I’m pretty fit, but the action was catching up with me. I was knackered, and so I was pleased that the GWA had a weekend off, thanks to a big golf tournament which was dominating the satellite television channels. Prim and I decided that we would get out of Glasgow, and spend a couple of days in St Andrews with my sister, my nephews, and of course Wallace, my old flatmate.
They were all pleased to see us when we arrived at the freshly decorated bungalow, with its view across the links; none more so, it seemed, than Wallace. Green iguanas are reptiles, right, and generally reptiles have very small brains, capable of focusing only on catching and crunching insects, or in the case of crocodiles, any large mammals which are daft enough to drink from the wrong river. I doubt if they even think about sex; although . . .
My point is that when I gave him to my nephews on a permanent basis I didn’t expect my old chum to have a memory which stretched back beyond his last bowl of Wonder Wienie Iguana Superfood, yet every time I walk into a room and he’s there, no matter how many other people are around, he ambles across to me, climbs up my leg and settles across my shoulders. He has five strong talons on each foot, so I have to be careful what I wear when I’m seeing him. The first time we visited Ellen and the boys in their new house, he did for a new silk shirt as well as leaving some choice scratches.
The performance was repeated when I went into the boys’ playroom, soon after we arrived at St Andrews that Friday evening; I’ll swear that as he secured himself on my old denim shirt he even rolled an appraising reptilian eye at Prim. After all, he played a significant role during the first night we ever spent under the same roof.
Ignoring his presence, and with Jonathan and Colin following, we wandered through to the kitchen where Ellie was preparing a meal. When I’d called her to ask if we could come, I’d told her we’d go out to eat, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Very few people are capable of throwing a chilling look down a telephone line, but my sister is.
‘You can take him with you, back to Glasgow, if you like, Oz,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you ever try to house train him?’
I felt my nephews’ eyes settle on me. They weren’t taking their mother’s threat seriously; they were used to the sparring between us and were waiting for my counter-punch. I raised an imperious eyebrow. ‘Of course. When he lived with me in the loft he used to climb up on the roof and crap in the guttering. Try leaving a window open.’
‘The insurance company would just love that. Ach, the truth is the old boy’s not that bad. Most of the time he goes outside to a corner of the garden, or he does it in his cage. I don’t give him the run of the house like you used to.’
I ruffled wee Colin’s hair. ‘What about these two?’ I asked. ‘You got them trained yet?’
‘In the bathroom department, yes. But in terms of general behaviour . . .’ She pointed to Colin; it was enough to make his face redden. ‘That one there, he’s six now; you’d think he’d know better than to get himself locked in someone’s cellar.’
‘You what?’
‘Aye! He was playing with a bunch of his pals the other day, where they shouldn’t have been, in the garden of a big old house down the street. It belongs to an old man who’s retired from business. This one climbed in a wee window, then fell to the floor and couldn’t get out. The place was dark and the door was locked, so he starts screaming. His pals were afraid of the old boy, so they came running to me.’
I whistled. ‘Jesus, what an error of judgement on their part.’ Beside me, Jonathan, the older wiser, brother, nodded agreement.
‘As they found out,’ said Ellie grimly, with a glance at Colin. ‘The upshot was that I had to ring the man’s doorbell and ask him if he could let my son out of his cellar. He wasn’t very pleasant about it either; chuntered on about getting the police.’
‘That’s right,’ Jonathan chuckled, ‘until Mum ripped into him about leaving his window open in the first place. “It’s an invitation to curious children”, she said.’ I looked at him, astonished. Although he was only ten, he had picked up about five years’ worth of maturity in the two since his parents had split up; on top of that I realised that he had become a terrific mimic. I felt slightly sorry for the old man with the big house; even if Ellie hadn’t been there, he’d have had to deal with Jonathan.
My sister glowered at her younger son. I sympathised with him; as a kid I’d been on the receiving end of that stare. ‘He’s into everything, that one. I’ve told him that next time he gets himself locked in somewhere I’ll leave him there overnight,’ her eyes fixed on mine, ‘just like Dad did with you once.’
