The Ossians

by Doug Johnstone

  They sat without speaking, the icy shadows of The Breeders on the stereo. Conversation gradually started up, like a pressure valve being released. Hannah finished her beer and slowly got up. Connor went to help her and she let him.

  ‘I’m off to bed,’ she announced.

  ‘I’ll come too,’ said Connor.

  Hannah looked at him. He was still wired on whatever the fuck he’d taken, and he’d drunk three beers in the space she’d taken to finish one. She knew that he’d lie there because he thought he should, the loving boyfriend, twitching and drumming, his irritating energy buzzing round the room and preventing her from sleeping. She didn’t need it.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You come to bed when you want.’

  He kissed her twice, the first one quick, the second a slow apology, and she was gone. He breathed out, a mixture of relief and sadness, and went to the fridge for another beer. He wondered what the pills were that he’d lifted from the girl in the hospital, and hoped they might get rid of his goddamn headache.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were in a fucking rambling club,’ said Connor, blowing on his hands as water squelched into his Converse. Ahead of him Murray strode along a thin, watery path through soggy moorland. Freezing rain swept across the moor and a pregnant, dreich sky hung overhead. Connor felt his cheek stinging from the rain and trudged on.

  It was mid-afternoon. Despite drinking, smoking and pill-popping till seven in the morning, Connor had been fussing over an exasperated Hannah all morning as she tried to relax. Eventually, driven mad by his inept nursing, Hannah pleaded with Murray to take Connor somewhere, anywhere, so she could get some rest. So now they were freezing their bollocks off in a field on the outskirts of the city.

  ‘You wanted to discover a bit of Scotland, well here it is,’ said Murray, his words whipped away as soon as he spoke. Ahead of them a rough wooden flagpole stood twenty feet high, with a small red and white flag snapping violently on top. Murray stopped and looked at the view. In the distance, a string of miserable conifers sulked beneath a cover of low gunmetal cloud. The wind gusted erratically, one minute fading to nothing, the next blasting and making the pair of them wobble.

  ‘I’ve been reading your interviews,’ said Murray, watching his cousin’s small frame cower in the elements. ‘Please tell me you’re not sober when you do these things.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You talk so much shite. Entertaining shite, I grant you, but I hope for your mental health that you’ve got drunkenness as an excuse.’

  Connor gave a shrug.

  ‘That piece in The Scotsman,’ Murray continued. ‘What was it? Trying to discover a national identity or the state of the nation or some guff like that. Really, Con, you should stick to “we can’t be pigeonholed” and “we just make music for ourselves and if anyone else likes it, that’s a bonus”. I don’t think music fans give a flying fuck for highfalutin ideas about nationhood, and Holy Grail-style quests for whatever the fuck it is you’re looking for.’

  Connor was hungover and so tired he thought he might puke. He couldn’t muster the energy to speak. He was concentrating on not getting blown off his feet into a bog and covered in freezing Highland crap. Murray was still talking.

  ‘Anyway, this is the Scotland that you’re so keen to discover. Imagine this scene soundtracked by Runrig or a pipe band, and you’ve just about got it.’

  Connor didn’t get it. He was still drunk from last night and couldn’t really remember how they came to be standing here.

  ‘In a fucking bog?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Murray, looking up at the flag whipping and rippling above them. ‘Haven’t you worked out where we are yet? A big bit of open moor? Near Inverness? With a couple of old flags planted in it?’

  ‘Euro Disney?’ Connor felt like he might pass out soon if he didn’t get a seat in the warm.

  ‘It’s fucking Culloden, you dolt,’ said Murray. ‘If that means anything to you.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Connor, looking around. ‘Jacobites, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Scotland v England, all that crap.’

  ‘All that crap indeed,’ said Murray. ‘The last battle ever fought on the British mainland. It was a waste of time on a miserable piece of shitty bog in the middle of nowhere two hundred and fifty years ago.’ Murray looked at Connor, who really thought he might vomit. ‘Do you even know what happened here?’

  ‘Yeah, we got fucked, didn’t we?’

