The Interpretations

  His desk was comparatively clear of clutter because all the press-cuttings, letters, official and unofficial documents, all the items of printed material that he felt it was absolutely essential to retain, all these were stacked in boxes and files on the floor. Every time he added to these piles he renewed the promise he had made several years before that one day he would begin the task of classifying and filing everything. In fact he had gone as far as getting a filing cabinet. Unfortunately this cabinet, a large grey and forbidding four-drawer item which was an aged reject from the Herald offices, merely added to the general clutter as, so far, nothing at all had been filed away inside it. Weet disliked grey and was determined to paint the cabinet another colour – probably red – before he began using it for its prime purpose. It had crossed his mind that very likely the cabinet could be painted at any point in its work/life cycle, whether empty, half-empty or full. But he didn’t want to take the risk. What this risk was, he couldn’t rightly say, other than the fact that it was there. So, at the moment there was only one item in the filing cabinet – a pot of red paint in the bottom drawer. He promised he would buy a paintbrush. Soon.

  Weet employed someone to come in once a week to do the cleaning and ironing. He liked to wear ironed shirts and pressed trousers but only if he didn’t have to do the ironing and pressing himself. He liked good food as long as he didn’t have to cook it. There were bits of life that he wasn’t really interested in living.

  Or reliving. There were no photographs on mantelshelf or desk of his wife who had left him three years before. He still had photos of her because he couldn’t quite bring himself to tear them up. But he certainly couldn’t display them. He had put them inside a folder which he had put inside a suitcase which sat on the floor in the spare room next to a small pile of back copies of the North Star, a paper he had worked for briefly before joining the Herald. He tried to convince himself that he no longer knew where these photographs were but he knew all right. He knew exactly where they were. He even knew which photo was on the first page of the first album.

  Weet’s wife had run away with one of the teachers from Dalmore High School. They had met at a school concert which was exactly how she had met Weet eight years before. Within a year her school teacher had dumped her for someone younger. Weet had found out about this and had gone to Edinburgh to meet her and ask her to come back. But she’d said no. Weet had felt sorry for her. She had realised this and that was at least part of the reason she’d said no. She wanted him to be angry but he wasn’t. She wanted him to shout but he couldn’t. At one point she had shouted at him, ‘Why don’t you hit me! Go on! Hit me!’

  Weet returned to Dalmore.

  He sold the house he had shared with his wife and he moved into the flat above the Army Surplus Store.

  There were no children.

  On the desk in the room he called his office there was a small manual typewriter, a portable, that he’d had for fifteen years. At the Herald he had an electric typewriter, a golfball, and he was told that soon this would be overtaken by something called word processing. Maxwell Golloval, the Herald’s Science Correspondent – who also covered Highland Affairs, Shinty and Obituaries – had told him that the world was going to change. The world was going to be turned upside down.

  This seemed unlikely.

  Weet loved his portable typewriter and, even though he didn’t use it very often – he much preferred to work at the Herald – he had promised himself that one day, after he had sorted out all his files, he would begin typing out his first novel on it. He had no idea what this novel would be about, or even why he wanted to write one but it seemed to be the thing that journalists aspired to. You write copy by day; you write literature by night. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. In fact, he knew it would be very difficult indeed, much more difficult, for example, than writing that piece on Gilfedder which, earlier that afternoon, had proved to be impossible. So there was only one thing to do. He decided that he would begin writing this novel today. Right now.

  He took a sheet of paper and placed it at the back of the roller. He turned the knob on the side to feed the paper in. The rich serrated sound was something that his ears and fingers enjoyed. He raised the bail arm at the front and eased the paper through to lie tight against the hard curve of the roller. The paper was now correctly aligned and needed no further adjustment. He was ready to begin.

  After staring at this blank sheet of paper for five minutes, Weet began to think that the writing of fiction was maybe just as difficult as the writing of fact – or at least what the Dalmore Herald chose to define as fact. He wasn’t sure how this could be. After all, you just had to make it up. Just make it up, he said to himself. Christ, it can’t be any more difficult, surely, than, say . . .

  writing that article about Gilfedder.

