Strip the Willow

by John Aberdein

  The snow had crisped, like Ludwig feared.

  – Bye, said the cleaner.

  – Bye, she said to the cleaner. I didn’t catch your name, you’re new aren’t you?

  The cleaner thrust the Margaret security tag on the breast of her tunic towards Lucy, at the same time saying, Maggie.

  – Bye, Maggie.

  That was the end of the sheets in the first folder. She reread the last sentence again.

  The snow had crisped, like Ludwig feared.

  She liked that somehow. She liked Tam’s straight hard style. They were getting somewhere. She opened the flap of the second folder. A knock on the door. Marilyn popped her head in.

  – I won’t poke in, she said. That’s me away. The meeting with UbSpec’s at nine sharp tomorrow, confirmed.

  – Thanks, said Lucy. Thanks for everything. I’ll let myself out.

  – The janitor’s here till seven. Goodnight.

  – Night.

  She was suddenly tired. She couldn’t take any more anyway. The family stuff seemed about over, and the good stuff couldn’t be far. Time to go.

  She stuffed the three folders in her case and set off home.

  a fast chrysalis

  That night Guy was called to another meeting, a briefing. It was important stuff, about how they were going to structure the real Spectacle, now that the dummy runs were over. The big boys were due to show up soon. The pavementette had been properly tensioned and was capable now of working at full throttle. Guy put his tuppenceworth in early, so that he could detach himself from the meeting and pop next door to Blissville.

  – Hello again, Luna, he said, when she had managed to find the key sequence for the door to let him in. Hello, it’s really good to see you.

  – Hi, said Luna. You ran away from me last time.

  – I had to, said Guy.

  – It was rude, she said. You ran away when I was offering you something I knew you wanted.

  – Luna, said Guy, Luna, there were absolutely bound to be cameras.

  – Yes, she said. In the old days there was God’s eye staring down, now there are a few cameras. You men. Which are you most afraid of?

  – Luna, said Guy, there must be somewhere better for us.

  – There isn’t, she said. There isn’t anywhere. If you want to swim with me, you have to swim here. Leop is busy just now. Just here in the doorway, look, under the arch. There won’t be a camera in the actual arch. Come on, come on, I can see you want to—

  – Luna, said Guy, as she let her silk gown drop, like a fast chrysalis, you brighten my sky.

  except when chasing sheep

  – How was your day? she said, when she got back in.

  – Which one? he said.

  Typical answer.

  She didn’t dignify it with immediate response.

  – I only ever had one proper day, he said. Feels that way.

  – Did you get fresh air?

  – It seemed quite fresh, he said. I was in a maze.

  – A maze—

  – I would have got the tea, but I’d no change, I gave it to Tam for looking after my stuff.

  – I could have given you more, if you’d said.

  – I don’t like to beg, he said. I wasn’t on those stairs all that long. I lived on an island. There’s always something to live off, on a decent island.

  – I daresay, said Lucy.

  – But no island is an island, entire of itself.

  Right, she thought.

  – I owe the mazeman £1.80 for my cheese-and-pickle, he said. He’s just a student. Would you remember that, in case I forget?

  – I thought a lightish tea, said Lucy. I’m sorry I’m late.

  – Are you late?

  – There’s a ready Caesar and a quiche in the freezer. Do you want wine?

  – I don’t risk booze.

  – By the way, she said, did you ever run?

  – Run? Just run? Yes, that was quite popular. Running along. Yes, I did the odd bit, I’m pretty sure. On the island the heather was thick and the bog got in the road. I mostly would have walked, I think. Except when chasing sheep, with my knife. My running must have stood me in good stead, but I never caught any. One I drove over a cliff. Salt-caked sheepskin, sogged guts.

  This must have been what it was like, the hyper-vivid too-much-information stuff that Tam taped way back, Lucy thought. He seemed to have flashes still.

  – Happy to walk now, till I get lost. Then I stop. You walk, I’ve seen you. Did you ever run?

