Strip the Willow (16 page)

All the grit scoured off mountain crags by frost and ice, all the howffs of granitic sand burgled by floods, all the loam thieved off the sweat-rich fields of Lower Deeside by summer and winter rains, got carried there to build a fatal ridge, where the sea clashed and rumbled, and broke in pieces ill-run ships and ill-souled men.

He carried on singing a few more verses. Some in order, some with a few words altered or missing, but all with the ballad’s relentless repetition.

Then it started.

For Alison it had been nothing to do with the ten-pin; how anybody could get into a lather over that predictable clatter escaped her. It was just that she had been out at Huntly earlier in the day, part of an outreach programme from city to county, and after a quick chicken pastie from the excellent baker, she went and visited the castle, then the local kirkyard.

Good to find the courage at last to revisit the place you were brought up in.

Huntly Castle was fine enough, it touched off half-decent memories. Long after her father had first taken her along, rather severely, for a historical introduction, she would flit in and out of the substantial pile at will, with a smile from the young woman curator. She didn’t need the printed guide, she knew all her favourite nooks. She would wrink around in the bakehouse, brewhouse, cellars and dungeons. She liked to imagine the different foods seething in compartments of the big black pot: poultry and eggs and onions together, hunks of beef for the laird and the laird’s guests, a parcel of bacon, a clootie dumpling with honey and beans.

Then she would go along the passageway, and see the dungeon below, like a stone bottle. Although there was a smell of
stone-dust
, plaster and clay, she thought there would have been lots more smells when the dungeon was full. All that the poor chained folk down there could likely do was scratch, doze and pee towards the centre, and then, to whichever absent god they’d been led to favour, pray. It was probably a lot worse than you could ever imagine.

How did anyone even begin to have the right to pour your soul into a stone bottle?

This time she went in with a wry grin under the defaced tall
frontispiece
, a Renaissance confection, with its pierced heart, dragon and griffin. They had been Catholics in Huntly, the ruling class, till the Covenanters bustled in during the 1640s and chipped off the crowning St Michael v. Satan disc. There was always a running battle to redefine the Antichrist.

She went up the tight circular stairs, holding onto the rope, till she was in the earl’s bed-chamber. It was wonderfully airy without any earl, you were at tree-top height. Swallows in elegant manic twitter flitted in from the leafy sun to test ledges and alcoves. They made her so lightsome she surprised herself.

She had an hour to spare, so she went to the cemetery outside town.

Her parents had died within months of each other when she was in her late teens, and she hadn’t buried them. Going against her aunts’ wishes, she had them cremated. She had no truck with religion, that was the thing. And she was sorry about that now and wished she had a place to find them.

Willa, then Jock. Then that infamous night of Jock’s funeral, when it got too wild in the Atholl. Waking up about noon, and not on her own. In a way, never on her own again, though her
bed-partner
emigrated soon enough.

Perhaps she could track some of the rest of the family. She found Andersons, right enough, a potential uncle or two, a blacksmith, a joiner, a small mill-owner, that was some shock, a postman.

Then, to one side of the Anderson slabs, there was a little stone doing its best to keep its head above grass. You could read the surname, it was
Anderson
too, but the lower words were all furred with lichen. It was only a matter of going back to the car to fetch a blunt pencil and an empty white envelope. She tore the envelope open, it was too thick otherwise. She bent over and scoured the blobs of lichen out. Then she knelt on the sappy grass and, with the pencil laid broadside, began the rubbing.

Jean

Who?

Our only daughter

Whose?

Died August 12th 1965, aged three months

Erected by Williamina and John Anderson

The year of our Lord, 1975

Ever in God’s Thoughts

She stared at the grey rubbed news of her usurpation. She had to hold the tiny slab by its two shoulders, like shaking a baby.
Williamina and John.
Willa and Jock. She tried to yank it out or push it over, but for all its lack of size, it was deep-rooted.

