The Stillman

by Tom McCulloch

  What arrogance, I hear you shout, the mother who played no part in my life criticising me on my choices made! Perhaps, but there will be no apology, I have avoided them my whole life. Disappointments I can talk about for hours but not apologies, apologies require regrets and those I never allow. I learned that lesson in Edinburgh, walking those sodden streets under glowering skies to a freezing office where I copied letters all day and fantasised about killing my Neanderthal boss and stowing him in a warehouse.

  There was no way I was going to allow myself the distress of staying, I simply had to retain my integrity. What are we if we lose that? I tell you this because I picture you as an honest man. The world needs an infusion of honesty, does it not?

  In reality, of course, I have no idea about you. You may be the biggest bastard who ever lived, beating your wife, abusing children. It could be my fault for bringing you into the world. Not that I believe such nonsense for a moment. You are cut from your father’s cloth, not mine, you will be an essentially decent man with an essentially decent family. It is too much to hope, I know, that you might believe the same of me. No, I am certain that when you think of me it is with anger alone. Indifference is perhaps the best I can hope for but what are we without hope?

  I live in Cuba after all, a country that still knows how to dream.

  The pages have been scanned from a written source into a pdf. The outline of punch holes is visible in the margins. My mother’s writing is tidy and compact, the ink blue and nowhere smudged.

  Helen’s Journal 1, Helen’s Journal 2. How many more? No-one stops a journal after two entries. That need to know, it’s stalked me since I was a little boy. The healthy reaction is to let go right now, delete all the emails and any others that might come. But that familiar feeling of self-loathing curiosity . . . I know I’ll give in, that I’ll read whatever I’m sent. I’ve thought about my mother so much but she always demands more. Even after death she wants more.

  I know who’s doing this. I understand the reference in vinales2004@hotmail.com. What I don’t know is why. It isn’t the first time I’ve been sent emails from Cuba. August 2004, a Cuban lawyer called Rodriguez emailed from the digital ether. His prose was ponderous but the information clear-cut. My mother was dead, a substantial estate left to me. No-one had heard from her in years, perhaps it was inevitable the next contact would be the final.

  I was more shocked by my reaction than the actual news, the lump in my throat when I would have expected apathy, or frustration at best. The lawyer wrote about Cuban law and the need to personally come to Cuba to fix the death matters in two months or the estate would pass to Fidel. There was no mention of what ‘substantial’ meant and his replies to my questions only brought terse you must come personally to organise ultimatums.

  My wife still knows nothing about where I really went. I told her my mother had died in Torremolinos, Spain. Clever boy. We’d been there, three awful holidays in a death-trap timeshare tower-block. If I’d said it was Havana she might have wanted to come. Flights on credit card, true, but I’ve hidden plenty with paperless statements and online accounts. Anyway, there was no way she’d go snooping, the mere mention of Torremolinos brought down the shutters.

  There’s secrets and then there’s secrets. Even JC thought I’d gone to Spain to sort out my mother’s estate. He had a beer with me at the airport before I flew to Glasgow for the onward connections to London and Havana. It was quite a thrill, sitting there knowing that no-one in the world apart from a stranger on the end of an email knew where I was really going.

  All those faces, boldly outlined by that ever-present sun. I have to squint as I look back at them. The colours are intense, like paint that won’t quite dry, so much more gloss than the Rorschach monochrome of the warehouse walls, the Chinese gloom of the barrel racks. My mother in time-stilled Havana. Vinales2004@hotmail.com. Ever since I returned home it’s been rushing back towards me like the wind on the moor. Time is a fickle mistress. Five years have gone by, in many ways I’m unsure what I remember actually happened at all.

  Once Upon a Time in the West

  She was sitting at the bar. The barman flashed me a look from behind the counter and gave her a slight nod.

  She didn’t acknowledge me and no wonder. I was sweating, wiping my forehead with a little green towel. I didn’t want the free Mojito offered by the hotel, just whisky. The barman poured a large one and I knocked it back, asking for another. I drank the next one more slowly, trying to relax into the surroundings. She shifted on her seat and I think she caught me glancing at her long brown legs. Who am I kidding, she did catch me, outright. But her only reaction was a tired smile. Just another leering man. They all look, sooner or later they all look.

