365

by James Robertson

  The wee man paused, looked properly at his interrogator for the first time, and said, ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re being excessively … I mean, for heaven’s sake …’ The important man was dismayed to find he could not complete a sentence. He glanced uneasily at the faces of people now eager to stand out in the rain a minute longer, if there was going to be a scene. They could tell their friends about it.

  The wee man was tearing tickets again, as if he could happily do it for ever.

  The important man’s lady was, unlike her husband, still a politician. ‘The queue’s moving quite fast,’ she said, taking him by the elbow. ‘Perhaps we’ll be lucky.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps,’ he said. As they moved away from the wee bearded man, he muttered, ‘I don’t believe for a minute that chap didn’t recognise me. He’d simply got himself into a corner, and couldn’t back down without losing face.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ the important man’s lady said.

  23 January

  Civilisation

  After three weeks of bloody chaos the Bishop arrived. Horrified, he called an immediate halt to the civilisation programme and summoned the generals for urgent talks.

  ‘There will be no further civilising until we have established the true nature of these creatures,’ the Bishop declared. ‘I’m shocked that you have permitted your troops to act in such an irregular and unjustified manner.’

  The assembled gentlemen looked abashed. One or two hung their heads.

  ‘From what I have learned,’ the Bishop continued, ‘these creatures are quite unlike us. They enjoy eating spiders and ants, the noises that come from their mouths are utterly unintelligible, they fornicate without restraint or censure – indeed, a promiscuous female is held in high esteem among them – and they wander about without a stitch of clothing on. However, strange though all this is, it does not necessarily mean that they are not human and that we should not treat them as such. So before we proceed, I want you to suggest arguments, in relation to each of these habits, in favour of their being human.’

  ‘Well, the French like eating frogs,’ one general remarked. ‘The Muslims refuse to eat pigs. Yet we agree that, for all their faults, the French and Muslims are human.’

  ‘Have you ever heard a Scotsman speak?’ asked another. ‘Or a Hungarian? Despite their barbarous tongues, we allow that they are human.’

  ‘To have sex with anyone except one’s wife is of course a grievous sin,’ a third general said. ‘As for loose women, they are an outrage to God and good society. Nevertheless, though we detest such immorality, who here can say that he is above reproach? And do we not accept that even the worst trollop in the basest brothel is human and not beyond redemption?’

  ‘You have all spoken wisely,’ the Bishop said. ‘But what about this business of going around in the nude?’

  Despite deep concentration, nobody could think of a single example of humans voluntarily and without shame or care wandering about displaying their nakedness for all to see.

  ‘Very well,’ the Bishop said. ‘Let the slaughter continue.’

  And it did – with increased ferocity, for now it had the blessing of the Church.

  24 January

  Without Incident

  Off the motorway and onto the short cut, over the hill: almost as soon as he’d made that decision he was doubting its wisdom. The motorway, gritted and salted, had been black, but on this narrow road there was a fresh white dusting even before it began to climb from the carse.* Perhaps he should play safe, drive the extra ten miles to the city and out through its suburbs to reach home. But there was no easy place to turn the car. Anyway the snow wasn’t that deep. Fifteen uneventful minutes was all he needed.

  At the first bend he felt the tyres spin, grip, spin again. He braked, not heavily, and the car lurched sideways. He steered into the skid, and brought the car to a halt. He let go a deep breath. Okay. Still no room to turn, so he set off again, slipping into second gear but no higher, balancing his efforts to turn the wheel as little as possible against the need for enough speed to cope with the incline. He took corners in the middle of the road. At least at night there was some warning from headlights if someone was coming the other way.

  There was no moon, but his own lights illuminated the snow lying everywhere, giving the landscape an eerie brightness. He was suddenly aware of the loudness of the orchestral music he’d been playing. It filled the car, but he hadn’t heard any of it these last intense minutes. He hit the off button, turned the heating down. He wanted to be alone, to be just himself on the road, to concentrate on the drive, to get home without incident.

  Round the last tricky bend, he crested the summit. All downhill from here. As he thought this, a flickering movement to his right distracted him. On the bank above the road, level with his window, a roe deer was running, its eye full of fear, its lean, brown body shining in the weird light. Such near grace, such wild, white-bummed beauty, and he the only witness. And the deer, outpacing the car, skipped down onto the white road, crossed into the trees, and was away.

  25 January

  A Hero of Mine

  i.m. Angus Matheson

  ‘Heroic’, that was a favourite word of his. Anybody or anything that he admired could be heroic: a stoical philosopher, a daring shinty player, somebody managing to survive in extreme poverty, or perhaps a bird or cat that showed resilience, defiance. All these were heroic in his eyes. He was a teacher of history, and history was full of heroes as well as those who did not come up to the mark. But if this was part of his thinking – that he assessed heroism from an academic viewpoint – it was neither the beginning nor the end of it.

