Strip the Willow

by John Aberdein

  – See our new man out, said Rookie Marr.

  – Yes, Leop, said Luna.

  When Luna stood up and walked, Guy could not keep his eyes off her long skirt. Luna’s skin, as revealed, was at the darker end of the honey spectrum.

  – And Guy— said Rookie Marr, drawing off his gaze.

  – Yes? said Guy.

  – Make it good, said Rookie Marr.

  – Of course, said Guy.

  – Or you know what you will be?

  – Toast? said Guy, in measured hope.

  – Dead meat, said the Leopard.

  The Leopard pressed a yellow key on the black remote.

  A curved plasma screen, showing in slo-mo the trampling of a tourist in Pamplona, swung inwards, dipped hooked horn adrip with gore, and a bright stairwell beyond was revealed. Luna indicated Guy to go first. Even in the world of the shark pool, hospitality died hard. She saw him to the threshold, she saw him through the slo-mo door. She saw him down the first dozen steps. As he descended, he felt a modest number of fingers on his shoulder. He turned around.

  Taking advantage of the construction of her dress, she had hoisted the lower tabard, the elongated apron. She had nothing else on, apart from silver shoes, and she said nothing.

  Guy was kind of frozen. The silence, if nothing else, needed to be covered.

  – Do come up and see us sometime, said Luna.

  – Will. Sure. Bye.

  Feet stammering on the stairs, he fled.

  any wynd was of the mind

  That night, rehearsal night, it was nearly twelve when Lucy, abandoning Balcony A, abandoning Guy and his remarks and the technical crew, abandoning the sea of carved polystyrene that was Union Street, blew Alison a light goodbye, and took her leave downwards by means of steep double steps. They were called the Back Wynd Steps, but were dead straight; any wynd was of the mind.

  possibly losing heart

  Alison looked at her departing back and shook her head. Lucy was losing stamina now, possibly losing heart. She was older, sure, but it wasn’t just that. If you were someone like Lucy, there was only so long you could put your principles on the line without coming apart. From her own point of view it was different. She fought back out of reflex – I’ll aye fecht for Gwen – but also knew when to lower her head and avoid open harm. Now, with Gwen moving beyond her, she was even more drawn to the older woman, her tough, gentle superior, who could both resist and be generous, then detach herself in a way.

  Well, there was a showdown coming, they both knew that.

  change would be a fine thing

  There was a typical heap on the left hand side, on one of the landings, drifted about with stray white polystyrene beads. Lucy tried to pick a way down past without scrunching.

  – What ye tiptoeing for? said the huddle on the Back Wynd Steps.

  – Sorry, didn’t want to wake you up.

  – Didna want to put siller in my cup, was it? Ye must hae plenty.

  – Thought it would jangle.

  – Change would be a fine thing.

  – Ha, she said. Hey, do I—? Do I know you from somewhere?

  – From somewhere? he said. Ye should. I’ve been that place.

  – I’m sure I know the voice.

  – Tell me ma name, then.

  – Oh, it’s just the voice, said Lucy.

  – The voice, he echoed. The voice. You be Julie?

  – No. Been many things, but not a Julie.

  – Pity.

  – You cold? she said. You must be cold. What do you need for a coffee?

  – Coupla quid.

  – Okay.

  – No coffee at this time, he said.

  Not Nae coffee, she noted. His accent had moved towards her.

  She popped a coin in his cup, but knew she should have put it in his hand.

  april 1

  edge of the sink

  When Lucy looked in a mirror, she often did history. Comparative history: the morning and evening of a life.

  ’68 had been sweet and Rabelaisian, tentative, assured, a Hogmanay and a New Year’s Day, a throwaway defining moment. Now here she was, in the office washroom at sixty, moisturising, dwelling on it, the city poised to tumble about her. The hard, glinting, bought and exploited city. Sixty the new forty, forty the new twenty? She peered in the mirror so hard, her moisturiser fell off the edge of the sink.

  Yep, it was evening alright.

