And the Land Lay Still (18 page)

§

On a Saturday in late June, Mike went by train to Stirling, to witness the annual SNP rally at Bannockburn. This was the day before the World Cup final – which, as if anybody cared by then, the hosts Argentina would win against the Netherlands. (Actually, some people did care, deeply. Because Scotland had beaten the Netherlands, and because the Netherlands were beaten by Argentina, it followed that Scotland, if you contorted your logic enough, were theoretical runners-up in the World Cup. There were folk desperate enough to think like that in 1978.)

For a site of national significance – the battlefield on which Scotland’s medieval independence from England was won – Bannockburn is an unspectacular place, hemmed in by housing schemes and roads. Angus had taken Mike there as a boy, but Mike had never been to the Nationalists’ rally. In the aftermath of Argentina, he thought it might yield some interesting images. All through the 1970s the event had attracted big numbers as the SNP’s popularity grew, but the tide was beginning to turn. The Nationalists’ confidence had recently taken a couple of knocks from Labour. In April, a forty-year-old lawyer, Donald Dewar, had beaten them, with relative ease, in a by-election in Glasgow. And on the last day of May they had been defeated again in Hamilton, scene of Winnie Ewing’s triumph in
1967, the one M. Lucas had been so ecstatic about. It seemed to Mike that the air at Bannockburn was failing to lift the saltires or make the lions rampant; the pipes and drums sounded thin and plaintive, and the speeches, relayed through a ropy PA system, sounded more anxious than celebratory. And was there not a touch of disdain in the way Robert the Bruce, armour-clad and mounted on his warhorse, looked down from his plinth on the bright yellows, blues and reds of the banners, on the abundance of kilts and plaids of every shade of tartan, and on the pale or sun-blotched faces of the milling crowd? Has it come to this,
here
, Mike imagined Bruce thinking. He took his pictures with discretion. Not everybody was happy to be photographed.

After wandering among the crowd for an hour or so, he’d had enough. He was about to leave when he found himself in front of an extraordinary but familiar figure. Wearing a kilt that hung down below one knee and was hoisted up above the other, sporting an enormous hairy sporran, a tweed jacket and a Glengarry bonnet, and supported by a shooting stick embedded in the ground at one end and in the tartan glen of his substantial rear at the other, was his old French teacher. He had aged greatly in the ten years since Mike had last seen him, but it was, without question, M. Lucas.

‘M. Lucas?’ he said. The older man looked around wildly. Mike went closer. ‘Do you remember me? You taught me at school. I’m Michael Pendreich.’

He was just a yard away, stretching a hand towards him, yet M. Lucas stared in his direction uncomprehendingly. Then his whole face brightened. He leaned forward on his stick, found the hand and grasped it. He did not let go but drew Mike closer to him.

‘M. Michel?
Comment ça va
? You are
here
? This is wonderful,
merveilleux
! My life, then, has not been entirely
wasted
.’

M. Lucas, Mike realised, was almost totally blind.

‘I’m here to take photos,’ Mike said. ‘It’s what I do for a living. I’m not a party member.’

‘Cela n’a pas
d’importance
!’ M. Lucas roared. ‘Who cares about membership? You are
here
, that’s all that matters. It’s good to hear your voice! But don’t take my photograph,
s’il vous plaît
!’

‘I was hoping you’d allow me.’

‘I forbid it. I
hate
to have my photograph taken.’

‘You resist it,’ Mike said, disappointed, but immediately sure that he would not go against a wish so vehemently expressed.

M. Lucas roared again, this time with laughter. ‘
Oui, oui
, I resist it.
Bien sûr
, what else is there to do but
that
!’ And he hooted and wheezed, and released Mike’s hand only once he had calmed down.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘my son Bernard is somewhere in the vicinity. He is my guide dog today. You will have noticed,
mon ami
, that my eyesight has not improved. You are, I regret to say, only’ – his voice took on the tone he had once used in class to tell spooky stories – ‘a shadow, a spectre. Do you see him anywhere?’

‘What does he look like?’

‘Like me,’ he said, ‘only less
presentable
.’

Mike could see nobody who might be Bernard. ‘I’ll wait till he comes back,’ he said.

‘Yes, I am grateful. He won’t be long. He has gone for some
refreshments
.’

‘Are you still at Bellcroft?’ Mike asked hesitatingly.

