With these new arrangements, Sonya and I didn’t see each other much through the week. Soon we were getting together only on Sundays. I found all this unsettling. Partly what unsettled me was that Sonya didn’t seem unsettled. Except maybe on Sundays.
Meanwhile, back on the good ship Spear, the HR people did the rounds with a new voluntary redundancy offer. This happened about once a year. Normally I kept my head down, but this time I put my hand up. I did my sums. I talked to the union rep. I talked to the management. One Sunday I talked to Sonya because we were still, by force of habit if nothing else, a kind of item. Among the things we talked about was my father’s failing health. It was more and more obvious that he wasn’t right. He was behaving oddly, forgetting things, losing his temper over nothing, not sleeping like a log any more. It had probably been coming on for years, but I hadn’t noticed while my mother was alive. Between them they’d managed to disguise it, but that wasn’t possible any longer. If I stopped working at the Spear maybe I could look after him a bit better, as she had done.
The redundancy offer was not great, but it was better than what was likely to be on the table the next time HR came round, or the time after that when there were no volunteers left. So I took it: a lump sum and – if I don’t touch it till I’m sixty – a reasonable pension. And there was a promise from the editor – a dangling-carrot kind of promise but a promise nonetheless – that I might get some freelance work once I was off the company’s books. I weighed up the situation: jump, or wait until the ship sank? If I jumped, there was a chance I might land in a lifeboat. Better that than drowning in the engine room.
So I jumped.
GREAT-UNCLE GILBERT
I am not bothered, actually, by the idea that I might not be here. Non-existence would at least remove all other cares. What worries me more is the greater likelihood that I am a living, breathing, corporeal being increasingly disconnected from the environment it inhabits: in the world but not of it. Six months have passed since I left the Spear, and what have I had from the editor? Despite a few emails and phone messages from me to him, only silence. For six months I have not gone out to work. I’ve seen hardly anything of my Erstwhile Colleagues from the sub-editors’ desk, although I know they will be attending Ronald Grigson’s funeral because it was one of them, Grant McKinley, who phoned me with the news of Ronald’s passing. My relationship with Sonya and her children, if not over, appears to be in its terminal stages. And my father’s deterioration means that he and I are now in a different place, or rather in different places, and, while we still utter words when in each other’s company (i.e. when I visit him), we don’t exactly have meaningful dialogue. For all these reasons, I am feeling somewhat detached.
These are the rational explanations. However, I am also unable to ignore the alternative theory, already hinted at, that I am heading, rather sooner than expected, towards that mystery zone presently occupied by Thomas Ythan Elder.
There is a precedent. Hiding in the foliage of the paternal ancestral tree is a relative who went clean off the rationality rails in his fifties, in the Fifties. As a very young man – a boy really – Great-uncle Gilbert was conscripted into the army and spent the last months of the First World War in France. Perhaps he suffered mental and emotional distress as a result of his military experience, and perhaps this was the start of his derailment. After the war he became a primary-school teacher. His favourite subject was arithmetic: indeed, he liked teaching arithmetic so much that he sometimes omitted to teach his charges anything else, which on more than one occasion caused him difficulties with the education authorities. He never married, but lived a solitary, frugal life. Apart from his work, his chief occupation was collecting things. It did not seem to matter what he collected, so long as he could count them. One year it was jam jars, the next it was broken clay pipes. He filled a whole trunk with fir cones. He amassed an impressive range of discarded boots and shoes, for the right foot only, and a veritable museum of birds’ bones. People were accustomed to seeing him at weekends, scouring the lanes and ditches for whatever new category of amassable items had caught his attention. He had a ledger in which, in a fine copperplate hand, he entered the total numbers of his acquisitions: 557 assorted nails; 260 lengths of string; 37 postcards depicting the Eiffel Tower. Over the years his small home became very crowded.
One Saturday morning he left this home, in Cupar, Fife, and walked to Crail, on the coast, a distance of about twenty miles. His stroll brought him to the North Sea, where witnesses saw him continue straight into the water, fully clothed, pushing through the waves until he was completely submerged. The alarm was raised but Gilbert was not recovered until the next tide brought him ashore at Pittenweem. The pockets of his coat were found to contain seventy-one pennies (five shillings and eleven pence), all dated between 1914 and 1918. If it had only been three and fourpence the message would have been so much clearer. Or would it? Sorry. That’s a joke in poor taste.
Although Great-uncle Gilbert wasn’t much talked about when I was a boy, sometimes, if my father was in fatalistic mood or my mother wanted to cast aspersions on his pedigree, Gilbert’s sad history, in the form of his ledger, was brought forth from the mahogany Cabinet of Morbid Curiosity that stood in a corner of the Best Room, and displayed to me as a terrible warning of what would happen if I took my good fortune and well-being for granted. Gilbert’s propensity for counting things had overwhelmed him by degrees as surely as the grey waters had closed over his head. If he had only kept his sums in the classroom where they belonged, tragedy might have been avoided. Never let your guard down, the lesson was, lest the worms of utter confusion enter your skull and turn your brain to sawdust. My mother (a woman possessed of that excellent Scottish characteristic, much admired and some would say encouraged by Our Friends in the South, a total lack of imagination) died at seventy-nine in full command of her faculties. But look at Gilbert! And my father! Did my mother not often say that I took after him in almost every respect? Yes she did!
