Strip the Willow

by John Aberdein

  The dear old Council almost stopped meeting. They met only once, in the fresh air of Gallowgate, to agree to issue relevant contracts.

  Item: to supply timbers and nails, for the supply of huts for victims of the poorer class.

  Item: to supply guards, that none of the poorer class, being with plague taken, may travel back to their homes.

  Item: to hire nurses, wherever they may be sought, to be paid a suitable bounty on their survival.

  Item: to cut 55,000 turves.

  Item: to cart said 55,000 turves to the Links of Aberdeen.

  Item: to lay said 55,000 turves on the graves of the dead, who shall be buried at the speediest instance, one with another.

  My father’s funeral I have to arrange, Peem thought. Together with Ludwig and Amande. Will my tribe of Annie, Hughie, Tammie come back out of the shadows? Not that Lucy ever met them: she read about them, is all.

  – Lucy volunteered, said Lucy. Often the nurses would come from a previous haunt of the plague, like Edinburgh. Well if they’d survived, they rode their luck. A paradoxical life. They were shunned and wanted. They performed great mercies. People were glad to see the back of them.

  – Did Lucy survive? he said.

  – Lucy had no immunity. She welcomed in the blackened, swollen, screaming folk, the young, the old, the nursing mothers. She bathed them, held them, given the chance she changed their rags. Tended whom she could tend. She listened to them in the sweat of night, it was all night for them, these huts were built to a budget, they had no windows. I’m sure she tried to console them.

  – What do you think she whispered to them? About heaven?

  – About heaven for some that were furthest gone, maybe. About real things. Will I really die? is always on everybody’s lips. What can you do but describe a flower by a stream, in the nook of a burn, under a bank, a clump of primrose. Perhaps they remember it. Perhaps they never looked at it. They remember it now. And then one day, she placed her hand inside her petticoat and felt the lumps in her groin.

  – But there is no gravestone for Lucy?

  – None for the 1,400 who died and were ditched here. Written out of history, or never written in, we can only piece one or two together. If I ever did Spectacle again, it would be the story, not of the garish, unjustly famous, but of the unknown.

  – Worthy, Peem said. That is worthy.

  – Folk want to know they are connected, said Lucy.

  – Alison does.

  – No, Alison feels betrayed. She brought up Gwen on her own. Alison barely knows Gwen’s dad; it was drunken groping at her stepfather’s funeral.

  There was another silence.

  – She had to work right after the baby. So she got a job, and eventually landed up working with her own absentee mother, or Gwen’s unavailable granny, take your pick. All unbeknownst. We went out from time to time, a gin from her mother odd Friday nights, that’s all a daughter needs. She didn’t even know I gave her away till the other day. If Alison wants to kill me, she kills me. If she wants to take us both out, that’s what she’ll do.

  – So we sit up a dead white tree, planted in a charnel house, and wait for our much wronged daughter to come and kill us? said Peem.

  – That or the rising sea.

  – The fucking sea, he said. Who cares about the fucking sea? Let’s go and meet her.

  – Wait, she said. Give me time.

  – You were there for me, he said, all those years ago. Lucy?

  – Your name is Peem, said Lucy. We made love once, a long time ago, and it was very wild, and very beautiful. I was cheeky to you, that was the fashion then. I told you to go away, not quite fuck off, learn to exist. I was afraid of commitment, I suppose. It was in my bones.

  – It comes full circle, he said. 360 years.

  – You slept, you were tired after making love. And you had been running half the night. And you had some problem I didn’t take in, about saving the city.

  – I was always about to save the city.

  – Lots of people are, said Lucy. Anyway, you slept, and I got fresh clothes for you.

  He looked across and imagined her nakedness, white on white, against the desperate tree.

  – What? she said.

  – I was going to say something. But—

  – It’s not too late, she said. It’s never too late. But you don’t have to.

  – I think that’s what I want on my epitaph.

