I took my time driving down to Brussels. I was conscious of how edgy I was and I knew that could easily translate into the kind of bad driving that picks up a ticket from the traffic police. I arrived at the hotel around the same time Allie’s flight was due to land. I found a legal parking slot about fifteen minutes’ walk away and left the car there, carrying nothing with me but the laptop case containing a lightweight raincoat I’d bought in Holland. With cash, of course.
There was a busy bar on a corner opposite the hotel, and I wedged myself into a spot by the window where I could watch the entrance. I knew what she looked like now; although she’d always refused to send me a photograph, claiming I’d only be disappointed and wouldn’t want to meet her, I’d finally tracked down an article on the internet from her local paper. They’d published a photograph of her at a book signing. As I’d thought, she wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t ugly either; but you could see she’d have gone through her teens as a wallflower. The fat kid that nobody wants to dance with.
I’d been there about an hour when she climbed out of one of the regular stream of taxis. I watched as the bellboy took her suitcase, catching a glimpse of her nervous frown. I left it about ten minutes, then I called the hotel from the bar and asked for Ms James in my best American accent.
When I heard the familiar ‘Hello?’ my heart rate shot up. I was so close now. I’d been rehearsing this scenario in my head for so long, the thought of it coming to fruition was enough to make me hard.
‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘I’m about twenty minutes away.’
‘Oh God,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Larry, I’m so scared. I’m going to be a major disappointment.’
‘No way,’ I said. ‘I know the woman inside. And she’s beautiful. I’m so glad you made it.’
‘Me too. Twenty minutes, you said?’
‘Less, if I can make it.’
She chuckled. ‘No. I need to shower and get into something a little more alluring.’
‘Twenty minutes,’ I said firmly.
‘You’re so masterful,’ she teased.
‘Believe it,’ I said.
She opened the door so swiftly I wondered if she’d been standing behind it. I suppose if I’d been in love, it would have been a breathtaking sight. She was wearing a black lace basque with push-up cups. Her stockings were sheer and black, her heels high and spindly. She stood with one leg cocked at what’s generally assumed to be a coquettish angle, one hand on hip, the other on the door. She’d done her best. It was as good as it was ever going to get, given what genetics had handed out to her.
Believe me, it wasn’t what I saw that was reviving my erection. It was the realisation that all my careful planning had worked out in fact as precisely as it ever had in my fantasies.
Her smile was tentative, the ultimate oxymoron in the light of the brazen nature of her pose. I stepped forward and gently closed the door behind me. ‘Wow,’ I said.
‘You mean it?’
I nodded, dropping my bag and moving into her. ‘I mean it.’ I buried my face in her hair. She hadn’t had time to shower, and it had that musky, animal smell that women spend fortunes trying to erase. I wrapped one arm around her, easing her back towards the kingsized bed I’d specifically asked for when I booked the room. Her lips were all over my face as we inched backwards. I nibbled her ear, moaning softly. This time, there was no calculation. My response was for real.
She fell back on to the bed and I let myself fall with her, my knee between her thighs. I could feel her wetness through the fine wool of my trousers. Her hand was groping for my cock, pushing my jacket aside. With one hand, I reached for her face, pushing her hair back so I could look into her eyes.
With my free hand, I reached behind me and pulled the knife from the waistband of my trousers. As I plunged it into her side again and again, her hand closed convulsively against me.
I think I was coming as she died.
As I said, we’d done virtually everything before we met. But not quite.
The Road and the Miles to Dundee
I hate this dress. It’s lemon yellow with blue roses and it makes my skin look like semolina pudding, my cheeks like dauds of strawberry jam in the middle of the plate. This dress, it’s Brinylon and it cuts in under my arms and it makes me sweat. I hate the crackly white petticoat that’s sewn in. It’s like plastic, scratchy and rustly. You can hear me coming halfway across the town. Mostly, though, I hate it because it’s a hand-me-down. It belonged to my cousin Morag whom I’m supposed to like because she’s my cousin and she’s only a year older than me, but I hate her too. She’s a clipe, always telling tales. She’s a Moaning Minnie. And she’s boring. And I get the horrible clothes Auntie Betty makes for her after she’s outgrown them. And they never fit because she’s a beanpole and I’m not. But I have to wear them. According to my mum, they’re too good to throw away. Me, I’d build a bonfire and set light to the lot of them.
