And no wonder He wants to remain anonymous, if the Internet is anything to go by. The whole thing is mad, for chance is nothing, and one night we Googled the word to find this marvel flashing up before our eyes –
Bizarre! Some Amazing Coincidences!
CHILDHOOD BOOK: While American novelist Anne Parrish was browsing bookstores in Paris in the 1920s, she came upon a book that was one of her childhood favourites – Jack Frost and Other Stories. She picked up the old book and showed it to her husband, telling him of the book she fondly remembered as a child. Her husband took the book, opened it, and on the flyleaf found the inscription ‘Anne Parrish, 209 N. Weber Street, Colorado Springs.’ It was Anne’s very own book.
ROYAL COINCIDENCE: In Monza, Italy, King Umberto 1 went to a small restaurant for dinner, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, General Emilio Ponzia-Vaglia. When the owner took King Umberto’s order, the King noticed that he and the restaurant owner were virtual doubles, in face and in build. Both men began discussing the striking resemblances between each other and found many more similarities –
1. Both men were born on the same day, of the same year (14th March, 1844).
2. Both men had been born in the same town.
3. Both men married a woman with the same name, Margherita.
4. The restaurateur opened his restaurant on the same day that King Umberto was crowned King of Italy.
5. On the 29th July 1900 King Umberto was informed that the restaurateur had died that day in a mysterious shooting accident, and as he expressed his regret, he was then assassinated by an anarchist in the crowd.
GOLDEN SCARAB: From The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche by Carl Jung – ‘A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to the golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose chafer (Cetonia aurata) which contrary to its usual habits had felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since, and that the dream of the patient has remained unique in my experience’.
We held hands and laughed and were astonished in equal measures.
‘Look,’ said Helen, ‘that’s nothing compared to the comments!’
And they were pretty astonishing: Chad HXC commented,
‘Hey, these are pretty crazy, but here is one not mentioned. Jesus’s birthday was September 11, 3BC. The attack on the twin towers was on September 11, 2001. Which is also the number for the emergency crew 9-1-1.’
The Dum Guy responded,
‘Chad HXC – Are you joking? I wasn’t aware that Christ’s birthday was known to the day and month, although I’ve heard Jesus was a Leo.’
And topped off by Drogo, who wrote later on the thread –
‘We went to Disney World, a trip almost 2000 miles from home. In a shop on Main Street we came across our neighbours from down the street.’
‘The world’s mad,’ I said.
‘Well, no madder than us,’ was her response.
9
IT JUST HAPPENED that this time it was the opposite way round: she was descending the stairs, and I was climbing.
‘Sorry,’ she said, trying to stand to one side, and I must have smiled and said, ‘O, don’t worry – I’ll get by.’
I might have said that – I’ve really no idea. Anyway the meeting on the stairs reminded me of something, from a long time ago, and it was only afterwards as I sat on the deck upstairs that all things became possible.
No, it couldn’t be, I said to myself. The stairs are narrow and you’re bound to meet hundreds of folk on them if you go up and down, and what else would you say anyway in that awkward situation except for ‘Sorry,’ and ‘O, don’t worry – I’ll get by.’
And of course I’d felt no urge to touch the old lady’s arm as she passed. Not at my age anyway.
Downstairs, Helen hadn’t given it a second thought. She was in the boat’s small bookshop, which was selling all the usual tourist junk – plastic crocodiles, Loch Ness Monsters, Isle of Mull keyrings, Columban medallions. Even the bookstall was small and limited – mostly picture books of old ferries and puffers and steamers. What a great business nostalgia was. She bought a magazine – The Scottish Field – to while away some time.
We both disembarked at Craignure. Long gone were the days when this great ferry service would then sail on to Tobermory and Colonsay and Tiree and Castlebay and Lochboisdale. Now everyone had their own ferry. This was really like a large shuttle bus now, transporting mostly tourists backwards and forwards between Mull and the mainland every three-quarters of an hour. At least in the summer.
The days of the bicycle too were gone: Helen was going to catch the service bus north where she would pick up her own old car which she used whenever she returned to the island. I’d left my hire car parked safely at the pier in Oban, and was going to join the tour bus which took all the visitors on down to Fionnphort from where we would all get the smaller ferry across to Iona.
None of it happened. As we were queuing to disembark, I bumped into her again in the crowd at the top of the gangway. I nodded to her, for having spoken to her earlier on the stairway, we almost seemed like acquaintances. She had a rucksack, and since I was just over for the day, I only carried a small shoulderbag. I acted the gentleman.
‘Would you like a hand?’ I asked.
She hesitated.
‘Yeah. Sure – just down to the bottom of these stairs.’
I gave her my hand luggage and swung her rucksack on my shoulder.
‘Thanks,’ she said, at the bottom.
‘Can I carry it to your car?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No thanks. My car’s not here. I’m just getting that service bus.’