  And although he used the word often, it would be wrong to think that he overused it. When he said it, he meant it. There was weight in the word, and measurement. He came from a place and time that produced heroes, and he recognised and acknowledged them. Against the brutality and dishonesty of the world and the general failings of humankind, heroism mattered to him. When he remembered a heroic person or witnessed or read of a heroic incident he did not want it to pass unnoticed. Even people with whom he disagreed – staunch adherents of a certain bleak religion, for example – could display heroic tendencies, and he would not see them diminished.

  And he was, himself, a hero. He had multiple sclerosis, and he suffered from that cruel disease long enough, and fought it and rode it and swore at it – he was a man of Skye, a Gaelic speaker, and I never heard anyone swear so heroically in English as he could – and it in turn trampled on him yet he was still there after it had done its worst, unbeaten. Gradually the disease wore him down but still he resisted and I think it was he who decided when it was time to go. I remember the last time I saw him, some weeks before he died, and when he said goodbye he said it as if he would not say it to me again.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, and I did not register the tone in which he said it at that moment, but later I did, and I hear it now. ‘Goodbye.’

  26 January

  The Rules

  Outside the restaurant I paused. It was cold on the street – not much above zero – but I wanted a little preview, so I pretended to inspect the menu in the window while taking a look inside. The glass was quite steamed up but I could see figures in there, their heads and hands moving as they talked and ate. It seemed busy, but that was understandable: it was early evening, people had finished work and were having a drink or a meal before whatever was going to happen next in their lives.

  I could see my girlfriend, sitting at a table about halfway back. She was waiting for me, as agreed. She wasn’t alone. Kieran, a guy from her work, was with her. I liked Kieran, I’d met him a few times and we’d played football together once or twice, but why was he with her now? What was going on? Probably nothing. They’d finished work and were having a drink before I turned up and Kieran went home or somewhere else. That was all, probably.

  He was an attractive man, Kieran. I kind of admired him but he worried me too. My girlfrien
d was an attractive woman. Probably I didn’t need to be worried but that wasn’t the point. You can’t just tell yourself not to feel something. They worked together all day and after work they went for a drink. Couldn’t they get enough of each other’s company?

  You’re not supposed to feel jealous. It’s not considered civilised or adult. But when you have a girlfriend you really want to keep, and you remember how you got her but you don’t know why she’s still with you, it’s hard to stick to the rules. I could feel myself boiling up inside. I wanted to burst in there like a tornado, asking no questions and accepting no explanations.

  But I knew what I was going to do was slide like a snake into the jungly heat of the place, give her a loving kiss, then clasp hands with Kieran and say, ‘How are you, Kieran? Good to see you.’ Because that was the civilised, adult way to behave, even if it was killing me.

  27 January

  Related Incidents

  for Emily

  Five bags of sugar. No small weight to carry inside you, but now she has arrived in the world, her first day out. Here, the thaw is on, green appearing as the snow retreats, the sound of water running everywhere. Fifteen miles away, across the hills, across the firth, she is home. New daughter, sister, niece, grandchild, great-grandchild. Only hours old and already she is all these things and more.

  Much further away, an old man is trying to get his clock to go. It is a grandfather clock. He wonders, Is there such a thing as a great-grandfather clock? It’s always been temperamental, but after being moved recently from the corner of one room to the corner of another (a necessary relocation) it has taken to stopping every twenty minutes. The secret is to have it sit on the floor just right, so that the pendulum swings with a regular tick, like a strong heartbeat. Every morning he taps another coin into place under the base, and starts the pendulum. Twenty minutes later the clock stops ticking. But he does not give up. Sometimes it ticks for half an hour. One day it will decide to keep going, as if it has been in that corner, in that room, all its long life.

  One day far into the future, the baby will be an old woman. Her mind will be full of the life she has led, the people she has known, the love she found or lost, memories that bring smiles or tears, a world that has changed beyond anything she could possibly have imagined when she was a little girl. One day, but not yet. For now, her life is unlived, unremembered, unimagined, unwritten. She wakes, she cries, she feeds, she sleeps. Every other discovery awaits her.

  The old man watches the second hand tick round the clock’s face. If he keeps watching, the hand may keep moving. If he turns away, takes up his newspaper or switches on the television, it may not. He knows there is no logic to this hypothesis. Some say that a watched kettle never boils. He thinks it possible that a watched clock may never stop.

  28 January

  Man and Beast

  Off the bus, she overtakes them making their way towards the High Street. It’s the dog that first attracts her attention, a sprightly black and white beast with alert ears and bright eyes. The man, grizzled and weathered and using a stick, is probably much younger than he looks. He is wearing several layers and has a pack slung over his shoulder. The dog stays close to the man’s side, on an invisible leash of – it’s clear at a glance – utter devotion.

  ‘What a bonnie dog,’ the woman says as she falls in with them. ‘What is she?’

  The man eyes her – suspicion followed rapidly by appreciation. Years have made him expert in assessing the motivations of people who engage with him.

  ‘Collie and Jack Russell and a bit of Staffie and something else, no sure what,’ he says. ‘D’ye like dogs?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘Is it all right to clap her?’

  ‘Aye, she’s fine.’ At the corner of the street they pause and the dog lets herself be stroked, but always with an eye on her master: I’m only doing this for you, the look says.

