The Ossians

by Doug Johnstone

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you want to see your rooms, or do you fancy a quick drink first?’ Derek asked.

  ‘We’ve always got time for a drink,’ said Connor, looking round at the threadbare carpet and the rough walls. The dads at the bar were eyeing them up. Connor couldn’t work out if they were eyeing up the lads as out-of-town twats or eyeing up the girls, for obvious reasons. Whatever, he didn’t feel threatened, maybe due to the presence of half a dozen schoolchildren, or maybe just because it wasn’t a threatening situation. Not every situation had to be. As the kids continued to create their cacophony of wheezy madness, he noticed for the first time in God knows how long that he didn’t have a headache. He had a good feeling about this place. He turned to the rest of them.

  ‘What are we all having?’

  ‘So are you a folk band, then?’

  Derek’s wife, Lynne, was a chatty little redhead with rolling hips, flushed cheeks and a wide smile, dispensing drinks and taking cash with one hand as she fussed over a tiny mongrel dog with the other. The Smoo Cave Hotel was full of dogs. An Alsatian, a collie, a pair of greyhounds (one of which was deaf, his owner having to click his fingers near the ground to get it to come), a Highland terrier and some indiscernible crossbreeds all mooched around for dropped crisps, sniffing at hands and trouser legs. The kids were still there although their accordions had been packed away, and they were now playing a complicated game of tig around the pool table. Where the kids had been practising there was now a ragtag ceilidh band made up of three accordion players, a fiddler, a lean woman in dungarees bashing away with a table leg at what looked like a home-made drum and a huge guy with an eye-patch and a beard dwarfing a mandolin. They were playing straggly, mournful laments that swayed with a sea shanty rhythm, at least partially due to the drunkenness of the players.

  It seemed like half of Durness had turned up, as dozens of people crammed into the bright space of the bar. Pint arms got nudged, conversations eavesdropped and dogs’ tails trodden upon. Connor had been getting the life story of the village from Lynne, as if it were her own tale. People here either worked on the fish farms or for the Ministry of Defence at Cape Wrath or did the occasional bit of sheep farming or else worked in the tourist trade like her. Plenty of people came through in the summer, but they hardly got any visitors in winter, that’s why she’d been surprised by their booking, but it was nice to see new faces around the place, and such young, attractive faces, too. There were half a dozen of the most beautiful beaches within walking distance if this weather cleared up and, of course, Smoo Cave, which has one of the biggest cave mouths in Britain, and then there’s the golf course past Balnakeil, the most northerly on the mainland and, oh, Balnakeil beach is absolutely gorgeous, but sometimes it’s closed if there’s missile or bomb testing going on, and then there’s the craft village, with all sorts of interesting little arty shops and workshops, and did Connor know that John Lennon used to spend his summers up here as a child with his favourite auntie and there’s a memorial to him in the village hall’s garden, which featured in that Beechgrove Garden programme, hadn’t he seen it?

  ‘Only with a name like The Ossians I thought you might be a folk group,’ she was saying now in a singsong northern accent placed somewhere between Shetland and Ireland to Connor’s ears. ‘You know, it sounds a bit Celtic or something. I’m just glad you didn’t turn out to be protestors. You know, against the MOD test range along the road? We get some of these new-age types coming up protesting against the military, they always look like that Swampie from the telly a few years back. They’ve all got these dreadlocks and scruffy clothes and wear beads and things, but they’re ever-so-well-spoken and all have proper jobs with posh companies and earn more than we do. What they don’t realise is that the government and the army provide a lot of employment in this area. What would happen to Durness and Balnakeil if the range shut down? The school roll is dropping as it is, families are leaving to go to towns and cities, and pretty soon I don’t know who’ll be left except people catering for tourists and fish farmers, I suppose. Did I tell you about the fellow Henderson who used to work on the fish farms? Killed his wife. Put her in the water, just like that. They locked him up in that loony bin Carstairs, but he got out eventually cos he wasn’t daft, not really, and you know what he did?’ Connor shook his head, suppressing a smile. ‘He only phoned up the Fisheries Commission, asking for his old job back. Can you imagine?’ The dog under her arm yapped in agreement, then struggled out of her grasp.

