by Iain Maloney
‘Come on, get dressed and let’s go on safari. I want to see your roots.’
‘Roots are usually hidden in the dirt.’ I pulled the curtains back. I’d lost the knack of Aberdeen weather. It looked sunny and warm, but that could mean anything. Union Street would be a wind tunnel and the second the sun disappeared we’d freeze. I tipped my backpack out onto the bed and began repacking it, adding jumpers.
‘I didn’t mean we should really go on safari.’
‘We’ll need warmer clothes later. I’ll put in a bottle of water. Do you want one? And some tissues.’
‘Yes, Mom.’
I sounded like Hannah. I could hear the voice, see her in Japan, in that hotel in Kagoshima packing the bag with rolls of toilet paper, tied up plastic bags just in case. In disgust I threw the bag back on the bed, then thought better of it. We really would be cold later on.
‘Which way?’ We were out on the street, the sunshine was warm and the wind gentle.
‘Do you want to see the city centre, the beach or some greenery?’
‘You have beaches here?’
‘Not like at home, but yeah, sand, water. The usual.’
‘City centre. Some window shopping. Find a café, watch the world go by.’
I shook the dust off my internal map, ran through images of cafés and bars, restaurants and shops I’d known as a kid and a student. Were any of them still there? ‘The best cafe was Café 52 but it’s down on The Green. Not an ideal place to watch the world go by, unless you have a thing about drunk old men pissing in doorways.’
‘Don’t be so down on the place. This is gorgeous. Big trees, wide streets and these solid, stern buildings. It’s all a bit like you, really.’
‘Like me?’
‘Solid, stern with hints of red. You really need to get your roots done.’
‘I thought you wanted to see my roots. Are you okay to walk or should we jump in a cab?’
‘Walking’s good. To be honest I wouldn’t mind a run.’
‘Me too. Maybe later.’
‘No, first thing tomorrow. I had that gin, remember?’
‘And you’re planning on having another.’ There was something in my tone, something that slipped past my censor.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Sorry. No, you know I don’t. It’s just… being here.’
When we turned onto Union Street, I expected something, a grand reveal like in a gallery, where you turn a corner and there are Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or the Mona Lisa. Instead Union Street was a warp hole, a rip in the fabric of time and space. Memories were trickling into my consciousness, images, sounds, smells. Like a drowning person grabbing at passing debris, I took hold of one memory, a good one, hoping it would keep me afloat. ‘Aberdeen University does a thing called the Torcher, it’s a charity fundraising parade every year. Each student group gets a flatbed truck and turns it into a parade float. Usually themed on what the society does.’
‘The music club plays music, the hockey club have a hockey theme.’
‘Exactly. I was in the Geology Society.’
‘Nerd.’
‘Pretty much. We went on field trips, fossil hunts. Mostly it was just a way to make friends who liked the same stuff.’
‘Other nerds.’
‘Sex, drugs and rock ’n coal.’
‘That’s bad.’
‘Anyway the year I was president—’
‘Chief Nerd—’
‘We made a volcano on the back of the truck. It erupted and everything. A combination of food dyes, water and washing up liquid. It looked really cool when we left campus. But we were just turning onto Union Street when the rain started. It mixed with the detergent and food dye and—’
‘Your volcano properly erupted?’
‘Overflowing, over the truck, over us and over the sides onto the street. This dirty red froth trailed us all the way around the city. Dyed my legs red for most of the next week.’
I could see them all, the GeoSoc: me, Calum, Anthony, Mel, Stuart and Nicola, the core of the group, knee-deep in rusty bubbles, laughing. If I could hang onto positive memories, maybe the others would stream by like a river around a rock.
