We turned off the main road and cut eastward, the last twenty miles to home. Through the passenger window I glimpsed a white shape moving among the trees. It was a glimpse of something rare and special, as yet unidentified. We turned back, and there she was, the white hind, in a group of five. The other four deer had been camouflaged against the bark and brown undergrowth, but not her. She stood out, single, yet not alone. In days gone by she’d have been a prize, a hunter’s quest. But to us, at least, she did not exist as a target, something waiting to be killed. To us she meant something else, but what? We did not know.
16 May
Night Train to Montrose
The opening shot is of a flat, cold, grey expanse of water with the dawn coming up. Everything is still and peaceful, just the call of a gull and the sound of wings flapping on the water. And then the camera pans slowly, revealing the railway viaduct and the town silhouetted against the brightening sky, with a train steaming across the viaduct into the little station by the water, the Montrose Basin. The platform is deserted except for a porter and a trolley loaded with mailbags and when the train stops the guard’s van door opens and the guard steps down and the porter starts heaving the bags in like he’s throwing in bodies, and even if you don’t know what’s coming, that’s what you think of, bodies. And I believe I’m right in saying that the number of mailbags is exactly the same as the body count in the film. And while this is going on nobody else gets off the train.
Then the guard looks along the platform and you can see he’s about to blow his whistle and at that moment a carriage door swings wide and a man in a fedora steps down. This is Skinner, who’s been away for years and has come back to settle some scores. Who was it played him, Robert Ryan? I think it was Robert Ryan. Anyway, he slams the door and at the same time the guard blows his whistle and the train lets off steam and begins to move, and that’s the cue for all the ducks and other birds in the Basin to take off in a huge commotion of noise and movement, darkening the sky.
Skinner looks at the porter but the porter turns away and then you see the three brothers, the McFees, walking in a huddle along the road to the station. They’ve been hired to stop Skinner before he even starts. They look tough and mean but you’ve already seen Skinner’s eyes and you know they haven’t a chance. And everything goes from there.
It is a great film, but completely neglected now. There was a sequel too, Bad Day at Brechin, but that never did a thing.
17 May
Over
This happened a long time ago, back before the days of the internet, Skype, mobile phones, texting, all that. A young man, not much more than a boy really, was walking along an Edinburgh street. On one side of him, terraced houses; on the other, open views to Arthur’s Seat, trees not fully in leaf, a bench, railings. He went to the bench, sat down, stood, walked again. Pacing, that’s what he was doing. The turrets of Holyrood Palace were visible beyond the railway lines. What did he care about palaces? A burial ground was below him. To hell with the dead! He paced in the other direction. He’d been in one of the houses across the street, queuing for hours, but it wasn’t a house, it was the American Consulate. If you wanted to visit the USA you went to the Consulate and filled in a form and they gave you a visa and stamped your passport, unless you were some kind of undesirable. He wasn’t undesirable, he’d been in the USA the year before, as a student, and he was desirable, he was desired. There was a girl waiting for him, they were in love, they’d been in love, she wanted him to go back, he wanted to go, he didn’t want to go, he couldn’t afford it, of course he could afford it if they were in love, their lives were together in front of them, but it was over, he loved her but not the way he once had, it had gone. Maybe if she came to Scotland … But he had to go there because she had a job, somewhere to live, he had nothing, not even the price of an air ticket but he could get that if he really wanted to go, but he didn’t, deep down he didn’t, and that was why he was pacing, knowing that he had the stamp in his passport, that he wasn’t going to use it, that he’d have to call her, write to her, he’d have to say, ‘I’m not coming,’ and it would break her heart, it was breaking his heart, but it was over, inside he knew it was over.
18 May
The Library
One day she decided to open her own library. She collected all the Ladybird books in the house – there were ten, ranging from Pippety’s Unlucky Day to Shopping with Mother and The Silver Arrow: A Robin Hood Adventure – because she wanted the library’s books to be the same size, and also these fitted neatly into a shoebox. She cut up sheets of paper and drew columns on them to record the loans, and stuck one sheet in the front of each book with a dab of glue. She made cardboard tickets and issued one each to her mother, father and big brother. In the real library you were allowed three tickets, but this was her library and she made the rules, and this way they would have to come back each time they wanted a different book. Using her brother’s printing set she made a date stamp with the next day’s date, because another rule was that you could only borrow a book for one day at a time. And that was the library ready to go.
Her brother didn’t seem to understand that the library was a game you had to play seriously. He objected to her having used his printing set, and to the fact that his Robin Hood book had been incorporated into her library. He tried to liberate it. She said that if he didn’t behave she would have to cancel his ticket. To her surprise he did behave, in fact he played the game quite nicely. She showed him the different books and asked which one he would like to borrow. He chose The Silver Arrow. She stamped it with the next day’s date but said he could bring it back sooner if he liked, the library would be open until four o’clock.
