He crouched there watching as the bankers returned with their buckets of apples; watched as they sat in a circle chatting and eating plates of vegetable stew with bottles of wine on the table. Archie’s stomach rumbled. He closed his eyes. He must have dozed off. When he woke it was growing dark. The gate clanged shut and the cars drove off, changing up through the gears as they pulled away. His limbs were stiff and he hobbled back to his hole and pulled out his sleeping bag and phone. He picked up a few sticks thinking he might cook some potatoes when the beam of a torch illuminated the path from the hospital. Was it the dick with the lighter? Two policemen swung into sight. He could hear their walkie-talkies. The beam of the torch swung left and right scanning the area. He ran back to the shelter of the shrubs and threw himself flat. If he didn’t move, they wouldn’t be able to pick him out. He froze to the ground, averting his gaze. He heard their feet crack on the rough surface as they walked round the huge pile of wood and debris. He risked a look and saw them pull back the door to his cave. ‘Someone’s been here alright,’ said a voice. ‘Welcome to the Ritz.’
‘Could be a rough sleeper,’ replied the other. ‘Do you want to hang around and see if they come back? There’s water in his mini-bar and fresh fruit.’
‘Knowing our luck we’ll wait all night. Log it, will you. We can look back later.’
There was the green glow of a screen and the tapping of a plastic stylus; the words of a report snaking across the surface in a black, continuous line – the thin line of his misery that stood between him and his old life, the brilliant place he had thought dull.
When they left he shouldered his rucksack and walked in the direction of the Commonwealth Pool to find shelter. He pulled up his hoodie as he reached the steps of the public building and slipped in with the crowd of office workers heading for the gym after work. He strolled over to the desk, trying not to look for security cameras. ‘I wonder if anyone handed in a pair of trunks last week?’ he asked.
The receptionist pulled a basket out from under the desk. ‘Take your pick,’ she said.
He selected a pair of Hawaiian shorts from the bottom, reasoning that they had been there the longest, unclaimed.
‘I’m surprised you’re prepared to admit to those,’ she laughed.
He smiled without looking up, hiding his eyes that were memorable for all the wrong reasons. ‘There goes my better half,’ he said, waving towards a young mother walking away from the self-service till towards the changing room with her child. He hoped the receptionist would assume she had paid for him too.
Downstairs, he slipped his feet into blue, plastic shoes and strode to the nearest cubicle. The trunks weren’t a bad fit, but then almost anything would have done. He had lost a lot of weight. He showered, letting the trickle of warm water run down over his head, washing the grime and the cold out of his body. He lathered up with soap from the dispenser, rubbing pink gel that smelled of carbolic and poverty all over his body and hair. He hoped that no one would notice the puddle of water at his feet, gritty with earth. It was a long way from the sandalwood body scrub of his spa membership.
He wandered out into the lit arena of the pool, dived into the fast lane and set off in a crawl. One, two, three, breathe. His strokes were still powerful, but on his third length a man came up behind him and overtook him on the opposite side. ‘You might want to try the slower lane, mate,’ he said at the end, before pushing off from the side.
Archie watched as the red latex cap of his head dipped into the water, disappeared and reappeared, effortless, athletic, and his own limbs grew heavy as if they could pull him down, leave him weighted on the tiled bottom, a sightless corpse, drowned in his comedy Hawaiian-paradise shorts. He ducked under the plastic discs of the lane divider, and swam on his back, back-stroking with slow strokes up and down the middle lane. His muscles warmed to the cold water. In a small adjacent pool women were pushing floats through the water to 1980s disco music. A pregnant woman floated in the crescent of a yellow foam woggle at the back of the class. Her protruding belly-button on top of her bump pushed through her costume, the strange distortion of swelling as the child grew inside her, displacing her, as Daniel had displaced Hannah. He looked back at the ceiling, kicked his legs faster and completed the length in under a minute thirty. Not as good as his old time but not bad, he thought. The women were applauding their teacher, who had sketched out the underwater movements in a slow-motion dance on the poolside. Archie recognised the heavy movements as his own, the exaggerated awareness of a mimed normality in the wrong element. He moved through the water of memory in the thin air of the present. It was all laborious, disjointed. He swam to the metal steps and pulled himself out, soaping down in the shower with more red jelly, revelling in the warmth of the water, the relaxation in his muscles. He didn’t care if the police caught him. He wondered if he could ask the receptionist to phone them for him. They would take him to the womb of the cell, and ring Dr Clark. He got dressed, comforted by the thought that he could end it, and put his blue plastic shoes in the bin by the door, disposing of the forensic evidence of his solitary visit.
