The Matrix (2 page)

Like my father, I continued my education at Aberdeen University. I studied sociology and politics. Mine was a purely academic interest: I never wanted to be a social worker or a politician. What drove me was curiosity, a strong urge to know how society worked, to uncover what lay beneath the surface appearance of human life.

By my fourth year, I had developed a particular interest in the sociology of religion. Whenever I thought about home, about the only society I knew at first hand, I found myself coming back again and again to that unbreakable knot of religion that tied it all together. I read the classic texts – Durkheim, Weber, Tawney, and the rest – and moved on via Berger and Luckmann to Wilson and the study of sectarianism. And then I found that sects and churches were no longer the fashionable thing, that the attention of scholars had shifted to that great, amorphous mass of cults and philosophies brought together under the term, New Religious Movements.

All this led quite naturally to my PhD, on which I spent another four years, this time in Glasgow. My subject was the social location of converts to the Unification Church (the Moonies) in Scotland. I stayed on in Glasgow for a couple of years as a junior lecturer, on temporary contracts. My salary was a pittance, the workload heavy, the students unrewarding for the most part. But I stayed on, mainly because of Catriona.

We met in my second year in Glasgow, a chance meeting at a party in a friend’s flat. Quick glances, a sense of recognition, mutual embarrassment, and a feeling in the pit of the stomach, a knowing: the irrational in its purest, dizziest sense. I remember the pang of disappointment when she left that night: we had exchanged barely ten words. I learned her name and noticed that she had a Glaswegian accent, that was all. But her face and voice were fixed in my mind, for a time it seemed they
were
my mind, all it consisted of, all it would ever be. I knew then, that night, within minutes of seeing her, we both knew, that nothing would ever be the same again, that all had changed in a matter of moments. I had never fallen in love before, it was as though I had stepped, breathless, into a world I did not recognize.

My friend knew that her full name was Catriona Stuart and that she lived in Hamilton. He did not know her well, she was a friend of a friend, but he told me what he could: that she played or sang in a rock band, that she had a degree in psychology, that she had been a model for a famous artist with whom she had lived for a time, and that she now lived with a boyfriend called Mark or Michael.

Almost none of these things turned out to be true. Catriona did indeed live in Hamilton, and she was a musician; but she did not play in a rock band, she was a violinist with a chamber music consort. She had posed several times for Kenneth Logan, a Glaswegian artist with a growing international reputation, and one of his paintings of her could be seen in the Burrell. She took me to see it soon after we started going out together. I think it was her way of seducing me. We had scarcely slept together then, and I was embarrassed by the public display of her nakedness, the vividness of her flesh. I was also astonished by the depth of Logan’s perception, his understanding of Catriona, the obvious pleasure he had taken in her body.

She told me as we were leaving that she and Logan had never slept together. I sensed that that was not the whole truth, that they had had a complex relationship. But for the time being it satisfied me to know it. It was one less commitment in her past. As for the rest: her degree had been in philosophy and music, and her boyfriend Melvin had walked out on her almost a year before.

I learned all this later, this and much more. The second time we met was not by chance. Jamie, my friend, arranged it, though I did not know it then. At the time, it seemed like destiny to both of us; and perhaps that is what it was, perhaps Jamie was no more than a willing tool.

In the years since then I have often asked myself: what if I had gone somewhere else that night? What if Catriona had been ill? What if . . .? But there comes a point when all the ‘what ifs’ dry up and fall away. They really do not matter. We would still have met, the next day, the next week, the next year – that is the important thing, that we would have met – somehow.

We went to the theatre, Jamie, his girlfriend, Catriona and myself. Everyone tried to pretend that it was just a casual arrangement: I was Jamie’s friend, Catriona knew his girlfriend well, it was natural that we might end up meeting again. But we all knew the truth, and throughout the evening there was a faint air of embarrassment.

