The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  She occasionally met up with friends, for a drink or outings to the cinema, but most had moved back home for the summer, and home meant anywhere from Shetland to Washington DC. Lorna found herself looking forward to the start of the new term, her last year, and to the point where her planned trajectory would become reality. She made resolutions to do more with the time available to her at university, to adopt new pastimes, join clubs and societies – and then felt that disquieting sense of dislocation: she had never joined societies or clubs because she always shunned distractions, except the occasional demo. Now, lying awake and staring at the ceiling, she didn’t know what to think, and whether meeting Joe for coffee would be a good or bad idea.

  Although Simone had said he’d got himself fixed up, suppose he hadn’t? Suppose his cheerily friendly phone call was a prelude to asking her for a place to stay? Suppose he was broke, or mad, or a rapist? After the initial loneliness, she’d become accustomed to having the flat to herself. Sure, she missed Suzie, but she was able to walk around the place in her underwear and not lock the bathroom door; able to sit at the kitchen table and work without the inconvenience of earplugs. So she approached her meeting with Joe with a steely resolve: she wasn’t going to offer hospitality, merely the civility that any stranger deserved.

  The rendezvous they’d planned like something from a bad spy film. He was medium height, medium build, with dark, straight hair, and would be wearing a red shirt. They’d arranged to meet at a Starbucks in the city centre. Lorna walked down from the HappyMart, glad of the exercise, and saw him immediately through the glass window, sitting at a corner table and reading a book.

  ‘Hi!’ she said brightly and stuck out a hand. He looked up, seemingly flustered, and shook it. First impressions of Joe weren’t promising. His hair was unkempt and badly needed cutting, he was not of medium build, although not quite of Auntie Meg proportions. She waved airily in the direction of the coffee machines. ‘Back in a tick.’

  She returned to their table to find he was again reading his book, which Lorna thought a little rude. He looked at her warily as she sat opposite him, a smile painted on her face. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘About five minutes,’ he offered, biting his lip.

  ‘I meant in Edinburgh?’

  He was now looking a little alarmed. ‘I’ve always lived here,’ he said. ‘Look, do I know you, or something?’

  It was then that Lorna spotted another man in a red shirt at the other end of the coffee shop. This one, Lorna saw with relief, did seem to be of medium build. ‘I’m really sorry,’ said Lorna. ‘It was the red shirt. Stupid of me ... Sorry.’

  Lorna picked up her cup, apologising again, and hurried across the room.

  ‘Joe?’

  He stood up immediately, rather chivalrously. ‘Yeah, you must be Lorna. Good to meet you’

  ‘Let’s get this straight,’ she replied. ‘Joe Crowe, right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘From Australia?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Well, thank God for that! I’ve just been chatting to someone else in a red shirt.’ She pointed across the room. ‘He wasn’t you, incidentally.’

  She looked at him more closely, and was immediately reminded of James Dean. Her mother had fancied James Dean, once forcing Lorna to watch Rebel Without A Cause, which she’d hated because it was in black and white. Now Lorna had the strange feeling of looking at someone though her mother’s eyes. He was tall and slim (not exactly the medium she’d been expecting), but looked strong. His forearms, sleeves rolled up, were muscular. He had a chiselled chin and a lock of dark hair flopping over one eye. She soon found that he had an infectious smile, and a more infectious laugh.

  He was in Edinburgh because his grandfather had emigrated from Scotland and he’d always wanted to see the place. Through a distant relative of Nico, husband to Simone, who seemed to have extended family in all corners of the world, a bar job had been secured for him. It wasn’t much of a job, as he readily admitted, pulling pints and cleaning ashtrays, but he wasn’t in Edinburgh to work. Not proper work, if she knew what he meant. He’d already visited Inverness, where his grandfather had been born, and had hitchhiked round the north of Scotland. He’d seen mountains and wilderness but, despite a good look, hadn’t seen the Loch Ness monster. Joe had also been to his sister’s wedding and eaten in the Greek beach bar: it gave them a point of connection, and reminded her again of Leo.

  At first she was wary, having programmed herself to be merely friendly, whatever he was like. Instead, she was unwillingly captivated. He had an easy charm, and had already found himself somewhere to stay. He wasn’t therefore looking for favours and, over that first coffee, apologised for phoning her. ‘But I promised big sis that I would,’ he said with a small shrug.

