He gets to work late, feeling shaky. (Alison is alive but never thinks of him!) Margaret the receptionist gives him a worried look, which he ignores. She’s noticed he’s lost weight, that his eyes are empty and his skin tired and dull. He looks like a man bereft of a wife. I bet he feels exposed, thinks Margaret. Men need wives to be barriers between them and the world. In her opinion, a single middle-aged man is practically naked.
‘Are you alright, Neal?’ asks Margaret in such a patronising tone, Neal immediately gives her a huge brittle smile.
‘Yes indeed, Margaret, I’m fine. I’m great. I am just perfectly great, okay?’ (Irritated by Margaret, and Alison does not love him, but she is alive!) ‘How are you, Margaret? Are you alright? You look a little tired.’
She doesn’t answer, just gives him a pitying look that says you can’t fool me, mister.
Damn, she can see right through me, he thinks. (But Alison is alive!) He feels raw. He accepts a cup of coffee from Margaret, and splashes some of it over his lap. Black coffee on his new Gap khaki trousers. His own clumsiness is so familiar, he’s not really surprised. (But Alison is alive!) The stain will never come out. (She doesn’t love him, but so what!)
Alison must be alive, or has been alive enough recently to post the keys, and this accelerating fact, as it flutters down inside Neal, alters things.
Margaret reminds him primly, that he has seven days of holiday which he must take or lose. Why not take today off? Why not, indeed?
So Neal says a cheery cheerio to the gloating Margaret and gets in his car. Puts on Rubber Soul. John Lennon singing ‘Baby You Can Drive My Car’. He’s not shaved for a few days; he seems to be growing a beard. His chin itches in a pleasant way – that is, he enjoys scratching it. He stretches in his seat, and that feels good too. (Alison is alive!!!) He gives his wife a quick thought, but it still hurts, so he stops. Sally thoughts could ruin whole minutes, whole days.
But look at him: Neal has faced the bogey man of loneliness and not died. He lives in Sloth City and not become ill. His idealised lover is not dead, and so can resume muse status. If Neal could bottle this feeling, it would be banned within days. It’s that wonderful. The road is wonderful, his car is wonderful, John Lennon is still wonderful after all this time. Ah! Wonderfulness!
He passes two boys who look familiar, and they look like they wouldn’t agree with his wonderful diagnosis. Who are they? Their faces, pale and serious, tug at something unpleasant in his memories. Then he is past them, and it’s alright to be wonderful again.
‘You going to Stevie’s birthday do?’
‘Nah,’ says Finn. ‘Busy.’
‘It’ll be good craic,’ says William. ‘At the National. You should come, Finn.’
‘You going?’
‘Aye.’
‘Think I’ve got something else on that night.’
‘Oh well. Fancy meeting up tonight?’ asks William. ‘A pint somewhere?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Just a quick half?’
‘Nah. Sorry. Working late.’
Pause.
‘I still can’t believe it about Calum. Can you?’ asks William.
‘No.’
‘I miss him. Weird, ’cause I didn’t see that much of him. You miss him?’
‘Yeah. Sure. Well, actually, it’s more like I keep thinking I see him.’
‘I keep thinking about him. Remember how he peed himself during story time once. Miss MacKenzie. Mind her? Mind her changing his trousers, and pretending he’s spilled his juice on them?’
‘Aye,’ says Finn, looking over William’s left shoulder at nothing.
‘And the time he won all those races on sports day, mind that? His t-shirt had like a hundred stickers on it, and he wore it for weeks after.’
‘Aye?’ shuffling his feet now.
‘Rosskeen. He was Rosskeen and I was Dalmore. What were you, were you Dalmore too, or were you Averon?’
‘Can’t remember, sorry. Sorry.’
‘You okay, Finn? You alright?’
William moves slightly towards Finn, and Finn steps back. Checks his watch, face reddening.
‘Got to rush, late again.’
‘Okay. Okay. Bye then, Finn. See you.’
‘Bye.’
The boys are heading in the same direction, but now they’ve said their goodbyes, Finn half-runs so he doesn’t walk alongside William.