I walked Catriona home. It is among my sharpest memories, the shape of her head in the darkness, the motion of her body beside mine, the faint aroma of an unfamiliar perfume, an overpowering sense of expectancy. I remember nothing of what we talked about. All that happened, happened in silence, at a level deeper than words. A movement, a glance, my hand brushing hers, her faint but unmistakable response. And later that night, much later, all movement ceasing.

We lived together for four years, Catriona and I. I was happier than most men ever are, and I believe she was happy as well. Looking back, I know I was often careless with our time together, valued it for less than it was worth. I know better now, I treasure every moment in my memory.

There is no need for detail, our lives were perfectly ordinary. All you need to know can be summed up in a single sentence: Catriona died at the age of twenty-six, died of cancer, died at three in the morning while I was asleep.

There are moments, even now, when I torment myself with the question: was he working even then to bring me to him? And not just me, but Catriona too?

There was nothing left for me in Glasgow, no street that did not bear Catriona’s mark, no landmark that did not remind me of her. I did my best with my grief. It never left me, but in time I came to live with it, as with a wound or an amputated limb. Now, of course, it has been replaced by something else – something more like fear.

I returned home for several months. There are few places better than Lewis for being alone. It was the summer of 1991, and I passed my thirtieth birthday in July. Most days I would drive to west Uig, to Mangurstadh beach. In winter, that is one of the wildest places on earth. There is nothing beyond it but the open reaches of the north Atlantic. Seals come to the rocks, and further out the flukes of whales tilt above the water. That summer, I sat alone on the beach, trying to empty my mind of thoughts I could not bear. If anyone had seen me, they might have thought me another rock thrown down on the sand.

On Sundays, I went with my mother to church, more for her comfort than my own. There was no God waiting for me there, and the pastor’s promises of life eternal rang falsely in my ears. But it gave me a certain peace. I could almost pretend to be a child again, to have my life ahead of me, and Catriona still to come.

My father saw a research post in sociology advertised in
The Times Educational Supplement.
I put it away at first, thinking it too early to return to my old life. But I could not go back to Glasgow, and I knew I could not face the long winter on Lewis. I applied for the job and was interviewed that August. In September, I arrived in Edinburgh with a small suitcase and a bag of books.

I remember that, for a moment, as I stepped from the plane, I thought there was someone waiting for me, just out of sight. It was a fanciful notion. I knew no one in the city, and I had no desire for company.

Finding accommodation from a distance had proved difficult, and I spent my first two weeks in Edinburgh with a friend of the family, Dr Ramsey McLean. He knew all about Catriona and the circumstances of her death, and I talked with him at some length about how hard I found it to cope with my loss. An Aberdonian, red-faced and jovial, he had known my father at university and spent frequent summer vacations on Lewis. I had last seen him there two years earlier.

He helped me find my feet in the city, introducing me to friends in the university, where he worked in the health centre, and providing me with bearings. Towards the end of the first fortnight, he told me that he had found an excellent flat for me. I moved in two days later.

The house in which he had found rooms stood towards the bottom end of the Royal Mile, in Bakehouse Close. Known as Deacon Laing’s Land, it was a six-storey tenement built in 1658 by a wealthy landowner turned Covenanter who, in the Duke of Rothes’s phrase, ‘glorified God in the Grassmarket’ when he was hanged there for his beliefs. It had known vicissitudes, but when I came to live there showed no signs of the slum from which it had been transformed not long before. I had a small flat on the top floor, a series of oddly shaped, low-ceilinged rooms full of wainscoting and rambling plaster decoration, tastefully furnished.

In the meantime, I had been settling in at work. My head of department was James Fergusson, the newly appointed Professor of Social Anthropology. You may have read his work on urban renewal in the 1960s. He has served on more than one government commission and is believed to have ambitions, I could not tell you precisely of what sort.

We met the day after my arrival at his office in Buccleuch Place. Before long, he made it clear to me that my appointment had been made against his wishes. Some of the theologians at New College had expressed a wish for some hard information about the city’s reputedly numerous occult and magical groups.

