‘Best gut them,’ he says.
‘Gut them, Bucket Boy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What my dad said to me when he brought the boat in. That was my job. Duke caught them and I gutted them.’
He hands me a wooden priest and I pick up a writhing fish. I smack it on top of the head and have a quick image of Akira, how he bows to any creature he kills, the trodden spider or the fish taken home from the market. I feel a pang of guilt that he has no idea what has happened to me.
‘Here.’
I take the knife from Lewis and start to gut the fish. I am sweating but my hands are red and cold.
‘We should have these for our tea,’ I say. ‘Few fried tatties and a glass or two.’
Instantly, I realise this familiarity is absurdly inappro-priate. I feel a heat in my cheeks. We are not friends.
He seems troubled once more and shoves the oars into the water. ‘We should get going. I’ll take you back.’
‘Look, Lewis, I’m—’
‘No. Don’t say it.’ He’s rowing furiously, throwing water, trying to spark his anger. ‘I’m not having that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He lifts the oars and lets the boat glide. ‘Just don’t.’ He leans towards me. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.’
I realise I have a dead fish in my hand, its little face agog with a perplexity I can fully understand.
We head in. The boat slips across the water, a glossy black dappled by white bubbles left behind by the oars. There is no more wind and the temperature drops. I feel two subtly different kinds of cold, one rising from the sea and one falling from the sky, chilling me from feet up, head down.
To the west is the long, sweeping beach at Edmonton Bay, directly in front of me a shorter, rocky shore, about a hundred metres away. Set back from this shore is the caravan, snug between two small hills. East, at the highest point of a low promontory, I can make out the vehicle track.
Over that crest, a little later, flashing blue lights appear. Three police 4x4s. One of them turns up the slope to the caravan, the other two stopping at the bottom. Yellow bibs quickly emerge.
Lewis sees me staring and glances over his shoulder. He keeps rowing for a few moments then stops, letting the oars skim the water. I think I hear someone shouting.
He gives me a rueful smile. ‘I’m surprised it took them so long.’
There is another sound in the distance, a low-pitched droning which I look round to place, but cannot.
Lewis rummages in the cargo box under his seat. He takes out a pair of binoculars and spends a long time looking at the shore. When he hands the glasses to me his face is red. He looks startled.
‘Quite a turnout.’
I watch a policeman emerge from the caravan, then another. At the foot of the slope five others stand in a group. One talks into a walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder and all of them are looking towards us, one with a pair of binoculars. Along the shore is another figure. Erin. She strides back and forth, the ubiquitous phone clamped to her ear, gesticulating wildly from sea to shore.
I move the glasses to the second of the three 4x4s. Someone else has a pair of binoculars trained on me. Akira, I realise. I wave at him and a moment later he does the same. We are both smiling.
Then, round the promontory to the east, the drone reveals itself, a police or coastguard boat. The drone rises in pitch as it throttles down, cutting a V of spray and heading straight for us.
‘You’re a director, aren’t you?’ I say.
‘Eh?’
‘Frank Stone, he’s probably the one standing in the bow of that boat with the bull-horn. What scene would he have, right now? What’s the best scene in an action movie? The one we all want?’
Lewis is a confusion of blinks.
‘Chase sequence, there’s always a chase sequence. Does the motor work?’ I pat the outboard behind me.
Bullit, it is not. It is not even OJ Simpson in his Ford Bronco, the LAPD in lazy pursuit. This is more zimmer versus Lamborghini, Lewis hunched forward at the tiller, as if coaxing the boat forward.
The cutter makes up our head start almost instantly, slowing to match our speed. The MV Hunter has two vertical stripes at the bow, one red and one blue. A jaunty line of multicoloured triangular flags stretches from the bow up to the radar mast and back down to the stern. A man with a yellow life vest and a bigger beard than Lewis is leaning on the railings at the bow, shouting something into a loudhailer. We have barely reached the edge of Edmonton Bay.
