Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  ‘That’s what I’m doing just now. Spa weekend in the Lakes. I just buried my sister – no, don’t say you’re sorry. You’re not and I’m not, and that’s fine. Organizing a funeral is a lot of work, so I’m going somewhere nice and far away to pay someone young and foreign to cover me in deep sea mud or whatever they call it and bring me a glass of champagne. Have you ever done anything like that? No? Well, you’re missing out. There’s a whole world out there designed to take your money and spoil you in return. It’s not going to fix any of this, duck, but it will help you begin to get past it. If you ask a silly old lady.’

  They drifted into silence until the announcement – ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be approaching Oxenholme. The woman looked up as Ida began to gather her things. Huge, lost eyes. Ida pulled her coat on and bent down.

  ‘Not here – this one’s mine – but why don’t you get off at the next stop. Penrith or Carlisle or something. Go to the taxi rank, ask the driver to take you to the most expensive hotel in the area.’

  The woman shrugged a bit.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Ida said. She grabbed her purse and took out five twenties, pushed them across the table. ‘You’ll need more, but that’s a good start.’

  ‘I can’t –’

  ‘Well, I’m not taking it back, so it’s either you or a big fat tip for that rude little ticket inspector. Go on.’

  ‘Why are you –?’

  ‘Because of the silence, duck. Because I know the silence.’

  The woman blinked.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. I don’t think you’re a silly old lady, by the way.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ida. She pulled up the little handle of her smart new suitcase and stepped off the train. She thought of that woman running herself a big, deep bath, of the feeling of muscles unclenching in hot water. Perhaps this was the person she was going to be now, after May, after Reg, for the next twenty years or however long it pleased God to give her. It didn’t feel half bad.

  Scotland on Sunday, September 2013

  Telling It Like It Is

  Your week in politics with Brian McConn

  Another day, another bona fide Scottish sleb zooms up the M24 and crashes into the independence debate.

  This week’s dose of low-wattage star power comes courtesy of Clio Campbell, who you might remember from her 1990s one-hit wonder … no?

  Well how about that literal crime-scene of an album she came out with a few years ago, where she encouraged a bunch of East London thugs to urinate – I’m sorry, ‘rap’ – all over the work of our great bard Robert Burns while she trilled an off-key lesbian take on ‘Highland Mary’? Forgotten that too? Lucky old you. Some of us haven’t yet managed to scrub it from our brains.

  Anyway, unlike her luvvie brethren in the cause (Alan Cumming and Brian Cox, to name but two), Miss Campbell has had the good grace to actually gift us her presence and (one presumes) tax monies before she began pronouncing on our constitutional question.

  ‘I just felt a pull to come home again,’ she said, loftily, in an interview granted to a pro-Nat website famed for its disregard for the spellchecker. ‘I’ve travelled all across Europe to protest injustice, only to discover a really inspiring fight right here on my doorstep. I was taking a break from London to support the amazing work of the anti-austerity movement in Greece, and talking to the people there, seeing their passion for bringing about change to their own home, I suddenly knew that Glasgow, not London, was the place for me to be.’

  While it’s still unclear what exactly is so ‘inspiring’ to a so-called freedom fighter about supporting Big Eck’s sleazy wee power-grab, at least we can count on this seasoned political campaigner to bring a much-needed touch of gravitas to the Yes campaign, eh?

  Well, not exactly.

  Miss Campbell made her entrance into the political arena with an appearance on BBC Scotland’s Big Debate programme, hosted at Glasgow University with an all-student audience. Joining her on the panel were a couple of Nat wannabes from organizations with names like ‘Business for Scotland’ and ‘English Scots for Yes’ (all suspiciously Scottish-accented and un-business-suited, but they’ll doubtlessly pop up on an SNP selection list near you soon), against the Right Honourable Gordon Duke MP, the well-spoken if quiet Lib Dem Mary Jackson, and the economist and voice of reason Jack Heughan. Really, though, it doesn’t matter who else was there, as the event descended into a shouting match between Miss Campbell and Mr Duke, who, a source informs me, may have been romantically involved, back in the day. Easy to see why that’s no longer the case. Screaming and shouting from the first moment Mr Duke dared to challenge one of her florid and sentimental assertions about the essentially left-wing nature of the Scottish psyche (which, as a Labour politician who has represented Glasgow constituencies for twenty-five years while she’s been travelling London and Europe, one might assume he knows something about), anything melodic about the so-called singer’s voice was lost in a banshee-like screech, which brought to mind the hysterical pitch of a maiden aunt lecturing boys in the street for running too quickly.

