And the Land Lay Still (81 page)

Liz said, ‘Don, we need tae talk.’

‘I ken.’

‘We need tae say aw the things we’ve no said for years.’

He nodded. Something like an ocean was welling up inside him.

‘And I need tae see Charlie.’

‘Right,’ he said.

§

The angst grew even worse in the run-up to the ’87 General Election. The electorate, egged on by pro-devolution pressure groups and mischievous elements in the media, had become frighteningly sophisticated at tactical voting. The four main parties fielded candidates in every Scottish seat, and in most Conservative seats it was fairly easy to identify the opposition party with the best chance of beating the incumbent. In Glenallan and West Mills it was Labour. In the months before the General Election various voices, local and national, called for Nationalist and Liberal voters to switch to Labour in order to eject him, David Eddelstane MP, from Westminster. The three parties declined to endorse tactical voting, at least in public, but despite that, and the fact that the same thing was happening to his colleagues, David felt as if he were being personally picked on.

In the final week of campaigning things looked extremely grim. Canvassing returns showed that West Mills was solidly Labour and, worse, that the rural vote was soft, likely to switch at the last moment or not come out at all. It was as if people were ashamed of voting Tory, as if they’d rather keep their grubby little habit in the closet. David knew how they felt, though obviously he couldn’t explain why. He, Melissa, his agent and numerous party workers spent much of election day organising lifts to and from the polling places, wheeling the aged, the sick and the demented in to make their mark. They weren’t quite holding the pencils for the old dears but they would have done if it had been permitted. By midnight it was clear that while Margaret was heading for another stunning victory UK-wide, the Scottish situation was far from healthy. MPs in once-watertight constituencies from Aberdeen to Bearsden were being dumped by the voters. As news of their defeats trickled in, David didn’t know whether he should envy or console them. There would be safety, wouldn’t there, in losing? But then he remembered
how much he liked Westminster, being part of the great tradition. And having reasons to be in London often, on his own. Did he really want to lose all that?

Eventually his own declaration was made at half past three, after fears that there might have to be a recount. He had squeaked in by 497 votes. Big hugs from Melissa and everybody in the team. Immense relief, which melted almost at once. He was one of only a handful of Conservative MPs left in Scotland. There had been twenty-one the day before. Now, with some results not yet declared, it was not even certain they would make double figures. Four government ministers were out. The media had been touting this as the ‘Doomsday Scenario’ – a massive Tory win south of the Border, a massive defeat north of it, with consequential constitutional crisis – and even as he made a brief acceptance speech a gang of angry Nats at the back of the hall started a chant: ‘No mandate! No poll tax! No mandate! No poll tax!’ He found himself stuttering and mumbling, trying not to antagonise them. He wasn’t cut out for this game. He probably never had been. So what on earth was he doing in it?

In the ensuing months the threatened constitutional crisis didn’t occur, although things began to get very unpleasant as the community charge – a policy David happened to believe was right in principle, even if it was being applied rather insensitively – was rolled out. Everywhere he went he encountered protest and hatred. He blocked the panic out, but it came back in the dark hours of night worse than ever, its rumble sounding now like the engine of a docking ferry, and his own despairing masturbation was less and less successful in making it disappear. He was permanently tired, permanently unable to get a good sleep. Melissa said she was worried about him.
She
was worried about him? ‘We haven’t made love for months, darling.’ ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry.’ Actually it was getting on for a year. They were apart so much, and when he was home they often went to bed at different times. Even when they went together he couldn’t summon up the energy for sex, regardless of whether he’d expended it by himself the night before. He apologised. He blamed stress, too much to drink, mind on next week’s debates – anything, really. The fact was, he loved her but was completely uninterested in her sexually. If he’d thought it would make a difference he’d have asked her to spice things up. Would she mind doing this, letting him do that?
But there was no point. It wasn’t her he wanted. It was someone else, someone anonymous and all-knowing.

§

Saleem said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that your wife has passed away, Don. Very sorry indeed.’

‘Thanks, Saleem,’ Don said.

He was in for milk and his paper, same as always except that he’d missed a day. This was Tuesday. Liz had died on Sunday. And the word was out. Betty Mair would have told Saleem and it would have been round the whole village in minutes. Not that it was unexpected, with Liz having been so ill.

