Strip the Willow (6 page)

– But your Crete will fight that? said the Provost.

– No, said Zander, that is sadly the point. That is why I seek, and others seek too, international support for heritage values.

– Oh, said the Provost. We’re hardly international, we’re only Uberdeen.

– Nobody is international, said Zander sharply, unless in the mind.

– And except the big boys, surely? said the Provost.

– That is the point, you have hit the point, said Zander. We can only resist international with international.

– Well, I’ve just called through for tea, said the Provost, tea and a scone, if you’d care to join me.

– That may not solve it, said Zander.

Zander had had forty years of couthiness and its claustrophobic by-lanes. He took his leave.

– Well, cheerio, Mister Protaxis, if that’s how ye feel. I’m sorry we’re no up to mythical standard, like you lads in Crete.

This time Lucy didn’t hesitate.

A quick goodbye to Alison in the pub, Alison wanting another, then she crossed UberStreet at Market Street, and inclined up, till she got to the heart of mobile phone land, where Orange, O2, Lug, Link and Vodaphone all had premises.

She could remember past shops, declined emporia: Lipton’s, Woolies, British Home Stores. But now, apart from mobile phones, there were only four other species of shops left on the street. Fast food, walk-in insurance, charity and cheapo.

There were two branches of Cod Zone Fritter, three of I Do It Fried Way and four of British Heart Trust. At British Heart Trust you could pick up a willed sofa for sixty quid or a reconditioned telly for fifty, and feel good, boosting research funds for such a worthwhile cause. Close by were a few insurance firms you’d never heard of, some back-of-a-lorry quantity discounters like 99 and Twist, and several board-ups. All the prestigious branded shops, like UCKU, Plus, Next Butt One, were tucked in malls.

She went down the steps. At first she didn’t see him.

Because he was down a landing.

– What you doing down here?

– Got moved on, didn’t I? They tried to take my particulars.

– Your particulars?

– Except I don’t have any.
Name
? No chance.
Address
? Here.
Next of kin
? You tell me.

– Did that satisfy them?

– No. There was only one. Promised he’d be back, before
the close of play
he called it. With what he called a
colleague.

– What then?

– Night in the jail if I’m lucky, Lucy.

Pause.

– It is, isn’t it?
Lucy
?

– No, said Lucy.

Pause.

– Yes.

–
No
,
yes
? he said. I thought it probably was.

– Think you should come with me this time, she said.

– Musta been a real bad day. It’s okay, money’s fine.

– I insist.

The taxi driver wouldn’t countenance it. Nor would the driver of OediBus, which was now truly global, having gobbled Greyhound and other majors. OediBus was the Halliburton of wheels. They carried millions now, civil and military, but not palpable lice.

– Hey, min, you’re jumpin, said the driver-conductor.

– So? he said.

– So, jump.

He dragged along in her wake. She walked a fraction ahead anyway.

It was difficult for Lucy not to say
Let’s get you into the bath,
as soon as they got through the door.

– Let’s get you into the bath, she said.

– Who’s we? he replied.

– Don’t be difficult, she said.

– I don’t know what I’m like underneath. It may be difficult. You may need scissors.

– I’m sure I’ve got an electric saw. If that’s what turns you on, Mister Kitoff.

Getting the boxers off alone would have required a charge of black blasting powder, or else some plastique pressed in the fly. Under the sink she found a pair of wooden tongs.

– If your name was ever inside your underpants, if you ever went to that kind of school, it is now officially obliterated, she said.

– The school or the name? he said. Jolly D.

– It’ll take a Dee to wash this off. I should have marched you up to the Linn and chucked you in.

– Did we ever go there? he said.

– Go and just stand in the shower, she said, while I set fire to these.

Any bath would clog with that amount of tar.

She was able to flush muck away as it delaminated off him in dauds. Off his torso and buttocks and legs.

– You seem to have preserved quite well, she said. Bog person.

– Thanks, he said.