  ‘So what kind of group are you?’

  ‘A rock band, I suppose.’

  ‘Like that nice Travis lot?’

  Connor laughed, finished his pint of 80 and moved on to the huge nip of whisky in front of him.

  ‘A bit like them.’

  ‘He’s awful nice-looking, that fellow in Travis. Are you going to be as famous as them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. We’re not quite as mainstream as that.’

  ‘Will you be giving us a song later?’

  ‘It’s our night off.’

  ‘Och, I’m sure you could play us a wee something.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t think it’d go down too well. Besides, this lot are pretty good.’

  ‘Ach, they’ll be falling off their chairs with the drink soon,’ laughed Lynne.

  ‘Are you planning on doing any work tonight?’ Derek shouted jovially from the far end of the bar. ‘Or were you going to yack on there all night? Poor bloke must have sore ears listening to you going on.’

  ‘Please excuse my husband,’ said Lynne, moving towards a waiting punter. ‘He doesn’t understand the concept of being a friendly host. Speak to you later, dear.’

  They hadn’t made it to their rooms yet. The five of them had stayed in the bar and soaked up the atmosphere as the pub gradually filled with locals. The mood in the room was a lot less reserved than they were used to from city pubs. As unfamiliar faces they were a magnet, locals pitching up and engaging them in conversation as if they were old friends. This was both a good and a bad thing. Kate and Danny got talking to a sweet elderly couple who ran a craft shop along the road and had nothing but nice things to say about the world. But later, Connor and Paul almost got into a fight with a mouthy prick of a salmon farmer who referred to an English footballer as ‘that darkie bastard’. Later, Paul found himself laughing at the same arsehole, as he drunkenly lamented that he ‘used to love that Gary Glitter, used to sing his songs and dance around the bedroom as a kid, but not now’.

  Connor made his way to the toilets. At the door to the bogs, still attached to half a ton of concrete at its base, stood a diamond-shaped ‘Passing Place’ sign, the first ‘a’ changed clumsily to an ‘i’. Connor chuckled despite himself. In the toilets he sucked speed off his fingers, swallowed a couple of large, oblong pink pills, and finished the last of the gin out of his water bottle. He wondered how he might be able to procure more gin without the rest of them knowing, and sauntered back to the table.

  The wheezy sway from the ceilidh band cut swathes through the air. Connor looked around as he let the drunken rhythms wash over him. Everyone in the place seemed comfortable, content. They all seemed to know what they were doing here. He was jealous. Bursts of laughter rose over the sound of the band, and made him feel lonely. He watched Derek and Lynne, swapping banter and looks with each other, smiles on their faces. His gaze fell upon the small portable telly sitting at the end of the bar. It was switched on with the sound muted, but he recognised the Scottish news presenters. He was thinking how weird it would be if the boy’s face appeared on the television and almost dropped his pint when it really happened. There were the boy’s angelic features staring out from the television, right at Connor. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle and laughed to himself. Had he conjured this up using the power of thought? Just how loaded was he? The picture on the screen was grainy, the boy seemed less radiant, less beautiful than he had in Thurso with the sound of crashing waves around th
em. Connor watched the news story and saw footage of a posh area of Edinburgh, a concerned-looking woman, then a shot of a dark executive saloon car and a registration number. It looked like a regular missing-person report. Did that mean the angel was just a boy who’d done a bunk from home with his parents’ swanky car? Maybe that’s what the angel wanted him to think. Maybe he’d arranged this little show specifically for Connor. He realised he would miss the angel if he wasn’t around. He found himself worrying that he wouldn’t turn up at the next show, wouldn’t look out for him any more, would just give up and leave him to fend for himself. The news report ended and he looked around the room, hoping to see that face among the punters, knowing that he wouldn’t, and knowing that he would be disappointed.