Our only daughter.

Not a word to her, during their years, that all she, Alison Anderson – Alison Orphaned Bastard Anderson – had ever been was a substitute. Only some bairn reft from god knows where – adopted – never the true Jean.

Our only daughter.

– Oh, Alison, she wept to herself. Alison, Alison.

– We got away from the harbour eventually. Once Spermy had picked up his
fancy science bird,
he called her.

Lucy sought a level of massage that was enough, just enough, now the motor was up and running. It was soon obvious the motor was up for far more than that.

– At first she was just this masked and dripping figure I heaved aboard. Or would have. But she took her snorkel out long enough to say
Ladder
. And in that tone. If we hadn’t a ladder lashed to the mast, I’d have had to contrive one. The rest of the crew, with all their skills, were curled in their bunks and far from sober.

We headed north. Whether it was true north or not, it wasn’t clear from deck. The sun was broadly behind us. It was having itself a riot before sinking into a cloud. Then I was summoned to take the wheel by Spermy, and he gave me the heading, twelve degrees.
Keep her a berth off the land.
Whatever that meant, jargoneer. He was going down to the cabin to help the diver out of her wetsuit. He was back in two minutes. He was a berth off the land himself, I think.

He had grown to be a volcano.

I gripped hold of the wheel.

I checked the overhead compass so much I was snapped at.

I wandered five degrees west and got bawled at.

I checked the brass clock to the right of the compass and it was still only ten.

The year was ten hours old. No doubt things were happening in Vietnam, Prague and Warsaw, in Paris and London.

The year was unfolding at a frightening rate.

I was right in the middle of all the action. I was part of a film, whirring away, I could feel the sprockets, engaging my
readymade
holes. That’s it, I could feel the sprockets. Sometimes I was in the projector gate and felt immortal. Sometimes I skated over the screen. And if my mind ever wandered a second, like a mote of dust, nothing was lost; it was still there, my mind, dancing in the beam.

Sir Patrick Spens, locked in his ballad. That Conrad character, in
Youth
.

– Marlow, said Lucy, softly.

– Then Julie appeared in the wheelhouse and I went to the cabin to make three coffees.

When I got down, the crew were lying abandoned in their bunks, some not even under the covers. There was one black knotted shoe sticking out from under a sheet. The smell of sick was worst, but stale beer, whisky, fag reek, farts and the rotten remainder of last year’s herring ran it close. Very, very close.

It took time to find all the doings, and to get the kettle under way. By the time I came up with the shoogly tray, the day had clouded, the wind was up, gulls zig-zagged across our wake, and she was giving him a blowjob.

If I’d only known, I could have waited.

How did I feel? I didn’t feel anything. It was the kind of film where a rogue reel might slip in. Mainly I thought it was quite a nice touch. He had his right hand on the wheel, with his left flat on the top of her head like he was blessing her. I’d known Spermy since he was ten or eleven. He was a hard man, he wasn’t religious.

She faced me as I opened the wheelhouse door. She raised an eyebrow at me, though there was little she could say. I may have looked shocked, so she gave a shake of her head. That seemed to please him; it was just as well something did.

I, being a gentleman, withdrew. I stood outside on the flying bridge, under a machine they called the Triplex. I had drunk two and a half coffees, when the wheelhouse opened again.

Knock, cunt, next time, he said. Na, ye’re okay. Come in and say hello tae Julie. Hello, Julie, I said. Hello, Peem, she replied.

Lucy wanted to yell out, break it precisely there, but knew disclosing his name was only part of their purpose. There was the whole head thing to be laid bare, whatever happened there, and to find that out they would have to go on.

– So, everything was nice for a while. The skipper was in a good mood, he had had his rocks off. Julie and me had a bond. We had both been kidnapped and were heading round Scotland together. She asked me what I did; Spermy had only told her my name. I said I was an ex-student, a bit of a poet, a builder and in love.

