The Jigsaw Man.
I sat down in one of the two chairs opposite. Straight back, my hands clasped in my lap. I looked across the table into those dark eyes, and tried to imagine myself twenty years previously, in a bright café in Glasgow, the day pouring in through large windows, the river flowing by outside.
Of course, I very rarely looked into those eyes. How often did we look at each other across the table? On the occasions when I sat with him, he would invariably have his head down sorting out jigsaw pieces. As would I. From this position did he impart such wisdom as came to him on any given day.
There was the day of the four wives of course. (If there ever were four wives.) We'd looked at each other that day. Was it these dark eyes that had stared back over the puzzle at me? I honestly couldn't remember. The eyes meant nothing to me. Nevertheless, I knew. This was the Jigsaw Man.
Had my Jigsaw Man had a moustache? I tried to picture him. I couldn't remember.
'It was you who came into the café,' I said. 'The day the plane crashed. You spoke to me without speaking.'
He didn't reply.
'I don't understand,' I said.
'What don't you understand?' asked the Jigsaw Man.
14
WHO WAS THE COOLEST BEATLE?
Who was the coolest Beatle? I'll cut right to the end and save you the trouble reading, in case that's how you'd like it. It was George. By a mile. Now, I'm not arguing that George was the most creative Beatle or the best songwriter. Yes, if you were to name the top ten best Beatles songs, you'd quite possibly have three of George's. But then, name the top thirty best Beatle songs, and you've still only got three of George's. His biggest hit as a solo artist saw him successfully sued for plagiarism, and his second biggest hit was written by someone else.
Nevertheless, George was the coolest Beatle, and not just in a way that you could say that so-and-so was the tallest hobbit or that Shanghai is the least polluted city in China. George was cool by any standard.
As for the others, we can dismiss Paul and Ringo straight away from the cool stakes. It could be argued that they do, without doubt, suffer in comparison with John and George by still being alive. But there are plenty of old rockers who manage to retain some element of cool about them, in the way that those two haven't.
The trouble is that they might have been cool at one time, by the definition of the day. It used to be a different thing to be cool. Thirty and forty years ago you were cool by drawing attention to yourself, by letting everyone see how cool you were. Consider the Fonz, the embodiment of '50s cool in a '70s TV show.
The Fonz owned the room. He walked in and everyone knew he'd arrived. He was the centre of attention. He sucked in the last vestige of cool from those around him and added it to his own well-stocked supply. He was from a time when you were cool because you let everyone know it.
Of all the major characters of popular 20th century entertainment, the Fonz rivals only Harpo Marx's early movies, sleazy, bottom-grabbing, child-like pervert character for being out-dated. Now the coolest guy in the room is cool because of what he doesn't do, rather than for what he does. He doesn't try to be cool, he just is cool. He might not say anything at all, and if he does speak, it's only to the person standing next to him.
He's cool because he is. That's all.
Paul and Ringo are still trying desperately to be cool. They haven't realised that the world has moved on. There was a time when some might have argued that Dylan was cooler than McCartney, and some could have argued the opposite. Now, regardless of whether you care for Bob's atrociously shot voice creaking and scraping its way through a fourteen minute song about the movie Titanic, Bob remains himself, while Paul is still trying to be someone that he thinks people want him to be, and therefore there's no contest in the cool stakes.
This is why people consider Paul to be disingenuous. They don't know who he is. Even if they don't think about it, they implicitly know that they’re looking at a guy who isn't being himself, and consequently, can you really believe anything he says? He's the rock star equivalent of a politician.
As for Ringo, making the peace sign hasn't passed for cool in over thirty years.
John is an interesting case, of course. There's an argument to be made that he is such an important figure in 20th Century popular culture that he rises above any notion of cool or otherwise.
When he was alive, he was the epitome of modern-day cool in that he clearly didn't give a shit what people thought of him. What Lennon fan amongst us, having craved a comeback album in the late '70s, did not weep upon finding all his new songs alternated with those of his wife? Nowadays, comfortably listening to Double Fantasy requires but a minute or so of track arrangement on your iPod. In 1980 it required lifting the needle on your record player every three-and-a-half minutes, a much more tiresome business. Yet, John clearly didn't give a shit what we thought about it and, more than likely, wasn't just doing it to please Yoko either. He was doing it because he wanted to do it that way.
Likewise, recording a Beatles album with your wife draped across the piano: not cool. Being able to write Come Together despite the fact that your wife is draped across your piano: damn cool.
The jury might have been out, but then the manner of his death – gunned down in the world's coolest city – pretty much sealed his place in the cool column. History has been kind to him, however, and now it is quite possible that Lennon belongs in an entirely different column, a column that transcends the cool discussion.
John didn't give a shit what you thought and wanted you to know just how much he didn't give a shit what you thought. George, on the other hand, out-cooled this by some way. He didn't give a shit what you thought, and he also didn't give a shit whether or not you knew or cared whether he gave a shit. George brought out an album in 1982 and more or less didn't tell anyone about it. He didn't care. No one bought it. He didn't care about that either.