  ‘And how is Simone?’

  ‘Getting to grips with learning Greek, that’s the hard part.’ Joe had one hand on his cup and pushing back his lock of falling hair with the other. ‘It’s not just the language, it’s the bloody alphabet. It’s completely different.’

  ‘It’s all Greek to me,’ said Lorna, which made Joe laugh, even though it wasn’t very funny. She remembered saying much the same thing in Greece, with Austin and Leo. But she also felt curiously flattered, looking at him more closely: green eyes flecked with blue, and that infuriating lock of hair. It made her want to lean over the table and push it back, and she had to resist the temptation.

  ‘Strangely enough, that’s exactly what she says.’

  Outside, a group of serious-looking Japanese tourists with camcorders were filming each other. A busker with a guitar was playing ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles. His guitar case was open by his feet. ‘I didn’t really get to know her,’ admitted Lorna. ‘We just ate there a few times, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, she remembers you,’ said Joe, hand still clasped to coffee cup. ‘You and your actress friend. Simone reckons you two were cool.’

  Lorna sipped her latte, remembering. ‘Suzie. Stick around long enough and you’ll get to meet her. We kind of still share a flat, except that she’s never here. She’s in School’s Out! if you’re interested. The new Spielberg film? It’s a romantic comedy, apparently.’ Lorna lifted her cup. ‘It’s got Hugh Grant in it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like romantic films,’ said Joe. ‘Being blunt, I thought that Notting Hill and Love Actually were crap.’

  ‘In that case, you’re not going to like School’s Out!’

  Joe smiled. ‘And what’s your favourite film?’ he asked.

  ‘You’d laugh, so I’m not going to tell you.’

  ‘I won’t laugh.’

  ‘Everybody laughs, Joe.’ Then, after a pause for dramatic effect. ‘Star Wars ... Sorry.’

  He was smiling, but not laughing. ‘Sorry? For what?’

  ‘For liking a film that’s complete bollocks.’

  ‘It’s not!’ He was pushing back his lock of hair again. ‘But can I ask why?’

  Lorna still didn’t really know why she liked Star Wars so much. She’d never been into science fiction and didn’t like Star Trek. She thought the other Star Wars films were garbage in comparison. It was just the first film that she loved. It was a fairy story, love story, and adventure story all wrapped together. At the time, her parents bickering on the deck of the riverboat, Lorna would sit at the prow of their boat, like Kate Winslet in Titanic, and try not to listen. On the gently rocking boat, in front of the TV, she had found another world. And in that mirror-world, with everything going wrong, things could also be put right.

  ‘Don’t really know,’ she said.

  Curiously, it was also a favourite of Joe’s, or so he said. Lorna didn’t know him well enough to believe him.

  ‘Joe, you’re just saying that.’

  He held up his hands, palms outwards. ‘Why would I lie? Listen, it’s a great film. It paved the way for the sci-fi stuff that’s come since. Actually, not just the sci-fi stuff. The special effects, for Christ’s sak
e!’ He returned his hands to his side and grinned. ‘In any case, I also fancied the pants off Princess Leia.’

  ‘I rather liked Han Solo,’ conceded Lorna.

  He was a year older than her and had completed a degree in media studies. He had offers of work lined up, he said, but didn’t quite know what to do. Taking time away from Australia might help him decide. That was the real reason he’d come to Scotland. He’d always wanted to work in radio drama, he said, maybe as a producer, maybe in front of the microphone. Like Suzie, Joe seemed to be a bit of a show-off. Even at first glance, Lorna knew it.

  ‘But why radio?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s more intimate than TV,’ he explained. ‘People listen to the radio because they want to. People generally watch TV because they can’t think of anything else to do. I like the spoken word,’ he added, ‘and I like to listen to it without the inconvenience of pictures. Good radio drama allows you to invent your own pictures. Does that make any sense?’

  Lorna thought about it. She too liked the written word, and liked the easy pleasure of inventing pictures to go with them. ‘Actually, I suppose it does,’ she said.

  ‘In any case,’ said Joe with another laugh. ‘I have the perfect face for radio.’

