‘You’re too young to remember,’ he continued, ‘but back in the 1960s banks didn’t have the terrible reputation they have today. They didn’t tempt you with easy credit, encourage you to buy things you didn’t want and couldn’t afford and then sell you more credit at higher rates of interest to service your debts. No, no, your local bank manager then was a figure of common sense and irreproachable probity. He was there to guide you in the careful conduct of your financial affairs, always recommending thrift and prudence.
‘There was a big advertising campaign on television, as a result of which people took to keeping a bank manager in the cupboard under the stairs, so that they could bring him out and ask his advice whenever they needed it. A great innovation, but over time values changed. Society learned to despise thrift and embrace extravagance, and these domesticated bank managers became unfashionable. Some were decommissioned. Others, like this one, were simply forgotten. Please don’t worry. You’re not responsible.’
Gary and Hannah did wonder about attending the funeral of the man they thought of, after his removal from the premises, as ‘their’ bank manager. But they led busy lives, and instead went on holiday to Spain while the painters were in.
12 August
The Minister and the Devil
Last night I went again to the manse, to continue my talk with the minister. I rang the bell and waited, and for a long time nothing happened. I was not altogether surprised. I lit a cigarette and stood in the outer lobby, puffing smoke at the insects flying about in the twilight. Twice more I pressed the bell, to assure him that I was there and not minded to go away. Through the frosted panes of the inner door I thought I glimpsed movement – like the stirrings of a genie seen through the cloudy glass of his bottle – but he did not come. I tried the door but it was locked. Then I walked around the whole house, peering in at the windows, but saw no sign of life. The man was either asleep, hiding, drunk or dead.
After the third cigarette I decided to defer doing further damage to my lungs, and went away. The condition of my soul did not concern me. As for the condition of the minister’s soul, well, that was why I was keen to resume our conversation.
I strolled down to the beach. A thin rain was falling, so I put up my umbrella. Nobody was about save one solitary figure on the sand. I thought it might be the minister, but on coming closer I realised that it was a stranger. He was turning slowly round and round on the one spot, and I saw that he, or someone, had drawn a circle in the sand and that he was inside it.
‘Help me,’ he said. ‘Make the tide turn back or I will drown.’ The sea was some thirty yards away.
‘Impossible,’ I said. Then I folded my umbrella and with its point began to draw a line from his circle towards the top of the beach.
‘Thank you!’ he called as I went away from him. ‘Tie it securely!’
I gave up with the line when the rain came on more heavily and I was obliged to open the umbrella again. When I looked back he was still standing in his circle. I realised that I had been mistaken. It was the minister after all.
13 August
Michael Scott (1)
Michael Scott, possessor of one of the greatest minds in medieval Europe, lived in an age when philosophers and thinkers often trod a dangerous path between God and the Devil. It was a hazard of their occupation. Some, Michael included, were more skilful than others in their dealings with the Almighty One.
But what of the Devil? If Michael needed to travel any great distance, he would challenge the Devil to transform himself into a winged horse and then ride him to his destination and back. On other occasions he caused him to waste much time trying to achieve impossible tasks: it is said, for example, that the Devil can still sometimes be seen toiling on the shore at Kirkcaldy, where Michael sent him to braid a rope out of sand. But there can hardly be much substance to these tales because, whatever else the Devil may be, he is certainly no fool.
Once, Alexander II, King of the Scots, sent Michael to Paris to complain about French pirates who were always attacking Scottish ships. Michael arrived at the court on a massive black steed (who knows whether or not this was the Devil in equine shape?) and demanded of the French King that the depredations cease forthwith. The King took offence at the arrogance of this envoy from such a small, poor country: it was beneath his dignity, he said, to concern himself with these matters.
At this, Michael commanded the mighty horse to stamp its hoof three times. The first crash of the hoof set all the bells of Paris ringing. The second brought three towers of the palace tumbling down. The horse raised its hoof a third time. ‘Wait!’ the French King shouted in alarm. Michael inclined his head and waited. While the hoof still hovered, the King declared an end to all acts of piracy against the Scots, and dispatched men to the ports to enforce the edict. Michael gave a signal, and the horse lowered its hoof with astonishing grace and delicacy.
