Whirligig (27 page)

Thus, Lachlan reasoned, if Claypole could be stopped from making his spokesmanly speech at the community hall, there would only be those against the wind farm left to speak. The arguments would then clearly swing against planning permission being granted and the councillors, being democratically elected, would have no choice but to vote ‘no' to planning permission. All Lachlan and Milky would have to do would be to keep Claypole in the van for the duration of the meeting and the wind farm would be scuppered.

Milky's motives were somewhat simpler. He felt the urgent need to use his seagull-killing bat – the one with the holes in. It was a weapon with which Milky was hauntingly familiar and horribly adept. He knew exactly what sort of blow or series of blows would be merely painful or damaging and what would be critical or fatal. The two of them could easily bundle their target into the back of Lachlan's van and have him bound and gagged in a moment. How much of a struggle there was would be Milky's cue as to how much the bat would be required.

Claypole, wandering down the drive to MacGilp House, drew out his wallet and examined it in the pale starlight. He had thirty-five pounds in cash. A pound for each year of his life. This was the only money he had in the world. In fact, he thought, his total worth in the world was something like minus £50,000, and thanks to Kevin Watt of the
Glenmorie Herald,
this fact would shortly be discovered by everyone at the ceilidh. There seemed little point quibbling about the newspaper's slanted reporting and minor inaccuracies, because the salient facts were undeniably true. More importantly, the truth had now been discovered by Coky.

He felt foolish for having pursued her at all. She was celibate, for God's sake. But why? What was the point of that? To Claypole's mind it was incomprehensible. Why, if you
could
have sex with people – if they didn't turn you down with a laugh or a scream – would you not do so, and as much as possible? It was well known to be enjoyable. Oh the irony, he thought. He might have been content to do without sex, if only there had
been something in it for his heart. But Coky had no love for him. And now only hate. With that thought, the shame and ache returned again and his shoulders shuddered with one self-pitying sob.

A future with a broken heart, though, was not the foulest horror on his horizon. Yes, he was now walking to London to supervise the dismantling of his life. (The cutting in two of his credit cards; the repossession of his flat that the bank had long been threatening; and presumably then a bankruptcy hearing.) But all this slow and brutal torture was nothing compared to the inevitable and humiliating call to Uncle Jerry.

Jerry would have to fork out for the flight to Australia, and even give him some pocket money while Claypole worked in some spit-and-sawdust bar and lived in Jerry's thunderbox with the snakes and the spiders that would probably kill him before Christmas. The living hell waiting for him in Queensland might be worse than any death. He might find his feet after a while, perhaps becoming an estate agent. After the grinding years of shafting first-time buyers, he would try his hand at property development and make enough money to marry some shrill nightmare with sloping shoulders who didn't shave under her arms, have a couple of fat-faced children and live in a bungalow with last year's Ken and Barbie melting in the scorched back yard. He would learn Aussie Rules Football and go to games on Saturdays, get drunk on brain-aching beer with men he did not like and go home to a house with no books. Was this to be his destiny? He would die in his forties, as his father had done – maybe sooner if he could afford enough drink – and it would be a blessed relief. And yet… perhaps it was not relief enough. How could he short-circuit this living nightmare? A grim smile crossed Claypole's
lips as he drifted down the drive of MacGilp House, and an idea struck him that had never struck him before. It was at once appalling, and yet logical and liberating for its simplicity and its finality. His pace down the drive quickened as he tried to think it through.

Claypole had always survived setbacks, but recovery from this one did not seem possible. The reality of the past, having been so opaque, now seemed overwhelmingly real. He had lost sight of what was true and what was not over the last week – over the last month – but it now came over him like a wave. He stumbled on a dried cowpat, and tried to remember the end of his media career not as he had allowed rumour to tell it, but as it had actually happened. Lies had been so easy to tell that they had also been simple for him to believe himself. Tough, unalloyed truth now hit him with full force.

When, after some years at the BBC, Claypole had joined Pumpkin Productions as its only employee, the company's logo was of an animated pumpkin that squeaked amusingly, imitating the famous MGM lion. The sole owner of the company, a Hungarian refugee and illustrator in his seventies called Vidor Vincze, was as jovial and amateurish as the company's logo suggested. For two years, Claypole did little other than drink coffee and have long lunches at Vidor's expense, for many of which Vidor joined him. There seemed to be more conversation to be had than work to do. Claypole was not well paid, but he could hardly be said to have been exploited. One sunny April morning, Vidor informed his employee that bowel cancer was about to end his life, and urged Claypole to continue his legacy. Within four weeks, Vidor was dead and
Claypole had remortgaged his carefully earned flat, taken out a business loan with the bank and paid Vidor's daughter £120,000 for all rights to everything Vidor had ever produced.

