This time no-one gets out from the two other cars which stop behind us. This place used to be called Diarmid’s Leap. It has become Diarmid’s Rest, with picnic tables and information boards, a 20p telescope. Inveran is below me, orange lights following the long, horseshoe sweep of the bay like the runaway of a goofy airstrip, ending in the darkness of a headland I cannot see.
They will ask me questions. They will ask me questions and I must smile, I must remember to smile.
* * *
‘Mr Jackson! A profound pleasure.’
The name badge tells me this is John Houston, Manager.
‘How was your flight?’
‘Well, they caught me in the end.’
A flicker of uncertainty before he realises he can laugh. But no idea what to say. ‘Yes, yes. Excellent!’
My spirits had sunk a few moments after we swung in the high iron gates of Inveran Castle Hotel. Through the windscreen, the headlights illuminated the snow-covered gravel of the long drive. Then the castle itself was looming, and, horror of horrors, two lines of hotel staff, an upside-down V extending from the doorway and down the entrance steps, twenty pairs of eyes following the three Mercedes as they swung around the fountain and came to a halt parallel to the steps. They were all smiling, rictus grins in the bitter chill, despite the alarming uniforms that must have been designed by a deranged toddler with colour blindness, all green waistcoats and odd reddish trousers, skirts. How long had the poor buggers been waiting?
Houston walks alongside me, up the stairs. At the top stand two well-built men in dark suits. The two other security men from the plane follow behind. I glimpse Erin. Already she is talking urgently into the mobile phone clamped to her ear. I wonder if she has even noticed the line of staff.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I say to young ‘Alison’, who blushes.
‘Helluva cold,’ I say to ‘Lewis’, a prematurely balding thirty-something with a big ginger beard who, in his Christmas-coloured uniform, looks like a grown-up version of one of Santa’s little helpers. ‘I found a wee ice-cube in my bed this morning. When I threw it on the fire it went fart.’
Lewis looks as if he is on the verge of panic.
‘One of Billy Connolly’s. I’m not that funny. Good to meet you. See that?’ I hold out my left hand. ‘Steady as a rock, eh?’ Lewis nods, a flicker of a frown. ‘But this is the one I shake hands with.’ I take his hand with my right, start juddering it up and down: fake DTs, not far from the truth.
There is a ripple of laughter up and down the V. Gotta give the crowd what they want, Duke. But as I reach the top of the steps and enter the reception hall I am glad of its vast emptiness.
‘This snow,’ Houston suddenly says. ‘It’s completely unseasonal.’ As if he feels he must apologise.
I have never liked this place. Inveran Castle was a tumbledown waiting to happen when I was growing up. Rarely remarked, just there, a place of black windows and geriatric aristocrats, drowning in a rising sea of empty bottles, unpaid bills. The Big House, it was called, of course, with that complex mix of Highland deference and scorn. You’d see them, occasionally, clambering out of a battered Jaguar, creatures from a lost geological era, into Archibald and Son’s to buy tweeds and waders for cauliflower-nosed relatives who would fish, drunk among the midges, and catch sod all.
‘I hope you like what we’ve done with the place,’ says Houston, as if this is my home and he the steward, anxiously watching me poke around, re-familiarising myself in a swell of sentiment. It is indeed a Breda Inc. accumulation, but the nostalgia is Erin’s. She bought the castle ten years ago. One for us, she said, the family, the rags to riches so captivating she spent twenty million on a refit and so disaffecting that she’s never visited until now.
A championship golf course lurks in the darkness, beyond the crenellated Victorian ridiculousness that brings rich, daft Americans to pay thousands for romantic dreams of emigrant roots.
It was the final nail for the Royal Inveran in the town centre, apparently, whose five- star clientele immediately bolted. I mean, who can compete with a castle? The bankruptcy was swift, I hear . . .
A shuffling makes me turn.
