‘Unconditional love,’ she responds – immediately, without blinking, staring him straight in the eyes. It is a statement of absolute conviction, but she delivers it like it is a personal challenge. She is a set of jump-leads for his serotonin. She smiles again. When she does, he finds it incomprehensible that someone would ever deliberately cause her pain.
Megan takes Joseph’s hand. He wasn’t always burdened with vertigo; it has been something he’s become aware of following his treatment. His anxiety manifests itself everywhere and in almost every given situation. It has essentially left him convinced that danger lies around every corner, despite how irrational that might sound to an intelligent man. It is what ultimately led to the enforced period away from work and the realisation – from his partners at least – that Joseph could no longer cut it. It is less than a year since he took time off indefinitely. He has been petrified that his own shadow might take up arms against him, yet here he is, walking across the thick glass floor, one hundred storeys above ground, in the observation deck of the Shanghai World Financial Centre Tower. Joseph’s head is in the clouds. And all because she is holding his hand.
Joseph admires this building very much. With the modern predilection for adorning unusual buildings with nicknames, it is now known as the Bottle Opener. There are so many actual bottle openers in the gift shop, Megan naively assumed they were the stimulus for the design concept. Unlike many skyscrapers, though, the design isn’t ostentatious. It is relatively sleek and simple; elegant – at least in comparison to its nearest neighbour, the Jin Mao Tower with its serrated edges and aggressive corners. Joseph smiles to himself as he considers the juxtaposition between Megan and Lucinda Burroughs.
Megan remarks that she’s been in the city for a while but has never even thought to observe it – or map its incomprehensible growth – from the top of its more notable buildings. That just seemed to her like something tourists did. Other people; normal people. She asked him to go up in the express lift with her. Megan laughed when Joseph said he couldn’t venture to the top. She said she’d take care of him.
His knees are shaking. She can feel the tremors in his hand. She clasps it tighter. They stare out across the distinctive bend of the Huangpu, left and right towards the four bridges that connect the new, wealth-orientated districts of Pudong New Area, where they have spent the day strolling, with the poorer west-bank areas where many of the displaced have been rehoused. It is one of the most populated areas of Shanghai. Paradoxically, that is due to the amount of immigrants like Megan Carter who have come here to contribute to this driven and powerful financial hub.
‘So … any regrets?’ Her question takes him by surprise.
‘What, about comin’ up here? Naw, it’s fine. Ma legs are a bit…’
‘No, I meant that’s my final question.’ She didn’t asked it earlier. Following her response to his, he leaned in to kiss her. She turned her head and he kissed her ear. It was awkward and he felt like an idiot. But, like many things in his life, it was just bad timing. As he withdrew, she touched his face tenderly and held it there, kissing him gently and briefly on the mouth. Neither of them was sure what to do next. There was a prolonged pause. Perhaps it wasn’t the Year of the Horse anymore. Maybe it was the Year of the Absolute Prick. They were both clumsy, ungainly. They stood up from the bench in unison. The takeaway sushi she had bought them remained half eaten. It wasn’t really his thing. He’d once eaten raw fish fingers but only because his dad had been too drunk to cook them properly. He had smirked at the thought of his traditionalist, narrow-minded father seeing him now.
He breaths deeply and leans forward, his forehead on the glass, looking straight down, 500 metres to the ground. He gasps and she grips his hand.
‘Ah’ve got regrets about everythin’ … absolutely everythin’,’ he says. ‘People ah’ve let down, people ah should’ve paid more attention tae. Ah listened tae people ah should’ve ignored, an’ ignored the very people ah should’ve listened tae. It’s just a big fuckin’ mess.’
‘But it’s not too late. You can still fix it,’ she says.
And he almost believes her.
‘You said it yourself … your partners are actually doing you a favour. They’ve set you free, Joseph. You’re just scared about what that freedom means. I totally get that. I left Vinnie and all his mob bullshit, and I swapped it for this … to be free from all of that. You can use that freedom too … find a bit of happiness, and a bit of purpose.’
Ah, purpose … that relative term connected to function. Function means a lot to designers. If something has no function, it’s essentially fucking useless. Pure ornamentation. Form even follows function! But what’s his? What’s his purpose now that the constants of employment and relationship are no longer there? He wants to believe her. He wants to stay with her. He wants to be younger, so that the possibility of staying with her wouldn’t be so fucking risible.
