Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  She reaches out her hand to him. ‘Don’t think that way.’ And she puts her hand on his arm. It’s like there’s electricity flowing through her fingertips into his body, pumping energy inside him. It’s like she’s got this magic power of caring what happens to him. Right now his mum’s away shopping with the Hags and his dad’s picking his nose in front of the television and here’s this girl called Jodie that he didn’t even know ten minutes ago and she’s like the most wonderful thing in his life. That one touch of her fingers on his arm and it’s like he’s seeing a thousand million zillion futures that could lead from this moment and he’s only allowed to choose one of them because God is such a boring bastard.

  ‘I’m seeing him later,’ he says. ‘I’m meant to meet him in the park.’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘Then I’ll come with you.’

  ‘What, so he can murder you too?’

  She says, ‘I want to know who he is and what this is about.’

  And they start walking. It just happens, neither of them say, ‘Let’s walk,’ or propose they take a vote or anything, but there they are, walking along the path beside the river. And next thing they’re holding hands, both a bit embarrassed at first, but they soon get used to it once they work out where their fingers ought to go. Funny, they used to hold people’s hands all the time – their parents, or their partner’s in school whenever they had to go on trips in pairs. But that was years and years ago and they’ve forgotten what it’s like. You probably start out knowing everything when you’re a baby but it gets wiped and you spend the rest of your life having to relearn it, or so the kid thinks.

  They get to an old monument with a bench in front of it. There’s been someone lit a fire at one end of the bench and left it black and charred so the two of them have to sit close together at the other end, and after a while the kid puts his arm round her. River’s full of rats and shit but right now it’s the most beautiful spot in the universe. And the kid’s got his arm round her thinking this is what I ran away to find, this is the answer, the missing piece, the full set.

  She goes, ‘You can kiss me,’ so he does. First time he’s ever properly kissed a girl and he feels like the game must have done when it fell in the water and disappeared. He’s at the centre of a whole lot of spreading rings, vibrating waves putting him in touch with the furthest end of the galaxy. Her lips are so soft and warm, full of a life that’s not his but she’s letting him share a little piece of it. He wonders if he’s meant to put his tongue in but she solves the dilemma by gently pushing him away. ‘Enough for now,’ she says with a smile, like she only dares allow herself a bit at a time, frightened of enjoying it too much.

  He looks round at the monument behind and finds himself reading the inscription on it.

  ON 31ST DECEMBER 1860, DURING SEVERE FLOODING,

  JAMES DEUCHAR, 20, A DIVINITY STUDENT AT GLASGOW

  UNIVERSITY, LEAPT INTO THE RIVER NEAR THIS SPOT

  INAN ATTEMPT TO RESCUE GEORGE LAIDLAW, 5, AND

  MARY LAIDLAW, 7, WHO HAD FALLEN IN. HAVING SAVED

  THE YOUNGER CHILD, MR. DEUCHAR RETURNED TO SEARCH

  FOR THE GIRL, WHO WAS WASHED UP ALIVE FURTHER

  DOWNSTREAM. MR. DEUCHAR, HOWEVER, PERISHED IN HIS

  NOBLE ENDEAVOUR. THIS MONUMENT TO HIS HEROISM WAS

  ERECTED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION, 3RD JANUARY 1863.

  ‘Look at that,’ he says.

  Jodie reads too. ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘Happened so long ago.’

  ‘It’s still terrible.’

  They both turn from it and look at the river in silence. Too shallow to be a threat to anyone unless they drank it. What if James Deuchar had lived and the children had died? Menus and submenus of human existence, hundreds of people alive today because of what that crazy superhero guy did in 1860, perhaps even Jodie or the kid, which is so cool, like everything’s connected and means something. He says to her, ‘If you fly far enough in space there’s another planet just like this one. Only that guy Deuchar didn’t get drowned.’

  She’s looking like this is rubbish but I’ll believe you if you want me to and she goes, ‘Is there another you and another me on that planet?’ and he goes, ‘Sure.’ Why not? It’s what they saw with their magnifying glass, said so on the Discovery Channel. She tells him Jodie Foster was in this film called Contact about an astronomer who gets sent instructions from aliens to make a spaceship and she builds it and goes to see them. And he decides to tell her everything.

  ‘The stranger I met in the park – he says he’s a spaceman.’

  She laughs then sees he’s serious. ‘You don’t believe him, do you?’

