The Stillman

by Tom McCulloch

  ‘Eh?’

  Maggie laughs and turns to the Boy with an exaggerated incline of the head. She’s flirting and the Boy deals with it like a pro, even a little wink! ‘A purple velvet kilt, I think it’d be well cool.’

  And now they’re both looking at me, amused, and I’m the one who’s getting embarrassed. Only my father isn’t looking at me, his hand hovering over Mr Bacon the Butcher. ‘Velvet,’ I say. ‘Have you spoken to your mother? How much is that going to cost me and I – ’

  ‘I’m only joking dad.’

  ‘About what?’ my wife says, breezing back into the living room. Even if the Boy had given an answer she wouldn’t have been interested, her attention now entirely focused on the person who appears behind her. Jack. He’s red-faced, still flushed with the admiration of his followers.

  ‘Hi Jim. I saw you’d ducked out and thought I’d pop down and tell you the latest. I thought Katie would want to know too. It’s a special feeling, knowing that solidarity still means something.’

  ‘Jack.’

  I haven’t even sat down yet and plonk myself down beside the Boy.

  ‘Weasel words and contradictions,’ says Jack.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘The company was ‘‘extremely disappointed’’ with the strike. It’s like getting told off by yer mammy! They’re ‘‘taking advice’’ and ‘‘open to conciliation’’ but ‘‘reserve the right to respond accordingly’’.’

  ‘Sounds like a threat.’

  ‘Smoke and mirrors. They’re playing to their own gallery. They’ll be round the table in a week, mark my words.’

  ‘Brilliant, isn’t it,’ says my wife.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You’re right, it isn’t a victory yet. The danger’s still there. But I reckon they’re ready to negotiate.’

  ‘Amazing what a strike will do.’

  ‘Damn right, Jim. The working class hasn’t rolled over just yet.’

  My father suddenly explodes into one of his coughing fits. Apparently they’re nothing to worry about. Nurse Davidson said sometimes he forgets to swallow and then saliva builds up and goes down the wrong way. I mean, how can you forget to swallow? Maggie rubs him gently on the back and wipes his mouth with a tissue. ‘Well. Am I getting a new kilt or not?’ he blurts out. He’s frustrated, angry at having drawn attention to his frailty.

  ‘Course you are!’ But I sound impatient rather than light-hearted. ‘We have to get going so you better get ready.’

  ‘Sorry,’ says Jack. ‘I didn’t mean to hold you up.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re a bit busy Jack.’

  ‘No hurry Jack, stay for a coffee,’ says my wife.

  ‘Well I don’t know about – ’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be a while anyway.’ She raises her eyebrows towards my father. ‘So you want a kilt as well, do you Dad?’

  ‘That’s kind, but I better get going,’ says Jack.

  ‘See you then,’ I say.

  ‘Peter!’ My father gets to his feet, scattering the Happy Families. He makes his way over to Jack and sticks out a bony hand. ‘What a pleasure it is to meet you. I hear you make Amber very happy.’

  ‘I think – ’

  My wife touches Jack’s hand, an excuse to touch, a quick smile that says just roll with it, any explanation would only confuse him. ‘Yes,’ she says, looking at Jack, ‘he makes us all very happy.’

  The Town. The Town. Land of dreams for a country boy. JC and I would come by bone shaking bus, twenty miles from the distillery. There was a cinema, a model shop that sold Gatt guns and fishing tackle, and a barman in The Gordon Arms who served us underage. He’d give your hand a little stroke when he handed over the change but we put up with it. It was booze! We were getting served! One day he was gone and he’s probably still doing time.

  The Gordon Arms didn’t last much longer, like the rest of the Town, the old-skool shops that disappeared one by one, the shoe stores with the high-stacked boxes, the sticky Formica cafés and someone’s granny serving, always someone you knew, the tweedy clothes shops with hostile sales assistants and an absence of customers. No much wonder the Town went nuts when the malls came. There’s three hypermarkets now, we can’t get enough, strategically placed on the outskirts: north, south and east, leaching the last independent life from the town centre. It’s complained about, sure, but no-one really cares. If we did we wouldn’t load our trolleys three feet high and keep on coming back for more, more, more.

