The Interpretations

  ‘The third in, what, a month?’

  ‘Well, why not? And it was him who suggested I could disappear during the bridge race.’

  ‘That was his idea?’

  ‘Yes. Quite imaginative, I thought.’

  ‘And you went along with it? I mean, all of it?’

  ‘Oh yes. It was an easy decision to take.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It was . . . It’s difficult to explain, really. It was difficult back then and it’s even more difficult now. The thing is that if . . . if you remember the, well, the so-called official reason for why I wanted to kill myself . . .’

  ‘Gilfedder. Donnie, that is.’

  ‘Yes. McCall decided I was so racked with guilt about what had happened to him that I killed myself. That was to be the explanation, anyway.’

  ‘I remember that.’

  ‘Well, the problem was . . . ah.’

  He halted as the waitress arrived and placed on the table two plates, each with a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.

  Jim looked at his watch. ‘Twelve oh six,’ he said. ‘I think you’re allowed to begin.’

  Because the table was so small, Jim picked up the postcard and the photo so that the waitress could set down the two glasses of apple juice. ‘Thank you,’ he said to her. He was about to put the photo and the postcard in his own pocket but then he offered them to Tom who had already picked up the passport. ‘Do you want these?’ he asked.

  Tom shook his head. ‘Thanks. I’ll get by without them, I think.’

  ‘Not even the photo of the gravestone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As you like.’ He slipped both items into his top pocket.

  Tom picked up his apple juice and drank it down in one. ‘Good stuff,’ he said as he placed the empty glass on the table.

  ‘Have another one.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Each sandwich had been split in two. Tom picked up half of his and ate it quickly and greedily as if he hadn’t eaten anything for a long time. Then he took the other half, wrapped it up in a paper serviette and placed it carefully on the edge of the table.

  Eating more slowly, Jim said, between his third and fourth mouthfuls of sandwich, ‘You were saying . . . about wanting to disappear. You really did feel guilty about Donnie, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘But, for Christ’s sake, Tom, you didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Oh, I did. As good as.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Jim said, speaking quickly and more loudly, leaning forward. He put down his sandwich. ‘Don’t give me that, please. The man was an animal, a mental case. D’you know how many people he put in hospital? Christ, he hit you, remember? Not the other way round. Eh?’ Jim looked Tom in the face. ‘Eh?’ he repeated. ‘Come on.’

  A long silence followed this. Ten or fifteen seconds. Then suddenly Tom was on his feet. He grabbed the wrapped half sandwich from the table, pushed it into his jacket pocket. Then he turned and stalked off in the direction of Old Compton Street. He didn’t say a word.

  Jim got up quickly, bumping the table as he did so. Tom’s empty glass tipped over. He grabbed it before it had a chance to roll off the table edge. Then he shouted: ‘Tom! Hold on!’ as he replaced the glass. ‘Wait a minute! Hold on!’ He ran into the road.

  It took only a few seconds for him to catch up. He stood in front of Tom and placed his hands on Tom’s shoulders. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . .’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ Tom said. ‘It’s been hard. Very hard . . .’

  ‘I realise that . . .’

  ‘I’ve thought about this every day – every single day – for the past eighteen years,’ Tom went on, his expression of indignation beginning to subside to one of hurt disappointment. ‘So please, please don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t think.’

  ‘I didn’t . . . Really, no, believe me,’ Jim said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Of course I don’t know . . . I mean, I can’t possibly know how you feel about all this. It’s just that I think maybe you’re being a bit hard on yourself, that’s all.’

  Tom said, ‘I’m not.’

  Jim shrugged. ‘Well . . .’ Then he dropped his hands from Tom’s shoulders. ‘But come back, please. This is no way for us to . . . to . . . it shouldn’t end like this, you know, after all this time.’ He stopped, found that he was breathing heavily. Then he said, ‘Come and sit down, eh? Just for a few minutes more.’

  Tom considered this for a moment or two and then, without saying anything, he turned and walked back to the café.

