Slinky materialises at 8.01 Monday. Site manager and secret collector of Hummel figurines. He’s about five feet tall and that yellow safety bib makes him look like a preening canary. Sounds like one too, twittering about the significant improvements made to the Stillhouse over the closedown. I don’t see much significance but I’m glad they’ve roped off the area around the spirit safes. I always feel uncomfortable with the tourist groups. My fellow Stillman Rankin loves it. He’s the go-to man with VIPs. I talk a lot of shite but the suits haven’t got a clue. He puts his arms round the pretty ones who want a photo, lets his hands wander.
‘Impressive, eh?’ Slinky says.
‘If you like. Must have cost a few quid.’
‘Speculate to accumulate and all that.’
‘Bit of an expense when we’re in the red.’
An exhibition has been installed at the far end of the Stillhouse in front of the redundant stills. Until the 1990s there were fifteen stills in operation, eight wash and seven spirit, one of the bigger distilleries in the country. Now there’s five wash and four spirit. Changed days, but why sup the mythical uisghe when you can get pished on cheap Polish voddie?
The blown-up images are all that remain of the glory days, the turning of the malt, peat burning in the big kiln, the august distillery patriarch. Modern set-pieces evoke the past in a melancholy homage; the thoughtful-looking manager nosing a dram, the granite-faced cooper, three laughing warehouse boys. Anything to keep the heritage flowing, the tourists smiling. The local is always the authentic, the glossy leaflets will declare, something like that.
‘Hard times right enough but you’re right to say ‘‘we’’.’
‘Not with you.’
‘Well it’s not going to be just me or just you who’s going to sort the problems out, it’ll be us. We’ll sort it out.’
I stare at him. Camp Gary’s right, Slinky really does look like someone who has a permanently itchy arse.
‘That’s why this strike is a . . . disappointment. A real disappointment. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘The vote isn’t in yet.’
‘No. But you’re on leave that day anyway.’
I hold his gaze. ‘Had it booked for a while.’
Slinky holds my gaze a moment too long. ‘Yes . . . So Colleen told me.’ Then he smiles.
That smile. I can’t rid myself of it. It ambushes me. I see thin curling lips in the turn of a water pipe or the sag of the security rope, the swan-like curve where the top of the still becomes the Lyne Arm. If I could see inside the condenser the thin pipe would twist and snake like half a dozen of Slinky’s unctuous smiles, round and round on themselves ad infinitum. When I can’t settle to Paper Moon on Tuesday’s night-shift I switch off the laptop and find myself in front of the mirror in the Stillhouse toilet, trying to re-create that fuckin smile.
It won’t do. The night-shift is a near sacred space. I check the hydrometers and clamber up to the walkway behind the spirit stills, walking along to the three filthy armchairs left in an empty space between machinery as a make-shift rest area. Hardly any light leaches up through the mesh metal floor from the Stillhouse below. Preacher Powell would not have my problem. Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men would not have this problem.
‘And neither the fuck will I,’ I whisper in a slow American drawl.
‘Neither the fuck will you what?’
‘The FUCK is – ’
‘Whoa pardner, calm the beans!’
‘JC. You fucker, scared the shit out of me.’
A small man with full beard and thick curly hair emerges from the gloom. He’s stifling his laughter, offering me a near-full bottle of whisky. ‘Nice, I thought you were going to go Chuck Norris on my ass.’
‘What are you doing creeping about? It’s 3.30 in the fuckin morning.’
‘Just back from a gig. Dundee. I saw the lights and figured you might be on nights.’ Then, mimicking my American accent. ‘If it’d been Rankin or Stan I’d have melted back into the shadows, man, disappeared.’
‘You’re off your head.’ I grab the bottle from him. JC plays accordion and writes melancholy, beautiful ballads. Such a delicate voice. The critics love him, use words like genuine, haunted. He’s been on the cusp of breakthrough for a while and his latest, Gold Mine, might just do it. He runs a micro-label and musical collective called Gate, full of outlaw troubadours, Krautrocky noodlers and alt-doodlers. If I played I’d want to be on Gate.