  ‘Judas!’ she whined at him, standing up and pointing a witchy fingernail, while the students in the audience, apparently unfamiliar with Miss Campbell’s ‘cool’ former career as a pop star several years before their birth, sniggered openly.

  Judging from a recent Yes Campaign press release, we can look forward to further interventions on the subject from Miss Campbell. They seem somewhat proud of their newest recruit, and good on them. What this debate was really missing was some authentic fishwife sensibility.

  DONALD

  Glasgow and Achiltibuie, 2004

  Pub gig, with Phil and Aly, in Glasgow. Morna had come down with him; they’d splashed out on a hotel and were making a holiday of it. It would do them for a honeymoon until they could properly afford to go abroad. The next day they were going to go to that big museum, maybe get a fancy dinner, and Morna had her eye on some of the shops.

  There was a tiny stage, and brighter light than he’d been accustomed to; he could only tell the place was packed by the bobbing silhouettes of heads. One eejit down the front kept shouting ‘Hoooooch!’, in a loud, exaggerated American twang.

  Afterwards, while the main act played, the eejit approached. Yellow teeth, a frayed look about him, his eyes faded from too much sunlight. Something desperate plastered over with a manic smile, his hair almost completely gone on top. If it weren’t for the beard, silver flecking the darkened auburn but still magnificent, Donald wouldn’t have known him.

  ‘Brother,’ he said, holding out his arms. American word. It was not a way they’d ever addressed each other. ‘You’re a hard man to track down, Donald Bain. A hard man. And the softest.’

  Donald pulled Malcolm in, held him closer than he ever had, now it was safe to.

  ‘You loved that man a long time,’ Morna would say, the day before the funeral. ‘Well before I came along. Go on. It’s OK to admit that.’

  Malcolm smelled of sweat and dirt and piss and whisky, much of it rising from the massive, grimy fisherman’s sweater he’d thrown over the top of himself.

  ‘Malcolm, man. What are you doing here?’

  ‘In this bar, or in Scotland?’ And he laughed too much at this.

  ‘Scotland. It’s not unusual for Malcolm Campbell to be in a bar. Right, come on over here. You’re going to tell me everything. And I need you to meet my wife.’

  ‘Your wife?’ Malcolm chuckled, an unpleasant noise. ‘OK. OK, brother.’

  Partly fearing an interjection from the friends Malcolm had failed to make in the crowd, Donald moved him quickly across the bar to the table Morna had huddled up at, still on her first gin and tonic.

  ‘Morna. Morna lass. You’re never going to believe – this is Malcolm. Malcolm Campbell.’

  ‘Your Malcolm?’

  ‘Aye. Aye. He’s here. Well, of course he is. Sit yourself down, Malcolm.’

  Sensing Morna was less than taken with him
, Malcolm concentrated the still-considerable remnants of his charm on her for the next half hour or so. Donald had always been impressed with this in their youth, the way Malcolm could win round the stubbornest opinion if he put his mind to it; he saw it now as a desperate flail. Malcolm just couldn’t stand that someone in his immediate vicinity wasn’t convinced by him. It was sad, Donald thought, to be still so paranoid, so desperate for approval, at the age they were.

