by Louise Welsh
‘In a rush?’
‘Not really.’
‘Good. Walk me to the car and tell me what you’ve been up to.’
Fergus slowed to a stroll.
‘I’m making progress.’
‘Excellent. Any thoughts of putting a research student on the trail, see what they might dig up for you?’
‘I prefer to do the research myself. It’s slower, but at least that way I feel I’m covering all the bases.’
‘Yes.’ Fergus sighed. ‘I suppose those days have passed.
Did I ever tell you I knew him?’
‘Rachel said you might have.’
The foolishness of the statement rose like bile in his throat. He waited for the professor to ask where they were when she’d mentioned it. But he gave a dry smile and said, ‘Good to know she thinks of me when I’m out of sight. Drunk, of course. Archie, that is, absolutely legless. I’m afraid I didn’t rate him much. Never managed to get to grips with the poetry either, too fey for my tastes, too Romantic.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘In a pub after some poetry reading or other.’ Fergus laughed. ‘Where else? To me he epitomised all of the clichés of the working-class poet. Drunken, unwashed, boorish, predatory towards women. At least Dylan Thomas had genius on his side. Lunan? Well …’ He grinned at Murray. ‘Sorry, I never got the hang of revering the dead. I didn’t intend to slight your hero.’
‘I’m not sure hero is the right word.’
Fergus shrugged. They were almost at the end of the car park now, the bays next to the anatomy building before the path swept down and away from the bounds of the university. He pulled his car keys from his pocket and the lights flashed on a black BMW. ‘Let’s just say you’re keen to give Lunan his place in history.’
It was the same car that Rachel had driven him home in. Murray took in its solid curves, realising he had half-expected Fergus to be driving the Saab which had tailed them down from the reservoir. His voice sounded vague to his own ears. ‘I want to bring his poems to a wider audience.’
‘And you think biography is the best way to do it? The life rather than the work?’
‘The life and the work.’
‘Maybe. After all, the life destroyed the work.’ Fergus opened the driver’s door and leaned against it. ‘I know I said I didn’t like Lunan’s poetry, but I can recognise he had ability. The problem is he pissed it up against the wall.’ He levelled his gaze and Murray knew that if this were a lecture, whatever came next would be the key point, a statement to be underlined and regurgitated in the exam. ‘It happens sometimes to self-starters. They burn out, as if the effort of pulling themselves up by their boot straps was too much to sustain.’ Fergus turned his mouth down at the corners in a parody of a sad smile. ‘They do something foolish – sabotage their own hard work – and then, of course, they’ve got no real support when they get into difficulties, no access to the old-boy network.’ He grinned. ‘They’re on their own, and that can be rather lonely. Whatever one’s occupation, it’s always important to have allies.’ He gave Murray a parting smile, ducked into the BMW and slammed the door. Murray went to turn away as the engine started, but then the window slid down and Fergus spoke again. ‘One last thing.’
Murray turned back.
‘Yes?’
‘Whatever went on between you and my wife, it’s over now. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew you would.’
The BMW swung out from its parking space and Murray walked towards the sloping pathway home. Fergus passed him on University Avenue. Neither of them waved goodbye.
Chapter Thirteen
GEORGE MEIKLE HAD lost none of his gruffness. The bookfinder nodded down at the pavement with the gravity of a funeral director presenting a newly embalmed corpse to its relatives.
‘That tells you all you need to know about Edinburgh’s road maintenance. Nigh on forty years it’s been there.’
Murray could make out the name Christie etched roughly into the concrete. He took out his mobile phone, lined up the camera function and snapped. It looked shit, the letters lost in the greyness of the concrete and the damp morning. Done well, it could make a nice image for the book. His brother would know how to capture it. He pushed the thought away.
‘Were you here when he did it?’
‘I was, yes.’
‘And Christie?’
‘Christie? No, she wasn’t there.’
Meikle turned and started to walk down the street. Murray took another useless shot with his camera-phone, and then followed, jogging a bit of the way before catching up with the bookfinder.