  Three Johnny Walkers later I offered her a cigarette and bought her a drink. Man she was pretty. The barman held my gaze a moment too long when he placed the drinks down. And no smile this time. No worries hombre, I wanted to say, just a lonely traveller passing through.

  Like sick. Warm sick. I lay naked on the bed, staring up at the decrepit air conditioning box. The brain-jarring rattle I could take but not the smell it was pumping out. The thought of the balcony was even worse. No fresh air out there, just heat, the oily pressing heat that hit me as soon as I stepped off the plane and hadn’t let up since. I’d just have to imagine the scene behind the grimy white curtain, the rusty Ladas and cannabilised American classics, Pontiacs and Plymouths, the smell of diesel and hot dust, the grand, crumbling buildings of cavernous blacks, sudden yellows. How many families crowded behind those requisitioned walls?

  Hotel Inglaterra. I guessed there wasn’t a Hotel Escocia. Not that this was a concern. This was a time to step up, leave chauvinisms behind. To feel sentimental after less than 24 hours in Havana would be absurd. The guidebook was right on the money, the hotel did have a superb location on the lively Parque Central. I was particularly taken with the ornate lamp-posts and the classical figures lining the facade. The long columned arcade was also impressive but the best feature of all the neon sign. Inglaterra in vertical white letters on a blue background, a horizontal t-bar at the top with Hotel printed in white letters on red. It just needed a couple of letters shorting out, a femme fatale smoking in the shadows.

  A stocky man in a loose-fitting brown suit had met me at the airport. He was around 30 and greying at the temples. The details stood out, as if I was being encouraged to memorise them. Probably just anxiety at being far beyond the recognisable. Red Cuba! Brown Suit was called Basilio and I hadn’t known he was coming. The email simply said that once I checked in at the hotel someone from the lawyer’s office would be in touch. But here was Basilio with my full name neatly printed on laminated paper. I felt slightly self-important as I guess most people probably do when met at airports, but no-one paid me any notice at all.

  Basilio drove the yellow ’57 Dodge very fast. Red fins, polished chrome. I bounced on the sprung leather seat and tried to understand the billboards. No flash cars and pouting models of the Global Village, just Che and Fidel, block letters and bold colours of a puzzling certainty, Fieles a Nuestra Historia . . . Viva Cuba Libre! Socialismo o Muerte, said Basilio, banging the steering wheel and laughing. I stared at the bus queues, fruit stalls, and ancient Soviet trucks, the hundreds of smiling school-kids in white shirts and coloured scarves.

  I invited Basilio for a drink but he just smiled, clapping me on the shoulder. Welcome to Cuba, I return 9.30 tomorrow morning. An old man with a horse and trap emerged from the black cloud left behind by the Dodge, waving at me and pointing at the nag. I ducked inside.

  It took me far too long to realise the woman at the bar was a prostitute. Even a few hours later the thought was excruciating. But I’d never met a hooker before so why would I make the assumption? She let her skirt ride up her thighs and seemed so interested when I started burbling on about mountains and lochs. I only got rid of her on the stairs. Wheech room, wheech room? A young woman in a black satin dress passed us with a look of utter
contempt.

  The air-con unit had started wheezing like an old asthmatic. If it conked out I was sure I could get another room. Hotel Inglaterra seemed almost deserted. Faded colonial grandeur indeed. I counted thirty-three ceiling cracks and wondered about the large water stains. The J&B sank a little lower. The prostitute, Basilio, and the staring barman, none of them knew anything about me, not a damn thing. Here, if I chose, I could be anyone I wanted.

  * * *

  I was late. Rodriguez was annoyed but doing his best to hide it. Smiling, but the fists clenched by his sides. I’d be tense too, working in this dingy office with its peeling plaster and smell of piss.

  The lawyer’s mood probably wasn’t helped by the crumpled specimen standing in front of him. His eyes flickered with amusement every time I wiped my forehead. The sweat was pouring out of me, a combination of last night’s booze and the heat. I’d managed to get sunburned too, despite having been in Cuba for less than a day. And most of that was the night. I wasn’t in the mood for his carefully rehearsed exposition of welcome and condolence.

