The Stillman

by Tom McCulloch

  I was quiet then. I swirled more wine and knocked it back. I thought of my mother’s collection of photographs in the wooden box and felt an overwhelming sense of futility. ‘You can’t give up, you know. You have to find a way to find Floriano. No matter how much time passes.’

  ‘Your mother was going to do that, help me find him.’

  ‘Floriano?’

  ‘She was going to go to Miami. Then she died.’

  Then she died, I thought. My selfless mother had agreed to help find someone else’s lost son. And then she died. If Adelina saw the anger flare in my eyes she decided to just ignore it.

  Eight

  A two-day blizzard. Impassable roads. The way the world pouuuurs down. As the snow piles heavier I feel lighter, Adelina can’t reach me on my island. But I know she’s coming. I polish my boots to mirror black and look out my least stained boiler-suit. I’m Brando, waiting for Martin Sheen to come creeping with his machete. My wife seethes at my cheeriness, stop whistling that tune, what the hell is it anyway? I say I can’t remember, that it’s driving me crazy too. But I do, and it’s not. It’s The End by The Doors. I see tracer fire in the potter’s night, the orange bloom of napalm strikes. The horror, the horror, I mouth as she stalks away.

  She hates being cooped up but there’s no chance of her getting to work. So she moans, moans about having to look after my father in Maggie’s absence. They sit in the living room, hours on end, my father beside the high-banked fire and a heat that could forge steel, my wife on the sofa and the TV turned too loud. I have no place there, my father bent like a question mark, staring at me as if I’m a vital part of the present but somehow extraneous at the same time. Why doesn’t it bother me more, this father who may not be my father?

  He makes me think of her. My mother. I’m haunted by a throwaway sentence from her journal. I abandoned my husband and son, without a second thought. I watch the decision settle on her face, the slam of the door and hurried steps down Lothian Road, along Princes Street. She’s anxious to get to the station but not too early, doesn’t want to be sitting on the train waiting for it to depart. That would leave too much time for that second thought to arise. She times it perfectly, settling breathlessly into her seat as the guard blows his whistle.

  The caricature’s decaying. I worry about the layers being added by the journal. What if I can’t ever shake off her complete, 3D presence? I guess I should be pleased. It’s what Young Jim wanted, a solution to the Mystery of his Disappearing Mother. Old Jim aint so sure. As the details fill, the hollowness expands, my long-standing suspicion becoming dogma, I just wasn’t enough to change her mind and make her stay. I was lacking. I hate Adelina for this confirmation but am still grateful she sent the journal, I think. That ambiguity again.

  Stan’s in the Stillhouse rest area, face tripping him. ‘Think they mighta shut us down for a couple of days.’

  ‘What would you do at home though?’

  ‘I’ve got a life Jim, I’d fill it!’

  Stan’s a liar. Every time I pass his house he’s slumped in front of the TV; broken, too much of a coward to admit it.

  ‘Still, we better take the shifts while we can get them eh?’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  He stares, holding back the cynical little smile trying to curl the side of his mouth. ‘Strange days.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Come on Jim, you know.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You weren’t out either.’

  ‘The fuck you talking about Stan?’

  ‘Watch this space, s’what they say, innit?’

  He’s not enigmatic enough to have this performance carry the desired impact. Still, I wonder what he knows as he shuffles down the stairs. Very little, fuck all most likely, just searching for a valedictory negative from the apparent victory of the strike that he’d voted against. Stan. He’s a whisper in your ear in the middle of the night, a saboteur of the deepest optimism.

  I force him away and stare at my shiny boots. There’s an undulating howl in the background. From the rest-area window the spruce silently dance, the fuuuush and ruuuuush hidden behind the moaning metal of the Stillhouse, shifting in the storm, a spaceship about to break its moorings and take me and my shiny boots up, up and away from all this.

  How much, truly, do I know about Adelina? A couple of weeks of Cuban compassion does not a paragon make, as old Solomon should have said. I see her collaring my wife, bitterly spitting out the story of that time out of time, a time that shouldn’t matter any more because it’s past, that even when happening was almost past, a cul-de-sac off the main drag of our lives. Does she realise that in a cul-de-sac you eventually have to turn round?