The boys stared up at me. ‘True,’ I admitted. ‘When I was about your age, Colin, I used to climb up the step-ladder into our attic. I had a one-man gang hut up there. Parts of it weren’t floored, so my mother was always telling me not to, but I kept doing it, until one day your Grandpa took the ladder away.
‘I thought it was a game until it got dark.’
Prim squeezed my elbow. ‘Pity we haven’t got an attic,’ she said.
‘You can shut up for a start,’ I retorted. ‘Elanore’s told me all about you as a kid. Watering the plants, indeed.’ She shut up.
We had a good evening, the six of us. Wallace spent most of it on my shoulders, Colin spent most of it enjoying having a man at the table, and Jonathan spent most of it chatting Prim up. Once they were banished to bed and the iguana to his cage, us adults settled down to catching up.
As a dutiful brother, I made a point of asking Our Ellie if everything in her life was okay. ‘Not bad, son,’ she assured me. ‘My divorce went through without a hitch. Alan’s being very good about the maintenance money for the boys; comes through by bank transfer on the first of every month. He comes over to see them every couple of months, and they spent the first half of August with him, but of course you’d know that, since they were in your apartment.’ In fact the boys had spent all of the school holidays in St Marti, with their Mum during July and with their father for the rest of the time.
‘Everything’s fine on the job front, too,’ Ellie went on. ‘I got a promotion last week, I like the people I work with, and the school roll keeps going up.’
‘And on the other front?’
She grinned at me; an un-Ellie-like grin, shy around the edges. ‘On the other front, I’m getting enough of the other, thank you very much, and that’s all I’m saying. I’m happy as I am, especially since I learned that a woman doesn’t have to wake up to the sound of a man snoring next to her to live an enjoyable life.
‘I’ve got a lot to thank you for, both of you.’
‘The house is nothing,’ said Prim. ‘You’d have done the same if it was you who won the lottery.’
‘I didn’t just mean the house. I was in a real rut out there in France with Alan, all on my own in that museum village. I was bloody miserable, in fact. Then you two showed up out of the blue, footloose and fancy free, in the middle of an adventure. Right then I saw what my life was compared to yours, and I realised that I didn’t have to put up with it.
‘For a good part of my life, Oz, I tried to set an example for you, as my wee brother. It was a real culture shock to discover that I should be following yours. But you taught me that very important thing when it really mattered.’ She looked at me and said the most tender thing I’d ever heard from her. ‘You saved my life, brither, in a very real sense.’
I grinned at her. ‘You’ve got it wrong, Ellie. I did follow your example; what I became is what you made me, as much as Mum and Dad. After Mum died, you lost yourself for a while, that was all. Not that those years with Alan were a total loss: far from it. See those two through there? Go back twenty-five years or so and they could be us.’
We killed a dozen cold Buds as we sat there looking out of the big bay window at the darkening night across the Old Course, and eventually, at the moonlight on the Eden Estuary beyond. We brought Ellen up to date with our business, with my movie-making and with our wedding plans, which had changed since Prim
had laid down the law to her mother in Auchterarder. To be fair to everyone in terms of travel we had decided that we would do everything in Gleneagles Hotel: wedding, reception, first night, the lot.
‘And after that?’ asked Ellie.
‘Somewhere sunny,’ said Prim. ‘We’ve never been to Asia; there maybe.’
We were so relaxed come bedtime that we almost forgot to plan the next day, but eventually we agreed that the girls would go shopping in Dundee and that I would ‘do something nice’ with my nephews, as long as it didn’t involve taking them among bawling, swearing men at a football match.
Next morning, I decided that Ellie’s conditions would allow me to take them to see Raith Rovers, in Kirkcaldy; the only bad experience they were likely to suffer there was loneliness. But before then, the big city of St Andrews was ours to explore, with its crowded golf courses, its wind-blown, chilly North Sea beaches, its shops - none of them with the slightest attraction for a ten-year-old, far less for a six-year-old.