I remember reading an interview with him in the mid-'80s in which he said that he could have a hit album if he wanted, that he could make the record and do the promotion rounds and sell it. At the time I thought he was living on past glories and that that ship had definitely sailed. Then, in 1987, he recorded a commercial album, did the rounds of the talk shows, made a few videos and had a hit record, just like he said he would. Then he chose not to do it again.
He had an eccentric rock star's mansion. He organised the concert for Bangladesh. He saved Monty Python's Life of Brian, then was OK about it when some of them wanted to go off and make their next movie for more money with a big American company. He held the Pythons in awe, and didn't realise that they held him in awe. He did his only solo concert in the UK to raise funds for the Natural Law Party at the 1992 General Election.
All right, that last one wasn't cool, but he didn't give a shit that it wasn't.
Cool is something you either are or you're not. There's little you can do about it. The more you try to achieve it, the farther away from it you become. George was cool. Paul and Ringo, because of, rather than despite, their desperation, are not. And John... well John just belongs in an entirely different article.
*
That was my piece. When it was posted online, the Beatles fans of the world rallied round and read it. It caught on amongst them. Someone somewhere must have linked to it from their Facebook page or something, and it took off. The last time I looked it had attracted over five thousand comments. I'd say they were split 5-95 between those who agreed with me and those who thought I was the stupidest moron that had ever listened to a Beatles album, if, in fact, that was something I'd ever done. And that's not to mention the legion of Harpo Marx fans who chipped in on the subject of my astonishing ludicrousness and slander.
The internet is an unforgiving place. I was brutalised. Humbled. My opinions brought to their knees. Of course this is what the internet is like, it is the fury of all hell let loose, but it hadn't occurred to me that it would happen over something like this, a trivial article, largely tongu
e in cheek, presenting a trivial, largely tongue in cheek point of view.
I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. If it wasn't for the fact that I was cast adrift for six months, a complete non-person, while another man – even if it was me – slept with my wife and helped my daughter with algebra, I might have been upset by it. Yet the fury of the internet seemed small potatoes next to the complete and utterly curious meltdown of a life.
Nevertheless, I was glad my picture wasn't on it, and that I'd written it under the obvious pseudonym, Billy Shears. I could go about my business unhindered, and not need to worry that all those who'd posted death threats because I'd had the hubris to imply that Sir Paul wasn't cool anymore – and indeed never had been – were actually going to be able to try to carry out the threat.
Soon enough I stopped reading the comments. Indeed, I expected much worse for my article on the work of the replacement Paul, the article that took for granted as absolute fact that McCartney had died in a car accident. However, no one read that one. That's how the internet works. Or not.
15
Her name was Amber. She apologised for being called Amber. I wondered if she was used to apologising in the States for the name, or whether it was just since she'd arrived in the UK.
'Why are you apologising?' I said. 'It's a nice name.'
'Over thirty per cent of women with the name Amber work in the porn industry,' she said.
'That's not true.'
'On average, in the US, just over 0.001 percent of women work in the porn industry. Yet if you're called Amber, bingo, you've got just a two in three chance to avoid it.'
I smiled, although I got the sense that this was all part of her routine when she told people her name.
'That why you came to Nairn?' I asked. 'There hasn't been a porn industry here in twenty years.'
She laughed. She smiled a lot, but there was a sincerity in the smile. I liked her, and not just because she believed I'd been on a plane to LA a few hours earlier.
We were sitting at the back of a small pub at the bottom of the High Street. A quiet afternoon inside, but then the sun was still shining and there was a warmth about the day that would linger late into the evening.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
I'd been thinking, and had sorted out my short term plans. Longer term, I wasn't so sure. All I could think about was somehow muddling through the next six months without doing anything stupid; what to do about the actual plane crash, however, I had no idea.
How could I stop the plane flying into the storm? How could I prevent it taking off? Maybe I could delay it, but then what was that going to achieve? There must be another me, right at that minute, the me of six months earlier, living with Brin. If the plane didn't crash, then that me wouldn't die. What then? Would that version of me disappear at the time the plane should have crashed, or would he go on living? In that case, there would be two of me, there would be another me living my life. The next six months was long enough. I needed that other me to be on the plane. Except, I knew he wouldn't be on it when it crashed.
Was I being selfish? Letting the plane take off, knowing that all those people were going to perish, just so my life would get back to normal? And how did I do that? If the other me got on the plane, it crashed, and then I turned up back at home, how was that going to look? What were the authorities going to think? If I arrived at home straight away, before the plane had left, then I could tell Brin I'd decided not to get on the plane. I'd have her as my alibi. Yet, I would still be on a CCTV camera – probably hundreds of times – walking through the airport and getting on the plane.
I had six months to think about it. The immediate problem was what I was going to do for six months, so that was what I had addressed.
'I can't go home. I'm already there, and that's just going to freak everybody out.'
Amber nodded. She was probably way ahead of me.
'You've got kids? You look like you've got kids.'
'Just the one. Baggins. She's eleven.'
