Stonemouth (39 page)

I sip towards the dregs of my pint.
Yes, you are telling us, Murd
. Only that’s not the way old Joe told it to me. When he told me this story it wasn’t about him personally at all; it was about one of his uncles who’d played this trick on one of
his
pals, years before Joe was remotely old enough to go drinking with his mates anywhere. The rest of the story’s similar enough, but it just never was about Joe himself.

I am so tempted to point this out – I really
want
to point this out – but I don’t. It’s cowardice, partly, maybe, but also just a reluctance to, well, throw a bucket of cold water over this warm wee festival of rosy-tinged remembrance. It irks me that history’s being rewritten like this, but if I say something now I’ll just look like the bad guy. I guess if Mr M was here he might set the record straight, but he’s not; Donald’s standing by the Murston table, talking to a couple of local businessmen. Best to keep quiet. In the end, after all, what does it really matter?

Only it always matters. I’m still not going to say anything, but it always matters, and I feel like a shit for not sticking up for the truth, no matter how much of a spoilsport or a pedant I might appear because of it. I finish my pint, turn away.

‘Aw, Stu? Stewart?’ Murdo calls out. I turn, surprised, to find that Murdo’s looking at me, as is everybody else, and a sort of channel through the crowd has opened between me and Murd. ‘You knew Joe a bit, did you no?’

‘Aye,’ I
say. Nonplussed, frankly. ‘Aye, we used to go on the occasional hill-walk together. Aye, nice old guy.’

I’m horribly aware I’m sounding trite and slightly stupid, and I’m sort of lowering my conversational style down to Murdo’s level, almost imitating him. (I almost said ‘thegether’ instead of ‘together’, for example, body-swerving the more colloquial word so late in the brain-to-mouth process I came close to stumbling over it.) And
was
he a nice old guy? He was pleasant to me and kind enough, but he was still a Murston – the senior Murston – at a time when the family was settling deeper and deeper into its criminal ways, abandoning farming and even land deals, and diversifying into still more lucrative fields.

‘Must have taught you a thing or two, aye?’ Murdo prompts.

‘Cannae get everythin from a university education, eh no?’

‘Nup,’ I agree. ‘Sure can’t. Aye, he let drop the occasional pearl of wisdom.’

‘Aw aye?’ Murdo says, looking round with a smug look.

Fuck, I’m on the spot here. Since I saw his body in the funeral parlour a couple of days ago I’ve been trying to think of something wise or profound Joe said, and there’s really only one thing I can remember. Plus I feel like I’m kind of embellishing and improving the memory as I try to recall it, a process I’m pretty much bound to continue if I try to articulate it now.

Still, it’s all I’ve got, and – assuming that Murdo isn’t trying to fuck me up here, believing I’ve got nothing and so expecting me to embarrass myself – maybe this invitation to take part in the rolling familial obituary for the old guy is sort of like a peace offering. Maybe.

So I clear my throat and say, ‘Yeah, he said something once about …about how one of the main mistakes people make is thinking that everybody else is basically like they are themselves.’

‘That right?’ Murd says.

Joe really did say something like this, and even at the time I thought it might be one of the more useful bits of geezer lore he’d
offer up. Not that we really expect to hear any great wisdom from the old these days; things move too fast, and society, reality itself, alters so rapidly that any lesson one generation learns has generally become irrelevant by the time the next one comes along. Some things will stay the same – never call on lower than two tens, men tend to be unfaithful – but a lot don’t.

‘Yeah,’ I say, looking around, talking to the whole group now though still glancing mostly towards Murdo. ‘He said that conservatives – right-wing people in general – tend to think everybody’s as nasty – well, as selfish – deep down, as they are. Only they’re wrong. And liberals, socialists and so on think everybody else is as nice, basically, as they themselves are. They’re wrong too. The truth is messier.’ I shrug. ‘Usually is.’ I spread my arms a little, and smile in what I hope is a self-deprecating manner. ‘Sorry; not as good a story as Murdo’s there.’ I sort of raise my glass towards Murdo, hating myself for it.

There’s a gentle breeze of sympathetic laughter around the group.

‘What was that story about them in that cesspit at the farm that time?’ Norrie says, and I’m able to slip away as people refocus on the three brothers again.

‘Aw, aye,’ Murdo says as the crowd clusters back around him once more, and he launches into another story.

‘Katy, isn’t it?’

‘Hiya.’

‘Hi. I’m Stewart.’

‘Hi…Oh. Yeah, of course. Hi. How you doing?’

‘I’m fine. Can I refresh that for you?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘The white, aye?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Lucky I happen to have a bottle right here, then.’

‘That’s very prepared.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Stewart,’
Jel says.

I’m back at the buffet tables, looking at the puddings and trying to decide if I’m remotely hungry or just being greedy. My organs differ in their opinions; however, I think I’m going to go with whatever one’s telling me I’m already completely full up.

‘We’re going,’ she tells me, putting one hand on my forearm, ‘but there’s a few people been invited back to the house later. Feel free, okay?’

‘Thanks. I might. How…how exclusive we talking – all invited?’

‘Well, no randoms, but otherwise bring who you like.’ She looks back into the room. ‘Saw you with Katy Linton there,’ she says, one eyebrow raised. ‘Little young for you, isn’t she?’

‘Young, but she knows things.’

‘Does she now?’

‘You’d be amazed.’

‘You think? Takes a lot to amaze me these days.’

‘Anyway, she’s twenty, twenty-one. But I wasn’t thinking of her when I was asking who I could bring.’