Fortunately there’s always the Castle. St Andrews is rich in Reformation history; bloody history at that. I walked the boys along to the Martyr’s Monument on the Scores, erected on the spot on which George Wishart, the unfortunate who gave the thing its name, was burned at the stake. I toned down the details of the story as far as I could, but my nephews eyes were still gleaming as we reached the old ruin further down the road . . . kids are sadistic little buggers, aren’t they?
It was still only mid-morning, so the Castle wasn’t busy, with only a few visitors dotted around. ‘See that big window there?’ I said, as we stepped through the entry kiosk. ‘That’s where Wishart’s pals took their revenge. An army of them, with old John Knox among them, took the place by storm, and hanged Cardinal Beaton right there in that very window, for everyone to see. Then they occupied the castle, until it was recaptured by the King’s troops.’
‘Who was John Mox?’ wee Colin piped up.
‘A Reformer,’ I told him. ‘Not a very nice man either, by all accounts. No one was very nice in those days, on either side. In this very castle there’s a thing called the Bottle Dungeon. It’s no more than a hole in the ground, hollowed out of the rock. They used to drop prisoners in there; the walls are smooth and they slope out on the way down, so that they couldn’t climb out, or stand up straight either. The lucky ones had food dropped in; the unlucky ones . . . didn’t.’
‘Want to see it, want to see it!’ Colin clamoured.
‘All in good time,’ I told him. ‘There’s something else I want to show you first.’
During the siege of the Castle, after Knox’s, or Mox’s, lot had topped the infamous Cardinal, the occupants had an ingenious idea. They would tunnel out under the walls, give the King’s forces a right doing, and disappear in the confusion. What they didn’t know was that the besieging commander was thinking along the same lines.
As it happened, the rock on which St Andrews Castle is built was too tough and too difficult to excavate, so neither side made it all the way through, but the aborted tunnels are still there. For me, they’re the most interesting part of the place, and they’re always my first port of call. The tunnel to the outside is as you’d expect low and narrow, and so we had to slide in.
‘Follow me, now,’ I told the boys. I felt a hand gripping the leg of my jeans.
‘Didn’t they hear each other tunnelling Uncle Oz?’ asked Jonathan.
‘No one really knows. Maybe they did; maybe that’s why they both stopped.’
‘How did the siege end?’
‘The Reformers were starved out in the end. They surrendered; Knox was sent to the galleys for his pains. He was lucky he didn’t go the same way as Wishart and Beaton.
‘You all right, Colin?’ I called back. There was no answer. ‘Colin!’ I shouted again.
‘He’s not here Uncle Oz,’ said Jonathan. ‘He was here to begin with, but he’s not now.’
‘The wee sod! Come on, let’s back out of here and find him.’
‘He’ll have gone to find the Bottle Dungeon. That’s what he wanted to see first.’
‘He’ll have a close-up view of the back of my hand,’ I muttered. ‘Come on.’ Jonathan, impressed by my threat, trotted along at my side as I set off across the open castle green to the seaward wall, beneath which the Dungeon was hollowed out. I expected to find the wee chap waiting for me, wearing his patented guilty look which he knew always softened me up, but there was no sign of him. In fact there was no one to be seen.
The old familiar tension in my stomach began as soon as we reached the old cell. Naturally, Historic Scotland, which manages the place for the Nation, doesn’t want to put the punters in peril, so there’s a protective grille over the hole through which the tenants were dropped in.
The grille had been removed; it was lying at the side of the entrance. Jonathan ran over to it and picked it up, as if to replace it. He’s a strong wee lad, but I could see that it was heavy for him.
‘Put that down,’ I snapped. He isn’t used to having me speak sharply to him, so he did as he was told, at once. I dropped to my knees beside the Dungeon, and looked down, but it seemed pitch-dark. I moved around to the other side, allowing as much light in as possible, and leaned into the narrow opening.
‘Colin!’ I shouted, but there was no reply. I peered into the enclosure, and gradually my eyes became accustomed to the light.
There was, indeed, a figure down there: a small figure, maybe ten feet below me on the floor of the old Bottle. And he wasn’t moving.
