Strip the Willow (11 page)

So to cap the whole thing, said Swink, there’s three parts to this. Investment, transport, marketing. If the council will join me on the investment side, if the Senator can smooth the way to accessing airborne help with the transport, and if we get into the marketplace first with a bright new product, I think we’re made. Hear, hear, said a third councillor. We’ll all be made, I’ll make sure of that, said the Lord Provost. There’s only expensive bottles on the market now. Their pitch is wrong. What we’re after is a popular water, to refresh the swine and lift the buggers up. So that’s the slogan:
A People’s Water: Aberdeen Pure.
Here’s to it!

Jim had heard enough, more than enough. But it was still snowing. When the toast and the briefing stopped, the councillors started leaving and drifting out. Jim kept tight behind the bay window. His knees were seized, and his calves felt stiff. Only the Lord Provost and Senator were left in the room. The Provost was pouring two really big whiskies. Then it came out. It wasn’t just mountain spring water they were plotting to snaffle. It was North Sea oil.

Just as the Wells of Dee at the top of Braeriach would
earn their keep,
so also the black reserves under the ocean crust, as yet not huge in proof, might
transform certain finances,
so long as certain finances were
in pole position
long before the off. Publicly-owned real estate does need to be managed creatively in the new situation, said the Senator. Planning controls will need to be more imaginative, agreed Swink.

As long as we keep the long nose of the press out, said the Lord Provost. That
Echo
drives me up the wall at times, with all their probing.
Tarves Man Finds Rat in Flour, Buckie Wife Breaks Tooth on Biscuit.
A free press is a luxury when business needs to expand. Buy in then, said the Senator. Do your own press thing, your own title. Time for you to diversify from bread and water. Let them eat news, eh? said Lord Provost Swink. Or something, said the Senator.

Then they huddled by the fire like a pair of Ebeneezers, and Jim could hear no more. He soft-shoed down the drive again.

Thank flaming fuck, thought Lucy.

Lucy pressed against the windowsill and looked down from her bedroom window. Two linked couples, lax, laughing, not letting go, came skittering down the near side of the road, and passed safely on. Up from the lounge came a clink as Theo entertained some
first-footing
guest, someone from Gray’s School of Art or, more likely, the continuing rump of the Communist Party.

Then, on the opposite side, she spied some slender creature in shorts. She watched him loping along behind the mature trees, hidden then reappearing, with puffs of breath going up and scuffs of white afly at each ankle. Glancing at her, the youth tripped, and spilled quick in the snow. She went and drew him, supporting him, shooshing him up the stairs. Nah, he lolloped on past. God!

Cheek! To suggest she fantasised about some half-clad guy passing by. An unknown guy. A bag of bones, if truth be told.

Jim reached the Brig of Dee. There were little embrasures where you could stand safe from traffic. East was the glimmering harbour. West were the louring hills. He remembered the time with Spermy, the time the Dee was frozen, nudging along in huge plates, on which his wild pal skated. Spermy was the type could sort Swink out. Because West, on the Cairngorm plateau, was where the Dee welled up and where Swink planned to plonk that bottling-plant to make his pile. Some breezeblock bottling-plant: just where his mother’s ashes lay? Grotesque. Aberdeen Pure? No chance.

Aberdeen Pure, yes, for a while, thought Lucy. Slow to catch on. Till rebranded as Mountain Heart. But all water holy. If sealed in a nippled bottle with a use-by date.

Jim stood on the Brig, over the upswirl and swallow of dark waters. He thought of Nan Shepherd’s book
The Living Mountain
. Flakes of white came swivelling down, blanking his thinking.

She seemed to have been reading all day. What time was it? Nine. She had.

He was bound to come back, her runner. She let the needle hover above
All Along the Watchtower,
from the brand-new Dylan. After his electric sell-out and bike smash-up, back to the true acoustic. She lowered the needle and went back to the window. She imagined bunching up her ribbed polo like a coiled python
None of them along the line / Know what any of it is worth.
She would crab backwards at her bra
No reason to get excited / The thief he kindly spoke
and he would clock her full-on
But you and I we’ve bin through that /And this is not our fate / our fate / our fate
shit, the needle. The door had clashed downstairs, and a heavy suck went through the house.

