Bright Stars

by Sophie Duffy

  Legend Press Ltd, 175-185 Gray’s Inn Road, London, WC1X 8UE

  info@legend-paperbooks.co.uk | www.legendpress.co.uk

  Contents © Sophie Duffy 2015

  The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

  Print ISBN 978-1-7850798-4-9

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-7850798-5-6

  Set in Times. Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays Ltd.

  Cover design by Simon Levy www.simonlevyassociates.co.uk

  All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Sophie Duffy has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster. Her first novel, The Generation Game (Legend Press) was published August 2011. It won the Yeovil Literary Prize (2006) and the Luke Bitmead Bursary (2010).

  This Holey Life (Legend Press) published August 2012 was runner-up in the Harry Bowling Prize (2008).

  Sophie has also published short stories in a range of literary journals and anthologies, including Momaya Press, The View from Here, Dark Tales, Arvon and Your Cat.

  As well as teaching in primary schools in inner-city London (1991-98) with a specialist interest in early years and emergent writing, Sophie now leads life writing workshops at Teignmouth library. She is a book reviewer for Serendipity Reviews and has been a judge for many competitions including The Yellow Room, Retreat West and the Hysterectomy Association.

  Visit Sophie at sophieduffy.com

  Follow her @sophiestenduffy

  For Niall

  We are bought and sold for English gold. Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.

  Robert Burns

  Christie Armstrong cordially invites you to the launch of her family’s new Niagara Icewine at The Burlington Suite, The Ritz 150 Piccadilly, London W1J 9BR Friday 13th December 2013 From 6 pm

  RSVP info@armstrongkingestates.ca

  Lancaster University, 1985

  Ball

  I always wanted to be a hero. A superhero with super powers. My favourite film was Superman starring Christopher Reeves, the only man to attempt the whole tights look and pull it off. (The look, not the tights.) You need a proper outfit to be a superhero. A cloak. A mask. A belt.

  I had a kilt. The Brown tartan. (Which is actually red, not brown. And which is my mother’s name, not my father’s.) I would wear the red Brown kilt to the Freshers’ Ball. I would draw strength from my ancestors, confidence from my clan. The kilt would be my disguise. My armour. I would go to the Ball and be proud of who I was.

  I just hoped I wouldn’t spend the evening on my own looking like a saddo.

  I did spend the first half of the evening on my own looking like a saddo. But the second half was different altogether. I saw this girl at the bar. She was tall, as tall as me and I am five foot eleven in my socks. She was as thin as me too. I was technically skinny whereas she was what Granny Spark would call ‘rangy’. She had this dress on. It was old-fashioned, like it might have been her mum’s. Sixties style, Twiggy style, crazy colours, short. But she had these thick black tights and Doctor Martens. She looked strong. But maybe a wee bit fragile too. Maybe those boots were her superhero disguise. Because girls can be superheroes too.

  My mum was a superhero. Brown by name, but not brown by nature. She’d fought and fought that cancer, tough as Maid Lilliard (I’ll come back to her) in bloody battle on her horse. In the end, the legion cells beat Mum’s body into submission. But not her spirit. Never her spirit.

  Mum was there with me that night, at the ball, urging me to be strong.

  I stepped out, walked over to the bar.

  ‘Nice kilt,’ she said, the student, before I had a chance to speak.

  ‘Thanks.’ I took a deep breath. It hurt. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Let me get you one,’ she said. ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘I was just on the lemonade.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘No, I’ll be daring,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a Lilt.’

  She raised her eyebrows at me, flung back her head and laughed this snorty laugh, her long wild Kate Bush hair shining red-green-and-blue in the disco lights. ‘Want a vodka in that?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’

  And she didn’t push it like people usually did. She bought me a Lilt, plus a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. She had a pint of cider and a packet of prawn cocktail. Which she assured me were technically veggie. She was a staunch veggie. She was staunch in all her beliefs.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s move some of those stupid bourgeois name cards and sit next to each other.’ And so we did. Well, she did. I merely followed her around like an already unquestioningly loyal dog.

  Her name was Rebecca Stone but she was called Bex. She changed her name card, writing in a thick marker pen that she blagged off a barman. This was the first of many times I would see her change things. Over the next few weeks she would daub blood-red paint outside Barclays. She’d rip down posters that propped up the patriarchy. And off campus, out in the field, she’d run with the sabs, locking gates, spraying scent, holding up the hunt. Always fighting the cause of the underdog. She was a superhero. And I was the underdog of underdogs.

  I fell in love with Bex that night in the Great Hall with the Indie music and the crush of hormone-charged teenagers and the flashing disco lights.

  Over the next week we would become inseparable, me the Scottish lad from Edinburgh, her the Devon lassie from Dartmoor. We would play pool, go to the library, ride the bus into town. Share confidences, secrets and dreams. We would become friends.

  I dared hope that maybe perhaps in time she might become more than a friend. Once she got to know me. Once she saw that I was a good man. But before I had the chance to prove myself to her, someone took my place. She still wanted to hang out with me, still wanted to be friends, but she gave her heart to someone else.