As soon as the book was in his hands he tore the loan sheet from it and ran away laughing. She burst into tears. It was the first time there’d been a theft from the library. Even her mother borrowing Shopping with Mother, returning it and immediately taking out Pippety’s Unlucky Day didn’t fully console her.
The library was closed the following day. It never did reopen.
19 May
The Orphan Grinder
My father was a rich and powerful man. When I was small I thought he was the richest, strongest man in the world. I guess all children think that of their fathers, for a while at least. I loved him very much, but I was also afraid of him. He was so sophisticated yet there was something animal about him, something wild. He smelled of the outdoors even though his place of work was an office in the heart of the city.
He was always working, always busy. Still, every night he found time to give me a bedtime story and a good-night kiss. His last words were delivered in a kindly but firm tone. ‘Sleep tight, my dear. Be good and the orphan grinder won’t come.’
The orphan grinder! How many thousands of children have fallen asleep half in terror of the orphan grinder, and half-secure in the knowledge that they would be safe from him! According to my father, he was a tall, thin man with spidery legs and great hands with clawed fingers, who carried orphans off in an enormous shopping trolley. Attached by bolts to his kitchen table was one of those old-fashioned mincers that you turn with a handle, pushing the meat through from the top. But the orphan grinder didn’t use meat, he used orphans. He ground them down and filled pies with the mixture that came out at the other end. The orphan grinder had a wicked, drooling grin on his face as he crammed the little bodies, head first, into his dreadful machine.
I know now it was only a story, but when you are a child it is hard to distinguish between stories and reality. One day, however, when my father offered his usual kiss and gentle admonition, I at last protested. ‘But, Daddy, I’m not an orphan!’
He looked at me with love in his blue eyes. ‘No, my dear, you are not. But millions of girls and boys are, the world over, through no fault of their own.’
‘And will the orphan grinder come for them?’ I asked.
My father gave a wolfish smile and chuckled. ‘He already has,’ he said, ‘he already has.’
20 May
Lift
You always took the lift because the stairs weren’t safe. The only thing about the lift was not to get in if somebody was already in it. When the doors opened, you only got in if it was empty. Once you were in you were safe, unless it stopped for someone else on another floor. If that happened you had to get out. Before they got in. Then, after the doors closed, you pressed the button and waited for it to come back. You were on a floor you didn’t know, which wasn’t good but it was better than being in the lift with a stranger. You had to stay calm. You had to wait.
If the lift broke down, you had to not panic. There was an emergency phone. You would use the phone and then wait. Nobody else could get in while the lift was broken. An engineer would talk to you on the phone. You didn’t see him, he didn’t get in the lift with you, but he could fix it. He’d get the lift working again. He had to.
Because the stairs weren’t safe. If you met anybody on the stairs you had to not trust them. The stairs smelled of piss and the concrete was hard. Anybody you met on the stairs could be a junkie, a thief, a killer, or all three.
If you were going down and they were coming up you were in trouble. If you were below them you had a chance of reaching the street before they got you.
So. You didn’t get in the lift with anybody else. You didn’t use the stairs unless you absolutely had to. You always checked your exit routes.
The exit on the ground floor led out to the street. The street was safer than the stairs, but not much. You had to get back in again, as quickly as you could.
You had food delivered these days. You put the safety chain on the door and paid the man or signed the chit and after he’d gone you unhooked the chain and took in the food.
It was safer that way. There was less chance of getting hurt.
21 May
Lord Cummerbund
‘Lord Cummerbund, as you know there has been considerable public disquiet about the conviction of Henry Ingram. You have come before this inquiry voluntarily but I want you to answer the questions put to you as fully and frankly as possible. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly clear, but as Ingram has been dead for more than a year I don’t really see the point.’
‘Lord Cummerbund, an innocent man may have been found guilty of a terrible crime. If such an injustice has been done, would you not agree, as the former most senior law officer of the land, that it should be undone?’
‘Oh, quite, quite. Fat lot of good it’ll do him, though.’
‘Now, in your former capacity you drew up the charges against Mr Ingram and it was of those charges that he was eventually found guilty. Were you then, and are you still, satisfied that the court reached the correct verdict?’
‘Absolutely. Not a shred of doubt about it.’
‘And do you agree that this verdict could not have been reached without the evidence of the witness Morgan Curtis.’
‘Oh, yes, that was crucial.’
‘Then why in an interview some years after the trial did you describe Mr Curtis, the prosecution’s key witness, as, I quote, “a soft-boiled egg”? What exactly did you mean by that?’
‘Well, you know. You crack open the shell and it’s all a bit runny inside. Underdone.’
‘You also referred to him as “not the sharpest tool in the box” and “an apple short of a picnic”. Were these rather unoriginal clichés intended to suggest that Mr Curtis was not intelligent?’
‘He was as thick as two short planks. Not all there.’
‘So you continue to disparage the intelligence and reliability of this witness, without whose evidence, as you have admitted, the guilty verdict imposed on Mr Ingram could not have been reached?’