  Her mobile pinged.

  limping home

  Up in the Fastness, the Leopard settled into his highback chair and snarled through the intercom for food. The dish was alien, Red Deer Haunch, this was not his country. Not quite, not yet.

  Luna did not join him. Luna never joined him for food. His moonwoman preferred what grew in cellophane packets: rocket, pak choi, cress.

  Out at sea, the Girl Julie, with red steel plates and brand new purse-net mounted, skipper Spermy McClung, was limping home after striking some bloody rock no on the chart off Boddam. A waterlogged log more like, from Sweden, Russia. It hadn’t revealed on the radar’s sweep and it hadn’t come up on sonar. Something just below the surface, in no-man’s sea, is always feared the worst.

  – Fuckin pass me the blower, he said to the mate, Baxter.

  He spoke on the radiophone to his new owner, and Rookie was far from chuffed.

  – The investment we’ve put in, said Rookie, leaves me exposed. We cannot afford down-time.

  – Deal wi it, said Spermy, and passed the phone back.

  – Says he canna afford down-time, said Spermy. We’ve left him exposed.

  – Cunt, said Baxter.

  In on land – yes, there was plenty happening there. Eager for cash, and unabashed by work, the Poles had moved in, or been moved in. There were shops in Uberdeen now, like PriceRite and KostKutter, where half the goods were labelled in Polish.

  Zupy: Barszcz, Rosol, Zurek.

  Soups: Beetroot, Clear, Slightly Sour.

  Maciek would have preferred to make his own barszcz, from his own beetroot. He had a plot of land now, a small allotment, overlooking the ruffled entrance to the harbour. What he wanted to plant there would take time to come to table. If salt on the wind didn’t poison it first. As he made his way down to the harbour from KostKutter he dropped a coin and a word, as he often did, to the man who dwelt on the steps.

  – Have faith, said Maciek, the wheel comes round.

  – Wi forty broken spokes? the man replied. Doubt it.

  Up in Northfield, Andy Endrie was touching the cold frame of a photo of his son, his loon, off-centre on the minimal mantelpiece. Down below, the electric fire, he could feel it beginning to scorch his breeks. He hoped Amande would come through soon and see to him, and also bring her partner, Ludwig, for a powwow about the chestnut stall. Fresh chestnuts from Spain. Old warhorses, veterans of the class-struggle, they still got out on the streets. They had to supplement their pensions somehow.

  Next door – he could hear them through the paper-thin partition in the Council semi – Ludwig and Amande were having a row. They needed each other; they needed somebody to row with, to take their minds off poverty, slackening tissues, suppressed homesickness, waves of self-pity and others’ disdain. One spoke in German Scots, the other in French Doric. He couldn’t make out all the words. But they were good people, they had seen plenty. Dinna tu m’accroche pas. That was a bit cruel from Amande, she often used it. Don’t try to hook me. And yet, when she was sitting behind Ludwig on the bike, cuddled into his back, she used to seem content. Maybe that was it. The basic huggy warmth was fine: it was face-to-face they didn’t get on. He himself hadn’t seen them properly for a year or two. His head was forced back irrevocably by his spondylitis, craning up at the ceiling. As he would say to you if you came by the house, Ach, I’m a bittie mair cramped noo.

  Bing Qing was supervising in the kitchen behind Balcony A. A precise word here or there, she felt no panic, even at the thought of so many VIPs. But that was easy for her. She had fled whe
n young from cultural revolution in Shanghai, where the greatest minds, the most skilled people, had to dig dung. Since then, for Bing Qing, everyone was a VIP.

  Her kitchen staff were Chinese, her serving staff were Polish. It was a good combination: the Chinese dedicated to the chopping-knife and the hot wok, the Poles educated and polite. The Poles were starting to count hours; she was careful not to underpay.

  Zander Petrakis, combative professor, was completing his monthly tour of the city boundary, as far away from the centre as possible, striding from boundary stone to boundary stone of the Freedom Lands like Nietzsche over his Alps. He was Emeritus now, and no longer taught. He would write; he would help the department win its funding with his delineations and relations of ideas, and sharp researches. Within the Department of Moral Philosophy his own chair was Philosophy pure. Although he had fought against the title Chair of Philosophy.

