The Ossians

by Doug Johnstone

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got time for a search,’ said Martin. ‘Your Glasgow train’s in half an hour.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Connor. ‘Hang on, what do you mean, my Glasgow train? Aren’t you coming, too?’

  Martin looked steadily and confidently at him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see The Ossians’ last-ever show?’

  ‘I think maybe I’ve seen enough of The Ossians.’

  ‘I know how you feel. But I’d like you to be there. For the last one.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Connor looked at Martin, who seemed sure of himself. He felt a swell of admiration.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Are you going to meet up with your folks in Fort William?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’ll be worried sick. You should call them at least.’

  ‘I could stay here with Donald and Selma. They seem nice.’

  ‘I’m sure they are, but that’s a pipe dream.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘You can’t stay here forever. You can’t run away from your life, that’s one thing I’ve learned on this senseless tour.’

  Martin smiled. ‘Maybe just a while longer, though. The train the other way goes as far as Mallaig, where you can get a boat to one of the islands. I’ve always fancied a ferry trip.’

  Connor shook his head, but was smiling.

  A high-pitched roaring sound came from far off, and in the distance they spotted a low-flying military jet heading straight down the loch towards them. The plane was overhead then gone, the whining scream of the engines peaking just as quickly then trailing off into the piercing blue of the winter sky.

  ‘Come on, we should head back,’ said Martin, getting up. ‘You’ve got a train to catch.’

  Connor rose and followed Martin away from Loch Ossian, stopping to look back at the serene, inky waters that had lured him into almost killing himself. It was a beautiful place, all right. Another flash of something came to him from last night.

  ‘Did you see a stag?’

  ‘What?’ said Martin, turning back.

  ‘Last night. When you found me. Did you see a stag?’

  ‘No.’

  Martin looked at him. Connor just shrugged and shook his head. They headed back to the station house, and the trains that would carry them to different futures.

  They heard the train before they saw it, the clank and chug of the engine in that sharp, rarefied air sounding to Connor like a harbinger of doom. He turned to Martin, who was smiling beatifically at him in a way that was almost unbearable.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Connor.

  ‘Don’t say anything.’

  ‘I owe you everything.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I owe you my life, at least. And probably my sanity.’

  ‘Your life and sanity are in your own hands now.’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ laughed Connor, ‘don’t say that.’ He turned to Donald and Selma and thanked them, promising to repay their hospitality and the lend of a train fare, a promise which they waved away. He turned to Martin as the train slowed for its approach to the platform. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come and witness the ignominious end of The Ossians?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I could use the company.’

  ‘You don’t need me any more.’

  ‘You don’t need me any more, Martin, that’s not the same thing.’ Connor was close to tears at the thought of his guardian angel about to head in the opposite direction, away from this solitary place. ‘Maybe we could hook up in Edinburgh sometime in the future, when things have settled down?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How will you find me?’

  ‘I’ll find you.’

  The train stopped, and the handful of punters on board were staring at the foursome on the platform. Connor hugged Martin, squeezing his thin shoulders, then stepped on to the train.

  ‘Enjoy the islands,’ he said as the automatic doors closed between them.

  As the train started, he felt like a naughty kid being sent back to boarding school. He didn’t look back. He slumped in his seat and felt an overwhelming bout of nausea wash over him. Out the window the sky was a blinding blue, painful to look at, and the light skited off the snow-covered moorland, filling the carriage with unearthly illumination. Connor closed his eyes. They passed some trees and the quick flickering of dark and light on his eyelids made him feel even more like vomiting. He thought of Hannah having her fit in Inverness and tried to will himself to lose control in similar fashion. He relaxed his body, hoping something otherworldly would sweep in and take control, some rush of extraneous force that would make his mind stop working for a moment and let him slip into the void of epilepsy.

  But nothing happened. After a while he opened his eyes. Sitting opposite him was a sinewed and leathery man of about forty, with bags of fishing and camping equipment and a small border collie looking up at him obediently. Connor went to pet the dog.