  He was wrong, of course, and probably knew it, but Lorna rather admired him for his lack of conceit. Suzie would have hated to work in radio; Lorna rather doubted that she’d ever listened to a radio drama in her life.

  ‘So, you’re going to be a lawyer,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of lawyer?’

  It was a question she had yet to resolve and she found Joe’s question unsettling: in that moment, she couldn’t immediately remember what had attracted her to law in the first place. ‘A good lawyer,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not a very good answer,’ said Joe.

  Outside, the busker was playing a Rolling Stones number, presumably thinking that his passing audience all remembered the 1970s. ‘I just want to do something useful.’

  ‘Oh God!’ said Joe with the lock of hair back over one eye. ‘You’re an idealist.’

  ‘Socialist, yes. Idealist, no.’

  ‘Well, a socialist with principles.’

  Lorna smiled; he was teasing, but not mocking – in much the same way that Leo had done. She smiled at Joe, drawn to him, her ramparts crumbling.

  Then her mobile rang. It was her mother and she was crying.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Family trouble,’ said Lorna. ‘Look, Joe, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.’

  Guilt

  The wooden bench overlooking North Berwick harbour was exactly as she remembered it, although she couldn’t recall the last time she had sat on it. In the harbour were small boats, their rigging clicking and clacking in the faint breeze. The tide was out and the boats sat stranded. The sun shone wetly from a grey and overhanging sky. She’d driven down at high speed and she was seething. ‘Mum, he could have been hurt!’

  ‘Aye, but he wasn’t. He’s in bed with a sore head, stupid bugger. Ashamed of himself, so he is.’

  Lorna shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets and sighed while, beside her, also wrapped warmly, her mother shook her head in exasperation. ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she said, a tug in her voice.

  Her dad, almost home after a visit to the Auld Hoose, had fallen down the communal stairs. Working only sporadically from home as an insurance advisor, it was a journey he knew well, drunk and sober. ‘He could have been hurt,’ Lorna repeated, looking towards the Bass Rock, as always, swathed in circling birds. ‘You should have got someone to help you.’

  ‘By the time I found him, he was snoring his head off. He didn’t need anybody’s help, Lorna.’ Finally alerted by his absence – the pub would have long since closed – her mum had found him in the stairwell. He was too heavy to lift by herself, and she didn’t want to involve neighbours. She didn’t want to broadcast her domestic problems. So she’d pushed a pillow under his head and hoped to God he’d wake up before neighbours used the stairs in the morning.

  ‘Of course he needs help,’ said Lorna. ‘He’s needed help for years.’

  ‘He needs a well-aimed kick up the arse, that’s what he needs,’ said her mother, who had given up not swearing. Now that Lorna was grown up, she often used words that had always been forbidden. ‘But he’s finally, finally promised to see the doctor,’ she added.

  ‘Well, it’s a start.’

  Her mother sighed. ‘He’s feeling awfully stupid about it, as well he might. But I think it’s frightened him a wee bit. Made him realise things, if you know what I mean. That’s why he’s agreed to the see the doc. Not before time,’ she added.

  Lorna placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Well, let’s go and see the stupid bugger, shall we?’ If her mum could now use forbidden words, Lorna didn’t see why she shouldn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry for dragging you down.’

  ‘It’s not a problem, really it’s not. I’m glad you did.’ Lorna squeezed her shoulder, noticing how thin her mother had become.

  Her dad was propped up in bed and wouldn’t meet her eye. He kept saying he was fine, but didn’t look fine. His face was ashen and there was a small bruise on his forehead. His hands were trembling.

  ‘I should really get up,’ he said, looking at the window. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘What things?’ asked Lorna.

  ‘Just things. I’m not completely useless, you know.’ He said this with a smile, except it wasn’t a real smile. ‘Despite what others might think,’ he added in a louder voice for the benefit of his wife who was pottering in the kitchen.

  ‘Mum says you’re going to see the doc.’

  ‘I suppose –’ Still not meeting her eye.

  ‘Please, Dad.’

  He nodded, hands bunched together, not looking at her.

  Afterwards, her mother suggested they went to the bakery to pick up a sandwich. Lorna noted that no money changed hands at the bakery.

