back to her mum’s and sat up till God knows when, talking low so we wouldn’t wake Dean in the next room. She made me coffee, gave me hugs, and at one point I fell asleep, and was at peace for a while, and woke up sprawled on the floor, my head on her lap, one gentle hand stroking my head. ‘Ash,’ I croaked, ‘you’re a saint.’
She just smiled.
A last cup of coffee and I left; back to H and T’s in time for a few hours’ fitful sleep; then up and away, run to the station by Aunt Antonia. I only just caught the train, and when, a quarter of an hour later, we pulled in to Lochgair, and I should have got my bag and quit the Sprinter and walked to the house and finally have talked - sober, and not in the context of a game of Alternative Charades - to my father, and apologised, and spent the three hours until the next Glasgow train with my mother and father in some longed-for spirit of reconciliation, I did nothing of the sort.
Instead I put my head to one side so that it rested against the cold glass of the window, closed my eyes and let my mouth hang open a little. I stayed like that for the minute or so we waited at the Lochgair station platform, and didn’t stir again - yawning convincingly for any other passengers who might be watching - until we were crossing the viaduct at Succothmore.
Still stuck on the track within sight of Janice Rae’s flat, I got up out of my seat, took down my bag and fished out the file mum had brought from the house. I found some much-Tippexed poems typed on foolscap, plus about twenty or so printed A4 pages which looked like they were part of a play or film script. I selected a page at random and started reading.
Lord: ... And I see them as they will be, dead and torn; shocked, mutilated and alone, on battlefields or by long roads, in ditches or against high walls, in echoing white corridors and misty woods, in fields, by rivers; dumped in holes, thrown in piles; neglected and absolved. Or, if living on, filled with petty, bitter memories, and a longing for the war they fought to end. Oh captain, I see in this my ending, what I think you didn’t start to glimpse with your most cunning intuition; the soldiers are always the real refugees. Their first victim is themselves, their life taken from them well before — as though seeking a replacement from another freed —
But I couldn’t take any more. I put the papers in the folder and the folder in my bag, then stuffed that under my seat.
I looked out at the rain instead; it was cheerier.
I’d avoided stopping off to see mum and dad. It made my eyes close, every time I thought about it. What was wrong with me?
Well, I thought; they made me. They produced me; their genes. And they brought me up. School and university still hadn’t changed me as much as they had; maybe even the rest of my life could never compensate for their formative effect. If I was too embarrassed, too full of shame to go and see them, it wasn’t just my fault; it was theirs too, because of the way they’d brought me up (God, I thought I’d stopped using that excuse when I left Lochgair Primary School). But there was a grain of truth in there.
Wasn’t there?
And hell, I thought; I had been tired; I was tired still, and I would phone that evening - definitely - and say I’d fallen asleep, and nobody would be too bothered, and after all a chap could only cope with so much sorrow-saying in one day ... of course I’d phone. A bit of soft soap, a bit of flannel, like dad would say.
No sweat; I could charm them. I’d make everything all right.
Still, it was the hangover of that piece of moral cowardice at Lochgair station, along with everything else, that led to me feeling so profoundly awful with myself that evening (after the train finally did get into Queen Street and I walked back, soaked and somehow no longer hungry, in the rain to the empty flat in Grant Street), that mum had to call me there, because I hadn’t been able to bring myself to phone her and dad ... and I still managed to feign sleep and a little shame and a smattering of sorrow and reassure her as best I could that really I was all right, yes of course, not to worry, I was fine, thanks for calling ... and so of course after that felt even worse.
I made a cup of coffee. I was feeling so bad that I treated it as a kind of moral victory that I was able to empty most of the water out of the obviously Gav-filled kettle and leave the level at the minimum mark. I stood in the kitchen waiting for the water to heat up with a distinct feeling of eco-smugness.
It was just as I was sitting down in the living room with my cup of coffee that I realised I’d left my bag on the train.
I couldn’t believe it. I remembered getting out of my seat, putting on my jacket, wondering about trying to get something to eat, deciding I didn’t feel hungry, glancing at the empty luggage rack, and then heading through the station and up the road. With no bag.
How could I? I put the coffee down, leapt out of my chair and over the couch, ran to the phone, and got through, ten minutes later, to the station. Lost Property was closed; call tomorrow.
I lay in bed that night, trying to remember what had been in the bag. Clothes, toiletries, one or two books, a couple of presents ... and the folder with Uncle Rory’s papers in it; both folders, including the one I hadn’t read yet.
No, I told myself, as panic tried to set in. It was inconceivable that I’d lost the bag forever. It would turn up. I had always been lucky that way. People were generally good. Even if somebody had picked it up, maybe they had done so by mistake. But probably a guard had spotted it and it was right now sitting in some staff-room in Queen Street station, or Gallanach. Or maybe - in a siding only a mile or two from where I lay - a cleaner’s brush was at this moment encountering the bag, wedged back under the seat ... But I’d get it back. It couldn’t just disappear; it had to find its way back to me. It had to.
I got to sleep eventually.
I dreamt of Uncle Rory coming home, driving the old Rover Verity had been born in, the window open, his arm sticking out, him smiling and holding the missing folder in his hand; waving it. In the dream, he had a funny looking white towel wrapped round his neck, and that was when I woke up and remembered.
My white silk scarf; the irreplaceable Möbius scarf, the gift of Darren Watt, had been in the missing bag as well.
‘Noooo!’ I wailed into the pillow.
Waking up was a process of gradually remembering all the things I had to feel bad about. I rang Lost Property first thing. No bag. I got them to give me the number for the cleaners’ mess-room and asked there. No bag. I tried Gallanach, in case the train had got back there before the bag had been discovered under the seat by some honest person. No bag.
I tried both stations again in the afternoon; guess what?
I did the only thing I could think of, and retired to bed; if 1 was to be a blade of grass doomed to be trampled flat, then I might as well accept it and lie down. I stayed in bed for the next twenty-four hours, sleeping, drinking a little water, not eating at all, and only rousing myself when Gav arrived back (from his paren
ts’, I wrongly assumed), loudly declaring himself to be of unsound liver but totally in love.
Oh, lucky ewe, I said, does she come from a respectable flock?
Ha ha, it’s your au - fr ... parents’ friend, Janice, Gav beamed, radiating unrepentant guilt; came round here the other day looking for you we got talking went for a curry had a few drinks ended up back here one thing led to another know how it is always liked older women they’re more experienced know what I mean arf arf anyway spent an extremely enjoyable New Year at her place apart from the usual visit to my folks’ of course oh by the way she’s coming round here tonight I’m cooking lasagne can you swap rooms seeing Norris won’t be back until tomorrow it’s just I didn’t expect you back until then either, that okay?
I stared at Gav from my bed, blinking and trying to take in this torrent of exponentially catastrophic information. I attempted desperately to convince myself that what I was experiencing was just a particularly cruel and hateful dream concocted by some part of my mind determined to exact due penalty from my conscience for my having behaved with such despicable lack of grace during the holidays ... but failed utterly; my sub-conscious’ stock of nightmare-paradigms includes nothing so banally twisted as Gav.
Finally, scraping together the last microscopic filaments of my tattered pride to produce a quorum fit for emergency ego-resuscitation if not actual wit, I managed: ‘Gav, I’m shocked.’ (Gav looked defensive for all of a micro-second, a concession my lacerated self-respect fell upon with all the pathetic desperation of a humiliatingly defeated politician pointing out that well, things can only get better.) ‘You never told me you could cook lasagne.’