  But she had my heart, unknowingly grasped in her hand.

  I will say it fairly, it grows on me with every year: there are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Edinburgh, November 2013

  Boxes

  There’s no such thing as ghosts. You get that a lot from our visitors. The stag-weekenders in their ginger wigs and tartan caps are the worst – they only believe what they want to believe – and yet they’re the ones who have palpitations when they are taken down into the dark, cold, breathy vaults under the Old Town. They blame it on their asthma.

  There’s no such thing as ghosts? I don’t believe that. Not for one minute. You can’t walk in Edinburgh without being tripped up by the limboed body of a plague victim or a soggy-footed witch.

  It’s not the ghosts I’m afraid of.

  Twenty-three years ago, I was lucky to get a job. So I didn’t mind putting on a costume and telling stories of Edinburgh’s murky past. I didn’t mind listening to loud American youths and skittish young English women. I was being paid. I could dress up, be someone from another time and put my own history behind me. Of course, history is always behind us. It has gone as soon as it has happened. But there are always repercussions. One act of recklessness, on
e ill-formed decision, can echo down the years. If you stop for a moment, you can hear it.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  So who was I to complain about dressing up in a cloak? This was my new disguise, stepping into someone else’s clothes. Someone else’s tights.

  Walking tours is the name of our game. History tours, ghost tours, paranormal events for ghostbusters. Around the Old Town, the kirkyards, the prisons, the underground vaults. Candles flickering in the shadows. Health and safety. No Ouija boards. No dogs. No scaredy-cats allowed.

  We bring history alive. We make money from the horrors of the past. We try not to blur the lines between history and myth, but if people want to believe in ghosts, that is their choice.

  I believe in ghosts.

  Today it’s the ghost of my younger self that’s pestering me. As well as Myrtle, Dad’s daft barking machine of a Dachshund. I’ve managed to park the car in the bus stop outside the old family home, a granite three-storey terrace in Newington. I can see Myrtle on the back of the sofa, crashing against the window panes as she defends her house. Dad’s house. My house. I’m back.

  I take a deep breath.

  Hazards on, boot open, all hands on deck. Not that the hands are particularly helpful. Dad’s are arthritic, as are Mrs Paterson’s from next door. But between us we manage to empty the boot and the back seat of my Vectra. Cardboard boxes and plastic stackers line up in the hall, the sad contents of my life to date. I’m tempted to set a match to it all in the back garden. But I won’t do that. Bonfires are frowned upon these days and anyway, fire won’t kill ghosts. Ghosts will haunt you through the flames and ashes.

  ‘Shall I put that kettle on?’

  ‘Thank you, Sheena.’ Dad gives Mrs P a smile, sheepish and knowing.

  Sheena, is it now.

  ‘Cameron, would you like a cup?’

  ‘That would be grand.’

  Mrs Paterson – Sheena – shuffles down the hall, to the kitchen at the back. Mum’s scullery. The place of family meals and board games, homework and arguments.

  Dad watches after her for a moment, wistfully, but I don’t know who his wist is aimed at, Mum or Sheena.

  ‘By the way, son…’ We continue lurking in the lobby, Dad chinking coins in his trouser pockets. ‘A letter arrived for you yesterday. I’ve put it on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘The mantelpiece?’

  ‘That’s what I said. The mantelpiece.’

  I follow Dad into the front room, praying it’s not a letter from a divorce solicitor. Surely things haven’t gone that far with Amanda?

  Myrtle is ensconced on Dad’s armchair watching a football match (it keeps her occupied and when she’s occupied she’s not barking). She looks at me briefly, decides I’m not about to kill her, and returns to watching the ball fly around the screen.

  Dad moves over to the fireplace, the fire itself unlit as it is not yet December and we are hardy Scots. The mantelpiece, a beautiful Victorian marble affair, is the keeper of important stuff: pools coupons, cheques, postal orders, invitations, Hearts season tickets. A letter is important enough to put on the mantelpiece.

  ‘It’s not often you get a letter from abroad now, is it?’ Dad chimes in. ‘Usually an email is all you get.’

  ‘Abroad, you say?’

  ‘From away across the ocean.’

  ‘A letter from America?’

  ‘Comedian,’ Dad says. ‘Not America, no, but you’re getting warmer. Or should that be colder?’

  ‘Canada?’

  He nods, shrugs, chinks more coins, looks like Dad always does when he is unsure of himself, when we both wish Mum were here to put things straight. Not Sheena.

  My heart at this point does actually thump. Like when I used to hear my name called out in class. Or when a shadow shifts in the vaults when everyone’s gone home at the end of the day and you’re last up the stairs with the keys to shut the ghosts in for the night.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Maybe Mum’s ghost is here somewhere, hiding under the sofa or behind the curtains, watching over us. Spying on Sheena.

  I hope she’s gone. A bright star shining in the universe. Not a lost soul in the underground world.

  So the mantelpiece is where I go, walking that weird walk you walk when you know someone’s watching you walk and it could be a memorable moment at the end of your walk.