I lift the binoculars and look at the shore. The convoy of police vehicles is following us along the shore track, the blue lights still flashing. If Lewis turned suddenly would they do the same thing? Back eastwards we would go until Lewis turned again. Back and forth along the coast, all day long.
I wave at the man in the cutter with the loudhailer. After a moment, he waves back.
Abruptly, Lewis cuts the engine.
We drift.
Alongside us, the drone becomes a lazy putter.
Lewis seems distressed, a man who has suddenly grasped the ridiculousness of what he’s doing.
The bearded man again raises his loudhailer and tells Lewis to stop. He waves a vague acknowledgement. I feel a surge of fondness which instantly deepens as he opens the tiller box and tosses me a half-bottle. I drink and the sun swells, making Lewis an inscrutable presence. I hand the bottle back. The non-drinker takes a hit as he glances at the Hunter, edging closer.
‘There’s nothing to worry about. It’s not as if you kidnapped me.’
‘That’s what it looks like! Why’d you ask me to take off like that?’
‘I’ll sort it, son, don’t worry.’
He laughs harshly, waving the bottle at a second man in a yellow life-jacket who is leaning from the stern of the Hunter and tying a line to our mooring ring. ‘What do you reckon, do you believe him?’
Lewis is right. I am treacherous, to be avoided like the skerries I can just make out to the west, there and gone in ocean glitter, swelling sun. Can you even be sure they are there at all?
‘Are you ok, Mr Jackson?’
I am helped onto the cutter. Lewis remains in the rowing boat. A police officer clambers down and puts a hand on his shoulder, as if he expects him to try and swim for it. But Lewis is immobile, looking at me. He’s waiting for me to tell the police that they’ve got it all wrong.
‘You missed one thing,’ I shout above the engine.
The policeman looks round as well.
‘The voiceover at the start. You say it was Duke who rescued the sailors from the Breda. It wasn’t.’
Lewis stares.
‘It was me.’
He tries to smile and seem unconvinced. But he knows, and then he looks so disappointed.
As I say, I am a treacherous man.
* * *
After the chaos, I return to the Castle Hotel. That is, I am returned. First by a convoy of three Mercedes and two police cars, then by six security men, three behind and three in front through hurried corridors. The danger that was no danger now passed, they are pulling out all the stops.
Fade-Out
I lie in scalding bath water. I place a little white face-towel on top of my head in the traditional Japanese fashion. I am convinced, but have no way of proving it, that this offers respectful acknowledgement to the snow-crowned monkeys in their hot pools who showed humans the way of the onsen.
Afterwards, I stand naked once more at the panoramic window. My skin has taken on the colour of boiled salmon and the steam rising from my body clouds the glass somewhat, although I can still see a few boats on the sea below me. Soon, the light of this perfect, ice-blue day will fade. All will become silhouettes and the projections easier. There I will sit in a rowing boat in the distant east, killing the last of the mackerel, watched by Lewis, who is pleased with me, who rows us with strong, easy strokes back to shore . . .
We can travel a long way for peace. There is a sacred plac
e in Japan, Mount Kōya; the heart of Shingon Buddhism and a place of many monasteries. For a few years after Anna died I went there. I was a spiritual dilettante, of course, seeking the quick fix, indulged by monks happy for my contributions to the upkeep of Henjoko-in, happy in turn to be bamboozled by their dawn rituals.
All I needed was a caravan . . .
I feel bad for what I said to Lewis as I left. It’s compulsive, for sure, that need to have the last word. Yet there is only so much he can know, and what he does will never be enough. His is a doleful presence. He will be ever-suspect for being so pathetic, whatever I might have said to the police. And just like you and Anna, Duke, he won’t let me be. I’m the Shinigami, cue the Bontempi!
That’s what causes these never-ending meditations, yes, meditations, stop sniggering. And so many more to come. It’s why I’ll live to an unseemly, biblical age. What does it matter, in comparison, if millions one day crowd the Odeons of the world to sit, appalled, through Lewis’s film?