  The kid shrugs. If we live in an infinite universe et cetera. Which we do.

  7

  Joe Coyle liked something to listen to while he was walking, and it was always his transistor radio with an earphone. You get these young ones with an enormous thing on their shoulder, ghetto blaster, music pounding out. Do they think they’re clever? Is their musical taste so superior to everybody else’s that they’ve got to inflict it on the entire population? One time, Joe had a quiet word with a group of them, kiddies probably no more than eleven or twelve year old. What did one of them say to him? ‘Fuck off, you old git.’ And the rest of them laughed. Circle of smirking weans, deserved a good cuff round the ear, and Joe Coyle realized he was scared of them. Scared because if he lifted a finger they’d have the law on him. Or one of the brats might pull a knife. Or his heart might give out like that fellow’s over by Gippen, took on a crowd of yobs who were vandalizing his neighbour’s car, wound up dead. World’s gone mad.

  Joe Coyle was walking back into town, back to ASDA, fact of the matter’s that he was finding a way to pass a Saturday afternoon needed passing. Being a non-driving moderate-drinking football-hating pensioner with a semi-invalid for a wife, well, there wasn’t a lot else for him to do, was there? Take up fishing, maybe, though he’d seen the price of rods in the Argos catalogue and it was outrageous really. No, a man’s legs are his best entertainment. When the kids were still with them, every weekend, the family walk. You lose the family but you don’t need to give up the walk.

  He gave his earphone a twist so he could hear better, turned up the volume, and listened to Any Questions. Panel of experts, so called, commenting on current affairs. Always guaranteed to set Joe’s blood boiling. One talking now, it was that fellow, what’s-his-name, wanted to be party leader and it came out he was sleeping with his secretary. Current affairs indeed. Then a woman, Joe knows her voice, can picture her face, a Blairite clone. Thirty years a Labour Party member, so he was, then they made it New Labour. And you know whose idea that was. Even the union went down the pan. Used to be called the ATWU, been that since it was founded, then they got in some marketing agency, load of kids with suits and expense accounts, and forty thousand quid’s worth of subs went on coming up with a wee picture of a daisy for a logo and a new name, Together. Meant to be a trade union, not a pop group!

  This daft woman talking in Joe’s ear, she was driving him nuts. Thirty year ago he was working forty hours a week at the plant, plus overtime, plus he was coming home and dealing with union business until midnight, plus there was branch meetings, plus he was out there at every election canvassing for the Labour Party, plus he was bringing up two weans to know the difference between right and wrong. And this stupid wee lassie on the radio? Thirty year ago she probably wasn’t even a sperm and an egg though already by then she’d got her career mapped out as New Labour spokesperson on community relations.

  Now it was the presenter talking, they wanted another question from the audience. Joe could think of a few he’d like to ask, but the one they got came from Susan Wells who’s thirteen years old and comes from Little Norton. Joe turned up his radio another notch to hear what the girl would say, and it was almost like struggling to catch birdsong, this flutey child’s voice reading the question she’d brought. Joe had to wait for t
he presenter to repeat it.

  ‘What is truth?’

  That was it: three words so short and simple that for a moment neither the audience nor the panel knew how to respond. ‘There we have it,’ said the presenter with an ironic smile in his voice. ‘Who’d like to kick off with that one?’

  Some posh bloke pitched in; MP, millionaire, archbishop, whatever. ‘Truth means different things to different people and in an integrated, multicultural society we need to respect that. Of course there are certain core values we all share and uphold: the sanctity of life, for instance, and respect for individual freedoms. But it would be quite wrong to believe in some kind of one-size-fits-all approach.’

  Next it was the fellow who’d been screwing his secretary, and of course he agreed entirely. ‘We really need to look at it in terms of individual rather than collective truths, all of us moving forward together while retaining our rich diversity of traditions and beliefs.’

  Then the clone, firm but conciliatory, way they’re trained to talk. She’ll be Prime Minister one day, thought Joe. ‘In a healthy democracy, instead of there being one monolithic truth, there are lots and lots of them, all having an equal say and contributing to the debate. To give an analogy, when I was growing up there were four television channels – now there are hundreds, and we’ve got the Internet too, all feeding us so much information that we can’t possibly keep track of everything. So we’re a society of surfers and choosers, cherry-picking whatever suits us, whether it’s our religion, our politics, our taste in fashion and so on. Some people might find that disorientating but really it’s the triumph of choice, and that has been the greatest achievement of global civilization in the last half century. Now there are no ideologies, no rule books we all have to follow.’

