The Fanatic (20 page)

She saw his eyes flicker and she followed that brief signal and suddenly realised what it was he was after. James’s sword lay a few feet away. She came to herself at once, fully awake, pushing James off her and diving to grab the sword. James jumped up, his breeks halfway down his legs, a ridiculous dishevelled sight. She had the sword by the hilt. ‘Whit? Whit is it?’ he was shouting. She looked around. The boy was gone.

She could say nothing. She ran a few steps towards the trees, pulling her clothes together. There was nobody there. She came back to James, who was finishing dressing himself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I dreamt … I thocht I saw somebody there.’

‘Where?’ he said anxiously. She pointed. He took the sword from her. They peered into the trees together.

‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘You should hae waked me. We must get aff the hill.’

They hurried down the slope together. ‘Whit’s wrang?’ she said. ‘Whit is
wrang?
’ But he did not speak until they had regained the flat land and were striding east, back to Cardross, in the last of the light.

‘These Highland hills,’ he told her. ‘It’s ma ain fault, Lizzie, I shouldna hae taen ye up there. They are cauld and evil, and the Erse folk watch frae them. They are pagans when they arena papists, and they would murder ye for a plack. Tell me whit ye saw.’

But she could not get the boy’s smile out of her mind. Surely he had meant her no harm. She only said, ‘I saw naethin. I thocht, for an instant, a man, but it was mair likely a beast, a deer mebbe. I was dreamin.’

He softened a little. ‘Ah, Lizzie, I was dreamin also. Ma heid was brimfou wi the beauty of this day. Truly God hath brought me to the banqueting-house, and his banner over me is love.’

She recognised that. It was from the Song of Solomon. And then she understood why he had taken her up there – to make real some kind of dream that he had, to live in the Song himself. They hurried along in the dark, disorientated on the unfamiliar paths. And she felt miserable within, and jealous of the words that he worshipped.

James Mitchel clung to her on the narrow bed of the cell. She felt the wooden planks beneath her, unyielding and hard. James grunted and came into her.

Had she come to the Bass for this? she asked herself. No, she had come in the secret, vain hope that this might be her time, that by some strange deliverance God might bless them.

‘When will ye come again?’ he asked later, as Elizabeth was getting ready to go.

‘I dinna ken,’ she told him. ‘It isna easy, James. Ma brither Nicol’s wife has taen ower the stall these last days, but she canna afford the time and I canna afford tae pey her for it. Forby, Nicol has troubles o his ain tae thole. First he was pit
oot o the clerkship o the guild o hammermen and noo he’s been chairged wi disruptin their elections. He could loss the richt tae practise his craft, or be sent tae the Tolbooth himsel. But I will come again if I can.’

She knew though that she would not return, that these were just excuses. The real reason was what was between her and James: something that was nothing to do with love and everything to do with it. She could not bear the thought of repeating their act in this awful place. She could not bear seeing and smelling and touching her poor ruined husband in this dreadful pit. She was bound to him by law and by love, and yet she lived as freely as a widow, but without a widow’s penury. The stall would never make her rich, but it gave her an income. And although, through James, she was firmly attached to and associated with the Presbyterian party, his past actions meant she was also set apart from many within that broad swathe of opinion; and so long as he was in prison, she need not be dragged into more trouble and danger on account of religion. The truth was – and she did not wish the Bass upon him or any man – she was better off without him.

She picked up her basket. There was one thing she had not yet given him. She had brought a book, worn, spine-cracked, its pages wavy from damp journeys. It would give him comfort, but she had swithered about bringing it at all. She had thought of it as a rival. But maybe it was more herself that was the rival.

‘I had near forgot,’ she said. She lifted a layer of folded linen from the bottom of the basket, and took the book out. ‘Ye’ll no can read muckle in this licht, but mebbe ye ken it weill enough onywey.’

She held it out and he reached for it.
Joshua Redivivus.
Mr Rutherford’s damned and burnable letters.

He looked at it in amazement, pulled it into his chest. ‘Ah, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘Lizzie, my dear love, ye could hae done nae better thing than this.’

He began to greet. She saw him there, head bowed, alone, clutching the book, and all she could think of was what she might be carrying away in secret from him, and all she felt was a terrible lack of love. She thought her heart would
break. She went to him and held him again until Tammas’s chap came at the door.

‘Mind,’ was her parting whisper. ‘Gie siller tae him. The pockmarked sodger.’

