Strip the Willow

by John Aberdein

  – If your name was ever inside your underpants, if you ever went to that kind of school, it is now officially obliterated, she said.

  – The school or the name? he said. Jolly D.

  – It’ll take a Dee to wash this off. I should have marched you up to the Linn and chucked you in.

  – Did we ever go there? he said.

  – Go and just stand in the shower, she said, while I set fire to these.

  Any bath would clog with that amount of tar.

  She was able to flush muck away as it delaminated off him in dauds. Off his torso and buttocks and legs.

  – You seem to have preserved quite well, she said. Bog person.

  – Thanks, he said.

  – Now the head, said Lucy.

  He flinched and drew away.

  – We might as well go the whole hog, she said.

  The head was mankiest of the lot.

  – Must we?

  – We must.

  She made sure it was only warm. He flinched again. She reduced the flow. But again he drew back.

  Only after slow advance and quick retreats did Lucy divine what was up with him. Most skulls are eggs basically, but his was nothing like. It was jaggy with dykes and dents. Crenellated, like a ridge deformed on the ocean floor; oozed, congealed with lava. In its heyday, possibly, sulphurous bubbles danced.

  – What the—? breathed Lucy.

  – Is there a problem? he said.

  It went way beyond amateur forensics. Lodged between her hands was a jigsaw. A fragile 3-D jigsaw, all the colours facing in.

  – So did I ever sleep with you? he said brightly. Now that you see me in the altogether.

  Altogether, she thought. There’s an altogether here?

  – Did you? he said. Did I?

  – Come on you, get dried.

  they say if you remember it

  – How much is missing? she asked, as she tucked him up in the spare bedroom.

  – A few decades, he said. That’s nothing on big ships.

  – Decades— said Lucy.

  – Perfect name for them, he said.

  – What happened?

  – The memory function got squeezed the most. I don’t know what happened. Very little of what’s happened since connects. I can’t hack into it.

  – Don’t say that, said Lucy. Hack. It sounds horrible. But you remembered me. Three days in a row.

  – I remembered your feet. I thought I remembered your name. It’s orientation that escapes me. And how my story hangs together.

  – What hope is there? she said, sitting on the far end of the bed. She nearly said, So is there no hope?

  – When the NHS was flush I was down for a series of three ops. Neuro-surgery on the hippocampus. The first one worked, the second was aborted due to side-effects. The third one never came to the top of their list.

  – What do you mean worked?

  – I got a lucid spell, hyper-lucid. The hippocampus, the short-term store, suddenly started flashing buried stuff over to the neocortex. Boy was it flashing. It was like I was in my own film. Lots of supporting characters dancing in and out, with plenty to say for themselves. But the flashing was all concentred on one day.

  – What day was that?

  – January 1st, ’68.

  – What a year—

  – Was it?

  – They say if you remember it, you weren’t there, said Lucy.

  – That’s not much help, he said. Anyway, in the recovery room they took tape after tape of me, warbling happily and unhappily on. The technician made a sort of story from them.

  – The technician? Was that part of his job description?

  – No, but he moved around doing lots of jobs, moved all over. Always poking his mike up people’s noses. Any good stuff he got, he tried to weld that into stories. And into the front ends of novels he used to call them.

  – Is that ethical?

  – What, only writing the front end of a novel? I shouldn’t think so. People want to know how it all works out.

  – No, I didn’t mean that. I mean turning people’s lives into fiction?

  – I wouldn’t know if it was my life or not. It was certainly very vivid. But he had a way with words, did Tam. The surgeon reconstructed my brain, and Tam reconstructed my story.

  – Very neat.

  – Think so? he said, pointing to his skull. As he took his hand away from the crash-scene, she noticed something she hadn’t seen during the mucky episode in the bathroom. His palms were kind of gnarled, sort of corrugated, criss-crossed.

  – Horny-handed, eh? he said. What do you think? I must have put some work in, in my day.

  – Hold on, she said. I thought of something a minute ago. Never mind Tam’s version, did you never listen to the tapes yourself?

  – Patients hadn’t accrued those kinds of rights. It was their tape, the NHS.

  – It was your memories!

  – They were reserving them for use in psychotherapy, but when the second op blew up, they put me out in the long grass. A home overlooking a soothing landscape and a bendy river. I escaped of course. Holed up on an island, other places. And the rest, with my memory, is not history.

  – Tam— said Lucy.

  – I don’t think I’m Tam—

  – No, but where’s he now?

  – Oh, he tried to make a go of writering but nobody could make money from him. He’s down at Left Luggage. He keeps the drafts in a spare locker. They all have a locker or two they work themselves for bonus. It’s understood.

  – Will he still have your front end?

  – Lurking, I daresay. He took care of it. I spoke to him only last week, when I drifted back. He did offer me the draft. But doubt very much that I could face it.

  Lucy stood up.

  – Hey, been a real big day.

  – Like Need to go, over again?

  – No, like Goodnight, buster. Sleep tight.

  – Night, he said. Thanks for the douche.