  My wife won’t be shocked. I see a reassuring arm around Adelina’s shoulder, a tired recognition of familiar disappointment and isn’t it just typical of Jim to pollute another, an unsuspecting stranger who just happened to wander into his orbit. Sure, she’d do the empathy, but in a way that left Adelina in no doubt about her lesser status in their shared hierarchy of disenchantment. The two letters I’d written to Adelina, she’s thrusting them in my wife’s face. Then copies of her own to me, my wife’s eyes wider and wider in breath-held suspense.

  I haven’t read those letters yet, they’re hidden in an empty tin of paint in the shed, my shed, where no-one else goes, there to be read in the vice-like cold, a dram to hand and an eye on the kitchen door in case my wife appears and wonders what the hell I’m doing out there.

  Not yet. The blizzard has bought me some time before Adelina re-appears. I need to steel myself before reading. Like blunt agreement the dark spruce bends in the hard wind. I bow back, hands clasped as I’ve seen the Boy do. If Stan’s watching he’ll despise me even more.

  The Stillhouse ticks and clicks and creaks. So many voices tonight, too much to sift, too much in flux. Even when I put my ear to the stills I can’t make anything out, the storm too insistent, and rising. Already the lights have flickered and I’m waiting for the blackout, looking forward to it, the momentary obliterating black before the generator kicks in. I can’t settle, I check the temperature levels in the wash stills and immediately forget them, I’m driven back inside as soon as I open the Stillhouse door, a shove in the chest, the blizzard laughing, laughing . . . Perhaps it’s The End right enough. I put in my iPod and scroll to the song, sing-along Jim and again the lights dim, a brief arrhythmia before settling back to steady fluorescence.

  Why doesn’t it bother me more? This father who may not be my father. He’ll be in bed, frowning at the glow in the dark stars and moons on Amber’s ceiling, or staring into the dying fire. He was always a man of the shadows, reading the lives of the saints until two, three am. Less ephemera by night, I suppose, a clearer view of the Absolute. He was interested in me too, but always that distance, that suspicion that he would always be closer to God than to me. Yes, he was the original ghost, long before me. Is this why it doesn’t bother me? Father? Yes son? I want to kill you, Jim Morrison sings, right on cue. Mother . . . I want to . . .

  And the violence of the music drowning out the end of the line matches the storm outside, the moaning metal and the crack of the gale, the insistent whining above the Hammond organ and Morrison’s shrieks and still that whining I think I recognise but can’t place, that even when I glance at the control panel and see the blinking red light doesn’t register as an alarm and fuuuuck, how did I let this happen, it hasn’t happened for years, number three wash boiling over the neck and gushing into the spirit safe and I’m shutting down the steam, wrenching the spill pipe back to the low wines drain to stop the overflow diverting into the burn and dawn’s tell-tale brown foamy scum and The Doors still building to that frantic crescendo and all this determinism, this certainty of followed protocols from grain to mash to distillation all counts for shit when you take your eyes from the ball and let the parameters shift, other considerations drift, and its embarrassment I feel and Stan’s gloating face and why can’t they all just leave me al
one, my mother, Adelina, my father, my fathers, why won’t they let me put it all back in place like the flow now slowing and the whining alarm stopping and all returning again to the Stillhouse I know and this . . . is . . . the . . . end.

  ‘Hello son.’

  ‘Morning dad.’

  He’s sitting in his chair, hands flat on his knees, a half-lit sphinx. The fire’s already roaring and it’s as if he’s been waiting for me to get in from the night shift, because he’s got something to say.

  ‘Still snowing.’

  ‘It is that.’

  ‘Still snowing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never known anything like it.’

  That’s all he’s got to say. It’s laughable to think that this old man, who has dominated almost fifty years of my life, could be an imposter. I sit on the sofa opposite, still too wired to go to bed, still fretting about the fuck up in the Stillhouse. Rankin was pissed off when he came on shift, annoyed that he’s got to re-distil number 3 wash. I sip my coffee, nowhere else to go since my wife handed me a mug and ordered me out of the kitchen. The blizzard’s created a wedding emergency, the kitchen commandeered for Crisis Command.