As she left the cell, Lizzie almost broke into a run. She needed to get out into the open air. But in the narrow passage she felt Tammas’s hand come up under her oxter and stop her. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘No yet.’

He was right behind her in the shadows. She could feel his breathing hard in at her back, his arm across her breast like a sack full of sand.

‘How did ye pey the boatman?’ Tammas said.

‘Wi siller,’ she whispered, ‘whit else?’ She tried to turn her head but his arm came up and held her more tightly. She was aware of her heart pounding against it. She thought of the siller she had given to James, who lay just a few feet away. ‘My husband,’ she began to say, but he clapped his other hand over her mouth. At that moment a soldier passed by the end of the passage.

‘Wheesht, wheesht noo,’ said Tammas. ‘We maunna be seen. The boat’s no in yet.’

They stood pressed together in the gloom. His hand was like leather. She could feel the coarse ridges of its skin when she moved her lips. His thigh shifted, pushing between her legs.

Jackie arrived late at Dawson’s on the Monday evening. It was after eight. She’d finally got around to calling Hugh back that morning and they’d arranged to meet for another drink. ‘Definitely just a couple,’ she’d said. ‘Monday night drinking is not a habit I want to get into.’ ‘Oh come on,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t give me that Protestant work ethic thing.’

Hugh was halfway through a pint. The bar was busy and he had to wave to attract her attention. ‘Sit down and guard this,’ he said, ‘and I’ll get you a drink. What do you want?’

‘I’ll have a pint too. Whatever you’re drinking.’

She knew as soon as she saw him again that nothing was going to happen between them. Nothing that she would instigate anyway. She couldn’t have predicted this with any certainty when they talked on the phone, nor as she was getting ready to go out, nor even as she was getting off the bus and crossing the street to the pub. Only when she saw him. It just wasn’t right. She’d found his boyishness appealing: now she found it annoying, a sign of immaturity and maybe selfishness. She had thought him handsome: now she saw that he would run to fat in a few years, that the line of his jaw would slacken.

He came back with her beer. There was something suspiciously like a twinkle in his eye. She hoped she wasn’t going to have to fight him off.

‘How’s publishing?’

‘All right. How’s tourism?’

‘Picking up, picking up. You know, people keep going on about the
Braveheart
factor, all these Yanks coming back to their homeland, but I never really believed it. But this year, I don’t know, it feels good. Already I sense an influx of dollars into my trouser pocket.’

‘That’s excellent. You’ll be able to pay decent wages.’

‘I already pay decent wages. Way above the likely minimum wage.’

‘Aye, you said that before. So that won’t affect you if it comes in?’

Hugh smiled. ‘My wage bill is what you might call an unknown quantity. Depending on what the current and future state of employment legislation is, I may or may not have more or less staff on my books than I do at present.’

‘Flexible rostering taken to its logical conclusion, eh?’

‘It’s an up and down kind of enterprise, Jackie. Hard to predict. But basically I think I can live with a minimum wage. The thing that bothers me is this tartan tax everybody keeps banging on about. I mean, a tax on tartan would really hurt the tourist industry.’

She looked hard but even still it took her a few seconds to realise he wasn’t serious.

‘I’ll take it you’ll live with a Scottish parliament too, then, if Labour win the election?’

‘Yes, if it happens. To be honest, my feeling is, why rock the boat? You know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Things are ticking along pretty smoothly for me just now – apart from one persistent hiccup. But if it happens, it happens. Anyway, I wouldn’t bank on Labour delivering the full kit and caboodle even if they win.’

‘They’re going to win the election, Hugh. No question. It’s just a matter of how big a majority. If they don’t I’m emigrating. I don’t think I could stand another five years of the Tories.’

‘Well anyway,’ said Hugh, ‘you’d hardly know there was a general election going on in the real world. It’s all done in TV studios these days. Frankly politics leaves me cold. Let’s change the subject.’

‘Okay. What’s the persistent hiccup?’

‘Guess.’

‘Not Andrew Carlin. You said on the phone he was doing fine.’

‘That was then. This is now. A whole new ball-game.’

‘What’s gone wrong?’

‘Well, after I left that message, I spoke to my guide Gerry. I was a bit premature, it seems. He’d done all right the first
night, but the next he didn’t rendezvous with the tour at the end. Of course it wasn’t a disaster, the people didn’t know he was going to be there, but Gerry’s patter leads up to it, and anyway the point is that’s what he’s paid to do. In fact, that must have been the night you went on the tour. What did you think?’

