Tombstoning (7 page)

The Western was a well-groomed cemetery with evenly spaced graves, wide walkways and huge monkey puzzle trees. It sat on the edge of town, overlooking tattie fields through a thin wire fence. Colin’s grave was at the back, amongst the more modest modern plots, and David walked up alone, noticing a line of neat Marines’ graves, all young men, not much older than David, who had died in the Falklands War. The idea of all those once youthful bodies lying decomposed under the turf shocked him. Poor bastards. Enjoy life while you can, he thought, because you’re a long time dead. The thought didn’t cheer him up any.

At the graveside he met up with Gary and a few other classmates, most looking like little kids playing a dressing-up game, trying to look upset, trying to wear a seriousness that they simply didn’t have the life experience to actually feel yet. It felt so unreal, the sun beating down between the tree shadows, cars zipping past beyond the fields, the sombre religious intoning from someone who didn’t even know Colin – ‘a life cut down in its prime’, for God’s sake. David noticed Neil wasn’t here. He had considered not coming himself, so he understood.

He looked at Gary, who seemed in worse shape than he was. He wanted to say something, something meaningful that might help both of them make sense of what was a nonsensical situation. A few days ago they’d all been blind drunk together, and now one of them was in a box, having earth shovelled over him. He suddenly couldn’t stand to look at Gary anymore. He wanted to be alone and very, very drunk; he wanted to crawl into his own little hole and hide.

He went to the wake to show face, but only stayed briefly. There was such a colossal distance between his generation and his parents’ that he couldn’t think of anything to say to Colin’s lost-looking mum and dad. His own parents were there, offering bland, formulaic condolences, and all the older mourners seemed like automatons, offering the appropriate programmed responses to stimuli. David just wanted to get out of there and start drinking properly.

He spent the rest of the day drifting from pub to pub, going to places that were not his usual haunts, just so he could be alone and unknown. But there was no such thing in Arbroath, and too many vaguely recognized well-wishers kept making comments about Colin that were simply strings of platitudes and clichés hung out to dry. He was thrown out of two pubs for being loud and abusive, then picked a fight with a large stranger outside Fatty’s chippy, just so that he could be hit and feel the reality of pain in his body. He staggered home, blood dripping from his nose on to his white shirt, and vowed never to go out in this stupid fucking town ever again.

Yet here he was, driving past the old golf clubhouse that was now a guesthouse perched on the hilltop edge of town. He negotiated a new roundabout on the road in, drove past a new statue which seemed to have two people in monks‘ outfits waving a parchment in the air, and headed up the hill towards his B&B.

As he turned into Nolt Loan Road and caught sight of the Keptie Pond his mind was deluged with lighter childhood memories. The water tower stood imperiously over the pond like a tinpot baron’s castle, while the island in the middle of the pond was still packed with trees and ducks and swans. There had been some new landscaping around the edges, he noticed, and new signposts warning about thin ice, and forbidding ball games, and reminding dog walkers about picking up dogshit as they went. The hut where you used to hire boats from was gone, as were the boats. But despite all the small changes, this was definitely still the same place, still the street that he grew up in, still the place he had spent the most time in his life. And now he was back.

4
The Cliffs

‘Please, call me Gillian.’

She pronounced it with a hard ‘G’, but that was about the only thing hard about Gillian Swankie, thought David. She was a short, voluptuous woman somewhere in her forties with an easy-going, bright red smile and a body made of flamboyant curves. She greeted David at the door with a strangely intimate handshake and a brace of air kisses, making him reel a little. She was certainly attractive, although she wore too much make-up. She was nothing like the lonely old widow he had imagined. The inside of the house didn’t match up to his expectations either – there were no toy dolls, lace curtains, frilly cushions, flowery patterned wallpaper or carpets. Instead the place was done out in neutral show-home colours, with exposed floorboards covered by simple rugs. There were no pictures of graduating children (she was probably too young for that, right enough) or tiny grandchildren – a staple of most B&Bs he’d stayed in around the country, the owners turning their now-empty family home into a pension-boosting money-spinner, the men taking a back seat, the women enjoying the company of strangers to fill the mothering void in their lives. But the Fairport felt different. Gillian with a hard ‘G’ seemed altogether younger, more vivacious and more dangerous than his image of a B&B owner, and although she was Mrs Swankie he couldn’t picture her as a doting wife. Was she alone or married or divorced? Did she have kids? What business was it of his what the hell she’d done with her life?

