Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  ‘He was a scientist,’ said Tulloch.

  Mr Bryan sputtered with laughter. ‘What the devil are you teaching these kids?’

  Mr Luss intervened. ‘It’s the attention he showers on one or two of them that bothers me. You know, Gordon, good intentions can be misinterpreted. That’s why we all need to be in the union, so we’ve got legal protection if ever there’s a problem.’ Footsteps came towards the door, which closed firmly, and Robbie left, bewildered by what he’d heard.

  Mr Tulloch didn’t know about the alien signals on the radiogram; Robbie would have liked to have told him. In space they didn’t have unions or free collective bargaining or beer and sandwiches in smoke-filled rooms. They didn’t even have pockets. The gentle whistle and crackle Robbie fell asleep to each night was a shortwave promise of prosperity without strife.

  Television programmes were interrupted to show Mr Heath announce that negotiations with the miners and power workers had fallen through, and that industry would consequently be limited to a three-day week to conserve coal, while electricity supplies were to be periodically cut off. It prompted Mrs Coyle to candle off to the shops first thing next morning, and by the end of the week she had filled an entire cupboard with sugar, butter and other essentials in readiness for what seemed more like a coming war than a few prearranged blackouts.

  It was the biggest fun Robbie had ever had, counting down to the moment when the lights went out and the television died. The family sat round the dining table watching flickering flames and each other’s spectral faces. ‘This is the sort of thing we went through when we were weans,’ Mr Coyle said, adjusting a candle that looked in danger of toppling.

  ‘It’s like being in Russia,’ his wife said gloomily.

  ‘They don’t have power cuts in Russia.’

  ‘They do in Albania,’ Robbie said. ‘Mr Tulloch told me.’

  ‘And what does he know about Albania?’

  ‘He knows about everything,’ said Robbie.

  ‘Oh, he does, does he?’ Mr Coyle laughed. ‘And how about Mr Luss? I expect he’ll be wanting the school to go on a three-day week along with the rest of industry. He’ll be having sit-ins in the assembly hall before we know it. The man calls himself a socialist but he’s only a trouble-maker.’

  ‘Joe, you shouldn’t talk like that about school teachers in front of the children.’

  ‘He’s learned his socialism off a lot of fancy books and student debates, but these teachers don’t really know what they are because they’re not like us, Robbie. All workers are socialist by birth. Talk to any of the men in the plant, even the lads that have only just come in straight from school, and they know what’s what though they don’t yet have a name for it. They join the union because it’s the only thing that stops them getting thrown out for nothing or having their pay packet cut. Luss, Tulloch, these so-called intellectuals – look where they end up, the hippie left or the bloody Liberals. Never trust anyone who’s only learned about life from reading books.’

  Robbie went up to bed in darkness. The radiogram was as inactive as every other electrical appliance in the house, but he had a secret nuclear fuel cell beneath his pillow, and this was what he placed beside his ear. Through it he could hear the voice of the Red Star, where everything was so much better.

  13

  One evening after school, Janet said sheepishly, ‘Mum, can I go to the dance next week?’

  ‘What dance is that?’ asked Mrs Coyle, who was darning socks. Robbie was sitting nearby, watching Young Scientist of the Year.

  ‘It’s at St Mary’s,’ said Janet. ‘Rhona’s going.’

  Mrs Coyle studied very carefully the needle she was re-threading. ‘I don’t know. You’d better ask your dad when he gets in.’

  On the television screen, a trio of neatly shorn English schoolboys were showing the presenter a new gadget they had invented for cleaning windows. ‘At first we found the motor kept getting wet,’ one said with a plummy chortle. ‘Then we tried the polyester casing.’

  ‘And I understand you all have interesting career ambitions,’ the presenter prompted, leading the boys to explain how business, law and politics beckoned. They went to the kind of posh school Mr Tulloch said Robbie ought to be in – he should try and get a scholarship. But Mr Coyle said that in the future these elitist places would be abolished completely and in the meantime he wasn’t going to have his son brainwashed by upper-class twits.

  ‘Does it have to be up to Dad?’ Janet pleaded. ‘Can’t you decide about the dance, Mum?’

  ‘We decide things together,’ Mrs Coyle said loyally. ‘Would you be wanting to go with a boy?’