Upstairs in the café, there was a half-eaten baked potato and cheese on a tray on the clearing station. With a glance over his shoulder, he took it across to a table overlooking the pool and sat down. It was still warm. He ate the uneaten half first and then the skin of the scooped-out second half, washed down with a glass of water from the cooler. There was a copy of the local paper on the table. The news was playing on a continuous feed on the telly behind the counter. BAE systems had shut down operations in Portsmouth but kept orders for the Clyde. ‘This is a cynical manoeuvre to keep Scotland on-side before the referendum,’ a Southern docker was shouting. ‘There have been five hundred years of shipbuilding at Portsmouth. We’ve been sacrificed,’ he said. The screen switched to men streaming out of the Govan yard, shaking their heads: eight hundred and fifty jobs were to go there too.
‘Archie Forbes,’ said a voice behind him, enunciating every syllable in his name at half speed. ‘How on earth are you doing?’
He looked up and the speaker came into focus. ‘Stephen,’ he said, without warmth.
‘It’s all going to kick off,’ said Stephen, waving at the screen, ‘because no one told the silly buggers the real orders have gone to Korea. We’ve had peace between Scotland and England for three hundred years and now they’re at each other’s throats before they’ve even had the referendum. It’ll start as a war of rhetoric and end as a trade war, you mark my words. They thought the malt tax was bad; you watch how tough a game of hard ball England will play if we split. That Govan contract will be the first to go.’ Stephen caught sight of the Hawaiian shorts drying on the top of Archie’s rucksack. ‘Not your usual style,’ he said.
‘No,’ Archie agreed, pushing them back into his rucksack, and standing up. ‘How’s tricks?’ he asked, looking towards the door.
‘Not bad,’ said Stephen. ‘Lots to tell. Sit tight and I’ll get you a coffee. You don’t need to rush off, do you?’
‘Actually –’ Archie said, conjuring the word from his previous life.
‘Nonsense,’ interrupted Stephen. ‘I insist. You need to get back in the loop. There’s more than one of us thinks you were badly treated by Forbes, Stock and Wilson.’
‘Shafted is the word you’re looking for,’ said Archie, ‘by the kangaroo court they call the shareholders. I got my twenty-eight days’ notice of the vote, but the ordinary resolution was passed as I knew it would be.’
‘Still, they’d give you a nice settlement,’ said Stephen, rubbing his fingers together.
‘No, they got me for personal liability on the contract with Fitzroy Ltd when it went into insolvent liquidation. I was only a shadow director, but you know the rest.’
‘The civil action against you.’
‘So you heard,’ said Archie. ‘I’m bankrupt, but at least the house was in Hannah’s name
.’
Stephen nodded. ‘I’ll get those coffees,’ he said.
He returned with a tray. ‘Flat white Americano, okay?’ he asked. ‘I got you a large. Looks like you could do with it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Archie. ‘I thought you swam at the Calton Hill Club?’
‘Still do, but I have the grand-sprogs staying.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the soft-play area. Tiny people were screaming in the nets and crashing into the ball pool. Archie waited for an intrusive thought, but nothing came. He looked back at Stephen, who held his gaze. ‘How’s the wife and kid?’ he asked.
‘Long story,’ said Archie.
‘And the long story short would be?’
‘Another time,’ said Archie.
‘Look, Archie,’ said Stephen, leaning forward. ‘You look like shit. I’d better tell you that it’s common knowledge that you’ve been having some difficulties. I can help you. Get you back across the Rubicon, so to speak. I’ve made a nice killing on the Lloyds and Post Office flotations, although you know they pegged the PO back to seven hundred pounds worth of shares per applicant. Purely political to keep the man in the street happy, of course, but there are some nice things coming up in Twitter and some derivatives. Here’s the thing: I know of a good deal coming up in Stan. It’s a bloody gold mine, and if Karzai can sort out a deal with the Taliban, get a bit of stability, well, I don’t need to finish the sentence. Open market. Chaos breeds opportunity, especially when there are nice, juicy assets.’