I hide my unease in comic surprise, an Inspector Clouseau-like jump and Karate-chop but Cato not there, just the grinning staff arranging themselves into another line. Houston re-appears with a remarkably ugly Monarch of the Glen sculpture, the stag looking more constipated than regal. There follows a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ that will have the suite-dwellers unhappily roused from dreams of Rob Roy. I lift the stag and offer a smile fit for an Oscar.
‘It is good to have you home for your birthday, Mr Jackson,’ whispers Houston. Erin appears to kiss me on the cheek and gently turn me to the right. A photographer seals the moment in eternity.
So doth complete another circle in this crescent life. I am led to the tight, tombstone sheets of the three-room Discovery Suite. As I close the door, Houston tells me that Vladimir Putin stayed in this very room during a summit a few years ago. The information is unlikely to help me sleep.
* * *
A silhouette against the window, a figure opening the curtains. Silver light pours in. The arrhythmia that rocked me to a jittery sleep remains. I feel it as a lightness in my chest, a waiting for sudden pain which has long emptied of anxiety and is now more expectation of an inevitability.
‘You’ve got the best view in the house,’ says Erin.
There is a wetness on the sheets. My heart gives a massive thud, a tolling for the arrival of incontinence. I am horrified by the thought of avoiding the coronary to instead moulder in an overheated nursing home where the staff tick off your days with the disinterest of deleting email spam.
‘Better to burn out than to fade away.’
‘You can see right . . . ’ Erin shimmers as she turns. ’What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
Sitting up, I see a glass on the floor, the wet sheets actually caused by some troubled night-flailing.
‘The islands in the distance, I can’t remember what they’re called. You can see the weather coming in.’ She comes closer and looms above me, her face blocking the window. ‘You look bloody awful.’
‘Believe me, I feel worse.’
‘You should cut down on the booze. Doesn’t go well with travelling. Not at your age. Quite a welcoming committee, wasn’t it? Just needed an anthem playing. What’s with that Houston guy?’
‘What time is it?’
‘Eleven thirty.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Erin.’ I have been asleep for less than three hours.
‘Bad idea to sleep. Ride out that jetlag!’ There is an unusual levity in her tone. ‘Try and stay awake.’
‘Not much choice now.’
She sits on the edge of the bed.
‘You know, I have the strangest feeling. I’ve been here what, twice? But it’s like everything I look at I’ve seen before. I can’t work out if it’s things I’ve actually seen or I’m just telling myself I did.’
I was here with her only once, an overly attentive, eleven-year-old Erin. She probably does remember everything she thinks she does, the islands and the white wake of the ferries, the scrawl of gulls on washed-out grey. I have a vivid image of her on a beach, arms wide and her face raised, as if urging the universe to give her all it has. Maybe that’s been her problem all along.
‘But I can’t picture Mum. I know we were here with her but I can’t even imagine her. It makes me miss her even more.’
I can’t do this. I am not ready to think about Anna. ‘Give it a rest, you’ve been here five bloody minutes.’
My harshness surprises me and I immediately regret it. Her body tenses, the head dropping a little.
‘Thanks. Thanks for that.’
‘I’m sorry, Erin. I’m just—’
‘Maybe I deserve it,’ she adds. ‘The Bruce. Having Frank Stone direct.’
‘You buy the ticket—’
‘You take the ride .
. . Sure. I still don’t understand what you’ve got against him.’
‘He hasn’t made a decent film in years.’
‘What about Time Passages?’
‘What about it?’
‘It got him Best Director.’
‘James Cameron won Best Director. Ron Howard, for crying out loud. You shouldn’t use the Oscars to measure quality.’
‘Didn’t you win an Oscar?’
I ignore the smirk. ‘Time Passages is schmaltz.’
‘That’s harsh, he’s—’
‘He’s a hack.’ My ego just can’t get past Frank, the poster boy for cosmetic dentistry and hair plugs.
‘He’ll be here later this morning.’
‘Wonderful. What about Renner?’
‘Still not sure. He’s being an awkward git.’