  Robbie snickered; Janet scowled. ‘I don’t have to,’ she told her mother. ‘I could go with Rhona. It’s only a dance.’

  ‘But we’d need to take you there and back, otherwise it’s a long walk for you on your own.’

  The haggling continued while Robbie watched the second team in the competition, three girls from Dame Margaret’s College in Devon who had made a sugar-powered car. There it was, a real vehicle with four bicycle wheels and an engine, bits of Meccano and wires all over the place, must have taken them months. It was like something off Tomorrow’s World, and it had been done by three girls who were only a few years older than Robbie. Why was there no one like that in his school? The blonde one, for example, team captain with sparkling eyes and a way of tossing her head like it was all nothing, really, this brilliant contraption they’d made. Could probably manage a milk-powered spaceship if they put their minds to it. She was called Rosalind.

  He was on Young Scientist of the Year, showing off the device he’d made with no help from anyone. ‘It’s a telepathy machine,’ he tells the presenter.

  ‘Show me how it works.’

  ‘You put your head close to the loudspeaker, like this.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘That way the electromagnetic fields can enter your brain.’

  ‘So you’re actually tuning your mind into the ether, so to speak?’

  ‘No,’ says Robbie firmly, ‘the ether theory was disproved by Albert Einstein in 1905.’

  The team captain from Dame Margaret’s College is watching with a mixture of envy and desire. ‘All right, we give up,’ she says at last. ‘Our sugar-powered car is no match for the Coyle Mind Transducer.’

  Robbie was in his room later, making some adjustments to the machine, when Mr Coyle came home and was greeted at once by his wife and daughter; Robbie heard what was said in the hall below.

  ‘She wants to go to the dance.’

  ‘Is it a discotheque?’

  ‘It’s at St Mary’s, Joe, so I don’t think they’ll be letting them get up to anything.’

  ‘Aye, but who’s taking her?’

  ‘I’ll go on my own, Dad.’

  ‘That’s even worse – but can I not get in and take off my coat before you bombard me with all your problems?’

  Mr and Mrs Coyle went to the kitchen; Janet rushed upstairs in tears, anticipating a bad result, and shut herself in her bedroom. Robbie crept down to the hallway and overheard his parents’ conversation.

  ‘There’s going to be layoffs at the plant, Anne, it’s looking definite.’

  ‘Will you get made redundant?’

  ‘No one knows how they’ll do it but we’re holding a strike meeting tomorrow.’

  The doorbell rang, startling Robbie, who either had to answer it or else run away, but he still hadn’t reached a decision when his mother came out of the kitchen. ‘Let’s see who it is,’ she said, apparently unaware he had been listening.

  Sam Dunbar was at the door. ‘Hello, Anne,’ he said with a smile.

  Joe came up behind his wife. ‘Come on in, Sam.’ There was no more trace of worry or despondency, nor of the contempt that underlay his grudging friendship with Sam; instead there was a perfect mask of cheerfulness.

  ‘I’ve a wee proposal to make,’ said Sam, stepping in.

  Mr and Mrs Coyle exchanged a puzzled
glance. ‘What sort of proposal?’ asked Anne, closing the front door and beckoning Sam towards the kitchen.

  ‘You’re a big fellow, Robbie.’ Sam patted him on the shoulder. ‘Do you like dancing?’

  It was all, to use a word Robbie had learned recently from Mr Tulloch, surreal. The telepathic waves of his machine had begun to scramble up the space–time continuum.

  ‘Dancing?’ said Mrs Coyle. ‘No, he’s not much of a dancer.’

  ‘That’s too bad. Maybe he needs a bit of practice.’

  Robbie hung back as the three adults went to the kitchen, each of them looking just as awkward as Robbie felt. Janet appeared on the stairs, wondering what was going on.

  Sam explained, ‘There’s a dance next week at St Mary’s.’

  ‘We know,’ said Mrs Coyle.

  ‘Sheena really wants to go but she’s got nobody to take her.’

  ‘I see,’ Mr Coyle said with a knowing smile. ‘Is she looking for a suitable boy?’

  ‘That’s it exactly.’

  Janet rushed into the kitchen. ‘Then Robbie and me can both go.’

