‘That’s a splendid idea,’ Poppy says.
‘So I propose to buy Douglas a new car. Not a brand-new one. A second-hand but sturdy and reliable one.’
‘You can’t buy me a car,’ I say.
‘I can. There is a little money in the bank. You’d have to identify the car, of course. One that would cope with the glen.’
‘Can I have one too?’ Ollie asks.
‘Not until I’m a hundred and ten, Ollie. It’s just that, whatever Ed’s plans are, I think we have to make plans that don’t include Corryvreckan. So, really, it would be for Poppy and me as much as for you, Douglas.’
‘On that basis, how can I say no?’
‘Here’s to not saying no,’ Poppy says, raising her glass.
‘Not saying no,’ we all say.
Ollie reaches for his rucksack, and from it produces a bottle of Salmon’s Leap 10-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky.
‘This is for you, Douglas,’ he says. ‘It’s a kind of reward for getting me that big story, even though you didn’t mean to. There’s a bottle of Glen Gloming too, but I’m keeping that for myself, because it’s so bloody lovely.’
‘I’ll tell you a secret, Ollie,’ I say. ‘Salmon’s Leap is exactly the same stuff.’
‘Is it? Ah! I suppose it would be. Damn! Ah well, too late now to take it back.’
‘It’s yours if you want it.’
‘I gave it to you. It’s yours.’
‘I appreciate that. We’ll never see their likes again.’
‘Here’s to singular single malts,’ Ollie says, and we all raise our champagne glasses again.
‘Cheers.’
‘Slàinte!’
‘Good health!’
‘Speaking of which,’ I say to Ollie, and with my eyes indicate the bowel-cancer-treatment pack sitting on the counter.
‘Ah yes,’ he says. ‘I almost forgot to say. Results came in yesterday. All clear. Panic over. Not that I was panicking.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Well, it’s certainly a relief. Don’t you be forgetting to do the test yourself now.’
‘What test?’ Poppy asks.
‘Dougie has to take a load off his mind.’
‘I’ll explain later,’ I tell her. ‘Mhairi must be happy.’
‘She is,’ Ollie says, ‘and if she’s happy, so am I. Bollocks, that’s something else I almost forgot. We’re going out tonight. I’ll need to get home.’
But he stays for another half-hour, a second large slice of cake, a second glass of bubbly, and a cigarette on the sitootery. By the time he cycles off, the Munlochys and Ollie Buckthorn are the best of friends, and there is even talk of getting together with Mhairi and the kids tomorrow. We agree, however, to discuss it in the morning. Because who knows what may happen before then?
TO BE CONTINUED
Douglas Findhorn Elder opens the back door of what is half his and half his father’s house – the house in which he grew up, which he has never really left and which, one day perhaps not too far off, will be wholly his – and steps into the blue night. The sky is cloudy and the garden dark with November darkness. His movement triggers a security light set on the wall of the house, and this illuminates the stone slabs of the patio or – as it has always been known in the family – the sitootery; or – as his father has sometimes referred to it with a glass of something in his hand – the wine-cowpery.
Coppélia ‘Poppy’ Munlochy, to whom Douglas earlier declared his love, and who returned the compliment, steps out beside him. It is ten o’clock on the night of her grandmother’s one hundredth birthday, a day of quiet but heartfelt celebration. Her grandmother, Rosalind Isabella Munlochy (née Striven), has retired to bed half an hour ago, declaring herself worn out with happiness. Whenever she looks at Douglas and Poppy, she says, she feels that one thing at least is right with the world.
They have left Ed’s bedding folded up on the living-room couch, just in case, but they don’t expect he will need it. Douglas wishes Ed, and all his other manifestations whether gone or just resting, well. He wishes Sonya well. He wishes Magnus, son of Ed and Sonya, well, and Ben and Sonya’s daughter, Paula, too. He wishes Gerry a full but not too rapid recovery, and in the longer term the fulfilment of his desire to study Philosophy. He wishes Ollie and Mhairi and his Erstwhile Colleagues at the Spear health, happiness and job security. He wishes Rosalind many happy returns of the day, or even just one or two. He wishes his father, Thomas Ythan Elder, peace and contentment, and likewise Beverley Brown and her staff and Jimmy and all the other care-home residents.
Without getting into lists of the dead and total strangers, that’s about it.