It’s my big cousin Senga’s twenty-first, which is why I’m wearing the party dress. We’re all crammed into my Auntie Jean’s livingroom, and the adults are all red in the face and cheery with the drink. This is my first grown-up party, and I’m supposed to be pleased that I’ve been allowed to come and stay up past my bedtime. But there’s nothing to do and nobody to talk to. I can’t even torment Morag because she’s not here. Auntie Betty made her stay at home because it’s too late for a big jessie like Morag to be up, even though she’s eleven and I’m only ten. Next time I see her, I’ll tell her how great it was. She willnae know it’s a lie.
I’m that fed up I’ve made myself a den. I’m sitting under the table with a tumbler of lemonade and a bowl of crisps I sneaked away when nobody was looking. I’ve never had crisps like this before. They’re sort of square and very yellow and if you look at them really close up, they’ve got lots of tiny wee bubbles under the surface. They don’t even taste like crisps. When I suck them, they sort of burst on my tongue and taste of cheese and salt, not potatoes. The bag they came in said, ‘Marks & Spencer Savoury Crisps’, so I thought they’d be all right. I’m not really sure if I like them or not. But I’m bored, so I’m eating them just the same.
Somebody turns off the record player and now it’s time for people to do their party pieces. Auntie Jean first, just as soon as she’s finished telling off Uncle Tom for not refilling her rum and coke quick enough. She’s always telling Uncle Tom off for something. I feel sorry for him. I thought it was only bairns that got picked on like she picks on him. I thought when you were a grown-up, folk stopped bothering you.
Anyway, Auntie Jean’s got her rum and coke and she’s away. Eyes shut, swaying a wee bit with the emotion. She always used to sing ‘Grannie’s Hielan’ Hame’, but lately she’s taken to that Julie Rogers song, ‘The Wedding’. Maybe she’s trying to tell Senga something. Her voice is rusty with fags, but she belts it out all the same. ‘And I can hear sweet voices singing, Ave Mar-ee-hee-haa.’ Dad says when God was handing out voices, Auntie Jean was in the lavvy. When she finishes, everybody whoops and cheers. I don’t know why, unless it’s relief because it’s over.
Then it’s my dad. I squirm around under the table so I can see him better. He plants his feet a wee bit apart and squares his shoulders in his good grey suit. I know what’s coming. ‘The Road and the Miles to Dundee’ is his song. Nobody else would dare sing it. Apart from anything else, it would just make them look stupid, because my dad’s got a great voice. He’s as good as Kenneth McKellar. Everybody says so. He clears his throat and out comes that sweet voice that makes me feel like I’m snuggled up someplace safe and warm.
Cauld winter was howlin’ o’er moor and o’er mountain
And wild was the surge of the dark rolling sea,
When I met about daybreak a bonnie young lassie,
Wha asked me the road and the miles to Dundee.
He’s
on the last verse when everything goes wrong. Without thinking about it, I’ve eased out from under the table to hear better. And that’s when that evil witch Auntie Betty spots me. My dad’s just coming to the end of the song when she bellows like a bullock. ‘My God, have you ett that whole bowl of crisps yoursel’? Nae wonder you’ve got all that puppy fat on you.’
I want to die. Instead of looking at my dad, everybody’s looking at me. The last note dies away, and though a few folk are clapping, mostly they’re eyeing up the yellow lemon dress straining at the seams. I can see them thinking, ‘Greedy wee shite’, as clearly as if they had cartoon thought bubbles over their heads. I want to shout out and tell them I just look fat because it’s not my dress.
