And the Land Lay Still

by James Robertson

  ‘It’s what you want,’ Sam called. And Mike knew he could go back, that half the reason he was breathless was because the choice was there. But it wasn’t what he wanted. Not like that. Not then and not there, and not with Sam.

  §

  They’ve just about finished the Highland Park. Mike shares out the last half-inch and indicates the Clynelish on the table. ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘Very unwise,’ Jean says. ‘But we don’t have to drink it all, do we?’

  Mike fetches it over, feeling the malt waves crash through him. Earlier he brought a big jug of water and a couple more glasses through from the kitchen, and when he remembers to do so he gulps down some water to offset the whisky. Jean doesn’t bother. He takes the Clynelish out of its box but doesn’t open it.

  ‘If we drink even a quarter of this we will die,’ he says.

  ‘Aye we will,’ Jean says. ‘But we’re going to anyway, remember?’

  ‘You are. I’m not ready yet.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You’ve corrupted me. When I first met you I didn’t drink this stuff. Made me throw up.’

  ‘You were a bairn. You had a lot of growing up to do.’

  ‘Aye. You’re not wrong there.’

  ‘You were still trying out lassies, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘Couldn’t make my mind up.’

  ‘It wasn’t about your mind, of course. Or it was but only because you needed to chase the fear and ignorance out of it.’

  ‘We all needed to do that,’ he says. ‘You knew right away, didn’t you?’

  ‘Pretty much. Don’t ask me how, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell you. You had to find out for yourself. And you did.’

  ‘Do you remember Catriona MacKay? Who came down from Inverness, and I thought she was the one?’

  ‘You thought you thought she was the one. The lovely Catriona. Drank like a fish. Aye, I do remember her. She had a very fine voice.’

  ‘We were almost an item for a few weeks in my first year. We really liked each other and I feel bad about it now because she didn’t know what was wrong and I didn’t know for certain so I couldn’t tell her.’

  ‘You don’t need to feel bad about it. She was growing up too.’

  ‘We were both so inexperienced. She was doing Languages. She was going to be a teacher. It was when the power cuts were happening because of the three-day week, and we’d been here one evening and were both a bit drunk and she said I could go back to her flat and we could save electricity by having a shower together. Remember all that stuff? Save hot water, shower with a friend? So that’s what we did. She suggested it as a joke and then we both realised we were going to do it and suddenly it wasn’t a joke. We hadn’t even kissed properly up till then. We kissed on the way to her flat and a bit more in her bedroom and then we got undressed and went through to the bathroom. I remember we held hands crossing the hallway. If there was anybody else in the flat they were asleep. We stood in the bath under the shower in the dark until the hot water ran out and it was lovely but I knew it wasn’t right. She had a beautiful body, perfect skin. I remember us kissing and the water running into our mouths and me soaping her breasts and her thighs and her bum and then her doing me, she was soaping me down there and it should have been the start of something but it wasn’t. I closed my eyes and it wasn’t her I imagined being there with, even though I didn’t have anybody in mind it wasn’t a her. Then we towelled each other dry and went to bed and hugged each other and she said, “Mike, is it you or is it me?” And I said, “It’s me.” And she said, “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” which was when I really knew, for certain, and then we went to sleep and when we woke up it was like we were just friends, like I was one of her girlfriends or something, and I walked out of her flat and I finally knew who I was.’

  Jean is smiling. Mike has the vague sense of having woken from a dream.

  ‘Did I just say all that?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Jesus, I must be pissed.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ Jean says. ‘We’re way past that.’

  He smiles back at her. She even looks quite healthy again.

  ‘The lovely Catriona,’ she says. ‘She was out for fun, that was clear. I wonder what happened to her.’

  ‘She got serious in the ’80s,’ he says. ‘Very active in Gaelic, environmentalism, land ownership, those issues. I think she gave up teaching to concentrate on all of that. She stays in Glasgow. I haven’t seen her for years.’ He thinks, I still have an address for her, I’ll invite her to the opening.

  ‘Those were called fringe issues back then,’ Jean says. ‘They’re mainstream now.’

  ‘And it’s great that they are, but you lose something when you stop being on the edge. Things get sanitised, normalised. Somehow it’s disappointing.’

  ‘The realisation of hope always is. That’s why the early years of devolution were such a let-down. We expected miracles and we got the mundane.’

  After a few moments she goes on. ‘I wonder what happened to all those other people who came through my door. Most of them were hopeful, I think. I wonder where they all ended up, and if they’re disappointed. God, there were a lot of them over the years.’

  And suddenly the memory clicks into place for Mike. ‘Jesus, that’s who that was!’

  ‘Who what was?’

  ‘I saw this guy today, in a café. He used to come here. I just didn’t recognise him because he looked that much older. Out of context. But it was him, definitely. Duffelcoat Dick.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Do you not remember him?’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘Older than us students. He wasn’t one of us, but he wasn’t one of the people we came to listen to either. Like yourself, or Walter. He always wore a brown duffelcoat. I think he thought it made him look like a student, but actually it made him look like a prat. Like a middle-aged man pretending to be a schoolboy. That’s what we called him, Duffelcoat Dick, but his real name was … No, I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Oh, him,’ Jean says. ‘He called himself Peter.’