Oh dear. I peer through the bus window and see a dark, still sea, and no land in sight. Oars, life jackets, plastic containers and other debris float on the surface, and me among them. I have jumped, and missed the lifeboat, or it wasn’t there after all. Or did I simply walk into the sea? It is calm now, but for how much longer?
THE ENDLESS PEW OF BASTARDS
The bus surges forward. Evidently the driver has lost patience, seen a gap in the defence and gone for it like a rugby fullback on the burst. Engine roaring like an aeroplane’s, the bus sways and jinks along a narrow corridor of cones between trenches full of utility pipes and cables. I grab the seat in front of me and cling on. The two men in the exciting seats bounce up and down and the woman with whose tête I have so recently been têting judders, but not one of us complains. Progress! From downstairs comes a ragged, slightly ironic cheer such as the one I previously internally suppressed. A few seconds later the bus is through the junction at Tollcross and disgorging passengers outside the King’s Theatre. But it is now 12.30. The coin has been tossed, the funeral referee is about to blow his whistle, and I am not even at the turnstiles.
Off we go again, but within seconds the bus slows to another halt. Ahead of us an articulated lorry carrying a load of immense steel pipes, perhaps – who knows? – destined for the intestinal reconstruction of Lothian Road, is reversing into a narrow side street in order to go back the way it came – and every other vehicle has to wait while this manoeuvre is completed. Should I have got out at the theatre and flagged down a cab? There seem to be plenty of cabs about but experience warns me that this will remain the case only so long as I stay on the bus. The minute I step onto the pavement all the taxis will vanish or turn off their FOR HIRE lights. This is an infallible law, so why invoke it by leaving the bus? There is also the cost to be taken into account. I have become ever more aware of the need to clamp down on extravagances since being de-salaried, which is like being de-bagged when all your money is in your trouser pockets. The lump
sum won’t last for ever. (This is one of Sonya’s wise maxims, or if it isn’t I never see the words passing across the mind-screen without hearing them in her voice.) Better the bus fare you know than the taxi fare you don’t. (That’s one of mine.)
Meanwhile, I am still making my way along the endless pew of bastards. The pew of endless bastards. No doubt this is symbolic. I see three of my Erstwhile Colleagues looming: Roy Wilkinson, Grant McKinley and Ollie Buckthorn, resplendent in shiny black suits very similar to the shiny black suit I myself am wearing. Roy and Grant join in the rise-and-fall procedure, grinning at me encouragingly, but there is no way, even if Ollie were to rise off his mountainous backside, that I will be able to get past him. Ollie grins too, but far from being encouraging his is the grin of an adolescent prankster, a grin of joukery-pawkery and high jinks. As I approach he lifts his brogue-encased feet and plants them on the shelf for hymn books, while signalling that I am to pass under his legs. Aware that I am causing enough disruption already and that Ollie will be merciless, I have no choice. Down I go on hands and knees into the thin stour of old religion, Ollie’s trousered buttocks lapping against my cheek as I tunnel forward. If he breaks wind now I am as dead as Ronald Grigson.
‘Sorry. Sorry. Excuse me. Fuck you, Ollie. Sorry.’
Ah. I find I have spoken aloud. Furthermore, I am crouching on a hard floor, among sweetie papers and discarded tickets. I snap out of it fast and regain my seat, but too late. The woman across the aisle has turned, looked quickly at me, then away again. The aisle on the bus, not in the church. Because I am not there yet.
‘Sorry,’ I say again, to her this time. It is meant sincerely, but the damage has been done. She stands and descends to the lower deck.
THE GAUZY BORDER
This has been happening more and more: getting carried away with, by or in the scenario. It feels odd, but is it? Isn’t this treading the gauzy border between reality and imagination, this uncertainty as to which side of that curtain you are on, normal? Some just slip more easily through the gap than others. One moment you’re on a number 11 bus going nowhere, the next you’re crawling along the floor of a church you’ve never entered before, with no end to the journey in sight.
Doesn’t this happen to us all?
I have too much time on my hands, that’s the trouble. Working five days a week, often six, kept me tethered to some semblance of reality, but the rope has been severed. And real life, when it opens up as a void, isn’t half as interesting as the imagined version.
Life without the imagined life is, in fact, unimaginable.
That woman might also be going to the funeral. If so, she’s as late as I am. Was she in black? I can’t remember. I think about following her downstairs and suggesting we share a cab, make a joint late entry together. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
I like the idea of a new, beautiful friendship.
But I don’t think she would be keen.