‘Oh, come on, it’s all over now. We all know Ingram did it. Does it really matter if Mr Curtis’s paella was missing a few prawns? Let sleeping dogs lie, that’s what I say. Right, is that it? Let’s go to the pub.’
‘Wait, Lord Cummerbund!’
‘Who’s buying? Mine’s a Scotch – on the rocks.’
22 May
Jack and the Fish
Jack went up the glen one afternoon, and lay down by a dark pool where he knew the trout liked to lie. He put his hand in under the bank and waited.
After a while he felt something come to rest in his upturned palm. He gently raised his hand and then pulled it out suddenly. A bonnie brown trout flopped onto the grass.
To Jack’s great surprise, the trout spoke.
‘Spare me, sir! Only put me back in the water, and I will grant you a wish.’
‘Ye’re on,’ says Jack. ‘Can I wish for anything at all?’
‘Aye, but hurry up about it,’ gasps the trout.
‘I’ll hae a poke of chips,’ says Jack, and he flips the trout into the water. And a steaming portion of chips wrapped in newspaper appears in his hand.
He’s about to start eating when he remembers something else he should have asked for. Quickly he puts his hand under the bank and finds the trout lying on the bottom recovering, and fetches her back out.
‘I’ll let ye go if ye gie me anither wish,’ he says.
‘You’re a hard man but I’ve no choice,’ says the trout. ‘What do you want?’
‘Saut and vinegar on the chips,’ says Jack, and pushes the trout into the water.
In an instant the chips are slathered in salt and vinegar. ‘Och!’ says Jack. ‘I forgot anither thing!’ So he dips his hand into the burn and lands the trout a third time.
‘What now?’ says the trout. ‘I’m finding this very stressful.’
‘A nice bit o fish in batter,’ Jack says. ‘That would be just braw, thank ye.’
‘Done,’ says the trout, and Jack lets her go. And a beautiful portion of fish in golden batter is beside the chips.
Ten minutes later Jack is wiping his mouth on the paper when he thinks, ‘Whit an eejit! If I’d only thought, I could hae had a fish supper every day for the rest o my life.’
So he lay down by the burn again, but although he waited till it was dark and he’d lost all sensation up to his shoulder, the trout never returned to his hand.
23 May
Glamourie
It was an afternoon of possible magic. The air heavy and hot, solid almost, needing a storm to break it up. Birds silenced by the heat. In the woods, hazy with bluebells, thick with the smell of wild garlic, the heat percolated through the branches and even the shade of the trees seemed stifling. Everything was languid, faint. To move at more than a gentle stroll was draining.
They came out of the wood and there was the loch, flat under the flat grey sky. Nothing stirred the water, or stirred on it. It was as if almost every living thing had gone somewhere else. A bee buzzed past as if hurrying to beat a curfew, a few flies rested on hot stones. That was it. The two of them in an emptied world.
When they sat on the grass, though, some crawling, biting creature nipped at his legs. He brushed invisible things away. She watched him, curious, smiling. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said.
Later, drinking tea in her kitchen with the storm raging outside, they puzzled over what had happened next, when they stood (because he couldn’t sit, so intense was the interference round his legs) and made their return along the path through the woods.
‘I don’t believe in that stuff,’ he said. ‘It just doesn’t happen. It definitely doesn’t happen to me.’
‘But it happened. We both know it.’
‘What happened? Did we fall asleep?’
‘No. We were walking. And we came to that stone, where the path divides. And you went one way, I went the other.’
‘But we were only out of sight of each other for a moment. A few seconds at most.’
‘I know. But on the other side, you weren’t there.’
‘No, you weren’t there. You’d disappeared.’
‘I was there all the time. I walked all the way back to the gate, looking for you.’
Which was where he had found her again.
‘Where were you?’ he’d cried. And ‘Where did you go?’ she’d asked at the same moment.
‘I don’t believe in any of that.’ He sounded tired, angry, maybe scared.
‘Me neither.’
The rain poured down the windows, so heavily that they couldn’t see out.
24 May
Checkout
The guy behind her in the queue was singing. She turned. A middle-aged, red-faced man, singing away to himself.
Earlier, in one of the aisles, she’d seen a young father singing to his son as he pushed him round in their shopping trolley. ‘Ally Bally, Ally Bally Bee,’ the father had sung. The child’s face had glowed with pleasure, and she too had been filled with pleasure, with hope even.
‘That’s lovely,’ she said now, to the red-faced man. ‘You’re the second person I’ve heard singing in here today.’
‘Well, you’ve got to do something to keep your spirits up, eh?’ he said, smiling.
‘Absolutely,’ she said.
‘After that stuff in London,’ the man said. ‘Just awful. That poor soldier hacked to death by those blacks.’
She tensed, but continued to pack things into bags as the checkout assistant scanned them. ‘Awful,’ she agreed.
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