  ‘She’s lovely.’

  ‘She’s my darling. And clever, tae. Goes everywhere wi me. I’m a traveller, ken.’ He assesses the woman again, then adds, ‘A Gypsy. No wan o thae New Age travellers.’ His hand goes towards the dog, who lifts her head to him. Only a true Gypsy, the woman understands him to mean, would have a dog like that.

  They go their ways. She glances back at the man and his dog, her heart lightened by the encounter. She is thinking of how, sitting at the back of the bus, she’d had to admonish a young lad for having his feet up on the opposite seat. Grudgingly he’d removed them, but without looking at her, his attention focused on his phone. Three, four times after that, she’d seen his legs twitch, seen the shift in his slumped posture preparatory to the feet going back up. But each time he’d remembered, kept them on the floor, like a puppy learning. He was still on the bus when she got off. She wonders where his feet are now.

  29 January

  All Will be Well

  for Alice Marra

  A man of quiet genius passed this way last night. He didn’t want his name in lights, he wanted it in brackets, that’s what he said. He wanted others to sing the songs he wrote – in their own way because nobody could sing them his way. And this happened, in a big hall in a big city (not his) for which he once wrote a big non-anthem. (Trust Michael to give the place something it didn’t bargain for. Listen – that’s the sound of high-heid-yins sucking in their cheeks.) So the stage was set, and onto it came wonderful musicians, singers – among them his son and daughter, his brother, others who had been his oldest friends and cronies, and none untouched by his special craft and gift – to play and sing his songs in their own ways. And two thousand of us there to listen, and we were (the ones) in brackets.

  What left me high and dry and stranded came at the end. After his daughter had stood centre-stage, alone but not really alone, and sung the song he’d told her was his finest – and she did it with such bravery and love, you could hear him give his proudest affirmation, ‘Good girl!’ – they came back on, those compañeros of his music world, and finished the night with the only song they could. And all his wise humanity came flooding in, and pouring out, and nothing to stop the tears from falling. Two thousand rose, to applaud the one who wasn’t there, and that provoked another, final song, and I felt a lightness where just before there’d been such heavy weight. I thought of the osprey nest he used to watch, his solicitude for the chick, his pleasure seeing it lift from the nest for the first time, learning flight, its sudden knowledge that it could be done. And Michael – gone yet with us still, as long as we have ears to hear and breath to sing.

  To rise above his loss is fitting tribute. No houseroom for the notion that we can’t. To rise like the bird that lives, and flies, and knows itself alive.

  All will be well, they sang. And it will.

  30 January

  In the Middle of the Wood

  for Gavin

  It is a frightening thing to be lost in the middle of the wood. All your ghosts and fears went there before you, and you thought they were away for good – childish childhood fancies banished by reason and common sense and the need to show the world an adult face. You told your own boys about the middle of the wood, led them there like Hansel and Gretel, but always brought them home again. To have left them would have been a betrayal of everything you were in their eyes: their strong, loving, protective father. But now they are grown and somewhere else, and their mother whom you love so much, you can’t hear her calling you any more. You’re alone, defenceless, a man unmanned. The wind has dropped to a sneer among the trees. And those ghosts and fears crowd in with their mockery and poking fingers.

  It was daylight not so long ago, and you believed you’d enough time and stamina to make it. But then the track ran out, the briars thickened and the dark came down like blood. You thought you’d just about get through, but no, some cold malignity had it in for you. It took your map and compass, your food, your wine and cigarettes, your clothes and sturdy shoes, and left only yourself to you. Looking around to see where you were, who you were, you no longer
knew.

  Bits of you are scattered on the forest floor, hanging ragged from the trees. You scrabble about but it’s hopeless, as quickly as you gather them you fall apart again. You’ve never had to do this before – put life back together. You’re a child, you want to cry, you want a hand to hold. The trees hold out theirs, whip them away again. Trust, certainty, the promise of daylight – wiped. Nothing, any more, is guaranteed.

  People did this to you and strolled away, ignorant or careless of the chaos they left behind. You are the wreckage of their hard ambitions. I’ve left you messages, but I cannot reach you. I hope we meet again, though, and soon – if you find a way out of the middle of the wood.

  31 January

  Fighting Talk

  CHAIRMAN: Mr Humbelby, these are serious matters. You have not been summoned before this committee in order to avoid answering the legitimate questions that we have to put to you.

  WITNESS: I am not avoiding the questions.

  CHAIRMAN: You are treating these proceedings as a game, as if we are trying to catch you out and you are trying not to be caught.

  WITNESS: It certainly feels like that. Like you are trying to catch me out.

  CHAIRMAN: Mr Humbelby, let me ask you again. When your company paid this very substantial amount to your agent, did you or did you not know who would be the ultimate recipient of that payment?

  WITNESS: We did not know.

  CHAIRMAN: Did you try to find out?

  WITNESS: That was a matter for our agent. It was down to him to seal the deal.

  CHAIRMAN: You didn’t care how that was done?

  WITNESS: We are not talking about a contract to supply library books here. This is tricky negotiating territory.