Estranged from his daughter, Christine, who lived in Australia, Black had found that coming to Florida and the remnants of his family had offered him far less solace than he could have imagined. His son, William, was an accountant – a traditional and noble profession for a Scots Protestant. But he worked in the film business. Black had always associated that tawdry enterprise with California, but William had explained that some major studios now had operations out in Florida in order to take advantage of the tax incentives and the weather. However, it was clear to him that his son had taken on some of the decadent trappings of that vile industry.
You only had to consider this house and its sickening extravagance. The Caribbean-style, theatrically uplit dwelling on its waterfront setting, the impact-glass windows running from the hardwood and tiled floors to the nine-foot ceilings, those five bedchambers with en suite facilities and walk-in closets, which were rooms themselves in their spacious generosity. The kitchen, with its stone countertops and designer accessories: refrigerator/freezer, stainless-steel appliances, washer-dryer. (Italian, William had called it. Albert had stated that he was unaware a scullery possessed a nationality.) Five luxurious bathrooms, all with marble countertops, baths and showers, toilets and bidets. The largest one, in the master bedroom that William shared with his wife, Darcy, containing a large Whirlpool bath, raised on a stage, and obviously meant for the indulgence of more than one person; Romanist in its decadence. A fitness room with state-of-the-art exercise equipment, an office and library, and a wine vault with dedicated storage spaces. Outside, a rear multilevel landscaped garden with luxurious water features and direct bay access with moorings that berthed a substantial boat, and a four-car garage the size of the old family home back in Edinburgh. When William conversed on the phone to his business associates and friends, it seemed to his father as if he was speaking another language.
William's wife, Darcy (Black had to constantly fight to cast aside images of her and his son cavorting nakedly in that bath), had been such a sweet wee lassie, all he could have wanted in a daughter-in-law. He recalled when the shy and demure and, above all, God-fearing young American student was presented to them by their son, at the old house in Merchiston, some twenty years ago. An exchange student, Darcy was supposedly a committed Christian. But how many times, he considered, had he seen her since they'd first met? Perhaps on half a dozen occasions. Then, when she and William had graduated, it was understood that they would marry and go to live in America.
Now Darcy seemed different: brisk, sly, assertive and worldly. He heard her cackling with her friends who came over and drank alcohol during the day. Their shrill laughter stinging his ears, as they recounted, in a manner that nauseated him, their purchases of rubbish, which seemed to be procured purely for the sake of ownership rather than utility.
Albert Black did not regard it as his place to pass comment on his discomfort. After all, on picking him up at the airport, William had immediately informed him that they didn't attend church any more. His son had obviously been thinking about this declaration; it had the stilted air of rehearsal. Of course, it was sugar-coated: he'd claimed that the Church of Scotland in Miami wasn't suitable, and the American Protestant evangelical churches were littered with egotists and false prophets. But Albert Black had looked into his son's watery-grey eyes and saw treachery.
Black had no relationship with his teenage grandson, Billy. He'd made the effort in the lad's boyhood, even trying to understand baseball, but how could you take seriously a nation that had rounders as its national sport? He'd taken him to the football over in Scotland, which he'd liked. But Billy was grown up now. That girl who came around – from Mexico or somewhere like that. They had told him but he couldn't recall. What he did register were her judging eyes, and that wily little smile stuck on her lips. Pretty, yes; but in a very tarty sort of way. A girl like that was always trouble to a young man. And that music they played! It was surely a travesty referring to that artless, monotonous racket as music. Continually banging out from his room in the basement. Billy seemed to have sole use of that huge area, which ran the length of the house. Living like a mole when there were perfectly good empty bedrooms to choose from. William and Darcy seeming not to bother, not even appearing to hear the continual cacophonous din. But then they were out most of the time. He recalled them mumbling some nonsense about Billy's need for privacy when they took him on the inaugural tour of their home.