  I apologised for being late. I’d slept in and kept Basilio waiting for half an hour. As soon as we left Parque Central the streets started to disintegrate. Off the main drag they got rougher, dirt tracks in the middle of a city. Bad for a hangover. Ancient Athens must have looked like this when the Gods fled. Columns and rooftop balconies scarred and peeling. Washing strung in front of ten feet high shuttered doors. Old women brushing their teeth, skinny husbands sitting at street tables playing dominoes. Basilio glanced at me in the rear-view mirror, probably wondering why these Europeans got drunk as soon as they arrived. He wouldn’t behave in the same way if he ever made it to London. London with those big red buses.

  Your mother taught English in Havana for sixteen years . . . a well-liked figure in the community . . . a friend of the Revolution who worked with the Cuba Solidarity Brigades and helped organise visits to schools and farms . . . many, many friends, Mr Drever and I have been told she knew how to enjoy life . . . she will be missed. I tried to let the lawyer’s words slip quietly past and failed. This need, I hated but indulged it, the greedy soaking up of the details of an unknown life. I felt like a little boy being told a story he couldn’t quite understand.

  ‘Your mother was like the trogon bird,’ said Rodriguez, ‘a rare breed.’ Then silence. The three of us looked at each other. The lawyer seized the initiative and broke the awkwardness. He was in his element. ‘Get some glasses Basilio, we must drink a toast to Mr Drever’s mother.’

  And he was off again. Like a rent-a-minister who didn’t know the deceased, delivering a eulogy that had the congregation wondering who was inside the casket. Even if half-true it was still too much. I didn’t want my mother humanised to any extent. My father, back home by the sea in his neat little cottage, I’d go to him if I ever wanted the truth.

  ‘Then there is the legacy.’

  I nodded. Basilio re-filled my glass.

  ‘The value of the estate is not . . . insubstantial,’ said Rodriguez. ‘Even by your British standards.’

  But he wouldn’t tell me how much. There were ‘complications’. I smiled, there always were with lawyers, a species that even the Cuban revolution hadn’t managed to eradicate.

  Apparently it would take some days for the final amount to be calculated. Rodriguez hoped this was not too much of a burden at such a difficult time. Perhaps I could take a few days to see the Cuba my mother had loved so dearly. She lived above a casa particular not too far from here. He could arrange for one of his mother’s friends to meet me at a café. We could visit her home, begin the sad necessity of packing up her belongings. The suggestion chilled me but the whisky was beginning to do its job. I could handle that, ‘course I could.

  Four more drinks at the café followed. A head full of booze made it easy to decide I could like it here.

  I sat at a corner table with a view of the teeming street. The barman leaned on the bar, hands on his chin. Each time I interrupted his dozing he didn’t bother making eye contact, just poured the drinks. That suited me just fine. To be the anonymous drunk. To brood in the half-light, staring through the bright doorway into the street. To my left was a beaded curtain, a darker room. Every now and then a raised voice, once when I looked up a thin-armed man. He’d smirked at me and barked something at the barman, who gave a dismissive wave.

  My mother, did she come here, sit at this very table with its scratches and scorch marks, brushing away the same flies that circled the sugar bowl? I crushed one against my wrist and studied the black smear. Another one landed. They had no choice, just following instinct. I envied the simplicity. In a life determined everything, even death itself, would seem like a victory. My own triumphs were rare but if you avoided the risk then you avoided defeat. I knocked back another whisky. Yes, banality trumped humiliation any day of the week.

  What about this friend then, Adelina? I tried to picture them. Gossamer night and melancholy red wine, pouring out the heartbreak and fears of lives turned to years. She must have seemed so exotic, my mother. She could have told Adelina anything she wanted, any exaggeration or embellishment the old phoney could muster. And no-one to challenge the narrative but herself, looking back guiltily from the occasional mirror she couldn’t avoid. That was the thing about being an exile, the inflated ego. Only those back in the homeland would be able to smell the hokum. My mother must have come to the same conclusion as I had the night before. That here, in exile, she could be anyone she wanted. It was an uneasy realisation.

  ‘Are you Mr Drever?’