A horrible dented Brezhnev hat and pilled black coat, real dead lamb or nylon, was on the path below. Theo was going too, buttoning himself. Well they could go, well rid. All she wanted was for her runner to come back, silent, genuine, urgent.

She left the bedroom, at that point, she remembered, and went downstairs, kind of determined.

Jim would soon be level with the Swink place again. Hell, his
footprints
under the window.

There came the sound of a light knocking.

He was the only runner out tonight, they would be lying in wait and catch him easy. Their plot would be safe then.

A second knock.

He remembered Admiral Byrd at Advance Station, his father’s book. He had a lot of feeling for Byrd suddenly, for all the self-isolated; desperate to act, to save the world, traversing white wastes, gassing themselves sick in huts and ro
oms.

There was a third knock at her door.

He could do with somebody to discuss this with.

She went and unlocked it.

– Can I come in a minute? he said.

– You’ve got it here, haven’t you?

She compressed the corner of her lip under a canine.

– Let’s read it together. I’ll take a chance.

– Don’t know if I could face that, she said.

– I’ve read very little of it for ages. Mankind cannot stand too much reality. That’s why I always left it with Tam.

– Well, she said.

– Well?

– Well, said Lucy. Come and sit down. Watch, the chair’s a bit squeaky. You sit there, I’ll sit over here.

– I would read it to you, he said, but my glasses must have got smashed.

– I’ll read. But I have to say this. Whoever told Tam about me, and made stuff up, it’s pretty outrageous. Was it you? I may have to stop from time to time, and ponder. That’s what I find.

– It’s not a page-turner then, from old Tam?

– Oh, it’s a page-turner. But I still have to stop. Privacy is a major casualty. Are you sitting comfortably?

– No. Bloody wicker. The bones of my arse are nipping.

– Well I am, said Lucy. So I’ll begin.

Someone appeared the other way. They were both on the
lightly-beaten
track, on the Ring Road pavement.

– Who’s that? he said.

– Guess, said Lucy.

At the very last both dodged, but in the same direction. Oomph! His pace brought them both down in a slither, till her iced shoulder veered and rapped a tree.

– That I do remember, he said.

– Oh good, said Lucy.

Oh, thorry, he went, muffly. What the! Faith full of hair. Yeuf! she went. Totally obliv. You certainly were, she said. Sorry! he said.

He rolled off and by dint of a knee here, a hand there, they fetched to their feet. He looked back up the road. He’d been really zooming, convinced the Provost and Senator had found his prints and would be out tracking him. A car came over the hump slowly. She tugged him round and laughed in his face. Hey, you! she said. Pay attention!

She began to give him a brushing-down. All he really saw was the hair he’d had threaded in his teeth. Red-blonde under the sodium lamp. Are you running from something? she said. I thought you were Mercury there on a mission. He turned again. The car had stopped, and switched its lights to sides. I am, he said. Or just no home to go to? Not one you’d be in a rush to call home, he said. Come in for a cuppa, I’m just across the road. It wasn’t the sort of word he expected. He had expectations already.
Cuppa.
Where, that huge house? Yes, the light upstairs, that’s me.

– That’s you, he said. That’s you speaking.

– You got it, said Lucy.

You sure? he said. Whether it’s me or not? Whether it’s okay? he said. Best be quiet when we get to the stairs, she said. Okay, he said. In case my father is back. She pushed the black wrought gate. Which creaked. I hope the bed doesn’t do that, she said. Don’t you know your own bed? he said. Never had sex in it before, she said. She levered the front door handle, mock-quietly. We’ve hardly been introduced, he said. Soon change that, whispered Lucy. What’s that big lump in the garden? he said, stalling.
Sisyphus,
said Lucy, my father’s sculpture. Come on.