No one tried to delay Michael’s departure. The King granted him safe passage home, and Michael accepted this guarantee, although of course he had no need of it.
14 August
Michael Scott (2)
In Dante’s Divine Comedy Michael Scott is consigned, along with other seers, sorcerers and astrologers, to the fourth ditch of the eighth circle of Hell. In this terrible place the sufferers’ heads are twisted round on their bodies as a punishment for trying to look into the future, and as they walk backwards along the chasm their tears of agony run down into the clefts of their buttocks.
Dante, however, was mistaken when he identified Michael – ‘the one with the skinny legs’ – in the Inferno. While he was still on Earth, Michael heard a rumour that the Devil, seeking revenge for the humiliations the philosopher had heaped upon him, had prepared a special bed in anticipation of his arrival. So Michael used a spell to open a window into Hell, to see what to expect. One half of the bed was a block of ice, the other a blazing fire, and the whole was covered with sharp spikes. Deciding at once that he had better book himself a place in Heaven, the philosopher went to a priest, confessed his sins and renounced all his previous transactions with the Devil.
The priest was still doubtful as to whether a man of Michael’s reputation, even having received absolution, would be allowed to enter Heaven. ‘What little faith you have in your own office!’ Michael told him. ‘Well, so that you know the outcome, I will send you a message soon after I die. If a dove comes to your door, it will be a sign that I have reached Heaven. But if a raven appears, take that to mean that I have gone to the other place.’
Months later, word reached the priest that Michael Scott was dead. When he went out the next morning, he saw dozens of ravens perched in the surrounding trees. Well, he thought, the message could not be clearer. And he clapped his hands. The ravens rose, filling the sky with their flapping wings and angry cries, and departed in a black cloud.
As the priest watched them go, secretly pleased that the Devil had claimed Michael Scott for his own, a single white dove glided in and landed at his feet.
15 August
Festival
He took another beer from the fridge. The literature – not the stuff he wrote, the other kind – called it a mini-bar. He didn’t know if its contents were part of the deal but he would continue to work on that assumption until proved wrong. Each day he pretty much emptied the fridge and the following morning, when he slipped out for breakfast before anybody else was around, somebody filled it up again. They seemed to know exactly when he was out. By the time he returned the fridge was restocked, the towels replaced, the bed made and the room spotless. They probably sent in a squad. How else could they get it back in shape so fast?
The festival was paying for everything else so surely they wouldn’t grudge him a beer or two, the odd bottle of wine and a few pretzels?
Three days ago he’d read from a platform shared with a Canadian woman and an Irishman. Fifteen minutes each, followed by questions. Nobody had asked him anything. After that he’d gone back to the hotel.
&nb
sp; His room was on the nineteenth floor, overlooking the lake. The lake was bigger than a small sea. He could sit on the balcony and if it became too hot retreat inside and cool off in the air conditioning. Sometimes he just walked around the room in the hotel’s white robe and flip-flop slippers, surveying his domain.
Their entire flat could have fitted into the room – twice. The bed was bigger than their bathroom. The bathroom was the size of a swimming pool. There was even a lobby. A hotel room with its own lobby. Unbelievable.
Five days and nights. He didn’t want to wake up.
The phone rang. It would be that man again, the organiser. The one who’d yelled at him, the only time he’d picked up, ‘Get your frickin ass down here right now!’ A publisher’s reception or something. It wasn’t obligatory, though. It wasn’t a legal requirement. He preferred being where was.
He sat in the armchair with the beer. After a while he moved to the sofa. He pointed the remote at the TV. Maybe he’d watch a movie. Maybe he wouldn’t.
16 August
One of Our Contemporary Geniuses
INTERVIEWER: Wullie Wheenge – may I call you Wullie?
