The Last Tour of Archie Forbes

by Victoria Hendry

  ‘Have you been using my deodorant?’ he shouted through the door. ‘It’s fucking dead.’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Archie. ‘I ran out.’

  ‘You never had any,’ replied Mike.

  Archie ignored him and, with a change of heart, pressed reply and fixed an appointment for the following week. He opened the Bible and typed a message to Louise. ‘Please reflect on this passage. Think about donating to charity the money you could save by indulging in fewer treats. The satisfaction your soul gains will enhance the progress your body makes.

  ‘St Luke: Chapter 16

  The Rich Man and Lazarus

  19. There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously each day:

  20. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,

  21. And desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

  22. It came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died and was buried;

  23. And in hell he lift up his eyes being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

  24. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame.

  25. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.’

  A message was fired straight back from Louise. ‘I have got three kids clasped to my own bosom, you self-righteous prick,’ he read. ‘My problem is glandular. Stuff your website, and stuff you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he typed back.

  ‘You’re so full of crap,’ said Mike, towelling his hair dry behind him, his eyes on the screen.

  ‘Please don’t stand behind me,’ said Archie.

  ‘Or what?’ said Mike. ‘You gonna break my neck or something?’ He skipped away. ‘You’re not a big man now.’ He sang a few bars of an American army camp training cadence: ‘Met superman and had a fight; I hit him in the head with some kryptonite.’

  Archie jumped up, knocking over the chair. Mike backed into the living room. ‘I hit him so hard that I busted his brains,’ he continued, stumbling over the sofa. ‘And now I’m dating Lois Lane.’ He fell back onto the green velour cushion and lay there laughing. Archie looked away, stared at the wall and saw jellyfish Chinooks blossom on the wallpaper, supplies dangling on wires below; in the far distance, a snowy mountain was growing out of desert sand. The supermarket siege played on a loop on the television, which had been left on. ‘It’s so fucked,’ he said. ‘It’s all so fucked.’

  Mike stopped laughing as Archie snapped off the TV, his thumb on the detonator button. He threw the remote across the room. ‘Watch it,’ shouted Mike. ‘That’s my new remote. It’s not paid up yet.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and walked into the hall. Picking up his hoodie, he stepped out into the street. It was just beginning to get dark, the tracer lights of cars making their way up the Walk, a long avenue of red. At the top, he turned off past a pet shop onto an old Victorian path and climbed up to the top of Calton Hill. ‘All day,’ came the memory of US troops singing in his head. ‘All day,’ he sang. ‘Running, running.’ Call and answer. ‘All night’; ‘All night,’ he answered. ‘Running’; ‘running’; ‘All night,’ the voices called. ‘All night,’ he echoed. ‘Fighting’; ‘Fighting.’ A car back-fired somewhere in the streets below him and he jumped, pressing himself into the wall. A man with his girlfriend at the top of the path spotted him, put an arm round her shoulder, and turned back to take the other way down. He whispered in the girl’s ear and she laughed, glancing back at him. ‘I’m not a nut,’ Archie shouted after them, stepping back onto the path and holding his arms wide. ‘It’s fine. I thought we were under fire.’

  Walking past the old observatory on the crest of the hill, Archie sat on a bench looking out over the Forth. A man walked past him wrapped in a Saltire from a tourist shop. Archie missed his son. He missed his wife. He wondered how they were doing without him, wondered if his child had cut his first tooth. Did the tooth fairy come for that? Was that how it went, he wondered – in other lives; in his other life that played out somewhere in the might-have-been?

  9

  He woke up on the bench in the morning stiff and cold. All around him in the grass he could see the detritus of the Independence March that had gathered there to ‘fill the hill’ the day before: cigarette butts, mini saltires and, winking at his feet, a Yes badge. He picked it up. When did the independence debate reduce itself to a yes/no vote, a game show choice? It would be televised with the shopping mall murders, the soaps, the TV schedule that churned real life into bite-sized pieces to be swallowed with food by the fire, and then turned off, as if turning it off made it stop, made it go away, kept it tidy. He thought of Mike, wondered if he had noticed he hadn’t come back in the wee, small hours. Leith lay in toy-town rows of tenements by the Forth. He felt nothing. The view was a criss-cross scratching on his retina – inconvenient, meaningless. The numbness scared him. His disconnectedness was growing. He began to walk with the jerky legs of an automaton down the hill to the road. If only he could make those connections again. Join his brain to his legs, his mind to his feelings, and not fear that they would engulf him in a tsunami of regret, churning with the flotsam of his old life.

  Out of habit, he walked down Broughton Street towards his old home in Trinity. His body began to warm up as the light grew, and he walked faster. He pumped his arms up and down to get the circulation going, moved his jaw from side to side – mandibles, snapping on air. His clothes were damp and he sucked his sleeve, tasting the bitter dew on the cotton of his sweatshirt. Fog beetle. He stopped at his old garden gate. The front door had been painted a different colour. He checked the number – ten – it was the right house. Ten – still feeling okay. Forty to go to the start of the bad memories. Today he would stick on ten, count backwards to one. Start from the beginning with new memories, new sensations, not seen through the prism of the warped past, the distortion of his broken life. He rang the bell. Through the glass of the door panel he saw the shadow of his wife approaching. She stopped and he saw her eye recognise him through a gap in the flowers etched onto the surface with acid. Her eye was very blue, the pupil small and black, imploding in on itself, a distant black hole. ‘Hannah,’ he called. ‘I only want to talk.’ He held up his hands. ‘No tricks.’