  ‘Who you looking for?’

  Hannah was watching him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s as if you’re looking for someone.’

  ‘Just soaking up the atmosphere.’

  Hannah was still looking at him.

  ‘Did you see that thing on the telly just now?’ Connor said eventually.

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘A news report. About a missing boy, I think.’

  ‘Connor, the television’s not on.’

  He looked round. He wasn’t particularly surprised to see the television was off. Had Derek or Lynne just switched it off while he wasn’t looking? Had it ever really been on?

  ‘It was on a minute ago.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Yeah. Wait here.’ He walked over to the television and placed his hand on the back of it. Still warm. He wasn’t going mad. He returned to his seat.

  ‘Still warm.’

  ‘OK, so the television was on. What missing boy?’

  ‘I think a boy has run away from home, stolen his folks’ car and is following me round the country.’

  ‘You mean following us round the country, don’t you? I take it you’re assuming he’s a fan of The Ossians.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why else would he follow us? Or you?’

  ‘Good question. Do you believe in angels?’

  ‘Connor, you need to calm down on the drink.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe in angels. Don’t be daft. I take it from the question that you do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘There’s no need to be, I’m perfectly fine.’

  ‘Apart from seeing angels and imagining news reports on television.’

  ‘I didn’t imagine it. The television was on, it’s still warm.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  He wasn’t upset that Hannah didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t believe him either, the state he was in. It didn’t matter whether anyone believed him, he knew the boy was looking out for him, and it made him feel comfortable. He felt contented.

  He looked across at Hannah, who had a frown on her face.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me, you know,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘I should be worrying about you.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you? What about the thing in Inverness? How do you feel now?’

  ‘I told you, I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’

  ‘Thanks. I love you too, fucknut.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. You look great, just… worried or something.’

  ‘The only thing I’m worried about is you.’

  ‘Promise?’

  Hannah thought about her missed period, her conversation with Kate and her fit in Inverness. She thought about Connor, sitting there loaded, talking about angels as if it was normal. She thought about bringing a baby into this world.

  ‘I promise.’

  There was an almighty bang and rumble from outside. The windows rattled in their frames and a whoosh of air was forced down the chimney. A couple of seconds later there was a lower, subsonic shudder, like an earthquake happening far away, that Connor and Hannah could feel through their legs. They looked at each other.

  The band kept playing, while some of the punters gave each other knowing looks. Another bang and rumble shook the windows again, followed two seconds later by the earthquake shake.

  ‘What the fuck’s that?’ Connor shouted over the band to Lynne.

  ‘That’ll be the MOD,’ she said. ‘I told you about the bombing range at Cape Wrath, didn’t I?’

  ‘I thought it was a few miles down the road.’

  ‘It is,’ said Lynne, coming round from behind the bar. ‘But they sometimes fire at the range from navy ships out at sea. Depending on the weather we might be able to see something.’

  She took Connor gently by the elbow and indicated to the rest of them to follow as she headed out the door.

  The wind had dropped to a whisper and sleet clouds were clearing from a sky jammed with stars. They followed Lynne up the road and stood at the gate to the clifftop field. They could hear the sea beyond the cliff, now that the weather had calmed. In the field a small flurry of sheep broke into an aimless run. To their right were three blinking lighthouses along the coast, twinkling out of sync.

  Suddenly there was a flash followed by a bang, and they saw the outline of a ship silhouetted against the horizon in the afterglow of gunfire. This happened again, then again, each time followed by a low, quaking rumble a couple of seconds after the explosion of light. The ship, maybe a mile out to sea, was repeatedly outlined against the blackness of the horizon like a shadow puppet.

