A Book of Death and Fish (42 page)

I was set to hand over the old Peugeot estate to Anna and her pals. They were adventurers and it wasn’t as if a bit of brine dripping from dinghies or boards or kayaks was going to do a lot more damage. She ran fine. So it was my last road movie with the workhorse. I had some stuff to pick up on the mainland so it was a chance to see Andra. Sometimes you just need to get off the rock.

I don’t care much about distance when I’m got some wheels under me. Dead easy. I tried to phone, before I left home, but got no answer. It was the evening. Maybe the home-help got him to his bed soon after his tea. I could have got the number from the cousins but I was going anyway.

The car wasn’t booked on the ferry. The guy kept me in the standby area till the last minute even though the boat wasn’t that busy. The bite of April.

And I wasn’t booked in anywhere. I couldn’t see a big push for weekend breaks by the North Sea this month. But the Alexandria was boarded up like its neighbours. Then I saw the posters. A gospel music convention. There might not be a bed in town. I could phone Willum and Sheila but it was a bit awkward – he might be at sea. She might be involved in the festival – she was quite strong on the church. They’d be bound to ask how Gabriele was doing. I wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Nae baud,’ and move on.

No big deal, I could run out of town and get a bed in Pennan or out Inverallochy or even Peterhead. Pennan could be booked out too. This was a holiday weekend, for some, and
Local Hero
left its mark on that village. People still wanted a photo of themselves standing by the phone box. They’d get lashed with spray there tonight.

But I knew I’d better get my arse up West Road pretty soon. I went the long way, past the signs for the lighthouse museum, leaving Glenbuchty Place between the sea and the main road. Took a left before the seaward road that used to lead to the gut-factory. You never got that smell now, in either The Broch or SY. My grampa used to call the street with the big new houses, further up the road, Fishmeal Avenue.

I was just round the corner from West Road but the prefabs were gone and my bearings with them. There were new blocks of flats between the boarded up old houses and the more prosperous outskirts.

I looked at the dashboard and saw it was near seven. I shouldn’t have stopped to walk along the beach, earlier on. I remembered the frapping red flag that warned the waves were too high for safe bathing. The surfers had a blazing gellie going in the dunes but they wouldn’t call it that, these latitudes.

One house looked like it might be the one. I knocked. There was a chain on the door. It opened enough for a wifie to tell me, aye, Andra was on the go all right but he bided off that next wee close. Looked just like this one. I might be ower late though. No, no, he was keeping a richt for a man who’d had his quota o strokes but these home-helps just did the rounds richt early.

The house looked dead. The buzzer worked well enough but nobody came. Then someone went by.

‘Aye,’ the man said. ‘Andra Sim’s house. For sure. No, no, he’ll no be in his bed but you’ll no find him in, this time o nicht. Try the Elizabethan.’

‘Not the Legion?’ I asked.

‘No, he disna drink there ony mair. Elizabethan.’

He pointed the way. I left the car on West Road and walked round the corner. There was a concrete building which looked like it could be of pre-fab construction but it had black painted mock timbers. This could be it. They had a board with special drinks offers on for the football. He’d be here.

It had all sorts of sightlines and corners and more than one screen. I had a fixed idea he was here but I couldn’t see him. I was being careful because even big characters can shrink after a stroke. I still couldn’t see him.

‘You in fae the match?’ someone asked.

‘No, I’m looking for my uncle Andra. Andra Sim.’

‘Andra disna drink here ony mair,’ the barman said.

‘Is he back at the Legion?’

‘Ye’ll find him in the Sultan. Just off the main street, ken at the front.’

‘Before that drop down to the harbour?’

‘Aye, that’s it. He’ll be in there.’

I thought I knew the way. Drove towards the sea-front. Parked the Peugeot.

I walked up and down the street and I couldn’t see a pub called the Sultan.

Time was marching on. I asked someone else. There wasn’t a lot of people out on the street.

