Tombstoning

by Unknown

  After he’d put the phone down he’d had another few whiskies, but the memory of the chat was still strong in his mind. Her voice sounded more grown-up than he remembered. She still did that thing where it sounded like she was about to laugh after every single sentence, but not in an annoying way, more like she just found any situation thoroughly entertaining.

  He got to the museum’s entrance and there was definitely no one there. He was knackered. Is this what happens to your body in your thirties, he thought, you start getting worn out just from walking fast? He had to start getting fit again, soon. He’d said that to himself so many times over the last three years that he now just ignored himself, knowing it would never happen. He was standing with his hands on his knees, getting his breath back when he looked up. There she was.

  His throat felt tight as he looked at her. Goddamn it, she looked fine. She was beautiful. Her hair was a little shorter, more stylish maybe, but still a bit all over the place. Her wide smile and clear, hazel eyes were as welcoming as he remembered and that nose, that kooky little nose just killed him. She was wearing a pair of sleek black trousers and a flimsy fawn blouse, and seemed taller somehow. He remembered her as being pretty but always slightly uncomfortable with that fact. She had definitely grown into her looks, she fitted her features better and seemed so at ease with herself, confident.

  Her smile grew wider as she approached him, and he felt himself responding with an idiotic grin. He awkwardly stuck out a hand and she laughed, grabbed him and kissed him on both cheeks before standing back and giving him the once-over, her hands still on his shoulders.

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit, is the correct cliché, I believe,’ she said, and her nose went for a wiggle. David felt the knot in his stomach disappearing and knew they were going to get along just fine.

  ‘That cliché applies much more to yourself, I suspect,’ David said, ‘except you actually look younger and better than you did fifteen years ago. Whereas I’m just the same, except with two stone of weight added on somewhere.’

  ‘Well, you were always too skinny at school,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it, David Lindsay from Arbroath, as I live and breathe. How about that?’

  ‘Actually, most folk call me Dave these days.’

  ‘I think I’ll stick with David. It’s more grown-up. And weren’t you David in school?’

  ‘Yeah, I changed it when I came to Edinburgh.’

  ‘Ah, the old “drop a syllable” routine. Never succumbed to it myself. Day one of “throwing off the shackles of the past” and all that. I think I’ll stick with David, how would that be?’

  ‘That would be just fine.’

  ‘Good stuff. So what now, David? Fancy a trawl through thousands of years of Scottish history?’

  ‘Not really, to be honest. It seems like such a nice day maybe we could just find a beer garden or something…’

  ‘Nonsense. Apart from anything else, I’ll burn to a bloody crisp in this sun, my pasty face can’t handle it. And anyway, I love this building and all the old stuff they’ve got in there. You didn’t do history at school, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then I can be your informal guide through the corridors of time’ – she was putting on a booming voice-over voice – ‘through thousands of years of bloodthirsty mayhem and savage carnage.’ She returned to her normal voice with a laugh. ‘Eat yer heart out, Simon Schama. Come on, I won’t lecture you too much, and I promise to go for a pint later on. How’s that?’

  David couldn’t give a damn about the last five thousand years of Scottish history, but he sure as hell wanted to spend the next few hours with Nicola Cruickshank. He motioned towards the museum’s squat, sandy turret of an entrance.

  ‘After you, madam. Is age before beauty the appropriate cliché?’

  ‘Watch it, I’m only a few months older than you,’ said Nicola, punching him on the arm and laughing to herself. David watched her go inside with wide eyes, a big smile and feeling for all the world like he was eighteen years old again.

  The air was cool inside and it was so dark compared to the glare of the street that it took David a couple of minutes to see things clearly. Gangs of rucksacked foreign schoolkids filled the airy space with shrill chatter, while tired-looking families trudged around the main concourse. Nicola was a few yards ahead of him already, heading past a crumbly sandstone cross into a section marked Kingdom of the Scots. She turned back, beamed that smile at him and waved her hand in encouragement.