Brad Renner will play Robert the Bruce. A-list gold but the Dick Van Dyke of Scottish accents. I remember the video of his read-through and have a near-physical yearning for my ryokan at Shuzenji.
‘We’ll stick with the press conference tomorrow morning. You and Stone. If Brad’s here, he’s here.’
‘Be still my beating heart.’
‘Look, it’s your film. Your script. That’s why we’re building a set in your home town. You don’t need to direct the damn movie for it to be yours. It’s all about you! People love you. Look at your biography . . . ’ And so on. She justifies herself via emoting, plain old wheedling and a peculiar grammar of arm and hand movements that leave after-trails in my jittery, jet-lagged eyes. She’s what I would see if I peered inside a Punch and Judy booth and watched the puppet master.
‘Two o’clock lunch with Frank. Is that ok?’
I remember Frank’s last visit to Shuzenji. An exhausting, six-hour gush of California enthusiasm.
‘How could I refuse?’
She takes my hand, presses it to her cheek. ‘I’m sorry. I am. But you’re home now and we’re making your masterpiece.’
It is humiliating, to lie in bed while she patronises me. My feet are also demeaning me, poking out all bony and pale from the sheets. But I won’t get up, I can’t bear the thought of her watching me struggle out of bed. Therein lies more humiliation, a condescending here, let me help.
‘Be nice to Frank. He’s a good man.’
She always speaks so highly of him, which is surprising considering he is even shorter than me.
I watch her leave.
There is, ultimately, nothing to be done.
I sit for a while longer then push back the sheets. My pyjamas have rolled up to my knees. I wonder again why my legs have become bald as I have aged, yet my ears sprout like the cress we used to grow at primary school. Perhaps it is the cress rather than the soundproofing which creates the silence that envelopes me as I walk across to the window and look out at the sea.
Japan knows a different space. That world resides in the infinitesimal. Waterfalls in miniaturised gardens. The bonsai approximations of trees. I reel against vertigo as I look out the panoramic window, down from my tower to the marina and its cruisers. My gaze moves past the pincers of the breakwater, across the open sea to the dapple of the inner islands, the mountains of far peninsulas in the hazy distance.
The Castle sits on a low hill, a couple of miles outside Inveran. To my left is the whole sweep of the bay, the town spread along it. Behind the townhouses and hotels of the seafront, terraces of trees and bushes step up a steeply rising hill, bisected by a line of elegant Victorian houses. Post-war pre-fabs cluster on the southern end of the ridge, a cemetery dominating the north.
I look back to the seafront. Flags line the long promenade that becomes Shore Road and continues over the headland, down to the Sound of Skerray. A few more miles and you come to an old croft . . .
‘You’re home now,’ Erin said.
So let’s get out there, see what’s what. It’s the reason I’m here, Duke, is it not? I’m here to see you all, one more time. Not to make a damn movie, although without The Bruce I doubt I’d ever have come back. There’s the crux, good brother. I’m here so I won’t ever have to come back.
* * *
Standard protocol dictates that I should be accompanied by a minder wherever I go. This, I can easily slip.
More difficult is escaping the hotel itself. It is almost impossible to leave a five-star hotel without being seen. The need to please means near-universal surveillance. Fart in an empty corridor and someone will instantly materialise with a can of air freshener. Put on your jacket in the lobby and the concierge is there. Isn’t it a fine day, sir? Going anywhere in particular?
‘We need a ruse, Akira. I’ll put on a dressing gown so it seems I’m going to the spa but I’ll have my tracksuit on underneath, see, Nikes in my bathing bag. I’ll whip off the gown and we run for it.’
He is momentarily unsure if I’m serious. Then we’re both laughing. In the end, we make it to the back entrance and the staff car park without being seen by anyone. No opportunity to dive into a linen trolley. It’s almost disappointing. I get in the passenger seat of the black Mercedes.
‘Your choice, Johnny,’ says Akira, and points at the sound system.
‘Charles Mingus.’
The soundtrack to an escape.