  ‘So truth is whatever we want it to be?’ the presenter intervened.

  ‘I suppose you could say that,’ the clone agreed. ‘Within reason, of course.’

  Joe stopped to take a breath, leaning against a railing. Had he ever heard a group of sane adults talk such utter gibberish? Disorientating? Too right it was, to have this sort of nonsense piped in your ear. And what was all that marching about, that he and Anne and millions more had done? Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or weren’t there? Not a difficult question, yes or no would do. But all you could get from these political jobsworths was evasive guff about everybody being right in their own way.

  Joe pulled out the earphone. I’ll tell you what’s truth, he thought to himself. Truth is that I’m standing here, the sky’s blue, two and two make four. Truth is all the things that happen, all the experiences, the good times and the bad, things you wish weren’t true but they are. He felt a pain in his chest, took another breath, calmed down. He damn well wasn’t going to be finished off by the idiot southerners on Any Questions.

  He took the small black radio out the breast pocket on his T-shirt and swivelled the tuner. The dial was marked only with numbers, that’s what they’re all like nowadays. Used to be you had a list of cities, permanent as the exchange rate, a gold standard of world frequencies: Vienna, Madrid, Paris. Robbie loved playing with the radiogram, thrown out long ago when nobody wanted it, not even the charity shops, though it still worked. Joe was for keeping it but not Anne. Can’t keep everything, she said. Got to let go. Joe’s dial was marked, however, by fine lines of Tipp-Ex indicating his favourite stations, and on abandoning Any Questions he moved up the scale in search of better wavelengths. Pushing the earphone back in place, he heard a medical programme in which a doctor was offering advice on healthy eating.

  ‘Plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, of course. And don’t forget the herbs and spices, because recent research shows these can contain high concentrations of useful antioxidants. But don’t overdo it, because some of our tastiest herbs owe their flavour to natural toxins designed to deter insects, and although not harmful in the amounts we use in cooking, you wouldn’t want to be brewing them up to make your morning cuppa.’

  Joe’s blood ran cold. All that stuff he’d heard was a lie. Fifteen year ago the doctors were saying you should drink parsley and he’d been doing it ever since. Now he knew the truth: he’d been a guinea pig in an experiment. Those bastards were out to kill him.

  He thought about it all the way to ASDA, got there and knew Anne had wanted him to buy something, told him to write it down. He hadn’t, never needed to, always carried the list in his head, but this parsley shocker had fair floored him – a junkie at his age! And a herbal one at that. Anne would no doubt tell him he was being a big daftie but he’d heard it with his own ear (the left one, his best). Not like he was starting to hear things, the way Robbie did, first sign he was getting ill. No, old Joe never had a day off sick in his life, only way they could get him out the plant was redundancy, but he’d been noticing right enough that if he ran out of parsley and skipped a day or two he sometimes got the shakes.

  Freezer cabinet – is that what Anne was wanting? Load of processed burgers full of dead pets that ran away and got caught – Maureen Dunbar’s cat’d make a good sleeve for a fur coat and a packet of mini-Kievs. No, try the next section, frozen desserts. Anne must have said ice cream, Joe thought, here we go, American type she likes, always coming up with new flavours. Picture of the pair of them on the back, jolly men with beards, wonder if they’re real? All gets made in a factory somewhere, they con you into thinking it’s home-made. Sliding open the freezer, reaching inside to retrieve a tub so cold it stuck momentarily to his fingers, pulling it from the frigid steam and closing the door, then reading the description on the side. ‘There’s nothing we like better than rowing on the beautiful rivers and lakes of Vermont, and that’s how we came up with this great new addition to our range. Rich vanilla ice cream, luscious Vermont maple syrup and miniature chocolate rowing boats in a mouth-watering tide of gorgeous caramel. We love it!’

  Joe tipped the tub to see the name on the lid. ‘Caramel Oargasm’. And wee kiddies could see it there in the freezer, it wasn’t like it was on the top shelf or anything. Fine if they want to have X-rated desserts and put them out of reach but this was where anybody could get it. ‘Mummy, can I have a caramel orgasm?’ Used to be you couldn’t even say ‘pregnant’ in public, and then they wonder why there’s all these perverts and weirdos?