‘Archie obviously thought a lot of her.’
‘Aye, he did.’
The older man spoke without looking at him, his face set straight ahead. Murray supposed this was what fishing was like, flinging out your line, watching it drop into the deep waters, and then waiting patiently for a pull on the lure.
‘So what did he do? Wait till the workies were away, and then fire in with a stick?’
Meikle gave him a curt nod.
‘That’s about the size of it.’
They walked on in silence, the older man setting the pace. A bus disgorged its passengers onto the street and Murray forced his way through the waiting queue, muttering a mantra of ‘Excuse me’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Excuse me’. Meikle had drawn further ahead and Murray had to negotiate a squad of draymen unloading a beer lorry, before he drew level.
‘Can you spare time for a coffee?’
To his own ears he sounded like a desperate adolescent trying to set up a first date, but Meikle glanced at his watch.
‘I’ve got thirty minutes before I’m due back. There’s a place over the way, if you’re not fussy about hygiene.’
Meikle stepped into a queue of traffic stalled by a double-parked delivery van. Murray hesitated then hurried after him just as the delivery driver pulled away. The van tooted its horn and Murray raised an open palm in a gesture that was part command, part apology.
Meikle was already climbing the entrance steps to the café. Murray followed him into a broth of hot fat, hamburgers and chips. His bowels shrank, as if giving him due notice of what would happen if he dared eat anything. A motherly waitress in a blue tabard leant against the counter chatting to an old man who sat alone over a cup of rusty-looking tea. ‘Naw, hen,’ the old man said, ‘I’m sweet enough.’ They both laughed, and he repeated it, ‘Sweet enough’, though it wasn’t much of a joke the first time. The aisle was almost blocked by a toddler strapped tight in its buggy, like a dangerous criminal under restraint. Its mother sat at a table next to it, reading Heat. A milky coffee congealed in front of her, beside a plate of chips smothered in tomato ketchup. She pressed a chip into the redness, with a gesture that suggested a lifetime of stubbed-out cigarettes, and placed it in the child’s outstretched hands. The toddler squeezed it into puree and let it drop. The woman muttered, ‘For fuck’s sake, Liam’, and started to pick the mess from his jacket.
Meikle tucked himself into a plastic bucket seat at one of the free tables and set his elbows on its Formica surface.
‘Twenty-five to, the clock’s ticking.’
Murray shifted a scattering of white sugar with the edge of his hand, a snow plough piling through a fresh fall, and set his tape recorder on the table.
‘I wanted to ask you about Christie.’
‘I thought it was Archie you were interested in.’
‘It is, but Christie’s a big part of his story. What did you think of her?’
‘I didn’t think anything. She was his girlfriend, his bird as we used to call them, that was all. I guess you could say she was the Yoko Ono of the group.’
‘She split you up?’
‘We were pals, not bloody civil partners.’
The waitress ambled over, leaned her bottom against the opposite table and asked what they wanted. Murray noticed the homemade UDA tattoo on her wrist as she wrote their order on her pad
. She gave the table a halfhearted wipe, and sugar grains rained onto Murray’s lap. Meikle waited till she had gone and then said, ‘Not that I’ve anything against gays.’
Murray tried to dust himself down, but some of the grains were caught in the trouser-folds around his groin and he gave up.
‘Of course not.’
‘It’s just that I’m not one, so mind you don’t put otherwise in your book.’
‘Message received and understood.’
The woman with the magazine put a chip into her own mouth and the toddler let out a pterodactyl caw.
Meikle said, ‘And don’t put any of that “doth protest too much” stuff in there either. I’m just setting the record straight.’
‘Straight as a die, George.’
The older man gave him a stern look that turned to a laugh. The waitress smiled as she set their coffees on the table between them.
‘Somebody’s happy, anyway.’ She took the bill from her pocket and placed it between the cups, asking, ‘Whose shout is it today then?’ as if they were seasoned regulars.