‘You’ve just walked by it. Can you no see it there?’

I looked back to the Saltoun Arms Hotel. That’d be it then.

I found the opening to the public bar and took a deep breath. There was a screen on with the warm-up to the match. Commentators were speculating. Alan Hansen was looking chill as ever. That’s the guy the Latin teacher wagged his finger at. Alan was always a bit more cool than cool. He came sauntering in off the pitch at Lornshill. Another Academy though folk down there still called it The Grange. That was real Rangers and Celtic country. Of course, we had to shout for Rangers.

‘Do you think, Mr Hansen, that football will ever put bread in your mouth?’ the Latin teacher asked.

I wondered what he was earning for this appearance.

And then my eye went to a figure on a bar stool. He was wearing an Aberdeen strip and his arms were in the air. He was leading the pub in the warm-up singsong.

‘Andra?’

He took a few seconds but he was clocking me all right.

‘I might have had a bit more hair last time you saw me.’

‘I ken ye jist the same. It’s Mary’s loon. You still have the bloody look o her too but you’re no jist as bonny.’

‘You’re not looking too shabby yourself for a man I thought might be lying down.’

‘Am no lying doon yet, loon.’

I bought him a whisky and I took one too.

‘And your mates?’

‘Dinna bother, loon, we’re in a big school here. We’re the breakfast club. But we werna in this morn and we might not be in the morra morn. But then again we micht. I dinna drink at hame ken but I like tae get the news here.’

I asked around and bought a rum here, a half pint there.

The barmaid came over. ‘Your uncle’s eyes fair lit up when he saw you,’ she said. ‘He’ll be speakin aboot it for days. How did you find him?’ ‘Well, I had a couple of stops along the way,’ I said.

‘He’s great for the singing,’ she said, ‘Leads them all at it. Then Willum’s wife comes for him or he gets a taxi. He’s nae bother.’

I floated between getting a yarn with Andra and getting the barmaid’s news. There was a fair chance my last surviving uncle was going to live for ever.

‘Start the bloody clock again,’ he said. ‘Am ready to go roond again. Ah please masel and a dinna harm naibody.’

Then he leaned over to tell me again, he didna drink at hame. A thing he jist didna dae. But they had a wee club goin in the morning. That was his usual. The taxi took him hame in time for his dinner. The hame-help had it ready for him. He wisna dain bad.

‘Nae baud,’ I said.

‘You’ve a smatterin o the lingo,’ the barmaid said.

Did she know my cousin Willum? Fishing skipper.

‘Willum that lost his boy? He just lost hert. Finally gave up and took the boatie across to Denmark. Ten year aul, the boatie. Jist eligible for the decommissioning. Young Andra, he wis a fine enough loon fan he wis young. Jist went the same way as an affie number o oor loons. Quinies too. Some o them were worse if onything, when it got a haud o them. Quinies my ain age. Ah ken them. It’s levelling oot at last. The toon is turning the corner.’

Too late for some. Like young Andra.

‘Did ye see that programme on the telly? They were following the
skippers, takin the boaties across for brakin up. There was a line of wheelhouses, all bristling wi aerials, a hale lang street o them, stretching oot. Men were in tears.’

‘You’re fair in the know when it comes to the boats.’

She told me she’d always followed them. Who was building fit. Who sold fit. This one awa to the West Coast. This skipper having a new boatie built. Then it was this ane oot, that ane decommissioned.

‘Any lassies on the boats? There’s a few lassie deckhands on the creel boats, down Mull way.’

‘Ken this, ah wid hae done it. Nae jist for the money. I wis interested. Still am. I asked a few skippers would they tak me on. Ane o them says aye quinie, ye can start next week.
Deckhand?
I says.
No, sex-slave
, he says. They jist widna tak a quine seriously.’

Aberdeen scored. Andra’s arms were in the air again. When the roar died down, I asked her if she knew any B&Bs.

‘Are you needing sorted the nicht?’ she asked.