So after two weeks in the Sunshine State, human contact was decidedly lacking. Now Albert Black's routine consisted of sitting all day in the shade at the bottom of the garden overlooking the bay, reading his Bible, waiting for his family to come home. Darcy would cook a meal, and they would say grace at the table, which he sensed was contrived and purely for his benefit. Then he'd go for a short evening walk prior to sitting in front of the monstrous plasma television screen before retiring to bed in withering exhaustion, his head blasted by one thousand channels of advertisements with slivers of television broadcast sandwiched in between.
Turning in.
His catchphrase: I think I'll turn in.
I've been turning in all my life.
He looked up to see a large white cruise ship pulling into the bay. It resembled a block in the housing scheme where he'd taught. From the inside, he supposed that the cabins would be luxurious enough. Perhaps the key difference to the scheme block, though, was in its mobility. It had probably come from the Caribbean. Albert Black found it hard to think of such places; they never seemed vivid in his imagination. It was Canada that had always held exotic sway. He'd thought of emigrating there, long ago, when he and Marion were young. But he felt duty-bound to work in his own country, and he joined the Scots Guards, serving abroad for three years, before returning to Scotland's capital city and taking a degree in divinity and philosophy at Edinburgh University, opting then to go into education via Moray House Teacher Training College.
He'd entered the education system with a Knoxian zeal, believing that it was important for a Scottish Protestant to continue the great democratic tradition of providing the best education for the poorest children. And he'd come to the then new sixties-built comprehensive school in the housing scheme, with high hopes of turning out missionaries, ministers, engineers, scientists, doctors and educators like himself; making it a bastion of a new Scottish Enlightenment. But, he reflected under the relentless sun that filtered through the shivering palm trees, his aspirations were lunatic. Typists and labourers; they produced them by the barrel-load. Builders, shop assistants and, latterly, once even that work had dried up, small-time gangsters and drug dealers. These days the school couldn't even unearth a decent footballer. It had never boasted a Smith, Stanton, Souness or Strachan, though one or two had made a living from the game. But no longer.
Of course, Albert Black knew the material he was working with – poverty, social disadvantage, broken homes and low expectation – but he strove to provide a disciplinary and ethical framework within the school gates, which might compensate for the lawless immorality in the scheme and beyond. And he'd been mocked for this. Not only turned into a figure of fun by his pupils, but also by other members of staff and by the Marxists on the city's education committee. Even his colleagues in the Association of Christian Teachers, embarrassed by his zeal, had betrayed him, failing to support his protests against the compulsory early retirement visited upon him.
We must have social education and religious knowledge!
2
She wished that she had taken his advice and succumbed to letting him shell out on the first-class ticket he had offered to get her. Sydney to LA to Miami was a nightmare. The economy class would have been okay, but for the toddler who peered over at her from the seat in front, never breaking his stare, despite her attempts to stay buried in her book. And there was his baby sibling next to him, in the arms of its mother; how it screamed and shat with a vengeance, filling the cabin with ear-splitting cries and noxious fumes.
Despite a relief th
at she wasn't in the woman's shoes – a woman, she noted, not that much older than herself – Helena wasn't volunteering to help out the stressed mother. She wanted nothing to do with anybody else's children.
Sitting back, ignoring the toddler and turning to the plane window, she copied the dozing man next to her and shut her eyes, letting Miami fill her thoughts. All Helena Hulme could think of was what was going to happen with her lover. He was a generous man, too reckless with his cash, she fancied, but it wouldn't have been right to let him pay for a first-class fare. Not with what she had to tell him.
3
The sun burned relentlessly over the bay, with not a single cloud defiling the azure sky. Although his preference was to stroll in the evenings when it was cooler, Albert Black decided to go for a walk and rose from under the parasol. He looked at the panama hat on the table in front of him. He felt somewhat foolish wearing it, but he had to protect his bald pate from the sun, and the alternative of the baseball cap offered by Billy was simply out of the question. Assuming this hat was William's, he picked it up again, and put it on.