JC slumps in an armchair. ‘S’up dude?’
‘Same old.’
‘And that loving wife of yours?’ He’s smiling again.
‘Wedding fever.’
‘Don’t be such a miserable fucker. Looking forward to playing by the way. Got Pepe lined up for the drums, Aileen on guitar.’
‘Least that’s something to look forward to. You will not believe what Amber and Peter want to do. Actually, you might.’
JC looks expectant.
‘Ice sculpture. Of a swan. Maybe doves. He’s going to do it himself.’
JC nods, mock-impressed. ‘Now that . . . is . . . class.’
The hangover will be a bitch. JC leaves just before six with not much left in the bottle. I must be reeking of whisky and eat a whole packet of chewing gum, load up on coffee. At the change of shift I make sure I keep a careful distance from Stan, wouldn’t put it past him to grass me up.
Grass me up. Something I might have said back in high school. But this place is a continuation of school, with thinner hair, bigger waists and 24/7 internet porn rather than hidden under your dad’s bed. All the envy, hate and social psychoses remain as well, set hard.
I’ll never rid myself of them. Half the buggers here got the same school bus until we all left at 16. We’ll all die together too, attending each other’s funeral until there’s nobody left. Who’ll be last man standing? Only JC escaped. I envied him this, a bit, but then he came back! Three years of playing his way around Australia and NZ and back he eventually trotted.
So what’s the point? The same dismal patterns will eventually re-establish whatever shore you wash up on. New York, Beijing, Skegness . . . I would’ve ended up with different children and a different wife but they’d have been just as peculiar as the ones I actually have. It might have been my daughter doing karate moves in the snow, my son demanding an OK! wedding.
JC’s right, I’m a miserable fucker. I stare at the sky and stumble into a bank of snow. If my wife’s looking out the window she’ll be shaking her head. She’ll know I’m pissed if she gets close enough so I’ll hide in the shed until she buggers off. That leaves the rest of the day. The hangover will stop me sleeping. I’ll end up re-reading the journal emails, I know it. I told JC, who was intrigued. But he’s an artist, he’s supposed to be interested in life’s little melodramas. As for the question about me believing my mother’s story? Shrewd bastard. And of course he asked who’s sending the emails. No idea, I said. No idea at all.
* * *
‘How are you Mr Drever?’ asks Nurse Ratched.
‘Doing fine. Had better days.’
‘I’m sure. But some have better days than others. You know how it is, you’ve been visiting your father for a long time.’
‘Aye, it’s all relative I guess.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Like everyone here.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘All the residents, they’re all relatives. Someone’s father, mother, sister.’
Her glare flickers between contempt and confusion. Ratched isn’t really her name but she was straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She’d set the ECT clamps with glee. ‘Very droll.’
‘Not my best. Bit tired, must be needing a holiday.’
‘A lot of our residents would bite your arm off for a holiday.’
Bite your arm off? Like a Hammer horror, the old folks as the undead, ripping off limbs. I persist with the levity. Unwise. ‘Not a bad holiday here though eh, sitting around all day.’
&
nbsp; ‘That . . . I doubt.’ Her look has very definitely decided on contempt.
‘I’m only – ’
‘Take a look around Mr Drever. We do our best to keep everyone amused and active, but the best stimulation always comes with . . . independence.’
‘Of course.’
‘Which is why changes of routine are so important for the residents. It’s been a while since we’ve seen you.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘But at least you remembered. And that means you’ve got more in common with people here than you realise. All our residents are remembering, it’s what they do. They sit. They remember.’
I can only nod. I hate coming here. Nurse Ratched is always immaculate, not a mole-hair out of place. She’s in her late-forties and the 1940s is where she truly belongs. The primness I don’t mind. It’s the self-righteousness and moral superiority that make my skin crawl.
