* * *
Fat Jack broke a promise. He didn’t put us top of the bill for the spring show after To Barra and Beyond. Nor in January 1956 when we got back from The Stornoway Way. Lex MacLean’s bow on the night of our debut seemed a lifetime ago. ‘Nothing wrong with being journeymen, boys.’
I watched my father’s fists clench and unclench.
‘Work the act,’ said Jack.
I didn’t want to. I was on the verge of quitting. I was tired of seasick winter tours and endless summer seasons, the grind of a week to week existence. My life was slipping past in a depressing show reel of flea-bitten boarding houses. The problem was what else to do. I wondered about some kind of business. Or maybe making films. I had bought my first camera, a Kodak Brownie.
Back home we went to work the act. The old man’s momentary faltering of optimism was lost in a blizzard of stale ideas, re-treads with a tired twist, waiting for something to click. Again and again my ideas were shot down when I could have done it so much better and he knew it.
I was going to take a stand. Sure I was. And then I did, on the night of the storm that changed everything. A somehow liquid night. The carry of sound as if we were underwater. We huddled by the fire as an extraordinary wind surged and the walls groaned, the roof about to rip and spin into the darkness any moment, then the cottage itself, the three of us Wizard of Oz-ing up, up and away. If only.
‘Just what is it that you don’t like about it?’
‘It’s too fancy.’
‘Too fancy? What’s that supposed to mean?’ I had an idea for a comedy chase sequence, Duke and I on a static motorbike with a projection of changing scenery behind us, a daft montage that would make it seem as if we were driving over mountains, the sea, along railway tracks. ‘You still think Buster Keaton rip-offs are going to cut it? It’s not the nineteen bloody twenties!’
‘Shut it, Johnny!’
‘Let me run with it.’
‘It won’t work.’
‘Why are you so jealous? I’ve never got that. Just what—’
He slapped me. Hard on the face.
I blinked away the tears but held his stare. ‘What is it that threatens you so much?’
When he made to strike me again I grabbed his hand.
‘Stop it!’ Duke stepped between us and pushed us apart. He looked as if he was on the verge of tears.
‘Away and get some coal in.’
‘Me?’ said Duke.
‘Not you. Him.’
‘C’mon, Dad, it’s a hurricane out there!’
My father and I stared at each other. ‘No worries, Duke.’ When I reached the door I said, ‘I quit.’
‘What?’
In the noise of the wind he hadn’t heard me. When I said it again it didn’t sound right any more.
‘That so?’
The wind wrenched the door from me. I struggled across to the byre and filled the coal bucket, hurrying back to the cottage in a howling black that suddenly swelled into bright white.
A flare was slowly falling, illuminating the remains of the outhouse, the long grass in the fields a wildly undulating sea. I ran to the end of the cottage and looked towards the Sound, a blackness pricked by a line of blinking red dots. The night swelled white again under another flare, revealing a violent confusion of waves, the red dots the running lights of a large cargo vessel.
It was no more than a hundred metres offshore and listing heavily to port, fuzzy behind explosions of spray. Men were braced at the rails, staring at the sea rising to meet them, uncertain about jumping. A lifeboat dangled from a line, battering against the hull. Another flare went up.
Then I saw people in the water. Three of them, closer to the shore, maybe twenty metres from the asphalt slipway. They struggled, gone then reappearing, fading into black as I waited for the next flare that never came. My vision closed on an expanse of smooth metal as the ship finally rolled onto its side and, on the darkening edge, figures tossed here and there by the waves.
I swam out. I swam back. I brought three men to the shore.
I knelt beside them on the shingle. I saw the catch of light in their bulging eyeballs as they focused on mine, a confusion lost in a spluttering of salt water. No sound but the wind. No words from Duke and my father, who stared at me, soaking wet in the doorway, with the same incredulous look as the sailors I had left on the shore.
We helped them back up to the cottage and Duke and the old man drove them to hospital in Inveran. I watched the car all along the shore road and up the hill, until the tail lights disappeared as it dropped over the brow, just as, on the Sound, the ship’s running lights had also vanished.