‘Aye.’

‘Jist a single?’

‘Aye.’

She made the call and I was fixed. No, I wouldn’t have another dram. And Andra wouldn’t need the taxi tonight. I could drive my uncle along the road when he was ready. Help him in his door.

Andra had one for the ditch after the game. I asked him how Willum was coping.

‘Weel, he’s a gem o a wife. That Sheila. But ye ken that yersel. The boatie wis jist steel an paint an wiring. Plain enough when you see them gettin rippid apairt. He’s at the book-learnin agin. Back at the Buchan college. He’s gey handy wi the electronics. He’ll nae be stuck.’

His father wouldn’t be stuck either.

‘You’re talkin wi a man fae wis at El Alamein. An so was Mary’s man, yer ain faither. Nae a thing tae dwell on. Victory or no. Ships o the desert were nae bloody camels, loon. When a tank wis takin oot, it wis something mair than steel an wiring. There were men in there. Loons, mair like. We were a jist loons.

‘Shermans an Spitfires an Stalingrad, that’s fit made the difference. Rommel wis cryin oot for petrol an tanks an men afore an eftir he was awa hame sick. He wisna gettin them because they couldna brak through at Stalingrad. An oor aircraft were droppin torpedos tae tak oot their tankers. An oor Spitfires were no daen they gentlemen’s dogfights, they were straffin the Stukas on their ain fields. That gave us hert.

‘So I’d to bite my tongue monys a time loon wi a your talk on disarmament this an that. We were caught oot in ’45. We turnt a coarnir at El Alamein and the Fifty First wis there and your faither an me wis there alang wi them.

‘So I’ll jist alang tae oor breakfast club in the mornin and sing the day in an nae bother naebody. An it’s very fine tae see ye loon, Mary’s Peter in The Broch agin.’

It needs analysing. It needs an analyst. I should have gone out to dinner with that nice one in the bobbed curls and the leather trousers.

‘You can tell me anything. Anything.’ In a strong French accent but I don’t think I imagined her. We met at a history conference in Edinburgh. This was her hobby. Mine too. To my own surprise, I got it together to submit a paper in time. To my amazement, it was accepted –
Health and Industry: the case of the doctor employed by the labourers at Ballachulish Quarry.

But her English might not have been quite up to my complexities. My French certainly wasn’t up to her own individual nature.

But maybe I was learning. When should a guy choose the impossible when other options are available? Because he doesn’t admit to himself, for years and years that they are – or were. That’s what history is. Things you can’t change. Flashback time, again.

We’re outside the Arts Lecture Theatre, Aberdeen Uni. The Film Society has shown
Les Dentellieres
. Sad and beautiful and maybe a touch on the lush side but recommended by a certain very distant German woman who spoke English I could understand very well. And she might have picked up Hebrew too, in that year on the kibbutz.

I was not long back from a train journey to Cologne. It had been a disaster worthy of a wry continental film. I came back, tied up in knots of tension and worried about eating and worried about everything. Maybe I was like that before I left Aberdeen. I just knew about it, when I stepped back on to that platform with a tight gut.

I was no longer a shift-porter with people putting money in my bank account. I spent most of these earnings on a souped up Mini, registered and insured in my mother’s name. Then there was the fishing holiday, staying with the couple on that Finnish island. Before leaving the home island to finish the degree. The olaid liked the car because it was purple. She put up with its attempts at roaring and the banter from the bowling club folk because we could go for spins in it.

I was just too proud to get my arse out again to the phonebox at Bridge of Cowie. I only had to tell the olaid I was writing all these letters to thon German blone I visited on the kibbutz. And I was a bit short on readies except for the trains. I’d paid for them already.

‘Can you help me out?’ How difficult would that have been? But I didn’t say any of that.

So I was uptight about money the whole trip and I didn’t realise there was more train fares to find, along with her schedule of people to visit. Gabriele had arranged things so it was busy enough to be not too personal. We were both being cautious.