‘Ellie?’ Jel says, and her voice drops a little even as she tries to look unconcerned.

‘I was thinking more of Ferg.’

‘Okay. I’ll make sure the more valuable booze has been padlocked.’

‘I’ll call if we’re coming.’

‘Do. You back down south tomorrow?’

‘Yep.’

‘Let’s try meet up, like, anyway? Before you go? See you.’ She dives in with a small cheek kiss, turns and goes.

I’m at the bar, getting a pint for myself, plus one for Ferg and a large whisky too – he’s been keeping an eye on the bar over the last hour and he’s worried the thousand-pound float might be about to run out.

‘Stewart,’ Ellie says, slipping in beside me at the bar. She puts some empty glasses down, instantly catches the barman’s eye and adds a mineral water to my order.

‘Hey,
Ellie.’ She’s looking at the three drinks. ‘Two are for Ferg,’ I explain.

‘Of course. Let me give you a hand.’

I smile at her, trying – out of the corners of my eyes – to see where Donald might be, or any of the Murston brothers. ‘We okay to be seen together?’ I ask.

‘I’m making it okay,’ she says, and lifts the whisky glass.

We wind our way through the press round the bar, heading for Ferg, back in prime position in the centre of the giant bay window.

‘So. How did it go for you guys?’ I ask Ellie.

‘Bearable,’ she tells me. She glances at a slim black watch on her wrist. ‘I’m taking Mum back home in a minute. Let me get out of these sepulchral threads.’

‘You look great. Black suits you.’

‘Yeah? Well, I feel like one of those sack-of-potatoes Greek grannies you see on the islands who look like they were born widowed.’

‘I guess comfort trumps being drop-dead gorgeous at a funeral.’

‘Steady.’

‘What are your plans after?’

‘Ha!’ Ellie says, and gives a sort of shoulders-in shudder. ‘Supposed to be a private party at the house for the rellies but I’m going to absent myself; bound to turn into a giant piss-up for Don and the boys and I’ve had enough of those.’ She looks round as we approach Ferg, who’s talking to a girl I half recognise. ‘Might come back here,’ she says. ‘Could even have a drink; leave the car.
If
there’s people still going to be around.’

‘That might depend on the life expectancy of the “free” component of the phrase “free bar”.’

‘I asked five minutes ago; barely over the halfway point.’

‘Blimey. I can tell Ferg to slow down.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Really, only halfway?’

‘Less than six hundred. People never drink as much as they think
they do at these things, even at the Mearnside’s prices. Though Don gets a discount, naturally.’

‘Give it time. Hey, Ferg.’ I hand him his pint; Ellie presents his whisky.

‘Thank you, Stewart. And Ellie. Well, gosh, this is like old times.’

‘And how are you, Ferg?’ Ellie asks.

‘Oh, radiant. You know Alicia?’ Ferg indicates the girl he’s been talking to, a compact lass with a rather round face but fabulous long wavy red hair. Alicia is the daughter of one of the town councillors in attendance. I think Ferg is trying to flirt with her, but he’s just coming across as smarmy.

‘Don’t you have a hair appointment later?’ I ask him.

Ferg looks confused in what I decide is an insolent, What-are-you-talking-about-you-idiot? way, so I choose not to pursue the point. There’s some very so-whattish chat for a couple of minutes, then Ellie says she better be going; a mum to drop at the house.

‘You be here later?’ she says as she passes.

‘Yup.’

I watch for them going and it’s a good ten minutes before she and Mrs M make it to the doors and out, delayed by people wanting to say thanks for the do and how sorry they are.

A couple of minutes after that, as more people come to join us and the talk gets a little louder, I leave my half-finished pint on the window ledge and announce to no one in particular that I’m off for a pee.

There’s something I want to do before I get too pissed. And before Ellie gets back, though my reasons for feeling that way are opaque even to me.

Having already established that the lifts no longer ascend as far as the fifth floor, I take what might look like an honest-mistake-stylee wrong turn out of the loos, check the corridor for emptiness – it is satisfactorily full of it – then barge through double doors and, chortling at my own cleverness, head smartly up a service stairwell to the fifth floor.

Where
I encounter a set of locked doors. Extraordinarily, even purposeful shaking doesn’t open them.

I go down to the fourth floor and the main stairs, prepared to be as brazen as you like regarding the dispensation of nods, hellos and so ons, but there’s nobody to be seen. More locked doors at the fifth; the lack of lit stairwell above the fourth floor might well have been a sign.

I head back downstairs a second time, mooch inconspicuously all the way along to the furthest service stairwell, ascend that, only to find more locked doors, then go down to the fourth floor – again; we’re becoming old friends, this fourth-floor corridor and me – take the exterior fire exit (bright outside, sea breeze; air’s bracing) and head up the fire escape towards the fifth, only to be stopped by the locked grille of a door halfway up. I look round, as though appealing to the white scraps that are circling gulls and the wispy remains of clouds.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I mutter.

I button up my jacket and jump nimbly onto the hand railing, trusting to my childhood superpowers of Having a Head for Heights and Being Quite Good at Climbing.

I ignore the twenty-metre drop to the concrete at the back of the hotel, checking only to make sure there isn’t anybody looking. There isn’t; in the winter you’d be hung out to dry up here, easily visible by anyone watching from the exclusive new development of villas and timeshares that is Mearnside Heights, but, as it’s barely autumn, the gently rustling mass of foliage on the trees, spreading across the slope above the hotel – and Spa, shields me from any prying gaze. Oh, look; there’s the new Spa wing. Uh-huh. Undistinguished, frankly.