* * *
The next day I remember as a series of highly stylised set-pieces. Everything I looked at or said was infused with a crystal clarity. Yet I was conscious of not trusting it, neither the broken fences which had turned four fields into one big one, nor the line of detritus that followed the salamander shores of the Sound of Skerray west towards McKeever’s Point and east towards Inveran.
Nor the big ship, lying on its side a hundred metres offshore, gentle waves lapping the near-submerged hull. The newspaper told us it was the SS Breda, built in 1921, a single-screw cargo steamer out of Rotterdam. A hundred metres long and 7,000 tonnes, all hands lost but the three Chinese sailors I had pulled from the sea, now babbling in Mandarin at Inveran Memorial.
Duke, my father and I stood in the yard, each with our hands on our hips. As we stared out at the Sound the Breda finally slipped under the waves. I accepted this fact with alacrity, the situation so far beyond normal that this vanishing seemed confirmation it had never happened at all.
Then a sound behind us, a movement at the byre.
Afterwards, we would each claim to have seen it first. But, as I say, I didn’t trust any of it.
‘Unreal.’
‘Unreal.’
‘Can’t whack it,’ said my father.
Up on a beam of the ramshackle byre, which had miraculously survived the storm, sat a bedraggled monkey.
‘What are we gonna do with it?’
‘Chuck it a tattie.’
‘A tattie?’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not throwing it a tattie. What if he doesn’t eat tatties? I mean—’
‘Everyone eats tatties.’
‘How do you know it’s a he?’
‘Everyone eats tatties! Away and get some.’
When I returned, my father opened his arms wide as he looked at the monkey, as if apologising for his idiot son.
‘The hell’s that?’
‘A tattie.’
‘I can see that, ya cheeky wee shite. Why’d you not peel it?’
‘I dunno.’
‘If you were a monkey. If you were eating your very first tattie, would you not want it peeled?’
He had a point.
My father removed his fedora. A sure sign of uncertainty. He began to scratch his bald head.
‘Old Donny’s got a phone. I’ll call the zoo and get them to come and take it away.’
He hefted the potato in his hand and lobbed it into the byre. A short second later the potato re-appeared, rolling to a standstill at his feet. I looked to Duke, looked to our father, looked to Duke.
After a few moments, at exactly the same time, we each took three slow steps into the byre and peered up. There was the monkey, sitting up on its beam. Grinning, I’m sure it was grinning.
‘Bring me some more tatties.’
He threw another one. A high-arc towards the monkey, who caught it smartly and lobbed it back. Three more with the same results. The fifth time the old man put his hat back on and pointed at it. And lo and behold the monkey tossed it back and knocked it off. The next time my father threw the potato over his shoulder. Back it came, once more knocking off his hat.
‘Boys, I have a wonderful idea for our act.’
‘Dad!’
The old man and I turned and followed Duke’s outstretched arm. In the fie
ld opposite the byre a horse was prancing, shaking its mane and snorting. Not just any horse, a truly magnificent one.
‘Christ almighty,’ my father said. ‘It’s the day of the animals.’
I am sure that was when the second idea detonated in his head. He had finally worked out the angle he had been pondering since the drive to Inveran with three half-drowned Chinese sailors. The horse should have reared up, whinnying, a lurid emphasis for the long-awaited eureka.
There followed another set-piece of that over-exposed day. Our father is on one side of the table, the two of us on the other, the inevitable bottle between us. We watch him drink and gesticulate, stand up in excitement and sit down in contemplation, shirt open to his waist and big belly straining, listening as he expands upon his strategy and the possibilities, think of the possibilities.
‘Are you sure about this, JJ?’ my brother asked me later. ‘I mean if you’re not then just say.’
‘It’s what he wants.’
‘Do you want it though? If you don’t we can fix it.’
Duke didn’t want to fix it. I saw it in his eyes. This would make him the big star I had no desire to be.