  They both sat down again. Tom, his face expressionless, continued as if nothing had happened, ‘I’d never met anyone like Donnie before. You see, I was supposed to be the one with reason and intellect and calmness and understanding. I was the one with . . . with maybe a bit of faith left, too. But all these good qualities were totally worthless when it came to dealing with this man. I was powerless. I believed that if you showed someone like Donnie Gilfedder that you just wanted to mind your own business, he’d leave you alone. But it wasn’t like that. And I wanted to show him that violence was wrong, that in the long run it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘And it didn’t . . .’

  ‘No, no, no. Quite the opposite. You see, I tried to convince him that I could survive without being violent. But I failed. In his world, violence was the only solution. And eventually he convinced me of that.’

  ‘But you never hit him . . .’

  ‘Oh, I did. I mean, I couldn’t fight him myself, obviously, so I used his own violence against him. When he hit me, out on the loading bay, he was really hitting himself. He didn’t know that but I did. That’s why I did it. I set him up. I knew that would be the end of him at WattWays, for sure. But then I didn’t know how far it would go. And it’s the old story, once you set violence in motion, you lose control. And so I destroyed him. And I destroyed myself, too. There you are.’

  After a few seconds, Jim said, ‘Well, I can’t agree. The only person responsible for Donnie’s death was Donnie himself.’

  Tom said nothing. Jim finished off his sandwich and pushed his plate a few inches across the table. He took a sip of apple juice. ‘I bet McCall knew,’ he said. ‘Your frame of mind, I mean. After all, if you were right about Peter Clinghurst, and McCall was keen to get you out of the way because you’d seen too much, then what you felt about Donnie Gilfedder was a godsend, surely. The more guilt you felt, the more likely you were to want to disappear.’

  ‘Oh, of course, yes, I realised that,’ Tom said. ‘I mean, it was obvious I was, well . . . troubled by it all. But actually it went further than that. When I was on the bridge – hiding, I mean, waiting behind the tower leg – I had a lot of time to think. Because McCall said he’d wait for a couple of hours after the race then come along in his car, help me over the fence and then we’d be on our way to Inverness.’

  ‘Isn’t that what happened?’

  ‘Not quite. It was close to five hours before he arrived. Said he’d been held up or something but I couldn’t help thinking he’d deliberately given me more time because he thought that I just might jump after all. And if I did, that would solve all his problems. Much simpler. Much simpler all round.’

  ‘But you didn’t. Well . . . obviously . . .’

  ‘No, I chose not to,’ Tom said slowly. ‘But it was close. I really was very low.’

  ‘You chose to live.’

  ‘I did. And later I began to think of it – it sounds a bit daft now, I know – I began to think of it as my Pol Pot moment.’ He smiled. ‘You know, start again from scratch. Year Zero and all that. Do you know what I mean?’

  Jim said, ‘To be frank, only up to a point. I’ve never quite felt like that myself.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you haven’t. It’s not all that pleasant.’

  ‘I’ll bet it isn’t. But you did it anyway. You started again with nothing, absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Well
, I couldn’t take anything with me, could I? No clues. McCall gave me some clothes and some money.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Quite a lot. Said he had access to some fund or other. I didn’t ask. Anyway, he gave me the money and Peter Clinghurst’s passport.’

  ‘And a pair of shoes.’

  Tom managed to smile again. ‘And a pair of shoes, yes. Lucky he was a size ten himself.’

  ‘And you went to Spain. And a few other places, too.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But what did you do?’ Jim asked. ‘What have you been doing for eighteen years?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been doing quite a lot of thinking, quite a lot of reading . . .’

  ‘But what about money? I mean, McCall’s money couldn’t have lasted all this time . . .’

  ‘No, but I don’t need much money. I kind of . . . live on the margins, so to speak. It’s amazing how you can get by if you’re careful.’

  ‘And what about Dalmore? Are you coming back?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘But it’s safe now. Archie’s dead. That’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for that reason only, no.’

  ‘So why, then?’

  ‘To be rid of it all, I suppose. To know it was all done with.’