WHEENGE (making noises reminiscent of various birds native to the tropical rainforest): Nnnn, nyet nyet nyet, whaaaaargh, chirrup chirrup chirrup, weeeel, you may. Call me Ishmael if you prefer. Where were we?
INTERVIEWER: I wanted to ask you about your life as an artist.
WHEENGE: Why?
INTERVIEWER: Well, you are widely regarded as the foremost of our creative thinkers. Many point to your novel Menstrie as a key text in the extraordinary resurgence of Scottish letters in the last thirty years. How would you say your work has influenced that of other writers?
WHEENGE: Nnnn, nyey nyet, ooooooh aaah, I wouldn’t.
INTERVIEWER: But surely –
WHEENGE: I am not saying, I am not saying, I am not saying that there has been no influence on, ah, um, others. What I am saying is that I am not saying anything about it. Myself. Being a humble chap of, hmm, working-class origins I am far from comfortable about ah, um, blowing my own, hmm, trumpet. (Makes noise like a trumpet.)
INTERVIEWER: I see. Well, leaving aside its possible influence on others, was Menstrie a breakthrough for you?
WHEENGE: Oh, ah, definitely. That is to say, no, not really. It did not make me any, ah, um, money, without which of course the artist is, ah, condemned to starvation and madness.
INTERVIEWER: Do you consider yourself mad?
WHEENGE: Certainly. We are all mad. And sometimes hungry. The world is mad. Society is mad. Though, in its defence, it considers itself completely, ah, sane. A sure sign of madness. But it has been tolerant towards me. Allowed me, yes, a remarkably long leash. (Barks like a dog.) Perhaps it lets me out as a, um, warning to others: this is what will happen to you if you do not rein in your imaginations. Whereas what we should be striving for …
INTERVIEWER: Yes, Dr Wheenge?
WHEENGE: Speaking as a medical man, which I am not, but since you so address me, what we should be striving for is vigorously exercised imaginations all round. Mens sana and all that jazz, do you follow me?
INTERVIEWER: Thank you, Wullie Wheenge, one of our contemporary geniuses.
17 August
World Affairs
‘But should we not do something? Surely there are times when we must act?’
Words of anguish, words of political calculation. The slaughter continues, the weeping grows louder, fades, grows again. Gunfire, the hot noise of engines, cities in flames, degraded landscapes. Lives turned to dust and blood.
On your computer screen is a photograph of a child in some nameless place of devastation, a child in a field of plastic bottles and decomposing filth. Right up to the edges of the photograph you see only plastic and filth, and you know that beyond those boundaries it continues. The child stands, held by the camera, prevented by the image from negotiating his way across this terrain in which there is no beauty, no renewal and no hope.
That child knows more of life than you will ever know, but he knows nothing.
Ten thousand miles away, on a stone beside a sheep track through green hills, a man rests. He rests from a walk that has no motivation other than the pleasure of walking. He takes a plastic bottle from his backpack and drinks. Earlier, he filled the bottle from the clear, clean flow of a small river.
The stone has not moved in a hundred million years. For him it is somewhere to sit. He feels the cold, good water in his throat. Unseen moorland birds sing. He savours the fact of being in such a place.
In that other landscape there is nowhere for the child to sit. When the camera has gone he will move on, picking his way across the debris. In some other photograph of hell – plastic sheeting, corrugated metal, hammered-together hardboard – he will appear again. He will be somewhere he calls home.
How can the child and the man exist at the same time? How can your consciousness contain knowledge of them both? What traumatic upheaval of time and the world could tip them into one another?
Time and the world are indifferent to them, and to you. There is no way to measure this world’s indifference. Without the world, you, the man, the child – are nothing. Without you, the man, the child, the world – is still the world.
18 August
Jack and the Princess (1)
One day, when Jack’s mother was round at a neighbour’s, a lassie with a bag on her shoulder came chapping at the door. She was on a long journey, she said, and very thirsty.