I turned to Jonathan. ‘Run to the kiosk. Tell the man there that there’s been an accident, and that I want him to close the place and get over here fast.’
My nephew’s young face twisted with anxiety. ‘Is Colin all right, Uncle Oz?’
‘That’s what we’re going to find out, pal. You do what I tell you and it’ll help. Oh yes, and ask the man to bring a torch, and a ladder.’ As Jonathan sprinted off towards the entrance, I took out my cellphone and called the emergency services, asking for an ambulance to the Castle, full speed.
I didn’t wait for the man with the ladder; instead I gripped the edge of the hole and lowered myself in, pushing myself off and jumping the last few feet, taking care not to land on the wee chap. I knelt beside him in the gloom. He was lying on his left side; very gently, I stroked his cheek. ‘What have you been up to now, Colin, my wee man?’
Never in my life have I been so glad to hear a child whimper. ‘Sore,’ he moaned.
‘Where, son?’
‘My shoulder.’
Remembering the first aid that my Dad had taught me, I held Colin’s wrist and found his pulse. It was fast, but strong and steady. ‘That’s good,’ I told him. ‘Do you hurt anywhere else?’
‘My head, Uncle Oz,’ His whisper sounded fuzzy and dazed, ‘and my neck.’ He stirred slightly, then cried out in pain. I guessed that he must be lying on the damaged shoulder, so, as carefully and slowly as I could, I put both hands under him and turned him on to his back. His eyes were almost closed, and I could see a lump and a big graze on his left temple.
‘There,’ I murmured. ‘That’ll be easier. Now I want you to lie very still until the ambulance people get here. Don’t even talk, if you can manage that. God, fella, your Mum said you were into everything, but I didn’t think you’d go this far. She’s going to murder me, I tell you.’
‘What’s going on down there?’ The shout came from above.
‘You’ve got a six-year-old prisoner,’ I called back. ‘The ambulance is on its way. You got a ladder?’
‘Aye, and a torch.’
‘Slide the ladder down here, leave me your torch and go and wait for the ambulance.’
The attendant did as he was told. ‘Is the wee boy all right?’ he asked as I climbed a few rungs to take the light from him.
‘No,’ I told him, a bit roughly, I’m afraid. ‘He’s quite badly shaken up and he may have broken his collar-bone. You’re going to have to explain to me how he came to
fall in here.’ His mouth opened as if in protest. ‘But not yet,’ I snapped. ‘Go and wait for the ambulance.’
There is no group of health workers whose members are more professional and skilled than the paramedics . . . I’m glad to say. The ambulance team was on the scene within ten minutes of my call. I explained what had happened, then climbed out of the Dungeon as they began to fit my nephew with a neck brace and to strap him, slowly and tenderly, to a lifting board.
The attendant was with Jonathan as I emerged into the sunshine; the few other people who had been in the Castle were standing around, looking on.
‘Okay,’ I said to the man. ‘Why the hell wasn’t that grille in place?’
‘It was, sir, I’m sure,’ he protested, in a light Highland accent. ‘The janitor goes down into the Dungeon every morning to clear up the rubbish that folk have dropped down the day before. He wouldna’ leave it uncovered. The wee boy must have lifted it off himself.’
‘The wee boy is six years old, and as far as I know neither of his parents come from the planet Krypton. He could no more lift that than he could fly, see through walls or leap tall buildings at a single bound.’
‘Well he must have dragged it then.’
‘Crap!’ I said, tersely, my anger fuelled, I must confess, by my fear of having to face my sister. ‘Did you see the Dungeon after your janitor had finished here? Did you, personally, see that cover in place?’
Reluctantly, the man shook his head. ‘No, but—’
‘But nothing. I want to talk to the janitor.’
‘He’s on his break, sir.’
The man was behaving very reasonably, but that cut no ice with an angry Blackstone. ‘Well put him together again and get him here,’ I barked at the poor sod.
Relief came his way in the form of one of the paramedics, who tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me sir, but first things first,’ he said. ‘I need a hand to lift your nephew out of there. My colleague will stay down there to steer, like, and make sure he doesnae get another bump on the way up.’
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