It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “It will at least take six or seven hours to go through such a pile of papers.”

  “Then we can be at Fochabers at five and try our luck for a couple of hours before sunset. Think about the possibility! You’re always complaining about how hard life as a General Practitioner really is. Here I’m offering you the best remedy in the world against grumpiness, stress, fatigue, depression, melancholia, mumps and measles. In the interest of your clients, who need an optimistic doctor and your family, who requires a cheerful and sprightly father cum husband, you cannot neglect such a golden opportunity. Jessie will be delighted and if I tell her you refused, she’ll be furious.”

  “All right, all right, first I’ll have to ask John to pave the way.”

  “Get a flight Friday late afternoon, and I’ll call you to-morrow evening, but don’t on no account, and I repeat, on no account, tell Jessie anything about the cleft palate research, only about the fishing trip. “I’ll tell you about it Friday evening. There are very weighty reasons – ”

  “You’re making me more and more curious.”

  “It’s far too sensitive a subject for a public medium like this. You’ll have to wait!”

  Putting the telephone down he stretched himself and yawned. A drowsy Cat lying in a warm nook by the hearth after a long night’s hunt. Golden toast with Seville orange marmalade and two cups of Darjīling made him also tired physically – and yet he was too excited to close his eyes or rest awhile so he wondered whether he should listen to Scottish accents in general or if he should see if he could pinpoint her accent straightaway. Living here she would have lost most of the keen edge of her natural pitch and intonation so he would encourage her to hone it – when he found her – the original tone – the greatest clarity. Choosing the broad approach he sat down at his writing table to search for accents and his future love. There seemed to be a plethora of possibilities – and having zig-zagged forward and backward to a reliable level of information he listened to thirty-two different Scottish accents. Beginning in Edinburgh and going counter clockwise around the coast he became intrigued by the sheer variety in intonation – stress – pitch and melody. There was a general trend in some patterns from South to North – and East to West – but the local and indeed the personal peculiarities were intriguing. Maybe there were not really – if analysing each fraction of a phoneme – two people who spoke alike. No two faces were alike. Hearing at least each sample twice he became convinced that her accent had had a North Scottish twang and began focusing on Aberdeen – Peterhead – Fraserburgh – MacDuff – Lossiemouth – and to a lesser extent – on Inverness – Wick – Thurso and Kirkwall. But he would begin with Inverness. Satisfied with the proceedings he began preparing for the journey. Socks – shirts – computer – tape recorder – microphone and questionnaire? He had better do that right now. The letterhead and the printer?

  ‘Dr Aubrey Saint-Clair.’ As good as anything else.

  ‘Department of Linguistics.’ No other option.

  ‘Milwaukee University.’ There were probably a university like that – or there was at least now.

  ‘277 Ojibwe Avenue.’ Quite Indian like – a touch of authenticity.

  ‘Wisconsin 53201.’ Almost Mid-Western darkness.

  ‘Telephone: (0) 1 410 330 3368.’ Someone might get a little surprise.

  ‘saintclaire@milwaukee.edu.’ Failure to connect – server relocated in the Kuiper Belt.

  ‘Place of recording.’ Just local denomination – no coordinates.

  ‘Date of recording.’ AD – not CE – far too Eurocentric.

  ‘Age of interviewee.’ That term certainly had an American flavour.

  ‘Sex.’ Really unnecessary – but it would be necessary here.

  ‘Born in the area.’ Yes or no.

  ‘Time spent in the area.’ Terrene revolutions around the Sun – roughly. Never ask a fair woman.

  ‘Time spent elsewhere.’ Influence of English – French – Irish maybe or Gaelic.

  ‘Any other spoken languages.’ Manx – Spanish – German – Italian – Norwegian.

  Many more questions could be added but this ought to be quite enough – both for his own sake and for the benefit of the façade – so important now-a-days when the façade sufficed for the whole. But why this elaborate framework? To cover his beaten track – though that was quite unnecessary. As a precaution? No! A habit? Probably – no – some would be willing to answer regardless of his credentials – but giving reasonably trustworthy information made some people more inclined to cooperate – all those who could not see what they saw. Blind faith. He took a new toothbrush – shaving soap – brush and razors – and having booked a flight from Gatwick the following morning at half past nine he could not do anything but wait with restless patience.

  VII

  The train journey through the rag mat of a landscape to Gatwick and the flight to Inverness – longer than the seven hundred and fifty kilometres warranted – had been as unnoticeable as Nitrogen for he had been too intent on imagining the possible vicissitudes of his coming quest. However – when he escaped the pressurised confines of the aluminium-alloy vehicle and filled his yearning lungs with the clear air of the Moray Firth he whistled loudly with relief. Carrying his briefcase in his hand and his valise slung up over his shoulder he walked along the inhuman building among his goal-oriented fellow travellers whose dire need to escape from themselves by enhancing their material circumstances were expressed in the speed with which they stalked their future. Passing the escape facility of the earthly airport and searching discreetly the cabs that drifted by he found one with a driver whose car looked sea-worthy enough to float his pilgrimage awhile.