  ‘Peter, that’s it. He was sitting in this café in the Grassmarket reading a paper. No duffelcoat and thirty-five years older, looking pretty rough, but it was him all right. Amazing.’

  ‘Not really. Edinburgh’s a wee place. Scotland’s a wee place.’

  ‘Aye, but still …’

  ‘He was a spook,’ Jean says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that. He was a spook. A spy. He worked for the Intelligence services.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I can’t prove it, but I know I’m right. We were bound to attract the attention of the Brits, Mike, even though we weren’t doing anything wrong. We had all sorts dropping in on us back then. It was a very worrying time for the defenders of the Union, poor dears.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘I told you, you were a bairn. We had one lad who used to come who’d been mixed up in some of that tartan terrorism business. His pals had bombed an oil pipeline or an electricity substation or something and he’d been on the edge of it, although I think it was mostly wishful thinking on his part.’

  ‘We’ve all done our share of that,’ Mike says.

  ‘Anyway, this boy used to get drunk and talk about blowing up the Duke of Sutherland’s statue at Golspie. The Highland lassies loved that idea. Do you not mind him?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I wasn’t here all the time.’

  ‘Well, if you had folk like that calling on you, you were bound to get visits from the Secret Service too. They assumed we were some kind of cell. What kind of cell I’ve no idea, but that Peter, that Duffelcoat Dick, he came along to investigate.’

  ‘What did he find? Did I miss some bomb-making workshops?’

  ‘He found a lot of people beginning to think themselves into a new place, a new country – some consciously, some unconscio
usly, but that’s what was happening. He dropped in for about six months on and off, between the first General Election in 1974 and the second one. Remember that? Two General Elections in a year. The Nats did well in February but they did even better in October. Anyway, I was fed up with him. He never contributed anything, he just sat around drinking other people’s wine and I’d had enough. I cornered him in the kitchen, it was just him and me and I said, “What is it you’re looking for?” and he said, “A corkscrew,” and I said, “You know what I mean,” and I shut the door and stood with my back to it. I said, “You sneak into my home and sit in the shadows with your lugs waggling like antennae and you think I don’t know who you are? Don’t worry, I’m not going to blow your cover, but what’s so special about us?” ’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said, “There’s nothing special about you. Do you think this is the only place I go?” And I said, “I don’t care where else you go or who else you like eavesdropping on, but I’m interested to know what you’re doing here.” He said, “The same as I’m doing everywhere. I’m trying to gauge whether we’ve reached point critical.” And I said, “Meaning what?” He said, “The point of no return. The point where you can’t stop it even if you want to.” “And have we?” I said. “No,” he said. “This will all pass. They’re not ready.” And I said, “Who? The people through in the other room?” And he said, “The people in general.” So I said, “Well, then, you’ll not need to come here any more, will you?” And I opened the kitchen door and stepped aside and he went down the passage and let himself out and I never saw him again.”

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Aye. But you know the funny thing? He was smiling at me as we were talking, quite friendly like, and when he was telling me we weren’t ready for independence – because that’s what he was saying, we weren’t ready so it wasn’t going to happen – it wasn’t like he was dismissing it, or us. It wasn’t like he was chalking up a victory. It was like an objective assessment.’

  ‘If he was a spook that would have been his job, to assess and report back.’

  ‘That’s true, he would have had a control. But there was something about him that made me think he was out on his own. Like he’d lost them, or they’d lost him. Lost control, you could say. You know those lines from Yeats? The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. I don’t think he was necessarily opposed to the idea of an independent Scotland. I think he quite liked it.’

  ‘And you really think he was a spook?’

  ‘He wasn’t the only one. They were getting pretty paranoid about Scotland. We were a hard one for them to get their wee heads around. I mean, Northern Ireland was easier for them to understand – there were bad guys shooting at them. They kept thinking all hell was going to break loose here too and it kept not happening. When I showed your man Duffelcoat Dick the exit, as he went by me I said, “Do you think we’ll ever be ready?” and he looked at me – I remember this as clear as anything – and he said, “Couldn’t tell you, Jean. We might just drift into it without meaning to.” I often think of him saying that. Maybe that is what we’re doing, drifting; but we know it’s happening and we like the direction of travel. We’re on a journey and sooner or later we’ll get to wherever we’re going.’

  §

  As soon as Catriona and he had redefined their relationship, Mike was hit by an overwhelming need to make up for lost time. He was nineteen and had no sexual experience. Suddenly he wanted to do for real things he’d hardly allowed himself to imagine. Where did you start, where did you go? There were a few very camp students at the art college, but he felt he had nothing in common with them except his sexuality. He thought of the places Sam had mentioned. He didn’t want to run into Sam again but maybe those places would be his way in.