  – Run, no, said Lucy. There are other things I want to ask, but later.

  – The famous later, he said. I found four sorts of berries, cowberries, crowberries, blaeberries. Rose hips. Are they a berry? Or halfway to a fruit? Hips.

  – Uh-huh, she said. Will you be happy watching TV?

  – Is anybody? he said.

  – Good point, she said. Soon they’ll all be watching Spectacle.

  – Do you have to watch it, or can you take part?

  – Both, said Lucy. There’s your plate, your knife and fork. There’s an extra sachet of Caesar if you need it. Now, I have to go up to my room. I’m not hungry.

  – How do you get into the sachet?

  – Work at it.

  – But don’t overwork, he said. I think that’s always been my secret.

  – Those horny hands?

  – Ah, there you’ve got me.

  The state of mind he seemed to be in, she was reluctant to leave out scissors.

  a bag of bones

  She put on the gas fire low; it was a bit sharp in the bedroom, she’d left the window open wider than she meant. She took the second bunch of papers out of her briefcase.

  Shima-shima-shima-shima. He was on the road again. He’d had enough of New Year. He left them to munch their fat sandwiches and sip bland chemicals.

  Lucy smiled. She remembered some of the more advanced chemicals, particularly in Paris. Before she had to hurry home. Paris was over by then, anyway. Sois jeune et tais toi. Be young and shut up. It was partly De Gaulle saying that, partly the Stalinists. But without the young, without the hard line of the Situationists, rien, fuck-all.

  But then she had to come back. Her own situation just sort of closed in. Theo had been surprisingly good, over the whole affair. Why did Marcie die, she’d asked, the day she came back from Paris. At this stage in my life I need to know. She lost her belief, said Theo.

  Don’t marry anyone else, said Lucy. That would be my decision, said Theo. I don’t care who you sleep with, said Lucy, as long as you don’t do it in this house. Again that would be up to me, don’t you think? said her father. Don’t anyway, Lucy had said. There are too many memories. And he didn’t, old Theo, he was careful to be careful with her. Or if he did it was silent, or she was out at the time and didn’t know.

  Jim sped through the white and arid Byron Square, with its grocers and cop sub-station, its community centre and betting shop. There was a break in the sky, a starry gap, a silver jet-trail arrowing over. Probably angled for San Francisco, where the good stuff was. The sky arrow grew fat, then bendy.

  She almost paused to comment, but then passed on. Good stuff was what she noted.

  Far e fuck’s e fire? rapped a local drunk, as he ran past. Remains to be seen, comrade, he replied. Fruit! shot the drunk, as he receded. 1968 was an hour old, yet already horns were locked. Selfish! Come back! Fruit! et cetera. Jim tried to let that language slide but it took him over. The Interim Committee On Solving Lovelessness was due to meet that evening, at the Monkey House. INCOSOLOV.

  Two-three idealists stamping about, waiting for followers, getting chilly. Been there, thought Lucy.

  Jim kept running. He curved up a white hill. He ran along the top road, striped by recent buses, Provost Fraser Drive. He possibly wouldn’t speak at the Monkey House. Not that he couldn’t speak. Just that he often didn’t. Because on the building site the topics were boring. Tits, beer, bonuses, and the uselessness of bosses. The use
lessness of students who didn’t finish their degrees was also high on the list.

  Yesterday, when they’d caught him scrawling a poem on a pie-bag, while he was supposed to be making the tea for break, they went about spare. It wasn’t even a pie-bag, it was a bradie bag, all oily with fatty flakes and difficult to write on. Difficult to make an impression. Because of the oiliness. You’d have thought plumbers and sparkies and chippies and brickies would understand these technical points. A poem in honour of his native city. It even rhymed, mostly.

  There was a taste of blood in his throat from the frost, but he was moving smoothly now, he was getting grooved. Jim switched from the long dismal drive onto the Ring Road. It half-ringed the city. The sea did the rest. After the tea-break yesterday, when the Ready-Mix arrived, the drum on the back of the lorry had sounded like short harsh waves endlessly churning. Then the drum tilted and spun, spewing concrete over the rods for the warehouse floor. They had to shovel it level.