  Ah.

  He stood up. He left the typewriter there on his desk complete with its blank sheet of paper that was both tempting and damning. He walked through to his sitting room whose main window gave onto the High Street.

  He liked to stand at the window, particularly on Wednesday afternoons when he left the Herald early, and watch the people below as they entered and exited the street. Opposite he could see Bees the Baker, the Newsagent Kilter and Read, and Fleming the Greengrocer who, on sunny summer days, displayed his goods on trestle tables on the pavement so that people could do their shopping without leaving the street.

  In winter, when it started to get dark shortly after three in the afternoon, Weet would stand at the window in the gloaming with the sitting room lights switched off and watch the movements below him. A sudden squall of fitful rain and gusty wind from the Grampians to the West would rid the street of people in a matter of a few seconds. He could hear, almost directly below him, the bell on the door of the Army Surplus Store as it rang out the arrival of refugees from the rain. The Army Surplus Store, with its wide aisles and lots of interesting items to inspect, was favoured for this purpose particularly by schoolboys on their way home from Dalmore High School. Farmers and DIY enthusiasts headed for Bethune’s the Ironmonger, another large store with room to get lost in. And then, as the rain eased, they would emerge from their preferred businesses in their glistening plastic macs, dampened waxed jackets or sodden school blazers and enter the street once more.

  Was there any pattern to these movements, other than escape from the rain? Ogilvie, for example, always went into Bethune’s, whether it was raining or not. Weet had seen him several times on Wednesday afternoons, walking along the High Street with Anderson. They usually parted by Kilter and Read, Ogilvie entering the newsagents and emerging a minute or so later with a newspaper under his arm. Anderson might go into Bees – they had a small teashop at the back – but once, when it started to rain heavily, he went on down the street to Tulloch’s Butcher’s Shop. It was well-known that Tulloch was having a hard time keeping his business going and was keen to sell. He seemed unable to concentrate on his business following the death of his wife. Was Anderson interested? He had two businesses on the High Street already; maybe he wanted a third.

  As for Ogilvie, it had taken Weet several weeks to see any kind of pattern. He noticed that Ogilvie always went into Bethune’s on Wednesday afternoons and stayed there for at least three quarters of an hour. From his own random visits to Bethune’s Weet found out that the current owner, Fraser Wallace, was never there on Wednesdays because he always drove down to Perth for meetings at the Bethune business headquarters. While he was away, the shop was managed by his wife, Marjorie. Weet remembered that Ogilvie and Marjorie Duguid, as she was then, were a couple of years ahead of him in Dalmore High School. They had been sweethearts then. So . . .

  Clearly Ogilvie was having an affair with his old girlfriend.

  Of course Fraser Wallace had been in the same year as well. All of them had been good friends, and probably still were. And maybe, at the request of his good friend Fraser Wallace, Ogilvie would go into Bethune’s on Wednesdays just to make sure that ever
ything was OK. Wednesday was market day and as Ogilvie had one of the biggest farms in the district he was nearly always in Dalmore on Wednesdays to buy and sell stock.

  So possibly it was all quite innocent.

  Or perhaps the second interpretation, by chance, provided the perfect smokescreen for the first.

  Weet went back to his typewriter. Why was it so difficult? All he had to do was make something up. But it seemed more difficult than writing down the truth, or at least the Herald’s version of the truth.

  Weet decided that he would not begin his novel until he had written his piece on Gilfedder. He also decided that he could not begin his piece on Gilfedder until after he’d had a few drinks. He set out for the Din.

  The new sign, screwed into the wall at the side of the main door to the bar said:

  Please, no muddy

  boots or shoes

  Weet looked down. Although it had stopped raining he had splashed though several puddles on his way to the pub. His shoes were certainly damp. But muddy? He inspected them carefully. Was that a fleck of mud on his left toecap? He was pretty sure it was. Yes, quite small but definitely a speck of mud. He knelt down, untied his laces, slipped off his shoes and socks and placed them to one side of the door. Then he went into the Din.