  ‘And who are “we”, exactly? Here on Charlie’s side there were four thousand Highlanders standing behind a wee French Catholic ponce. Over there’ – Murray pointed to their right where, in the distance, Connor could just make out another flagpole with a yellow flag flying from it – ‘was a pompous English duke with English, German and Dutch soldiers and several thousand Scots behind him as well. In fact there were more Scots fighting for the English that day, who were really Germans anyway, than there were for French dandy Charlie. So that’s your fucking Scotland for you. Thousands of clansmen slaughtering each other in a godforsaken shithole in the name of Germany versus France. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It makes me think I want to get out this fucking rain,’ said Connor, although his mind was buzzing, imagining the miserable scene that must have played out here. What the fuck were they thinking? What was the point of any of it? Were people back then really so stupid that they thought the killing of a few thousand men here would make any difference to anything? And had it?

  ‘Come on,’ said Murray, turning and heading further into the centre of the boggy field, to Connor’s dismay. Murray stopped after a few strides and shouted back, ‘Don’t worry, they’ve got a tearoom just past that other flag. There’s a visitor centre.’

  ‘Is it licensed?’ said Connor. He felt his pockets crackle with pills as he shoved his hands deep into them and hunched his shoulders into the oncoming wind. He felt wretched. The rain was heavier now and his feet were soaked. As he walked, his shoes started to squeak like a clown’s, and he thought how ridiculous it would’ve been if both sides at Culloden had been wearing clown outfits, racing at each other in baggy trousers, red noses, braces and bow ties, their claymores whirling above their heads as they whooped their battle cries.

  Back at Murray’s flat, Hannah insisted on going out.

  ‘Look, it’s Saturday night and I feel better than I have all week, plus I’ve been cooped up here all day. So let’s see what this city has to offer in the way of action, eh?’

  An hour later the six of them – the girls in front, Paul and Murray next with Connor and Danny bringing up the rear – were walking up the west bank of the Ness into a face-pinching breeze with clear, dark skies above. The water seemed to Connor like honey, the slowness of its movement and the citrus sheen from the street lights mesmerising him. The metallic crackle of the blister packs in his pockets had annoyed him so much earlier that he’d popped all the pills out into his pocket, and thrown the packaging away. Now he couldn’t tell which of the pills in his pocket he’d lifted from his parents’ bathroom and which he’d stolen from the girl in the hospital last night, and he didn’t care. He couldn’t even really remember doing either of those things too clearly. The more he reached back into his memory, the more he felt a slight panic at the lack of concrete events from the last seven days. It was only a week since they’d played the first gig of the tour, wasn’t it? At the Liquid Room? Where he got accosted by Nick and Shug in the bogs? And staggered home under the whalebones? He told himself these things had happened, but it seemed now that they’d happened in some shitty film he’d watched late at night.

  He tried to focus on the city around him. He liked what he’d seen of Inverness. It didn’t smell of anything that air shouldn’t smell of. No breweries, no pollution, no crap. He could feel the inside of his nostrils nip as he breathed in deeply, coughing as the burning reached his chest and lungs. They walked under bare branches draped with twinkling fairy lights, the sounds of the town centre coming to th
em from across the meandering river. Connor thought there was something odd about the view across the water, then realised it was the height of the buildings, or rather the lack of height. Nothing was over two storeys high, including the handful of sixties breezeblock buildings that stuck out like spare pricks among the older, more distinguished stonework. And it was mostly flat, too. After living in Edinburgh so long he found a flat, low-level town a strangely foreign experience. They crossed over a pale-blue steel footbridge with a European Union plaque bolted to its arch, the yellow circle of stars a declaration of community. The bridge wobbled as they walked across into the drinking zone.

  Connor saw the same crap they’d encountered everywhere else. McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King; chain pubs and newly opened vodka bars; already-drunk punters clinging on to each other as they zigzagged down the compact grid of streets that constituted Inverness’s nightlife. What was he expecting? He couldn’t keep being surprised that places like this – only a few hours’ drive from Edinburgh in a decent car – had been infected by civilisation as much as the capital had. And what was he expecting anyway, fucking mud huts? This place had air you could breathe and pubs you could drink in. Wasn’t that enough?

