Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  It was old Mr Tulloch found the answer. He’d read a lot of books even though he was a science teacher and he knew the good ones, the ones that don’t fade. Wilhelm Meister gets going right away, Anne found, there’s no messing about, no fancy writing in it, just a straightforward story about a boy who’s got a dream. He’s seen a puppet show and all he wants is to be in the theatre, it seems like the most exciting thing there could be. Reminded Anne of the way Robbie used to be about space. So this lad Wilhelm falls in with a load of actors and he’s in and out of love, some of the women are good and some of them mess him around – well, who knows how Robbie got on with that part of life, he mentioned one or two girls he knew at the uni and some came and visited him near the end but she and Joe were never the sort to pry. Anyway, this Wilhelm fellow theatres off on all sorts of adventures and spends a lot of time rehearsing Hamlet, that was a bit Anne wasn’t so keen on. Awful lot of talk about Hamlet, she could have done without that, couldn’t see the point at all. Maybe Goethe ran out of ideas and decided to talk about somebody else’s book instead of his own. But then Wilhelm makes his big discovery – he’s never going to make it as an actor. And that’s so true to life, because we all start out with dreams in our head and then they fade, one by one, and we learn to adjust. Anne wanted to be Judy Garland once. Now all she wants is for her turn to come in the hip-replacement queue. She heard the toilet flushing upstairs.

  Poor Wilhelm, finding out he can’t act. Except that the story still isn’t finished, because then he meets up with a doctor who knows how to treat depression, and gives Wilhelm a book about religion, and Anne had about as much time for that as she did for Hamlet, but once Wilhelm has finished reading the book he winds up in this nice big country estate and that’s where she’d got to now, the third part of the novel. And this is where it all fits together at last – the actors, the book about religion, a young boy Wilhelm adopts – they’re all part of this bigger story, because we realize the whole thing has been organized by a secret group called the Society of the Tower, sort of like the Freemasons or the Rotary Club. All the way through, Wilhelm has been bumping into various people, and now they turn out to have been members of the Society in disguise. Maybe that’s not so realistic, but it’s still like life because when you look back on it, thought Anne, you see how things have happened that didn’t mean anything at the time, but afterwards they do. Lots of wee incidents with Janet, for example, all showing how she’d grow up and leave Kenzie and change her name and identity and want nothing more to do with her parents as if they never existed. There’s a pattern. Call it destiny or fate or whatever you choose, there’s a path you follow – even if all you wind up with is a dodgy hip that gives you H-E-double-L. We get older and we get wiser and it’s no use trying to persuade the young about it because if they’ve got any luck they’ll have their chance too and one day they’ll know. Not that Robbie had the chance.

  ‘About a million,’ Joe said, coming back in and twitching the curtain to see what was happening across the road.

  ‘A million what?’

  ‘Rubber bands,’ he told her. ‘Or something like that, thrown away every day, and we pay for it in stamps. Just think what you could do with them.’

  ‘Hold letters together?’

  ‘Aye, you could do that.’

  ‘But that’s what they do already.’

  Joe laughed, threw up his hands in despair at the sort of intellect he had to deal with, then went to the kitchen to put on the kettle while Anne tried to carry on reading, though she couldn’t decide if she liked Goethe’s Society of the Tower with all its secrets and rituals. One of the leaders is a shifty character who’s already set up a branch in America and wants to have it running in every country in the world – a bit like the CIA if Joe was to be believed. A year or two ago Anne read another book of Robbie’s, The Castle by Franz Kafka, and that was all about a fellow like Wilhelm Meister, coming to a place and finding the people there were in on a big secret that he knew nothing about, or maybe there was no secret but he only thought there was. So you’ve got one book says wouldn’t life be lovely if there were people pulling all the strings for us and controlling what happens, like they’re gods, and you’ve got another book saying it would be hell. And there was Joe, bringing back two mugs of tea, who’d spent all his life saying we should be socialists and now he wanted to start a campaign to save rubber bands. Well, thought Anne, if I could have another life I’d go to university and study all sorts and then maybe I’d know what to make of it.