Every paving slab, every streetlight evoked something, drew out a strand of me at a time, unravelling me like a knitted jumper. Indian restaurants, charity shops, an ATM I’d used, The College bar where we celebrated Anthony’s birthday, Josephine’s pizza restaurant where I went with Mel. But so much had changed. Maybe it was just my own negativity but I didn’t remember it being so dilapidated. Empty stores, boarded shops, To Let signs, business after business closed and replaced by yet another charity shop or chain store. In some ways I was relieved to see the faded front of The Balmoral pub, unchanged for centuries it seemed. We turned into Belmont Street, the heart of the student world, all the bars and fast food shops I’d known were still there, with maybe a lick of paint or a new name. One Up, the independent record store, had gone. No one had any money for music. Businesses went under but pubs and betting shops thrived. I pined for our home in Hawaii with its views of the sea to one side and the forest and mountains on the other. In every direction a scene that would pick me up. Hawaii renewed itself; Aberdeen aged, withered.
Ash was taking photos. I looked up. I’d been so drawn into the darkness at street level that I’d forgotten the glory of the Aberdeen skyline. Church spires and townhouse gables, bay windows jutting out of slate roofs, the sun glinting off the granite.
The Wild Boar, one of my favourite student lunch spots, was still there. I led Ash inside, took a table as far at the back as I could, away from the window and its bright view into my past. When the waitress came over Ash took control, ordered some food, a fruit juice for me and a glass of mâcon-villages. The waitress repeated the order back. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No fruit juice. Make it a bottle. Two glasses.’
Aberdeen, October 1988
Dad was in the garden, digging. He had started in the corner where I used to pretend I was Indiana Jones. Before dawn he was out there, shush, whack, shush, whack, the spade chunking into the ground, the dirt landing in a pile behind him. I peeked through my curtains and watched him in his tracksuit bottoms and his painting jumper, strawberry plant roots hanging from the shovel like melted cheese hanging from a pizza slice. I watched him stick it in, foot on the top, force it down, lever it back, up and over his shoulder. I watched him for twenty minutes kneeling on my bed before I realised Hannah was below me, standing one step outside the house in her dressing gown and slippers, a cup of camomile held in both hands. Her hair was starting to turn, even from up there I could see a sliver or two of silver. She plucked them when she found them, stuck them to the bathroom mirror like a hunter mounting trophies on the wall, sometimes forgot to clean them up again. I found them there, four, five in a row. Dad was making good progress, the hole deep enough that I couldn’t see his knees.
It was the weekend, Saturday morning. I had a little bit of homework I hadn’t finished last night. Before the summer I’d have gone down in my pyjamas, made a hot chocolate and done it at the kitchen table, Dad pottering like this in the garden, Hannah out for a run if she wasn’t working, hoovering, reading the paper with a mug of tea. Often it was just me and Dad, the radio on. He’d take a week’s worth of stress out on the weeds and slugs. After lunch we’d head out on the bikes maybe, saving the hills for Sunday when we’d have the whole day free, an early start and we could be up Lochnagar before most people had switched on the cartoons.
Before summer.
I sat at my desk, opened my maths book. Shush, whack, shush, whack. The problems were easy but I’d left them for today because last night I couldn’t concentrate. Since school started back I’d been making mistakes, simple, stupid mistakes, things I knew but I couldn’t concentrate, in class, at home, I couldn’t focus. Last night I wrote d instead of b three times in the equation so I packed it in and went to bed. I couldn’t take another day of Miss Brown looking at me with that sympathetic ch
ubby face when she gave me my work back with a B on it, that look of it’s okay, we all know your dad’s crazy and that’s why you’ve suddenly become a moron. That look, nothing but that look from teachers and my friends. Pity. Shush, whack, shush, whack.
So I left my homework for the morning thinking I’d be able to concentrate then. Fat chance. My fossils lay in a line on the desk, their smashed display case thrown out but not replaced. My rocks on the windowsill. Milky quartz, the light glinting off the violet amethyst, black pockmarked basalt from Sakurajima like something from another planet, thousands of holes, bubbles made by heat and pressure, made by Pele.
It’s not a priority right now, Caroline.
No. Obviously.
