I looked at the chart. ‘Red,’ I said.
He flipped the chart, clockwise.
‘Blue,’ I said. ‘Yellow. Orange. Green. Indigo. Purple.’
He put the chart down once I’d taken my glasses off. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Colour blind. It needs to be perfect before acceptance. Sorry to have taken you so far out of your way.’ He stood up and stretched out his hand. ‘Best of luck. Maybe you could try the police?’
On the way back, I experimented looking out the bus window. A red roof. Dearg, I said to myself. Red. Maybe that was the problem: perhaps my own language had a different colour code. A woman wearing a beautiful blue coat walked down the street. Wearing a còta liath. A children’s slide in the playpark was buidhe. Yellow. The lights turned orange. I smiled. No – we had no real word for that. No ‘proper’ word, if you like. Just orains, evidently from the English. Ruadh. That was the word for it. That’s what Alasdair would have used. ‘An Abhainn Ruadh’, he would say – the rusty river. For what function did orange have in that world where the fruit was non-existent, and the traffic lights still to come. Uaine was green, though that too was relatively new. It used to be called glas, which folk now translated as grey. So, in the old days, green grass would be feur glas, which now literally meant grey grass. Perhaps I wasn’t colour blind at all; maybe just had a different colour chart.
It seems like yesterday. I can stretch out my hand and feel the starch in his shirt which left it so beautiful and uncreased, with the exquisite Nelson Loop on the shoulder. And I remember the insignia on his cap, a small golden anchor inside the red oval within the golden wreath of oak leaves. I can remember the faint aroma of tobacco from him, and the way he stood at the high arched window looking down as I left the building.
So I never went to sea. Instead, for reasons that are now so imprecise compared with the detail of that single day,
I finished up teaching. I now wonder about that man. What precision – or imprecision – had left him on the top floor of that building that hot summer’s day? I like to think that he too had followed a whim, and one day seen a poster and not being colour blind had ended up seeing the seven wonders of the world, including the sun rising over Mount Fujiyama on a June morning.
If I had my chance all over again, I would ask him all that: about Rio in the spring, and the Gulf of Mexico in a storm, and sailing through the Suez Canal before the time of the blockade. But he would have looked at me with those clear blue eyes and answered factually, when I wanted to hear about the poetry and the fear of it all. Like me, I don’t suppose he ever told that to anyone.
When I first started teaching I rented a balcony flat which I then bought once I married Marion. An old Russian lady lived downstairs, and when she decided to move in with her son in St John’s Wood, we managed between us to buy her apartment, which gave us a nice three-bedroomed flat in that very pleasant area of London. As a free gift she left us her Venetian vase.
Marion was from York, though her family had also originally been Scottish, but that was way back in the late eighteenth century. She was a lecturer too, but in a very different discipline from mine – Microbiology.
She taught the subject at King’s College, and if nothing else brought me to a much healthier lifestyle once I realised the full health implications of what I was eating and drinking and smoking! I met her at a trans-college conference in the city where all the differing academic departments had (for once) come together to take a united stand against central government cutbacks in education. And that was even before the blessed Margaret Thatcher came to power! I think it was in the days of Ted Heath, though if I remember correctly, all the protests were directed at Keith Joseph.
We had a very pleasant marriage, marred only by the fact that we were unable to have children. We discussed IVF and all the other options, of course. Having an inhouse expert, as it were, saved lots of time and hassle, and money too no doubt, and we pretty quickly decided to leave things as they were and just concentrate on our careers without bringing too many sought complications our way. I’m not sure that decision greatly helped our careers, but let’s put it this way – I don’t suppose it did any harm.
My own post was extended first of all to being full-time, then to the actual establishment of a small department in which I was initially Acting Head before being appointed Head and Professor of what proved to be a popular and expanding department. By the time I took early retirement we had a full department quota of twenty full-time and fifteen part-time staff with a student roll of well over a hundred, not counting the part-time and pathway students from other disciplines. It’s not an erotic poem, but it paid me well.
There was a particular growth in the number of overseas students we attracted to Slade’s and my greatest joy these past years was in overseeing the development of the Overseas Exchange Programme, which saw researchers and teachers and students from over a hundred indigenous cultures involved in sharing their perspectives on native art with each other.
I managed to combine this somewhat busy career with media interests too, which brought further travel my way. I started with a weekly column about Art in the Evening Standard, which was soon syndicated to many of the other major evening papers in the big cities, and of course through that I was inevitably invited to a whole host of conferences, which led to some contracts for editing and publishing some books about indigenous art until – and I don’t know how it really happened – I came latterly to be considered the worldwide expert on the subject. It was all interpretation as in the old days when you were given a poem and asked to define what the poet meant. As if you could define anything.
A mùdag is a wickerwork little creel all closed in, but with one little opening on one side to admit the hand, and is used for keeping teased wool. It is in shape oval like a rugby ball and about twice as bulky. How can one little word mean so many others? A coileach is a black cockerel hatched in March which has more power for terrifying goblins by his crow than a cockerel hatched in autumn. Which is why a black cockerel is considered a lucky bird to have about one’s house. Though that same word, coileach, also means peaked waves and a choppy sea when the wind and the current are against one another.