  ‘Do you not remember what it was like in the war?’ said Joe, handing one cup to Anne, who nursed its warmth in compensation for the forsaken book. ‘We couldn’t go throwing away rubber bands then, could we? They needed rubber for the guns and planes and ships.’

  Really it was iron they collected, all those railings from every part of the country, given up gratefully by cheering patriotic folk who never minded if the iron was the wrong kind and ended up being dumped at the bottom of the sea, but the detail mattered little to Joe, who had a faraway look in his eyes, a ragged-shorts and shrapnel-collecting look as if in his boy’s mind he was following the swift whip of a Spitfire worked by a twisted rubber band, zooming over a grey Gorbals skyline.

  Anne asked him, ‘Where exactly did they use the rubber?’

  ‘On the tyres. Round cockpits, doors, nose cones, anywhere they needed a flexible seal.’

  Balancing a rubber ball on the end of a nose – you’d need a flexible seal for that. ‘What about guns?’ Anne quizzed. ‘Where do they put rubber in a gun?’

  Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t know, it’s not the point. But think of what gets wasted every day.’

  Anne thought about it.

  ‘Can’t go on, can it?’ said Joe. ‘We’re going to run out eventually, but do the Post Office care? Not a bit, because it all fits in with their privatization plans, big con they’ve been plotting for years, even when they first put up the Post Office Tower, and that was a story too. How many times have I said to the postman when he comes to the door, here would you like these, and given him a handful of rubber bands? And he always looks at me like I’m an idiot.’

  Anne thought about that too.

  ‘But they’re the idiots,’ said Joe, ‘if they think they can go on throwing away rubber bands, and you know who’s behind it all?’

  ‘Who’s that, Joe?’ Anne asked dutifully.

  ‘It’s the people running this country, that’s who. They don’t want to save and recycle and make life better for ordinary folk like us, they only want to strip this country of every asset it’s got.’

  ‘Like rubber trees?’

  ‘Don’t be facetious, Anne, these days it’s a synthetic composite they make from oil and the Americans have been in a panic about it ever since the first North Sea rig went up. They want to see this country run out of everything so we’ll buy from them instead. They’re halfway there already, all they need do is make sure we keep throwing away enough stuff that’s perfectly useful.’ Joe drew breath then swigged his tea, still standing at the window surveying a world he held in a contempt so profound he almost didn’t notice it anymore, like the weight of a limb.

  ‘It’s not worth getting het up about.’ Anne looked at the wall clock. ‘I’m needing to take my next pill – I left them in the kitchen.’

  ‘Those pills are hopeless,’ said Joe, about to go and get them for her when he stopped. ‘I meant to get you bicarb. Totally slipped my mind.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘It didn’t matter.’

  ‘But you need it for your indigestion, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, never mind about that, Joe. Just fetch me my pills.’

  He brought what she wanted then said, ‘I’ll go back into town.’

  ‘You stay here, you daftie.’

  ‘But I went all the way there and walked out of that shop with nothing. Too busy thinking about the wine – you know what they’re doi
ng?’

  Anne nodded patiently. ‘I know.’

  ‘Won’t take me long to go back. Could do with another walk.’

  She knew why he was so restless; this was always a difficult time for them, every year when it came again. And a round one, twenty-five. Silver, like they ought to celebrate. He could have his walk and she could finish her book. ‘Get some eggs when you’re out.’

  ‘Eggs?’

  ‘We’re needing some.’

  ‘Could have told me that earlier.’

  ‘I didn’t think of it,’ said Anne. ‘Write it down so you won’t forget. Don’t want another wasted journey.’

  ‘Aye,’ Joe muttered, ‘so much waste. And we know who’s at the back of it all.’

  6

  This is so the most exciting thing the kid’s ever done it’s like unbelievable he’s a real-life spy a real-life assistant to a spaceman and he’s going round Kenzie with a game he’s knocked inside his jacket. If his Stegosaurus dad could see him right now he’d be. Actually he probably couldn’t give a shit.