  – Forget it— said Lucy, and bit her tongue.

  – Already have, he said.

  – Okay, you, she said. I’m off early, Edinburgh tomorrow, so I’ll leave a breakfast out. Oh, and a shirt and pants from the chest. Of my late father.

  – Breeks too would be good, he said. Some sort of trousers.

  april 7

  the inner or the outer man

  He spent part of next morning baggily wandering the house. There was a lot of sculpture, some busts, some abstracts. He got lost several times, and kept seeing the same photograph or painting where he didn’t expect. Kept dunting his shin on some kist or chest in a darker hallway.

  He got frightened of the house and came back to his room with a tray of stuff from the larder and fridge.

  He wasn’t happy in his room either, so he went through to Lucy’s. He looked for matches on her bedside table. He found them on the black marble mantel and lit the old gas fire.

  He put his hands on top of the marble and toasted his chest and points south. His right finger traced and retraced the pale veins on the mantel, the twigs and branchings.

  It almost reminded him, but of what?

  From downstairs a grandfather kept dinging.

  He wanted to go down, arrest the pendulum.

  But wasn’t sure about finding his way back up.

  The gas fire was still giving out its low blue roar when she came in from the evening train.

  – What you doing on my bed?

  – Sorry, I was away there. My room was cold.

  – It’s centrally heated.

  – I couldn’t see that.

  – I’ve brought us tea. I got Marks and Sparks kippers at Waverley. Build you back up.

  – Couldn’t look at a kipper, sorry. Smell.

  – Do you want to go down to the station now? See Tam? Tam must know your name, surely?

  – I was A13 to him, he said. Before they picked me up for the first op I had been wandering. Nobody had an earthly where I’d been.
No papers or nothing. A13.

  – He calls you A13? Hardly.

  – No. Jim. As in pal. Tam’s originally from Glasgow.

  They went down in her Morris Traveller, going round by St Machar Drive and the Prom to avoid the centre.

  – This car’s a throwback, he said. It’s not like the other cars I see.

  It was a modest, pleasant estate, with curved ash external framing.

  – It’s an honest trundler, she said. I don’t take it to work. I keep it in the garage against rust, away from the haar and the salt air.

  – What crap is that? he said. Down there. UberSea?

  – A set of surf-viewing chambers, said Lucy. Not everybody can enjoy surf on their own. It evens up the opportunity. The Uberdeen Buddhists have endorsed it. The season ticket works out quite cheap. You can reserve a pen.

  – To watch surf? he said

  – From the inside, said Lucy.

  – To watch surf?

  She hadn’t a clue why she’d given the spiel, she’d no wish to defend it.

  Half an hour later they were back with three manilla folders, tashed and faded, in a red UCKU bag. UCKU did a range of colours, Cool Lemon, Passion Red, and so on. He’d given Tam the last of his change. Tam didn’t want it. He gave it to him anyway.

  – What would you rather? said Lucy. Read or eat? The inner or the outer man?

  – Eat, he said, cheese. Cheese is fine, I know you’ve got cheese. Cheese and ham. A sandwich.

  – You’re easy put by.

  – Then, I think, an early bed.

  – Really? said Lucy. I’d hoped—

  – Tomorrow’s the 1st of January.

  – No, it’s— Oh, yeah, ’68. Absolutely.

  – Let’s see what the day brings.

  – But I’m off first light to Glasgow till late tomorrow. UbSpec Total voted me to go.

  – It might be ramblings, he said. By the time you come back, I might just burn them. What point is there trawling amongst the past, at this stage?

  Lucy didn’t reply. She fussed at the window and busied herself. She seemed to take an awful long time to shut a pair of curtains.

  april 8

  that sweet ignorance, forgetting

  Next morning his face was chilly. He snuggled under till he heard the front door click and then got up.

  He moved down to the kitchen and poked around. From time to time, the grandfather dinged.

  He made a pint of coffee. She had white pint mugs.

  He unfolded a slatted blond chair and set it down at the side of the Raeburn. He took the top manilla folder from the plastic bag on the worktop and laid it broadways across the slats. He fetched the coffee and put it on the stove, on the asbestos mat.

  He laid his bum to the stove’s heat, as close as he could, and then swayed away. She must have banked it up specially.

  He clasped his biceps in opposite palms, and kneaded them with his thumbs.

  He repeated the previous bum manoeuvre.

  Running out of things to do, he made an excursion to the loo.

  Out in the hall, the grandfather dinged.

  He lifted the folder, to balance on his lap, so’s he could sit. He reached for a swig of warm coffee. Last moment of freedom; freedom of that sweet ignorance, forgetting. He twisted to check the door was closed. He thought of a different Tam, well-mounted on his night mare Meg – mired to the stirrups indeed – jolting her rider into storm.

  There was such a thing as dread of the almost known.

  He flopped the first folder open. Withdrew one sheet.

  Which was blank, possibly a cover.

  It gave him pause for all that.

  A second sheet, he drew out. Blank.