  “Good morning! Could you please drive me to Inverness and find a place where I might be able to rent a trustworthy car?”

  “Awright!’”

  Claith cap and stout. Roots in the soil and an open mind for the shape of the day. The light was brightening as they approached the Sea but the road turned westward and passed Castle Stuart – dark and forbidding – but now made insipid by commercial pawing. Originally a legacy of Mary’s – when she returned home. Her womanhood and catholic stance might have mitigated the puritan terror that erupted eighty years later but such counterfactual extrapolations could only suggest the haphazard twists and turns of the events that determined history. The landscape was hilly to the South and patches of forest – spread out among the square fields – gave a replanted or a refurnished – not a pristine – impression – but the great sweet Sea – stretched out to the North till the curvature in the distance only left a dim haze in the binoculars – had remained as it was – being much harder to destroy by the progress of the species as water covered seventy-one percent of the surface of the planet. This ancient Sea from whence he came and to whom – at the end of the journey – he would return – drifting westward in the leaden month of November on a small skiff of pale straw till the waves – but here and now the Sun of May was shining gaily to encourage him on his present leg of adventure. First a car and then some demibouteilles as appropriate vouchsafements for the help he would need to find her whereabouts for no obligations should be left lingering in his wake – no unfinished karmă clinging to weigh him down. Worldly tangents fell from circles of serenity. Yet per aspera ad astra – to make a virtue of necessity. The density of rectangular buildings – traffic – Brownian movements and pedestrians increased. About five nautical miles or a little longer. The old houses had retained the august character of the century in which they were built to endure for succeeding generations – the new ones had not and that was it. In front of a grey-glass building the driver stopped.

  “Oh thank ye! It’s jist here.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Opening the glass door he found himself lost in a tasteless office to suffer the plastic smile and the bored eyes of a young red-haired women dressed in a pale blue uniform c
ut for a cardboard prototype in order to make the individual confined in it look like a soldier in an army of homogeneous hypocrites. A betrayal of true femininity – or individuality slaughtered on the slab of commerce for supposed efficiency and unlimited greed.

  “Good morning!”

  “Good morning, Belle-de-jour!”

  “Eh, excuse me?”

  “It means, Good Morning, Morning Glory!”

  Wavering between the insecurity of evaluating his wayward approach and her natural tendency to laugh at such a compliment she waited for a little clue.

  “I wonder if you could help me finding an appropriate motor driven vehicle. I need it for two, three, four or five days, depending on my stars.”

  Assured by his smile to take it all as a joke she dived down behind the counter.

  “Of course, that’s our business. You can have a look at the cars that are currently available here.”

  “But I don’t know very much about cars, so I hope you can give me a bit of advice. Which car would you choose yourself, for example?”

  “Oh, I don’t really know. Maybe – ”

  There was that note in the /o/. Shedding her professional armour she looked keenly at the list.

  “It depends on how much money you want to spend?”

  “And that depends on your advice.”

  As she smiled he felt relieved for the impediments of the circumstances had collapsed. She was still gay – because of being young – and a fellow human soul – though paid to languish inside a cage of superimposed conformity.

  “But I really must know a wee bit about what you want?”

  “A reliable car, one that’s easy to drive, one that does not tempt a needy wight to usurp it should I have forgotten it by the roadside, one that’s inconspicuous, one that’s fast if need be.”

  “Then this Rover here might be our best offer.”

  “All right, and can I leave it at Aberdeen if I cannot come back here to Inverness?”

  “Of course and how would you prefer to pay.”

  “With simple money backed by human trust.”

  “I’m afraid that we cannot accept cash.”

  “I sincerely regret that as I always prefer cash, but since this is a dire emergency I will let you have the virtual alternative.”

  Though taking his card she was also thinking about what he might mean.

  “Here’s the address at which you can leave the car in Aberdeen.”

  “Can I leave it at the airport?”

  “You can do that as well.”

  She gave him the contract and he signed it reluctant to commit himself.

  “You just have to go outside there and ask for James. He’ll show you the car.”

  The coming standard distribution of activity – female and male admissions to universities.

  “All right, thanks, and good day.”

  A youngish man with close-cropped skull approached. Only doing his duty – on a day like this.

  “Good morning, here’s the papers. Can you find the right car for me, please?”

  “Jist follow me.”

  The four-wheeled animals of iron – rubber and plastic – built in their own image – and gleaming with polish – all stood to attention in the sunshine.

  “Here’s the Rover.”

  “Is there anything of importance I should know?”

  “Nae, the papers are there on the seat and here’s your copy. I wish you a pleasant trip.”

  “Thanks and may all the Gods above be with you where ever you go.”

  His look – doubt or amusement – not really knowing if it were meant seriously.

  “But by the way, can you recommend a reliable and well-stocked wine merchant here in the vicinity. I must have twenty-four bottles of wine this very instant.”

  “Twenty-four bottles, eh well well, it’s of course no business of mine, but you’re not supposed to drink and drive here now-a-days, you know.”

  “Quite, but regrettably I will not get an opportunity to drink any of the bottles myself; they are meant as gifts for twenty-four future girl-friends of mine.”