  They ate their sandwiches on the same familiar bench, looking out across a familiar sea. The tide was beginning to turn, the boats starting to float, to regain purpose. Mid-stream in the estuary, a grey battleship was heading upstream, bound for the naval dockyard in Fife.

  ‘He seems OK,’ offered Lorna, ‘although he’s not.’

  ‘Apart from everything else, Lorna, he worries about you.’

  ‘Me?’ Lorna turned to face her mother who was staring straight ahead. ‘Whatever has he got to worry about?’ Between them on the bench was carved a faded inscription: Austin Loves Lorna, circled with a heart. Bloody Suzie, all those years ago, cackling, a penknife in one hand, forehead knotted in concentration. Lorna had completely forgotten, and inched closer to her mother to obscure the offending words.

  ‘He worries whether you’re doing the right thing.’

  Lorna was hungry, but no longer wanted to eat. Through an alcoholic haze, her father was accusing her of stupidity. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said, throwing the remnants of her baguette into the metal-lattice bin beside the bench. She could have fed it to the seagulls, but wasn’t feeling charitable.

  ‘He also feels guilty.’

  So, thought Lorna, I now have a father who is both worried and guilty, but who can’t walk up stairs. Once again, she felt enclosed by the small town and her parents’ inadequacies. ‘I don’t understand, Mum. Guilty about what?’

  The wind had blown hair across her mother’s face. Lorna saw how grey it had become; she’d not noticed this before, or the etched lines around her eyes.

  ‘Because Tom’s death was somebody’s fault, wasn’t it? In clever words, the hospital admitted as much.’

  ‘This isn’t making any sense.’

  ‘Your father thinks that you’ve always been looking for someone to blame. He feels guilty about not doing something about it when Tom died. Suzie’s dad said that we should have taken action against the hospital. He told us it was the right thing to do. Your dad thinks
that’s why you want to be lawyer.’

  Lorna couldn’t think of a sensible reply. ‘Is being a lawyer such a bad thing?’

  ‘Of course not, darling. We’re both hugely proud of you. Enormously proud, Lorna. Please don’t think we’re not. He worries about whether you’re following your heart or your head.’

  ‘Lawyers could have got us some money,’ said Lorna, realising, the moment the words left her mouth, how utterly stupid this sounded. She closed her eyes, remembering how she had cut up Tom’s T-shirt and guiltily hidden its remnants in the bin. But it wasn’t clear whether her mother had heard her because, when she opened her eyes, her mum had silently risen from the bench and left. Lorna watched the battleship head further upstream, then drove back to Edinburgh.

  * * *

  When she got back to Edinburgh, depressed, she phoned Joe. Talking to her parents had unnerved her.

  ‘I’m not really phoning for a reason,’ she said. He was living in a flat in the Old Town, sharing the rent with a couple of medical students. Lorna could hear voices in the background. ‘Probably just to apologise for running out.’

  ‘I enjoyed meeting you,’ said Joe.

  ‘It’s not every day I phone people I’ve only just met. Sorry,’ she added, twining the telephone cord between her fingers.

  ‘That’s two apologies. You OK, Lorna?’

  She forced out a small laugh. ‘I just feel a little down, that’s all. My dad had a bit of an accident.’

  ‘Geez, not serious, I hope.’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that.’ Seeing her father’s ashen face and shaking hands had brought conflicting emotions into sharp focus. ‘I was also wondering what you were doing tomorrow evening?’ She pressed her eyes together. She had never been this forward before.

  ‘Tomorrow? Yeah, nothing, I guess.’

  Lorna then shakily poured herself a large glass of wine, hoping her father wasn’t doing the same. Brazen bitch, she said aloud.

  * * *

  Lorna had read somewhere that during the Falklands War penguins were so entranced by the novelty of low-flying jet fighters that they’d lean backwards to watch the planes cross the sky – and lean further back, and back, then fall over. She thought this was hilarious and recounted the anecdote over and over before finding out, years later, that it was a myth. But it nearly happened to her the evening after her visit to North Berwick, as she turned to watch Joe walk to the bar, unintentionally tilting her chair backwards so it was balanced on two legs, then realising with a pang of alarm that she was about to end up on the floor.