  ‘Careful, I reckon he might have ticks,’ said the man. His accent was northern England somewhere. ‘The deer are riddled with ’em, you see, and I reckon he might’ve picked ’em up out there.’

  Connor withdrew his bandaged hand and examined it. It seemed to be pulsing a message to him, shards of pain shooting up his arm. He took out a packet of painkillers that Selma had given him and dry-swallowed four.

  ‘A lot of deer about?’ he said.

  ‘Loads of ’em this time of year. They come down from the mountains in winter, better feeding, you see.’

  Connor looked outside and winced at the sharpness of light on snow. He fished out Donald’s whisky bottle and offered a drink to the man, who smiled and glugged down a mouthful, handing the bottle back.

  ‘Been fishing?’

  ‘Sure have. I work as a woodcutter nine months of the year, that way I earn enough to spend the winter fishing. Can’t beat it, being out there with no one else about, just you, the water and the fish. And this little fella, of course.’

  The dog’s tail thumped the carriage floor. The thought of ticks leaping about in its fur unsettled Connor and he imagined tiny beasts launching themselves at him. The thought made him itch all over and he started to scratch at the back of his bandaged hand, then up his arm. He suddenly couldn’t stand to be opposite this man and his dog. He felt itchy and trapped, hot and sweaty. He got up, saying he was going to the toilet, and headed down the carriage, bumping from side to side with the movement of the train, until he reached the doors he’d stepped through getting on board.

  Out the window, he saw two scruffy kids playing in the snow beside a green corrugated-iron hut. They were descending now, down off Rannoch Moor, and in the distance Connor saw little reflective glimmers as cars trundled along a road, bouncing sunlight and snow glare back off their metallic bodies. He wondered if one of those glimmers was The Ossians, heading south to meet him in the sweaty, dank confines of King Tut’s.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his mobile. As the train descended, the reception must be coming back. It kept beeping with all the messages that had been left for him in the last twenty-four hours, time he’d spent blissfully out of contact, trying to kill himself in the Scottish wilderness, or whatever inane shit he’d been doing. He let the phone burble in his pocket until eventually it stopped. There were ten phone messages and seven texts. Half were from Paul, half from Nick. He didn’t bother to read any of the texts, or listen to any of the messages. He’d already spoken to Paul, and he didn’t have anything to say to Nick, at least not anything Nick wanted to hear. As he was standing with the thing in his hand, it started ringing. He jumped. That fucking tinpot tune. He looked at the screen. Nick. He’d had enough of him and the stupid phone calls and this whole fucking escapade. He pressed answer and shouted into the mouthpiece, ‘I’ve lost your fucking b
ag full of money and drugs, get over it.’ He opened the window and hurled the phone out as hard as he could. He watched its curved trajectory as the train sped away, then saw it land with a flump in the snow, before the train turned a corner and it disappeared out of sight. He wouldn’t be able to listen to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ ever again, Nick had fucking ruined that song for him. He felt relief now the phone was gone, but an undercurrent of worry at what Nick and, more importantly, Shug would do to him when he returned from this little jaunt empty-handed. Fuck it, he couldn’t do anything about it now. He’d have to take what was coming to him, either that or avoid them for the rest of his life, which wasn’t exactly likely. He’d worry about it after tonight. One shitty little thing at a time.

  He went to the toilet and necked four more painkillers, a final pill he found deep in a pocket and a lump of crystallised speed, downing them with whisky. He felt better, despite a burning in the pit of his stomach. As he left the toilet, two girls about four years old came running down the corridor towards him. Both wore pink dresses and had their hair tied in bunches with pink ribbon. Connor thought they were the cutest things he’d ever seen, the snow glare lighting up their perfect faces. As they got closer he heard one of them shouting over her shoulder, ‘Last one there’s a rotten egg.’ He couldn’t believe kids were still saying things like that.

