365

by James Robertson

  That night, as soon as darkness falls, he sticks the moon up his jersey and slips down to the beach. The sea is flat and still. Jack unfolds the moon and lays it on the water, and gives it a wee push. And that wee push is enough to make a ripple, and the moon rides over it, and that makes another ripple, and then a wave, and Jack looks up and sees the pale edge of the moon on the horizon, and the further out the moon in the sea floats the higher the moon in the sky climbs, and he knows it’s going to be all right.

  But never again will he try to touch the moon, no matter how tempting it is.

  17 September

  Another Country

  The leader spoke. The message was clear: hope solidifies, ambition gels, the dream becomes reality. After all these years, now was the time. For if not now, when? If not us, who? If we were not to wait indefinitely, why hesitate now?

  So ran the rhetoric. Powerful stuff, rhetoric. But it was more than that, because it described something within touching distance. The reasons were powerful too: to build a better country, one that was both more prosperous and fairer, one where material well-being went hand in hand with social justice. To build a society that worked, and cared.

  And more than reasons, there were goals to be attained, and detailed plans for attaining them. Practical measures to do with recalibrating the work–life balance: an overhaul of the tax system, a renewal and reorganisation of public services, a negotiated, functioning relationship between the public and private sectors.

  None of this was simple. It would mean work, hard work, with perhaps few rewards at first. There would need to be a realisation on the part of the better off that their standard of living would be static for a while, might even decline, in order to deliver a more egalitarian society, a more equitable spread of wealth and opportunities. And on the part of the poorer sections of the community, there would have to be a shift in expectations, an end to the culture of entitlement, an embracing of the idea of less being more, a revision of values. None of this, to repeat, was simple, but the leader laid out a road map, a route up the mountain, one planned phase after another. This, now, was within reach. It could be reached, grasped, embraced, if the people wanted it. But did the people want it enough?

  A couple of diehards, who had been on the barricades, on the long march, who had been middle-aged when the leader was still in short trousers, asked themselves that question. They asked it over their beers, their beards, and their hard-won memories.

  ‘Aye,’ one told the other, ‘it’s doable, of course. It’s there for the taking. But you know, I liked it better when it was a dream.’

  18 September

  The Right Thing

  It was a day like any other. She saw the twins off to school, kissed their father on his way out, then rapidly tidied the kitchen before leaving the house herself. She was always last away, first back. The twins had keys but she liked to be home before they were.

  She worked part-time, finishing at two when everybody else returned from lunch. Holding the fort, that was what she did between one and two. Not much happened in that hour – a few phone calls, an occasional delivery – but somebody had to be on reception.

  Holding the fort : it made her think of the Westerns they used to show on Sunday afternoons when she was a girl.

  Nothing stood still. Already her own girls were nearly old enough to marry, and would only narrowly miss voting in the referendum.

  On the way home she went to the polling place, a church hall. She handed over her card and received the ballot paper.

  She had read and listened to all the arguments about the economy, assets, debts, pensions, oil, membership of this or that international organisation, but as she stood in the booth, pencil poised, none of them seemed to matter. What mattered was how she felt.

  When she reached home she put the radio on for the news. The reader reported simply that voting was brisk. Of course he wasn’t permitted to say anything that might influence those still to vote.

  She started to prepare the evening meal.

  Brisk: were people voting with swift but certain resolve? Or were they rushing at it, not giving it due consideration?

  She’d considered it, long and hard. How often did such an opportunity come along? To vote for – or against – your country’s independence? Once in a lifetime, they were saying, but it was rarer than that.

  What was independence? What did it mean in this crowded, connected world?

  Well, she had made her mark. She felt she had done the right thing.

  She heard the door opening, their voices, their shoes on the stairs. She made a pot of tea and waited for them to join her, as they would, because it was a day like any other.

  19 September

  My Father, Falling

  When my father falls he goes down like a tree. Still a big man at eighty-seven, he falls the length of himself, and if you are not there to catch him at the first stumble there is no stopping him. If you see him go and don’t manage to reach him at least you have some forewarning of the noise when he hits the deck: it’s like a gunshot or a clap of thunder. If you are in another room and hear this you think a wall must have collapsed or a wardrobe tipped over. But it’s my father, falling.

  The falls are happening more and more often. Two or three times a day, lately. His balance is all wrong and he knows this but knowing it and applying the knowledge so that he doesn’t fall are different things. My mother calls him India Rubber Man because he bounces but doesn’t break. I think he’s made of something more like teak. He breaks other things as he goes down – chairs, tables, bathroom fittings – but, so far, not himself. Although he comes up in huge bruises, under the skin the bone is hard and strong. But we know this cannot last, that a fall will come from which he does not, slowly and painfully, right himself, get onto his knees, crawl and haul himself back into his chair.