Stretched double bass, the tenor sax kicking in and the music settling to a driving beat. I turn and look out the back window and here’s another black Mercedes swinging around the corner, coming up fast, tyres kicking up slushy snow like a chase sequence in a James Bond movie. Akira steps on it and we’ve lost them, but no, the Merc suddenly fishtails back into view . . .
Instead, we ease through the back gates and head down the access road, walled on both sides by Sitka or maybe Norway spruce. No-one is following and I am smiling. As is Akira. We drop down and round a steep hairpin left and leave the dark trees behind, taking a left onto a single track.
The Albannach Road.
We used to cycle out this way, I think. My memory is unsure but these days I don’t spend much time questioning. In imagination there is also truth. So there we are, Duke! In the wan distance of another winter day, miles from our cottage, cycling along a potholed road that can’t have changed much between then and now. The sea is a ten-metre drop from the verge on the right-hand side, small islands across the water and larger ones beyond, sombre greens and browns.
‘Is it always so cold here?’ asks Akira.
Leonid once asked me something similar. He was always moaning about the cold and the rain. I used to joke that only a Russian would defect to a country where the weather was almost as bad.
I offer Akira my hipflask. ‘A little warm-you-up?’
He declines.
I drink for both of us, the road becoming a cindery winding through memories that whip past too swiftly to keep up with, like the dead leaves blustering across the car as the wind rises. A rough sea comes closer, a dark band on the horizon promising sleet, which reaches us as the road becomes the promenade. Soon we’re in Inveran proper, the hurrying umbrellas of Abraham Street. One by one people look up the car. I seem to recognise every face.
Don’t worry, folks, I’m only passing through . . .
A sign says Esha Bay, 6. On Stevenson Street I see that the Inveran Empire has fallen to an Odeon. If I look out the window and up I might be able to see the cemetery on the heights. Not today. I am not ready for tears that I will explain away as the coldness of the ever-slashing wind.
The Clachan, though. That is another matter altogether. I might not even have noticed it on the opposite side of the road if we hadn’t been stopped by a red light. My flask is empty, after all.
The décor, of course, has changed. No longer the 1950s austerity of smoke-stained walls and punishing wooden chairs, as if any pandering to comfort was disrespectful to The Clachan’s alcoholic function. The stained-glass windows on each side of the main door have been restored. In one, two coopers make a whisky barrel, in another, several musicians sit at a table.
Yet the basic structure is
unchanged. The Clachan still has two bars, separated by the same door with the murderously low lintel. We stand and wait at the counter in the first, the only customers and no sign of any staff. After a while, we head through to the second bar, a smaller, darker room: faux-mahogany, dimpled, copper-topped tables and cosy booths, red leather seats.
He looks as old as I, the barman. A similar thinning of white. He stands behind the polished brass taps. Squints as he holds a glass up to the light. ‘What’ll it be, son?’ A smile makes another line in a magnificently creased face as he notices his doppelgänger, who eases slowly onto a bar stool.
‘Double Highland Park.’
‘And why not.’
‘Fancy one yourself?’
He does.
He moves away to find the whisky, revealing a mirror behind him. It is framed on the left and right by gantry shelves filled with bottles of spirits, while a third runs along the top, lined with a collection of old water jugs advertising Johnny Walker, Teachers . . . There is nothing in front of the mirror except two ice buckets, making clear the mirror is the main feature of the bar.
It is rectangular, about two feet by three, a frame covered in fake, peeling gilt. The surface is stencilled in curling gold letters. Nostalgia. I stare at my reflection until the barman hands me a glass.
We drink. It is 11.15am. Whine of the wind outside. It could be any day, from now back to 1950.
‘Just passing through?’
‘Coming back.’ I nod to the mirror behind him. ‘Not much choice with that looking back at you.’
He chuckles. ‘Not exactly needed in a pub, eh? Nostalgia. The drink’ll get you there soon enough.’
‘Isn’t that the truth? Freedom and whisky gang thegither!’ I raise my glass and the barman does the same.
The Accidental Recluse Page 9