The priority is Dad, shush, whack. We needed all our time, all our patience, all our understanding for him. He refused help. Refused treatment. Fucking shrinks, he called them. Why can’t they just leave me alone, leave us alone. I just want to forget but they want me to go over it again and again. Group sessions, sitting in front of complete strangers crying and talking about your dreams? Californian bullshit. Tell me about your mother. And how does that make you feel? Why don’t they just watch fucking North Tonight, there’s never anything else fucking on. Standing in front of the TV with a glass of whisky. Always standing. He couldn’t sit, couldn’t stay still for a moment. But that was okay, the shouting at the TV. He’d done that before anyway. Not as much, and not so sweary, but he’d always liked heckling politicians, newsreaders, anyone who annoyed him. So that was fine. It was the nights. Every night. Last night.
The nightmares.
The screaming.
In Japan the walls were paper-thin, I remember putting my hand through one and thinking how thick our granite walls were. We couldn’t hear the Galloways. But even granite isn’t soundproof. My audiobooks didn’t work, didn’t keep the sounds out. Nothing did. Nothing. None of us got much sleep, it was no wonder I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t tell the difference between b and d anymore.
Most nights. Most days. Something. Flashbacks. Dreams. Panic attacks. Drunk. Three months of understanding. He wouldn’t get help and it wasn’t getting better. So this was how we lived now, everyone on edge, waiting for the next alarm.
At least the phone had stopped ringing. The doorbell. Reporters. Journalists. The house under siege over the summer, friends, neighbours, well-meaning well-wishers, pot of tea after pot of tea in the living room with all the thank Gods and the you always think it’ll happen to someone elses and the you’re looking well, considerings.
He’d gone back to work after two weeks, though how he managed in his office I had no idea. They told him to take all the time he needed. But he went back.
I triple-checked my working and put the maths away, got my essay out, my notepad for the rough draft. Essays for English were so much harder than science reports. In science the conclusion was straightforward. This is what happened. This is what I learned. Direct. Clear. Unambiguous. In English the conclusion was a wrapping up of everything already said. What was the point of that? I’d already said it so why say it again? If it wasn’t clear the first time, I could make it clearer. I wished they’d let me drop those stupid arts subjects. Biology, chemistry, physics and maths. I could fill my day with those. How would King Lear help me get into a good earth science department?
Hoops to jump through, things you had to do even if you didn’t want to. That’s what being an adult means, Caroline. Unless that something was getting treatment, unless that something was not drinking. Unless that something was not screwing Frank Carpenter. Sometimes the phone rang and it wasn’t a reporter or a well-wisher. Sometimes Hannah answered it and her voice changed. Sometimes it was him.
Some things never changed.
School was far from a refuge. I’d pushed the party out of my mind, pushed Mark to one side. He’d spent the rest of the summer inventing stories.
Frigid.
Whore.
Bitch.
Slut.
Liar.
There’d been fights. Graeme, Neil, groups of boys in the playground, in the streets. During sports, crunching tackles, dirty play in scrums. Some girls too. Laughter, names. Silence fell when I went into the toilet, my ears burning.
Pity in the classroom.
Hatred in the corridors.
Half the year against me, the teachers thinking I was some kind of jelly, and Dad out the back, shush, whack, shush, whack. I wished I was like one of those TV prodigy kids and I could go to university two years early, pack up and go, leave them to it.
‘Marcus.’ I could hear Hannah through the glass, through the half-closed curtains.
Shush, whack, shush, whack.
‘Marcus. Please stop.’
Shush, whack, shush, whack.
‘What are you doing? Trying to reach New Zealand?’
Shush, whack, shush, whack.
Some of the survivors were interviewed on the news. Some of the families. The way they talked about it like they couldn’t keep any of it in for a second longer, the stories coming out. Where they were when it started, the first explosion. Where they went. Who they saw. How they got off. How they felt when the boat picked them up, the helicopter, seeing their family at the hospital, all of it pouring out.
The exhaustion in them. Haunted. The smiles, their arms around wives and girlfriends, sons and daughters. Happy to be home. Glad to be alive. Counting blessings, thanking lucky stars.