In school we used to have Poems for Interpretation.
I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way, they stretched in neverending line along the margin of a bay: ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they outdid the sparkling waves in glee: a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company: I gazed and gazed – but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought: for oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.
ANSWER EACH OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY:
1. The title of the poem is… (1 mark)
2. It was written by… (1 mark)
3. What is the basic situation? (2 marks)
4. Are there conflicts in the poem? If so, what are they? (3 marks)
I have of course also sat on a number of boards and government trusts and committees which have discussed the future direction of art in this country, and count people such as former Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair and some other world leaders in my circle of friends. Sorry to make all this sound rather boastful – it’s not meant to be. It’s just a quick résumé of my career: its worst fault, I suspect, is that it is leaden, and sounds like a job application with a CV! The years have taken their toll, and destroyed spontaneity.
Marion’s career was no less ‘successful,’ if you want to use that word. She too progressed to being Head of Department (specialising herself in Parasitology), but then moved sideways into
college management, ending up as Principal, a post she carried out as a duty rather than as a vocation.
‘It’s critical for the wellbeing of the institution,’ she argued. ‘I know full well it means endless long boring meetings, and often huge compromises, but someone’s got to do it, and I firmly believe that in the long run it will be for the benefit of all the students.’
So she sacrificed herself for them, even though it killed her in the end.
I’m so tired. God, am I tired. Is that belief? To call upon the name. How did it all happen? So quickly too. I occasionally remember my name, as it was then. Alasdair. Alexander in English. Sometimes shortened to Sandy. Some people called me Alex. How my mother always put the emphasis on the first two letters, so that the rest of my name always sounded like a question left hanging. Al so strongly put, then the asdair as if some kind of resignation was setting in. I called myself that for a while. Aly. Big Al they called me. And Ali Mohammed used to come round the houses every spring with a large magic case full of clothes. When he opened it, no one could believe the amount that was inside: vests, pants, shirts, trousers, jerseys, caps, handkerchiefs, stockings and all kinds of secret wonders that only my mother was allowed to see. Ali carried his case strapped to his back on his bike, so how come it was always newly full to the brim at every house, no matter how many things people bought?
I lie awake thinking of the speed at which everything happened. First of all slowly, really slowly, like a slow motion film. We used to make bàtachan- seileasdair. Iris boats. Boats made out of irises. The best of them were found down by the rock pool next to the stream. You plucked one, then cut your way through the sheaf with your teeth, then looped the sharp end of the iris back into the hole you’d made and there you had it: abracadabra my bonny lies over the ocean the big ship sails on the ally-ally-oh, an iris boat that would take you all the way across the Atlantic to America itself.
The best place to launch it from was the old bridge by the ruin. You could stand on the flat stone which held the bottom of the bridge and release your boat and the game was then to run as fast as you could up the slope by the side of the bridge and get to the other side in time to catch it just emerging down below. It all depended. If it had been raining heavily and the stream was running fast, you had no chance: by the time you reached the bridge your seileasdair would be somersaulting away through the rapids down the other side. The other major hazard were the stones which bedded the stream – if the weather had been too dry and the water was low, likely as not your boat would wedge between the rocks and make the game impossible. The dream was always circumstantial: to find the right kind of iris, to make the right kind of cut with your teeth, to loop back the stem perfectly, to find the river running free. When the word became flesh you believed and watched in awe as it flew from your hands, landed like a seaplane in the water, glided between the rocks as you ran and then waited for you as you leant over the parapet, where it would emerge out into the sunlight, very much like the Queen Mary herself, blowing her horn at the Statue of Liberty.
Age is a dreamy process. I’m forever now taking little nods where time dissolves, and the strange thing is that it is always quiet when I waken. I drift off in the early afternoon while the birds sing outside the window and someone mows a lawn in the distance, and sometimes I hear a shout or two, and then I’m once again rolling a marble down the rock which lay between the river and the byre. You had to climb it from the far side and sit on the very top from where a long sinewy crevice ran all the way to the bottom. If you released the marble too quickly it would spill out of the crevice, but if you were careful and lay face down on top of the rock and stretched yourself full out the marble would then hold the hollow at the top for a moment or two before running all the way down the crevice to the grassy bottom. It moved right and then left and then straight down, then to the right again and then in a long slow sweep down to the left where it would nestle safely in the grass. The trick was to do it as fast as you could without the marble spilling out, and I once managed to do it to the count of ten.
And every time I waken there is that soft, distant hum and I wait to hear voices and none come. ‘Alasdair?’ she would shout. ‘Alasdair?’ And the voice is not there. Or there would be the sound of a ball hitting a home made cricket bat, or the sound of Catherine playing with her dollies,or the lowing of a cow far away, and there is silence. I listen and I can hear the grass grow.