  Standing by the mantelpiece in my old home, separated from my beautiful wife, worried about the investigation, holding a letter that is making my hand quiver. Foreign stamps. Bears and other big animals. Canadian.

  It feels heavy. Nice quality stationery. And there is my address, my childhood address, Dad’s address, c/o Mr Andrew Spark, my address once more, hopefully temporary, written by a flourishing hand. And on the reverse?

  Her name.

  Seeing it there, in black and white, solid and real, is unnerving, like it’s rattling my bones and I might just topple over and shatter into hundreds of tiny pieces.

  Christie Armstrong.

  How did she find me?

  And why?

  I didn’t expect to see or hear from her ever again.

  It was Mum that gave me my love of history. She read to me every night, here in this room, me tucked up in my bed, brushed cotton tartan pyjamas and flannel-wiped face, Mum in her baffies and dressing gown, sitting in a wicker chair with a mug of Brooke Bond.

  It was always history books. Jacobite risings. Battles and clans. Bannockburn. Culloden. Flora MacDonald. Myths and legends and historical events all entwined so you didn’t know what was real, what was fiction. She loved her bonnie Scotland. She would’ve been putting a big tick by the Yes in the referendum. A Yes for independence.

  That’s why I chose to study History at Lancaster.* You have to study the past to make sense of your present and to navigate your future. But I never finished my degree. Instead, I ended up in a place I never expected to be, my freedom snatched like a rug from under my feet. I ended up playing cloak-and-daggers in locked away, dark and lonely places.

  I’ve always been grateful to have a job, don’t get me wrong. It’s been a good job, usually interesting, often varied, depending on the punters, and the fickle spectral residents. And I’ve worked my way up from tour guide to manager. Not exactly Duncan Bannatyne, though not bad considering.

  But the ghosts still haunt me. They are chasing me even now as I write my story. My own history, as I see it. Others will have a different opinion, their own narrative. But this is mine. And nobody can take it away from me.

  And my story brings me back here to my childhood bedroom, where I lie now, still in my single bed, still with my orange eiderdown, still in my brushed cotton tartan pyjamas (somewhat bigger), but without my mother, without my wife and maybe without my job.

  And the letter, the letter. Unopened, still on the mantelpiece amongst the photographs and the sports trophies and the bills. Waiting.

  I’m not actually writing an historical memoir. This is actually supposed to be therapy, getting the words down on the page and out of my head. My counsellor, Jeremy, suggested it. Jeremy says it will help me come to terms with what happened in the past if I write my account of it. Jeremy says it will help me work through my feelings for Amanda. Jeremy says it may help me work out why I did what I did last month.

  ‘Are you not away to work today?’ Dad asks me as I help myself to some tea and cornflakes.

  ‘I’ve got some time off.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Dad looks surprised. He knows I never take time off. I haven’t mentioned the investigation because there’s no need to worry him. What I did was not particularly professional but it’ll get sorted and life can carry on.

  ‘So… the letter?’

  The letter now sits on the table between us, clean and smart against the crumb-infested, stain-attacked pine surface.

  ‘I haven’t opened it yet.’

  ‘Are you going to open it?’

  I nod. My mouth is full of cornflakes.

  ‘When?�
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  Before I realise what I am doing – though I think it’s because my mouth is still full and I can’t speak without spitting – I make this action. My palm is flat on the table and I realise that the reason it is stinging is because I must have slammed my hand down with some force. I swallow my food. ‘Dad, stop fussing.’ I don’t remember saying this but it’s ringing in my head.

  He’s up now, refilling the kettle, footering around the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry, Dad. It’s just, well, I know who it’s from.’

  He sighs and I can detect a wheeze from his chest. Been smoking since he was ten years old. It’s amazing he’s still upright and breathing.

  ‘It’s from her, isn’t it? The lassie.’ He turns on the tap, splashing water everywhere and I can’t see his face. ‘You don’t have to open it,’ he says quietly, but loud enough. ‘I can put it on the fire and we can forget all about it.’

  He reels round to look at me now, soft grey eyes washed out with years of work, widowhood, worry over four sons. ‘You don’t have to return to that place.’

  ‘What place?’

  ‘1986,’ he says. ‘You can leave it back there with Thatcher.’

  ‘We can’t escape Thatcher, Dad. You know that as well as anyone. Her legacy’s all around. And so is Christie’s.’

  ‘You cannae do anything about Margaret Thatcher. But you can do something about this letter.’

  ‘You mean I should do nothing.’

  ‘I mean you should put it on the fire.’

  ‘Let me think about it, Dad.’ I finish the last of my cornflakes and carry the bowl and spoon to the sink. ‘I’ll take Myrtle out for a walk, shall I?’

  ‘She’d like that.’ Dad smiles at me. He has a wet patch on his trousers, which makes me see him as an old man, incontinent, prostate problems.

  ‘You should get that tap looked at.’

  ‘The tap?’ He examines his groin area and wipes at it with a tea towel.

  ‘I meant a plumber not a urologist.’