There’s a horrible moment of hush. Then suddenly my dad’s feet appear in front of my face. ‘Leave the bairn alone, Betty,’ he says in a different voice from the one we’ve all been listening to. This one’s hard and quiet, the one I know never to argue with.
But Auntie Betty’s stupid as well as evil. ‘Jim, I’m only speaking for her own good,’ she says, and I can hear exactly where Morag gets her slimy ways fi’.
‘Betty,’ my dad says, ‘You’ve always been an interfering bitch. Now leave my bairn alone.’
Auntie Betty flushes scarlet and retreats, muttering something nobody’s listening to. There’s a flurry of movement and Uncle Don launches into ‘The Mucking o’ Geordie’s Byre’. My dad drops to the floor beside me, says nothing, puts his hand over mine.
My hero.
Says I, ‘My young lassie, I canna’ weel tell ye
The road and the distance I canna’ weel gie.
But if you’ll permit me tae gang a wee bittie,
I’ll show ye the road and the miles to Dundee.’
At once she consented and gave me her arm,
Ne’er a word did I speir wha the lassie micht be,
She appeared like an angel in feature and form,
As she walked by my side on the road to Dundee.
I’m off to university in a couple of days. I’m really excited, but I’m a bit scared too. I’m off to England. I’ve only ever been there twice before – the first time, a holiday in Blackpool when I was eleven, the second my university interview. Both times, I felt like I’d been transported to another planet. Now my life as an alien is about to begin, and I can’t wait to get away and dive into this new world. I can be anybody I want to be. I can make myself up from scratch.
But for now, I’m still trapped in who I’ve always been. This time next week, I’ll be in the shadow of Oxford’s dreaming spires, drinking coffee with intellectuals, talking about politics and ideas and literature. Tonight, though, I’m at Dysart Miners’ Welfare for my cousin Senga’s spree. She’s marrying an Englishman. ‘I don’t suppose they have sprees in England,’ I say to him.
‘No,’ he says. There’s something about the way he says it that makes me think he’s another one who’s feeling like his life as an alien is only just beginning.
The show of presents is at the far end of the hall, a row of trestle tables covered in white paper, groaning under the weight of china, linen, glassware and the strange assortment of things people think newlyweds need for a proper start in life. There’s a whole subsection entirely devoted to Pyrex casseroles. My cousin Derry whispers to me that Hutt’s department store had a special offer on Pyrex last month, that’s why there are twenty-three of them on display. ‘Do you think they’ll be able to swap them?’ I ask.
‘Christ, I hope so,’ he says. ‘Otherwise we’ll all be getting Pyrex for Christmas.’
The demarcation lines are clearly drawn. The women sit at tables round the perimeter of the hall, leaving a space in the middle for the dancing. The men congregate round the long bar that occupies most of one side of the room. I’m already getting the hard stare from Auntie Betty and her cronies for standing with the men at the bar, drinking underage pints and smoking. Morag is staring wistfully across at me, like she wishes she had the nerve to come and join me and Derry and Senga’s fiancé. But she won’t budge. She hasn’t got a rebellious molecule in her body.
The band’s been playing a wee while now, and a few folk have been dancing, but nothing much is happening. ‘Is it no’ time for a wee song, Jim?’ one of the other men asks my dad.
‘Aye, you’re probably right. I’ll away up and have a word with the bandleader.’ It’s a grandiose term for the leader of the trio of accordion, drums and guitar that have been serenading us with a competent if uninspired selection of Scottish standards and pop songs from the previous decade. But my dad walks up to the stage anyway and leans over the accordionist, his mouth close to the wee bald man’s ear.
When they finish their rendition of ‘The Bluebell Polka’, my dad steps up to the microphone. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the band has kindly agreed that they’ll accompany anybody who wants to give us a song. So if you don’t mind, I’ll start off the proceedings.’ And he’s off. The familiar words float above the band and he treats us to his usual graceful rendition.
But tonight, I’m not in the mood. I’m not daddy’s wee lassie any more. I’m a young woman on the threshold of her life, and I don’t want to acquiesce quietly to anything. He finishes the song and, by popular demand, gives us an encore of ‘Ae Fond Kiss’.