  ‘Looks like a frigate of some kind,’ said Lynne, smiling as they all looked at her. ‘You get all sorts of navy ships out here and you can tell them apart quite easily. There should be some aircraft bombing soon, they do both at the same time. Tornadoes or Harriers usually, but sometimes they fly American aircraft like Hornets. I think the idea is to simulate battle conditions.’

  ‘What are they firing at?’ said Danny.

  ‘The naval guns fire at the Cape Wrath range, it’s just a big stretch of empty land really. And the aircraft usually drop their bombs on Garvie Island, it’s just beyond the headland here. It’s the only place in Europe where they’re allowed to drop live, thousand-pound bombs. You get quite a shake from those, I can tell you.’

  The ship’s guns had been quiet for a minute or two when they heard aircraft jets overhead. Connor craned his neck and felt dizzy as the stars birled round the sky. He couldn’t see anything except the bright pinpricks of light from millions of miles away, millions of years ago. The engine roar got louder until it filled their ears, then just as quickly it eased away, fading into the blackness. Suddenly the earth shook and their ears popped and an almighty walloping explosion made them all jump. A few seconds later this was repeated, then again and again. Connor’s ribcage shuddered and his heart raced. He held on to the gate, flakes of cold rust coming off in his hands as he clung on.

  ‘Is this safe?’ Danny shouted over the sound of another plane slicing through the air above them.

  ‘Oh, we’re fine here,’ said Lynne calmly. ‘They’re very careful about where they’re shooting and bombing. There have never been any accidents as long as I can remember.’

  ‘What about that friendly fire you hear about?’ said Kate, her eyes wide as another crumpling bang shook her guts.

  ‘That’s the Americans, isn’t it? Not our boys, they know what they’re shooting at.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Kate.

  Connor was mesmerised by the noise and was settling into the rhythm of it. A rising crescendo of jet roar, slowly dying away then – wham! – a bowel-loosening explosion that made you jump no matter how much you were expecting it. He tried to imagine being a small bird flapping around in the shock waves from the explosion, or a tiny bug, flipped up into the air and fried in a microsecond.

  ‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?’ Hannah leant in and shouted in his ear.

  ‘Just a wee bit.’

  ‘It’s like be
ing in a war zone,’ she said. ‘Something off the news.’

  A lot of the boys Connor was at school with in Arbroath had ended up joining the forces, that’s what happened if you had a marine base just outside town. He wondered if one of them was flying a plane over their heads right now, or manning the guns on the frigate. What made people join the army? He couldn’t think of anything in the world he’d rather do less. Didn’t these folk always end up as drunken security guards or homeless junkies when they came out? They were supposed to get a sense of community from it, a sense of belonging to something, wasn’t that the recruitment angle? But wasn’t that what he was looking for? Maybe he should join up, that would give him a bit of discipline, a bit of backbone. And it would sort his drinking and drug-taking out. What a load of shite. He would die in the army.

  But he felt he was dying now, standing on a dark clifftop, listening to bombs dropping, clinging with tensed knuckles to a rusty gate, the stars swimming above him. This was his country, a drunken dickhead making racist remarks in a pub. This was Scotland, a friendly wee woman with an expert knowledge of British navy ships and fish-farm murderers getting their old jobs back and dead seagulls on piers and Ecstasy and coke and angelic stalkers following your every move and ridiculous drug deals under cover of darkness and ketamine pills and punches to the face and swigging straight gin and dead seals on beaches and stealing pills from hospital patients and Christmas shoppers in November and speed and hash and bad weather and English students and beautiful landscapes and whisky and more gin.

  He felt nauseous and began shivering. He vomited thick, stinking, dark bile on to the grass, the acrid taste of it stripping his throat. Hannah started rubbing his back gently. The rest of them looked at him as he spat and wiped his mouth with his sleeve and blinked away tears.

  ‘I think we’d better get you inside, dear,’ said Lynne, trying to loop her arm through his. Connor shrugged it off.