'Won't you want to see her? What about your wife?'
'Good question.' I paused, thought about how much I needed to explain myself. 'Not sure what I'll do. Assuming there's another me actually there, I can't really risk putting myself in the middle of that timeline. Like going to the school and chatting to Baggins at lunchtime or something. What could I say? Oh, don't tell me later that we talked? That's too weird. I could, of course, go down there and hide behind a tree, view her from afar.'
'You might get arrested.'
'Well, maybe. I don't know. I might, but that's going to be pretty painful, watching her with some other dad, knowing that I can't be there. I don't know, I just...'
I let the sentence go, but she gave a small wave to drag the rest of it out of me.
'I don't know how this sounds, but... I know she's happy. I know how those six months go. Nothing exceptional. Baggins is happy, nothing bad happens. I don't need to protect her. So, it's like, as long as I know she's happy, and I don't need to worry about her, then I don't miss her too much. That doesn't sound callous, does it?'
She shook her head.
'So, on balance, I might just leave it. But we'll see. God knows what I might think by November.'
'And your wife?'
'What about her?'
'Do you have the same thoughts about your wife?'
That was an interesting question, and very much drove a nail into the heart of my feelings for her. I'd already had – and quickly tried to dismiss – the thought that six months away from Brin might not be too much of a bad thing, because those six months we'd just lived through hadn't been so great. She'd seemed distant and distracted. Annoyed at me at times, in a way that she would never have been before.
Perhaps seventeen years of marriage had finally caught up with us. Or maybe there was the other thing. Maybe she had finally seen through my guilt.
'I don't know,' I said, letting the words drift away and hoping Amber would pick up on the fact that I didn't want to talk about it.
'OK,' she said. 'What else?'
'Well, I don't want to use my bank card, because then the other me is going to see that he's in Nairn and then have to contact the bank, and so on. I don't need to worry about money for a few days as I had plenty of dollars which I've changed. Booked into the Golf View for two nights...'
'Nice.'
'Then I'll need to decide what to do. Brin, Baggins and I will be turning up here in about ten days, so I need to be long gone by then, and I need to make sure that I don't do anything that has someone recognising me when I come back next week with the family.'
'Lay low,' she said.
'Exactly.'
'What about me?'
'I don't remember meeting you last June.'
'Maybe this is altering your past.'
I nodded. I was drinking a gin and tonic, lots of lemon, lots of ice. She'd taken the same. I was trying to take my time, as I was aware I could have drunk about eight of them in an hour, and that was somewhere I didn't want to go.
'That kind of thing,' I began, and I shook my head. 'That's just a total mind bender. Think of every time-travel movie you ever saw. There's always something that's a head scratcher, that has you thinking, well that doesn't add up. I can't think too much about it. I need to keep my head down.'
'What will you do for money when the dollars have run out? As they will, fairly quickly, if you're staying at the Golf View.'
'Tomorrow I'm going to put on a small bet on the Test match.' She raised her eyebrows, so I said, 'Cricket,' and she nodded. 'And I'll keep doing that, whenever there's some sport or other where I know what's going to happen. Nothing big, nothing to draw attention to myself. Won't use the same betting shop more than a couple of times. I'll likely move around.'
'Like Dr Bruce Banner.'
'Exactly.'
'That's kind of sad, but I think it's a good choice.'
'It's only for six months.'
She made a small movement wi
th her eyes then stared into her glass. There was a slight shrug of her shoulders.
'What?' I asked.
'Oh, nothing,' she said.
'What? Really. You can't insert yourself into the position of my principal advisor and then keep opinions to yourself.'
She nodded, as this seemed a reasonable argument.
'There's not a comfortable available course of action open to you in six months time. I mean, one that will keep you out of prison. So, maybe six months will turn out to be much longer.'
'What do you mean comfortable course of action?' I asked.
She stared across the table for a few moments, and then let it all out. 'You're going to have to kill the other you before he gets on the plane, then not get on the plane, and then... whatever. You let it crash, or try to make sure it doesn't crash by some means that I really can't figure out.'
She looked like she was ready to burble on, but I guess the look on my face made her slightly abashed and she finally nodded in acknowledgement at the outrageousness of the suggestion.
'You want me to kill myself?'
'I don't want you to do it, it just makes sense.'
'No it doesn't.'
'Why?'
'Because I'm on that plane until it's just about to crash, then I come here. If I kill myself before getting on the plane, then I'm never in a position to wish that I was on Nairn beach, so maybe I never come to Nairn. Maybe this other me, the me that I am now, just vanishes the second I murder the first me.'
'Ha!' she said.
'What?'
'That's just kinda cool. I mean, I can see your point, so you probably don't want to do it.'
She had a way about her. Nice smile. Even though the contradiction didn't seem that cool to me I still found myself thinking it was cool because she'd said it was.
'And doesn't that apply to everything?' I said. 'If I do anything to change things up to the point where that plane crashes, then don't I just vanish? This me here right now, maybe this never happens?'
Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! Page 8