  Bohespic was alone behind the bar. ‘Usual, Weet?’ he asked.

  ‘Usual,’ Weet said. ‘Two usuals. A big usual and a wee usual.’

  ‘Fine.’

  So here he was now, at half past six, standing barefoot at the bar, having drunk four beers, each with a whisky chaser, in his first twenty minutes. During this time his conversation with Bohespic was intermittent and desultory. Finally Weet ventured, ‘Bit quiet tonight, eh?’

  Bohespic shook his head. ‘You’re the only one in.’

  ‘Am I? Am I really?’ Weet turned and looked round the pub. No one was sitting in the little nooks and corners; no one was playing billiards. The beer-mats lay on the pine tables in the perfect formation created by Bohespic an hour earlier. There was no doubt: Weet was the Din’s only customer.

  ‘D’you think it might be something to do with my new sign?’ Bohespic suggested.

  ‘New sign?’

  ‘About muddy boots.’

  ‘Oh that. Naw, naw.’ Weet shook his head. ‘Why would anyone object to that?’

  ‘Well, exactly. I mean, I just don’t want the place turning into a midden.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘I mean . . . those guys working on the park for that new memorial . . . they just trail in here with half the county sticking to them.’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘New carpet,’ Bohespic said, pointing to the floor. ‘It’s got to be kept clean.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Not unreasonable, is it?’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Please.’

  Bohespic pulled another pint and drew another whisky from the optic.

  ‘And anyway,’ Weet said as he poured his whisky into his beer, ‘anyone who doesn’t like it can just leave their shoes outside.’

  ‘Oh, come on, I wouldn’t go that far.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well,’ Weet said, ‘that’s what I did.’

  Bohespic looked at him in astonishment. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Weet leaned across the bar. ‘It’s a serious matter, cleanliness,’ he said. ‘Would I joke about it?’ Then he perched on a bar stool and swung his right leg up, placing his bare foot on the edge of the bar. ‘There you go.’

  ‘Oh Christ Almighty.’

  ‘Rules are rules,’ Weet said. ‘And that’s a damn good rule.’ He moved his foot down to the floor again and wriggled his cold toes.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Weet, come on, put your shoes on.’ Bohespic’s tone was more despairing than angry.

  Weet shook his head. ‘Couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Oh fucking hell,’ Bohespic said, and now there was a transformation in his tone, from incredulity to anger. He pulled open a drawer behind the bar and scrabbled around inside it until he found a screwdriver. ‘Come on,’ he said to Weet as he made his way to the door. ‘Come on over here.’ This was more of an order than a request. ‘Let’s fucking sort this out now.’

  Weet finished his pint of beer and whisky chaser and followed.

  By now it was raining heavily again. The two men stood outside and regarded the new sign for a few moments. Bohespic, who was not wearing a jacket, was quickly soaked to the skin. Weet, still barefoot, leaned against the wall for support. Then Bohespic slipped the screwdriver down the back of the new sign and started to tug it away from the wall. The screws that held it began to give way but then the sign itself, which was made of wood, split in two vertically, along the grain. Bohespic took hold of each half in turn and wrenched it from the wall.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘There. Are you happy now?’

  Weet was sitting on the pavement, his jacket and the seat of his trousers absorbing water. His hair, slick and straight, fitted his skull like a thin, shiny helmet.

  ‘Happy?’ Weet said. ‘Perfectly happy.’ Then, ‘Never anything but.’

  ‘Come on, get up,’ Bohespic said. He grabbed Weet by the elbows and hauled him to his feet. ‘And put your fucking shoes on.’

  Weet’s shoes were filling with water. ‘Too wet,’ he said. ‘Too wet.’

  ‘Christ, put them on anyway.’