‘That school? Pfff! They put me out to graze three years ago. But I cannot blame them. I could barely find my way from one classroom to the next.
Alors, je suis retraité
. An O-A-P.’ He spelled the letters out with disgust. ‘Unfortunately there are some affairs in which resistance is
useless
.’

‘Your spirit,’ Mike said, ‘does not seem diminished.’

‘No, thank God. We are poor, but we are happy. The thing is to be happy. Everything is tolerable if you are
happy
.’

Bernard, neat in shirt and trousers and with his long black hair tied back in a ponytail, arrived bearing two ice-cream cones. He handed one to his father and M. Lucas went to work on it. A trickle of ice cream ran down his chin but when Bernard tried to wipe it off M. Lucas waved him away. ‘Plus tard, plus tard,’ he said. He introduced Mike to Bernard and they shook hands and exchanged a few pleasantries while M. Lucas was engrossed in his ice cream. Then Mike said he would have to go. He had a train to catch back to Edinburgh.

‘M. Michel,’ M. Lucas said dramatically, ‘we shall meet again. Or we shall not meet again. But you fill me with hope because you are here today. There are hard times coming,
mon ami
. But hard times come for a purpose. They are to be
resisted
. Remember that.’

‘I will,’ Mike said.

‘But then’ – he flung the last bit of his cone away and grabbed for Mike’s hand again, and when he found it clasped it stickily in both of his – ‘but then a time will come to
accept
. The time of resistance will be over,
terminé
! The ghosts of history will whisper in our ears, and we will go forward into the future.
Oui, c’est vrai!
You think I speak in strange tongues, but what I say is true. These things will come to pass.’

Mike glanced at Bernard, who nodded his head – to signify, it seemed, not that his father was to be humoured, but that he agreed with him.

‘Au revoir, M. Michel, au revoir,’ M. Lucas said. ‘Remember, until the time comes to accept, resist
everything
!’

The contrast between the glow of his optimism and the decrepitude of his appearance could not have been more stark. Mike retreated in confusion. He’d not gone twenty feet before another familiar voice greeted him.

‘Hello, Mike,’ Angus said.

‘Dad! What are you doing here?’

‘The same as you, I expect. Who was that you were speaking to?’

‘M. Lucas.’

‘A
monsieur
? Well, I have to thank you. While you were busy talking, I got some great shots. Who is he?’

‘My old French teacher from Bellcroft,’ Mike said. ‘If you’d taken more interest in my education you might have recognised him.’

Angus was oblivious to the criticism. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘You must have had interesting lessons with a guy like that in charge.’

‘You can’t use anything you’ve taken of him,’ Mike said hotly. ‘He doesn’t like being photographed.’

‘I didn’t see a sign round his neck saying “No Pictures”. Anyway, it’ll be down to the magazine editor what he uses. I’m on a commission. Scotland post-World Cup. Are we all about to commit suicide? I thought this would be a place worth coming to and I was right.’

‘Don’t use M. Lucas,’ Mike said.

‘Out of my hands,’ Angus said.

He had what he’d come for, and was leaving too. He offered Mike a lift back to the station at Stirling. The car he kept in Glasgow was parked a few streets away. They walked over to it. Angus started the engine and they moved off.

‘You might have got in touch,’ Mike said. ‘I never see you.’

‘Sorry,’ Angus said. ‘It was all a bit last minute. And I’m not staying. I was up first thing this morning to catch the start of an Orange march and tonight I intend to see what Sauchiehall Street’s like on a Saturday these days. Loch Lomond tomorrow if it’s fair, a quick spin through a few towns and villages, then back down on the sleeper. So I just didn’t have time.’

‘You could have taken an extra day.’

‘Look,’ Angus said, ‘I’m back soon for my annual retreat. A month at Cnoc nan Gobhar. Why don’t you come up for a while? You’ve not been for ages.’

‘I just won’t have time,’ Mike said.

‘Don’t get smart,’ Angus said.

‘Who are you bringing with you this year? Cindy?’

‘Cindy? I’m not with Cindy any more. That was years ago.’

‘Was it?’ Mike said. ‘I can’t keep up.’

Angus swung in to the kerb and pulled up sharp. ‘I can take you to the station or you can walk. It’s your choice. A bit of respect is what’s required.’

‘You’re right there,’ Mike said. He opened the door. ‘Don’t use M. Lucas.’ He got out and slammed the door.