Yesterday, in the heat, all the rowans started shedding blossoms, and the pavement is littered with them today. It’s an annual phenomenon, these pretend snowflakes, and they rise up around the boy’s footsteps in little white flurries. William stares at Finn’s back, wistfully, and Finn’s face is pink, confused. Neither notices the rowan blossoms.
At home, Neal makes coffee and considers the day. It’s not even ten o’clock yet. The day stretches out, an unexpected reprieve from routine, and seems longer somehow than a weekend day. Why has he not taken all his holidays? What is wrong with him? It is also a beautiful day, the sky is so blue it looks fake. White clouds scud across it like … like in The Simpsons. A Simpson sky.
He finds his hiking boots and drives west to the foot of Ben Wyvis. Walking up the mountain is not an ordeal. Neal has always been a walker, and his legs are strong. He paces himself, stops several times, walks slowly up the steep steps at the top. It takes him two hours and a bit. He strolls slowly on the flat plateau at the top and notices the Cairngorms, the Firth, the empty glens to the west – but it’s the inner view that compels him. That makes him smile, weary and exhilarated at the same time. What does his love for Alison feel like now? If he never sees Alison again, she will still bring him this joy. Without doing a thing, she gives him access to his own heart.
And somewhere un-fishlike, her heart is beating.
Beating Hearts
It’s been such a cold wet summer, the sudden sun is an assault on the senses. Young men who work in offices are swinging their jackets over their shoulders, walking with their heads up, checking out the talent. Middle-aged men with short hair suddenly wish they had long hair again and whistle old songs to themselves, and smile small bemused smiles. Dozens of women momentarily close their eyes and lift their faces to the sun, tilt their heads to let the sirocco breeze reach as much of their necks as it can. Everyone, from the adolescents loitering outside Our Price to the old ladies working in the charity shops on Sauchiehall Street, feels younger than they did yesterday, and without exception, they all remove at least one item of clothing. Collectively, Glasgow sighs into this reprieve of a day, and the wind indifferently whips all these urban sighs away to the sea.
Alice is on one of her walks. She crosses over George Square then heads down Buchanan Street to Argyle Street. Not to shop – she rarely shops – but because this is one of the routes she walks. She jaywalks across Argyle Street and a car almost clips her; she gives a little yelp and jumps onto the pavement. The driver beeps and shouts from his open window, ‘Watch where you’re bloody going, hen, why don’t you!’ But the hen comes out in a nice way, as if he likes her. That’s the kind of thing this sun can do.
On and on she walks, left foot, right foot, left, right, and within minutes she’s somewhere else. She doesn’t want to remember but remembers nonetheless, another day like this when the wind had real warmth in it, and they’d all piled into Neal’s old van and headed to Loch Achilty. Calum, Neal and herself. All the way to the loch, they played a tape full blast. What was it? Blondie? No, it was 10cc. I’m not in love, it’s just a silly phase I’m going through. She was between men again and it was a relief to just be with Neal and her son. Relaxing! She’d rolled a joint, lit it and smoked it all herself. Never needed company to get high in those days, though it’s been years since she fancied a joint – dope just began to make her paranoid after a while.
She remembers they parked in a lay-by and walked along the loch shore till they came to a place out of sight of the few houses. It was hot, further from the coast and therefore hotter than Alness.
They all took their clothes off. She hadn’t felt naked, not in an embarrassing way. They’d skinny-dipped before, and sometimes even used the toilet while the other one was bathing. Calum must have been only six or seven, not modest yet. The afternoon was blissfully primitive: they ate sandwiches when hungry, drank Irn Bru when thirsty, dozed when sleepy, and swam when they felt too hot. The water was dark, peaty soft. Once a school of tiny fish slid against her legs and she hadn’t minded. A timeless afternoon of laziness and calm. Till clouds moved across the sun and a breeze came up. The water rippled with it, and she felt her skin rise in ticklish goosebumps, her nipples harden, her mood descend. She thought of her dad, his unhappiness and cruelty. Her pretty dead mum, the way she used to always let Ali help her make bread. That huge yellow bowl and their four hands pounding the dough. The most recent boyfriend, the way he’d looked at her with dead eyes for weeks before dumping her. Even while fucking (and yes, there was no other word for it), always the dead eyes.