Milk and a paper. The wee things didn’t stop. In fact they were what kept you going.

Saleem asked, ‘When is the funeral?’

‘Next week. Monday morning at the crem in Drumkirk.’

‘And what time?’

‘Eleven o’clock.’

‘I don’t know if I can be there.’

‘Ye’d be very welcome.’

‘It depends if I can get Nasreen to look after the shop.’

‘I understand,’ Don said. He was standing with his paper under his arm, a finger hooked through the handle of the plastic milk carton. ‘I hardly ever see her these days,’ he said.

‘I am an abandoned man.’ Saleem smiled. ‘First my children leave me, then my wife. She prefers being a granny,’ he said. ‘You know our daughter has a wee lassie herself?’

‘Aye, ye told me that.’

‘Nasreen can’t stay away. She’s always going to Glasgow to be a babysitter. She goes for two days and stays for a week. She says this is so our daughter can go to work. She’s back part-time, you know. She’s a biochemist.’

‘Aye, I ken,’ Don said. Saleem was extremely proud of his daughter and her achievements – almost more so than he was of his son, who was an accountant.

‘But actually, I know this is not the real reason why Nasreen goes,’ Saleem said. ‘The real reason is, she’s tired of being a bloody shopkeeper. So she goes babysitting instead.’

‘And you’re left here.’

‘That’s right. Abandoned. The last of the Khan bloody shopkeepers. Somebody has to do it, though.’

Don couldn’t think of a time when he’d heard Saleem say ‘shopkeeper’ without sticking ‘bloody’ in front of it.

‘Ach, weel,’ he said, ‘I’d better get up the road.’

‘Right then, Don,’ Saleem said. ‘You know what?’ he added.

‘What?’

‘If Nasreen isn’t here, I’ll close the bloody shop. I would like to pay my respects to you, to your wife. Liz. I liked her very much.’

‘Me tae,’ Don said, and laughed, and Saleem smiled. ‘We had oor ups and doons, but we came through them maistly. We were fine at the end.’

‘That is important,’ Saleem said. ‘After someone has gone, you cannot say sorry.’

‘We said sorry,’ Don said.

§

On a clear, cold January morning David met Lucy, for the first time in over a year. They’d had very little contact since he was first elected. This was hardly surprising: she had been in Glasgow for most of those years, and she’d also made it clear that his parliamentary career had pretty much wiped out any residual sisterly affection she might harbour for him. But she still accepted cash donations from him. In fact, she took cheques these days, which meant she’d compromised with capitalism enough to open a bank account.

He’d lost track of which movement, party or pressure group she was in. Frankly, he didn’t care any more, and when she got in touch, in a note sent to his parliamentary office saying she required an urgent meeting about something important, he was irritated. Typical Lucy. It would doubtless turn out to be supremely unimportant. One thing he detested about the left in general was its self-righteous arrogance. The farther left, the more bloody arrogant. It was a fact of life, he had come to recognise, that people who went on and on about humanity and democracy and rights for all and how putridly evil and nasty the establishment was, tended to be the most vicious, dictatorial, backbiting, cynical, self-seeking,
prejudiced, petty bastards around; whereas your average old-school Tory – the kind of person supposedly intent on grinding the faces of the poor – was generally polite, generous, warm-hearted, affable and kind. Of course, the lefties would say that your average old-school Tory was well-heeled enough to be able to afford the luxuries of affability and kindness, so was still scum. You couldn’t win.

He wasn’t, therefore, in the best of moods when he met Lucy, for old times’ sake, in the café off the Portobello Road. Only it wasn’t the same café, it had been replaced by a cheerful Mediterranean-coloured tapas-coffee-wine bar, which lightened David’s heart a little, especially when he saw how much Lucy hated it. She kept sniffing and looking around nervously as if she were transgressing some rule of comradely misery just by being there. She was wearing a long black woollen coat, not cheap by the look of it, and a black beret pushed back on her head. He noticed grey flecks in her hair, deep tracks between her eyebrows. For the first time he was struck by how much she resembled their mother.