Archie got to his feet. ‘I need to go,’ he said.
‘I’m not impugning your efforts,’ he said. ‘You and the boys.’
‘Right,’ said Archie. He could feel something flexing its muscles inside him. Was it rage?
‘Keep in touch,’ said Stephen, sliding his card across the table to him. ‘Seriously.’
Archie nodded, but left the card on the table. He dropped the shorts on the desk as he passed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘They weren’t mine after all.’
* * *
Unable to decide where to go, he walked towards his den and found himself back on Warrender Park Terrace. The lights were still off in Petal’s flat but he rang the bell anyway. There was no reply. As he reached the pavement, a student was coming out of the main door of the block. ‘Hold the door,’ Archie called, with a cheery wave. He could check one last time whether there was some clue as to her whereabouts that he had overlooked. It was a risk but worth it. He was running out of ideas.
The back garden was as before and Petal’s rear windows were still dark. He could hear the hens clucking in their nest box. He put down some more feed for them, pushed open the bathroom window and climbed in. He walked into the kitchen and closed the blind before turning on a lamp. There was an unopened carton of almond milk standing on the counter and he drank it, before sitting at the table with its pots of wilting herbs and burnt-down candles. He lit one and looked into its flame. He was tired. The light danced in a corona before his eyes. The edges of the room grew misty and dissolved in trailing colours. He lay his head on his arms, folded on the table. His forehead was pressed into the crook of his elbow and the warmth from his body was comforting. It was a quiet corner in this noisy city where he wandered in a state of vigilance. He drifted off, aware of the warmth of the candle and a distant rumble of Petal’s central heating boiler starting up. As it ignited, Calum puffed up in his blank mind, popcorn light, and took form. He was without boundaries, blasted from a hard kernel on a withered stalk. He was the transformative being who could not be, who should not walk but did, and he reached out through Archie’s eyes and ears to find a new existence in a world between now and never. His voice was melodic and deep. It rumbled in Archie’s head, and oppressed the captive woman trapped out of sight. Archie heard him, but could not challenge him – his volume, his purpose, his threat of rage hidden like a cudgel behind his back. Archie knew he was there, and wanted to pacify him, soothe his anger, his unpredictability, but the popcorn man, the horror, walked from his imagination and lived; unchallenged because of all he might do, could do, does.
Archie lifted his head from the table and looked round panicking. He wasn’t sure what was inside and what was out. It played in his head like a radio that hits the channel before being turned down. There was static. He stood up, knocking the chair over, and tried to out-walk the image and the sound, wandering from room to room. He trailed his fingers over the perfect, polished wood of the sideboard. He drew circles along the grain of walnut veneers, tracing the torsos of men trapped in the wood, encasing sherry glasses and playing cards. He felt close to her here, certain she would come back somehow, and he viewed the movie of her in his mind, saw her captivity unfold towards crisis and knew that she would escape. He knew it, willed it, so that she could come back to him, and the police wouldn’t think that he had abducted her because at that moment, this moment, he couldn’t make sense of her absence, her missingness. She was/wasn’t the girl on the poster on the tree. He was/wasn’t dreaming her. All would be well. If Archie patrolled, he would spot the crack she had slipped through. He knew it was there somewhere – perhaps in the wallpaper in the hall, tucked in behind a wrinkle in the pattern, or between the joins where the long strips didn’t meet but should. It was in those special places that only the owner of a house saw: the crack in the floorboards that has been filled but is working loose; the hole where the radiator pipe disappears into the dark where hair gathers. Those were the places he would find Petal, but he had to be quiet, surprise her captor – the voice/man in his head who was holding her.