‘We don’t get many single visitors through Fairport, are you here on business?’

‘Not exactly,’ was all David could think of to say. She looked at him and a crafty smile came across her comfortable, worn-in, handsome face. She seemed to know something David didn’t. She turned to head up the stairs and David followed, his eyes trained on her impressively large arse which swung from side to side as she pulled on the banister. ‘I’ll show you to your room,’ she said, looking over her shoulder. David glanced up with a start, shifting his eyes from her arse to her face a moment too late. Rumbled.

The room was standard issue, no-nonsense B&B – small telly mounted on the wall in a corner, plain double bed, small en suite toilet and shower and a tray next to the bed with a kettle, sachets of instant coffee, biscuits and two cups. Genuine Scottish hospitality. He got the spiel about breakfast (served until a surprisingly late eleven o’clock) and the front door (stayed unlocked through the night) from Gillian, who locked eyes with him throughout, smiling in a knowing way. Were the two of them alone in the house?

Gillian left and he got settled in, but a couple of minutes later he heard a phone ring and she called up to him. It must be Nicola, he thought, why hadn’t she tried his mobile? He went downstairs and picked up the receiver.

‘Alright, droopy drawers, ready for some reunion action?’

‘David?’ It was a male voice and he recognized it.

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s Gary. Spink. From school.’

The first thing David thought was how the fuck does he know I’m here? Some sort of small-town telepathy thing going on? Jungle drums? An announcement in the
Arbroath Herald
?

‘Hey, Gary. How the hell are you? Long time no see, and all that.’

‘I’m fine.’ He didn’t sound fine, thought David. He sounded nervy, or timid, or something similar. But then he’d always been a little shy of life, thought David, always acting as if something was about to jump out from behind a tree and scare seven shades of shite out of him. Maybe sometime in the last fifteen years, something had done just that.

‘How did you know I was staying here?’

‘I ran into Sonia the other day and she mentioned it.’ Sonia? Who the hell was she? And how did she know who, and where, he was? ‘Listen,’ he still sounded nervous and David imagined him twisting the phone cord around a fidgeting finger. ‘Do you fancy maybe going out for a pint tonight? Catch up on old times and all that? Just thought it would be an idea before the reunion proper tomorrow.’

He had to think quick. He was waiting for Nicola to phone, and the prospect of hooking up with her tonight, just the two of them, blew everything else out the water.

‘I was thinking I might just take it easy tonight, Gary, to be honest. You know, chill out. Keep the powder dry for tomorrow night and all that. You understand.’

‘Sure. It was just an idea. Well, listen, if you’re not busy tomorrow during the day, how about we go to the football? We’re playing Montrose at home. If you fancy it?’

Gary sounded so pathetic on the phone David felt sorry for him, then guilty for feeling sorry. He thought, well I don’t even know this guy from fucking Adam anymore, I haven’t spoken to him in fifteen years. But then he was bouncing him tonight in favour of a woman who, a week ago, he hadn’t spoken to in just as long. Why the hell not go to the footy the next day? If nothing else, he could do with a few afternoon pints, might as well get a head start if this reunion was going to be at all bearable.

‘Sure, Gary, why not?’ He could hear the boyish relief down the phone, and something else, a more desperate sensation he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

‘Great,’ said Gary. ‘Want to meet in Tutties? Say about one o’clock?’

‘Cool. I’ll see you there.’

‘See you there.’

David put the phone down. Another voice from the past, he thought, but then why be surprised by that? He was, after all, in the town he grew up in for a stupid school reunion.

The phone rang as he was still standing there, and he picked it up instinctively.

‘Hello?’

‘Is that you, David?’

Nicola.

‘Hi there, gorgeous. What’s wrong with trying my mobile?’

‘Tried it. Straight on to answer machine.’

‘Maybe I’m not getting a reception here.’

‘Maybe. It’s a terrible backwater, after all.’

‘Sure is.’

‘You made it then, didn’t bottle out?’