But even if cash and eating and everything else were OK, it’s clear as the olaid’s crystal sherry-glasses that this was not going to be an easy voyage. When I say it’s clear, I mean it’s clear now. Not then. Amazing bond you get from coping with stuff. The unexplained loss of a parent, in her case. And the sudden death of one, in mine. All these long letters. Both of us.

There was more to it than that. The powerful forces of fishing and dancing. Gabriele had come over to Aberdeen for the Folk Festival. She’d come along when I took a sea trout on the fly, from the Ythan estuary. She found some wild mushrooms she knew and trusted. It was a fine meal.

And the eightsome got us both out of ourselves, birling like dervishes. Holy shit, looks like the guys in the hats are right about that one too – dancing is dangerous, puts your very soul in jeopardy. I used to think Jeopardy was the name of a town. Maybe near Cairo.

It’s now we need my friend from Marseilles. No kidding, she’s a psychoanalyst with a passion for history. This is the question I failed to ask.

Is this well documented and normal, this way of not really coping with the death of a parent? Looking like you’re doing pretty good – the family meals, the compensatory building of a stronger relationship with other family members. The semblance of balance. Until about a year later, the nosedive comes. Like a plastic Stuka fallen from its fine string of monofilament fishing nylon and heading for the carpet.

The dive manifesting itself in broken sleep, manic behaviour, eating disorders, falling in love. With people who live in other countries. While the near ones are reaching out for you.

Does everyone’s mind work like this? Digression and flashback. Come back with me now again, outside said theatre, in a daze after said film, recommended by said woman, not quite a girlfriend. And you have to forget that there’s nearly a quarter of a century between where we are now and the scene outside the film.

I’ve one hand on the drop handlebars and a present, live young woman says my name. She wants to talk about the film. She wants to go for coffee. This is not correspondence. It’s not my imagination. She’s breathing.

She walks like a dancer. Talking and strolling with her, I now know the phrase. I didn’t know it then. ‘
Ca marche comme sur des roulettes.
’

It’s going on rollers, man. The sister taught me that one. She said I needed at least one cool phrase, in French.

I don’t look her in the eye because I’m somehow aware I’ll fall in there. She’s slim and has elegant fingers, elegant everything, cropped hair and fine features. My eyes are caught by the way the black on the backs of her hands shifts to pale along the fingers.

She didn’t come to lectures very often but we got talking after a seminar. Then I saw her in the launderette. Not a very beautiful one. She told me she was jealous of me. Why? Because I knew where I was from. She remembered my piece about attitudes to the Chinese opium trade. My approach was a study of recorded statements referring to the proprietor who was seen as a benefactor because of the obvious economic benefits from spending some of the proceeds on my home island. I’d suggested that we could, by analogy, also look more closely at how the slave trade
was perceived in Scotland. Maybe a study of letters to newspapers by prosperous residents of a relevant trading town.

People looked at her and saw a black girl with a trace of an American accent so assumed she had a strong cultural identity. But her parents had lived amongst the leafy courtyards and stonework and university culture of Oxford for a part of her upbringing. She spoke with a nice accent. She didn’t know what African-American meant. She didn’t know who she was.

And all I could find to say to this handsome woman, engaging with me again, was that this guy was coming round to the flat tonight. (I was back in Aberdeen city for the last year of Uni.) And I should be heading home in case I missed him.

He was one of the travelling people. He was a relative of my landlord. I wanted to meet him because he could direct me to all these recordings of stories and songs and history which had been retained by the travellers – the outsiders – when they’d been lost by most other sectors of Scottish society. He could just open his mouth and there you would have it, all that knowledge. All these stories.

This is another of these moments when you know just what you should have said. ‘Jump on the carrier. There’s my jacket for a cushion. We’re going to hear some history, first-person narration. Three on a bike’s a bit of a crowd but two’s a piece of piss.’