Murray pulled his wallet from his jacket and handed her a five-pound note.
‘Quite right. I bet your dad shelled out enough on you over the years, eh?’
Murray said, ‘He’s not …’
But she had already counted his change onto the table and was making her way to a trio of workmen in fluorescent waistcoats.
‘Nosy besom. See she’s serving the Diet Coke men quick enough, anyway. No waiting around for them, eh?’ Now that his venom had been spent, Meikle softened a little. ‘Christie was all right as far as I was concerned. I mean, you wouldn’t have expected Archie to go for someone run of the mill. She was a good-looking girl. Didn’t say much, but nice to have around. Good wallpaper. I called her Yoko because after she came on the scene Archie and me saw less of each other. That’s the way it is with some guys once they hook up. They don’t hang out with the lads any more. Maybe it’s no bad thing. I spent too much time hanging out with the lads over the years. Look where it got me.’
‘I spoke to Professor James. He said Christie never said a word in his writing workshops.’
Meikle’s voice was low.
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘That Archie had the potential to make it big, but he wasn’t sure he’d have had the discipline.’
‘He’s changed his tune.’
‘Oh?’
Murray stirred his coffee, wary of losing the other man with the wrong question.
‘James couldn’t stand Archie or his poetry. It was him who made sure Archie was chucked out of uni.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Who do you think? It’s not like I spent my time hanging around with professors.’
‘If he wasn’t welcome, why did Archie keep going to the poetry workshops?’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’
Murray could hear the heat of pub arguments and long-ago resentment in the older man’s voice. He levelled his own tones and said, ‘No reason, but why go where you’re not wanted?’
Meikle sighed. The anger was still there, but now he spoke with resignation.
‘They were good at what they did, right?’
Murray nodded.
‘Some of them became world-class.’
‘The way I read it, Archie wanted to be part of their gang, but for whatever reason they didn’t want him. Maybe I can see their point. They were university types – no offence intended – but you know what I mean. Serious guys. And Archie was wild, too wild sometimes.’
‘According to James, it wasn’t unknown for Archie to turn up drunk and obnoxious. He said that if Archie hadn’t been so talented, he would have told him not to come back.’
Meikle sipped his coffee. He gazed beyond Murray and he might have been looking through the café’s unwashed window to the busy street outside or into the past. ‘That type of thing wasn’t unusual, but there was more to it than just drunkenness. Archie had this extra energy. It’s hard to explain. Like he had a tincture of quicksilver running through his blood. I think that was part of why he drank so much – to damp his energy down.’ Meikle looked at his watch again. ‘I’m going to have to head soon. You asked me if I was there when he wrote Christie’s name in the concrete.’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t show you it to make a good picture for your book. The night he did that was the night Christie introduced him to Bobby Robb.’
They left their cold coffee cups on the table along with the tip and headed back into the street. This time the bookfinder kept Murray close.
‘I blamed Bobby for Archie’s death much more than I ever blamed Christie. She was only a young lass. Bobby was old enough to know what he was doing.’
The name rang a distant bell, but Murray resisted asking who Robb was for fear of breaking the spell. Meikle continued, ‘If I’m honest, I’d been losing patience with Archie for a while.’ He glanced at Murray. ‘You’re too young to remember what the city was like in those days. The phrase “wine bar” hadn’t been invented. Men were meant to behave like men, drink as much as they could get down and only greet when their team lost the cup. People were used to blokes with long hair by then, but you’d better bloody act like a man if you knew what was good for you.’
‘And Archie didn’t?’
‘Nowadays, odds are he would be okay. Anything goes, right? But not back then. Archie was too loud. He’d get steamboats and start mouthing off, on sex, religion, politics, poetry – the kind of stuff that gets up people’s noses. He attracted aggro and whoever was with him got dragged in. It was beginning to piss me off.’
‘And Bobby?’