‘You thought I’d bottle out?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘It did cross my mind.’

‘So now you’re here, how is it?’

‘Strange. Just had Gary Spink on the phone.’

‘Really? Saying what?’

‘I’m meeting him for the footy tomorrow.’

‘So you’re still free tonight? How about we go out and get drunk, as previously discussed.’

‘Funny, I was thinking exactly the same thing. When and where did you have in mind?’

‘Well, I thought we could pay the Lochlands an overdue visit, but before that, how about you take me for a drive?’

‘A drive?’ David could sense something funny. ‘What sort of drive?’

‘You know, a drive. In your car,’ said Nicola. ‘Brrrm, brrrm. I’m doing that steering wheel thing with my hands. Internationally accepted gesture for driving.’

‘Where to?’

‘You’re a right suspicious sod, aren’t you? Just around. Around and about. Maybe we’ll do handbrake turns in the Viewfield Hotel car park, maybe we’ll drive down to the harbour and I’ll push you in.’

‘Or maybe we’ll drive out to the cliffs where Colin fell?’

There was a slight beat of a pause.

‘Maybe that’ll happen,’ said Nicola, and David heard a slyness in her voice that was irresistible. ‘Anything’s possible.’

He didn’t hesitate.

‘Will I come pick you up?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Nicola, the slyness replaced by a bubbly chirrup, no less irresistible. ‘You remember the house? 10 St Vigeans Road. I’ll see you in, what, ten minutes?’

‘Make it five,’ said David.

His head spun slightly as he put down the phone, but he took the stairs two at a time back up to his room to get the car keys, and was out the front door in twenty seconds flat.

Such a beautiful setting on such a peaceful evening, it was hard to accept a life being snuffed out in this place. The sandstone of the cliffs seemed to glow in the late evening sunlight, as if the rock was resonating with the sun’s wavelengths, giving off its own light and heat in response. The North Sea seemed a different creature to the notorious icy beast that had claimed so many lives through the years, more like a gently purring cat at the heels of the land, ingratiating itself with little friendly lapping sounds. Nicola and David gazed out at the enormity of the sea, hypnotized by the white noise shush of the green-brown water.

‘Next stop Norway,’ said Nicola. David didn’t seem to hear, or was lost in his thoughts. Eventually he emerged from the trance he was in.

‘What?’

‘It’s something my dad always says looking out to sea. “Next stop Norway”, as if it was swimmable or something. As if you could just wander in like Reggie Perrin, and by teatime you’d be ensconced in a cottage on the banks of a fjord, feasting on a smorgasbord with some Nordic family decked out in big woolly jumpers. I really like that idea, making the massive, faceless sea seem small and personal.’

Nicola wondered why she’d brought David here – to the cliffs, to Arbroath at all. He’d looked a little shocked as they’d driven around town for a while, as if every corner they turned was unveiling new, horrific memories for him. Of course she knew that those memories weren’t horrific, he wasn’t a traumatized man for Christ’s sake, it’s just that the memories hadn’t been visited in a long, long time, without the visceral presence of the actual places to unearth them. For her the town was an organic entity, changing and developing, for better or worse, but for him it was maybe a place trapped in amber, buried in time, locked instantaneously in a moment, like Pompeii. It was a ridiculous way to look at a town, she thought, and he needed to stop looking at Arbroath, and his past, that way.

She turned her back on the sea and looked again at the small memorial stone. ‘In memory of Colin Anderson, who died here July 31st, 1988.’ It was a simple enough inscription on a three-foot, rough-hewn stone, the grey granite grain of it somehow out of place amongst all this sandstone. The rock under their feet seemed alive with possibilities, while the memorial stone reminded Nicola only of pallid death. Maybe it had been a mistake to come here, she thought. What was to be gained? She looked out over the fields inland from the cliffs, the low potato plants still green in the ground, a couple of months yet before they could be picked. The rows of fields seemed to go on for miles, somehow further than the sea she had been looking at, because of the parallel lines drawing her eye to infinity.

‘Whose are the flowers, do you think?’ David was looking at the stone. A bunch of wilted carnations, dirty white and jaundiced yellow, lay at the foot of the stone, kept in place by a rock.