Douglas and Poppy each hold a glass of wine as well as one another, but they are not drunk, and neither of them wishes to be so. They have talked a lot about Glentaragar and Edinburgh, and the distance between them, and they are resolved to reduce it. There will be times when they will have to be apart, and there will be times when they will be together. Each has responsibilities. Insofar as they can, they will share them. They will talk much more, no doubt, about how to manage these, but they are practicalities, and practicalities can always be sorted. The decision of the heart is the one that matters, and it has been made. For the moment they are silent, hardly conscious of the background noise of the city as they stand on the stone slabs until the light goes out.
‘If we don’t move it stays off,’ Douglas says.
There is no moon, and this makes Douglas think of his friend Mungo Forth Mungo, and the night they admired the moon together. And he seems to hear – or perhaps he just imagines – Mungo’s voice, low, dark, yet sonorous and somehow commanding, coming from beyond the edge of the stones. And Mungo is giving a lecture. Tens of thousands of listeners may be out there in the black night, but only Douglas hears him:
‘You think this belongs to you. With all your libraries full of books and universities full of accumulated knowledge, your internet and roads and railways and great cities, you think you are here to stay. You have no idea! You have barely arrived. We, or our ancestors, have been around a hundred times longer than you, a thousand times longer. You may think you have made an impact, but your leavings will be superficial. Fire and ice, wind and flood will wipe them away, but we will still be here. You build buildings that will turn to dust; you make music, art and literature that you think immortal but which will be outlasted by the scream of a gull or the flutter of a moth; you suck the oceans dry of oil and gas and fish; you batter and bleed the land of every mineral and nutrient it holds; you cut and burn forests and hollow out mountains and drain bogs; and somehow you think you have a plan, a prospect, a future history. You think that you know more than we do, that you have made a storehouse for your children, that you are greater than any other living thing. But the toad, the toadstool, the ant, the blackbird, the deer, the daffodil, the jellyfish – you are less than all of these. That’s it really. You know nothing and have nothing and are nothing. You can’t help yourselves. You have no moon inside you.’
Douglas smiles at the notion of a toad coming out with such a diatribe. What does a toad, a common toad, know? And to say that humans have no moon inside them is like saying, on a night like tonight, that there is no moon in the sky, when of course there is: you just can’t see it.
And although you can’t see Mungo either, he is there. It is the end of the first day of November, and he has gone to bed, to sleep the winter sleep of the replete. Do toads dream? If Mungo is dreaming, it is probably of amplexus in the spring.
Poppy says, ‘Did you hear Ollie calling you Ulysses this afternoon?’
‘I did,’ Douglas replies.
‘Did you ever read the novel Ulysses?’
‘James Joyce? Aye, I did once. Skimmed quite a bit of it.’
‘Do you remember the last words in it, when Molly Bloom concludes her monologue?’
‘Not exactly. She says “yes” a lot, doesn’t she?’
‘She does. And “I will”. Sh
e says that too. Well, I was just thinking about it. It’s very affirmative. Very life-affirming.’
‘It’s a good way to end a book. Affirmatively.’
‘Yes, it is. It leaves you wanting more.’
‘Do you want more?’
‘I do. Yes. I want more life. I want more life with you. I want life to go on. To be continued.’
‘That’s what I want.’
‘Can I say something?’
‘Anything.’
‘Well, we haven’t known each other long, but it’s just that my biological clock is ticking.’
‘I see.’
‘In fact, it might be about to chime.’
‘What are you saying, Poppy?’
‘Nothing. I’m just saying. Does that terrify you?’
‘Not particularly. It would have, once. Can I say something?’
‘What?’
‘Let’s not worry about it. Let’s just take things as they come.’
‘Okay.’
‘That way we won’t regret anything that doesn’t happen.’
‘Or anything that does.’
‘Absolutely.’
After another few minutes, during which they drink their wine and cuddle very close, Poppy says, ‘I’m getting cold.’
‘Let’s go in then,’ Douglas says.
But they stay a while, because it seems to them that the cloud is moving and thinning, and that if they wait they may see the light of the moon, or even one star, coming through to greet them.
THE BEGINNING
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HAMISH HAMILTON
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
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Hamish Hamilton is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2016
Copyright © James Robertson, 2016
Cover illustrations by Nicholas John Frith
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-241-97054-6
To Be Continued Page 40