‘It’s ok, Duke.’
* * *
The next day was bitter. A slicing wind off the sea. The old man had called The Inveran Courier and we were waiting for the promised journalist. Providence and the old man had cracked their knuckles.
It was 1pm and he still hadn’t appeared, so we took turns going into the yard to look down the shore road.
I saw a figure in the distance, walking along the road and up the slope to the cottage. It took me far too long to realise it was a woman. The trouser suit confused me. She was blonde and pretty, a bit older than Duke, I would have said.
She waved and I waved back, not with the desired nonchalance but with a weird, Nazi-like salute. My casual lean against the gate also failed, it was just too far away and I nearly fell over. I blushed as only a seventeen-year-old can blush.
She looked at me closely and bit her lip. Tried not to laugh. ‘I’m here to interview you. I’m from the Courier?’
‘Sure. Right. Eh—’
‘Duke Jackson. A pleasure.’
Her gaze moved past me, eyes opening wider to admit The Duke, who had appeared out of nowhere.
‘Anna Chambers,’ she said. ‘Delighted to meet you.’ Her smile had become something altogether different.
She apologised for being so late. Her rubbishy old jalopy had broken down, a fact illustrated with a thumb over her shoulder, which all three of us dumbly followed, our gazes stopped by the whitewashed kitchen wall. She very much appreciated Duke’s offer to run her back into town afterwards and then, all business-like with a clap of hands, asked if we were ready to begin.
My father spoke of the Day of the Animals, a phrase he’d become quite attached to. ‘That should be the title of the article, hen.’
She offered the most carefully non-committal of smiles. ‘Perhaps we should hear from Duke,’ she said.
‘A pleasure,’ said Duke.
He needed no deep breath. No tense, here I go then. The all-new Hero of the Breda showed no first-night nerves. He told Anna how he saw the men in the sea and didn’t think twice, just swam out and brought them in. It was truly impressive, my brother clearly a genius or a psychopath.
‘Brought them home,’ was what Duke actually said. Turned out the hero had a gifted turn of phrase. He didn’t settle the angst on his face as he would in later performances, although he did flash me a wary look. Testing my contempt, maybe, or making sure I didn’t give it away.
Anna looked at him very closely. She had stopped writing in her notebook. Her lips were slightly open. That was when I noticed the day’s bitter cold which I still feel now, colder than the waters of the Sound as I swam back to the shore with the Chinese sailors and out of my own story.
At first, I looked back with anger.
Then incredulity.
In time, I avoided thought of it altogether. Later still, I was completely reconciled. It would even come to make me laugh. Because it could only have been this way. We are all children of myth. Every story has its creation legend: the Cherokee and their water beetle, the Vikings with their ancient giant. Some might say The Breda Boys foundation myth was of less cosmic significance. But all these myths, they’re just tall tales round the fire. They’re showbiz.
* * *
You had to hand it to Anna Chambers. She only escaped the Woman and Home pages for the Breda article because the feature writer had ruptured a hernia trying to reach the second of the Inveran links in one.
She never looked back. Her story was a sensation. The Day of the Animals became the Day of the Menagerie, a quick-smart syndication for our heroic, Boys Own tale. I imagined it flashing around the country like in a film montage: a dramatic, read-all-about-it spinning of a dozen front pages.
She took the famous photo too.
The three of us stand outside the old byre, left arms outstretched as we lean towards the camera. It was extraordinary how long we spent discussing whether it should be our left arm or right, the old man eventually holding sway with the unassailable argument that if in doubt, veer left.
You might have seen that photo. I have a confused look on my face, as if I don’t quite get the punchline to the joke. There was this shipwreck, right, the only survivors a monkey, a horse and three Chinamen . . .
Anna was also there a week later at Inveran Town Hall. One of the hundreds pouring inside, who occasionally shook my hand but much more often my brother’s. The people intimidated me less than the building, with its Jacobethan pilasters and flagstoned staircase leading up to the arcade. Heavy double doors then opened into the hall, the wooden floor polished to a glassy sheen, and ornate, white painted balconies on three sides, chandeliers like sparkling wasps’ nests . . .