I hear a sudden, impatient rapping at the door. Instantly, my sagging ball-sack retracts. I have been flash-chilled. The steam no longer rises. My niece Erin is another who will forever keep coming.
I make her wait in the corridor. I have to dress. Her concern will undoubtedly be over-played and I have no desire to sit here in a dressing gown, the confused old man she would like to be presented with. I choose grey slacks and a black silk shirt, and a pair of what I think might be deck shoes.
As soon as I open the door she is upon me. Arms around my neck for a few long moments. Then she stands back, holding me by the shoulders, concerned eyes flicking across my face.
‘I don’t like deck shoes,’ I say.
‘That’s ok. I know you don’t.’
She puts a hand on my cheek, a look of genuine concern in her eyes.
‘Would you prefer me to be a gibbering mess on the sofa?’
‘What?’
‘I’m ok, Erin. My shoes.’ We both look down at my feet. ‘I was just telling you about my shoes.’
‘Of course you were. Well, thanks. Thanks for telling me about your shoes. Can you not let me feel relieved?’
‘There’s nothing to feel concerned about. He was harmless. He invited me and I went with him.’
‘But I didn’t know that, did I? I just wanted to give you a hug and ask if you’re ok.’
‘And I am.’
‘So I see.’ She crosses to the big window and stands looking out at the darkening day. Hands on her hips.
‘Good publicity for The Bruce, eh? You can’t buy that kind of coverage. Stone must be happy as a pig in shit.’
Her head dips. The vaguest of shakes. She remains there for a few more seconds then quickly wipes her eyes, turning and striding to the door. ‘I’ve never understood why you think I don’t care.’
‘Look, Erin, I don’t know—’
‘Just stop. I was going to ask if you wanted to postpone the event tonight. No need for that, is there? You’re here and you’re A-OK. I mean, the disappearance and reappearance of the famous Johnny Jackson? What a story. They’ll be eating out of your hand. Deck shoes or no bloody deck shoes!’
With a feeling of great weariness, I remember the Freedom of Inveran.
‘Can I just suggest . . . ’
She gives me what looks like a mint. You’re handed something similar after landing at Singapore, that most paranoid of places. Just a sweet, innocently offered, likely some kind of homing device.
Then she leaves.
A few moments later, there is another, softer knock at the door.
Akira.
‘I saw Erin in the corridor. She was . . . ’
‘I know. She’s concerned. It’s her way of showing it.’
‘Do you want a drink?’
He is already heading to the drinks cabinet. My refusal prompts a quick, searching look but no more.
‘I missed you,’ I tell him.
* * *
They come at six. I am quick-hustled along corridors. Smell of mahogany and heavy light. Doors open, peering faces shoved back inside. A stuffed stag is told to freeze, a gun at its head, Highland aristos in the haughty portraits lining the walls ordered to look away, look away, the busts of some incarnation of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll whisked off their marble plinths on each side of the main door, an explanation in the distant explosions I see as the Mercedes zips down the drive: possible IEDs in the cranium, Mr Jackson, we couldn’t take any chances . . .
Instead, it is a quiet descent in the lift with Akira and Erin, the only sound a sentimental lounge-jazz version of Loch Lomond. My niece wants to know why I am smiling but won’t ask. Only in the car, as the entourage sweeps out the back gate, does she say anything. ‘So, you’re ready?’
I nod dumbly.
I have no idea why I am sober. I am entirely under-equipped to deal with the press of dignitaries I am introduced to as we enter the Town Hall. They’re horrified at what happened. They do not believe my disappearance was innocent and feel somehow responsible. They’re hugely impressed I’ve come at all. ‘The show must go on,’ I say, and a woman with gold chains around her neck who would be more at home carrying sacks of tatties than the burden of office clasps my hand with tears in her eyes and says, ‘Yes, yes, indeed, you truly are the best of this place . . . ’
Did you hear that, Duke?