  ‘Pick’em up tomorrow,’ Weet said. He took a couple of steps across the pavement, his bare feet slapping down on the wet slabs.

  Bohespic picked up the two halves of his broken sign. ‘You’re a good man, Weet,’ he said. ‘You’re a good man, you bastard.’

  ‘I’m drunk,’ Weet said. ‘And I’m going home. I live over there, you know.’ He pointed.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Got to go,’ Weet continued. ‘Work. Deadlines. Busy, busy, busy.’

  ‘Take your shoes with you, at least,’ Bohespic said. ‘If you’re not going to put them on.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Weet said. ‘I’ll pick them up tomorrow.’ He turned and splashed his way unevenly down the street.

  ‘Jesus,’ Bohespic said as he watched Weet go. And then he added, more quietly, ‘Oh Jesus.’

  By the time he reached the front door of his flat Weet could no longer feel his toes. Within four minutes he was out on the street again. He was still barefoot but now he was wearing a coat on top of his already soaked jacket. And he was carrying something that looked like a briefcase. In fact it was his portable typewriter locked away, complete with its blank sheet of paper, inside its mushroom coloured moulded plastic case.

  A haze of bounced water a foot deep lay like a thick transparent blanket on the street surface as Weet padded his way into it, heading south. A quarter of an hour later he was standing in the middle of the new Duie Bridge. The rain had stopped. But Weet was soaked through and cold. His left foot was bleeding and he was shivering.

  He tried to sling the typewriter over the side, to pitch it into the river-becoming-sea as the tide rose, but his first attempt failed because he didn’t let go in time. He spun round too far and the typewriter clattered into the chain-link fence that separated the pedestrians from the cars. The typewriter and its owner fell in a heap onto the wet walkway.

  The little portable machine he had once been so proud of was now in bits. The handle had broken off and the case itself had released the typewriter which now had a dented corner and an angry cluster of hammers struggling to be the first to strike the page. Weet picked up the broken case and flung it into the firth. Then he got the typewriter itself onto the handrail and tipped it over the side. It struck the outer base of the walkway and cart-wheeled out and down towards the water below. He threw the other bits after it.

  Mike Delvan, out for his early evening run, met Weet a few minutes later. By this time Weet was limping homewards. He was still wet an
d shivering but his mood was firm and confident. ‘Shoes?’ he said to his concerned friend. ‘Shoes?’ He shook his head. ‘Self-knowledge is a wonderful thing,’ he said quietly, only just able to control his chattering jaw, ‘and you can only reach it barefoot.’

  14

  He liked the cars. He would have to admit this: he really did like the cars. But he did not covet. To covet was a sin so he did not covet. But he liked the cars all the same, even though he didn’t own one himself.

  Brotherton’s old rusted heap was an exception, a ten-year-old Vauxhall and never cleaned, or perhaps only once, two years ago, to erase the message PLEASE CLEAN ME traced by a child-like finger in the mud on the boot. Nor did he like Henderson’s Ford. Too small, too much like a little willing pony, lacking style. But Airds’ Jaguar was a fine car. Racing green and well polished. Of course he had the money to hire someone to clean and polish it for him. But even so. Beautiful lines. Certainly a fine car.

  Airds would not be turning up today. Airds with his much younger wife and his polished Jaguar. Airds attended the funerals only of pillars of the community because it was important to be seen only in the company of certain special people, even dead ones. He would be a candidate at the next council elections and might there not be someone in the polling booth, pencil raised, bewildered by the choice before him who might catch sight of that name, Airds, conveniently at the top of the list – even the alphabet conspired in his favour – and say Oh, well, Airds is a good enough man. Didn’t I see him at old Ballantyne’s funeral thon time?

  But Airds would not be here today. Would anyone turn up, other than Gilfedder’s family?

  He turned from his stance by the side of the path but before going to the vestry he stepped up onto the lawn and walked out until he had reached the middle of it. It was dry now with no chance of his feet getting wet, though the sky was grey in the west and there was rain to come.