For the next two years, there were reissued books of Vidor's beautiful stories, and the cartoons were shown again on some of the digital children's channels, and Claypole and his rapidly appointed staff were busy. Gradually, though, the business had begun to founder. Claypole spent heavily, trying to garner interest in Colin the Calf where it was clearly waning. Soon he halted his own salary, and shortly after that began to renege on bills and to make his staff redundant. The books no longer sold, and eventually went out of print. The cartoons were no longer shown, even in Hungary. And the brand that Vidor had carefully built over thirty years was evaporating. But not before Claypole had taken one huge gamble. Embracing fully the new media, he had launched an App for all tablet computer platforms, with all the cartoons available on it, and all the books in free e-book format. It was his firm conviction that it would revitalise the brand and allow the internet to do the work for him, and he borrowed hugely on his credit cards. When an online community of fans had established itself, he would exploit them by selling advertising. The future for media businesses, as he would tell anyone who would listen, was in communities, not revenue. But no such community existed, and only a tiny and demanding one formed itself. He found that having given away the content for free, he could not even go back to charging for it. He was stuck, broke, and finished.

But, Claypole realised during the sleepless nights and booze-filled days that followed the final demand
from the bank, there was one thing he could do to rescue the situation. The one audacious route out from humiliation was to make out that everything had gone as intended, and just see where it took him. He could pretend to have been a success. He would give the impression he had done well. As far as the world was concerned, he would be a wealthy entrepreneur. He could hand the business onto a large and much-hated international media outfit without the world knowing he had done so for free.

After performing this sleight of hand, and receiving payment of £66,180 which would, when cashed, plummet into the black hole of his mortgage account, Claypole should just have joined the massed ranks of the endebted employed. But he had spent five years thinking and acting as a player. An owner, a man of substance, and not just a functionary. So he buried deep within himself the truth: that he had ruined a perfectly good business based on something real and beautiful: the skilled work of a good man. He had sold it short and allowed the buzzwords and bullshit of the internet to lure him into bad decisions. Then he had attempted to prop up his collapsing life by pumping more lies into it. Now, here in Scotland, the whole thing had deflated, and it was suddenly clear to him that there was only one thing he could do to avoid the horror. He smelled the sea, and headed towards it with grim resolve.

In the fetid camper van's cab, the two would-be kidnappers went about their last-minute preparations.

‘Cord?' said Lachlan.

‘Aye,' said Milky.

‘Can't you say “check”?'

‘Why?'

Lachlan folded his arms. ‘Just… Never got the hang of having fun, have you, Milks?'

Milky shrugged and began to roll a cigarette.

‘So… cord?' Lachlan began again.

‘Check.'

‘Gag?'

‘Check.'

‘Rook to Queen Bishop 4?'

If Milky had turned to his childhood friend, he would have seen him grinning idiotically.

‘Don't fuck about,' said the bearded and balded Milky.

Lachlan looked at Milky. Not given to humour at the best of times, Milky was being particularly serious. Lachlan had been cracking silly jokes and jiggling in the passenger seat for the ten minutes they had been parked.

‘If he's walking, we just grab him, right?'

‘Aye,' said Milky.

‘And if he's driving, you hail him down and I'll jump in his car.'

Milky exhaled smoke, but was otherwise horribly still. ‘No.
You
hail him, and
I'll
get in the car.'

As Claypole continued to trip and stumble down the drive, the night was beginning to chill his sweaty body. Momentarily he was forced to fight down the urge to go back to the house. Might he break through the angry crowds at the ceilidh, find Coky, sit her down,
apologise profusely and plead for her to have him, despite everything? If necessary he would beg for it as a favour. Just once. The last wish of a rude dying ginger skinhead bankrupt. But nothing like that happened in real life. Claypole knew he didn't deserve, even after all that had happened to him, to get the girl. He deserved only rejection, humiliation and dishonour. His dreams had turned to dust. Even survival seemed pointless, as long as the end could be painless.

He looked back at the castle, now in the middle distance, his damp eyes stinging with fury and pain. The lights were on all over the ground floor. The music had stopped, but still it looked warm and jolly. A light went on in the east wing's second floor, and then another next to it. Going to bed, he thought. Coky is going to bed. She would soon be between old, smooth linen – her firm brown legs swishing back and forth in a four-poster, the three-bar fire in front of a rusting grate fading from orange to brown.

‘Fuck,' he whispered into the night as he turned and resumed his trek. Why is it, he thought, that in Scotland you are never truly warm? He had spent more time in the last few days stumbling through the chilly dark, terrified out of his wits, than one man could reasonably be expected to bear. What relief would shortly come. Soon he would never have to walk down another scary, cold, Scottish road ever again. The sea's freezing embrace would be at first horrible, but then numbing. He snorted as he remembered the irony that he had now taken none of his heart pills for a week. Perhaps, he thought as he stomped through the bushes, the temperature of the sea would stop his feeble heart before he held his head under the murky water and breathed in.