  That is what is wrong with Western Philosophy, he’d said. Too much sitting. The first word of wisdom comes with breath in the lungs. He would have preferred his status to be conferred as Great Stride in Philosophy.

  He stopped at a last stone before dusk. A grey stone, irregular, earthfast, standing at the wooded crown of the Blak Hill of Queyltis, in the picnic area at Hillview Crescent. He made out a shallow saucer mark. Its lead was melted and stolen, any useful inscription gone. The message from the past could not be read, and he moved on.

  William Swink II, Uberdeen’s elected Provost, was getting into a tizz in the Town House, abusing English, struggling into his chained-off office, as he called it. It was a thin double chain, with a monstrous bauble. Using the ermine of his robe as a polishing duster, he huffed and breathed and rubbed it.

  – It’s dim as ditchwater, said the Lord Provost.

  – That’ll mak twa o ye, said Walter Mitchell. Yir chain’s fine, I Brassoed it this mornin.

  He unkinked the Provost’s chain, and let it enhance the absentee chest and the womanly belly-paunch. He could remember the Lord Provost when he was fitter. He rippled his hands twice down the lightly-trapped ermine, suppling it in place.

  – Hey, Walty, said the Provost. Watch the material!

  – Haud at peace, ye auld minker, said Walty.

  Up in the Fastness, the Leopard swallowed a last dark gobbet of venison, and dismissed his Principal Taster for the night.

  are you with us or against us, lucy?

  Soon her mobile began a second crescendo. Guy the Accelerator. Lucy laid her brow on the chill mirror, and shut her eyes to outwait him.

  She didn’t reopen till the third burst of pinging stopped. Condensation had come over the mirror – so reassuring to see your own breath. Her finger made nine lines, at angles, in the fog: two rivers, a bumpy hinterland, a coast.

  History grounded on its map.

  Dampish settlement at first, Deen, of no account, like its close neighbour, Don. Or rather of which no account. She had searched, she had raked the record, stashed high in a tin-lined room in the Town House.

  Rivermouth dwelling opportunities, Deen and Don, scrabbling about in glacial gravel. Lucy imagined calluses beaded across a young girl’s palm, and a rough wooden spade gradually rounding.

  Mediaeval burgh next, compact, bijou. Dung-strewn, wooden, a bugger to go on fire. Its leper spital a mile outside. The girl now carrying an expired hen and a cog of yesterday’s milk to leave some distance away, on a cup-marked stone.

  Then the seventeenth century spawned its oxymoron: Civil War. She imagined persecution, of the girl, and the girl’s child, caused by lack of imagination of what it is to be another. The girl hiding, failing to hide, up foul alleys, from dragoons.

  Lately a city, Greek, neo, of sparkle and severity, washed in the wind. No coal or iron ore, but plenty deep and surface stone, and grass, and near and distant fish. Hand-knitted stockings for the Crimea, mutton pies, horn combs.

  Envelopes patented then manufactured athwart the river, from fresh pulp, for bills and billets-doux. She imagined the lass’s tongue, licking a gummed triangle. It was the same girl, harried through history, strolling free a single moment.

  Then the whining bombs tumbling home, on Urquhart Road, Cattofield; the stanched mutuality of stretchers.

  After that particular war, called the last war for unclear reasons, it was rationing, typhoid, mild depression, oil.

  Old shops swingballed, to maximise malls. On the day she learned of her mother’s death, Lucy saw, from the top of a dizzy bus, a lurching iron ball, splattering through the lath and plaster of an outdated draper.

  The new glassy halls were christened, and post-christened, with propitious names: St Nicholas, Bon Accord, Sonsy Quines.

  Santa Claus, Happy to Meet, Big-Breasted Women.

  To attract big cargo. And lo, big cargo came. Tall kirks got converted, into pubs and clubs. Once the folk were Picts and Celts, wild, blue, artistic. Then they fled hell as Papists, Episcopapes, Seceders, Receders, and phlegmatic Protestants. Finally they were Long Throats, happy in their cups.

