Strip the Willow

by John Aberdein

  Next Butt One.

  Most of the masks had already done so.

  Hers too—

  Dropped.

  Down.

  Close by, a lorry was tipping box upon cardboard box of tashed bibs and torn leotards.

  At the far side, another upended loads of soft, burst, giant spheres and smashed up backdrops. Spears of acrylic broke away, and flashed in the air, as the load went rattling down the deep quarry.

  What did he say? Who knew wealth had undone so many?

  Deepest Manmade Hole in Europe. Now the old Rubislaw quarry was being filled in. Reverberating, issuing ash.

  The gull, prising an edible clot from Go Plut, flapped, off.

  Lucy hung on, thinking of Alison.

  There was no getting away from it. She had lost her own and only daughter.

  Loser.

  A new lorry arrived and parped at her, twice.

  She jumped at that.

  She depressed the clutch with her left foot, and slotted the stick of the Traveller in reverse.

  She remembered what she’d said to her man. If the worst comes to the worst, she’d said, forget GrottoLotto, forget Spectacle. Make your way to the beach.

  lovely and bright

  Half of the Shack was a clearing station for the walking and hirpling wounded. Half was a café still. The astringency of Dettol fought for the air with the scent of hot sweet tea.

  – Hi, he said. How’s you?

  – No time for that. Lend a hand, said Iris.

  Peem poured tea and refilled mugs from a large black kettle.

  There was a thistledown of dried scales fluttering from him still, but nobody noticed, or if they did, nobody said. The immediate wake of a revolution is rarely a fashion parade. He had to use an old stained spoon to bail a smelly herring scale out of somebody’s tea.

  The guy with the tea, Alfie, a docker, was sitting with his leg across a plastic-cushioned chair, waiting for attention. He was the worse of a horse kick to the shin. Though the mounties had been withdrawn not long after they arrived. By order of Lord Provost William Swink II, when he’d seen the almighty muck-up Rookie Marr had made.

  A leopard in a pit should quit from clawing, Swink had apparently said to the blue doorman at the Town House, just as he was leaving.

  Swink himself was being airlifted to his peed-a-terre, his Mountain Heart HQ at the summit of Braeriach. To see how things pan out, you ken. I shouldn’t be watching shenanigans like this from too close up. In case I have an apocalyptic fit.

  A fit? said the doorman.

  And I’ll give you a tip, Swink had continued. If I was you, I’d get out too. More tanks are coming, and we folks in the toon have but small power over the likes of them.

  – Oh, and anither thing I heard, said Alfie, the docker. Aboot thon wife Julie, Julie ye ken. Weel she wis the ane that radioed Spermy wi news o their twa boats bein selled oot. I never heard him so livid, said Julie, and she’s nae doot seen her share o Spermy’s ragins ower the years. Spermy’s got a haud o the Leopard.

  – I ken, said Peem.

  – An he’s threatenin tae maroon him oot on Rockall. On Rockall wi fuck-all, was the words Spermy said.

  – Marooned? Wi fuck-all? Marr, he’ll never be that.

  – Why nae? said Alfie, I dinna get ye.

  – I daresay he’s got offshore investments, said Peem.

  Julie, eh—?

  He heard the clack of the fish-room boards, the old fleshly percussion. He was back in the old now of Eriboll, the now of the Shack. He felt the spirit of Mina prevailing, the way she tended bits of black pudding.

  – Peem, get a move on with that tea! Iris shouted.

  As he went round with the dribbling spout, some of them were giving a groan, but most were glued to TV. Somebody must have put some life in Echo TV, or taken them over, because they had a presenter out in the street already.

  She was some woman; resolute, straight down the line, revelling in it.

  She had on an orange blouse, smart, like a livery. She unbuttoned the blouse deftly, and took it off. She had a slip on, she was only a slip herself. She held the blouse high to the crowd and lit the tail with somebody’s lighter. The blouse went up in a harsh frazzle and she dropped it, like a piece of flaming shit, into the gutter.

  That was an image that would endure.

  – For Bill, she said, straight to lens. She grabbed somebody’s jacket, and moved determinedly on.

  – C’mon, Luna, she could be heard adding. Time to get a grip.

  A woman in a silver dress was carrying a mike in and out of shot, unsteadily on a boom.

  – Wait for me, Gwen.

  Doing interviews and pieces to camera, Gwen opened up aspects most folk never knew.

  It wasn’t just the folks he knew then. In the old days outside Swink’s villa, it had seemed for a moment it might be only him. And then, swifter than swift, as he was swept into bed and off to sea, not even him.

  But now there was a whole movement, a movement of movements had come in, to divert and disrupt GrottoLotto. It was like the best of the G8, really. No strict leader, so none had bossed. The young got tuned, their mobiles pealing, like small bells in a siege. They could see what needed doing, and up and off and did it, that was the story.

  You could only gradually piece it together, from the interviews by the woman; Gwen she was called. But it was clear the stilted Ball-busters, the clown birds, were only part of it. Though they were the initial shock-troops, the natural world guising in and taking the nonsense on. Feathers everywhere, concealing their sharper purpose. The Boozebusters had played a key role too, rubbishing the supermarkets and luring police away.