  He opted for the Kenilworth in Rose Street. Everybody knew its reputation, so simply pushing through its doors was an act of self-recognition. But he was very nervous. He bought a pint and got talking to an older man sitting at the bar who said his name was John and that he was a lawyer. Maybe it was and maybe he was, it was no less likely than that Mike’s name was Mike and he was a student. John was guarded at first. Later he explained that in his professional life he sometimes had to deal with men facing ruin because they had fallen for handsome young policemen in public toilets. When the pub closed, everybody spilled on to the street and headed en masse towards Frederick Street. ‘Crawford’s Tearooms,’ John explained. ‘Last chance for a cup of something and a fairy cake. It’s fun, but you and I don’t need to go there tonight.’ His home was in Heriot Row and he invited Mike back. It was a basement flat, stylish and expensive. He made coffee in a cafetière and they went into the sitting room and John closed the shutters and put some Bach on the stereo. All of this – the cafetière, the shutters, the classical music – was new to Mike and so was the kissing and fondling on the settee that followed. Then John said, ‘What do you like?’ ‘This,’ Mike said, ‘I like this.’ ‘Do you like to gie it or take it?’ There was something wonderfully salacious about the fact that he said gie, just the one word like that. ‘I’m not sure,’ Mike said. ‘This your first time, eh?’ John said. ‘Well, we’ve got all night.’ And they had. John pushed him out of the door at five o’clock in the morning. ‘I don’t do relationships,’ he said, ‘but we can do that again some time if you want.’

  By nightfall that same day Mike wanted very much to do it again. At nine o’clock he walked down Lothian Road past the glassy, bright, scary bars Eric the medic said it was best for students to avoid at the weekend, and crossed over to the New Town. He went down the steps to John’s flat and rang the bell. Nothing happened, although a light was on. He rang again. He heard movement, and the door was opened on the chain.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. He half-expected John to be fresh from the bath, in his silk dressing gown, but he was fully dressed, in jacket and tie. The door was not unchained.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ John whispered. There was no trace of the previous night’s kindness in his voice. Then, loudly: ‘No thanks, goodnight.’ And the whisper again: ‘Don’t ever, ever, come here like this again. Understand?’ The door shut in Mike’s face. He heard John’s voice retreating down the hall. ‘Jehovah’s bloody Witnesses, can you believe it, at this time of night?’

  That was a lesson. A few weeks later he saw John again, in another bar, and he apologised, and so did John. The thing was, John said, there were rules. Some played by one set of rules, some by another. With him, the rule was, you met in a public place. Then maybe you went home, maybe you didn’t. But you didn’t just turn up. Anybody could just turn up, and that was risky. Anybody could already be there. John wasn’t really ‘out’. Most of the men he knew, professional men, weren’t. ‘And another thing,’ he said, tapping Mike’s camera in its case (he’d been taking pictures earlier in the evening, and still had it with him). ‘Leave that at home. That makes me nervous.’

  §

  He told Isobel. He knew it would upset her, which was why he told her. He’d already told Angus. Telling them in that order was also calculated to upset Isobel.

  Angus said he didn’t give a damn. Mike was disappointed. He’d hoped for a little more than that.

  Isobel said, ‘You can’t be.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because … because …’

  ‘Because you never thought it would happen to you?’ Mike said. ‘And before you start trying to make excuses, it isn’t a phase and I don’t need to see a doctor. This is who I am, so you may as well get used to it.’

  She kept looking at him as if trying to spot the difference between Michael at Christmas and this new, adulterated Michael. They were in the kitchen, he at the table, she backed up against the worktop where she’d been making a pie. Her hands were covered in flour, and she held them away from her as if they cradled an invisible bomb.

  ‘Nothing’s changed,’ he said. ‘The only thing that’s
changed is now we both know.’

  ‘Of course something’s changed,’ she snapped. ‘How could you?’

  ‘How could I what?’ He’d come home to appal her, and she was appalled. Now he could be angry with her. He’d brought an overnight bag but he’d be going straight back to Edinburgh. Perhaps somewhere deep inside he’d hoped for a miracle, an acceptance, a new and better understanding between them. And perhaps he’d just wanted to hurt her.

  ‘Do those things,’ she said in a shocked whisper. ‘I can’t bear to think about it.’ And she went to the sink to wash her hands.

  ‘Then don’t,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking you to. I’m just not going to go on pretending I’m something I’m not. You must have had an idea, surely?’

  ‘Why would I have suspected that? You always seemed perfectly normal to me.’

  ‘Maybe you weren’t paying attention,’ he said. ‘When I was at home, that is.’

  She spun round, hands dripping. ‘Oh, you’re going to blame it on being sent to boarding school, is that it?’

  ‘I’m not blaming anything. I don’t feel bad about it, not any more. I feel good about it.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad for you, Michael,’ she said, ‘because I don’t.’ She dried her hands and stood in the middle of the room with them on her hips. ‘And before you accuse me of not paying you attention, when was the last time you gave me any consideration? Well? And how long have you “known”?’ He could hear her putting the inverted commas round the word.

  ‘Not long enough,’ he said. ‘But I do now.’ He twisted the knife a little further. ‘And so does Dad.’

  ‘For God’s sake, you’ve not told him, have you?’

  ‘On the phone, yes.’

  ‘And he approves?’

  ‘He doesn’t disapprove.’

  ‘He wouldn’t, would he? He’s always indulged you. The only thing I can say is you didn’t get that from him.’