By the time he gets back to the bar, Auntie Jean is up there, belting out ‘The Wedding’ with all the smug complacency of a woman who has got the difficult daughter boxed off on the road to the aisle. My dad takes a welcome swallow of his lager and smiles at me.
I scowl in return. ‘Does it not strike you as a wee bit hypocritical, you singing that song?’ I say.
He looks baffled. ‘What?’
‘It’s all about a man who takes pity on a lassie who’s trying to get to Dundee. Right? He helps her. With no thought of anything in return. Right?’ I demand.
‘Aye,’ he says cautiously. The last year or two have taught him caution is a good policy when it comes to crossing verbal swords with me. I’ve learned a lot from the school debating society, and even more from the students in Edinburgh I hang out with at weekends.
‘And you don’t find anything hypocritical in that?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘He does the right thing, the fellow in the song.’
‘So how come you won’t pick up hitchhikers, then?’ I say.
Game, set and match.
At length wi’ the Howe o’ Strathmartine behind us,
The spires o’ the toon in full view we could see,
She said ‘Gentle Sir, I can never forget ye
For showing me far on the road to Dundee’.
I took the gowd pin from the scarf on my bosom
And said ‘Keep ye this in remembrance o’ me’
Then bravely I kissed the sweet lips o’ the lassie,
E’er I parted wi’ her on the road to Dundee.
I’m staying with my friend Antonia and her husband, who have a house on the shores of Lake Champlain, a long finger of water that forms part of the border between Vermont and New York State. Antonia and I became friends at Oxford, in spite of the difference in our backgrounds. She was a diplomat’s daughter, educated at public school, born to privilege and position. And it didn’t matter a damn because we were equals in the things that mattered.
We’re having a good time. This feels like the life I’ve always wanted. My first book is due to be published in a week’s time, I’m travelling the world, young, free and single, and I have appropriated Antonia’s sense of entitlement with not a premonition of what might change that. I’m swimming in the chilly dark waters of Lake Champlain when it happens, though I’m oblivious to it the time. We come out of the water and run up to the house, our only thought how soon we can get dried off and settle in front of the log fire with a glass of good malt whisky.
It’s th
e middle of the night when I find out my life has changed irrevocably. I drift out of sleep, woken by a distant phone ringing. I turn over and set my compass for unconsciousness when Antonia is suddenly standing in front of me, her face crumpled and distressed. ‘The phone . . . it’s for you.’ I can’t make sense of this but I roll out of bed and go downstairs anyway. Her husband is standing mute, the receiver held out to me.
The voice on the other end is familiar. ‘I’m awful sorry, lassie,’ says Uncle Tom. ‘It’s your dad. He was playing bowls. He walked out on the green to play the final of the tournament. And he just dropped down dead.’ His voice keeps going, but I can’t make out the words.
Later that day, I’m walking in the rain in Central Park. Antonia has organised everything; a flight from Burlington to New York, then a night flight back to Scotland via Paris. I’ve packed my bags, but I’ve still got four hours to kill. So I buy my first packet of cigarettes in years and walk. Smoke and rain, good excuses for a wet face and red eyes. The dye in my passport runs as I get soaked to the skin; for years, I can’t escape remembrance of this day every time I travel abroad.
It’s taken them a couple of days to track me down, so I don’t get back till the day of the funeral. The crematorium is packed, standingroom only for a man so many people loved. The minister’s doing a good job – he knew my dad, so he understands the need to celebrate a life as well as mourn a death. He actually makes us laugh, and I think of my dad watching all this from somewhere else and maybe realising how much his life meant.
Back at the house, after the formal funeral purvey, it’s family only. I’m in the kitchen with our Senga making potted meat sandwiches. I feel dazed. I’m not sure whether it’s grief or jetlag or what. I’m taking the bread knife to a tall stack of sandwiches, cutting them into neat triangles, when Auntie Betty barges into the kitchen. She puts a hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Are you awful upset about your dad, then?’