He marched in slow time along the hall to calm down, stopped at the front door and turned back, placing each foot heel first in a choreographed march, swinging his arms as he passed the empty archways of the doors to unlit rooms. It was here in this hallway that he would find the portal, reach in and seize Calum by the throat and strangle him, silence his voice. ‘Petal is here. Petal-is-here. Petalishere,’ he whispered. He turned at the end of the hall, turned and returned, slow march. He looked down and noticed the hole worn in the rug. This could be it. He knelt down and pressed his eye to the floor. Calum’s voice was louder here. He saw him talking to Petal beneath the boards. He had him. Calum was right here beneath his feet and he was talking to Petal, gesticulating. The words became clearer, he saw her fear but he knew she was brave. He jumped to his feet and pulled at the rug.
There was a knocking sound, at the kitchen window, a staccato spray of bullets. Archie threw himself flat and covered his head. ‘Is that you, Petal?’ asked a voice. ‘It’s Mrs Robb. I was just checking the hens. Petal? I see they’ve been fed, so I’m assuming you’re back. Perhaps you’ve had an early night. Give me a ring when you have a minute then, dear. Bye, now.’ Archie heard the back door to the communal stair close, and the sound of feet passing along the passageway. A door banged upstairs. He stood up, staring at the planks of wood under his feet. The floor looked ordinary. The woodworm voices were silent; the rug crumpled on one side. He straightened it, and walked into the kitchen to blow out the candle. Calum’s voice was gone. Archie tipped his head from one side to the other, like a swimmer with water trapped in his ears, but there was nothing. He filled a glass at the tap and as he drank, scanning the room, he noticed that there was a phone on the wall and written on a faded sticker above a line of numbers were the words, ‘My mobile.’ He added it to his contacts and called the number. It rang. He drew a deep breath. He could solve the mystery. There was a click and then the operator’s voice, ‘Please leave a message.’ He ended the call and looked round the empty room. He wiped round the surfaces he had touched with a dish-towel from the sink and rinsed it out in the basin. He couldn’t stay here, compound the picture of his guilt by association. He pushed up the bathroom window and climbed back out into the night.
* * *
Archie paused as he neared his den in the hospital grounds. That comedian with the lighter was creeping him out
, and the police might come back. He needed time to think; to think how to mesh his worlds into one. He walked back to Canaan Lane and over to Braid Road past the spot where Edinburgh’s last two highwaymen were hung. He walked past rows of bungalows to the crest of the hill at Fairmilehead and left the city. The buildings stopped at the boundary of the by-pass, a new city wall. There were fields beyond. He dodged the cars exiting the dual carriageway, and walked up the country road towards the ski centre. Turning off the path, he climbed up through the trees to the brow of the hill, then dropped down over the ridge onto a sheep track. He followed it until he came to a ruined shepherd’s cottage that he remembered from summer picnics with his wife. Had they really fed each other strawberries here? Kissed until they grew dizzy on wine and each other? He threw his bag into a corner and sat with his back against the wall opposite the empty doorway, looking straight out over the estuary and the city. Orange lights twinkled under a full moon. An aeroplane approached over the cone of Berwick Law, its landing lights flashing as it lost height, the wind pushing its belly playfully back up. He thought of the passengers fastening their seat belts, the reunions they looked forward to, the kisses of welcome on the concourse, the context of lives over which they still had control.
He looked up at the sky sparkling with stars. Was there someone up there on another planet as unhappy as him? Had they sailed in front of the Kepler telescope – a blip in a star’s brilliance; their misery no more than a mote floating in the eye’s black jelly of a distant observer, ungrasped, indefinable. Somewhere among the four hundred billion stars of the galaxy, there would be someone like him, trapped on a planet in the Goldilocks zone, neither too hot nor cold for life. The question was, what sustained them when the vacuum was inside? Where were the planets that could sustain love – constant, free-flowing – not frozen solid, or boiled dry by too much want and desire; by politicians waving their troops on; by businesses hungry for profit; by jealous lovers and armed men? His limbs sank around his empty stomach and his head dropped onto the bed of leaves. He remembered Daniel’s baby fist closing round his proffered finger. The love in his eyes. He curled his body against the contours of the hollow in which he lay, and he gazed at the stars and his distant, fellow beings, empty and sore.
The Last Tour of Archie Forbes Page 16