Setting off at a steady pace, pleased that he had extricated himself from the house, Black meandered through Miami Beach, down to the art deco district towards Ocean Drive. His problematic right knee was stiff; the walk would be kill or cure. He recalled that fright some five years ago, when it just gave out one afternoon, sending him into recumbent shock onto a pavement in crowded George Street. His puzzlement and fear at how something that he had relied upon for so long could just withdraw its hitherto under-appreciated services in a split second, transforming his life in the process.
The knee was holding up though. Despite the intense heat on his back, causing his shirt to stick uncomfortably to his skin, Black was hitting a decent stride and making good progress. When he came onto Ocean Drive, he immediately cut through the crowds of posing youths and holidaymakers, crossed its Bermuda-grass verges, and approached the sea. He watched the Atlantic lap up against the vanilla sands. The sea was steady, with small breakers rolling in and washing up on the sunkissed coast. Already, quite a few bathers were out, working on their tans. Yet as soon as Black became aware of a vague sense of idyllic contentment, it was abruptly broken, seized as he was by a vice-like grip inside him. It seemed to crush some of his organs, and he realised what it was: an insinuating thought, pulsing and poignant, that somehow Marion was out there, waiting for him! He struggled for breath, his palpitations big and heavy as his eyes gaped out over the aquamarine prairie.
What am I doing here? I have to go home . . . she might come back . . . everything will be a mess . . . the house . . . the garden . . .
Two bikinied girls, supine on beach towels, caught a glimpse of his stricken figure, and turned to each other and giggled. His schoolteacher's instinct to hone in on sources of mischief got the better of him as Black observed their derision, and saw that he was its object. His face flushed red and he turned away, traipsing dejectedly across the sand, leaving the beach for the bustle of Ocean Drive. At the News Cafe he went to the adjoining shop and picked up a two-day-old Daily Mail.
Paying for the paper, he made his way back down the street. He soon became aware of some impending commotion ahead: people were hastily peeling aside as a growling, wild-eyed figure lurched forward, pushing a cart. Unlike the others on the street, Black did not move, maintaining steady eye contact with a skinny, crazed-looking Negro man, as the strutting tourists grimaced and al fresco diners turned away. The man stopped his trolley in front of Black and glared at him in hostility, screaming 'muthafucker' three times in his face.
Albert Black was still, but felt that terrible rage working his insides again, and envisioned picking up the metal fork on the table close to him and ramming it into the man's eye. Driving it into his brain.
This thing alive, spared, while my Marion's gone . . .
Instead, Albert Black stared back at his aggressor with a look of loathing so focused and total that it reached the man's brain through its narcotic icing. With deliberate enunciation, Black spoke the Latin motto of his old regiment, the Scots Guards: — Nemo me impune lacessit! The bum lowered his head, picking up the meaning from the body language and tone of the old soldier. No one assails me with impunity. He quickly steered his cart round the rigid-spined Black, mumbling inaudible curses as he departed.
That foul creature, beyond sin, walking God's Earth in mortal pain; surely deliverance from its torment would be the act of a righteous man . . .
Terrorised by his thoughts, Albert Black looked around, and turned on his heels, heading back to the News Cafe, where he sat down in a heap at the pavement-side table and looked onto Ocean Drive. A young man minced towards him.— What can I get you? he performed.
— Water . . . Black could only gasp like a man marooned in a desert.
— Avec gas, sans gas?
This thing lisping at me! This land of monsters!