‘But this isnae freedom, Megan. Yer livin’ on a witness protection programme, but wi’ nae protection. How can that be livin’?’
‘It’s living, because all I was doing before was barely surviving. We were in that closed community where everyone who knew us would’ve known what he was doing to me, but nobody would ever, ever say anything about it. I knew he wouldn’t go to the cops … about me or the money. That was my chance and I took it. I’ve no regrets, Joseph.’
He turns away from the view and looks at her. It is the most resolute she’s been in the four days they have spent together.
‘But ye said yer no’ stayin’ on here. So that’s you on the run again. Fuck sake, Megan, ye cannae keep doin’ that for the next fifty years.’
‘I’m fine. That thing with those British guys could’ve happened to anyone. It’s just made me think that it’s time to transfer. Doubletree are really good that way. They actually like having people like me … happy to move, no responsibilities. It’s pretty straightforward to get a transfer in those circumstances.’
‘Well ah certainly couldnae do it,’ he says. ‘Although ah’m no’ sure what ah am gonnae do.’
‘You need to go and see Bobby,’ she says. ‘You need to find a bit of closure.’
He laughs and she looks puzzled.
‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘it’s such an Americanism, that word, eh?’
‘Are you mocking me?’
‘Naw, ah’m not. Ah’m just deflectin’ … it’s what we do, we Scots. We’re miserable, dour bastards.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘How would you know? How many Scots have you met?’ he says.
‘Ach … loads,’ she says, laughing.
‘Right, you are just takin’ the fuckin’ piss now, is that it?’ He laughs too.
‘Mel Gibson, Scotty from Star Trek, Mrs Doubtfire … the big fat baddie in the Austin Powers movies. I grew up with lots of Scotties.’ She puts her arms around him and cuddles him.
He catches sight of their reflection in a shiny metal panel. He feels detached from the reality of the situation. It feels like he is watching another couple; like he is acting on impulses he is struggling to comprehend. Joseph is simultaneously anxious about what might happen when he lets her go and experiences the feeling that his entire life has been a preparation for what he will say next.
‘Why don’t ye come back wi’ me … back tae Scotland?’
Chapter Fourteen
October 2014. Ibiza, Spain
Sebastian Tellier’s melancholic ‘La Ritournelle’ fills the house. It is such an expansive, layered song. It is the rich, musical equivalent of whisky fermenting. An aural comfort blanket. Bobby Cassidy has the Sonos powering on repeat, and the song is on its umpteenth circuit. Windows are wide open and a cool breeze wafts its way around the interior, investigating all of its open space and available corners. A ‘David Essex in Stardust’ metamorphosis seems to be under way. It isn’t a good sign. Hamish May can still navigate the mood swings of his friend by the musical accompaniment. Based on the last few days, Bobby
is only one nostalgic trip away from a Leonard Cohen career retrospective.
‘Jesus, it’s fuckin’ freezin’ in here!’ says Hammy as the door to his room closes sharply behind him. ‘At least it’ll shift the bloody smell, mind you.’ Hammy considers whether Bobby did actually go to bed last night, or if he simply stayed in the same spot where his friend left him, watching Laurel & Hardy DVDs with the sound turned down.
‘Ye no’ gonnae get changed oot they clothes, mate?’ asks Hammy hopefully.
‘Nae fuckin’ point,’ Bobby replies.
A half-eaten bowl of Cheerios sits disregarded on the glass table. It fights for space amongst the scattered detritus of empty beer bottles and potato crisp packets from last night, which Hammy now assumes Bobby has left for him to clear away. He is eating at least. That’s something.
‘Get yer scabby, crusty scants aff, ya blacko,’ Hammy laughs. ‘Then once we’ve chased the bastards ’roon the hoose and caught them wi’ the big tongs, we’ll wrestle them intae the washing machine an’ fumigate the cunts.’
‘They’re fine. Ah’m no’ takin’ them off.’
‘C’mon tae fuck, Bob eh? Ah no’ ah’m here tae help ye, but for fuck’s sake help yersel’, ya useless auld cunt!’
‘Gie’s peace,’ says Bobby.