Alice shivers right now, recalling this long-ago afternoon on the loch shore. The happiness, which she did not know was happiness at the time, which was too slow and ordinary to stand up and be counted as happiness; and the subsequent frightening mood dip. She remembers how Neal, who must’ve seen, must’ve been watching, handed her over his shirt. She’d put it on, his large, soft red tartan shirt, and wrapped it around herself, and that is how she feels right now in this warm wind on a Glasgow street. Still stark naked, naked to the bone and shivering, but momentarily distracted by sensuality, by warmth, by the illusion of protection. Not much, not a solid safe feeling, but a good-enough-for-now feeling.
It’s the first time she’s really thought of Neal since the Golspie hotel. He’s been summoned by a climatic change, and she slows her walk. Alice halts, raises her face and closes her eyes instinctively, not to savour the sun or wind, but the memory of Neal’s shirt. Oh! If only memories like these could be safely folded up and re-aired when needed. Not just fleeting images, all blurred and compressed, but the whole experience. Re-live those times properly. Calum had been so happy that day. In fact, now she thinks of it, Calum had always been happy when it was just the three of them. He’d hated all her boyfriends. Hated them. Right pain he’d been, sometimes, cramping her style, putting blokes off her with his glares and tantrums.
When she opens her eyes, she finds herself still on Argyle Street. The wind is still warm, she feels tireless. She walks past the lower end of Central Station, under the overpass and into the meaner end of the street. The pawn shops, the sex shops, the men walking slowly with no goal in mind. Finally she comes to a junction, and when she crosses, the pavement veers away from the road. There are many cars here, but no other pedestrians, not a single one.
She hurries till she finds herself walking between grey tower blocks of council flats. It feels like she’s entering a dangerous forest. The street is in shadow. She walks quicker, and is quickly, within minutes, completely lost. There are still no people in sight, though George Square is a mere quarter mile away and heaving with people. Presumably, there are hundreds of people here too, but they’re hidden behind locked doors and boarded-up windows. She feels watched. As she walks, the wind whips up carrier bags and crisp packets, and even empty tins of Tennent’s. It doesn’t feel like such a friendly wind here. A small scrawny dog, half Corgi by the curly tail, appears from nowhere and follows her half-heartedly, every so often dropping behind, then scurrying back to her side.
‘I’ve nothing for you,’ she warns him, hearing her voice out loud for the first time in hours. It cheers her like an old friend, this rusty sound of her own voice. What else does she have of her past now, but her own body and its emanations?
‘Nothing. Not a sausage.’
She comes to a chip shop, which – miracle of miracles – despite the chain-linked windows, is open. She buys some chips and a battered sausage. Eats the chips greedily and gives the sausage to the dog. Then she lets her internal compass lead her back to the heart of the city, which today is located precisely at the top of Sauchiehall, where a dark-eyed man is playing a wild fiddle, an ancient Celtic air gone mad, to a large crowd. Office workers on their lunch, shoppers out of shopping steam, pensioners out for a constitutional, and babies who have no choice about things like destinations – all this humanity is gathered together temporarily in a cluster. No one within this crowd feels lost or lonely because they are the heart of the city.
Of course, there is a multitude of such hearts everywhere, and they change every minute; with every breath they shift and alter, till they beat in a different way in another location, maybe even just a block away, thirty minutes later, a wee bit further towards the river, the cinema, the clubs, the corner of a room in a fourth-floor flat. The world is dotted with hearts. Like stars in the sky.
On her way home, with the day still nice and trying not to end too early, Alice is noticed by someone from the Highlands. Her old friend Kate from Gairloch, with her glowering eighteen-year-old Mhairi. Between them, they carry seven carrier bags of new clothes and shoes.
‘Is that you, Alison?’
Alice looks caught, says nothing. Experiences deep irritation.
‘Alison! Hey, it is you, isn’t it?’
‘Hello Kate. Hey Mhairi.’
Mhairi grunts: ‘Hey.’ Yawns.