  ‘Eh, wait a wee minute,’ her father said touchily. ‘It’s not up to you to say what everybody does.’

  ‘I’d take them in the car and pick them up afterwards,’ Sam explained. ‘I could have them home by nine.’ He smiled at Janet. ‘So you’re wanting to go too are you, poppet? Have you got someone taking you? I suppose I could squeeze the four of you in the car.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Mr Coyle. ‘Janet, you were talking about going with Rhona. If you don’t mind going with a girl then why don’t you go with Sheena? You see, Sam, it doesn’t have to be boy–girl couples – they don’t need a lumber like in these American films with all their proms and winching and that, not kids this age.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Sam replied, rubbing his cheek ruefully. ‘To tell you the truth, Joe, I was already winching when I was their age and that’s why I want Sheena going with someone I know won’t try and get up to anything.’

  Another word Robbie had learned recently was ‘ignominious’, and it was how he felt now.

  Mrs Coyle tittered. ‘You were an early starter, Sam.’

  ‘Just an ordinary lad, Anne. The most dangerous animal in the world is a teenage boy – if you’ve got two daughters, that is.’

  ‘Doesn’t your Louise want to go?’ asked Mrs Coyle. ‘She could look after her wee sister.’

  ‘She says the church-hall dances are for weans. Look, why don’t I take the three of them: Sheena, Robbie and Janet?’

  ‘I’m sure Robbie doesn’t even want to go,’ said Mr Coyle.

  Robbie’s fate was completely out of his hands; he was like the shiny projectile in a pinball table, buffeted from one post to another. First Mr Dunbar would light up, then his father, but the mounting score meant nothing to Robbie. All he saw was the pleasant possibility of spending time with Sheena.

  ‘I want to go,’ he said.

  ‘Eh?’ His father looked at him as if he’d just volunteered for a one-way trip to Pluto.

  ‘You’re only doing it to spite me!’ Janet told him angrily. ‘I was the first who said anything about the dance and if you go then you’ll ruin it.’

  ‘Then it’s decided,’ Mr Coyle said flatly. ‘Robbie goes with Sheena. Janet, you’re staying at home.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Sam came here to invite Robbie; he’s the one with the car and the plan and it’s not for us to upset everything.’

  ‘But, Dad, that’s so totally … I hate you all!’ She left the room in more tears.

  Mr Coyle told Sam, ‘Sometimes you’ve got to be hard with them for their own good.’

  ‘Maybe not that hard,’ his wife said quietly.

  Sam looked equally pained. ‘It’s no bother taking the three of them …’

  ‘No,’ Mr Coyle insisted. ‘Even if I’m wrong I never go back on my word. You only confuse your children that way. To be honest, Sam, I’ve got other things on my mind more important than dancing. Take Robbie with you next week – he’ll keep an eye on Sheena.’

  Sam shuffled uneasily towards the front door. ‘We can talk about it another time, Joe.’

  After Sam left, Robbie felt even more awkward. The ominous momentum of his father’s mood had overbalanced the entire house, so Robbie climbed back to the safe equilibrium of his mind transducer. The sun was setting now and the tuning dial could begin picking up the interstellar signals.

  ‘Don’t worry, kid.’ It was the voice of the Red Star. ‘Things’ll work out, wait and see.’

  ‘But will I ever meet someone like her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The captain of Dame Margaret’s … Hang on, I shouldn’t need to tell you this, we’re meant to be in telepathic contact, aren’t we?’

  ‘It’s not that simple. Just go to the dance next week and await further instructions.’

  14

  The dances at St Mary’s church hall were intermittent affairs organized with the stated aim of ‘keeping youngsters out of trouble’; and since trouble, as Mr Coyle often warned, was something you could encounter almost everywhere, these dances had to be kept scrupulously clean and free of any contamination from the unpleasantness of the real world. ‘There’s a lot of funny characters around,’ Mr Coyle had often told his children, and these characters who pushed drugs, knifed strangers or abducted the innocent into a life of crime and prostitution could be found in every town, in every inadequately lit street, in every shop or park, waiting to pounce on any unwitting and unescorted youngster who crossed their malevolent shadow. The only way to survive in a world invaded by aliens was to trust no one, and to carry a laser at all times.