‘I enjoyed it. Your guide’s very good. And I thought Carlin was pretty effective too. I kind of missed him after his first appearance, but that was only because I was expecting him again, from what you’d said. The others in the group were perfectly happy.’

‘Yeah, but I want them to finish on a high note. I want them spreading the word that this is the tour to go on. Anyway, I saw him yesterday and sorted it out. Turns out he came over dizzy or something, so he says, and by the time he got himself together they were too far ahead. Well, maybe. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘So that’s okay.’

‘No, it’s not. Gerry phones me this morning. Carlin did his stuff all right last night, in fact he was outstanding – Gerry said even he was nearly peeing himself. But he
diverted the tour.
For no apparent reason. Grabbed Gerry by the arm and made him go a different route. Not a word of explanation. Gerry hung around afterwards to see what the problem was but the guy had just vanished. And I still don’t know where he stays so I can’t contact him.’

‘That’s the trouble with flexible rostering. You’ll need to catch him and put a rocket up his close.’

‘Very funny. The trouble is, I don’t want to piss him off. He’s so weird. He’s such a good ghost, but it’s no use if he turns up some times and not others.’

‘That’s the trouble with ghosts. Not reliable. What are you going to do?’

‘Give him another chance. Tonight. I thought maybe we could go on the tour together – if you can face it again. And we can see how he performs.’

‘Tonight? Oh, I don’t know, Hugh, I’m pretty tired.’

‘I’d really appreciate it.’

‘But we’d have to go now.’

‘Fifteen minutes.’

She thought about it. It was what she’d wanted, although she’d not figured on doing the tour
with
Hugh. But she hesitated. The whole Carlin thing suddenly seemed stupid.

‘Please,’ Hugh said.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But I’m knackered, I might not last the whole thing. If I slip off halfway along the route, don’t be offended.’

‘I’ll be devastated,’ he said. He put his hand over her wrist and grinned at her. She smiled back weakly. The tour had to be better than this. He was making her feel sick.

Carlin lit the two candles in their holders on the shelf above the fireplace. They flickered for a minute, then the flames shaped themselves and became steady. With his thumb and forefinger he traced their outlines as if he were a potter tapering them out of clay. He liked that, a light that was steady yet not still. He liked the way the glow concentrated onto his face reflected in the mirror. He stood impassively between the flames.

He’d had it again.
The horrors.
That was an expression they used in the old days, but then it meant delirium tremens. He’d read it in books. In the dictionary it also said
extreme depression.
Maybe that was what he was suffering from. Well, it was the horrors right enough. He’d get so far along the Cowgate and then he’d be hit with it. A feeling of helplessness, of events running out of control. Of having been born into the wrong life. Chance could land you on a bed of roses or a torturer’s table. You had no say in the matter at all. And when you realised this, you began to break up physically. You ached, you poured sweat, you trembled like a caught rabbit. You could raise your eyes above the pain but there was nothing up there, no redemption.

The sweat had dried on him. He’d cut away from the tour again. No doubt he’d be getting his books from Hardie – not that there were any to get. He’d forced his breathing back to normal, walking across the Meadows. It was light relief that he needed. He looked at himself very steadily, an idea forming. Then the mirror started.

‘Your name, please?’

‘Andrew Carlin.’

‘Your occupation?’

‘Ghost impersonator.’

‘Your chosen specialised subject?’

‘The Life, Times and Sexual Deviations of Major Thomas Weir.’

‘Andrew Carlin, you have two minutes on the Life, Times and Sexual Deviations of Major Thomas Weir, starting … now by what nickname relating to his reputation for extreme devoutness was Major Weir sometimes known?’

‘Angelical Thomas.’

‘Correct. In a letter to Sir Walter Scott the antiquarian Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe hinted in some doggerel verse that in addition to mares and cows Major Weir had had sexual relations with which other animal?’

‘His cat.’

‘Correct. Weir had an incestuous relationship with his stepdaughter Margaret Burdoun and when she became pregnant disposed of her in what way?’

‘He married her off to an English soldier.’

‘Correct. When in charge of the Marquis of Montrose in the Edinburgh Tolbooth in 1650, how did Weir make himself obnoxious to his prisoner on the night before his execution?’

‘He smoked tobacco in his cell.’

‘Correct. In the nineteenth century Weir’s house was briefly occupied by one William Patullo who awoke with his wife one night to find what apparition in their room?’

‘A calf with its forefeet up on the bed?’