  Plan A was go to Spud’s and sell him the game but now the kid’s thinking he should ditch Spud who’s on the Death List anyway. The kid’s more interested in the Stranger aka RC who still might turn out to be a paedophile or a murderer you never know but the kid can look after himself and won’t take any unnecessary chances because the Stranger might also be the Doctor or the equivalent as in real life well you never know that either, the kid thinks, I mean how would you know it if you met a genuine Time Lord? When Rose Tyler went to school they must have kept telling her Never Go With Strangers, I bet they had those lessons even way back then, the kid thinks, but she went with the Doctor and became his assistant and all sorts of cool things happened like when she got her DNA inside a Dalek and gave it emotions. You’ve got to keep an open mind.

  He’s decided to take the path that goes beside the river, place where you only go if you’re on a date or pushing a buggy or you’re a smelly old fisherman or else, as in this case, you’re a runaway carrying stolen goods. It’s very much a life-on-the-edge sort of place. River’s so sluggish it looks like it needs a kick up the arse, shopping trolley stuck in the middle of it all tangled with weeds and rubbish. Things to do number zero: push a shopping trolley in a river. Like so totally pointless. Though he’ll probably try it one day, maybe tonight if he feels like it since he won’t be home.

  He’s got that one covered already. A quick call on his mobile and Stegosaurus is now convinced the kid’s sleeping over at Spud’s. The most rudimentary bit of fact-checking would have blown that lie out of the water like a duck on the end of a shotgun pellet but Steg’s not up for that kind of labour-intensive childcare strategy as in call Spud’s parents and confirm. Couldn’t give a shit as long as he’s got the flat to himself so he can watch his pay-per-view porn channel tonight without embarrassing-offspring interference. As in, can I watch too? And Steg like no you can’t and I wasn’t watching it anyway. It’s on his credit-card bill for Christ’s sake!

  Two girls up ahead, under the concrete bridge where the road crosses the river, walking slowly and chatting the way girls do, like they’re all the time flirting with someone invisible. Mature girls, maybe fourteen or fifteen, not from his school he thinks, in any case no reason why they should recognize him which is cool because staying incognito is important while he’s on the run, except that one of them is looking at him, blonde girl, nice eyes, makes him feel wobbly. It’s sort of a riverside-path opposite-direction opposite-gender confrontation kind of event where the two girls are coming his way and taking up quite a lot of girl-shaped space with their arms and hair and so forth and he’s coming towards them and his eyes connecting with the blonde girl’s and somebody’s going to have to make way as in step aside but that’s kind of an acknowledgement of the other’s existence which is so to speak a delicate issue.

  ‘What you got in there? A gun?’

  It’s the other girl speaking to him, the brown-haired one, and it’s only now that the kid realizes he’s walking with his hand inside his jacket, holding the stolen game. Girl’s looking at him with a come-on-then smirk like she’s already halfway through the Bonus Features menu vis-à-vis the opposite sex as in she’s done it and put the phone shots on the web to prove it and can say what she likes. ‘Well? Gonnie shoot me?’

  The kid wants to pull out a sonic screwdriver and stun her. The Stranger would know how to sort it out but the other girl, the blonde one, she joins in like it’s a double act. ‘What’re you hiding?’ she says, only sweeter, like she thinks it might be a bunch of flowers for her or a box of chocolates.

  ‘A game,’ he says and brings it out and before he even knows what he’s saying or why he’s saying it he goes, ‘Do you want it?’ and hands it towards her.

  She’s looking at it like it’s some incredible thing materialized out of thin air as in Tardis or other transdimensional object and the other one’s got like ‘this boy’s mental’ written all over her face but not the blonde girl who’s acting like it really is a box of chocolates. The kid repeats the offer but not by saying anything because right now he can’t. He stretches his arm a bit, waves the game towards her like he’s tempting a pony with a piece of hay, wants to stroke her nose sort of thing.

  ‘Did you steal it?’ says boss girl, ever wise to the ways of the world, and the kid wonders which answer scores more points.

  ‘It’s mine,’ says the kid.

  ‘I can see that,’ she goes, ‘but I’m asking if you stole it. Still got the wrapper and everything. Bet you’ve been in WH Smith and knocked it.’