  You can tell a proud man to take more care. You can tell him not to carry anything when he sets off from one place to another. You can instruct him in the correct method of using his Zimmer. You can clear routes, removing rugs and other items that might ambush him. You can ask him to stay where he is while you fetch whatever it is he wants. But you can’t switch off his determination to keep trying. You can’t stop him having another go when your back is turned. And you can’t stop him being a one-man forest of crashing trees, a constantly replayed film of timber falling, falling, falling. Because this is what a proud man does, in the end. He stands proud, and then he falls, over and over until he cannot rise again.

  20 September

  Please Moderate Your Language

  ‘Could you please moderate your language?’ a voice from the audience requested.

  The writer, making a speech after receiving an award for his most recent novel, had just used a certain word for the second time.

  ‘Moderate your own fucking language,’ the writer said, using the word for the third time. And continued to express his views on matters literary, cultural, historical and political.

  What was meant by the request from the listener? What was implied in the verb ‘moderate’? Not, surely, that the views of the writer were offensive, but that his mode of expressing them, his language, was. But wait. All of his language? No. Some of his words? No. One word in particular? Yes, the single representative of what is sometimes called ‘bad’ language. The moderation requested was the removal of one word and its associated forms: the word ‘fuck’.

  Essentially: eliminate the word ‘fuck’ from the speech and nobody would have been offended. All would have been able fully to appreciate the writer’s views on matters literary, cultural, historical and political. There would have been no distractions from the content of his speech.

  Aye, that’ll be fucking right.

  Consider the proposition that ‘bad language’ exists. Language is made up of words. If some words are bad, others must be good. What makes words good or bad? Convention, taste, authority, law. Remove the bad words, these four chums say, and language will be all
the better for it. But who, if not the speaker of the bad words, will moderate their removal? How about the four chums, the custodians of language? Let them take the bad words away for questioning. If this action trespasses too much on notions of civilisation and tolerance, let the questioning be done secretly, in an alien tongue. Let the bad words be subject to extraordinary rendition.

  ‘Extraordinary’ means ‘amazing’, ‘unusual’, ‘exceptional’. ‘Rendition’ means ‘delivery’, ‘performance’, ‘interpretation’. These are not bad words.

  A critic once counted four thousand uses of the word ‘fuck’ in another novel by the same writer.

  Had the critic nothing better to do?

  Irrelevant. Take the writer away for questioning.

  The four chums appreciate, by the way, the listener’s use of the word ‘please’.

  21 September

  General Incompetence

  General Incompetence was planning his next campaign. He wanted it to be a good one. In particular, he wanted to gain the greatest amount of something in return for the smallest amount of something else. He couldn’t remember the exact formula, but territory, casualties, collateral damage, direct hits, political approval and political embarrassment all came into it.

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ he barked. (He had learned how to do this at Sandhurst.) His trusty comrade Major Disaster entered. Disaster was a smart-looking chap but you never quite knew what was going on under the surface.

  ‘What is it, Disaster?’ Incompetence said. ‘Stand easy.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Trouble in the ranks, sir. The men are fed up being sent into impossible combat zones underequipped and with no clear objective.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but I blame the politicians.’

  Major Disaster stood a little less easy and even shuffled his boots. ‘Sir – the troops blame you. I understand how difficult your position is, but the men on the ground don’t care. They’ve begun to take their frustrations out on the local population. There have been a couple of nasty incidents, sir.’

  ‘Good lord, Disaster!’

  ‘Exactly, sir. I have taken action, sir. Corporal Punishment has been arrested and I’ve been liaising with Marshall Arts to give the men some therapy, which has resulted in Private Anguish and Private Remorse being released.’

  ‘I don’t approve of that, Disaster. There were very sound reasons for Anguish and Remorse being locked up. And you know I disapprove of Arts. We can’t have the men going soft.’

  ‘I agree, sir. These are only stopgap measures. In the longer term …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you may have to go, sir.’

  ‘You mean resign? The army without General Incompetence? But that’s unthinkable.’

  ‘Sometimes the unthinkable must be thunk, sir. The Bismarck was once unthinkable.’

  ‘This is no time for bad puns,’ General Incompetence snapped. (He had learned how to do this at Sandhurst.) He stroked his moustache contemplatively. He was wondering if the Major was quite so trusty after all. Perhaps a coup was being planned. Perhaps Disaster would succeed Incompetence. It would not be the first time.

  22 September

  The Triple-Lock Fail-Safe Emergency Valve

  ‘See that?’ Mike the plumber said. ‘Know what that is?’

  He was pointing at a lever on a pipe under the kitchen sink.

  I shook my head. ‘No idea,’ I said.

  ‘That’s your triple-lock fail-safe emergency valve.’

  ‘That sounds quite important.’

  ‘It’s very important. And it’s also in very poor condition.’