  The changes were insidious but I remember the winter Saturday I finally noticed. I was in a clothes store in the giant shopping mall, the Northgate. You’d hear people in the street, you going down the Northgate . . . there’s three new shops opened in the Northgate. So there I was in the fabled Northgate, near-drooling in front of a rack of socks and all of a sudden I seemed to come across myself again. A few more minutes of muzak and I might have been lost forever.

  That’s when I opted out of any more change. Seems more authentic to be a moaning old fart, my line of retreat drawn by a slant of dusty light across those old shops, people, pubs. Strange thing is, I’ve become nostalgic not for something lost, but the hope I once had that the Town could be transformed into somewhere more exciting, more persuasive. I knew this was impossible, even back then. But the memory of unattainability is still preferable to wandering those epic stores pondering loyalty points and two for one offers.

  It’s hot in the car but my father likes the heat. The local radio is annoying but my wife likes the DJ. I glance in the rear-view mirror at the Boy. He’s squeezed between Maggie and my father and looks anxious, probably cracked an unwanted erection. It’s strange to think that his interaction with this place will be so different from my own. No doubt he’ll discover his own bemusement, this era of endless choice will be his line in the memory sands.

  I park in my usual place on the top floor of the multi-storey car park opposite Tesco No. 1 in the north of the Town. The Boy and his mother complain, as usual, that I haven’t parked at the southern end, opposite Tesco No. 3. I know all the shops and the recently extended shopping centre are up that end but I like seeing the sagging pubs and ramshackle charity shops, the To Let boards that would swing in the wind if Ken Loach wanted to film an obvious metaphor.

  We straggle up the High Street in a long silent line. My wife bustles ahead with me behind, Maggie pushing my father in the collapsible NHS wheelchair and the Boy bringing up the rear. He’ll be checking out Maggie’s arse and now I’ll have to stop myself doing the same. I’m nervous, we might bump into Adelina at any moment. I feel like my teenage self, embarrassed to be walking down the street with my father, desperately hoping that I don’t come across any of my friends or, horror of horrors, Samantha Christie, whom I fancy to bits.

  A few years ago the Victorian arcade that houses MacDonnell and Son, Gentlemen Outfitters was given a makeover. Kudos to the council for trying to snag the tourists who were buzzing past the Town in ever-bigger swarms. The consultants created authenticity on steroids; hunting, shooting ‘n fishing gone mental, boutiques selling tweeds, local beer and cheese, hand-crafted soaps . . . And a heritage centre too, with old town ghost walks and fire-side storytelling. It’s like one of those twenty-second segments between songs on the Eurovision Song Contest, an abstraction of place and identity to facilitate instant understanding. If I was a tourist I’d come here, darn tootin! That sets me all jumpy again, looking around for Adelina.

  The kilt outfitter is one of the last survivors from my childhood. And the irony is that the shop fits right in to the pimp my heritage vibe. The more cynical visitor might think that these clustering racks of kilts, sporrans, and dress-shirts, the ancient mustiness and the mounted stags heads, are some kind of affectation, the matronly manageress in blue apron delivered straight from central casting. But it’s been like this ever since I can remember and that’s the saddest thing, even the last remaining pockets of authenticity feel manufactured.

  ‘Arms out,’ she orders, tape mea
sure round her neck.

  My wife holds a hand to her lips. To stop her from laughing or crying with nostalgic delight, I can’t tell.

  The world is happening to me, again. I’m placed within it yet apart. I stand to the left of the counter, the Boy in the middle and my father to the right. We’ve inadvertently arranged ourselves in height order. If someone hit our head with a little hammer we’d make different tones, a human glockenspiel. We turn when told by the crabby old woman, saying not a word as she works her way along, taking her measurements and scribbling her notes.

  ‘Tea there,’ she announces, nodding towards one of those eighties teas-maids. ‘Back as soon as.’

  We make tea, drinking from cracked mugs and wandering among the kilts. They’ve got football tartans these days, and those open-necked shirts with the leather laces that got popular after Braveheart, like the Celtic hand-fasting ceremony. Identity rediscovered, Hollywood-style. The outfits that are handed to us fit perfectly. We don’t have a family tartan and have gone with ‘Ben Lawers Thistle’. It’s as subdued as I could find, greys and dark blues instead of the usual lurid reds, or worse, those yellowy-greens, like last night’s curry spewings.