– Now the head, said Lucy.

He flinched and drew away.

– We might as well go the whole hog, she said.

The head was mankiest of the lot.

– Must we?

– We must.

She made sure it was only warm. He flinched again. She reduced the flow. But again he drew back.

Only after slow advance and quick retreats did Lucy divine what was up with him. Most skulls are eggs basically, but his was nothing like. It was jaggy with dykes and dents. Crenellated, like a ridge deformed on the ocean floor; oozed, congealed with lava. In its heyday, possibly, sulphurous bubbles danced.

– What the—? breathed Lucy.

– Is there a problem? he said.

It went way beyond amateur forensics. Lodged between her hands was a jigsaw. A fragile 3-D jigsaw, all the colours facing in.

– So did I ever sleep with you? he said brightly. Now that you see me in the altogether.

Altogether,
she thought. There’s an
altogether
here?

– Did you? he said. Did I?

– Come on you, get dried.

– How much is missing? she asked, as she tucked him up in the spare bedroom.

– A few decades, he said. That’s nothing on big ships.

– Decades— said Lucy.

– Perfect name for them, he said.

– What happened?

– The memory function got squeezed the most. I don’t know what happened. Very little of what’s happened since connects. I can’t hack into it.

– Don’t say that, said Lucy.
Hack
. It sounds horrible. But you remembered me. Three days in a row.

– I remembered your feet. I thought I remembered your name. It’s orientation that escapes me. And how my story hangs together.

– What hope is there? she said, sitting on the far end of the bed. She nearly said,
So is there no hope
?

– When the NHS was flush I was down for a series of three ops. Neuro-surgery on the hippocampus. The first one worked, the second was aborted due to side-effects. The third one never came to the top of their list.

– What do you mean
worked
?

– I got a lucid spell, hyper-lucid. The hippocampus, the
short-term
store, suddenly started flashing buried stuff over to the
neocortex
. Boy was it flashing. It was like I was in my own film. Lots of supporting characters dancing in and out, with plenty to say for themselves. But the flashing was all concentred on one day.

– What day was that?

– January 1st, ’68.

– What a year—

– Was it?

– They say if you remember it, you weren’t there, said Lucy.

– That’s not much help, he said. Anyway, in the recovery room they took tape after tape of me, warbling happily and unhappily on. The technician made a sort of story from them.

– The technician? Was that part of his job description?

– No, but he moved around doing lots of jobs, moved all over.
Always poking his mike up people’s noses. Any good stuff he got, he tried to weld that into stories. And into the
front ends
of novels he used to call them.

– Is that ethical?

– What, only writing the front end of a novel? I shouldn’t think so. People want to know how it all works out.

– No, I didn’t mean that. I mean turning people’s lives into fiction?

– I wouldn’t know if it was my life or not. It was certainly very vivid. But he had a way with words, did Tam. The surgeon
reconstructed
my brain, and Tam reconstructed my story.

– Very neat.

– Think so? he said, pointing to his skull. As he took his hand away from the crash-scene, she noticed something she hadn’t seen during the mucky episode in the bathroom. His palms were kind of gnarled, sort of corrugated, criss-crossed.

– Horny-handed, eh? he said. What do you think? I must have put some work in, in my day.

– Hold on, she said. I thought of something a minute ago. Never mind Tam’s version, did you never listen to the tapes yourself?

– Patients hadn’t accrued those kinds of rights. It was their tape, the NHS.

– It was your memories!

– They were reserving them for use in psychotherapy, but when the second op blew up, they put me out in the long grass. A home overlooking a soothing landscape and a bendy river. I escaped of course. Holed up on an island, other places. And the rest, with my memory, is not history.

– Tam— said Lucy.

– I don’t think I’m
Tam
—

– No, but where’s he now?

– Oh, he tried to make a go of writering but nobody could make money from him. He’s down at Left Luggage. He keeps the drafts in a spare locker. They all have a locker or two they work themselves for bonus. It’s understood.

