The Museum of Doubt

by James Meek

  He never said but I reckon it was something about the six months he did for dangerous driving that got him on the apocrypha thing. He’d been terrified of getting beaten up or abused or whatever in jail and tried to keep in with the authorities on both sides by writing pornographic stories to order. And maybe after a while the sex fantasies began to fray and it began to show that there was a hunger for something else, tiny legends of a world outside, and he began to slip them in: that it wasn’t just the smooth slender bodies twining over the sheet which got the screws and lifers going but the insistence in parenthesis that the ancient Egyptians had abandoned goat-hair duvets for duck-down ones when they discovered the aphrodisiac qualities of the now extinct Nilotic eider.

  Almost everyone had been amazed he got sent down, he was so middle class, even the advocate was embarrassed, he hurried away afterwards and didn’t speak to anyone. I wasn’t surprised, though. Arnold was a dangerous driver. He’s a dangerous driver now. Whatever they did to him in prison, it didn’t change his overtaking habits. It was a gamble on a blind summit and he lost, collided with a car full of students from England. He killed two of them. Arnold went into an airbag but his wife in the passenger seat didn’t have one. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Perhaps she’d been as unhappy as that. I don’t know. Anyway she went through the windscreen head-first. Straight away you imagine it happening in slow motion but it doesn’t, of course, you don’t see it like that any more than you see the flight of a shell from a gun. There’s a loud noise and in an instant, like a badly edited film, it jumps, it’s all arranged across the road, perfectly, peacefully, the broken cars, the glass, the bodies and the wheels spinning slowly.

  Arnold was 36, same as me. His wife died about the time my divorce came through. Since the trial he’d seen even less of Jenny than I had. She didn’t think he’d killed her deliberately, no-one did. Before the accident Jenny said she liked the way he drove. Afterwards she didn’t hate her father: nothing so passionate. She went off him. She’d just started at art college and got a flat and never went round to see him any more, in jail or out. When they paroled him I expected him to take to drink, I don’t know why. He went teetotal and as soon as he got his licence back he was driving worse than before. That’s to say he was a good driver, very skillful, but always found a way to drive that was out beyond the edges of his skill and relied on luck to fill the space between.

  I’d left my watch at home. The clock above the bar said 10.25 and the last boat was at 11. Someone told me that the landlord always set the clock ten minutes fast, so that left a good three quarters of an hour to get to Queensferry. You couldn’t rely on Arnold to use that time well, though. Of course everyone ran the risk that they might die on their way home from the pub. A loose slate might fall on their heads, or they might have a heart attack, get stabbed. What else could happen? There could be an earthquake. A predator could escape from the zoo. A predator could escape from his mates. But the chances were infinitessimal. It wasn’t something you thought about: Better watch on my way home from the pub in case I get killed. Driving with Arnold it was. Even if the chances of death doubled at the third decimal place, you wouldn’t put money on it, there was only one life. To have four gin and tonics and then go out the door thinking and now, perhaps, the afterlife, now, even before morning.

  Arnold was coming over. Need a lift? he said.

  No thanks.

  He nodded at the door. I don’t think Siobhan’s coming back. Did you say something?

  Yes.

  Arnold jiggled his car keys. Last boat at 11, he said.

  I’ll get a cab.

  Come on.

  No really Arnie, it’s great of you, I appreciate it, but I’m fine, I’m doing all right, taxis are good, they’re cheap, they’re reliable, they’re fast. Fast enough, I mean. Not too – yeah, fast enough. Don’t want to have you going out of your way.

  He looked hurt. He fidgeted with his keys and looked around. He did seem astoundingly calm and sober for an Edinburgh pub on a Friday night. Con, he said, I don’t understand you. We’ve been drinking in this place for the past two years and we both know where we go at closing time. It’s not like we’re strangers. What is the deal with these taxis? D’you not get embarrassed when you’re getting out of the cab on the quayside and you see me driving up the ramp? D’you think I avoid the moon deck bar on a Friday night cause I like the Stoker’s Lounge better?