  The old matron is pleased with the results of her expertise and smiles for the first time.

  We stand there in differing states of self-consciousness. My wife takes a picture on her mobile that will end up framed on the living room sideboard. The Boy says he’s not wearing any pants and gives Maggie a pervy smile. She shakes her head and pretends to be shocked. My father hasn’t heard, he’s pulling at his bow-tie; it doesn’t feel right, Katie can you fix it? He’s shrinking in front of me, day by day becoming smaller, more hunched. But still that proud set to his jaw. He must have worked hard on that when my mother left, staring into endless midnight mirrors, wondering what this bastard John Tannehill had that he lacked.

  Job done we disperse. 4.30pm, I stand at the door to the arcade, vaguely listening to the fiddle music on the tannoy. Streetlights cast a jaundiced glow on the piles of pavement slush. Rain, snow or shine, everyone hurries round here, my family no different, making their separate bee-lines to God knows where. Not that it matters, we’re all just happy to be released from proximity to each other until we have to rendezvous in the car-park at six.

  I’m still edgy. Every corner’s a sudden meeting waiting to happen. A headache is settling in for the evening. I check up and down the half-empty street before setting off. If I see Adelina I can duck back inside the arcade and make a Bond-like escape via the River Street exit.

  The Post Office is just round the corner but there’s a long queue. It takes an age for my turn and any moment I’m expecting my wife to walk past the window and see me standing there. The counter-girl comes back with eight letters, the first time I’ve collected anything from the PO Box in five years. Hardly makes all those direct debits seem value for money.

  ‘You looked good in that kilt.’

  She must have crept up the stairs like a cat. ‘How long have you been standing there?’

  ‘Can I not admire a fine figure of a man?’

  ‘But Jack’s not here.’

  ‘Oh stop it!’ A slight reddening of the neck though.

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Just stop it. I came up to give you a compliment, what’s so wrong with that?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said thank you. For the compliment.’

  She smiles, mouths a sarcastic ok. ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

  I glance down at the pile of brochures and leaflets for alternative care homes that Nurse Davidson left behind. They’ve got names like Lavender Grove and Fair View Heights, cover images of well-groomed staff and smiling residents doing flower arranging, jigsaws. ‘For dad.’

  ‘Want me to help? I can – ’

  ‘No! That’s ok. It’s something I want to do myself, you all made it quite clear it was my responsibility.’

  ‘I know, but – ’

  ‘No buts!’ I’m holding an arm out, as if I‘m directing fuckin traffic.

  She hesitates, then moves back to the door. ‘As you wish.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s asleep. Dinner’ll be a while. I’ll shout you.’

  How long am I going to stare at the brochures? I should throw them aside and cross to the window, look at my disembodied reflection that I want to stop mirroring my ridiculous actions and do something different, just once after all these years, do something different that might actually be useful, like gather up the brochures, walk downstairs and fling the lot on the fire. That way I wouldn’t have to see Adelina’s neat handwriting on those blue envelopes ever again, I wouldn’t have to think about what’s in those letters I smuggled upstairs among the pages of Lavender Grove and The Willows. I would just watch them burn.

  The reflection lets me down. He gives an exaggerated shrug like Marcel Marceau then sits and separates the letters and the brochures. I really do have a twinge of guilt about finding another home for my father and switch on the laptop to send an enquiry email. But I don’t. Vinales2004 again. Best laid plans of mice and monkeys and all that.

  I mean, what would you do?

  Havana, Cuba, 17/4/1999

  And what of John Tannehill, the love of my life? From our first meeting onwards I saw him everywhere, I still do. The shadow cast by the lemon tree, that’s him, about to step into the light with that sad, unreachable smile, the figure at the door of the midnight cantina, gone when I turn. Forgive the sentiment of an old lady, I blame the tropical sun, frazzling the synapses for the last forty years.