  David wasn’t hot on museums. He didn’t really see the point in all that ancient history, and the exhibits always seemed so dry, dusty and disconnected with anything remotely like a real life that someone might actually have lived. Maybe he just didn’t have the leap of imagination necessary to fully appreciate what all this old crap was meant to signify. But for the sake of hanging out with Nicola he could easily stomach a few lumps of old rock and metal, the odd statue or bit of broken pottery. He could see her at the first spotlit display. My god, she was beautiful. He walked into the first room keeping his eyes on her all the way.

  Nicola was studiously examining a tiny metallic trinket box in the display cabinet, but she was thinking about David. She knew he was watching her. When you were a woman with years of experience of catching men’s eyes, you knew when someone was watching you, you could just sense it. She didn’t often appreciate it, but she liked the feeling today because she knew that he was comparing her school self with herself now, and she reckoned that modern Nicola won hands down. She couldn’t figure out why exactly, but she just felt like more of a human being than that awkward, gawky kid she had been all those years before.

  She’d made a joke about it, but David really hadn’t changed. Well, OK, physically he had filled out a little, she could see that around his face, but that really was a good thing in her book; she’d always thought he had a kind of haunted look about him when he was younger, like there wasn’t quite enough flesh under the skin stretched tight across his cheeks. He had shorter hair and it was a mess, but it was a cool mess. He was dressing younger than his age, a T-shirt over a long-sleeved top, skater-boy jeans and trainers, but then there was nothing wrong with that as long as you didn’t look ridiculous. And David didn’t look ridiculous. Far from it. He looked pretty damn cute. She wasn’t getting carried away or anything. But he was cute.

  ‘The Monymusk reliquary,’ said David, reading the blurb. ‘Associated with St Columba and Robert the Bruce. It’s tiny. What does it do?’

  ‘You keep ancient relics in it.’

  ‘Relics?’

  ‘Bones. Of saints. This one was small so they could wear it round their necks. They paraded it in front of the troops at Bannockburn, so they say.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Historians.’

  ‘Ah, them.’

  ‘It sounds like you don’t hold much truck with the word of historians. And before you say anything, bear in mind that I’ve got an honours degree in history and archaeology from Glasgow Uni.’

  ‘I was just about to say that historians are great, and always right.’

  ‘Nah, you’re right, they’re a bunch of speculative bastards. Especially all the high-profile television ones.’ She looked away from the strange shiny box in front of them and around the room. ‘Recognize anything in here?’

  David looked around. In front of them was a small sign which said ‘Scotland Defined’. That seemed like quite a claim, he thought, but he let it pass. On either side the walls were covered in large quotations, done in fancy script, and he realized straight away that they were quotations from the Declaration of Arbroath. They had, of course, done it to fucking death at school, seeing as how it was the town’s main claim to fame. The Scottish nobility’s letter to the Pope backing Robert the Bruce as king, asking the Pope to recognize Scotland as an independent nation and asking if he’d mind having a go at the English for hammering the crap out of us. Written, signed and sealed in Arbroath Abbey in 1320. The primary school
history lessons were trickling back now. He read the two inscriptions, one about not cowing down to the English while a hundred of us are still kicking around, the other about fighting for freedom. It was all very Braveheart.

  ‘Ah, I get it,’ he said. ‘A not-so-subtle piece of subliminal advertising for the school reunion, is that it? Surround me with messages from the past about the importance of Arbroath in our history?’

  ‘Nah, I just thought it would be a cheeky laugh to bring you here,’ she said. ‘My own declaration of Arbroath. Or something. Actually it didn’t occur to me until after I put the phone down last night. But it fits quite nicely, don’t you think?’

  She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were a very attractive shade of brown. They were smiling at each other now, both caught in a moment, wondering what was really going on here. Nicola moved first, breaking eye contact and heading through into the next room of the museum in a casual saunter that felt slightly on the forced side.