  A third. Ditto.

  A fourth, a fifth—

  All the snows of amnesia come again.

  of human nature

  Alison knew the relationship with Finlay wouldn’t work. What she didn’t know was why she was drawn always to repeat such doomed experiments. It taxed her optimistic view of human nature, to find her own so prone to stupidity. Younger men, why was she drawn to younger men? Sure, they had their famous vigours. But what could you talk about when you took a break from fucking? It was wrong to generalise but, by and large—

  They had arranged their second meeting in Ma’s, Ma Cameron’s, and there he was. Sitting in the alcove on the left, in a rugby jersey and red long hair like a Celtic bard.

  – Hi, Finlay, luve, she said.

  – Hi, hun, he said. Usual?

  don’t try to control me

  Lucy got back from Edinburgh in mid-evening and found him sprawled on the kitchen floor. He was in a slack form of the recovery position. She could have taken a felt pen and traced his proneness, with the volume of white paper splayed beneath his body.

  – This is terrible, she said. You need to build yourself back up. Or you’ll be no use to man or beast.

  No comeback. No gay repartee.

  – So were they ramblings? she said. Shall we just burn them?

  – Very funny.

  – Oh, she said, picking one up. They’re not upside down, then.

  – Do you think – Tam? she said.

  – Leave Tam out of it, Lucy. It’s hardly going to be Tam.

  It was not a discussion. It was a very short circuit.

  He woke in the middle of the night and went through to her room. It was locked.

  – Lucy, he said. Speak to me. Tell me what you’ve done with them.

  No reply.

  – Lucy, he said. You’re perfectly safe, I don’t have a hard-on. No answer.

  – Lucy, he said. Whatever you do, don’t try to control me.

  He went back to his room and lay with the light on, looking at the ceiling.

  april 9

  my space

  She was surprised next morning to find him down at breakfast. He had made eight pieces of toast and propped them in the stand.

  – Sorry about last night, he said.

  – What?

  – Sorry that you felt you had to lock your door.

  – I think you should get out of the house today, said Lucy.

  – Get out—?

  – Of the house.

  – You don’t want me snooping, is it?

  – I think we need to give each other space.

  – That’s another of my beliefs, he said. People always give me space. People give each other space. But what are you meant to do with it? Had my space, more than enough, thank you.

  – Don’t take offence, it isn’t meant that way. I have things I need to adjust to, come to terms with. Some are at work.

  After tightening his belt and asking for additional braces and the address written down and a map and a little money, he set off. He went the easiest way, downhill. Crossed the road. He saw a bus coming and took it. Hazlehead. There were huge trees and massive banks of rhododendron. He found a maze.

  – It’s the only municipal maze in Scotland, the attendant said.

  – What’s municipal got to do with it?

  – What the brochure says, The only municipal maze in Scotland.

  – New on the job?

  – Student.

  After an hour and a half the student attendant mounted the wooden safety tower. He shouted down to the figure grazing and pausing amongst the privet.

  – You lost, mister?

  – I think I know where I am. Still in the maze, amn’t I?

  – Aye. Get your money’s worth, I would.

  nae problem

  Lucy got into the department with her briefcase tucked under her arm, and was a bit short with Alison.

  – I’ve really got piles, said Lucy.

  – Funny place tae hae them.

  – So can we leave that meeting till after break?

  – New problem wi Guy we’ve got— said Alison. Okay, okay, nae problem.

  Lucy got into her office, opened a spreadsheet on-screen, reconfigured some calculations, dealt with seventeen emails,
signed three letters, and made out her expenses for the week before.

  She unlocked a bundle of papers from her briefcase.

  is that where we’re going

  She had glanced through odd pages in bed, two nights ago, and had glimpsed some stuff. Unsettling, very. She hadn’t risked Tam’s text at all night two. Now she took the first sheaf and shuffled the pages, then banged the whole wad tight. It was all shouty and bold, the Sixties for you. Here goes, she thought. It was straight in, there wasn’t a title page.

  Icarus ’68

  He was a strange character, the man I met, the man whose life I tried to record, if character is the word. But what else can you say? He was a strange lack of character? He was a strange useless character? That’s hardly fair. Even useless characters have their uses. He was a windy character, that’s for sure, that’s what I feel most. A strange windy character, in at least two senses.

  He blew with the wind at times, with as much control as a piece of paper. He was bold at others, but easily frightened off, so windy in that sense too. But then you can never sum somebody up, you never quite get them. Because, listening to him, listening to A13, which is how I first knew him, listening to Jim as he became, I knew there was more. For a wind blew through him too, as though he was a harp strung from a tree, an Aeolian harp that a gust might snatch a chord from.

  Yet the various gusts that blew, after his accident, for I only met him afterwards, sometimes made him seem not so much a harp as an empty hall, with hollow echoes of glory and servitude. No, let me get that figure closer. There were portraits on his wall, and French windows flung open, at both ends. Wind made the portraits rock where they hung, to gouge thin grooves in ancient plaster.