  – What?

  – I was going to say something.

  She was sinking into herself.

  – Have to get up the road, before the tanks— said Peem.

  – I’ll stay here. My people need me.

  – Underneath? he said.

  – Underneath everything. Kiss me before you go.

  the full story

  He headed back up the town, keeping to the wall, ready to dive into any alley.

  So he’d held back the full story, at least for now, and perhaps that was best. The years after the fishing, long after he recovered from the bout with the Triplex, the years as a teacher in schools round the country, teaching the distinction between the colon and the semicolon, attempting to inculcate in the young selected glimpses from the history of doubleness in the Scottish novel. Taking them up hills to recite poems, out to islands to chart the whirlpools in their veins. And away to the theatre, the Citizens, the Traverse, until that fateful night when he allowed himself to get distracted, by an unwise whisky, by jollity behind, and him driving the yellow minibus.

  When he came out of his second cracked skull coma, there was no welcome left for him in teaching, not with two kids dead on the Forth Brig slip road. He wasn’t breathalysed, he was admonished, he went on supply lists round the country, but whatever teacher shortage might be looming, work for him just shrivelled away. And as it did, so did his sense of purpose and connection. He went wandering then.

  He hadn’t been home for many’s a year, after that second bust-up with his Dad, about irresponsibility. Tam was about his only pal, and Iris of course. They gave him a cubby-hole in their house to type in, when he passed through, and Tam looked after his drafts. Iris didn’t read them.

  The NHS had filed Tam’s transcript years ago, and wouldn’t release it. Only occasionally did Tam offer comment on the success or otherwise of Peem’s reimaginings of the balder facts. Peem’s memory came, Peem’s memory went, in strange waves. Horizontigo, yes. He feared his past. He wished it away. He sought to recover what was lost.

  Writing was mainly therapy, Tam knew that.

  As he walked back up the Boulevard, he was composing the core of two speeches. The one he would make at his father’s funeral, if he survived, and if Andy’s body hadn’t got lost in the struggle by then, or abstracted to cover things up by government forces. He wondered if he would meet Annie and them there, and what he could possibly say.

  Also what on earth he could say to Alison when he met her, if he met her. It was all so raw, it was war-zone stuff. Hello – you’ve never met me – I’m your father – your mother’s in deep shock – and your Grandad’s just been shot – how are you?

  He wondered what she would look like, Alison, when she was pointed out to him. Decently-built like Lucy, or scrawnier like him? He wondered what she would speak like, too. What would she have inherited of her late Grandad’s accents: the emphases with which he had praised, loved, exploded; his subversive laugh?

  How are you, love?

  no lass in her senses

  Was this it, then? thought Lucy.

  Would a wee lassie approach behind her, and leave a dead hen and a jug of milk at the base of the tree, then scurry wordless away?

  Would a bigger one wander up, dressed in skins, and begin haggering the ground around the tree, with an ineffectual wooden spade?

  Would no lass in her senses ever come near her?

  kidnapped by time

  Alison took her father’s arm, it was a brilliant feeling. Peem had asked around and eventually plucked his
startled daughter from the massive dance, which had taken over the street. The initial shock, the standing-back, the drinking-in, the blind hug, then, facing each other, running with tears, took longer than you could ever imagine. Then the questions started.

  – Sae did ye miss me aa these years? she said.

  – I didna ken you existed. But I missed you, sure I missed you. I’ve been pretty much on my own for a good while now.

  – Ye didna need tae be.

  – I can cope with aloneness, he said. Sometimes ye get to really like it. Other times no.

  – Bein alane stinks, said Alison, sae dinna ging aff again, okay?

  – I didna go off, said Peem. I was sort o kidnapped. Kidnapped by man and accidents, kidnapped by time. But I’m gettin a grip noo.

  – Gettin a grip soonds good tae me.

  – What is it ye mainly want to do?