Dad never said a word. He was debriefed at the Skean Dhu and that was it. Clammed up. No interviews. No fucking shrinks. He hadn’t even told me anything. His burns healed but there was scarring. He’d run his fingers over the burns on his palms, tracing something, following canals in his flesh, remembering, the flashbacks coming. He’d be there, back on the platform, screaming at night, during the day, at any time they might come, we have to get out of here, we have to go, we’re going to die. He couldn’t see us, thought we were there with him, thought we were part of the crew. He’s reliving it, Hannah said, it’s like a sleepwalker, don’t interrupt, the effect could be damaging. Did she know this? Did cardiac surgeons study psychology?
Surely you didn’t just leave him to it?
I’d been reading about trauma, sitting in the library. I didn’t take the books out in case he found them in the house. ‘Bomb happy’ the soldiers called it. After trauma like that it was very difficult to readjust to normality. He needed help but wouldn’t even consider the idea. They tried, professionals, charities, knocking on the door, calling. He would have none of it.
The disaster hung over the city. I’d followed a lot of the investigation into Piper Alpha, the programmes, articles. It wasn’t just Dad. Aberdeen changed that day. Oil was no longer something over the horizon that jacked up house prices and flooded the city with Americans.
His memories overwhelmed him when they were triggered by something. Usually it was a flickering light. He had a flashback one day in the Co-op when one of the strip lights was about to go. He stood stock-still for a few seconds then broke into a run, a burst of speed up and down the aisles, shouting that we had to get out.
Did he have them at work?
When he was driving?
Would he get better with time?
‘Marcus. Marcus look at me.’
He was waist-deep in the hole, a mound behind him like Mount Fuji for moles. How far down would he go? Soon enough there’d be nothing left a shovel could shift. You couldn’t get to the other side of the world with a spade. His back was to the house so I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see if this was relaxing him, if this was some form of physical therapy or if he had that look, the manic look before he’d run out of the house, get into the Saab and race off for hours, for a night, for a day or two. But this was new, this digging.
Hannah was halfway up the lawn, still in her gown and slippers, minus the tea. The Galloways were in their garden, Mr Johnstone on the other side, watching the show. My Crazy Dad, like it was some sitcom and I was watching
too, the TV frame of the window, the curtains like it was a theatre, a soap opera. Down there the cheating wife and the alcoholic father, act one, scene one.
She crossed the grass. A step at a time. Slowly. You don’t interrupt them. It could be dangerous. ‘Marcus. Please. Speak to me. Please stop.’ She was crying, trying to control it, her voice. She cried in her room. Kept it to herself but I could hear her. I wondered when she would leave. When the calls would stop. When she would choose.
She reached him. He hadn’t stopped. It looked like he didn’t even know she was there, his back to her, arms going shush, whack, shush, whack. She reached out. A hand. ‘Marcus.’
He turned. Took one hand off the spade. His face. Empty. Drawn. Then he moved, jumped out of the hole and grabbed her. She screamed. He pushed her, pulled her into the hole, down onto her back. ‘Marcus, stop, stop it.’ He held her down, shovelled dirt back into the hole, on top of her. She wriggled, fought, coughed. He couldn’t hold her with one hand and shovel with the other. He dropped the shovel, slapped her hard, pushed her back down, began shovelling again. Mr Galloway ran into the house. Mr Johnstone climbed over the fence into our garden, dragged Dad off Hannah. Dad swung at him but Mr Johnstone was fit, fast, and ducked it. Mr Galloway burst out of our kitchen and together they got Dad on the ground, held him down.
‘Marcus, calm the fuck down, okay?’ said Mr Galloway. ‘We’ve got you. You have to calm down.’
Mrs Galloway ran through, helped Hannah to stand and brushed the worst of the dirt off, held her. Dad was writhing but slowly he calmed, stopped fighting them. He lay there on the grass, on his back, a neighbour on each side, a knee on each shoulder.
‘Is she okay?’ Mr Galloway called over to his wife.
‘Of course she’s not okay.’