Angus leaned over and wound down the window. He was smiling. ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘grow up a bit.’ He drove off, tooting his horn. Mike stood on the pavement, shaking his head as if he were the father and Angus the wayward son. You bastard, he thought. Then, because there was nothing else for it, he headed for the station.

The spread was in one of the colour supplements a couple of weeks later. Angus had certainly captured something – if not the mood of the country, then moods of various kinds. There were drummers, defiant and wary, warming up before the Orange march; there were some kids kicking a ball around on a bald patch of grass in front of grim-looking housing and a notice that read
NO BALL GAMES
; there was a handsome, tall white man and a short, balding Asian man outside a shop, next to a display of produce and a handwritten sign,
BRAW NEW TATTIES
, and although it was probably the Asian man’s shop you didn’t know this, and although they were standing together neither was smiling so you weren’t sure what the relationship was; there was a family paddling in a few inches of water, trousers rolled, skirts hitched, and the dad had a Scotland top
on and they all looked ridiculous against a background of sublime loch and mountain scenery. And there, taking pride of place and a full page to himself, was M. Lucas, perched on his shooting stick in his absurd kilt with all the trimmings, his hair unkempt and with ice cream running down his chin, and if you didn’t know you wouldn’t realise he was blind but you’d guess there was something not right with his vision. There was litter scattered around him and hints of flags and tartan at the edges of the picture, and he sat amid this debris like King Lear, mad and proud. Mike was incensed that his father had allowed it to be used: it was all very well saying it was out of his hands but of course it wasn’t, he needn’t have submitted it. But Mike looked at it and looked at it, and what incensed him most was what a wonderful photograph it was. And he wanted to phone Angus to tell him what he thought, but he couldn’t. How could he say how sorry he was that his old teacher made such an eloquent symbol of something so tragicomic, how glad he was that M. Lucas couldn’t see it, and how jealous he was that the Angus angle had triumphed once again? He told himself that he was a better person than his father, that he had shown restraint and respect by his actions, but it was small consolation. He looked at his father’s photograph and two thoughts reverberated in his head. The first was,
what if I had taken that?
The second was,
if only I had!

§

What if, what if, what if? If only, if only, if only. Those phrases sit like crows on the passage of the years. They settle on politics, they settle on love, they settle on life. You clap your hands but not all the crows fly away. What if Mike had not ended up with Adam that night at Jean’s? If only he had been sure of his sexuality at thirteen, or sixteen. What if he had become a lawyer, not a photographer? If only Scotland had scored two more goals in Argentina. What if Jim Callaghan had called a General Election in the autumn of 1978, before the so-called Winter of Discontent? If only the result of the devolution referendum of March 1979 had been different. He understands, of course, that all such propositions and regrets are now completely pointless, but he finds it hard, almost impossible,
not
to look back and wonder.

The Bill for setting up a Scottish assembly made its way, ground,
squeezed and crushed by friend and foe, line by line, clause by clause, through late-night sittings in the House of Commons. In amongst those clauses was provision for the holding of a referendum, so that the Scottish people could decide if they really wanted such a squeezed and crushed assembly as the Bill proposed. On Burns Night in 1978, one of the squeezers and crushers, a Scot called George Cunningham, the Honourable Member for Islington, proposed an amendment to the legislation, requiring 40 per cent of the registered electorate to vote in favour of an assembly before it could be established. George Cunningham was not in favour of an assembly himself. Many of his fellow MPs were not in favour of an assembly. They voted for the amendment. The pro-devolutionists howled in outrage. In no General Election since the war had the victorious party won the votes of 40 per cent of the registered electorate. George Cunningham had not won the votes of 40 per cent of the registered electorate of Islington. The amendment, the pro-devolutionists said, was a wrecking amendment, designed to frustrate the democratic process. The anti-devolutionists taunted them: if their plans were so popular, what were they afraid of? From the Tory benches came further jibes: the sole reason the Labour government was insisting on pushing devolution through in the face of mass indifference was that it felt threatened by the SNP in so many of its Scottish seats. But, the Tories said, creating an assembly in Edinburgh wouldn’t halt the Nationalists: it would give them a platform from which to argue for their ultimate goal of complete independence. Encouraged, the grinders and crushers on the Labour benches worked tirelessly on. Their selfless endeavours were reported in stifling detail, day after day, in the newspapers. The longer it continued, the more depressing it became. It looked as if the Scots were genetically and historically conditioned to fall out amongst themselves. Eventually, in July 1978, when the Bill could be ground and crushed no more, it limped into being as the Scotland Act.