That and the smell. The odour of sagging, failing bodies. It followed me from the centre of the village where I’d parked, out the single track mile to the care home. Rather the sub-zero walk than getting the car stuck in a snowdrift. That smell, my father’s carried it for years. Is that why my wife slaps on more and more of those lotions, a futile attempt to mask the inevitable? Disdain. The word suddenly drops into my mind, cold as witch’s tit. It’s disdain I feel for old people. For their physical decline, for not being young, for allowing themselves to be locked in this Victorian prison, half-invisible behind the snowy fuzz, the whole place and everyone in it slowly fading out of existence. I know this camouflages a deep-seated fear of old age, I’m not that deluded. Even the Ego of Drever acknowledges death.
Nurse Ratched leads me into the conservatory. I’m glad of the heat after the freezing walk but give it three minutes until the itchy sweats. There’s half a dozen residents, sitting alone or sleeping in chairs. Most of them have books and newspapers beside them though nobody is reading. And no-one is watching the flat-screen TV blaring down from a gantry.
My father’s sitting in one of those hydraulic chairs. He’s cleared a patch on the steamed-up window and is leaning forward and staring outside, very intently. Every time I visit I try to feel nostalgia, empathy, kindness . . . Every time I muster only guilt at failing to feel what I think I’m supposed to. Nurse Ratched told me he’s had a bad couple of nights and obviously expected me to enquire further. I didn’t, why bother going through the motions of concern when she’s got me pegged as a sociopath anyway? She said I should make sure not to upset him because he seemed to be ‘getting more emotional these days’. These days. The insinuation was obvious and she’s right. If I visit more often I’ll be better able to make informed observations about the patterns of my father’s daily life, what his mental state is likely to be given certain circumstances and therefore how long I should stay, what I should say.
I’m surprised by the warmth in his eyes. He turns slowly when I take his hand, like he’s known I was there all along. There are a few brief moments of recognition before his gaze clouds. When he places his hand against my cheek it’s like he’s been told to and can’t quite remember why.
Little I say will be remembered. That’s the thing about dementia, nothing sticks. I could take his hand and tell him I’ve been sent some emails (they’re like letters dad) from my dead mother, remember her, your wife who left us decades ago? I could drop in questions to test her story; where did she work and did she have a cousin called Morven. Maybe he could reassure me that the emails were full of lies and I should go back to thinking of her in the way I’ve always tried, as someone who doesn’t matter because she’s never existed.
I get back to the car just after twelve-thirty. The dashboard display says minus 9. Even as I look it drops to minus 9.5. The cold is vicious but I leave the heater off, punishing myself, I guess, for being able to leave that place and the envy that hides behind his clouded gaze. My footprints stretch back across the narrow bridge and up the single-track. Time and again for years I’ve been coming here and always the same emptiness. No signs of life and in the absence of colour no more ambiguities. Just never-ending white, an oppressive, unmoving nothingness.
Which is still better than the home. The manager intercepted me before I escaped. If a fit lad like me can’t make it what chance for the inmates? Again he wanted to offload his guilt about the home’s looming closure. Again he was sorry it had come to this state of affairs. Again he reminded me that a transfer home is keeping a space open, but it is becoming critical that you sign the necessary documentation. Needless to say he could facilitate the matter, help out in some way, at any point, just . . . He let it trail off, whatever he was going to say left unsaid, so how could I know what he was actually offering, if anything? Just par for the course, I usually leave the home perplexed, as if my father’s dilapidated mind has somehow affected my own.
I close my eyes, try not to think about the confused old man who stared at me blankly but was happy to let me hold his hand. I don’t want to think of his sudden tears, or Nurse Ratched ordering me to just go now. I don’t want to stand again in the conservatory doorway, watching her cradle my father’s head and rock him back and fore with such gentleness. We had been silently sitting. I’ve no idea why he became hysterical. I hadn’t mentioned anything about my mother, even though JC suggested I did. I should have stuck with my first instinct and stayed home. There’s the lesson. Staying put, maintaining sweet ignorance.