ELDER FUCKS UP
Assuming I ever actually get to the church, I’ll have missed the opening hymn and prayers but not, I hope, the eulogy. I want to hear the eulogy. It will be my last opportunity to like Ronald Grigson. Not that I actively disliked him, I just never really knew him. He was always rather stand-offish, not much of a team player. I’m not much of a team player myself, but at least I would go for a drink with the Erstwhile Colleagues at the end of a shift. Grigson hardly ever joined us. He was the Spear’s business and finance editor, which in the last year or so meant not only editing but also writing most of the contents of the pages for which he was responsible. He always had them signed off before the rest of us were done, and if you read them late into the evening you sometimes felt there wasn’t much point in completing the rest of the paper, because according to Ronald the world was likely to end before daybreak or at any rate shortly after the London Stock Exchange opened. For him, every economic cloud had another cloud piling up behind it. He was a glass-half-empty man who, on the occasions when he did come to the pub, usually slipped away before it was his turn to replenish the glasses-wholly-empty. I can’t recall Ronald Grigson ever buying me a drink, but I know for a fact that I’ve bought rounds that included Ronald Grigson. That rankles. I am sitting on a bus trying to attend the man’s funeral, and it rankles. Why on earth? What difference does it make if he was a cheapskate? He’s dead. He didn’t take redundancy, he held out for finishing his career at sixty-five with full pension rights, and look, he’s dead, three years short of the target. Woke up one Sunday morning, told his wife he wasn’t feeling so good, she went for the papers and when she came back he was away. Heart attack. Whether I liked him or not is immaterial. Sixty-two is way too young for anyone to go.
Sixty-two is only twelve years older than fifty. A blink away. The realist in me knows this isn’t worth worrying about. These are merely numbers, and people die all the time. Sixty-two is a damned sight better than forty-two, or twenty-two, or two. Nevertheless. Sixty-two is just around the corner. Over the next ridge. Too close for comfort. To repeat, people die all the time: not comforting at all. And what have I, Douglas Findhorn Elder, done thus far, with my fifty years and nearly twenty-five minutes? Have I even woken up? What if life is a dream, a series of pictures that flash in front of you, some with captions, some without? And then, one day, End of slide show. Click to exit?
How would you know – until that last message appeared?
The bus is moving again, but it is now 12.40, and even with a clear run through Bruntsfield and Morningside the journey will take at least another ten minutes. Hopeless. ELDER FUCKS UP, MISSES FUNERAL, as a headline in Life and Work will never read.
COLLEAGUES
It is one o’clock when I reach the church, an imposing, red sandstone edition surrounded by streets of Victorian terraced houses and detached villas. The church, too, is Victorian, circa 1880, which makes it – like me – late. I approach along a narrow, tree-lined lane, which opens onto a spacious, gravelled apron in front of the church. On both sides of the building are lush green lawns densely populated with gravestones. I don’t need to step on the grass to know how thick and springy it will feel – the natural outcome of a long, rich diet.
A hearse, sleek and shiny as a racehorse, is parked on the gravel. One might call it a racehearse. A pale, thin man in a black frockcoat that’s far too big for him leans against one flank. He might be polishing it with his tails but he isn’t, he is smoking. I make a gesture intended to indicate my legitimate-mourner status as I crunch my way across the gravel towards the set of double doors, which are firmly closed against the day.
‘Hih!’
I turn. The smoker has pushed himself erect and is pointing at me. His manner seems aggrieved, even belligerent.
‘Gie me the finger, would ye?’
I move towards him. A character actor who has somehow got inside my head speaks on my behalf: ‘No, no, my good fellow, you have grasped the wrong end of the malacca.’
‘Ye whit?’
‘I was just trying to tell you I’m going to the funeral. In there.’
‘Ye’re late.’
‘I know. My bus was held up. Roadworks.’
‘Well, dinnae take it oot on me.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Ye did. Ye gied me the finger, and then ye patronised me.’
‘Honestly, I didn’t mean it that way. That was somebody else.’
I start back to the doors, and he hurries after me.
‘Hih!’
‘What?’
‘Ye cannae just breenge in,’ he says, catching up.
‘I’ll be discreet.’
‘Ye’ll need tae wait. They’ll be oot in a minute. Listen.’
I stop and listen. A hymn, perhaps the last of the service, has just begun. The organ is playing mightily, and the congregation is far from bashful as it breaks into ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’. Despite the closed doors the music and singing filter into the autumn air. I can see the notes flying heavenward like a flock of s
tarlings.
‘That sounds like quite a crowd in there.’
‘A full hoose,’ my companion replies. He sucks the glow of life out of his cigarette, drops the dowt on the gravel and stamps on it. ‘Packed tae the rafters. I stayed oot here tae haud the latecomers back – somebody has tae – but you’ve been the only one. Naebody else’s bus was held up.’
‘You can’t blame me for that. You’re one of the undertakers, I take it?’
‘Aye, that’s me. Gerry the undertaker. Who’d have thought it would come tae this? The rest of the team’s inside.’
‘In the church?’
‘Naw, no them. My auld team. In the jail. I was let out early for good behaviour and I got this job. They’re training me but they dinnae think I’m ready for the actual services yet, so they leave me ootside tae mind the motor. Like a dug. Still, could be worse, eh? They might have tied me up.’ He seems altogether friendlier now that we have clarified his role in the proceedings. ‘Dinnae say anything aboot me having a fag, will ye? I’m no supposed tae, on the job like.’
To Be Continued Page 2