‘Correct. In the 1650s Weir lodged in the Cowgate and became acquainted with the terrorist James Mitchel. In whose house did they both stay?’

‘Grizel Whitford’s.’

‘Correct. A spot on the road between Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy, where Weir and his sister Jean supposedly first committed incest, was marked by what feature ever after?’

‘Er … a cross?’

‘No, it remained bare and no grass would grow there. Weir was first accused of bestiality in 1651, when a woman claimed to have seen him having sexual relations with which animal while on his way to a prayer meeting at Newmilns in Ayrshire?’

‘His horse.’

‘Correct. At his trial Weir was found guilty unanimously of incest and bestiality, and by a majority of two further crimes. What were they?’

‘Adultery and fornication.’

‘Correct. What would be an appropriate response to the suggestion that I am a ludicrous old buffoon?’

‘Well ye are, but whit’s that got tae dae wi Major Weir?’

‘Correct. Jean Weir claimed that her mother had the ability to read people’s minds. What mark on her forehead signified this power?’

‘A mark like a horseshoe.’

‘Correct. Weir helped to find James Mitchel work as a chaplain on at least one occasion. What is the Scots term for a clergyman who fails to find employment?’

‘Stickit. A stickit minister.’

‘Correct. In which of Sir Walter Scott’s novels does a “great ill-favoured jackanape” called Major Weir –’

‘
Redgauntlet.
’

‘Correct. In which book’ – BZZZZZ! – ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish, in which book by George Sinclair, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, were the Weirs’ crimes, including their supposed sorcery, described in 1685? And you may answer.’

‘
Satan’s Invisible World Discovered.
’

‘Correct. And at the end of that round, Mr Carlin –’

‘That was never two minutes.’

BZZZZZ!

‘I can assure you, Mr Carlin … As I was saying, at the end of that round you have scored thirteen points, and
no passes!
’

BZZ! BZZ! BZZZZZ! It was the entryphone. Carlin’s entryphone hardly ever buzzed. He gave the mirror two fingers and went to the intercom by the door. He lifted the receiver and listened into it. He could hear a car passing on the street.

‘Hello? Andrew, are you there? It’s Jackie, Jackie Halkit. Can I come up?’

Carlin said nothing. He held the receiver away from himself for a few seconds. Then he pressed the switch that would open the door to her.

People took ages to come up his stairs. He was on the
fourth floor, and the last flight was a narrow stair that led to his flat only, in what had once been the attic space. It belonged to a man who owned one of the third-floor flats, had done a conversion years ago, and who now rented out both and lived off the income elsewhere in the city. Carlin had been there for ten years.

Jackie peched up to his door. ‘Bloody hell, that’ll keep you fit,’ she said. He held the door open for her and she stauchered in.

‘Where do I go?’ she asked. But it was obvious really. The lobby was a tiny rectangle, one end filled with the bulk of a big mirrored wardrobe. There was a door with a glazed window which was the bathroom, and a doorless galley next to it which was the kitchen. She followed herself into the only other room.

It was bigger than she’d expected. There was a wide dormer window looking out over the roofs of other tenements: a row of bookshelves ran round it below the glass. There was a big armchair in the space in front of the window, with a small table beside it. Opposite, on another table, sat a television and a VCR. She noted the gas fire and the fake fire-surround, with the mirror above it and the candles burning on the shelf. There was another chair, wooden, with a straight back, and a chest of drawers. Under the sloping roof on one side of the window was a narrow bed covered with a folded tartan rug. A radio on the floor beside the bed. A few clothes lying about; a dirty coffee mug; more books. A photograph or two; some pictures on the walls. These were her immediate impressions. There was a general stour about the place, but this wasn’t bad at all. She’d expected Carlin to live in a complete cowp.

She turned round. He was standing silently behind her. No doubt he was expecting an explanation.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘I don’t really know why I’m here. Is it all right?’

He smiled. He seemed quite relaxed, she thought. Maybe being on his own territory …

‘Is it all right you no knowin why ye’re here?’

‘I mean, is it all right me having come? Just turned up? I’m sorry.’

‘Is that whit ye’ve done? Jist turned up?’

He was still playing at his word games then. Although, of course, there was subtlety in it. He knew fine well she hadn’t been just passing.

‘You might think I’m invading your privacy.’

‘Aye, I might.’ She decided to treat this neutrally. One thing about Carlin, if he wanted you out he would say so. No – he wouldn’t have let you in in the first place.

‘You just stay here yourself then?’ she asked.

Again he smiled, gave a half-nod.