  I steal glances at my father’s face, again. Thing is, I’ve never had any reason to look for any physical differences between us. Why start questioning his sharp nose, stumpy neck and big-lobed ears when my every assumption is that this man is my father? Actually, it was never an assumption because it was never a consideration. Peering at him, nothing is so obviously different in our faces to send me scurrying to Tesco’s for a DNA kit. I’ve already dug out my birth certificate and sure enough it names ‘Edward Drever’ as my father. The whole thing’s probably a fantasy of my screwed-up mother, some psychological excuse for running away.

  A sudden racket from the kitchen has my father glancing up from the fire. He looks frightened, confused.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad.’

  ‘Where’s Maggie? Where’s Katie?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have a look.’

  The kitchen door is half-open. I hear Peter’s and Amber’s raised voices as well as my wife’s. I’ve no intention of having a look. It’s not that I don’t want to help. It’s that they don’t want me to.

  Amber’s gabbling on about the wedding rehearsal that’ll have to be re-arranged but she can’t get hold of the registrar; Peter’s complaining about mobile networks dropping like flies.

  It’s impressive, they must’ve walked the three miles from Peter’s place, bent-double against the blizzard just to come here and panic. My wife’s in her element. She’s drawn up a spreadsheet of contingencies, conference calls on Skype, webinars, whatever it takes to make sure the wedding goes ahead. The venison farm up the glen has been contacted to set aside a hundred-weight of meat, Sammy the Keeper commissioned to get it down in the snowcat and we’ll make stew, production-line style, the wedding guests all local and Malky can collect them in the Land Rover with a trailer on the back, no bother, and it’ll be fine Amber, don’t be crying darling, it’ll be different and exciting and people will talk about it for years.

  I sense a vague movement and glance up to see the Boy sitting half-way up the stairs. I cock my head towards the kitchen door, can you believe this? He says nothing and pads back up the stairs. Has he ever studied my face, fretted about whether I’m his father, which genetic legacies he’s going to be landed with when he gets the miserable confirmation?

  ‘Amber and Peter,’ I tell my father when I return to the living room. ‘They’re a bit worried about the snow.’

  ‘The snow?’

  ‘For the wedding, in case it gets worse.’

  ‘Yes. Have the kilts arrived?’

  ‘We’ll have to collect them. We might have to wear suits if the snow keeps up.’

  ‘Snow suits?’

  ‘Just suits. As a fall-back. If we can’t get into town to pick up the kilts.’

  ‘Yes. I see.’

  ‘What about your wedding Dad?’ A sudden welling, out before I could catch myself. But I have to ask, I have to put him right back there with my mother. For a long minute the crackling fire is the only sound. ‘I mean . . . It’s just that you’ve never told me very much about – ’

  ‘Wind.’ He’s suddenly surfaced, mid-memory. ‘Always that Edinburgh wind. She had a blue dress. My shoes were scuffed, my bloody shoes. I polished them in the morning and scuffed them on the bus.’

  ‘Was it a nice day?’

  ‘I kept on seeing that bloody scuff, all day long. Your mother said not to worry, not to worry, she said.’

  ‘Did lots of people come?’

  ‘She looked beautiful that day, she truly did. I don’t think she ever knew how much I loved her. I told her so many, many times but I don’t think she ever properly listened, she never bloody listened.’

  ‘Was John Tannehill there?’

  He looks up, startled. ‘How do you know that name?’

  ‘We’ve talked about him before, Dad.’

  He pokes out a bony finger. ‘Now listen here boy, I don’t want to hear that name again. He stole her.’

  ‘My mother?’

  The finger wavers in space. ‘He took her away on a boat. It was a steamer, maybe. At Leith.’

  ‘Do I look like him?’