  Gradually, over a couple of rounds, the story came out. Anouli had finally thrown Malcolm out after fifteen years of touring and gigging and fighting and drinking. Donald was impressed – he wouldn’t have bet on that relationship lasting longer than any other in Malcolm’s life. Failing to make a name for himself outside of her legend, Malcolm had barrelled round the bluegrass-and-folk circuit in Kentucky for a while, then bagged himself up on board a Greyhound bus and, reading between the lines, had become a vagrant. He spoke of Hank Williams and Bob Dylan, of riding the trains, the camaraderie of the road and the noble American tradition of wandering; Donald and Morna heard sleeping in doorways, eating off the streets, soup kitchens. Eventually, he’d been taken to hospital after a heart attack, and on being unable to pay the bills it had been discovered that his visa was long-expired. ‘Forcibly deported,’ he said with some pride. ‘So I arrived back in Glasgow and decided to become a drain on the good old NHS, eh?’

  Morna looked over at Donald. ‘Malcolm, where are you staying just now?’

  He waved a hand. ‘With good people.’

  ‘OK,’ Morna said. ‘Well, I’m going to pay a visit to the ladies’ room.’

  ‘You couldn’t make yourself look lovelier, my darling, trust me on that.’

  Coming out of anyone else’s mouth that line would have clunked, but Donald was amazed to see even his stoic Morna simper slightly as she turned away. The scarecrow turned those pale eyes, suddenly full of purpose, back to Donald.

  ‘A good woman you’ve got there. I hope you don’t mind me saying that I’m surprised to see you, ah … settled. I’d always thought – ach, never mind man. Never mind. Now, tell me. Where’s my daughter? Where’s my girl, the big celebrity? Oh aye, I know all about her. It wasn’t much news in the States, but my sister wrote me when she had her big hit song, and I used the internet at the library a wee while back. Incredible, these things they have now, isn’t it. But nobody seems to know where she is any more. That thrawn bitch her mother wouldn’t help me and if you ask me, I don’t think she had a bloody clue.’

  ‘Cliodhna and Eileen had a fight, when she was about sixteen, that’s right,’ Donald said, slowly, feeling the pub grow closer and hotter around his collar. ‘I don’t know if they keep in touch that much.’

  ‘Knew it!’ Malcolm’s eyes gleamed with the triumph of his victory, even all those decades later. The slights Eileen had committed had clearly not been forgiven. ‘I thought so. And it seems to me you might be the only person who knows how to find her. I found an article where she talks about going on tour with her Uncle Donnie. The man who taught her everything she knows about music. Everything she knows.’

  Donald drew breath. Of course Malcolm was here with a purpose. Of course he was.

  ‘I haven’t seen Clio in a couple of years, Malcolm. She gets in touch when she wants. She has her ways. Last I heard, she was living in London. She’s active, is that girl. Politics and the like. She’s always going to the demos and whatnot – I’ve had to bail her out a couple of times. Doesn’t settle down.’ He raised his glass. ‘Like her daddy, there.’

  ‘Pfff. Politics. That’s her mother’s nonsense, that. I had hoped – I’d thought maybe you might have got all that out of her.’ There was a note of accusation there that Donald felt unable to tolerate.

  ‘Well, I took her in at sixteen, fed her, got her music lessons, helped her get into college, got her started on the gig circuit. I didn’t need to do any of that. I’m not even officially her godfather.’

  ‘And I thank you for that, Donald. Really I do—’

  ‘We’ll not have this conversation again, Malcolm. Not twenty years on. I will say that had you wanted to have any influence in the girl’s life you should have actually been there. She’s a fine woman, is Cliodhna. She’s strong and honest and she speaks her mind, she’s got a beauty of a voice, and she’s trying to make a difference in the world. Any father would be proud of a daughter like that, even if she’s not really what you’d call conventional in her lifestyle.’

  ‘Donald. Donald. I just want to see her. Tell me how. Please.’

  His face had dropped. The swagger, the charms, the façade: all gone. Malcolm was alone and lost, and needing, needing so badly. Donald noticed waxy tones to his skin, a greyish film mugging up the whites of his eyes.

  ‘How long have you got, Malcolm?’

  They both sat there for a second.

  ‘They’re saying eight months. Maybe.’

  Morna had been standing there, just behind them, not wanting to intrude. Now she bustled herself into the empty seat.