  Robbie and Sheena stepped together into the church hall’s decontaminated zone. No aliens here; only a hundred or so children aged eleven to fourteen sipping lemonade served from a table in the corner of the brightly lit room. During the whole car journey Sheena hadn’t said a single word to Robbie, and now that Mr Dunbar had released the two of them for their evening together she showed little sign of becoming any more talkative. It was her father’s idea that she go with Robbie, not hers, and she was determined to make this clear. Janet was at the cinema with her mother, and Robbie wished he was there too. The evening stretched before him like a noose.

  ‘I’m going to talk to my friends,’ Sheena said, abruptly departing to the opposite side of the room where some girls excitedly greeted her. They all stared in his direction and broke into giggles. He wanted to shoot them dead.

  A man in a cardigan was fiddling with a record player which didn’t seem to be working, while a fat woman with a sweaty forehead called to her lanky son about checking the loudspeaker leads. Robbie went to the refreshment table and saw it was 5p a cup. He had no money; Mr Dunbar had bought the entry tickets and Robbie hadn’t thought to bring any.

  ‘Do you want something?’ He looked up from the paper cups and saw an older girl in a white dress, or maybe it was some kind of apron that you wore when it was your job to sell lemonade at church-hall dances, Robbie wasn’t sure. She didn’t look anything like Sheena or the captain of Dame Margaret’s science team. She looked kind.

  ‘I haven’t any money,’ he said meekly.

  ‘Then you won’t be buying anything.’

  He felt totally foolish. Ignominious and surreal. It was only in the Star Trek future that money would be abolished and pockets made unnecessary; here in St Mary’s church hall they were still essential.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said quietly, glancing around. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Come on, don’t let me get caught. Lemonade, cola or Irn Bru?’

  ‘Irn Bru.’

  She poured so hurriedly she created an orange bubbling fizz that volcanoed over the edge of the cup onto the paper tablecloth. ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, taking the dripping cup and sucking the sweet froth into his mouth.

  ‘You’re trouble,’ she told him. ‘So mu
ch for me and my good deeds.’

  It was the longest conversation he’d ever had in his entire life with a female who wasn’t a member of his family or somebody’s pet hamster. It all felt so easy, he thought, while walking away from the table, wondering if he’d ever speak to her again. Too bad he couldn’t go back and cadge a free bag of cheese and onion. Safely positioned at the far wall he turned and looked towards the table but now somebody else had taken over; a greasy-haired boy. She was gone like a radio signal.

  There was a loud popping from one of the loudspeakers, then the cardiganed man began speaking into a microphone. All fell silent.

  ‘Hello, boys and girls, and hello, too, ladies, because I can see that a few parents have managed to come as well. It’s always nice when people of all ages can mix together, because we oldies still know how to have a good time, don’t we? And I’m glad to see so many familiar faces from St Mary’s and the youth club, as well as a few newcomers who I hope we’ll meet again. Obviously a splendid occasion like this involves a great many people behind the scenes so to speak making sure everything goes all right on the night, and I can’t list everyone now, but I’d just like to say a special thank you to Agnes Ritchie and to Mr and Mrs Morrison, and also to young Alan. Do be sure to partake of refreshments and please try to avoid spillages on the floor. Now without further ado let’s on with the show.’

  There was another loud pop and then a tune no one recognized, which clearly went back a generation or two. Nobody was quite sure what to do with it until the fat woman pulled a short bald man, her husband or someone who was simply unlucky, out into the middle of the floor, where one or two other brave individuals of comparable vintage went to join them. The children carried on sipping and talking in the clusters they had formed, none of which had room for Robbie.

  He didn’t recognize a single person here, and in an effort to appear less conspicuous began walking slowly round the room, carefully studying the pictures on the walls and sipping his Irn Bru. When his drink ran out he was left awkwardly holding an empty cup; locating a bin for it offered a welcome diversion, but afterwards as he carried on examining the decor with the attentive gaze of a connoisseur he found himself troubled by his empty hands, weighty and superfluous at the ends of his unoccupied arms. He linked them behind his back like Prince Philip being shown round a new building, while all the other children stared at him (or rather ignored him, which amounted to the same thing), and a few grown-ups jigged around like idiots. It was so ignominiously surreal.