  ‘Where are you running to, girls?’ he said, crouching down and feeling unsteady on his haunches. Their eyes widened as they stood looking at him and he saw himself through their eyes – stinking of booze, bleary-eyed, hand bandaged, unwashed, unsteady, in a dirty long coat standing outside the toilet accosting them. He felt ill.

  One of the girls nudged the other, and they ran off quickly without saying a word. He looked down the carriage and they were standing talking to a woman and pointing back in his direction. He felt his face flush and the pain in his hand got stronger as blood coursed through it. He turned and walked the other way, feeling his back burning. Towards the rear of the train he picked an empty seat. He sat down feeling nervous. Jesus, fuck, now he was scaring little girls on trains. What the fuck was wrong with him? He had to try and hold his shit together for one more night.

  Outside, clouds were predictably gathering. Of course, it would be raining by the time they got to Glasgow. It always rained in Glasgow, as if that blighted city had invented the stuff. They were travelling through heavily conifered land now and thickly packed pine trees lined the railway track, throwing sodden, murky light into the train as they sped past. They stopped somewhere, shunting back and forth to attach or detach carriages, the only view out the window being hundreds of already logged trees, awaiting collection.

  Next stop, Ardlui, they waited ten minutes. Passengers got off to stretch their legs and have a fag, despite a thin smir in the air. Connor stood at the back of the platform, the heavy, sweet smell of wet pinewood in his nostrils, avoiding the stare of the pink girls’ mum, swigging whisky and massaging his sore hand, which seemed like an alien extension of his arm. A train heading in the other direction stopped, too, the passengers sauntering on to the platform to mingle and smoke fags, chat and stretch. Connor felt like switching trains, heading back up to Corrour, Loch Ossian, Martin and peace. But he couldn’t go back there, he’d been through all this already, it was a fucking joke to think that he’d be able to survive up there. And what? Play happy fucking families with Donald, Selma and Martin? Aye, right. Martin was probably gone from there already, heading fuck knows where.

  The people from the other train had the same vacant look in their eyes as the herd from his train. The same resigned acceptance of their lot, the same automaton shuffle. He was standing on the platform with a bunch of hapless drones, all moving slowly round each other, never interacting, never communicating, all of them living in their own little worlds. But he wasn’t any better than them, he was worse, because he scorned their ambitions, belittled their dreams, objectified their lives until they were nothing to him, because that was easier than getting involved. He went back inside and drank some more whisky on his own.

  The train snaked south, barbed-wire fences appearing either side of the track. They sped past large signs reading ‘MOD Property Keep Out’. One large loch stretched into another, as the water gradually widened, becoming the Clyde. Miserable, grey, two-storey box houses sprouted out of the wet landscape, their insipid colour like damp stains on the land. As they trundled along the waterside the weather worsened, the rain becoming heavy and flecking the river surface with spots. Despite this, Connor spotted three boys ripping planks of wood from a rickety old quay, and a middle-aged man smacking golf balls into the river from a rubbish-strewn beach. Bottles, glass and plastic crap were everywhere now, washed up on the shore from fuck knows where. Dingy tenements and high-rise flats appeared on the horizon and they passed a parade of warehouse shops, DIY stores and electrical retailers, all squatting by the river’s edge as if getting ready to jump in.

  The end was approaching. They crawled through Glasgow, the rain relentless from a sky the texture of burnt wood. Connor downed the last of the whisky and slung the bottle under his seat. He looked at his ticket, which he was fiddling with in his seemingly uncontrollable bandaged hand, and only then realised it was the thirteenth. Friday the thirteenth. He smiled grimly as the train pulled into Queen Street Station. He remembered sitting backstage at the Liquid Room, all those days ago, and laughing that the final gig was on Friday the thirteenth. It seemed back then like a big joke. Now he wasn’t sure. The train came to a juddering halt and people started to get off. He sat. The guard came down the train emptying bins and told him this was the end of the line.