  He tried to think what he needed and soon was in the herb section. ‘Take a look at this,’ he said to a passing assistant, a teenage girl. ‘Fifty-seven pence.’

  She looked displeased. ‘We’ve been through this. Try fresh herbs another day.’

  ‘What?’

  She walked on, ignored him. He was a customer and she’d treated him as if he didn’t even exist. Who the hell did she think she was? Young kid with purple hair and a head full of pop music, thinks she’s too good to worry herself with an old man like Joe Coyle, is that it? And what did she do about Iraq?

  Hang on, rewind. Strange sense of déjà vu like he’d seen it in another life but no they really had been through all of this already and he’d momentarily forgot like it was blanked out, bit of the tape that didn’t record properly. It was all that parsley. Fellow on the radio, professor somebody or other, bloke who knows about these things, said there’s something psychoactive in the plant and that’s why people have been using it for generations not realizing every time they put a wee sprinkle on their steamed cod or roast lamb they’re getting high on it. OK in moderation, professor somebody or other says, but two cups a day? We’re talking brain, liver and lung damage, doc says, legs crossed behind his big desk and sitting back with a sorrowful shake of his head. Do you not mind that man lived on carrot juice and when they found him dead on his bed he looked like a carrot?

  Joe felt suddenly breathless, all that green juice poisoning his system – and there was him thinking it was doing him good! He was turning into a walking wreck so he was, and all because of those damned Americans. Stay calm, big fellow. You were on the cigs for long enough until you gave them up and that was no problem. You d
ecide something and then you do it. No need to be emotional about it like a blubbering wean or a woman. Twenty-five year next week and you’ve survived that one, haven’t you? Two wee cups of parsley every day, what’s that? Maybe shortened your life by a year or two, call it ten if you like. In which case you died last week … no don’t think that way.

  He walked to the end of the aisle and saw the cash desks with queues at each, people stuffing groceries in bags, but it was the sunshine beyond that drew him, sucking his gaze like a buzzing fly’s, his feet knowing where to go even if his mind was somewhere else, and soon he was at the entrance, the Big Issue seller with his stray-dog look standing only a few yards ahead, but before Joe could cross the threshold he heard a deep male voice.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  Startled, Joe turned to see a uniformed security guard at his side.

  ‘You didn’t pay for that.’ The guard was pointing at the ice cream Joe raised into full view, feeling guilty and confused.

  ‘Sorry … I totally forgot.’

  ‘Come on, Joe.’ It was his friend Agnes, appearing from nowhere and rescuing him. ‘Here, I’ll do it for you at the cigarette counter.’

  Joe meekly followed. ‘I’m getting awfie forgetful.’

  ‘Comes to us all, Joe,’ Agnes said before stepping behind the counter and instructing the assistant at the till to deal with his purchase. Agnes took the tub from him and squinted at the lid, then laughed. ‘You saucy old devil. It’s good, mind you.’ Then she saw Joe’s face and the look of humiliation it bore. ‘Hey, don’t you go losing your marbles too soon, Joe,’ she said. ‘Anne needs you more than ever.’

  ‘I know,’ Joe said softly, and the assistant handed him his ice cream in a carrier bag.

  ‘We’ve all got our crosses to bear,’ said Agnes. ‘Mind yourself.’

  Joe left the supermarket and when he saw the Big Issue seller again it all came to him, he’d been here already today. He’d long been forgetful but that was age, it was normal. This was worse. This was CIA-sponsored parsley poisoning. But it wasn’t too late to cure himself; if he could beat the cigs he could kick the weed, and he wasn’t feart of a wee touch of the shakes. Breaking into a brisk walk he soon felt more positive, buoyed by a convert’s faith as he reflected on what a fool he’d been, surprised he never peed green with all that toxic juice in him, might do yet, but why don’t they bring back the wee Edgar Allan under the bed? Would save all that traipsing round the landing from bedroom to bog every night and good for the environment too – one flush in the morning and it’s gone. He’d suggest it to Anne, though he couldn’t imagine her squatting for a jimmy riddle in the small hours. How did our grandparents manage, Joe wondered; they had arthritis in those days too, and a trip outside to the cludgie come daybreak. The smell of wood and poo, the smooth worn seat beneath your wee bum and the sunshine leaking through the cracks in the planks. How fondly he remembered it all.