  David followed on, feeling a bit like a dog on a lead, but happily wagging his tail. They wandered around the rest of the floor, swapping comments on the bits and bobs in glass cases, the stone sculptures, the old swords, armour, coins, trinkets, spears and a multitude of other pieces of the pointless past. He paid scant attention to the exhibits, his thoughts constantly returning to Nicola. What were they doing here? Why had she asked him? Why had he agreed to come?

  He made an effort to concentrate at a display of Robert the Bruce stuff, reading the accompanying blurb which said that everything in the case was either ‘a facsimile of the original’, ‘rumoured to have belonged to Robert the Bruce’ or ‘found at Bannockburn, but possibly a later forgery’. Christ, the stuff in here wasn’t even the original old crap, it was less ancient copies of old crap. A thought suddenly struck him.

  ‘Is the Declaration of Arbroath here?’ he said.

  ‘No, it’s in Register House on Charlotte Square.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who knows? Historian politics? It’s a backbiting business, the study of Scottish history. Not quite as bloodthirsty as the history itself, but not without its battles.’

  By this time they had worked their way around the ground floor. The restrained air of the place, the relentlessly studious vibe, was beginning to tire him. He looked up from the open-plan concourse and the building seemed to go up forever, shafts of daylight splitting the dusty air at irregular intervals.

  ‘How many floors has this place got?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Jesus. You’re joking.’

  Nicola looked at David’s face. She’d realized straight away that he wasn’t at all interested in the museum and its exhibits, and she’d kept on slowly heading round the place to wind him up, see how long he could put on a brave face just to stay with her. She was testing him and she knew it was a bit puerile, but she had enjoyed doing it all the same. She laughed, looking at his hangdog expression, and took his arm, turning him towards the exit.

  ‘OK, David Lindsay from Arbroath, no more history for today. You’ve earned your pint.’

  ‘Too right I have,’ said David, relieved to be leaving, exhilarated to be arm in arm with this woman and damn well looking forward to the first pint of the day.

  Sandy Bell’s was that rarest of things, a traditional pub still going strong in the centre of town. The tiny space was dominated by a large ornate gantry lined with dozens of single malt bottles. Half a dozen crumpled old men lined the bar. A young couple sat in the corner in front of the toilets playing guitar and fiddle gently, the melodies and rhythms intertwining with the thick fog of cigarette smoke that danced in the sunlight filtering through the windows. Nicola and David were squeezed into the table at the front of the bar, both nursing pints of lager, and they could just see the arse end of the museum across the road. They clinked glasses together in a cheers and drank.

  ‘So,’ said David with a deliberately ironic air of clunky formality. ‘Nicola Cruickshank. From Arbroath. Tell me about your life for the last fifteen years.’

  She gave him a sideways look. ‘The concise version, or the ultra-concise one?’

  ‘Concise version, please.’

  ‘Left school, four years at Glasgow, backpacked round the world, worked in Australia, came home, discovered I was pregnant, had Amy, worked at Arbroath Abbey, moved to Edinburgh.’

  She had been counting off the points on her fingers with a smile, and now returned to her pint.

  ‘Wow, what the hell is the ultra-concise version like?’

  ‘Graduated, travelled, Amy, job.’

  ‘Fair enough. So… a daughter, eh?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I assume you’re wondering about the father? Well, I haven’t seen him since before Amy was born. He’s Australian, we had a thing going over there for a while, nothing even remotely serious, then we split up and I came back to Scotland. Two weeks after I got off the plane I discovered I was two months pregnant. That was 1995. He knows about her, I post pictures and he sends stuff on birthdays and Christmas, but he’s about as interested in us as we are in him, to be honest. He’s also six years younger than me, barely more than a baby himself when I got pregnant, and on the other side of the world, so I can’t really blame him for not taking more of an interest.’