‘Look at ye,’ Hammy says. ‘Ye look like Catweazle at a Hugh Hefner lookalike contest.’
Bobby knows he looks bloated. He is at least two stones over what would be classed as a normal weight for him. The various full-length mirrors in this austere art gallery don’t lie. His thinning hair is grey and hasn’t been cut for months. His stubble is rougher than the surface of the moon, and he’s been wearing the same boxer shorts and silk-sheened dressing gown for six days now. They used to be white, like virtually everything else Bobby wears.
‘Haw, Howard Hughes … whit the fuck’s goin’ on here? Is there somethin’ ye’re no’ tellin’ me, man?’
Bobby’s expression becomes more vacant.
‘Fuck sake, please tell me yer no’ back at the gamblin’.’
Bobby takes a few deep breaths then slowly shakes his head.
‘Are ye sick?’ asks Hammy, fairly certain that he would’ve noticed something more serious than a general malaise.
But what Bobby is about to say has taken time to build up to, and he still isn’t sure what it might mean for them. He sighs.
Hammy is now worried.
‘Laurence is cancelling us for 2015. That fuckin’ barney wi’ thon Rough Guide cunt a month back wis the last straw. Ah’m fucked.’ Bobby sits down. The weight of those few words seems too much for him to carry standing up.
‘So,’ says a relieved Hammy. ‘Big fuckin’ deal. We’ll get another gig, an’ a bit closer tae San Ant than oot at that fuckin’ hippy market tae.’
‘That’s no’ gonnae happen, Hammy. It’s finished. Ah’m finished. Ah don’t get the vibe aboot here anymore,’ says Bobby. ‘Ah’m yesterday’s man.’
Hammy looks at his watch. This had better not take long. Esta will be waiting and she has a ‘beeg, beeg sooprise’ for him. He rolls his noisy chair over towards where Bobby is reclining like a fallen Caesar on the white chaise longue. It was only a few sentences, but Bobby hasn’t said this many words in days. Hammy appreciates that his role here is simply to listen and then talk his charge down from the edge. Again.
‘Ah think ah want tae go home, Hammy. Ah mean it this time. It’s by for us here, mate.’
He’s never said this before. Hammy is suddenly perplexed by Bobby’s use of the word ‘us’. As far as Hammy is concerned, this is their home.
‘Ever since the start ae the year, ah’ve felt like total shite. Like ah’ve nae idea what ah’m even dain’ here.’
Hammy knows that much but has just put it down to Bobby turning fifty and the acceleration of the arthritis that now so forcibly pains his joints.
‘Ah’ve been thinking aboot Hettie, an’ Gary … an’ even fuckin’ Joey. Ah want tae see them aw again.’
Hammy briefly thinks Bobby’s marbles have gone, along with the dexterity of his digits.
But Bobby corrects himself. ‘Well, no’ Gary obviously, but ye know whit ah mean, aye?’
‘Look, Bob … ah get it. Yer fifty, yer feelin’ fucked, an’ frankly, yer needin’ a good fuckin’ shaggin’ … although we’d need tae hunt for the skankiest, dirtiest hoor on the strip wi’ you in that condition.’ It isn’t the most erudite psychoanalysis, but Hammy suspects it’s pretty accurate. ‘There’s nothin’ back in Scotland for us now. Fuck sake, we didn’t even get tae vote for it tae become independent! Look how fuckin’ angry that made ye.’ Hammy sighs. This isn’t going as he hoped. He wants to get away, to dissolve into the ample cleavage of the rampant Esta Soler and to feel whole again as he does every day he’s with her. ‘Ah’m no’ even sure ae the point ae goin’ home … wherever the fuck that actually is noo. Ah mean, Hettie’ll no’ even see ye, man … ye know that. An’ dae ye even know where Joey Miller is?’ Hammy watches Bobby meekly shake his head. ‘An’ whit the fuck ah’m ah gonnae dae back in Scotland, eh? Look at me! That snidey bastart Cameron’s hardly featherin’ nests for disabled cunts like me is he?’
How his friend has changed, and not only over this last year. He tries to shake the thought, but the truth is Bobby Cassidy has been on the slide since the day a young drunk driver out for a tour of the island mowed Hammy down, taking the use of his legs away from him.
