The woman with the refreshments trolley could barely speak, she was so embarrassed to be serving President Obama. He bought a coffee and a Mars Bar, and found her the exact change as she said she was running out.
‘Going far?’ I said, when he closed his laptop.
‘To Inverness,’ he said. ‘I’m giving a speech to the Gaelic Society there.’
So I had been right! ‘Do you speak Gaelic yourself ?’ I asked.
‘Not a word,’ he said. ‘But they’ve promised not to hold that against me.’
He took out some papers from an attaché case and began to read them, initialling each page as he finished it. He was left-handed, and had an awkward, upside-down way of writing.
‘I’m sorry for the trouble you’re having with Congress,’ I said.
‘So am I,’ President Obama replied. He was still very polite, but I detected a slight note of irritation in his voice. He was a busy man, of course, and no doubt had important state business to attend to before we reached Inverness. So I got out my newspaper, and did not disturb him again.
30 December
The Search Party
We would never have gone out if we had not intended to return. We left a fire in the grate, banked up with dross, and a light in the window in case we were still out after dark. We left provisions too: tea, coffee, sugar, bread, tins of this and that; the makings of several meals. And there were a few bottles, the contents of which we were sure would fuel stories and songs around the fire when everyone had eaten their fill. Yes, we certainly meant to return.
But somehow we were distracted. It wasn’t so much that we lost our way, more that we found a path we weren’t expecting, and we followed it. We were seeking something. That was the whole reason for going out. The path might lead us to whatever it was. But what seems to have happened is that after a while the path began, as it were, to follow us: it went where we went, rather than the other way round. And now I am not sure that it was a path at all.
We paused to rest not long ago, huddling together against the cold, and one of us said, ‘What is it we are looking for?’ Nobody could remember. Another asked, ‘Is it a thing, or a person?’ So we checked, but we were still roped together and we did not think anyone was missing.
The snow has stopped falling, but everything is white. The moon, though so very far away, is bright. Perhaps we should have left markers, to guide us back. It is too late for that now. We must go forward. We will reach somewhere eventually.
By the time we do, we will probably have forgotten the details of what we left behind – the smell of wood smoke, the lamp in the window – but something will stir in our memories. At the end of our search will be an unfamiliar place, which, nevertheless, we will recognise. And I think then we will discover that some of us did not make it after all, and we will remember their faces and their voices. And we will go into the warmth, taking them with us.
31 December
The Miner
All the stories in the world originally came from one source, a mine in a remote and desolate place where only the story-miners lived. The stories came in many shapes and sizes – some heavy and bulky, some smooth and delicate, others sharp and awkward to hold – but they had one common property: something in each one shone, or glittered, reflecting light in its own special way.
The stories were dispatched, unrefined, across the world, to people who had no knowledge of the mine’s existence. When they came across one of the stories in their own locality, they assumed that it belonged to them.
Over many centuries the mine workings grew deeper and more complex. When one seam was exhausted, another was opened. Still, it became increasingly difficult to find and extract new stories. As this happened, the miners themselves grew fewer. The older generation died. Younger families left, seeking less demanding and more rewarding work. A time came when only one miner remained – a strong and skilful labourer, but the last of his kind. One day he came up from the mine empty-handed: there were no more stories down there.
Sad though he was to see the end of a long tradition, the miner was a realistic man. He collected his tools and personal belongings, and set off in search of a new occupation.
How long he walked is not recorded, but eventually he left behind the bleak landscape familiar to him, and travelled through a country of thick forests, green meadows, rushing rivers and cultivated fields. He passed through villages and towns and spent time in huge cities. And he began to notice – lying at the roadside, or marking the edges of flowerbeds in parks and gardens, or abandoned in heaps in disused warehouses – the same multiform stories that he had once mined. He collected several of the discarded ones, and used his tools to recut or polish them a little. Then he walked on, discreetly depositing them in pubs, churches, schools, theatres, places of work, places of play …
And when people came across one of these slightly altered stories, they picked it up and took it home, assuming that it belonged to them.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published 2014
Copyright © James Robertson, 2014
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Text design by Claire Mason
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental
ISBN: 978-0-241-97060-7
* mountain pass (Gaelic)
* stretch of low-lying alluvial land beside a river (Scots)
* frog (Scots)
* loosens the neckties (Scots)
* old man (contemptuous, Scots from Gaelic)
* schoolmaster (Scots)
* This piece was generated using the French avant-garde OULIPO group’s formula ‘N + 7’, in which the writer takes a text already in existence and substitutes each of that text’s nouns with the seventh noun following it in a dictionary. On this occasion an English–Gaelic dictionary was used. The obituary may – or may not – make more sense if read in conjunction with ‘Rennie Mackay’, the preceding story.
* Adapted from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. The trade of nail-painting has entirely replaced the trade of nail-making once observed by Smith in this part of Kirkcaldy.
* In Edinburgh, this phrase is sometimes used to denote coitus interruptus.
* limp (Scots)
on, 365
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