  I had wondered about that. My face went the colour of the carpet in the Stoker’s Lounge. It’d been stupid to think he hadn’t noticed me trying to avoid him on the boat all this time.

  I’m sorry, Arnie, I said. I don’t like the way you drive.

  I hadn’t meant to say that. Anyway, he was alive, was he not?

  I know, said Arnold. But I’m more careful now.

  No you’re not. I’ve seen the way you go down the Queensferry Road.

  That’s just the way it looks. That is me being careful. I don’t hit anything. I never hit anything. I make sure now. I’ve made sure ever since that time. It’s a science, it’s dynamics. Anyway, there’s plenty of time, there’s no need to hurry.

  The clock said 10.35, i.e. 10.25, so he was right, there was plenty of time. And even though I’d seen him shoot past and slot his car at 60 through a space you wouldn’t try to park in, I’d never actually driven with him.

  If you’re so worried about the taxi, said Arnold, you can give me a fiver if you like. He grinned.

  A fiver? To Queensferry? I could get to Inverness on a fiver. And still have money left over for a deep-fried Brie supper and a chilled Vimto.

  Make it ten then.

  We went out to the car. We hadn’t got there before he’d hit me with some new apocrypha which might’ve made me change my mind if I hadn’t been thinking along the same lines, so much that I was hardly aware he’d said it.

  The dice you’d need to roll to reflect the chances of your being involved in a car accident on any one trip, he said, would have so many faces that without a powerful microscope it would be indistinguishable from a perfect sphere.

  What was that? I said, fastening the seatbelt. He repeated it while he started the car.

  Bet you didn’t sell that to News International, I said.

  No. I just thought of that one. It’s not for sale.

  Private apocrypha, eh.

  He didn’t say anything. That didn’t bother me because I was looking at the digital clock on his dashboard. We were out on the road and moving. Arnold was driving at just under the speed limit in built-up areas. Cars were passing us. The clock said 10.35.

  Your clock’s wrong, I said.

  I know, he said.

  Right.

  They were going to change the name to Kingsferry, said Arnold. In honour of the king who died falling off the cliff, you know, trying to catch the boat late at night.

  That’s not such a good one, Arnie. Don’t think you’d get far with that.

  It’s true! I’m off work now. No apocrypha in my free time. It’s true.

  Why would they call it Kingsferry? They didn’t start calling Dallas Dead Presidentville after Kennedy got shot there.

  Because that’s what it’s about. It’s not about folk crossing the river.

  It is as far as I’m concerned. They could call them South Ferry Ferry and North Ferry Ferry and that’d make sense to me.

  No, Con, said Arnold, turning to look at me, and even though we were still trundling along at 30, I wanted him to turn back and keep his eyes on the road. He looked worried for me, as if I was about to go out alone into the world without the things I needed to know to survive. If it was about folk crossing the river there’d be a bridge. A Forth road bridge. They could easily build one. It’d be open round the clock and no-one would ever have to be racing to get the last boat again.

  We’re not racing, though, ’cause we’ve got plenty of time.

  OK, but folk do. And they’re supposed to be all into public safety. I tell you what it is, it’s put ther
e deliberately. It’s a deliberate exception. Because they know you can’t resist it. You want it. You want a place in the country where you can be provoked into taking a risk without going out and looking for it too hard.

  No you don’t.

  You do Con. You know you do. There just aren’t enough real risks on the go, and you don’t want to go rock climbing or bungee jumping or kayaking, cause you’re getting on, and it’s too much trouble, and they take all the risk out of it anyway, it’s like a fairground ride, and you don’t want to go out looking for a fight, and violence in the pictures is just a wank … so you sit in the pub and you wait until you’re about to miss the ferry.

  Don’t talk this way, Arnie, it’s not good.