  Speeden up, ye scrawny bastard, the foreman had shouted at him, or the cunt’ll ging aff. Nice. The cunt’ll ging aff. Just when he was composing. Why don’t they mix it on site by hand? he’d said. Cut down on all the panic? Oh, aye in a panic, that’s them, said the geezer next to him. It’s a real killer. Come on, ye prick! bellowed the foreman. Cuntin poets. Eh boys, fit hiv we ivver deen tae deserve a cuntin poet! Even the grumpy old labourer, Killer they called him, grunted at that. The foreman threatened to get him shifted, out to the new incinerator site at Tullos. Fuckin dae less harm oot there, said the foreman. Poems burnt pronto, part o the service.

  Beauty, when it does not hold the promise of happiness, must be destroyed. Who said that? Debord or Raoul, somebody in Paris, Debord she thought. She repeated it to herself. Beauty, when it does not hold the promise of happiness, must be destroyed.

  On Jim ran. Shima-shima-shima-shima-shima-shima. There was a ring of hard-pruned roses there on a roundabout. Downhill now, easy and smooth he ran, mind slidingly idle. Hunters, proper hunters, had been running long before folk ever squatted down to pullulate in cities. Hunters of spirit would still be running when Paris, London, Rome, Berlin had been abandoned as scribbled drafts of a bad idea, on a greasy bag. He passed the Grammar rugger pitches, where the moon slanted H after H after H after H on the snow. Binding in scrums and raking in rucks, in the game of high advancement. He was in a freer line of evolution, running.

  Christ, thought Lucy. If I want doughball philosophy, I can buy it on Amazon.

  Down Jim swung through Rubislaw Den. The snow came on again. The sweat of tea and rubber coolies had been exchanged for well set back, proportionate mansions. The snow drove harder. On an instinct he ran up one short drive and sheltered at the side of a big bay window. The tall curtains were drawn, except for a crack of light. The window was open at the bottom, as though to allow a cat freedom. There was a wooden bowl of apples sitting on the inside ledge.

  One squint through the crack showed him Lord Provost William Swink, he was forever in the local papers, plus a few stuffed shirts of a certain age, probably councillors. Nobody knew what Swink’s politics really were, was he Social Progressive or Progressive Social? He was a pie-man. Coming back to the town from his time in England, he had bought about twenty bread shops and turned them into pie outlets. He had taken shares in other food concerns, fishing-boats and abattoirs, cold stores and sausage houses. He wanted to break into drink too, that was the word. That was the handle most folk had on their current Provost. Jim got his ear as close as he could to the bottom of the window to try and fill in the gaps.

  Now image. It’s high time we attacked image harder, the Provost was saying. Typhoid hurt us more than we knew at the time. Five hundred in hospital, and then the deaths, well trade took a dip, you’d expect that. Granite, fish, paper and comb were already in decline, we know that too. Tourism dropped like a tradesman’s plummet, as we ken fine, eh lads? Jim wondered if any of the councillors were really tradesmen, or whether they owned tourist-related businesses. But before I go further, said Swink, will you try a dram? Senator, a whisky? said the Lord Provost. I’m a bourbon man, but when in Rome, said the Senator. It’s Fiddich, said Swink. I’m sure it’ll hit the spot, said the Senator. Men? Aye, aye, Bill. Just a suspicion. Nae too much noo, William. Heave awa wi’t. The councillors, if that’s what they were, had spoken.