It was half past ten. They were almost the only customers. She didn’t know what she wanted to eat or drink, so he ordered himself a cappuccino and pecan pastry, and she said, ‘Oh, I’ll just have the same, then.’

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘All right, I suppose.’

There was a silence. He thought, is she refusing to ask how
I
am or does it just not occur to her?

He tried again. ‘So, where are you these days?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s a simple enough question, isn’t it? Where are you? Physically, not ideologically. Glasgow? Here? Somewhere else?’

‘Here,’ she said. ‘And Edinburgh sometimes.’

‘Really?’ He was quite often in Edinburgh. He’d rather it was a Lucy-free zone.

‘I’ve got a friend there I can crash with. I think I may move in with her.’

‘Oh. So you’ve left Glasgow?’

‘Glasgow’s finished. You shits have destroyed it.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘There’s to be a garden festival there
this year. That’s millions of pounds’ worth of public and private investment. Then it’ll be European City of Culture in 1990. Glasgow’s being reborn.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said. ‘Flower beds instead of shipyards? Fucking opera? City of unemployment and poverty more like.’

‘You’re not a philistine, Lucy,’ he said, flashing her a patronising smile because he felt like winding her up, ‘however much you try to be one. The only thing that’ll destroy Glasgow will be if it tries to live in the past. Anyway, if that’s how you feel, shouldn’t you be showing some solidarity? How come you’ve left the sinking ship? If it is sinking, which I don’t accept.’

‘I’m not even going to debate it with you, asshole,’ she said. He noted the Americanism, in amongst her unconvincing effort to sound working class, and was tempted to mock her for it, but did not. He thought, so maybe I’m screwed up, and probably Freddy is in some way I don’t know about, but surely neither of us are even a tenth as screwed up as Lucy.

She’d eaten half of her pastry and pushed the plate with the other half away, a kind of feeble protest. She seemed very deflated and in the past this would have aroused his sympathy, but now he wondered, without much hope or patience, if she could finally be coming to her senses.

‘So what do you want to talk about?’

She threw him an accusatory glance. ‘
I
don’t know.’

‘For God’s sake, Lucy. You said you had something important to discuss. You wrote me a letter to that effect.’

‘Okay, okay. But I’m your sister too, aren’t I? Can’t I just want to see you?’

‘Yes, but you never do. Just want to
see
me. You only get in touch when you want something. What is it this time? Money, I presume.’

‘I think I’m due a bit, don’t you?’

‘What’s it for? I’m not giving to any more lousy causes.’

‘You don’t have to. It’s for me. I’ve decided to buy somewhere to live.’

‘I thought you said you were moving in with a friend in Edinburgh?’

‘I said I’m thinking about it. I’ve got to have a roof over my head,
haven’t I? But if I’m going to buy a place I need a deposit, and then enough to pay the mortgage.’

This was amazing. She really seemed serious.

‘That’s quite a change,’ he said. ‘I thought you were against private property.’

‘Are you going to chuck everything back in my face today, is that it?’

‘No, Lucy. I’m pleased, very pleased. How much do you want?’

She rolled her head, looked at the ceiling, then back at him. ‘A hundred thousand.’

‘What?’

‘A hundred thousand pounds.’

‘You’re kidding.’

But she wasn’t, any more than he had been about Glasgow’s renaissance. She said, ‘It’s not as if you don’t have it. You and Freddy cleaned up between you when the dinosaurs died. Don’t think I don’t know how much you sold Ochiltree House for. And there was our grandmother’s money before that. I’ve never seen a penny of any of it. I mean, actually, if you divide it by the number of years since I left home I’m hardly asking for anything. Five thousand a year or something. I just want it in a lump sum, that’s all.’

‘You walked out. You wanted nothing to do with our parents. You never spoke to either of them again. I’ve been giving you money for nearly twenty years – not much, I know, especially to begin with, but not chicken feed either, if you add it all up. Which I don’t do, by the way. I don’t keep a tally. And now you want me to write you a cheque for a hundred thousand quid just because you’ve woken up to the fact that the world isn’t ever going to be a communist veggy-paradise or whatever the hell it is you believe in these days. Well, sorry, Lucy, I may be a mug but I’m not that bloody stupid.’