  She opened the door on the chain. His son was in her arms, and Archie looked at them through the crack in the door, a Madonna and Child on a narrow altar panel. Perfect. Remote. ‘How are you?’ he said.

  ‘We were fine,’ she replied. ‘You’re not meant to be here. Margaret is to call the police if you come within five hundred yards of the house. You know that.’

  He looked across the fence to the neighbour’s bay window. ‘No sign of the Twitcher,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t joke.’

  ‘I never meant to hit you,’ he said.

  ‘You knocked me unconscious,’ she said. ‘It was like being hit by a train.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Really.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

  Margaret must still be sleeping, he thought, or she would be knocking on the window by now, and miming dialling for the police. ‘I couldn’t remember when Daniel’s birthday was,’ he said, looking at his son, who turned his face into his mother’s shoulder.

  ‘It was the first,’ she said. ‘The first of September. How could you forget a date like that? It’s not difficult.’

  He nodded. ‘I was on a tour of duty,’ he said, ‘when he popped out.’

  ‘He didn’t pop out,’ she replied. ‘As you would know if you’d
been there.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘So whose was it? Who arranged your life? I thought it was you. A personal secretary and tablets and iPhones and yet, somehow, Mister Smart Guy missed the birth of his first child.’

  ‘I was called up,’ he said.

  ‘You volunteered. It’s different.’

  ‘I wish I could go back in time and make different choices, but I can’t.’

  ‘So why are you here, Archie? Do you want to go to jail? Breaking a restraining order is an offence. You should know that.’

  ‘It’s worth it to see you,’ he said.

  She shut the door. ‘Discussion’s over, Archie,’ she said. Her voice was muffled behind the glass. ‘You have three minutes and then I’m going to call the police.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Just get me my training gear and my old smartphone, and I’ll leave you alone. You can call me if you change your mind. He’s my son too. I still want to be his dad,’ he said.

  There was silence and then, as he backed away to the gate, the upstairs window opened and a bag flew out onto the grass. It was full of clothes.

  ‘Thanks,’ he called, but she had already pulled out her mobile and was looking at the watch on her wrist. ‘Three minutes,’ she mouthed.

  He gave her a thumbs-up. The bag made him feel human, the loss of his possessions at the hostel less pointed. He swung it up onto his shoulder and marched along the road, whistling. He put it at his feet at breakfast in St Philomena’s. The regulars had backed away from him as he came into the room, and he sat alone at a table that could seat six. ‘Alright, big man?’ said a volunteer collecting the dirty dishes.

  He nodded. He tried to switch his phone on to confirm his appointment with the businesswoman but the battery was flat. He found the charger at the foot of the bag covered in dust. He wiped it off with a finger: his wife’s skin cells, the fibres from his carpet, the grease from his skin. ‘Can you charge this for me?’ he asked the volunteer. ‘Please? I think it’s still about fifty quid in credit.’

  ‘I’m not really allowed to,’ he said.

  Archie’s hand trembled as he put the phone back in his bag.

  ‘Give it here,’ said the volunteer. ‘Who are you going to phone anyway?’

  ‘A business contact,’ said Archie.

  ‘Ooh, get you,’ said the volunteer, ‘A business contact, and here’s me frying your bacon and eggs, while you’re living the high life.’

  10

  After a day catching up in the hospital studio, Petal was phoning the inbox of the only hot man in the newspaper’s lonely hearts column. ‘Cupid Calling connects you to your perfect date,’ said an automated voice. ‘Put the passion back into your life, but remember to meet in a public place and let someone know where you are going. Cupid doesn’t accept any responsibility for adverts placed in this paper. Please speak after the tone.’

  ‘I’m a forty-five-year-old community health arts worker,’ said Petal, ‘and looking for lurve.’ She paused.

  ‘Remember to press the hash tag when you have finished recording your message,’ purred the mechanical voice. ‘If you want to change your message, press two.’