That was almost ten years ago. Paradoxically, the accident and its aftermath have freed Hammy, but simultaneously imprisoned Bobby Cassidy. Hammy knows Bobby feels responsible and that self-reproach and regret have been mounting ever since. But now they have seemingly combined forces and are beginning to consume him.
‘Ah need tae go, pal. Ah’ve got physio … an’ the joints are aw a bit sore, y’know?’ says Hammy, wincing theatrically but to no response. ‘We’ll sit doon later oan an’ figure it aw oot, right? Ah’ll go an’ see Laurie Revlon tae. Work oot a deal. Ye’re still a big draw, Bob. You’re MC fuckin’ Bobcat for fuck’s sake! You helped build this bastardin’ island.’
‘Aye … once upon a time, maybe,’ says Bobby mournfully. ‘But that wis then.’
Hammy leaves without anything else being said but content that Bobby will just sit aimlessly watching Belle & Sebastian repeats in monochrome as opposed to hurling himself from the villa’s elevated roof.
Esta Soler is a Sangre Naranja: a small group of local, wealthy, middle-aged women who meet regularly to play poker, smoke cigars and discuss the details of their specific ongoing extramarital sexual encounters. It is a closed community with as many secretive codes and rules as the other order with whom it shares a colour. The similarities stop there, though. The Blood Oranges are solely about female gratification. Hammy has often wondered how such a small island community of notoriously loose-lipped Catholic females can keep schtum about such things. Is it only their priests who are taken into any form of confessional confidence? He’s even wondered if the perversity of their husbands stretches to participation, as willing and encouraging voyeurs. But the risk of exposure simply seems to be part of the game for these feisty women. In its present manifestation, the Sangre Naranja comprise fifteen members. Esta Soler is the group’s current organiser and leader. She is in the middle of a three-year term. It is her responsibility to set challenges for the women and their carefully selected covert partners as if they were all merely part of a suburban Woman’s Institute group trying out cake recipes. However, the tasks all involve increasingly daring sexual exploits upon which they then have to report like participants in a contemporary Masters & Johnson academic research study programme.
An austere Alicante hospital rehabilitation centre was the scene for the first meeting between Hamish May and Esta Soler. It was November 2008, two years after the car accident. An unconscious Hamish May had initially been taken to a small hospital in Ibiza Town. He was in the flat back of a car being driven by Bobby Cassidy’s clos
est neighbour, a German surgeon who had bought his house as a holiday home only three weeks prior to the accident. In his first week in the house, only a loud ‘FORE!’ had prevented Hammy hitting him with an almost perfect five-iron shot from the roof. On the direct advice of the Ibiza Town surgeon, Hammy was immediately flown to the specialist hospital in Alicante.
Hammy subsequently spent a significant period of time in the same hospital, undergoing twenty-three separate operations, as Spanish orthopaedic surgeons attempted to repair the damage of extensive compound fractures to both tibias and the fibula of his right leg. To exacerbate this, he contracted MRSA while in the hospital, causing further tissue and muscle damage. Was it not for this, a long recovery might have resulted in him being able to walk again unaided. Hammy’s mum and dad, and several of his large extended family flew out to see him several times while he was in hospital. Fragmented relationships were repaired, despite Hammy having made it clear to all of them he had no intention of returning to Scotland. With Bobby Cassidy paying all of the horse-choking medical bills, Hammy’s allegiance remained firmly in Ibiza.
‘Eso me ha dolido incluso incluso a mi,’ said Esta, opening that first conversation while sitting in the chair opposite Hammy. She had been staring at the elaborate tapestry of scars on his exposed lower legs. They looked like they were the template for an abstract game of Snakes & Ladders.
‘Eh … ah’m sorry, ah don’t speak any Spanish,’ Hammy replied, smiling, before adding ‘…An’ ah dinnae dae the English much better.’
Esta smiled back at him. ‘Ah … jour leg, painful no?’
‘Aye. Fuck me … the worst ah’ve ever felt, an’ ah once got seriously electrocuted tae.’
Esta looked bemused, as if waiting for Spanish subtitles to appear across Hammy’s chest.
‘Sorry,’ he said, recognising that he’d spoken far too quickly. ‘It. Was. The. Worst. Pain. Ever.’
The Man Who Loved Islands Page 11