  Mike had a pretty low opinion of most of the plumbing in the house. The old plumber, Joe, had generally expressed the view that there was plenty of life left in things. Joe was a ‘hit it with a hammer’ kind of plumber, but he’d retired, and somebody had given me Mike’s name. Mike was more hands-off. He took a lot of readings with a gadget that beeped.

  ‘So, should we replace it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s your decision, but I would say so. It could go at any time.’

  ‘What happens if it goes?’

  Mike looked very serious.

  ‘If your triple-lock fail-safe emergency valve goes,’ he said, ‘you’re in trouble. It triggers a blowback situation in the cold-water system. When that happens, the outlet can’t handle the pressure, and it explodes, and then you have a knock-on effect all down the street.’

  ‘Explodes?’ I said. ‘All down the street? Just because that little valve stops working?’

  ‘That’s right. That’s why it’s a triple-lock fail-safe mechanism. If that goes, so do the ones in the other houses. Then the main under the road bursts. Then you’ve got the road collapsing, trees down, probably the houses too. You’ve got floods like you’ve never imagined – more like a tidal wave in fact. You’ve got major disruption to transport and services, electricity and gas supplies cut. You’ve got oil tankers smashed like toys, harbours washed away, two-thirds of the country underwater. You’ve got tornadoes, forest fires, plagues of locusts, crop failure, famine. You’ve got a mini ice age, the sun blocked out by ash, perpetual winter, total anarchy.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ I said. ‘You go ahead and replace that valve right away. Can you manage it all right?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a simple enough job,’ Mike said, ‘but even a new valve can go at any time. You just can’t tell.’

  He took a reading with his gadget. It beeped.

  23 September

  Not Safe

  The path through the forest divided in two. I considered my options. One way was narrower and looked less well maintained than the other, but, being in adventurous mood, I opted for the narrower path. No sooner had I set off than a man stepped out from behind a tree.

  ‘I wouldn’t go down there if I were you,’ he said.

  He was solid and tall and carried a large stick. His clothes were of a thick, heavy material, dark blue or possibly black. He wore a brown leather belt and sturdy brown shoes, but no hat or cap. Was he in uniform? It was hard to tell. Nor could I decide if the stick was fashioned by human hand or one he’d happened to pick up in the forest.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘The path is not in good condition.’

  I indicated my own stout footwear. ‘I think I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I still wouldn’t go. There’s nothing to be seen.’

  He was polite, yet clearly determined to dissuade me from taking that path. He moved slightly so that he stood in my way.

  ‘Where does it go?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t go anywhere.’

  ‘It must go somewhere. Do you mean it comes to a dead end?’

  He considered this. ‘No. It rejoins the main path later. So you may as well go that way. It’s safer.’

  ‘I’d rather go this way. I’m just going for a walk, that’s all.’

  ‘I advise against it,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘There’s no sign warning of any danger.’

  ‘Signs only encourage people,’ he said. ‘They think it’s all right to go as long as they’re careful.’

  ‘I will be careful.’

  ‘You can’t be careful enough.’

  ‘Are you telling me I can’t walk down there? If so, on what or whose authority?’

  ‘I’m telling you it’s not safe and you can get to where you’re going the other way.’

  Something in the very reasonableness of his argument made me as keen to continue along the path as he seemed keen to bar my progress.

  ‘We seem to have different views about this,’ I said.

  He raised his stick. ‘I don’t think so,’ he replied.

  I considered my options.

  24 September

  Off the Beaten Track

  I was walking in the forest. I had heard stories about a place somewhere on the far side. Some told of an old castle, or of a pool with a waterfall, or of a s
ecluded, sandy beach beside the sea. I wanted to see if the stories were true.

  Earlier in my walk I had come upon a narrower, less well maintained path than the one I was on, but a man with an official look about him had stopped me taking it. I regretted that I had allowed this to happen. Perhaps that path led to the place. It was too late now, though, to turn back.

  Just then I spotted another path, one so overgrown and thin that it hardly qualified as a path at all. Still, I decided to try it, to see if it went anywhere or petered out.

  Although it was very rough, and steep in places, the thin path did not peter out. The forest was quiet and still, but after some time I sensed a change. I could hear something: a river, or a waterfall, or the sound of the sea. I pressed forward, and suddenly emerged into a clearing.

  A man stepped out from behind a tree. He was solid and tall and carried a large stick. His clothes were made of thick, heavy tweed, in autumnal colours, and a deerstalker was on his head. I was sure that this was the man I had met earlier.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m just going for a walk,’ I replied, ‘as I told you this morning.’

  ‘What do you mean? You have never spoken to me before.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ I said. ‘You were wearing different clothes, a kind of uniform, blue or possibly black. You threatened me with your stick.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen you before. Anyway, you’re not allowed here. You must go back.’