There was a fear of Satanism in the air, a mood of unease. Those of a fundamentalist persuasion within the churches argued that devil worship was alive and flourishing, that Satanic abuse was on the increase. The more responsible thought this hyperbole, but found it hard either to deny reports of actual occult practices or to distinguish readily between simple New Age woolliness and more disturbing forays into demonism or black magic.

‘Dr Macleod,’ Fergusson began almost as soon as I had stepped through his door, ‘I have to tell you that I have the most severe reservations about your presence here. I run a department founded on rigour. You will find this an empirical establishment, not a haven for half-baked beliefs and mumbo jumbo.’

I tried to reassure him. It was not easy, he was not an easy man to reach.

‘I agree with you entirely,’ I said, ‘as far as the empirical approach is concerned. I’m not interested in these beliefs myself, I’m not a believer in any sense. But I do think it makes sense to study the irrational, to understand what social factors create groups like these. Don’t you think that’s worthwhile?’

‘That’s not what the men in black suits at New College are looking for. Or their chums in the Kirk. They want evidence of devil worship. Witchcraft. Demonic possession.’

‘I can’t give them that, not if what they mean is evidence that any of those things is real. They already believe in a devil, in powers of darkness – they hardly need me to prove it to them. I intend to show them something different, that these occult activities involve nothing more than sad or inadequate people whose lives need a little drama.’

‘I’ve no time for psychology either.’

‘You won’t get any. My investigations will be purely sociological. Hard facts about social class, education, actual and relative deprivation . . .’

Fergusson stood. He was a tall man, bearded, forbidding. I could see I had not reassured him.

‘You miss the point, Dr Macleod. I don’t give a damn how hard-headed you are, how empirical your research will be. Your work here could give this department a bad name. Since I seem to have no choice in the matter, I’m forced to accommodate you. But I want some assurances. There are to be no public lectures on your findings. No lectures within the university without my express permission. No interviews with the press, local or national. In fact, no contact with any member of the press. I want you to keep a very low profile. Do you understand? I want to see as little of you round here as possible.’

I agreed to his demands and turned to go.

‘Dr Macleod,’ he called out, catching me at the door. I looked back. ‘I understand you have had a personal tragedy.’

I nodded.

‘May I take it that this . . . loss will not interfere with your work?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Of course you do. I want you to understand that, if you can’t handle this job, you’ll have no sympathy from me. They have doctors at the health centre to deal with personal problems. Our relationship is to remain strictly professional, purely academic.’ He paused. ‘And don’t let me hear that you’ve been trawling the mediums in search of fond messages from your late beloved. I won’t have that, I won’t stand for it.’

I wanted very much to hit him, but I did not. Instead I closed the door, quite hard, and went out, down the stairs, into the cold street. Winter had begun, but I barely noticed it. I walked without a coat or a hat, not knowing where I was going or why. I was not angry with Professor Fergusson, what I felt was something beyond anger, much gentler, much more dangerous. In the end I came to myself and found a bus to take me back to town. I counted the stairs to my flat: there were one-hundred-and-sixty-eight. Hard stone steps worn away in places by generations of feet, from landing to weary landing.

I spent the next few days tidying my books and papers, or going for walks in order to explore the city – the Old Town first, then the straighter streets of the New Town with its elegant Georgian doorways and wrought-iron railings. I felt separate from everything, remote, dislocated, more like a tourist than a new resident. Nothing beautiful moved me, there was nothing harmonious in the long vistas or the tall sandstone façades.

I started work the following week, reading from early morning on into the evening at the National Library on George IV Bridge. So began a tedious drift into winter, each day marked out by a succession of books and pamphlets of mind-numbing banality. I wanted to familiarize myself with a broad range of New Age and occult beliefs, in order to narrow down my field of enquiry. I read until my eyes ached about the Great Pyramid, UFOs, ley lines, reincarnation, astrology, ancient mysteries of every kind, the Gnostic gospels, enneagrams, tarot, Tantric yoga, crystal healing – a maze of theories that seemed to cover every imaginable human obsession, every hope and fear.