If only.
Another email’s waiting. Synchronicity, you can’t do anything about it. Still
Why did my mother decide not to send her journal back in 1999, leaving it to vinales2004 to send it now, over a decade later? I can see her razoring gaze, watching with amusement what she’s set in motion. This not wanting to remain a stranger is a scam, the journal never intended as a mea culpa for my benefit but a catharsis to soothe her conscience. If not she would’ve fuckin sent it. Am I really supposed to believe the alternative, that the ego-monster spent years agonising about sending or not sending before death overtook the decision? Seriously?
The more I read the less sure I am how to react. Not that there isn’t plenty of choice. I’ve spent so long obsessing about her that there’s no emotion, no variation on any theme that I haven’t dug up, raked over. I could’ve tracked her down, sure, but I don’t understand people who go searching for the parents who gave them up for adoption or whatever. Was the fact of the abandonment not a vague clue? Why track the bastard down to be traumatised all over again? There are far too many seekers out there and seeker sounds just like sucker.
Better to obsess on your own terms. Better a range of options than the truth. And this journal can reveal no truth because I don’t believe any of it. How much can we ever believe anyone’s story?
Havana, Cuba, 4/4/1999
Goodness me, those last few pages! I should be more sensitive. The problem is it has never, ever been a strong point. But I should be able to project, as I tell my pupils; to master English you must step into the world of an English speaker. Some of them are very good at it, they know instinctively how to play the game, how to lie.
However, I can’t begin to imagine what it would feel like to read my dead mother’s journal, knowing that she was alive when she just wrote this sentence. I should be able to empathise, to understand that this is your first connection with a mother who left your life a long, long time ago, that woman without a face who has suddenly reappeared in your life for no apparent reason other than that she is dead.
There is another reason, of course, there usually is. I want you to know me, James. I realise you have no means of engagement other than these few words and I have considered how you might react. In my maudlin midnight drunks I imagine your wretched pain at a rapprochement that will not now happen. Then, come dawn’s bleak hangover, I have heard your screaming derision. But whatever your reaction it will not be in the face of my physical presence. It must be very frustrating to know that you cannot
have the last word.
What about my presence? I am not tall, I am not short. I am average, but I do not have an average temperament. Average would have kept me in Edinburgh with you and Edward. It was expected, certainly, but it would not have been right. And my face? It is lined now, furrowed like the fields of Caithness, tanned a deep brown. When I first met the tropical sun I thought I would never get used to it. Just biological panic, within six months I wanted it hot, hotter! I am 61 years old and who knows how I made it. Sometimes the bottle winks, like it knows the secret. I can never decide if booze helped me get this far or blocked a different, easier path.
What else? Some have told me I am swift to anger but quicker to forgive. It is an unfortunate combination, it being difficult to maintain relationships on the see-saw extremes. They have come and gone, those relationships, and mostly they are gone. It is not my intention to appear self-pitying, but I have no control over your conjectures. Leonardo in the café has told me that that after six shots of aguardiente I look like Paul on the road to Damascus, just before he sees God. Leonardo, he has such respect for my journey, the struggle to follow my own star. Note, however, that I resemble a biblical patriarch, not a matriarch. And perhaps my femininity has indeed been a casualty of struggling against so many supercilious men for so long.
These nights are ever more muddied. I did not think the act of writing a journal would be so complicated, such a minefield of doubt and projection. These connections with a previous self can be so difficult to find. I have spilled my drink and the writing pad is sodden. Ten minutes on the balcony is all it takes to dry out. Maybe I should try it myself! Did you grasp what Leonardo said? That I look like Saint Paul just before he sees God. Such is my luck, to always be on the fringes of the revelation. If I had been paying more attention I would not have chased it all around the bloody world but probably found it in the rain bouncing off an Edinburgh corporation bus, heard it in the wind slicing up Craig’s Close.
The Stillman Page 5