‘In ye come,’ says Jack, and sits her at the kitchen table and fetches her a cup of milk. But she’s only taken a wee sip when she says, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, this milk’s turned.’
The milk was fresh that morning but, being a polite lad, Jack takes it away and gives her some more, and so as not to waste the first cup he drinks it himself. It tastes fine to him. But at the bottom of the cup he finds a dead spider. I’m sure that wasn’t there when I poured in the milk, he thinks, but it must have been the spider she tasted.
Then she says she’s hungry. Now before his mother went out she’d baked a pie, so Jack fetches it and cuts a slice for the lassie. But after just one mouthful she pushes it away. ‘Oh, that pie’s stale,’ she says.
So Jack cuts her another slice but so as not to waste the first one he eats it himself. It tastes fine to him. But he bites on something hard, and finds it’s a button that’s somehow got into the pie. Well, this is an awfie sensitive lassie, Jack thinks, maybe she’s a princess.
Then she says she’d like a nap before she goes on her way, and is there a bed where she can lie down for a bit? ‘Ye can use ma mither’s bed,’ Jack says. But before he takes her through he slips a single dried pea under the mattress. Now we’ll see if she’s a princess, he thinks, and if she is maybe she’ll marry me and we’ll be rich.
So Jack sits in the kitchen and waits for her to complain about the pea, but nothing happens. And he’s just wishing they hadn’t drunk so much milk or had such big slices of pie, and hoping her feet are clean, when he hears his mother coming home.
If that’s no a princess in there, Jack thinks, I’m deid.
19 August
Jack and the Princess (2)
When Jack’s mother comes in, the first thing she sees is the guilty look on Jack’s face. And she sees the milk jug empty and the pie with a great chunk missing out of it, and she flies into a rage at him.
‘Och, dinna be angry, Mither,’ Jack says from the far side of the table, ‘but I couldna help it. This lassie cam tae the door and she’s on a lang journey and she was thirsty so I gied her some milk, and she was hungry so I gied her some of the pie and she was tired so I let her sleep in yer bed. But, Mither, she’s an awfie sensitive lassie and I think she’s a princess and if she is maybe she’ll marry me and we’ll be rich.’
‘Ye’re an eejit, Jack,’ says his mother, but just then they hear a squeal of pain coming from the next room.
‘That’ll be the pea I pit under the mattress,’ Jack
says.
‘Princess, is it?’ says his mother, and they both go into the bedroom.
But the lassie isn’t lying in the bed in agony. She’s halfway through the window with the sash fallen down and trapping her and that’s why she’s squealing. They pull her back in and she says, ‘Oh thank you, I was needing some fresh air but when I opened the window it fell on me.’ And Jack says, ‘Och, did ye hurt yersel?’
But Jack’s mother is much more interested in the bag that the lassie is trying to keep hidden behind her back. She grabs it and empties it onto the bed, and out tumble all of her own precious things – earrings, bracelets, silk scarves and suchlike.
Well, Jack’s mother chases the lassie round the room and out into the kitchen where she picks up the coal shovel and starts walloping her on the back and the legs till at last the lassie gets out of the house and takes off up the road with Jack’s mother right behind her.
By the time Jack’s mother returns everything is tidy and in its proper place in the house, but Jack’s away out for a long, long walk.
20 August
The Envoy of Peace
I come in peace. This is the meaning of my title. Let me make myself clear. I always come in peace. Even when I came before, I came in peace.
When I came before, it was to bring peace to this region, which has for so long been troubled by war. It saddened me to see this and so I came. It saddened me too that when I brought peace on that occasion, I had to bring it in a little casket protected by aeroplanes and tanks. I did not wish to bring peace thus, but I had no choice. There was a wicked man who had his own aeroplanes and tanks and also weapons of even greater power. In order to bring my peace it was necessary to destroy the wicked man, his aeroplanes and tanks, and his weapons of greater power. And look, he is no more. He is gone, his aeroplanes and tanks are gone, and even his weapons of greater power are gone.
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