  – Get oot o the soss an sotter, Dad, said Alison. I’ve had it up tae here, ma life’s a mess. Far did ye say ma mither wis?

  a disgrace tae the deid

  Lucy got tired of running history through her brain.

  She heard footsteps behind her on the grass.

  There were two sets.

  – Come doon oot o that this instant, mither, ye’re a disgrace tae the deid!

  Alison’s face was red and sweaty, her hair was all over the place.

  – Alison, Alison— she said. I was scared to look round in case it was you. In case it wasn’t you, sorry. Oh, god, I’m sorry, Alison, so so sorry. You look so – stressed. Is the revolution over, it all seemed to slip away?

  – Na, said Alison, the revolution’s fine. Is yir bum nae numb, sat up that tree? Ye’re perchit there like a cross atween a craw an a refugee.

  what lenin would have said

  – Jist noo there’s an amount o dancin that wid fear ye, said Alison, as the three of them made their way up town, hardly touching the big topics, walking side-by-side. There’s a Strip the Willow aboot a mile lang, said Alison, atween the Mercat Cross an Holburn Junction. They’re roon an roon like a hairy worm, dancin fester an fester tae keep the tanks oot.

  Peem and Lucy looked at each other over their daughter’s head, and smiled.

  – I dinna think tanks dare go near that pavementette, said Alison. There’s student blockades at aa weys in, every shity wee lane ye could think o. Hey, fit ye twa sae laughy at?

  – A revolution in one street? said Lucy. I don’t know what Lenin would have said—?

  – Hae tae start some place, Lenin wid hae said, said Alison. Plus Gwen’s got her camera goin. They’ve cut aff her TV link, but she’s streamin the scene on the Internet, tae keep them honest.

  – Ye crack me up, said Peem, ye really do. Every shity wee lane.

  welded

  They got up Justice Street and into the Castlegate. Dancers stretched ahead of them, it must be a good few thousand, with all manner of styles and steps and shouts and colours. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of misery, no doubt hard to feel miserable when you’re so close and patterned with everybody, touching in turn, skirling and birling and moving real fast. Glistening away they were, glowing with something deeply needed, absolved from individualism at last, verging on happy you even might say.

  – This maks it aa worthwhile, for me, said Alison. Kinda brings it aa hame.

  Her father and mother put their arms round her waist, and the three pulled closer together so they could watch for a moment in content and peace. They could hardly spot a soul they knew, but what did it matter?

  – Richt! Ready tae dive in? said Alison.

  – I’ll gie it a shot, said Peem.

  – C’mon, then, said Alison. Quick, afore the music finishes. Ye dance wi Mither, and I’ll grab that muckle leerup, tryin tae tuck himsel ahint a pillar like a spare prick at a countra weddin.

  She went up to the bloke with the coat collar tugged high.

  – Are you gey bored? she said.

  He nodded.

  – C’mon then, chum.

  Dive indeed it had to be, into the long river of folk, which came, as though flowing over old worn stones, swirling towards them, each couple, after miles of dancing, shaking with riffs of surrendered laughter. It was a wonder they weren’t pulling bodies out, considering some of the ages. But, as long as music belted from the speakers, they all kept going.

  Lucy and Peem, then Alison and Guy, joined at the bottom of the stilled pavementette, just by the Hole, and eddied their way up the lines, as the dance composed and recomposed itself. Pair after pair came birling down, proffering a hand, hooking an arm, pivoting once and surging on, with abiding sense of difference melded, and delicate sense of each other welded.

  Peem hardly recognised anyone; he swung on the arms of unknown women from his native city. He did see Charlie pass on the other side, and shouted to him, something daft like Up the flamingoes! but it didn’t matter, Charlie didn’t hear; words were nothing to do with the dance.