  Feeling the weight of the overhead storm clouds pushing him into the earth, trying to crush him into the dirt, he got off. He slowly made his way out the station feeling the ache of his throbbing hand by his side. He headed out into the bleak, oppressive, treacherous city, his mind as dark as the winter streets.

  14

  Glasgow

  ‘We hit the wall drinking

  But we drank straight through it

  We drank ourselves stupid

  What else were we trained to do?’

  The Ossians, ‘Alcohol’

  By Christ his hand hurt.

  He needed a drink. He was in no hurry to get to King Tut’s, apprehensive about meeting the rest of them. What could he say about Corrour and Loch Ossian? How could he tell them The Ossians were splitting up? What about these A&R guys that were coming? He needed to talk to Hannah, but couldn’t think straight, distracted by the incessant pain pulsating in his bandaged hand. It seemed to be scudding messages to the rest of his body that his brain didn’t know about, taking over his limbs and his heart, as if that injured hand was an invading army, infiltrating his system and taking charge of this hapless shell of a body. He imagined it as a coup, his brain being ousted from power by his malevolent hand. What ridiculous pish.

  Tut’s was getting closer as he trudged his way up St Vincent Street in the dreary, pishy rain. He saw a shabby, downmarket boozer off a side street and headed towards it. Before he entered he could hear the karaoke, some poor cow murdering Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’. He went in and ordered a pint and a double whisky. He looked round. The pub was full of weegie dregs, all seemingly having the time of their lives. Connor felt like an alien beamed down from another fucking planet. There were smiles on faces everywhere he looked, as a young woman squeezed into a short skirt and tight top two sizes too small got up onstage and started caterwauling through ‘Dancing Queen’. Her mates bounced around, waving Bacardi Breezers, all of them laughing their arses off. The pain in his hand thumped in time with the music as he downed the whisky and started on the pint. His stomach was agony with every sip, but he drank on regardless. He thought about Martin, standing on a ferry with the winter wind blowing his hair about, a sly smile on his face as he headed for new adventures in a place Connor would never visit. That stupid confused bastard had saved his life, all because of a daf
t gay crush. How ridiculous was that? Connor was still alive because a young boy fancied him enough to chase him round the country. Yet here he was killing himself again in a pub full of cheery idiots. He was going to turn it round, though. He would explain it all to Hannah tomorrow, when he was straight, once this gig was over, and he could draw a line under everything from the last two weeks.

  But then he thought of Nick. He’d no idea how much money and drugs had been in the kitbag. It didn’t matter. It was gone. When he got back to Edinburgh, he was a marked man. Maybe if he went to the police? But that wouldn’t work, what evidence did he have? And anyway, he’d be implicating himself if he grassed Nick up. Perhaps if he just came clean to Nick about what happened, the wee shite might have a rare attack of conscience and let him off with only a small beating. That was bollocks and he was kidding himself. But he couldn’t think about Nick yet. He had to stay focused on tonight.

  The ‘Dancing Queen’ girl finished, and a young lad got up and started laying into ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. He could only have been about sixteen, no way he would remember Nirvana from first time around. Jesus Christ. How fucking depressing. Connor downed what was left of his pint, retching at the acidic pain in his stomach, and stumbled out the door, desperate to get away from that fucking riff and those happy people.

  He was soaked through by the time he got to Tut’s but didn’t bother shaking himself off as he entered the bustling downstairs bar. He made his way unsteadily past the tables and jukebox and headed for the upstairs club area. He was scared of what the rest of the band would say. Scared of talking to Hannah, the one person he loved more than anything else, the one person he’d been the biggest arsehole to.

  Fuck, his hand hurt like hell. He couldn’t concentrate.

  Upstairs was empty apart from Hannah, Kate, Danny and Paul, sitting in a booth with plates of hot food. Connor saw the look of relief in Hannah’s eyes as he appeared and felt a terrible sickness wash over him.