  ‘Well now. You’ll be coming back up north with us tomorrow, Malcolm, unless you’ve got anything else on? We’ve a few spare rooms, and it’s not tourist season. You can lend Donald here a hand with his bits and bobs, maybe you could do a wee jam session in the pub together from time to time? They like that. Where are you staying tonight, anyway? Donald, I think we could probably get Malcolm a hotel room, could we not? Maybe not where we’re staying, but thereabouts. You’ll get a good breakfast, and we’ll come and pick you up about ten. What do you say, yes?’

  Donald looked at this woman, this miracle of a woman, and wanted to bury himself in her, raise her on high above the shoulders of the crowd around the bar, take out an advert in the newspaper in her honour.

  ‘Are you sure, love?’ he asked, later that night, as they curled together in the big clean sheets of the hotel bed. ‘It won’t be easy. Caring for the sick never is, and he’s not going to be the most patient of patients.’

  ‘Donald Bain. Didn’t you always tell me the man was more family to you than your family? Even given everything he’s done, you care for family. It’s what you do.’

  Donald was surprised to see Malcolm actually sitting there, on the steps of the bed and breakfast they’d found for him, the next morning, a crumpled plastic bag at his feet. He’d showered, and he took the new jumper Morna had bought for him (her one bit of shopping in the big city, as it happened) docile as a lamb. In the car on the way up, he mostly slept in the back seat, unless roused by a particular tune on the cassette player, mumbling still-sweet harmonies through his beard.

  There are no recordings of Malcolm Campbell singing. Donald had thought that Anouli might have something, even a live session that he’d sung back-up on, but she replied, weeks after he’d contacted her through her record label, to say that there was nothing left. She’d destroyed some songs they’d been working on together after she’d thrown him out. Drunken rage. No fury like a woman scorned, ha? Oh Jesus, I can’t believe he’s gone, she said.

  Donald had woken with a powerful need to get out of the house that day. It smelled of illness, and they couldn’t open the windows as the draughts were too sharp. He could hear Morna downstairs, her radio on as she clicked about the kitchen. He pulled the trousers he’d worn yesterday over his pyjamas, walked quietly past Malcolm’s door.

  ‘I’m going out, love.’

  ‘Out? You’ve nothing on today, have you?’

  ‘No no. I just want a bit of air. ‘

  ‘Well, hold on and I’ll make you a spot of breakfast first, then.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’ve not got an appetite.’

  ‘At least take a bit of bread for when you’re up there, eh?’

  He did it to appease her more than anything, and she left it there, waved him off at the window. Maybe it was having come to each other so late in life, but he and Morna always knew to allow the other one a wee bit of breathing room when it was needed. His fingers closed around the bread,
wrapped in a tea towel, in the pocket of his coat, and he began breaking it into little pieces as he walked.

  The night before, Malcolm had been quiet. They’d sat up staring at the fire after Morna had gone to bed, blankets over their knees like the old men their fathers never got to be. Donald had got up to change the record occasionally ­– he’d been playing old songs by their contemporaries – until Malcolm had asked for it to stop.

  ‘I don’t want to use my ears tonight, Donald Bain.’

  And so they’d sat. Donald found himself drifting off at one point, but Malcolm’s eyes had stayed open. Eventually Donald had eased himself out of the chair, and said, gently,

  ‘We’ll need to be turning in, Malcolm.’

  Malcolm had nodded, taken an age to raise his thin bones to standing, and shuffled out of the door without looking back.

  ‘Night night, then,’ Donald had said to his back, as he went about damping down the embers.

  The next morning, with bread in his pocket, he kept himself out for hours, up in the foothills around Stac Pollaidh. His feet beat paths he knew without him having to direct them.

  As he found himself back in the valley, it started raining. That fine kind of misty rain, the sort that soaks you through before you’ve noticed it properly. Well, he deserved much more for his cowardice. Himself out here on the moors, hiding from it. Leaving poor Morna to deal with it all. Well, wasn’t it women’s work? Nursing, wiping, anything to do with the body. Morna had raised three children. She had the patience and the nerve for the job. She wasn’t the woman to run away from a house because of a feeling, for God’s sake, and that’s who you’d want at your deathbed, wouldn’t you? Strong. Staunch. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d get home and Morna and Malcolm would be sitting at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of tea.