Been watching you this year, she said, when they were safely in the bedroom. Sit. Not on the chair, it’s squeaky wicker. Over here, where it’s comfy. Do you like my hair? Me at the window all night combing it, you running past. I won’t sit on the bed, he said. Too sweaty. Do you? she repeated, do you like it? Must tell you what I’ve just heard, he said, it’s scary. He sidled up to the tall window and checked down at the Ring Road. It’s drastic, he said, really drastic. The angle was restricted by the trees. Hey, never mind that, Jumpy, look. What? Do you like it or not? Uh-huh.
Uh-huh
is not an answer, it’s my hair we’re talking about. I do, I do. I haven’t asked you to marry me yet. What do you like about it? Don’t usually go for beehives, he said. Get you! What do you go for about it? There’s red, a sort of reddy, through the gold. Better. And? It’s brilliant. Shiny anyway, she said. Well, now the intros are done, are you going to get your gear off, or am I? I’ll do it, he said, my kit’s siping. His father’s word, meaning
wet through.
Me too, said Lucy. Look the fire’s on. You can toast them over a chair. It’s very good of you. Good’s not what I had in mind, she said. Ooh, I thought you’d have a few more muscles. I’m a distance guy, not a fish humper. A what? Distance runner, he said. Hey, steady! Don’t you want me to? she said.

– I should not be reading this, said Lucy.

– My glasses are smashed, remember.

Yes, what about you though? I feel naked.

– Who says that again? he said.

– Not me, she said.

You nearly are, said Lucy.

– Lucy says that? he said.

– Yes, Lucy in the story.

Chest for a chest?

– Does he say that?

– Listen for Chrissake!

Good idea, she said. She hoicked her ribbed top up in a coil and dipped her head out, disturbing her hair. Wow! She patted her hair in place, unzipped a boot or two and a skirt, and stepped out. Together, she said. Now.

– I cannot read this, said Lucy.

She slipped off a last wisp, as he flipped out of his Ys.

– Come over here. I feel utterly daft broadcasting this.

At last, she said.
At last
? he thought. They were going at the speed of light. Where was the average first-night fumble on a draughty porch? Ooh, you’re icy, said Lucy, don’t touch me. That was more the style. She pulled him by his bemused firm-on towards the burping fire.

– I got the burp sorted, said Lucy.

– I’m glad.

– A fitter came. After Theo died.

– Can I hold your hand?

– No, I need both hands to be able to flip the pages. Arm round my waist, best. Not like that, duh. Like so.

Wait, need to get a.

– Is that you started again?

– Fuck’s sake. Yes! said Lucy.

Wait, need to get a. What? she said. Hold it! he said. Johnny-
come-lately
thingy. I hate that latex smell, said Lucy. I’m starting the Pill. Never in the hottest of dreams was it this simple. They just about made it back to the bed. She pulled him down.

– Very romantic, and I don’t say, said Lucy.

– Blame Tam, not me.

– I will if I can get hold of him.

– Read on, don’t stop now.

He propped briefly, on his bony bits, over her bonny bits. It had been a short engagement. Lucy, who raved for poets, hunks, philosophers and rockers, closed her eyes against the skimpinesss of her conscripted lover. Fuck, fuck, o fuck, Jesus! he panted, three at best minutes later. Thaaank you!

– Conscripted, eh? he said. He squeezed her middle. Hey, there’s more to you than I recall. Lucy rocked against him for luck.

Don’t thank, it’s rude, said Lucy. Save your breath to get your strength up. Strength? he said. Seconds. You’re amazing, he said. Might need thirds. I was away, sorry, did the bed creak? he said. Not for me, said Lucy. Anyway who gives? If Theo comes back, he’ll have to handle it. Theo? My father, we live here together, I don’t think he’s back yet. And before you start, she said, I don’t do jealous. Wee silence. Am I your first? she said, seems a bit that way. I was in bed with two when I was eleven, he said, well, eleven plus. Don’t boast, said Lucy, I don’t dig it. And I don’t do troilism. You don’t even look like a troil, he said. But I’ll eat you for my supper, she said. You up for it yet? Nymph or summat? he replied. No, just that you seem like a shiftworker. One minute on, ten minutes off, or something. Do you you like my back? It’s warm, he said, it’s lithe, it’s. Smoothtalker, stroke!