  John returned to Edinburgh one more time. The September of 1961. He had lost weight and become more agitated. It was the morphine. He had spent time on leave in a Hindu retreat, a few weeks in Algiers with a group of French painters and writers. Haiti was ‘troubled’ he said, ‘an uneasy place’ where he’d been terrified by visions. His poems caught it all, a tumble of Basho, Snyder and Rilke.

  I stayed on board for the week that John was docked. Yes, your mother chose to look after him rather than her one year-old child. He had a malarial fever but was still shooting up three times a day. I was terrified by the thought of him leaving a second time but leave he did. I stayed on the quayside for two hours after The Montana sailed.

  Your poor father Edward, he should be canonised. A gentler man I have never known. The deeper I sank the kinder he became. I simply could not understand it. He would bring you to me and I would burst into tears. Yet still he would try. I spent hours alone, poring over the books that John had left me; ‘Howl’ by Ginsberg, Basil Bunting’s ‘Poems, 1950’, ‘Journey to the End of the Night’ by Céline, searching for pieces of him that I would re-assemble in my own words, page after page that I ripped into pieces, looking for the combination that might make him whole again, bring him back.

  He was such a continual presence that it seemed obvious a letter would arrive from him. He was staying with a friend in Tottenham, north London. There was an address on the bottom of the envelope.

  That was when I lost my mind. I told myself that if I left straightaway John would be there when I arrived but if I delayed even a single day he would be gone. It was the Wednesday before Easter, 1962. You were just over two years old. Your father was on an early shift and I waited until his mother had taken you out for a walk. I packed a suitcase and took the midday train from Waverley to Kings Cross. I abandoned my husband and son. Without a second thought.

  Can you picture me? Do you imagine me standing like a little girl lost in the bustle of the Kings Cross commute with my one piece of luggage clasped to my chest? Do you wonder if I was wracked with guilt, ready to take the first train back north, before my disappearance was noticed? Or maybe I stood in cold pouring rain that I didn’t notice, soaked but smiling as the future unfurled and all the hurrying, worrying commuters were the inverse of all the excited possibilities flowing through my mind? The truth is I was all of those things, all and m
ore. I have been all of those things ever since.

  I took the Tube to Seven Sisters and spent two hours trying to find the flat John was staying at. When I finally did I spent another fifteen minutes ringing the bell before it opened a few inches and a suspicious, beady eye peered out. This was Freaky Steve.

  I would come to like Steve, in time, but that first meeting I hated him. He made me stand in the freezing drizzle, firing question after question. ‘I have to confirm your identity,’ he said, ‘anyone could have found John’s letter and claim to be you.’ In the end he let me in. We sat in silence in the filthy kitchen, drinking tea, Freaky Steve in an old dressing gown open to his concave stomach.

  Steve rented the house with his girlfriend Sue. He’d met John a few years back and let him kip down anytime he was back in London. My heart sank when he said that John had shipped out a week ago. I was free to stay for as long as I wanted, so long as I chipped in for the rent.

  John, John, I babbled on to Sue about John non-stop. How was he when you saw him? Did he mention me? I asked the same questions a thousand times, trying to ignore the pity in her eyes. ‘You’ll be together,’ she’d repeat, ever-patient. Sue, I miss her terribly. She is still my secret diamond, cutting through everything, precious.

  At the time, Sue worked in an English language school, St. David’s. It was one of the first in the country, a few cramped rooms in a back street in Marylebone. She got me a start as a teaching assistant. I helped out with the conversational stuff and soon started doing some classes of my own. We sat in front of the electric fire, testing each other on tenses, grammar, pretending to be the wide-eyed children of foreign diplomats that we taught.

  John sent the occasional postcard from Osaka, New York, Sydney . . . full of promises to be back in London by the spring, by Christmas . . . He had left some belongings in Steve’s flat. Did I do the love-struck thing, hold one of his t-shirts to my nose and inhale his scent, close my eyes with a deep sigh? Of course! I would wrap myself in one of those shirts and read his notes, poems and books into the small hours. Rexroth, ‘The Master and Margarita’, Pound’s ‘Cantos’, ‘Under the Volcano’, Mandelstam . . . , John was better than all of them and didn’t even know it. He could have been a superstar but wouldn’t have cared a jot. I adored him for that.