  Lord Provost Swink went the rounds with a tray of drams swilling golden in their cut crystal. He went round a second time with a silver platter of shortbread fingers. Then he announced himself ready to spill a few beans. I think it’s time we rid the city of its identity with alienated beef, he said. Alien beef? said the Senator. Exactly, said Lord Provost Swink, because that’s what did for us, with the typhoid. We need to give ourselves a good sluice, and for that there’s nothing better than water. A good sloosh, said a councillor. Cheers. Cheers, said Swink. Now, pure water, where do we get it? Nae oot o a tap, said a second councillor, there’s nithin in that tap nooadays but chlorine. From springs isn’t it, said Swink. Best of the lot, a spring on a mountaintop. That’s an affa lang wey tae ging for a suppie water, said the second councillor. Granted, said Swink. So that’s where the Senator comes in. We would need one Chinook per week on manoeuvres from Edzell, that would cover it for a start. We’ve spoken on this. Aberdeen Pure. Sorry, I dinna get ye, said the first councillor. The name of the water, said Swink. We build a bottling-plant at 4,000 feet on Braeriach, and fetch it down in the Senator’s chopper. Three thousand bottles a week for starters. Wells of Dee equals Aberdeen Pure.

  Soonds aaricht, I suppose, said the second. Rescue wir reputation an ye ken fit ye’ll be minded as? Lord Aberdeen? said Swink. Na, said the second. Clean Bill o Health. Ha-ha-ha, said Swink. Help yourselves to cheese and a perforated water biscuit. It’s a cracking new line we’ve just brought out.

  Plot aplenty, sure, but where was Lucy? Terrible when you were well through life and all you wanted was the chance to re-read your youth.

  So to cap the whole thing, said Swink, there’s three parts to this. Investment, transport, marketing. If the council will join me on the investment side, if the Senator can smooth the way to accessing airborne help with the transport, and if we get into the marketplace first with a bright new product, I think we’re made. Hear, hear, said a third councillor. We’ll all be made, I’ll make sure of that, said the Lord Provost. There’s only expensive bottles on the market now. Their pitch is wrong. What we’re after is a popular water, to refresh the swine and lift the buggers up. So that’s the slogan: A People’s Water: Aberdeen Pure. Here’s to it!

  Jim had heard enough, more than enough. But it was still snowing. When the toast and the briefing stopped, the councillors started leaving and drifting out. Jim kept tight behind the bay window. His knees were seized, and his calves felt stiff. Only the Lord Provost and Senator were left in the room. The Provost was pouring two really big whiskies. Then it came out. It wasn’t just mountain spring water they were plotting to snaffle. It was North Sea oil.

  Just as the Wells of Dee at the top of Braeriach would earn their keep, so also the black reserves under the ocean crust, as yet not huge in proof, might transform certain finances, so long as certain finances were in pole position long before the off. Publicly-owned real estate does need to be managed creatively in the new situation, said the Senator. Planning controls will need to be more imaginative, agreed Swink.

  As long as we keep the long nose of the press out, said the Lord Provost. That Echo drives me up the wall at times, with all their probing. Tarves Man Finds Rat in Flour, Buckie Wife Breaks Tooth on Biscuit. A free press is a luxury when business needs to expand. Buy in then, said the Senator. Do your own press thing, your own title. Time for you to diversify from bread and water. Let them eat news, eh? said Lord Provost Swink. Or something, said the Senator.

  Then they huddled by the fire like a pair of Ebeneezers, and Jim could hear no more. He soft-shoed down the drive again.

  Thank flaming fuck, thought Lucy.

/>   Lucy pressed against the windowsill and looked down from her bedroom window. Two linked couples, lax, laughing, not letting go, came skittering down the near side of the road, and passed safely on. Up from the lounge came a clink as Theo entertained some first-footing guest, someone from Gray’s School of Art or, more likely, the continuing rump of the Communist Party.

  Then, on the opposite side, she spied some slender creature in shorts. She watched him loping along behind the mature trees, hidden then reappearing, with puffs of breath going up and scuffs of white afly at each ankle. Glancing at her, the youth tripped, and spilled quick in the snow. She went and drew him, supporting him, shooshing him up the stairs. Nah, he lolloped on past. God!

  Cheek! To suggest she fantasised about some half-clad guy passing by. An unknown guy. A bag of bones, if truth be told.