I looked down from the table on the stage where we had been seated with the other dignitaries. There was Anna with her notebook in the front row. A green dress, hair the colour of summer barley.
Again, she acknowledged me and again she did not see me, those big blue eyes only for Duke. As his were only for her. He fixed her with that lopsided smile and she quickly smiled back, another blush. His problem was the others he saw. The others he smiled at who she had not yet noticed.
Ah, Duke, the machine greased by need. There was genius in his aw shucks, it was nothing. He was just the Everyman who happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was just like you. In fact, it might even be you, next time. Anna fell for it, we all did, including the tubby man with Himmler spectacles sitting at the other end of the table. He was the main reason we were in the Town Hall, the culmination of the events triggered by Anna’s story going national.
Fat Jack was the bearer of the news, driving out from Inveran in his new Austin 30 to tell us. It turned out that the horse we rescued was Sunflower Star, the Aga Khan’s favourite, being taken to stud. None of us knew what an Aga Khan was. Not until he turned up with his entourage two days later.
We traipsed into Inveran Memorial and another photo: the Khan, the three of us and the bewildered Chinese sailors. The Khan wanted to reward us for Duke’s heroism, although I suspected he was more relieved about the return of his prize horse. ‘You are very welcome to the monkey,’ he added.
Not to be outdone by the acclamation of an exotic aristocrat, the council leapt into action, informing us we had been awarded the Freedom of Inveran for our act of civic responsibility. The news was conferred by the chairman in his office overlooking the town green with growing alarm, as if he had just seen a troubling vision of the old man grazing his cows.
Hence the reception in the Town Hall and the chairman’s toe-curling speech about how we embodied the best of this hard-working community. The London hacks grinned as they scribbled, the Aga Khan a bewildered presence at one end of the table while at the other the old man beamed, Duke smouldered in his blue blazer and I wondered if he might stand up and croon.
‘This is just unreal, isn’t it?’ he had said to me a few hours ago when we were getting ready.
‘Just a bit.’
‘You look like you’re going to court.’
‘You look like you’ve already been convicted.’
He grabbed my hand, suddenly and genuinely anxious. ‘There’s still time to change this, you know.’
‘Your tie’s squint.’
‘Bloody hell, JJ. I can’t do this. It’s not right.’
‘Careful, you don’t want the old man dropping dead, not now. He’s reached the gates of paradise.’
After a long and bumptious speech, the chairman presented us with a grudgingly small silver quaich. The Khan followed with nothing so gaudy. Just a simple handshake, having already handed over a cheque for £5,000, an almost unbelievable amount of money. All of which continued to explain my father’s beaming face as the Fleet Street flashbulbs popped and the audience broke into applause. Then the old man waved his hands up and down, asking for quiet.
He scanned the faces, very grave now. ‘For those who say you can’t do something. For those who say something is beyond your ability . . . I say,’ and he tipped back the fedora. ‘You Aga bloody CAN!’
* * *
A few days later we sat in the kitchen pondering the quaich, which my father had placed in the centre of the table.
The absurdity was palpable. Any moment I expected to hear the laughter explode, the great cosmic joke revealed and everything instantly vanishing: money, monkey . . . even the ridiculous clothes worn by Duke and the old man. The Khan’s money had been put to swift use at Archibald and Son’s, the stop-off of choice for the huntin-shootin-fishin set on their way to the grouse moors and salmon rivers, a toff’s paradise they had once mocked.
A secret envy was now manifest in Duke’s yachtsman attire, complete with stripy cravat and canvas deck shoes. My father had gone for the classic tweeds and walking stick, a sterling silver handle shaped like a whippet’s head. Yet he still wore his greasy fedora, making the somewhat redundant points that country gentlemen are born, not made, and you can’t polish a turd.
The Accidental Recluse Page 5