  It’s not that you want to die. You want to live. More than anything, you want to live, you want to have even just the next five minutes of your life, never mind seeing the sun come up again. Only there’s something that comes in between wanting one and wanting the other, it’s like a separation, you start believing two different things at the same time, that if you die, it’d be the end, and that you can die without actually dying. That you can watch it. That you can do it again. That it’d be interesting. You really believe that. It’s strange. I don’t understand it. D’you understand it?

  A horn opened up behind us and headlights flared through the rear windscreen. The car behind pulled out sharply and overtook with a roar of contempt. Our speed had dropped to 25. So far the only way we were going to die tonight was getting spannered by a fellow motorist. I wanted to talk about going faster. I wanted to talk about what happened to Arnold’s wife. I didn’t want to upset him.

  I’m not into the risk, I said. I was really wanting to get a lift with Siobhan and sit with her in the moon deck bar in the big white ship and go home.

  Arnold didn’t say anything. I hadn’t thought it was possible to drive any slower in high gear but it seemed we were slipping back to about bicycle pace. I remembered he’d been after Siobhan just after he’d got out, and I remembered he’d been sitting down there in the yeasty fug of the Stoker’s Lounge for two years while we’d been up there watching the lights of passing ships through the rain on the glass roof and the moon wax and wane over the flint-coloured water of the firth.

  We passed the Kwik-Fit garage. I turned round to check the time on the digital clock they had.

  Arnie, I said. Let’s talk about time.

  Despite his mastery of the laws of space and time, said Arnold, Albert Einstein never owned a watch and relied on friends to tell him what year it was.

  When we left the pub it was 10.25 by the clock, I said, which was ten minutes fast, so it was 10.15. Your clock said 10.35, but you agreed that was wrong.

  Stonehenge tells the time more accurately than the most sophisticated atomic clock.

  The Kwik-Fit clock we’ve just passed says 10.50.

  The landlord of the Faulkner Arms always sets his clock 10 minutes fast to make sure none of his customers misses the last boat to Fife.

  Christ, was it you told me that?

  I didn’t think you’d believe that one, said Arnold. He’s a landlord, isn’t he? His clock’s slow. So’s mine.

  I looked around. Accurate timekeeping by: Kwik-Fit. Arnold’s car had central locking, controlled from the driver’s seat. Traffic was shooting past. I had the impression we were standing still. But we must have been going at least as fast as a strong freestyle swimmer. Ten minutes to cover seven miles. Not at this rate. Siobhan would be on board already. She was great but it upset her that all I wanted to do was talk to her and loiter in her presence for as long as she happened to be around. She wanted love, or sex, or both, I wasn’t sure, which made it strange she’d put up with me for so long. One time we did come across Arnold on the big white ship, just when Siobhan was crying over something I’d said. There are people who treat crying as like sighing or yawning but I hate it, it’s a catastrophe. Once when I was wee there was a primary school trip to the city reservoir and we were walking along the foot of the dam wall and I saw some drops of water dribbling down the concrete by my head and I screamed to the teacher that the dam was about to burst. Everyone laughed and the teacher, who never missed an opportunity for a bit of child-battering, gave me a thump on the back of the head. I was relieved. I really had thought the dam was going to burst. What got me wasn’t so much the thought of all of us and Mrs Swynton getting swept away by a wall of water but the chest-hollowing innocence of the first little driblets, the inadequacy of the warning they were of the thousands of tons of dark, cold, merciless water pressing against the concrete. They did warn you, but they told you nothing of how deep and overwhelming their source was. I hadn’t cried since I was a boy. That was something I could have asked Pastor Samuel about.

  Arnold had tried to comfort her. It’d been terrible. She kept coming up against not liking him as much as she felt she should and he kept coming up against the fucking apocrypha every time something more than inane pleasantries were called for. He hadn’t been like that before. When I heard him telling her, instead of not to pay any attention to the crap I’d said, that 60 per cent of single women in their thirties were in stable relationships by the time they were forty, the thought of him scribbling away about fantasy women in his cell, struggling to meet some deadline for fear he’d get his head kicked in, and getting infected with the spores of instant harmless wee fictions for instant meaningless wee rewards, almost set me going without the pastor’s help.