‘Is that the one to Fionnphort?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The one for Fionnphort is over there. This is the one for the north end of the island, going to Tobermory then on to Dervaig and Calgary and down the west coast.’
She looked at me, and pointed to the buses.
‘It says all that on the bus. See? Tobermory on that one. Fionnphort on the other.’
I looked for signs of sarcasm, but could not detect any. Maybe she thought I was plain stupid. Or couldn’t read English. Sometimes, to be fair, I’d adopt a French accent and having recently lived there, that was perfectly plausible. Or maybe she just thought I was at it: a real fly-by-night, a real chancer, who went around trying to pick up women. How life had made us suspicious.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘That’s the bus I was going to get. North, and round the west coast.’
‘Are you sure?’ she replied. ‘Normally folk come here just to go on to Iona.’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure.’
I sat halfway along the bus and was relieved that she sat opposite me when she entered, even though there were plenty empty seats further away. We smiled, and of course I knew then it was her: the freckles were still there, and the smile, and the eyes, even if the dark curly hair was now short and rooted grey.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Imagine that! Would you call it a – miracle? Or a coincidence?’
I was overwhelmed – not by the miracle, or the coincidence, but by her confession of remembrance.
‘But you had no reason…’ I began.
‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘Except that I was in trauma that day and maybe because of that I remember it all.’
‘Trauma?’
She looked at me across the bus divide.
‘Yes. I’d lost my violin, and I think I was in shock. It made me hugely sensitive to everything around me, as if I could suddenly hear or see or find my fiddle in the most unexpected of plac
es, and I must therefore have been highly tuned to every single thing, in case – somehow and magically and miraculously – my violin would manifest itself somewhere. It didn’t, but everything else did. I remember the exact colour and shape and texture of the bench at Waverley where I lost my fiddle. I remember the voices of all the police officers and of all the pawn shop owners I asked. I remember the sound of the train going through all the stations up here as
I travelled to tell my Mum. I remember this man who blocked my way on the stairs and how he said “Sorry” as he tried to stand to one side, and how I said, “O, don’t worry – I’ll get by,” and I remember how I cycled all the way home – I can still hear the sound of the wheels on the road and the willow warblers singing, and I can smell the wild garlic – and how my Mum was milking Daisy down by the gate, and how she sensed I was there, and turned, still sitting on her stool and waved to me.’
It was a glorious flood of words and I was terribly ashamed of my earlier lies and my manoeuvring to get to know her, when it was obvious she knew all along.
‘I’m sorry,’ I began, but she stopped me with a wave of her hand.
‘No. Don’t say it,’ she said. ‘Be honest.’
She moved across in her seat to be nearer the aisle and looked straight at me.
‘For a change?’ she asked.
I lowered my eyes, even looked the other way for a moment, out the window.
‘We’re not children any more. It doesn’t work like that any more.’
I looked back at her, trying to smile. I wished too I had the courage to move nearer, even towards the aisle, but even that was lacking. Maybe truth had frozen me.
‘So,’ I said instead, maybe foolishly, ‘Did you ever find the violin?’
She shook her head, slowly. I moved nearer the aisle.
‘Listen – I know this sounds all foolish and daft and sort of made-up and as if I’m saying it because you’re here and
I want to bed you and all that stuff we know and read about, but still it’s true.’
I paused. I managed to pause.
‘But I’ve – I’ve wondered about you all my life. Who you were, what you were, how you were, where you were, what happened to you, what didn’t happen to you, did you marry, did you have children, did you live, did you die, did it matter, did I make it up, did any of it happen, ever…’
She leaned over towards me and did the most beautiful thing: stroked my cheek, as if I were a little child.
‘You’ve wondered about yourself,’ she said.
Or at least that’s what I think she said.
‘Who you were, what you were, how you were, where you were, what happened to you, what didn’t happen to you, did you marry, did you have children, did you live, did you die, did it matter, did you make it up, did any of it happen, ever…’
She paused, fully withdrawing her hand.
‘And I only know all that because that’s what we’ve all wondered. You don’t need to be a prophet to see it. Though you might need to be one to hear it.’
Afterwards, as we walked down the road towards Dervaig, things were discovered: a disused apiary by the roadside, a finch’s nest in a bush by the river, and a discarded, though not quite broken, child’s bicycle in the ditch.
Once we arrived at Tobermory, the joining bus west wasn’t there – it had broken down – so we just decided to walk to Helen’s home in Calgary instead.
‘It’s sixteen miles,’ she said, looking me up and down like a horse. ‘Do you think you’ll manage?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I’ll manage. But I’ve got a good thumb, and if needs be…’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t think so. Two reasons – first of all, there’s not much traffic on this road. And secondly – don’t you think hitching is a bit – what shall I say – uncool? – for folks of our age?’
So we tramped it, like two young road trippers. It was a beautiful day anyway – a May day, with sufficient sun to be warm and enough wind to be cool. In the proper sense.