  The Poles had been great. Poles in unassuming clothes had evicted balcony parties right along the street, using the night’s confusion to set up possible squats.

  On Balcony A in the morning, Bing Qing had fed them won ton soup, packed with pork, shrimp, water chestnuts and ginger. One of the Poles told Gwen they now proposed inviting Bing Qing and her kitchen workers to a reciprocal feast, dzik z Zubrowka, whole roast boar with fragrant bison grass vodka. Now that they’d liberated some fancy malls.

  Over the street, one bright bunch had hijacked a mobile crane. They had prised William Wallace from his plinth tucked well away from UberStreet, along by His Majesty’s Theatre.

  A second yellow crane was uplifting ponderous Edward VII from his domain on UberStreet. That fat clort as the poet Alistair Mackie once called him. They were crawling him down to the seaside at dead low tide. Out in the shallows, given a season’s weed, the stone king could become a haven for blennies, a Red Green spokesman was saying. A lee for idle eels, he enthused, a living Eddy! A far, far nobler thing than being doodled on by doos for centuries, and shat upon by pigeons.

  Everything Gwen – and Luna – picked up on seemed vital, funny, outrageous, vibrant. As somebody said, I aye thocht the toon could dae wi a makower. But I nivver thocht it wid be like this!

  Back they switched to the first group, teetering with Wallace stropped on the end of a cable, along Union Terrace. Revellers were dancing close, reining themselves in to suit the swing of the crane by complex convolutions of their conga. Wallace was going where King Edward had been, the ample gap-site.

  The crane stopped. Wallace’s mailed left arm gradually reduced its arc and was indicating. Even after seven centuries, even after they had killed his body, he still had command of his reason. The camera followed the line of his expressive cupped palm, upthrust above the battlefield of UberStreet. What were the young doing, hanging out of windows on opposite sides of the street? Pulling on a long rope to raise their white banner. Every letter a different colour, the paint still running, lovely and bright—

  Republican Road.

  you are me

  There were plenty more sights.

  Outside the Town House, the bulk of a khaki camouflage tank had vanished, with only the barrel of its cannon jutting vertically, as though the commander had ODed
on erection enhancer. The Highland Light Desert’s shells must have clattered into the granite, as they sought to intimidate Maciek’s guerillas. But when the dust of chips, mica and depleted uranium wafted and fell clear, it was revealed how laughable the effect. The tank’s successive, concussive recoils had made good inroads, punching through its naïve stance on Guy Bord’s pavementette. The top layer had dented, weakened, and ripped: the tank’s arse must be resting on the return strip below.

  Pawel spoke to camera, We drive them out. We drive them into Kanal.

  From the Town House clocktower, a red and white flag jutted and flew.

  Iris’s husband, Tam, was being interviewed now. No, it’s great, he said. You look at statues half your life, they sink into your soul. But really, man, if you can’t stand them, move them on! said Tam.

  Tam had white hair, as near as dammit, swept back, quiffed, luxuriant. And Tam expressed it perfectly. Those who were hurt, those who were shot by Marr’s forces, we salute. All we are saying is give peace a chance.

  – Are you technical? said Gwen.

  – Sure, said Tam.

  – This feed will go, said Gwen. They’ll cut us off. Get us up and streaming on Internet. Get who you need. Do what it takes.

  – Right, said Tam. Do ma best.

  – Hold this, she said to Luna.

  Luna put down her boom and held up a web address on card to the camera.

  – Iris, babe, gotta go, Peem said. It’s early days.

  She was slitting bap after bap open, for bacon rolls.

  – I admire you, Iris. I’m glad that you and Tam—

  – We never had family, though, said Iris, you know that. That was our sadness. That’s why I kept on at the teaching so long. And various actions, of course. Now this. Did you ever track yours?

  – Track—? he said. He was thinking of tanks. Everybody knew the rest of the tanks lay out beyond, barracked at Bridge of Don.

  – Your family—?

  – Mislaid them, quite a bit, he said, and knew the tears would well.

  He planted a kiss on her floury cheek.

  – Must dash, Iris. Ciao. Keep fighting.

  – See you, Peem.

  He left the Shack and there at the dockside was the Girl Julie loading up. A pinioned figure with a bag over his head was being hurried on. He saw a chopper swoop low over the harbour and guessed they didn’t have long.

  He walked up Marischal Street to the Mercat Cross. A mountain of free fish was being mined in buckets by a tatterdemalion army of young revolutionaries, casual minkers, Omega-3 addicts and sledz-loving Slavs.

  One wag had clambered up on top of the ancient execution site, and then shinned up the long pedestal, using the embossed thistles and entwined roses as footholds and handholds. From his back pocket he whipped out a big herring to feed to the unicorn.

  Its whorled horn was painted gold, chipped at the tip. The unicorn flared its nostrils at the smell of the fish, as the wag swung from the shortened horn using one hand, wailing and singing out,

  You are Me and I am You,

  I am the Walrus,

  I am the Eggman,

  Goo Goo Ga Joob—

  A group soon came together under the dirty old Mercat Cross and joined right in, and ran to get guitars from wherever guitars could be got, or grabbed hold of a bin, or a bucket, or baton and lid. Or a pair of tongs from a chestnut stand, anything they could clash together and beat the time with.