  His laugh was infectious with a mixture of exuberance and curiosity.

  “Twenty-four! Well, I wish you luck, and pluck.”

  “Thanks, I think I might need it, but where would I find a good wine-merchant in Inverness?”

  “There’s the food store here jist around the corner.”

  “Is it a kind of a supermarket?”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “I’m mortally afraid of supermarkets, even of having to set eyes on one of them from the outside; but there must be a real wine-merchant left somewhere here in Inverness?”

  “Then ye’ll jist have to turn right here and continue down High Street, and then turn left till ye come to MacGregor’s Wine and Whisky Store.”

  “Thanks a lot. Then I’ll be on my way.”

  He drove slowly to absorb the street life and the sudden change of styles. The stones of the old houses were cut smooth with care – they breathed still with the mindset that had formed them by looking stern and unforgiving but also generous and alive with a grave and solemn spirit – as if to reflect his preconceived notions or to suggest the rays of light that – coming through gaps in the clouds – would show the inhabitants that their struggle with the Soil and the Sea could be softened by an unexpected bounty – or even that the dreary life on Earth one day would be given up in exchange for the eternal light of Heaven – but further down the street there were rows of uniform houses which – having been prefabricated without proper regard for human proportions – the golden mean – the light within and the light from above – had been stacked up closely beside each other in acts of unconscious despair – as a last resort – though also to exploit the poor useful idiots who continued to sustain the universal cancer of profit maximisation. A universal appetite must have a universal prey and last eat up itself. Then High Street – an increase in pedestrians going about their business – intent on pleasure or self-promotion – doomed to nurse their grievances or exhume their mouldy sorrows. A distinct degree of provincialism endowed the atmosphere with a certain charming ease though it was speckled by an honourable wear and tear of relative hardship which also was suggested in the way clothes were cut and worn. Yet taste was innate – a function of self-awareness. Round the corner maybe? Here it was. His goal of the hour so he parked and crossed the not too busy street. The door was open to greet the pleasant weather and the thirsty customers.

  “Good day.”

  “Can I help ye?”

  Nearly bald and jovial – debonair – with horn-brown spectacles pushed up on his rippled brow.

  “I sincerely hope so. I need twenty-four demi-bouteilles, half-bottles, of a reasonably good wine. They need not all be alike, and while I prefer Bordeaux, they might as well – ”

  “Half-bottles? That’s kind o unusual, but if ye’ll come wi me we can go doon and hae a look.”

  He followed him down a well-worn staircase into the caverns below the dark earth. The smell was pleasant and views of time past began to unfold – leather aprons and Horses – casks – being opened and closed – heart-wood and tannic acid – plenty of leisure and plenty of hard work – but further down the air became humid and fusty.

  “Let’s see, let’s see, here there’re some bottles o Bordeaux, but we can certainly not find twenty-four, but fit aboot a Sauterne?”

  “That would be excellent!”

  “It’s over here. Let’s see. Château Broustet, eight bottles, an here Cantegril, eleven bottles, an Bastor-Lamontagne twenty-two bottles.”

  “That will do. Eight Broustet, eight Cantegril and eight Bastor-Lamontagne.”

  They found two card-board boxes hidden in the shadows – put twelve bottles in each and went upstairs from the underworld to b
e once more just where the light fell upon the Earth.

  “Awright, let me see, let me see. That will be altogether two hundred an fifty-one Pounds.”

  “Can you give me a discount?”

  “A discount, weel, five percent at the maist.”

  “All right.”

  “Then it will be, say, two hundred an thirty-nine Pounds.”

  He counted the money and handed him the new crisp paper bills. Though somewhat reluctant to reveal his professional caution the wine merchant subjected them discreetly to an ultraviolet test. A standard acid routine against fraud and another fine American legacy – already flourishing among New York newsagents years –

  “Would you mind if I just took a couple of bottles now and came back later to fetch the rest?”

  “Oh nae, oh nae.”

  Putting four bottles into his pockets he left the shop behind in time and space. The chances would be just as good here as elsewhere – so looking up and down the street he wondered about whether he should concentrate on the age group around thirty or around fifty. The age group around thirty would be able to put more affective stress into their voices – but the age group around fifty would in all probability have retained a more distinct accent. A rather handsome woman of about forty was approaching him quickly. She looked fresh and unprejudiced.

  “Excuse me, madame, but would it be very inconvenient if I stole two minutes of your life in order to make a phonetic recording of your voice? On behalf of the University of Milwaukee I am conducting research into the phonetic varieties of Scottish accents, and my name is Aubrey Saint-Clair, Doctor Aubrey Saint-Clair?”

  She met him half-ways – on the threshold. Her eyes were cool – grey and appreciative. For a moment she stood absolutely still evaluating her options and her options were based upon how polite and candid he appeared to be.

  “I wouldnae mind.”

  Somewhat like Isabella Brant beneath the Honeysuckles – forthcoming and satisfied.

  “Excellent. First I have to ask you if you have lived here in Inverness all your life?”