I sensed she’d lied about the first part, for there seemed to me to be more than enough cars on the road, and occasionally one would stop and offer us a lift, but we refused, saying that we were out enjoying the day. Which we were.
She told me about Peru and Madagascar and the Rhonda Valley and I told her some of the things about Alasdair and Kate, and Big Roderick, and the boat, and London. But though we told these things, yet we told them as relative strangers, for it is one thing to hear a story and another to trust it.
We finally accepted a lift from a local. We knew he was local because we could hear his exhaust from miles away. He stopped his old Cortina and beckoned us in. He came out of the car and flung the rucksack and my hand luggage into the boot, steered Helen into the front passenger seat and off we headed.
We were all silent for a while, mostly because we could hardly think, never mind speak or hear, because of the racket from the exhaust. But after some miles we became accustomed to it and spoke our words between the bullet sounds. He started.
‘Aye aye.’
‘Aye,’ we replied.
‘Aye,’ he said in return.
‘Well Helen O’ Connor,’ he then said, ‘it’s really splendid to see you again.’
He looked over at her.
‘And you looking so well too. As beautiful today as you were when I first set eyes upon you, but no wonder, for your mother too was a beautiful woman.’
‘Now, now, Lachlan,’ said Helen. ‘You know it’s not fair to compare a daughter with her mother.’
He laughed. And looked in the car mirror.
‘And who’s this splendid gentleman who has the honour of walking the roads with you?’
I’d known instantly from his accent that he was a Gaelic speaker, so I said.
‘Uibhisteach. Tuigidh tu fhèin an còrr.’
He laughed raucously.
‘An Uibhisteach! They’re almost as rare here as Muileachs themselves!’
He turned once again to Helen.
‘Great people, the Uibhisteachs – the best sailors in the world. But that’s the last thing you want to hear – my yarns about sailing the high seas with the Uist boys. And the Lewis lads – they weren’t bad either!’
We all went quiet again.
‘You’ll want to – to go out in the boat, of course?’ he said to Helen.
She nodded.
‘Tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘Or the day after?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Helen said. ‘You know I always like to do that first.’
He dropped us off at her house.
‘You know, of course…’ I began.
She waited for me to continue.
‘I’ll just walk on. Or there must be a B&B around here
I can stay at.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There are several B&Bs around here. And there’s also a taxi – Murdo the Taxi – who could take you back for the last ferry if you’re that keen.’
She looked at me.
‘There’s also a spare room. You could sleep there.’
She raised her rucksack on her shoulders. She put it down again.
‘It’s not a deal. It’s just pure simple humanity. With all its hopes and dangers.’
The house was cold, but we soon got a fire going and by the time we’d made tea and some food the house was warm enough. Ah! I suddenly thought. I’ve got nothing extra with me. ‘Ehm… I was supposed to be just going to Iona for the day.’
She looked at me.
‘That’s what comes from telling lies! Weren’t you ever in the Boy Scouts? Be prepared, and all that…’
‘No,’ I confessed. ‘No. I’m afraid I was never in the Boy Scouts. A deprived childhood and all that…’
‘Just as well I was in the Guides then.’
She went through to the back room and came back with a toothbrush and toothpaste.
‘Sorry there’s no shaver,’ she said. ‘And if you look in that old chest t
here, who knows what wonderful clothes you might find for yourself.’
She put on some music while I rummaged through the sea chest. Shostakovich, Symphony No 5 in D Minor, the Russian National Orchestra, conducted by Yakov Kreizberg. I sang a different song under my breath: three fat men on a dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, as
I searched out thick woolly stockings, a long striped nightshirt which Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws himself would have been proud of, a lovely hand-woven silk shirt and a couple of old-fashioned fishermen’s smocks, which were old enough to be new and retro.
I felt like a little boy. Let loose in a toy shop. And I think
I played the part. I put on the smock and did a pretend sailor’s hornpipe, and finally piped down only when I realised something far more important was going on around me: Kreizberg was leading us quietly into the third movement, and the elegy was overwhelming. We both sat humbled.
We sat facing each other by the fireside. The flames freckled her face in the evening light and I sipped a soft malt in a crystal glass. She had a glass of red wine. Chet Baker was singing. The logs crackled, turning red. It was the time before we began to put ourselves in the story. The time when the story was still out there, to be brought into the house, rather than born within. The pre-love time when intimacy is approached rather than achieved. The way you ascend a hill from the side or the way you tack or jib when sailing a boat into the wind.
We told tales about things that had happened to us rather than about ourselves. ‘I mind that time,’ she said, and
I would respond ‘Once…’ I told her about coincidences in my own life and she told about the time she was in Dublin and sitting in Bewley’s tearoom thinking about her flatmate from twenty years before, Anne, when who walked in the door but… and then I remembered walking in New York and suddenly glancing up to see my name on a street sign: Alexander Street. She laughed.
‘Och that could happen anywhere. Just think of the number of Alexander Streets there are!’
The Girl on the Ferryboat Page 10