  ‘What if I have?’ says the kid, and the blonde girl’s looking at him in silence. Like he’s the Stranger and she knows he’s a thief, murderer, pervert et cetera but so what?

  ‘Maybe we’ll shop you,’ says the brown-haired girl, still smirking.

  ‘Why would you do that?’ says the kid.

  ‘Cos,’ she says, and the kid sees she’s rolling gum in her mouth, first time he’s noticed, blends so well with the way she talks.

  The blonde says, ‘It’s wrong to steal.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ says her friend. ‘As long as you can get away with it.’

  ‘It’s wrong, that’s all,’ she goes, and says to the kid, ‘You should take it back to the shop.’

  Boss girl says, ‘You’re mental,’ then her mobile rings, she’s got Black Eyed Peas on it, and she gives her head a toss when she puts the phone to her ear. As in contemptuous, thinks the kid. And now she’s talking to some boy at the other end like there’s nobody else in the world, as you do, like her friend and the kid and the river have all been sucked into the Vortex and there’s just her and the phone and the crackly voice on it and the kid thinks you’re on the List, you and your boyfriend, you’re right at the top of it.

  Kid says to the pretty girl, ‘Take it,’ like he’s still holding it out but she doesn’t want it.

  ‘I can’t. It’s wrong.’

  And he chucks it in the water, just like that. Disappears in the brown flow and sinks from view in a circle of spreading waves and the boss interrupts her conversation as in pulls the phone a wee bit from her ear as she turns to look and says, ‘Fuck!’ and then at the kid and goes ‘Fuckin dickhead!’ and at her friend and goes, ‘Did you see what that mental cunt done?’ and then she laughs and says into the phone, ‘You should see this fuckin lunatic we met, lobbed a brand-new game in the river,’ and then a moment later to the other girl she goes, ‘We’re seeing Kyle, OK? C’moan,’ and makes to leave but the blonde says no, tells her flat, doesn’t want to come.

  Second moment of disbelief for the boss. ‘What, you want to stay with this prick?’ Then second moment of bursting out laughing. ‘You two are as bad as each other!’ But there’s no more to be said – the boss stares at the pair of them and finally gets the message. ‘All right, fuck off,’ and she turns and away she goes, fat arse swinging in her short skirt, never looking over her shoulder but texting on
her phone instead.

  Blonde girl says to the kid, ‘Why did you do it? First steal it, then throw it away?’

  Kid shrugs. ‘Cos.’

  ‘Cos what?’

  ‘Dunno. Felt like it, I suppose.’

  She says, ‘My name’s Jodie.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Like the actress, you know?’ But the kid doesn’t. ‘Jodie Foster. My mum wanted to call me after her. And my mum’s called Dorothy because of The Wizard of Oz, can you believe that?’ The kid believes but doesn’t see the relevance, as in it’s only a name so what difference does it make? But doesn’t say anything. She goes, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  She smiles. ‘Mystery man, eh? Go on, tell me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  Pair of them standing beside the river, nobody else about. Sort of romantic. Never mind the shopping trolley and the smell and stuff. ‘Thing is, you’re right about the game. I knocked it. I’ve done stuff that’s wrong.’

  ‘It’s not so bad …’

  ‘Not just that. Other stuff.’

  She’s looking at him in this penetrating way like she’s trying to read his mind. The kid likes it. Only people ever try to read his mind are teachers reckoning he hasn’t done his homework, but this Jodie, it’s as if she cares about him.

  ‘Go on,’ she says, ‘what’s your name?’

  ‘I’m not telling. It’s best if you don’t know. I’m … I’m on a mission.’

  Slight raising of her eyebrows. As in, I don’t really believe you but if you want me to then I’ll believe because I care about you. ‘A mission?’

  He goes, ‘There’s this man I met in the park,’ and he tells her. Not everything, he knows he can only go so far. And her eyebrows come down again and make a frown.

  ‘Be careful! He’s probably a paedo.’

  ‘No, he’s not one of those, I know what they’re like. My guess is he’s escaped from prison.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And I want to help him. Cos I’ve run away too. We’re like these two people who don’t fit in anywhere and nobody wants us.’