  They both took another swig of lager as a plaintive violin line meandered around the room.

  ‘I guess that must’ve been tricky, bringing a daughter up yourself.’

  ‘I had the family. My folks were great about it, they couldn’t get enough of her. Still can’t. After a year or two I managed to get a job at the abbey, doing the tourist guide stint. I suppose I was slumming it with a degree and everything, but it was a decent enough job. Plus I got a foot in the door at Historic Scotland, and now I work at the headquarters at Salisbury Place, inspecting and categorizing listed buildings and that sort of malarkey. It’s a job I really enjoy, and it’s good to be out of Arbroath.’

  She swigged the remains of her pint and squeezed out from behind the table to get the round in.

  ‘Same again?’

  ‘Yeah, cheers.’

  David watched her as she went to the bar and couldn’t help noticing her figure. She was as slim as she’d always been, but she still had curves where women were supposed to have curves. He wondered how his own body had changed over the last fifteen years. It didn’t look as good as hers, that’s for sure. When Nicola turned back with the pints he self-consciously turned away to look down at his empty pint glass. Nicola noticed, smiled and squeezed back into her seat.

  ‘So,’ she said, drawling the word in a parody of his earlier opening gambit. ‘David Lindsay. From Arbroath. A potted history, if you please.’

  ‘I’m afraid mine isn’t nearly so interesting. If I count them on my fingers like you I’ll probably only get to about three.’

  ‘Quit stalling and make with the info.’

  ‘OK. Left school, came to Edinburgh to do computer science, graduated with a 2:2, worked in pubs for a couple of years, did a post-grad at Napier in web design, worked through a string of gradually less impressive and less exciting jobs over the last’ – he counted in his head – ‘Jesus, eight years. I’ve been doing this shit for eight years.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now what?’

  ‘What about this place you’re at now – what is it, Run Deep?’

  ‘Still Waters, I like what you’ve done there. Nah, it’s a shithole, and a failing one at that. The arse has fallen out the web-design market, everyone and their bloody dog can do it nowadays. I suspect the dole queue beckons soon, to be honest.’

  ‘Really? Sorry to hear that. Although it doesn’t sound as if you particularly like the job anyway.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose I do, but it pays the bills.’

  ‘That is surely the saddest phrase in the English language – “it pays the bills”.’

  ‘I know what you mean. But it does.’

  David took a breather and a few slugs of lager. Just the
mention of his mundane, depressing work was enough to get him down. Nicola couldn’t help noticing.

  ‘Anyway, enough talk about work,’ she said. ‘This is a Saturday after all. Instead, let me apply some peer pressure on you about this school reunion. Give me your hand.’

  David offered up his arm and Nicola grabbed his wrist and started twisting.

  ‘Chinese burn, Chinese burn,’ she said. ‘Are you gonna come to this bloody thing?’

  David drew his arm away laughing.

  ‘I don’t know. It makes me feel a bit queasy even thinking about it.’

  ‘Come on. I know we’ve only just re-met after fifteen years, but we’re getting along OK, aren’t we?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, it’ll be the same with everyone else, won’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well… I don’t know.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘The trouble is, you’ve obviously kept in touch with people from back there over the years. I haven’t. Not only have I not kept in touch, I haven’t even set foot in the place since…’

  ‘Since Colin died?’

  David was jolted by the mention of it.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Nicola had a look that was part sympathy, part exasperation.

  ‘Really, David, that’s all ancient history. I mean it was fifteen years ago. No one will ever know whether it was an accident or suicide and…’

  ‘It was an accident,’ said David automatically.

  Nicola stopped in her tracks. She reached out and took his hand across the table.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. These things happen all the time. OK, so it was an accident – if there’s one thing teenagers are prone to, it’s accidents. So he fell off the cliffs. It’s sad, it’s a fucking waste, of course it is, but it was so long ago now that surely you can’t still be upset about it.’