  Now Spectacle—

  The last of the mirror fog had gone. Her phone began that rising ping again. She plucked the mobile from her bag, flipped the lid and took the call. It was Guy, of course, wondering where the ten bells of fuck she was.

  – Keep your hair on, Guy, she said. I wasn’t aware there were that many.

  She and Guy, never notably adhesive, were coming unstuck.

  – Are you with us or against us, Lucy?

  She pulled on her coat and tied the belt in a flamboyant knot; the kind favoured by younger women.

  the 37 million quid thing

  Union Street, specced up specially for Spectacle, had long been closed to normal traffic. Instead, a slow-revving rotating belt had been installed, as may be stood on, or stridden on, in the newer terminals of bigger airports. A mile of belting above the rollers, a mile of belting below, made of high-tensile, non-slip pavementette.

  Pavementette: a marvel first fabricated to make the pocked skin of the moon amenable. Due to New Formula Fluon nothing could mark pavementette, whether gum, gunge or rocket peroxide. Woven into the fabric, every fifty metres or so, was a local brand name.

  Mountain Heart

  Mountain Heart

  Mountain Heart

  What do you think? Guy Bord had asked, that day when the members of the Joint Working Group were on their tour. The revolving belt was remarkably smooth.

  Moved, I am, said Lucy.

  Good, he said. Oh, I see, ha, moved along—

  No, it’s philosophy, Guy.

  Which one are you on these days? said Guy.

  Cogito, sed non ergo sum. I think, but do not therefore, necessarily, exist. Moved, I am.

  Give me a break, said Guy. That’s 17 million quid you’re standing on. Correction, 37 million. It overran.

  Thanks, Lucy had said, I’m moved.

  It lay stopped now, or stoppedish, the 37 million quid thing, softly vibrating. Not a soul was being carried to a horizon against that soul’s particular wishes.

  Lucy aimed a path across the vibrating band and jiggled into the boozy crowd.

  – Fuckface, fa dae ye think ye’re pushin, eh? Hey, I’m spikkin tae ye—! a woman said.

  Fa meant who. Ye meant you. Fuckface meant a variety of things, principally Fuckface.

  – Sorry, she said, and coughed. Could I just squeeze—?

  – Dinna ye fuckin sorry me! said the woman. Loser!

  Lucy shut up, as was implicit in the last instruction. Loser, as a catchall term of scorn and abuse, seemed to have scourged the language recently. Financial misfortune, negative equity? Loser. Sacked due to global downturn? Loser. Down because of romantic fracture? Loser. And if, despite your own travails, you showed sympathy for others, other losers, you were a double-loser yourself.

  It was not the law of the jungle, which was probably quite humane, and based on good housekeeping.

  It was the law of the shallow pool, where a lame creature attempting to ford is reduced
to a skeleton in no time flat. By the hidden piranha. The new lingo told Lucy all she needed to know about the legacy of the Sixties. There was none.

  All you need is love? Loser!

  Yanking her coat-knot tighter, she took fresh aim towards two huge bergs of jagged polystyrene, lodged on the far edge of the pavementette. The bergs were bright, basically white, but aquamarine backlit for truth to nature.

  The first had a ledge chipped out, for green bottles of Stella to sit. It had a legend chiselled above. Chill!

  Smart. Cool. Self-centred. And the greatest of these is cool, she thought. Cool had been cool for fifty years, possibly longer. You are a long time dead, she thought. And before that, you must seek to be a long time cool.

  There were three green bottles left.

  The second iceberg had a double set of stencils forking up, the left hand-prints small and red, diverging, the right footprints vertical, big and black. Some leftie perhaps, in mourning for socialism, or love poet who had kicked ass with Death.

  She wished there were more. There were plenty more bergs and Lucy wished the other blanks had been chiselled or inscribed or daubed; customised with people’s meanings. But meaning was something you bought into now, not something you did.