I show my gratitude with my best approximation of your Dean Martin dazzler, which is actually a sickly, gummy troubling. The crowd is instantly uneasy, stepping back, clearing a path through the ghost-fog of outdated, over-applied Chanel, tired suits all shiny at the elbows and best shoes that were never that good. Now and then I glimpse a troubled-looking younger man or woman, who have the instantaneous realisation as our eyes meet that they have reached a crucial crossroads and must either immediately leave this place or accept the same sag and swell.
When I reach the stage they all clap so enthusiastically, a standing ovation as my eyes scan the rictus, painted smiles, as if one by one they might fall forward and clatter down, each a cardboard cut-out.
I try to look overcome. I move my hands up and down. The applause fades into the still vigorous, lone clapping of the mayor, grinning at me like another stalker-to-be, a suspicion heightened by a fawning eulogy that ends with a bear hug and an almost coy presentation of the inevitable quaich.
‘The Freedom of Inveran!’ I declare. ‘I am again honoured. But I wonder. What did you leave out last time?’
This received with an explosion of laughter.
‘So, tomorrow my cows will graze on the bowling green. It’s the only way to get my game down pat.’
More laughter.
And so on.
Palm of yer hand, I hear the old man whisper. He seems pleased, at last, as another ovation begins . . .
Erin is chipper. ‘A triumph,’ she whispers. Control of the Spectacle has been reasserted. Tonight’s success will be followed by Brad Renner’s long-delayed arrival on set tomorrow, before we leave for more book signings; Glasgow, Edinburgh then London, a BBC interview and a guaranteed Ten O’ Clock News slot. My nausea feels inversely proportionate to her satisfaction.
She’s still at my side when we enter the drinks reception in the council chamber, taking questions from journalists rushed north when the news broke of my disappearance. She lets me answer two or three before ending things by suddenly grasping both my hands and saying that she feared the worst when I vanished, that the anti-Breda protestors had shown their true colours . . .
I stare at her as the doors to the chamber open. She winks. ‘I know. But we’ve got to play the game, eh?’
As the well-wishers surge towards me I have the queasiest of suspicions that the whole Shinigami episode with Lewis was a set-up arranged by my niece, that he is not now sitting in his caravan thinking about long-gone camping trips with his dad but smoking a cigarette in the back room of Inveran Snooker Club as a man in a black suit counts hundred pound notes into his hand.
The
n the mayor. Back again. A rattle of chains as she thrusts a glass of champagne into my hand. ‘Did I tell you I know him?’ She is leaning towards me, conspiratorial, but her flickering eyes include the others clustering around.
I say nothing. I want to hear her say his name.
‘Lewis Chapman. My daughter went to school with him. A funny little boy.’
‘Wasn’t he just.’
This from a mono-browed, bulbous-headed man with a bright yellow tie I suspect he thinks is wacky.
‘Yes, he was, wasn’t he?’
‘You can just imagine this, somehow.’
‘Funny how it slips into place, with hindsight.’
‘Not that it makes it any less troubling.’
I say nothing. They will see what they want regardless of any protest that they’ve got it all wrong. And if they ever see The Shinigami they will say the same about me, the entourage nodding seriously as it shuffles and murmurs and turns to Lewis with its most sympathetic of collective frowns.
I escape to the toilet, accompanied by two security men who hover by the sinks as I sit in a cubicle with my head in my hands. Sometime later, there is a tap on the door. I open it to Akira.
‘We’re done here.’
‘For tonight?’
‘Not just tonight.’
‘Ok, Johnny.’
The most genuine thing about my return is the way it must end. With the quiet turning of my back.
Did you expect drama, Duke? Perhaps Akira should upturn the buffet and create a distraction as I slip out. It is what Stone would do, I see him as we return to the chamber, flailing to a rapt and clustering audience.
Instead, we make a selfie-interrupted way through the crowd then slip out a door at the back of the chamber into a dark corridor. We hurry along, following the light of Akira’s mobile phone and look, Duke, there’s the entrance to the Museum of Inveran, a decent set-up that, come on, where’s the joke about the relic, my photo in a display case, my old school tie on a plinth . . .
The Accidental Recluse Page 25