  Danny was talking to him.

  ‘Kate told me you spoke to her last night.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m sorry we didn’t tell you, it’s just…’

  Connor waved this away. ‘I know, I know. It’s fine.’

  ‘It’s not like we were sneaking around or anything, we just didn’t know if there was anything to tell yet, that’s all.’

  ‘Hannah and Paul knew.’

  ‘That was a mistake. And you can’t blame them for not saying anything, it wasn’t really their place.’

  ‘I don’t. I don’t blame anyone for anything. I’m fine.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Of course. Forget it.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to tell me that if I mess with your sister you’ll kill me or something?’

  ‘You’re not going to do that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I’d kill you.’

  They both laughed quietly. They walked on a bit, then Connor said, ‘Did you tell Kate about what happened at the pier?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit early with you and Kate to be keeping secrets?’

  ‘Probably. But I didn’t think it would exactly show us in a good light. Even though it was that dicksplash Gerry’s fault.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Did you tell Hannah?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You think we got away with it? I mean, is it that easy to do something like that and nobody find out?’

  ‘It looks like it,’ said Connor. He thought about the anonymous phone call from the other night.

  ‘Doesn’t seem right, somehow. That we just get away with it.’

  ‘What do you suggest? We go to a police station and say, “Excuse me, two nights ago we accidentally ran over hundreds of flying rats on Aberdeen pier”?’

  Danny shook his head as he finished a joint and stepped on the roach.

  ‘But don’t you feel guilty?’

  ‘I’m not exactly thrilled about it,’ said Connor. ‘But with Hannah’s fit last night I’ve got more important things to worry about.’

  The bullshit just kept coming, didn’t it? Sure, he was worried about Hannah, but mostly he’d been thinking about the stalker, the drug deals and his next drink, not about Hannah at all. He did care about her. Hell, he loved her, and she’d collapsed twenty-four hours ago. What the fuck was he thinking, letting her go out tonight? But he knew she was eminently more sensible than him and wouldn’t risk her own health. Not like him. If he told her not to do something, wouldn’t she just turn round and do it? Plus it was a Saturday night and he wanted to get loaded. So there it was, in all its glory. Connor was more bothered about getting off his face than about the well-being of his girlfriend. Hold the front page. But she wanted to go out and so did he and so did the rest of them. So what? So I don’t know fucking what, he thought. Well done, boy, you’ve tied yourself up in knots again.

  ‘Where’s this pub of yours, Murray?’ said Danny.

  ‘Good timing.’

  Murray stopped beneath a black wrought-iron canopy jutting over the street, the words ‘Victorian Market’ embossed on the side.

  ‘It’s in here.’

  He headed down a tiny alley that looked like a dead end, the whitewashed, pebble-dashed walls on either side filthy with grime. By an unmarked door, a couple of gnarly old buggers stood sucking on filterless fags. Murray nodded at them and pushed open the door, which led to some rickety stairs. The rest of them followed, and Connor wondered what a Saturday night in Inverness would deliver.

  The Market Bar was full of drunks. Old drunks, cool drunks, arrogant drunks, unwashed drunks, kid drunks, pathetic drunks and gregarious drunks. Connor felt at home. The air was heavy with the stench of urine and cheap air freshener, thanks to the smoking ban. The small, square, pine-panelled room was heaving with the dregs of the city’s drinkers. On a tiny carpeted stage opposite the bar an old man with a runny nose and the skin peeling from his hands sat on a bar stool, elaborately fingerpicking on an old, large-bodied Gibson that had definitely seen better days. He crooned and picked away through blues and jazz numbers, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his filthy jumper and using that sleeve as a guitar slide. Between songs an emaciated young barman with a messy ponytail and massive baggy jeans delivered pints of 80 Shilling to the old-timer, which he gulped down. A tatty, single-flame gas heater flickered away high on one wall surrounded by framed black and white photographs of anonymous musicians.