— No gas, Black coughed, still shaking at the violence of his thoughts. Wiping the back of his dripping neck with a hanky, he turned to his paper. The news from the UK told him that a child had been kidnapped in Sussex, police suspected a paedophile. This disgusted Black, but then all the news did. There seemed to be evil, sloth and degenerate behaviour everywhere. He recalled the watershed election of 1979 when he'd voted for Thatcher, seeing the free market as a way to enforce discipline on a feckless and destructive working class. Later he realised that she and her ilk had, in consumer capitalism, unleashed a godless, amoral wrecking ball; a satanic genie you couldn't get back into the bottle. Far from delivering the British proletariat from squalor and ignorance, it had reduced them to new depths of despair and immorality. Drugs replaced jobs: Black watched the scheme and the school where he worked, slowly give up and die.
Now with Marion's restraining and calming influence gone, his head was filled by the dark thoughts of violence he'd struggled all his life to repress. He thought of his family; how it had all been a sham.
It would be fitting if our souls were taken: my own, William's, Darcy's and the boy's, so that we may join Marion, spared of any further mortal pain and treachery.
No, that was a weak and sinful thought! The thought of a monster!
Forgive me.
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.
At his table, oblivious to the crowds, Black's thoughts raced back to those years of teaching, to that desperate war of attrition with other teachers, education committees and, most of all, the pupils.
Such a vain and thankless battle. The waste of a life. Nobody from that school had been a success. Ever.
Not one of them.
No, that wasn't quite right. There was one. Black had seen him. On the television, at some pop-music award ceremony he'd mistakenly tuned into. Sitting up, lost, in the old family house, with Marion in the hospital, vapidly gazing at the television. He'd been about to change channels, but then had instantly recognised an ex-pupil, teetering up onto the stage, obviously drunk, to receive his award. He had that distinctive, almost albino, whiteness that he'd retained. He had mumbled some nonsense to a nervous host before leaving the platform. It was a few days later when Black had seen his image again, this time on the front page of a magazine: silly pop-music tripe for imbeciles, which he'd nonetheless been moved to purchase. The boy – now a man – was staring back at him with the same sneering insolence he recalled from bygone days. Yet, such was his pride in his old school, Black had been rather delighted. It was good to see an old boy doing well. The article told of a number-one hit single with a well-known American singer, Kathryn Joyner. He knew the name, had recalled that Marion had liked her. It said that the ex-pupil was now working with some established artists, one of whom he had heard of from the Sunday papers: a shallow, manipulative woman who had led a selfish, decadent and sinful life before supposedly 'finding God'.
American lie
s and blasphemy! No man or woman who has sinned can be born again in this life! The sin has to be carried, suffered, prayed against, and then, on the Day of Judgement, we fall upon the blessed mercy of the Lord. No pope or priest or prophet, no mortal man can absolve us!
But Albert Black had nonetheless gone back to the hospital that evening, enthused enough to anticipate telling Marion the story of the ex-pupil. When he got there, the curtains were pulled around her bed. A nurse saw him. He knew everything he needed to know by her face. Marion had gone, and he hadn't even been there. The nurse explained how they'd tried to call him. There was no answerphone. Didn't he have a mobile? Black ignored her, and pulling aside the curtains, kissed his departed wife's still-warm head and said a quick prayer. Then he walked off the ward and into a hospital toilet where he sat down and cried like a madman, in furious, demented rage and abject misery. When a male nurse came to attend to him, knocking on the door, he'd insisted that he was fine, then simply stood up and pulled the flush, washed his hands and unlocked the stall, appearing before the young man. Then he signed the appropriate documentation and went home to organise the funeral.
But when he reached his house something compelled him to read more of the music magazine article and Albert Black dissolved into apoplexy.
I can honestly say that I learned nothing from my school, from my teachers. Fucking zero. In fact, they often went out of their way to discourage me. All I wanted to do was music . . . they make you do all that utterly pointless shit . . . stuff that you've no interest in, nor any aptitude for. We were all treated like factory fodder at our school. Then when the factories shut down, dole and YTS fodder. The only decent teachers I had were in English and Art. It was the only time I was treated like a human being. Other than that school was a concentration camp run by weak, stupid wankers with no morality. No fucking spine.