– Will he still have your
front end
?

– Lurking, I daresay. He took care of it. I spoke to him only last week, when I drifted back. He did offer me the draft. But doubt very much that I could face it.

Lucy stood up.

– Hey, been a real big day.

– Like
Need to go,
over again?

– No, like
Goodnight, buster.
Sleep tight.

– Night, he said. Thanks for the douche.

– Forget it— said Lucy, and bit her tongue.

– Already have, he said.

– Okay, you, she said. I’m off early, Edinburgh tomorrow, so I’ll leave a breakfast out. Oh, and a shirt and pants from the chest. Of my late father.

– Breeks too would be good, he said. Some sort of trousers.

He spent part of next morning baggily wandering the house. There was a lot of sculpture, some busts, some abstracts. He got lost several times, and kept seeing the same photograph or painting where he didn’t expect. Kept dunting his shin on some kist or chest in a darker hallway.

He got frightened of the house and came back to his room with a tray of stuff from the larder and fridge.

He wasn’t happy in his room either, so he went through to Lucy’s. He looked for matches on her bedside table. He found them on the black marble mantel and lit the old gas fire.

He put his hands on top of the marble and toasted his chest and points south. His right finger traced and retraced the pale veins on the mantel, the twigs and branchings.

It almost reminded him, but of what?

From downstairs a grandfather kept dinging.

He wanted to go down, arrest the pendulum.

But wasn’t sure about finding his way back up.

The gas fire was still giving out its low blue roar when she came in from the evening train.

– What you doing on my bed?

– Sorry, I was away there. My room was cold.

– It’s centrally heated.

– I couldn’t see that.

– I’ve brought us tea. I got Marks and Sparks kippers at Waverley. Build you back up.

– Couldn’t look at a kipper, sorry. Smell.

– Do you want to go down to the station now? See Tam? Tam must know your name, surely?

– I was
A13
to him, he said. Before they picked me up for the
first op I had been wandering. Nobody had an earthly where I’d been. No papers or nothing.
A13
.

– He calls you
A13
? Hardly.

– No.
Jim.
As in
pal.
Tam’s originally from Glasgow.

They went down in her Morris Traveller, going round by St Machar Drive and the Prom to avoid the centre.

– This car’s a throwback, he said. It’s not like the other cars I see.

It was a modest, pleasant estate, with curved ash external framing.

– It’s an honest trundler, she said. I don’t take it to work. I keep it in the garage against rust, away from the haar and the salt air.

– What crap is that? he said. Down there.
UberSea
?

– A set of surf-viewing chambers, said Lucy. Not everybody can enjoy surf on their own. It evens up the opportunity. The Uberdeen Buddhists have endorsed it. The season ticket works out quite cheap. You can reserve a pen.

– To watch surf? he said

– From the inside, said Lucy.

– To watch surf?

She hadn’t a clue why she’d given the spiel, she’d no wish to defend it.

Half an hour later they were back with three manilla folders, tashed and faded, in a red UCKU bag. UCKU did a range of colours, Cool Lemon, Passion Red, and so on. He’d given Tam the last of his change. Tam didn’t want it. He gave it to him anyway.

– What would you rather? said Lucy. Read or eat? The inner or the outer man?

– Eat, he said, cheese. Cheese is fine, I know you’ve got cheese. Cheese and ham. A sandwich.

– You’re easy put by.

– Then, I think, an early bed.

– Really? said Lucy. I’d hoped—

– Tomorrow’s the 1st of January.

– No, it’s— Oh, yeah, ’68. Absolutely.

– Let’s see what the day brings.

– But I’m off first light to Glasgow till late tomorrow. UbSpec Total voted me to go.

– It might be ramblings, he said. By the time you come back, I might just burn them. What point is there trawling amongst the past, at this stage?

Lucy didn’t reply. She fussed at the window and busied herself. She seemed to take an awful long time to shut a pair of curtains.