  They sat around a table next to the stage and Danny got the drinks in. Nobody in the place seemed to be paying the old blues guy any attention whatsoever, but Connor was immediately mesmerised by those flaky old hands, skimming up and down the fretboard and over the strings like pond skaters on water. The others were talking away, the usual opening gambits of pub chat, but Connor found himself getting more and more sucked into the blues guy’s world of heartbreak and lightning-fast fingers. Murray and Kate chatted to two loose-limbed, disjointed characters that Murray obviously knew. Paul, Danny and Hannah were talking to a couple of hippy-looking girls at the next table, one of whom had long, mousy brown hair pleated all the way past her arse, the other with bells in her blonde dreadlocks and dozens of silver bangles on each wrist.

  ‘Is your mate not chatty, then?’ Connor heard the hairbell girl say to Hannah.

  ‘Nah, he’s just into guitarists in a big way,’ she replied, looking at Connor gazing at the blues guy.

  ‘And what about you?’ said Hairbell.

  ‘I’m a guitarist,’ said Hannah, laughing.

  Connor felt dislocated from the conversation and liked the feeling. He couldn’t deal with other people just now, and he felt grateful for the distraction of the blues guy. Everything seemed to be happening around him and he had no control over any of it. Kate and Danny were a couple, and everyone had known except him. He was a drug dealer or mule or whatever, and someone was spying on him, leaving notes and phoning him on a mobile hardly anyone had the number to. He felt like one of the gulls on the pier, his head tucked under a wing to protect him, only to be wiped out as easily as pressing a foot to an accelerator.

  His brain was buzzing as he tried but failed to retrieve the feeling of being absorbed in the blues guy’s guitar-playing. He felt the need for more speed and pills – whatever they were. He headed to the bogs to pop another couple. If he was honest, a lot of the appeal was in the fact that he didn’t know what they were. When he got back, the blues guy had given up for the night, and was slumped in a corner on his own.

  The night shuffled on. Connor watched Hannah as she chatted to Paul and Danny. She laughed at something, throwing her head back in what might’ve been a flirty gesture in other circumstances. Maybe it was a flirty gesture, he thought.
Christ, what was wrong with him? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Hannah laugh like that while talking to him. It always seemed to be arguments, or resigned sighing, or words drifting past each other in the air. What the fuck could he do about it? He felt stuck in a moment that he couldn’t get out of. Christ, now he was thinking in U2 lyrics, it couldn’t get any worse than that.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ said Hannah, watching him.

  ‘U2 lyrics,’ he said.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Hannah, turning to the rest of them. ‘Watch out, folks, Connor’s having a breakdown.’

  ‘What, more than usual?’ said Danny.

  The bell for last orders had rung ages ago, but no one paid any notice. A clock on the wall said two o’clock, and the bar showed no sign of closing, so they were well into lock-in territory. The two loose-limbed guys from earlier came over and started teasing Murray, cajoling him into something, but he resisted. After a few minutes of this, Murray glanced at the guy behind the bar, who nodded gently. Without ceremony, Murray got up on to the stage, picked up the blues guy’s guitar and sat on the stool.

  He picked out a plaintive country riff for a while, minor chords tumbling gently over each other, then began singing in a smoky, sonorous voice, his eyes tight shut. He was singing something about water arguing with itself, and the colour of whisky, and hope and sorrow, Connor couldn’t make out the words exactly, but he was instantly captivated. He’d never seen Murray perform like this, on his own with just a guitar, and it was compelling. The sound of chatter in the bar gradually faded as more and more people began tuning in to what Murray was doing. Connor felt Hannah’s arm linking with his own, and turned to see her smiling at him. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, a face full of kindness, tranquillity and love, a smile that made him feel nervous and contented all at the same time.

  He turned back. Murray was playing gently, singing softly, holding the attention of the whole room. It was mesmerising. Chords looped round each other, falling and rising, falling and rising, never properly resolving, Murray repeating the same few lines, which somehow seemed to be imbued with more resonance and meaning each time round. Connor was struck by a mixture of awe and jealousy. Nothing he’d ever written was anywhere near as good as this song. He tried to think of the perfect word to describe what he was hearing. Grace. There was something graceful about it. A 39-year-old guy playing quietly in a room full of drunks, but he was somehow reaching deep into himself to deliver a sentiment that touched everyone.