  You are Me. He was glad they were happy. But it wasn’t his mood.

  a second comer

  He didn’t remember the best way to the beach. Remembering the best way never came easy, to his benighted, that was the word, to his benighted skull. And things were changing faster now.

  He was on Constitution Street. Or was it the Boulevard? Peem minded the cold morning in ’57, ’58 or so the trams had rattled here, their death-rattle as it turned out. Rejected, scrapped, they sat in their serried lines and crackled and burned.

  Sometimes he had the feeling, not of having lived long, though that was much, but of having lived through several civilisations. Some more civil than others, just a touch.

  The Links were blocked high on either side by the HyperMall and Jumbo Arcade, the UberEye and the RollerCoaster. There was a thinnish strip between, a token alley. It acted like a green arrow, pointing at the Prom, behind which low sands and a restless North Sea moved.

  In the green, at the end of Arcadia, a white skeletal shape stuck up.

  Somebody was before him. And he, like a second comer, needed to get his heart in gear.

  i was going to say something

  Not a whole tree, by any means, though big enough.

  No leaves.

  No twigs.

  No bark.

  A single trunk, and two white boughs branching out.

  It was rammed in the ground, in concrete.

  He reached up, and touched the bough that wasn’t empty.

  – Have you been here long? he said.

  – No, said Lucy. I just arrived.

  – Good, he said. I wouldn’t want to have kept you waiting.

  He looked seaward, but couldn’t see the sea.

  – Come on up, she said. I’ve something to tell you. You’ll need to be sitting down.

  He climbed into the empty bough.

  – I’ve something to tell you, said Lucy.

  – Tell me, he said.

  – Did you ever meet Alison? said Lucy.

  It was quiet at the beach, for the merest moment. The rides weren’t working yet.

  – Your colleague was it, said Peem, I think. No, I didn’t meet her.

  – You did, said Lucy, but neither of you spoke. Do you know how old she is, she’s forty past.

  – Tell me what you have to tell, said Peem. I’m too old for this. I know this tone. Is it, when Alison was first thought of—

  – That’s just it, said Lucy, she wasn’t thought of at all.

  I came back from Paris early. I had Alison for six hours. Theo arranged to have her adopted. As for the father, he’d fucked off—

  – When he was told to.

  – And never appeared again, or wrote, or phoned.

  – You said you were on the Pill.

  – I said I was starting. I hadn’t actually taken the first one.

  – What an unholy, fucking mess.

  – Puts Spectacle in the shade, said Lucy.

  – Alison is revving about the place in a stretch Hummer, with bull bars, Lucy continued. God knows where she’s stolen it from. I only just got away, through the kindness of trees.

  – I’ve just saved Rookie Marr from choking, he said. Last night.

  – Unbelievable, said Lucy. That’s unbelievable. The Sixties were quiet compared to this.

  – Yeah, I grant you. Icarus ’68, eh? What was that all about? Like I saw the sun for about ten minutes, and flew sideways as much as up.

  – This is a stick I planted earlier, said Lucy. I put it here in honour of Theo. Remember his Sisyphus, out in the garden in the snow?

  – No, Peem said. I just remember you.

  – This stick is into something, said Lucy. Do you know what I found out?

  – No, tell me.

  – There was another Lucy. And she’s under here.

  – Too much, he said.

  – She’ll not be in good shape, said Lucy. It was 360 years ago she arrived. It’s not clear in the city record whether she was a Lucy or a Lucky. She worked in an inn, serving ale and oysters. That class of women was nicknamed Lucky. From Luckenbooth perhaps. Anyway there was a lot of shit about religion—

  – There often is—

  – And King Charles wanted one Prayer Book, and the Presbyterians another. Next minute Montrose was riding across the Bridge of Dee to quell somebody, whichever side he was on that day, and a musket got let off, something pre-emptive, or warning, or accidental, and John Forbes stopped the ball.

  – You don’t have a clue what you do to me, said Peem
. And I don’t think you ever did.

  – Anyway, said Lucy, Lucy had followed him to the Bridge of Dee, and, being pregnant, of course she was demented. John died, with that ball in his head, and she went away and hid, she brought the baby up. She said in public she was fostering, else she’d have been stuck on the stool of repentance for a year, and shelling out a fine.

  Five years later, Montrose was in town again, with a troop of Irish dragoons. Montrose was handsome, and a poet, and somebody who would die bravely on a gallows and be distributed on spikes. But he didn’t take a line on rape.

  Lucy was forced up the narrowness of Adelphi by three or four of them. Lucky for her it was that time of the month. They slapped her about and jeered and left her.

  Three years further on, and what came visiting? Something smaller than a dragoon, less vainglorious than a leader.

  – It seems to be the small things get you, said Peem.

  – Plague, said Lucy. Plague ripped the heart out of the people. The rich couldn’t get out to their country seats fast enough. They left their servants of course, to prevent looting.