Her breathing has become light. Almost indistinct. Faint. I didn’t think anything was ever faint before. Even on the calmest of summer days, something would be moving. Clouds. Bees over the clover. The bog cotton on the moor. Seonaidh Dhòmhnaill Alasdair or Seasag Ruairidh Sheumais with a stick herding the cow. And there was always noise. Geese, ducks, hens, dogs, boats. The priest’s car. The minister’s car. The teacher’s car. The travelling shop-van. MacBrayne’s bus. A plane high up in the heavens and the peewit crying on a spring morning.
Maybe the moon was nearest to this state. Late autumn, once the harvest was home, was moon-time. The full moon on the 23rd of September. It was a Thursday. The haystacks were all secure in the yard. Coming back from the machair I saw the geese going south. The moon rose over Easabhail. Bha i ruadh. She was red. Gealach an Abachaidh. The harvest moon. Nothing moved. Not even the sea could be heard. It cast a faint light on all the earth. Like this. So that the rocks and the stream and our house and even the huge church on the hill became small. Even if I stood on top of the highest hill and reached right up on tiptoe and had a long stick in my hand I wouldn’t be able to reach the moon. She was too far away. For the moon is feminine. As is the sun. The earth is masculine. The sea is both.
Our neighbour could be in two places at once. He was called Mìcheal, and not only had the gift of second sight but was also sometimes taken away by the Host of the Dead. They would come for him at twilight through the small western window and transport him south west east north for days on end to distant places. The Host were led by Niall Sgròb and Mìcheal told me that they had taken him across the great ocean to a place which was twinkling with lights.
I asked him how they had carried him. ‘By the hand,’ he said, ‘like you would take a child.’
As a child, I too could be in two places at once. I remember once when I was walking across the moor with my mother I ran on ahead and when I looked back I could see the two of us walking towards me. And it worked not only looking back. Another day I was scything the hay with my father when I looked across into the next field where I was sitting holding his hand. I now regret that there are two places.
I hold hers now. A strong hold. Weak. A hold like the one I held when I put the ring on her finger. Thumb. Index. Middle. Wedding. Pinky. A gold ring. That’s now too big. A hand I held in Cornwall and in St Tropez when we were on our honeymoon. Honey. Moon. I do. Yes, and I will, yes
I do, yes and yes and yes and yes, breathed Molly Bloom.
No no no no, as dear Margherita said, in better times.
I read of her occasionally too from her recluse in New Mexico. What a beautiful, honest, and straightforward woman. As was Marion. I don’t want my… my regret… to diminish her, for she too was straightforward and honourable. She was always ready to forgive and, like all of us, naturally assumed that the world was made in her image. She found it so genuinely distressing therefore to encounter colleagues who were unforgiving, bearing little grudges forever as if they could improve on Sisyphus. She was okay, okay? And none of it is self-pity. Whatever else, o God, save me from that.
There is a morning time when I waken, just before dawn, and I’m back there. It’s warm, and there’s a kind of soft humming sound in the distance, and bicycle clips being put on, and an oven door closing or opening. It clicks when it closes and clucks when it opens. And the smell of newly baked scones on the greideal, the griddle, and once we have these, we’ll walk north, I think, to Roghasdail to see if the boys would like a game.
I’m so glad my Dad fixed the ball yesterday: you’d h
ardly know the leather had been sown. If I play at outside-left it will be best on that machair slope, ’cause I know the inclines and hollows so well. My eldest sister is singing, and even I know the words by now: it’s now or never, come hold me tight, kiss me my darling, be mine tonight. And I realise it’s London, and now, and that I will never see them again.
I’m so tired. God, am I tired.
And then I remembered her. Just like that, out of the blue as it were, for no apparent reason, as I sat at an outdoor table in a café in Paris in the September sunshine. The Rue de Richelieu where I often went in the mornings for my double shot of espresso: an old habit which I’d allowed to creep back in following Marion’s death.
That and the occasional Gauloise and the glass of vintage red in the evenings. My friend Doctor Jacques, with whom I often played chess, assured me it was the best thing in the world.
‘Not only good for your heart, but even better for the spirit! Santé!’
We’d always talked of relocating to Paris and never gotten round to it, but during her long illness we persuaded ourselves to move there, maybe finally permitting ourselves some liberty.
The house in St John’s Wood sold for an absolute fortune and allowed us to buy a beautiful small maison de ville in the lovely sixth arrondissement, by the Jardin du Luxembourg, where I used to wheel her round the ponds every day. She was brave throughout the whole thing, and it was some relief to us that we were able to share simple things in the final days to make life’s long sacrifice worthwhile.
They used to hold little toy yacht races on the Luxemburg ponds, and the grown-up men who played these games with such fierce competitiveness in these end days gave us a special welcome and would insist that Marion be brought right into the heart of the action, and would help push the wheelchair down to the water’s edge where she could watch the yachts racing across the water from close quarters. I knew she especially loved the old boys’ shouts and cries as they urged their beautiful little motorboats across the pond – Mon Dieu! Sacre bleu! J’en ai morre! C’est dans la poche!, shouts as if victory or defeat meant life or death to them which they then resolved with hearty backslapping hugs to each other when it was all over.
The Girl on the Ferryboat Page 7