  We were quiet up to the city boundary, him crawling along, leaning back in the seat, one hand on the wheel, ignoring the cars overtaking us, staring ahead, placid and blinking, and me trying to work out how to open the door, the effect on the fabric of the jacket of rolling and skidding for a few yards, the effect on the fabric of me, the result of grabbing the handbrake and pulling it sharply upwards, calculations of time, distance and speed, and what about going by Kincardine, a place of great and famous beauty by night.

  The moment the dual carriageway came in sight Arnold stamped on the accelerator and we were away. We had five minutes to get to the terminal. Once we were up to 90, I started to think we’d make it. By the time the needle shook on 110, I was thinking we wouldn’t.

  We’ll just fly across, then, I said.

  Arnold didn’t say anything. We came up behind a Mercedes dawdling along in the fast lane at 80 or so. With two sharp movements of the wheel, we slid into the slow lane and back again in front of the Merc, missing a rusting hatchback by the thickness of paintwork.

  Don’t do this, Arnie, I said. It’s not important. Slow down. We’ll get there.

  I thought you liked it, said Arnold. Just to see what happens.

  I never did anything to give you that idea.

  You fucked my daughter without wearing a condom, said Arnold.

  People get older suddenly. It builds up and comes breaking through. One instant the age you’ve been for years, the next, the age you’ll be for years to come. A dream one night, a drink, a cloud crossing the sun, a word, a thought, and you lurch backward into the next age like a drunk going over the balcony. I felt as if I’d been seized by eight relentless hands and had clingfilm pressed down over my face and body and I couldn’t fight it, it was becoming part of me and that was me for the rest of my life with this extra, unwanted, itching skin.

  As things stood the rest of my life was being measured out in red cat’s eyes beaded along the A90, and the vision of the long cat of after dark expired at the water’s edge, if not sooner. Arnold, I said, Arnie, wait, OK. Whatever you think, let’s talk. Let’s take time to talk. We’ll go down the waterfront and get a carryout and sit up all night and talk it over. All weekend if you want. I can’t talk when you’re driving like this. It’s putting the wind up me.

  Arnold laughed. Putting the wind up you! he said. Good. Scientists say thirty per cent of the human brain is set aside exclusively to react to fear.

  Bollocks, I said. Sixty.

  The laugh went out of Arnold’s fac
e. He was leaning forward, his chin almost over the wheel, staring ahead. I don’t know I want you to talk, he said.

  Come on Arnie. She was 17, she knew what she was doing.

  She was 16.

  OK, she was 16 at the beginning, but she was very self-possessed.

  It’s interesting you talk about possession, said Arnold.

  Christ, you’re the one who was doing the my daughter my daughter bit! I was working up an anger because I could see we were going to make it to the terminal and up the ramp no bother. She was old enough to be living by herself. It’s not like I was the first.

  Arnold’s left hand came swinging off the wheel and I flinched. But he was just changing down from fifth to fourth.

  What are you doing? I said. We swung off the dual carriageway onto the back road into Queensferry, the long way round to the terminal, narrower, slower, and with great opportunities for head-on collisions.

  You’re such a bastard, Con, said Arnold, and you never bother to remind yourself of it.

  I had a tight hold of the door-grip with one hand and my seatbelt with the other. We came up behind a Capri tanking along at 70 and Arnie took it on a blind bend just as something bright and screaming came round in the other direction. I closed my eyes, bent down and wrapped my arms around my head. There was a shrieking sound and horns, the Capri must have melted its brake pads to let us in, and we lived to fight another second.

  Whatever it is I’ve done to upset you, Arnold, I’m sorry, I shouted.