  The finger drops. A look of hurt flashes across his face. ‘Why would you ask that? What does that mean?’ But he doesn’t hold my gaze and I know in an instant there’s something here, he’s never been able to lie. My mouth is bone dry, heart hammering. I feel like a little boy.

  ‘Why would you ask that?’

  His voice is breaking. He’s told me everything and nothing and it does bother me, it does bother me.

  ‘Why would you say that?’ he repeats.

  Anger hits me like a hammer, a big fuck off hammer right in the middle of the forehead. I’m up and out of the living room in a short second, down the hallway and into the kitchen. Peter, Amber and my wife look up from the laptop huddle. No one says a word as I slam the door. I step into sudden security light, harsh cold, the house lights we never remember to turn off like a ship’s illuminations in mist, soft yellows with a treacherous reassurance.

  I’ll read her fuckin letters. Right now. I’ll sit in the hard light of the shed and read all about how I miss you Jim and maybe one day I’ll be able to make it across to the UK like I said at the airport when you were leaving, my aunt runs a Cuban restaurant in London and can you imagine me in a little waitress outfit and Floriano will be with me if I’ve managed to get to Miami and track him down and we’ll get to know each other again, I’m so desperate for that, he always was such a sweet little boy, I miss him so much but I have no idea about where he is although Little Havana is still the best bet and the money you left me will get me over there soon, soon enough when I make the necessary arrangement and I hope this letter isn’t intercepted, these letters that never capture exactly what I mean and wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit together again at the little restaurant in Las Terrazas, the sky so blue here today, so blue, is it like that with you, Jim, it was so wonderful to read your last letter about what you have been doing and yes, I would love to climb a Scottish mountain with you and huddle beside a rock in the rain and just be close, just be close again to you and might this not be possible, one day, the world so full of possibilities so why say that you cannot write to me anymore, why after two letters must you say that, what has happened, of course the distance makes it difficult but it should also make it so much more important, so much more special and something to fight for, but I will keep on writing to you regardless and I will manage to get away from Cuba and I will see you again but I will not write anymore because there are important things that should not be said in a letter but only face to face and until then I will not be a fool any longer although I only wish you had not told me you loved me.

  I love you. I repeated it in both the letters I sent her. She said the same in every letter she sent me, twice a week for five weeks before I
stopped going to the post office to pick them up.

  I’m surprised she kept writing for so long after that, especially without a reply. Eight more letters. I stare at the two I’ve just read. Six others are waiting in date order. They’ll remain unread. Email, that’s what matters these days, not these neat, handwritten letters. Another one’s coming, another attachment. It’s inevitable. It’s been inevitable since I first saw Adelina.

  Havana, Cuba, 21/4/1999

  Havana is so soft tonight, the smell of jasmine, cooling stone. Yet I am sad. Leonardo knew, Leonardo who knows the soul. He reached across and touched my face, asked what was wrong. He holds a candle for me, as have others. But none are like Leonardo, none have ever known how to listen the way he does. I have seen the innocence of the full moon on his face so many times and felt worthless in comparison. If he says I look sad I listen, sometimes only a saint can find a way in.

  Sadness and guilt are one and the same. It took me years to realise. My guilt about you has been ever-present, the sadness growing over time. They combine, now, in an emotion beyond definition.

  I tell myself it is too late to amend. There is no rewind button, no re-claiming of an integrity lost a lifetime ago. This cowardice is a failing, yes, but an impassable one. Some are able to atone but I know that my ego is too strong to allow it. That is why your father loved Catholicism, he craved the wiping of the slate that comes in confession. My guilt does not give itself up so easily, my sadness cannot be consigned to oblivion by the blandishments of a priest. No, it’s a primitive religion for simple souls.

  Still, I sometimes wish for it, I long to blink in the clear light that will follow my long-overdue confession, I long to just be.

  But I am too fearful, too fearful to let go of this diseased ego and clear the way for true atonement. As I am too fearful of you. That is why you do not have to worry about me suddenly turning up in your life like a bad melodrama, begging forgiveness. I may even have gone too far with this journal, I know. But I have to write it, if only for myself. There it is encapsulated, my terminal selfishness.