  Jim picked up his glass and drank some more apple juice. As he put the glass down, he said, ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘I’m not unhappy.’

  ‘That’s as good as it gets, is it?’

  ‘Not just for me,’ Tom said. ‘For most people, I imagine. What about you? Are you happy?’

  Jim didn’t answer immediately.

  ‘Come on, Weet. You asked me the question and now I’m asking you.’

  ‘Nobody’s called me Weet for a long time,’ Jim said. ‘Not for a very long time. And, no, I’m not particularly happy.’

  ‘Well then,’ Tom said, ‘we’re in much the same position, aren’t we?’

  ‘Maybe we are,’ Jim conceded. ‘Maybe we are. But tell me, if there was something that would make you happier, what would that be?’

  ‘That’s easy. To be forgotten.’

  Jim thought about this for a few moments and then said, ‘To be forgotten but not to forget? I mean, you still get the Herald.’

  ‘Not any more. I cancelled it on Monday. There’s no need any more.’

  ‘I see. Well . . .’

  Tom stood up. ‘This time, I think I’d better go.’

  Still seated, Jim said, ‘Is that it, then?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Thanks for the coffees. And the sandwich.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. Really, I don’t believe it . . .’

  ‘Look,’ Tom said, but his voice was soft. ‘Don’t worry about me. No, please, I mean it. I’m fine. Really. And it’s . . . it’s great that you took all that trouble to track me down. I appreciate it. I do, honestly. But what can I say? You were looking for someone else. And I think you knew that, too. No, don’t get up. No, please, don’t get up. And don’t say anything. Just stay there. And I’ll say goodbye.’

  He pushed his chair in beneath the table, turned and headed across Frith Street towards the café opposite. Then he rounded the corner into Old Compton Street and disappeared.

  1982

  23

  Gilfedder said, ‘It’s not easy with a sore stomach.’

  ‘It’s what?’ I said.

  ‘Difficult,’ he said, ‘difficult to lift a crate when you’ve a sore stomach.’ And then he punched me hard in the solar plexus.

  I doubled over and fell to my knees. My eyes watered and I gasped like a wheezy old bellows.

  Gilfedder leaned over and spoke to me quietly, in my ear, ‘I run this place, right? And I don’t like fancy cunts like you. Right? This is a man’s job, this, so you’ve no fuckin’ chance.’ Then he straightened up and walked away.

  I managed to pull myself up and sit on a chair. I leaned forward and spread myself across the Formica-topped table, one of three in the empty staff room. I lay like this for a full minute, trying to regulate my breathing. Then I sat up. My stomach hurt like hell. I wasn’t sure I could even stand, far less lift a crate of fish. But I did stand up. I picked up my red rubber gloves from the table and stumbled towards the door. I steadied myself against the wall as I made my way slowly along the corridor, entering more deeply into the foul fish smell that led to the loading bay.

  I held myself pretty much erect as I walked across the floor to join the other men who were already starting to unload the lorry that had drawn up alongside the bay. Each wooden crate of fish was grabbed by two men, one each end, and swung down from the lorry onto a pallet made of thick slats of pine. A couple of men stood on the lorry itself and shifted the crates into position for the unloaders. The whole place was cold and everything smelled of fish.

  Morgan, the night shift leader, said, ‘Gilfedder, you work with the new man, here.’ He turned to me. ‘What’s your name again?’

  ‘Tom,’ I said.

  ‘I’m no workin’ with that,’ Gilfedder said, without looking round. He had decided to lift the crates by himself and he did so with ease, taking hold of them as if they were empty and flinging them down on the pallets. Lumps of ice from the crates scattered across the floor of the loading bay. ‘Mind and no spill any,’ Morgan said but Gilfedder gave no indication he’d heard. To me Morgan said, ‘Up on the lorry, then, and give Bob and the Mule a hand.’ I did as I was bidden.

  Of course Gilfedder was right: it was very difficult for me to lift the crates when my stomach ached so much. I started slowly, got slower still but managed to recover later on.