  The woman was silhouetted by the light streaming in the doorway. ‘At your service,’ I said, standing up. I winced inwardly. At your service? What, like I’m some colonial fuckin gent?

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Now I felt like a total prat. ‘I mean, yes. I’m Jim. You must be Adelina.’ She ignored my outstretched hand and put her arms around me instead. I tensed, keeping my hands by my side.

  ‘It is good to meet you, so good.’

  ‘I thought I was in the wrong café. Took me long enough to find it.’

  She stepped out of the light. I realised there was no particular reason why Adelina should be the same age as my mother. Mid-thirties, I reckoned, long black hair and slightly chubby. Plain. A large mole on her left cheek which I noticed and then couldn’t stop noticing.

  ‘You want a drink? I’m on whisky.’

  ‘Yes please Mr Drever.’

  ‘Just Jim.’

  ‘Ok. Jeem.’

  The barman began to pay more attention. Thin Arms appeared at the beaded curtain without the smirk. The gringo was with a local now, his assessment shifting to something yet to be defined. What’s the story then, is the girl a prostitute, a friend? Thin Arms seemed keen to know and gave me an inscrutable wink as I crossed to the bar. Adelina wanted neat whisky too. I liked the way she called me Jeem but not her affection for my mother.

  When I came back from the toilet I saw she’d primped herself up, tugging up the top that had slipped down her shoulder and revealed her bra strap. I wondered if she’d got dressed up, if she’d thought it fitting. I had no idea what she might know about me. Over-exposed, that was the feeling. Was she comparing me to my dead mother, looking for parallels in the mannerisms, the patterns of speech? She was as nervous as me. I pictured her putting the phone down after speaking to Rodriguez, not sure at all about meeting Helen’s son.

  We drank. I fidgeted. She filled each silence with a question. I answered and tried not to ramble. I picked at the bocadillos she ordered because the booze had ruined my appetite.

  ‘She was a good woman.’

  ‘But what does that mean?’

  ‘Just that. She was always there for me.’

  ‘So good means being there.’

  ‘Among other things, yes.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You were lucky to have a mother like her.’

  I held back the anger and was surprised by the
sudden tears in my eyes. Adelina must have thought I was going to cry but instead I started laughing, emphasising my words, saying she was so right, my mother was a fine woman, a rock in my life. When I had finished she stood up, a bit unsteady, and led me to the café doorway, pointing vaguely down the street.

  ‘Do you see that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That balcony.’

  I could see balcony on balcony, in fact there were ornate, crumbling balconies everywhere. ‘Sure.’

  ‘She lived there.’

  ‘Did she now?’

  ‘Shall we go?’

  I thought about the 747 sweeping down to Cuba, the Florida Keys so clear I could see cars on the causeways. One to the next, the islands like a join-the-dots challenge. Let go, cut loose. I looked at her closely. Her smile. It more than made up for something I couldn’t quite place.

  Three

  Didn’t someone once describe a distillery as a meditation in machinery? If my own characterisation is equally pretentious I don’t care, no way I’m ever going to tell anyone. The distillery has always been alive to me, see? The end of closedown is like a beast coming out of hibernation.

  Two more days of warehouse purgatory. The first mash is due on Wednesday night. The weekend for fermentation and Monday morning I’ll be ready in the Stillhouse for the first distillation. Camp Gary can now be viewed as novelty rather than punishment, the lorry drivers a passing amusement. I don’t care about pulling my weight anymore. It isn’t expected anyway.

  So check off the hours, doze in the dark. Dream the storyboard. A montage, naturally, homoerotic but don’t tell, something out of Cronenberg, Kenneth Anger; the crop-haired young Mashman in blue boiler suit, checking the grain hopper and cranking the lever, a close-up rub of the hands as he steps into the Mashroom, the sci-fi control panel and periodic checks down the mash tun hatch, that vague urge to jump in, what would it feel like? And the music? Melancholy, like the opening credits of Twin Peaks, fading into throbbing machine hum, the fuuuush of the fermentation room and the wort spurting into the washback, the Mashman’s flexing muscles as he empties in a ten kilo bag of yeast and those long gleaming pipes, imperceptibly swelling as he slowly, rhythmically, rubs a cloth along them.