  Alison swung on the arms of many she knew: councillors, janitors, barmen, Finlay – Hi hun! he shouted in passing – and crotchetty old Walty, the Lord Provost’s dresser, plus Guy of course. From time to time she gave Guy a stronger haul on the arm, to try to stagger him, but to his credit he pulled hard back. He was either genuinely drawn into the dance, or else he was cunningly fashioning an alibi. Revolutionary situations, she guessed, were often like that, poor souls wondering which side to skulk on. Never mind: this was the best dance that could ever be for her, or that ever was, better than Cossack and Zulu and Breton and Irish, Circassian Circle and Nutcracker Suite.

  Lucy saw Zander stuck in a doorway, and waved at him, but he did seem stuck, as though struggling to master such mass activity, a shame really. While she swung with Peem, she couldn’t help feeling how light he was, how weak in the bicep. Had he ever done anything real? He was thin as a dream. Thank goodness Alison had inherited a bit of solidity from her, a bit of abiding beef. The music from the loudspeakers stopped; the dancers faltered and looked at each other—

  A harsh noise at the end of the street turned swift to a clattering roar.

  Then it loomed above them.

  An attack helicopter.

  Dancers delinked, abandoned partners, stumbled, bumped and fled for the nearest doorway. Under the hammering apparition, Lucy pulled and pushed Alison through a doorway and fell on her, covering her body. What fools they’d been, what happy-clappy fools. They lay without a breath beneath the machine. It shaded across them, its engine thudding, its rotors chopping air.

  But no shots came.

  – Alison—? breathed Lucy. Alison, love?

  – Aye me, Mither. An we thocht it wis bad afore?

  – I never knew there were so many forces.

  Yet Lucy remembered the baton charges and tear gas in Paris. You went so far. You felt exalted. Then terror stripped all good combination. You felt exposed and loose. If you were still warm, it was only each to each, not each to other.

  hug me

  Gwen was one of the last to budge as the Lynx made its low passes. She was still speaking to camera as the populace melted through alleys fast. She faced the lens and checked the sky alternately. What was happening on the streets, what was aborting in the very next instant, was too fast to commentate on, although she tried.

  – And now, it’s an absolute disgrace, the British Government has turned its tanks and helicopters against its own people. Well I say to you, we are not the enemy within, they are. Root these traitors out. Root them out, I say. Bring down this corrupt system, that looks after the useless rich like Rookie Marr and LeopCorp and turns its guns on its own people. This has gone on too long. There can be no greater task.

  Then Echo TV’s volunteer cameraman said he wanted to go, while he could. She said, Go then, and to Luna, her boom assistant, she said, You too, Luna, go.

  – Thank you for getting me out, said Luna.

  – Get off the street, said Gwen, before they riddle you.

  When she turned awa
y, so as not to watch her brief comrades fleeing, there in the gardens below was a solitary figure.

  She bounded down, two stairs at a time. The man was off his head, wielding a hoe and hacking flowers out, where it said Sonsy Quines.

  Sonsy Quines, in all their white, pink, yellow and chocolate glamour, were being cast aside.

  – Who are you? said Gwen.

  – Maciek, said Maciek.

  – Does it mean madman? said Gwen.

  – It means I am staying here, said Maciek. I can’t run. I don’t have fast legs, and I can’t eat flowers. I will grow my vegetable here, it is less salt in the heart of the city.

  – The heart of the city is empty now, said Gwen. Take one look.

  – I will grow here, said Maciek, even if it is lettuce.

  – I gotta go, said Gwen, I’m a marked woman.

  – And beetroot of course, said Maciek. I need my plenty beetroot, after what we are through.

  – Put that bloody hoe down, said Gwen.

  He leaned it alert on a park bench.

  – Hug me.

  He did, so that they crushed breasts together, and pressed cheeks. He felt all gnarly.

  – Goodbye, said Gwen.

  – Goodbye, said Maciek. Look after yourself. You the world needs, if today it does not know it.

  may 3

  a better way

  Before you could sort a city out, you had to clean up the source.