  The bed of the lorry and the stone floor of the loading bay were the same height so when only a couple of layers of crates remained on the lorry we were no longer dropping crates down onto the pallets, we were building the pallets up. Most of the men were now on the lorry. I found myself next to Gilfedder. ‘How’s the new cunt?’ he said to me. ‘Oh fine,’ I replied. I managed to pick up a crate by myself and I flung it up onto the rising levels of the nearest pallet. A herring slipped out and landed at my feet. ‘Mind and no spill any, new cunt,’ Gilfedder said. I picked up the herring and flung it into the nearest crate.

  When the lorry was unloaded we trooped through to the freezing room. It was as if we were still outside. The freezing room was a huge hall with a high ceiling and it was filled with cold air, the stink of fish and the loud purring of the motors that powered the freezing vats. Bob and the Mule had left their early job on the lorry and had moved the fully-laden pallets through from the loading bay using forklift trucks. The pallets were now lined up next to the freezing vats.

  Morgan said, ‘Right, let’s fill the bastards.’

  Again, we worked in pairs, emptying the crates into the vats. We had to spread the fish carefully so that they slipped down between the vertical metal plates inside the vats. These plates were about four inches apart. When each vat was full of fish they were all sprayed with water until the vats held only vertical slices four inches thick and made out of water and tightly-packed fish. Then the freezing began. Within half an hour the fish were frozen into slabs. The slabs were then pushed up from below until they stuck up above the vats and could be snapped off, stacked on pallets and driven round to the cold room for storage.

  It took fifteen minutes or so to fill all seven vats with fish and thirty minutes for the vats to freeze completely. This meant that when we had finished filling the vats we had about fifteen minutes to wait until the first vat was ready for emptying. Assuming there wasn’t another lorry to be unloaded, we could have a break. We went back through to the staff room.

  This was a small room completely without adornment. The yellow walls were bare. The pale blue tops of the Formica tables were stained with odd spots and rings of tea and coffee and spilled cigarette ash. There were fifteen chairs made of tubular metal and with plastic seats and backs. The two ceiling lights were extre
mely bright as if to convince us we were working during the day, not at night. The place stank of cigarettes and fish. The men took off their dark red rubber aprons and flung them on the backs of the chairs. They took out their piece boxes from their haversacks and ate their sandwiches. They drank from thermos flasks. When they’d eaten and drunk they got out their roll-up tins and made cigarettes whose smoke rose, gathered and settled in a layer just above head height. There was little conversation apart from speculation as to the arrival time of the next lorry. Then Gilfedder said, loudly, so that no one could miss him, ‘How’s the new boy doin’?’

  ‘Oh, just fine,’ I said. ‘Just fine.’

  ‘Stomach OK?’

  ‘Never better.’

  Then the Mule, who was a man in his early sixties, said to Gilfedder, ‘Leave the lad alone, Donnie. He’ll be just grand if you let him be.’

  ‘Keep out o’ this, Mule,’ Gilfedder said. ‘If he’s a lad then he shouldna be here. This is man’s work.’

  I looked at Gilfedder properly for the first time. I guessed he was about thirty years old. He was quite a big man – about six feet tall – and very broad. Although the same height as me he must have been a couple of stones heavier and none of this was fat. He was physically fit and robust but his face betrayed him, displaying to those who could read it, the mixture of strengths and weaknesses afforded by his physique. For he had a look that bordered on desperation, as if it was necessary for him to assert his physical superiority moment by moment. And his expression made me feel that if this confirmation were denied him then something inside him might fragment with consequences that were unpredictable but almost certainly bad.

  ‘Man’s work,’ he said again, looking across at me. ‘This is fucking man’s work.’

  I knew I had to say something but invention left me. I was glad that Morgan came in to announce the arrival of the next lorry. Piece boxes were closed, thermoses capped and aprons were tied on again. We went back out to the loading bay.

  The night shift finished at eight o’clock, just as it was beginning to get light. Someone had let down the tyres on my bike. Gilfedder, I supposed. At least he hadn’t slashed them. I pumped them up and then cycled home.