But I just said I’d love to go for a coffee but someone was coming round and I needed to get back. I couldn’t settle into all these stories I heard that night, because I kept thinking she would have been in her element.

But I was to dance with her twice. Once, she and her flatmates were having a party. I didn’t usually get asked to parties because people knew I didn’t drink and was serious. But I was pulled along by a group, doing the course.

She grabbed my arm. ‘Drink?’

‘No, ta, I’m fine.’

‘Well, let’s dance then.’

‘OK.’

She tried to get me to stay when the others were leaving. I used to wake early, these days. Get up to make the most of the time when your thinking could be clear. ‘You’re not really going now?’

But we did meet again, maybe two years later, not long after I’d finally got together with Gabriele. I’d come back to Aberdeen to see different friends to the ones she’d come to visit. But we went together to hear this band. We’d both been planning to go there. It wasn’t a date. But there was dancing. We were still very compatible dancers. I didn’t walk her to the door of her pals’ flat. Just to the corner of the shared road.

I hope I had the good grace to kiss her the French style. By which I mean a brush of each cheek. I don’t think I did. Of course, I now know I loved her, after these half-conversations. I think I still do. I haven’t heard of her again, since.

Who says men don’t find out their own feelings? In my case, it only took some years. Funnily enough, that quarter of a century again. My analyst friend might tell me that’s about average in male behaviour. And fear is pretty common too. The sort that kills a relationship that’s going to go and throw you off a course you’re pretty well bound to take. Even if you think you’re a nonconformist.

So of course, as part of the slightly late mid-life crisis, I was lost for a time in the eyes and voice of another slim, black lady when she visited that same city to sing in The Lemon Tree. Don’t get me wrong. I saw the singer’s individuality. Her face did not look at all similar to that of my student friend. She was an artist, not a historian. I was not at all conscious of making comparisons or returning to an intense period in my own life. And I was not yet ready to admit to myself or to Gabriele, out loud, that you can only live in a state of sustained tension for a limited time.

The way you lie awake, night after night, composing songs which won’t be sung. Certainly not by the petite diva from New York City. Of course I could always have sent them to her, which might have improved the chances a little. Like buying a lottery ticket increases the odds marginally in your favour.

Then again, maybe I was almost aware that it was another cropped African head I was really seeing and another set of quite pale fingers, equally expressive ones, moving before me when the world was a bit younger.

Something inside your skull activates some gland or other so one desire damps down another. It’s a force for defence in that it attacks love. It’s lethal and in fact capable of killing passion before it has a chance to start.

So the death I’m discussing in this paper is without question a murder. I don’t even have to consult my lawyer mate, to confirm this. It’s quite clear that a real possibility of love was killed by wilful avoidance.

And now, so many years later, it seems that you’re still quite capable of disregarding the lessons of your most personal history. A bit like the Griomsiadair boys (that’s the old men, remember?), heading out into the Minch when the great, black drifters are running for harbour. But do you think we can be too hard on ourselves?

When I fell into deep conversation with Emily, the singer, I was not yet ready to admit, consciously, that I needed the kind of space that is not created by building physical structures but by clear thinking. Even if I’d already taken that step, I’d still not been able to sit down and talk it all out with the woman who bore a child we made, together.

I’m suggesting now, without the advantage of professional advice, that a less conscious part of you is really making the connections. But it also informs your conscious self, eventually, so it too has a chance of coping with them.

That’s conflict.

There is one piece of documentation.

It’s not objective but it is contemporary. I found a scrap of paper in the flyleaf of a notebook. An attempt to keep track of a project which was in danger of getting out of control. I knew at the time the building work, for my mother, could easily get out of hand. But I didn’t have a clue what else was going on, in my head.

I don’t think this is a love poem and so I can copy it here. I don’t think it’s really addressed to either of these two black women I met, all those years apart, in Aberdeen city.

At last, I do know what it is. It’s a town boy’s version of all these Gaelic songs of separation.