Kate squints. ‘Hey Ali! I wasn’t sure it was you. You look so different.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, yeah! But you look great. Honestly. Short hair suits you. And nice shoes.’
‘Thanks. But I’m getting so fat, look!’
‘Don’t be soft.’
‘Eh?’
‘Sorry. You look great. Look at me – middle-age spread gets us all in the end.’
‘Aye. Well.’
‘Everyone’s looking for you, Alison. You should ring Chrissie. She’s dead worried.’
‘Aye. Well. Keep meaning to.’
‘Will you stop fidgeting, Mhairi?’
‘My hands are killing me, Mum. We should’ve taken a taxi, like I said. It’s cheap here.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, put your bags down for a minute and stop whining.’
Mhairi sighs melodramatically, rolls her eyes in disgust, and Alice suddenly realises why Kate and Mhairi seem so odd to her. Losing a child has begun to seem normal, so the weirdness is that Kate’s child has not died.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ asks Kate.
‘Just, you know. Stuff. Work and that.’
‘Fancy a coffee? Let’s have a coffee somewhere, Ali.’
Mhairi sighs again, looks pointedly at her watch.
‘Will you stop fussing, Mhairi? Come on, Ali. A coffee.’
‘Sorry. Bit late, you see,’ Alice blurts, looking at the sky just above Kate’s shoulder.
‘Well, keep in touch, girl.’
‘Yeah.’
Kate hugs her hard. Alice’s arms remain limply at her side, then she briefly squeezes her old friend and swiftly walks away with a muffled, ‘Bye, Kate. Take care. See ya, Mhairi.’
‘Don’t forget to ring Chrissie. Everyone wonders where you are, Alison.’
But Alice gives no indication she hears.
Janet Disappoints Neal
‘I know where Alison is,’ Chrissie tells Neal over the phone. She’s called him at work, and he turns from the computer to pay attention.
‘Kate, an old pal of hers, phoned me up. Said she’d seen Alison down in Glasgow. Didn’t look anything like her, really, she said, but it was definitely her.’
‘She talked to her?’
‘Aye, she did, and it was her right enough. Luckily Kate kind of followed her home.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Well, I don’t think it was that on-purpose sneaky, like. She hadn’t planned to spy on her or anything. Just that Ali acted so strange. She gave me the address of the house where Ali went.’
And for this, Chrissie has given up chocolate éclairs forever. That was the bargain, as of yest
erday. Every day, a different bribe to God. If you give me Ali back, I will give up Rioja, milk chocolate with raisins, gossiping about workmates, criticising my eldest about spoiling her kids. Always, the carefully specific sacrifices, in case her bluff was called.
* * *
The next day at dawn, after the quick bowl of Fruit and Fibre, Neal drives south instead of going to work. He doesn’t phone in sick. Work routines have kind of slipped off the radar, and in the last two months Neal has missed four days of work. The old Neal was punctual and reliable. Weirdly, it gets easier and easier not to care. Nothing horrendous has resulted, so far.
As he passes Dunkeld, a train thunders past on the way north to Inverness. He gives it a glance, but does not see, of course, Alison or Alice looking out the window, thinking of her sister.
Whoosh!
They slide past each other at a relative speed of 156 miles an hour.
And perhaps something passes between them, for there is a palpable quiver in the air of Neal’s car suddenly, and he presses harder on the accelerator. And in the train, Alice/Alison shivers, and begins to eat a pear. She isn’t hungry, but she needs to rid herself of excess energy. If she was still a smoker, she’d smoke now. She’s restless, impatient. Is she approaching normality, as she approaches her old home town? It looks like it. Crunch, crunch, and she notices it’s not a very juicy pear, but finishes it anyway. It’s something to do, and it’s been a long time since she’s noticed the taste of anything.
Maybe she’ll get pissed tonight. That would be a good thing to do. Find Chrissie and have a right old session. She’s not been pissed since … since that bottle of whisky by herself that terrible day. Damn, she misses getting drunk. She hopes her stomach allows her to. Is it an ulcer? What a drag it is, getting old.
If I Touched the Earth Page 15