‘Bobby was bad news. I’d heard a bit about him: Edinburgh’s a small city and a guy like him doesn’t go unnoticed. He was one of those leeches that attach themselves to students – you know the type, that bit older with the kind of contacts some youngsters find impressive.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Drugs, wideboys, who knows what else. In those days students got decent grants and Bobby Robb was just the boy to help spend them. But even if I hadn’t heard of Bobby, I’d have tagged him as trouble as soon as Christie walked into the bar looking up at him like he was Jesus Christ resurrected and ready to turn beer into whisky. There was something Victorian about the whole thing. Like she was a little milkmaid fresh from the country and he was an old villain ready to sucker her in and pimp her out.’
They approached a building under renovation and fell into single file as they entered a tunnel of scaffolding, its supports bandaged at head height with sacking to save careless drinkers from cracking their skulls. On the wooden walkways above men in hardhats hammered into the stonework. Mineral dust powdered the air. Murray held his breath until they emerged on the other side. Meikle picked up the tale.
‘Archie favoured working men’s pubs. Like I said, there wasn’t much else unless you wanted to drink in a hotel. But he went for the rougher end. The bar we were in that night was the kind of place where you’d expect Christie to get a comment or two. The punters stared at her, right enough, when she came in. Then they saw Bobby and concentrated on their pints. It’s always struck me as funny that guys with scars get a reputation for being hard. It’s the ones that cut them you should be looking out for, right?’ Murray nodded and Meikle went on. ‘Bobby had a scar running from the corner of his mouth up to his eyelid, looked like he’d been lucky to keep his sight. Side-on, it gave him this horrible, sneering smile, a bit like the Penguin.’
Murray looked at Meikle blankly and he said, ‘You know, the baddie in Batman.’
‘I think you mean the Joker.’
‘Shit.’ Meikle shook his head. ‘That’s what my wife calls a senior moment. Sideways, he looked like the Joker, but the funny thing was, he was the kind of ugly git women would be attracted to.’
Murray knew the type, but he asked, ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Something about his confidence maybe, the way he c
arried himself, the fact he looked like a bastard. Some women like that.’
‘So you thought Christie might go off with him?’
‘There were stars in her eyes when she looked at him right enough, but I got the impression it was Archie he was interested in. Homed right in on him and started to give him the gab.’
‘Did Archie reciprocate?’
‘Oh, he was taken with him, yes.’
Murray hesitated.
‘Are you saying Archie had homosexual tendencies?’
The bookfinder glanced at him.
‘If you’d asked me then, about Archie maybe being gay, I would have called you a poof for thinking it. But looking back, I don’t know. I don’t think so. He never tried anything on with me, but who can say? I guess Archie was the kind of guy that would try anything once, twice if he liked it.’
They were close to the library now. Murray looked at his watch. Five to the hour.
‘So, him and Bobby?’
‘You’re asking the wrong man.’
‘But you had your suspicions?’
‘No, I had no opportunity for suspicions. I never saw him or Christie again after that night.’
They passed a pub and had to fall into single file again to pass the smokers loitering outside. When they fell back into step, Murray asked, ‘What happened?’
Meikle sighed. ‘There were a few of us drinking that night. Archie had brought along a student pal that liked slumming it and I was with a couple of mates from the Socialist Workers’ Party. They tolerated Archie for my sake, and I put up with his wee snob of a pal for his. It was an uneasy balance, but it was a balance all the same.’
‘And Bobby Robb upset it?’
‘Big time, as my granddaughter would say. Bobby was all charm, but he wasn’t trying to charm me. It was like he was presenting a mask to Archie and Christie, but from where I was sitting I could see the line between where the mask finished and the real Bobby began. And he knew it. He kept turning round and giving me these sly nods and winks. I would have coped with that – after all, it was Archie’s business who he hung about with – but then Bobby pulled out a pack of Tarot cards and started laying them out in front of Christie.’ George shook his head. ‘When it comes to chat-ups, fortune-telling is up there with foot rubs and neck massages.’