  She pressed two. ‘I’m a thirty-five-year-old community health arts worker,’ she said, ‘looking for a serious relationship. I have a good sense of humour, GSOH.’ She laughed, ‘And OHAC, own house and car. Please call me on my mobile.’ She read the number out from a sticker on the wall-mounted phone. ‘I look forward to hearing from you,’ she added, and hung up. She didn’t play it back. As she passed the mirror in the hall, she smiled and tried piling her hair on top of her head. Then she shook it down, and went into the bathroom. As she lay in the bath, she remembered Archie. He had been nice, troubled but nice, and handsome. She imagined drawing him, tracing the lines of his face in charcoal and healing his eyes, smudging in dark centres, relaxed and dreamy. If only he didn’t stare in that fixed way. Maybe Dr Clark could work a miracle and she could resign and gallop off with Archie into the sunset. A knight in shining armour. He was muscular, maybe ex-army, like the guy a few years ago. The one who had lost his arm. She looked at her body floating in the water. She was a mermaid. Her hair was seaweed. The water ran off her skin as she lifted her arm up into the light, and saw the water droplets clinging to the tiny hairs. Where were the desiccated limbs of the injured soldiers now; dried fingers pointing at the sky; chattering bones in the desert; bright skull houses for scorpions. She remembered the small, amorphous statuette the one-armed soldier had shown her. He had found it in the sand in Iraq. It lay in the palm of his good hand, its round stone breasts and strong thighs pock-marked by the wind. ‘Maybe you should give it to a museum?’ she had suggested, but he had already tried that. ‘It didn’t fit with their collecting policy,’ he said. ‘Said it wasn’t local.’

  She had laughed at the understatement. ‘Try a national?’

  He had shrugged and put it back in his pocket. ‘I don’t want to get into trouble,’ he said. ‘We were walking over the Queen of Sheba’s palace. It was still there, under the sand. I saw this sticking up and I trousered it, but now it doesn’t feel right to have it. It lives in a shoe-box under the bed. I swear it walks around in there at night.’

  11

  Archie slept all weekend and woke on Monday morning from a dream about his conference trip to Vancouver. In the happy book of his past life he was standing on the bus to Granville Island with Hannah. The driver had looked Middle Eastern. Tourists packed onto the bus. ‘Would all the cute and the beautiful move to the back?’ shouted the driver.

  Hannah squeezed past Archie. ‘For those who don’t speak English …’ the driver added.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Hannah, smiling at Archie, and her smile grew wider as the driver made the same announcement in five languages. ‘I got the French,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Is that all?’ replied Archie with a laugh. ‘I’m a polyglot.’

  ‘You’re a comedian,’ she said. The bus jolted as it moved off and Archie caught Hannah’s elbow to steady her. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Reflex.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ she replied, and looked into his eyes.

  He held her gaze. ‘Are you enjoying the conference so far?’ he asked for something to say.

  She nodded. ‘Intelligent Eco-Investments … mmmm. Not to be missed, but I’m glad the afternoon session was cancelled. I enjoyed our lunch in Edinburgh that time.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  ‘Fancy another at the marina?’ she asked. ‘An aunt took me last summer.’

  ‘Contrary to appearances,’ he said, indicating his suit. ‘I only came for the world-famous shrimps.’

  ‘And curly fries? You can admit it to me. That’s the great thing about Canada. No one looks down on you if your order curly fries.’

  He laughed and through the window saw wooden houses in candy colours give way to multi-storey apartments with trees in pots on their balconies. Yachts were moored at pontoons.

  ‘Granville Island,’ shouted the driver. ‘Give a big cheer if you’re happy.’

  Archie cheered. There was a smattering of whoos from the teenagers at the front. ‘That was not a big cheer,’ said the driver. Hannah whooped.

  ‘Lucky the big boss isn’t here,’ said Archie.

  ‘Where did you tell him we were going?’

  ‘The Museum of Anthropology. I saw an advert for it at the airport. Smart and cultural.’

  ‘Good call,’ said Hannah. ‘Sounds a lot better than a bar.’

  ‘Not if he asks me about it,’ he replied.

  ‘I was there last year,’ she said. ‘Great carvings. Tell him about the winged bird men in cases, or the legend of the man whose wife was swallowed by a whale. You see pictures of it everywhere. He rode its back clinging to its fin to rescue her.’

  ‘Difficult to hang on, I would think,’ he sa
id. They had flown into the city over Vancouver Bay and seen whales drifting deep under cockleshell boats on the surface. They had looked no bigger than melon pips from the air.

  ‘It’s a metaphor for the tenacity of true love,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Very metaphorical,’ he said.

  ‘Very,’ she replied. ‘I’ll see if I can get you a postcard of it.’

  ‘To lend authenticity to the lie if we bump into Charles.’

  ‘No. To remind you of a great story.’

  ‘Don’t get all deep on me,’ he said. ‘I’m still thinking about the curly fries.’

  * * *

  He could smell them as he woke. He staggered to the door of his alcove. Mike had frozen chips heating in the microwave. He could smell the fat rising off them. It made him gag. He grabbed his towel and headed for the bathroom.

  The radio burbled from its perch as Archie cleaned his teeth. President Kenyatta had ordered a day of national mourning in Kenya for the shoppers killed in the shopping centre. He switched it off, afraid that the sound of gun-fire would play as the reporter recapped on the events recorded from the next block by journalists crouched in the road – gathering their stories; feeding the media machine; fresh mice dropped into the gaping throat of their pet serpent. In the silence after noise, he could believe himself human again as he shaved, and put on his favourite old T-shirt and joggers from his bag. He added the sunglasses and walked out. ‘Breakfast?’ shouted Mike as he passed the kitchen, where bacon was sparking in its own universe in the microwave.