Lucy wanted to say
Were you really
? but refrained. Her touch now was of the lightest, just enough to keep the hippocampus, the famous sea-horse of memory, swimming through the years.

– She told me she was finishing a PhD, marine biology, specially prawns. Scotland was overfished, so she was off to Sarawak shortly. Out in Sarawak, where headhunters kept their parangs gleaming, she would be an advisor on very big prawns, on how to get the mangrove cleared.
I am completely my own person,
she said.

We went down in the cabin amongst the sozzled. We made dinner, very late dinner, to be consumed after nightfall, Spermy’s orders. Much would be mince and peas, the rest tatties. We peeled away side by side in the gathering storm.

As soon as the tatties were on, she led me through to the
fish-room
and I fucked her standing against the boards. It wasn’t love, but it was very, very good. I felt at home on the boat.

Lucy wrestled with herself. Her fingers stopped massaging. Her palms and fingers were spread out over his skull, all ready to press down, all ready to punch through him twenty thousand volts.

– When we came up on deck, it was thinking about getting dark, and the skipper was scowling. Baxter rose, and he took the wheel so we could all get dinner. Around the table there was no grace said. But I think they were grateful for anything hot; they looked
peely-wally
and some were shivery.

We had come through a wild place, the Pentland Firth, though Julie and me had not noticed the extra bumps. She attempted to talk about moonrise and herring rising, plankton and such. Spermy wasn’t in the mood for that. Then she told us she was the Lord Provost’s daughter. Nobody seemed amused or even interested. I said I needed to talk to her later. As we came out of the shelter of Orkney, we realised there was a northerly swell running, so dinner was cut short. The cling peaches and condensed milk remained unopened.

I need your help, Julie, I said.

I explained her father’s designs, on the source of the city’s water, on all the future side-deals from oil. Julie wasn’t fazed,
I know what
he’s like.
Her father bankrolled her many enjoyments. His actions might be in some ways regrettable. He might like to pull some wool over eyes. But, she said. Julie spoke like she fucked. But? I said. Blood is thicker than water. Basic science. Check that sometime.

I spoke to Spermy on his own. Spermy was worse. 77% of the
Spare Me
was owned ashore, by SwinkFoods. Spermy was no more free to act than fly in the air. Spermy was gripped, so no help there.

Never mind that bastard Swink, Spermy said. It’s you that better watch oot. And I’m nae referrin tae the fuckin wheelhoose.

’68 was twenty hours old. I was losing my illusions fast, on a pretty high sea with that rum pair.

Lucy made another couple of cups of tea and lemon. She didn’t feel like talking. She noticed he had his eyes closed now, and this aid to dwelling in the past profoundly annoyed her.

– The
Spare Me
was a purser. Me, I wouldn’t have known a
purse-netter
from a Botticelli. I sidled up and queried Baxter: Spermy would just have laughed.

Purse, ye’re asking? said Baxter. Just a net as deep as the North Sea and as lang as a running track. Drop her ower the boat’s arse as she steams in a circle, pick up yir ain end, because naebody’s goin to pick it up for ye, whack the twa ends thegither in the hauler, the block, the Triplex, whatever ye want to call it, and heave awa. Thanks, I said. That’s when the fun starts, he told me.

Especially if you shot for herring, but only got sprats. Under
persuasion
, herring would swim in ever-decreasing circles till they were like a ball of silver tight in a purse against the side of the boat.

But sprats, no, not sprats.

Sprats would get it into their tiny heads that they could swim away through the net. They couldn’t. Trying to reverse without anyone noticing, they then got trapped by the gills. Not just the odd one or two. A net the size of a running track, a decent mark, ten or twelve million. They had to be shaken out by hand.

I hope we don’t get sprats, then, I said to Baxter.

Lucy realised she wasn’t massaging any more, and just stood behind him quietly as he spieled. She didn’t know how long they had been at this now.