have said, ‘Sorry for shouting at him.’ And it would have been over. But I didn’t. I said, ‘If anyone should be pissed off about today it should be me.’
She looked at me expectantly, arms folded, weight on one hip.
‘Volunteering me to run that thing over to the Krugers’ place without even asking me?’
‘What’s the big deal?’
‘It’s half an hour away. It’ll be an hour and a half out of my day.’
‘I didn’t know you were that busy.’
Was there anything in this? I looked at her. ‘It’d be nice to be asked, rather than be treated like, like a fucking . . . I don’t know . . .’
‘I just didn’t think you’d mind. You often go in to Alarbus in the afternoons, it’s on the way. If it’s too much trouble I’ll call Stephanie and tell her they’ll have to pick it up.’
‘No, it’s fine. I’ll do it.’ I picked up the TV remote.
‘Christ, don’t sulk, Donnie.’
‘I’m not sulking.’
‘Fine. Whatever. I’m going to bed.’
I sat channel-hopping for a while before I turned the TV off and walked the long hallway down to my office. I didn’t turn the lights on, there was enough moonlight coming through the three walls of glass to see by. I unlocked the bottom drawer, rooted in below a printout of my screenplay (my own notes scribbled in the margins in red: ‘NO!’ and ‘WHY?’) and fished out a bottle of single malt whisky – a 25-year-old Talisker, a Christmas gift from Sammy’s dad a couple of years back. There was a glass on the desk with a couple of inches of tepid mineral water in it. I tipped the water into my bin and poured a big glug of the pale whisky. I held the glass under my nose for a moment, the strong fumes making my eyes tear, before I took a drink, gratefully feeling the burn, feeling my face flush and my blood elevate. The whisky had come all the way from Skye, less than a couple of hundred miles north along the west coast from where I grew up. I had never been there. ‘25 Years of Age’. Made in 1986.
Mr Cardew’s nicotine-yellowed fingers as they turned the pages; pointing out certain phrases he’d underlined. Asking you what you thought. Seeing if you were understanding everything.
It had been a strange and unexpected thing, coming to love books in my late teens. My father never read anything outside of his tabloid. My mother would occasionally be caught frowning over a dog-eared potboiler lent to her by a friend, or some bodice-ripper she’d borrowed from the library; its lurid covers encased in clear, protective plastic. There had been no books in the house I’d grown up in. As for school, well, the only kids who read books for pleasure, who read outside of when a teacher was literally standing over them in the classroom, were the freaks. The kids like . . . like him. Docherty. The Professor. Strange and unexpected then when I discovered under Mr Cardew’s encouragement that what seemed to me to be tracts of boredom and torture actually contained un imaginable vistas, entire worlds of escape. (
And you were much in need of escape then, weren’t you?
) That you could open one of them and start turning the pages and that, instead of time slowing down and refusing to pass, you would look up at the clock (
that clock, in its mesh cage
) and the deadly, endless afternoon ahead of you would have vanished.
I thought of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Scotsman’s Return From Abroad’, where Stevenson says ‘The king o’ drinks, as I conceive it, Talisker, Isla, or Glenlivet!’
What had you said? ‘
Rather than be treated like, like a fucking . . . I don’t know
. . .’ But you did know. ‘A fucking errand boy.’ That had been the phrase forming on your lips. But to say it out loud was to make it real and neither of you wantedthat. No – you definitely didn’t want that. This Scotsman wouldn’t be returning home. Ever.
* * *
The last time I saw my mother was late November 1982, the height of the trial and all the publicity.
She looked at me expectantly, arms folded, weight on one hip.
‘Volunteering me to run that thing over to the Krugers’ place without even asking me?’
‘What’s the big deal?’
‘It’s half an hour away. It’ll be an hour and a half out of my day.’
‘I didn’t know you were that busy.’
Was there anything in this? I looked at her. ‘It’d be nice to be asked, rather than be treated like, like a fucking . . . I don’t know . . .’
‘I just didn’t think you’d mind. You often go in to Alarbus in the afternoons, it’s on the way. If it’s too much trouble I’ll call Stephanie and tell her they’ll have to pick it up.’
‘No, it’s fine. I’ll do it.’ I picked up the TV remote.
‘Christ, don’t sulk, Donnie.’
‘I’m not sulking.’
‘Fine. Whatever. I’m going to bed.’
I sat channel-hopping for a while before I turned the TV off and walked the long hallway down to my office. I didn’t turn the lights on, there was enough moonlight coming through the three walls of glass to see by. I unlocked the bottom drawer, rooted in below a printout of my screenplay (my own notes scribbled in the margins in red: ‘NO!’ and ‘WHY?’) and fished out a bottle of single malt whisky – a 25-year-old Talisker, a Christmas gift from Sammy’s dad a couple of years back. There was a glass on the desk with a couple of inches of tepid mineral water in it. I tipped the water into my bin and poured a big glug of the pale whisky. I held the glass under my nose for a moment, the strong fumes making my eyes tear, before I took a drink, gratefully feeling the burn, feeling my face flush and my blood elevate. The whisky had come all the way from Skye, less than a couple of hundred miles north along the west coast from where I grew up. I had never been there. ‘25 Years of Age’. Made in 1986.
Mr Cardew’s nicotine-yellowed fingers as they turned the pages; pointing out certain phrases he’d underlined. Asking you what you thought. Seeing if you were understanding everything.
It had been a strange and unexpected thing, coming to love books in my late teens. My father never read anything outside of his tabloid. My mother would occasionally be caught frowning over a dog-eared potboiler lent to her by a friend, or some bodice-ripper she’d borrowed from the library; its lurid covers encased in clear, protective plastic. There had been no books in the house I’d grown up in. As for school, well, the only kids who read books for pleasure, who read outside of when a teacher was literally standing over them in the classroom, were the freaks. The kids like . . . like him. Docherty. The Professor. Strange and unexpected then when I discovered under Mr Cardew’s encouragement that what seemed to me to be tracts of boredom and torture actually contained un imaginable vistas, entire worlds of escape. (
And you were much in need of escape then, weren’t you?
) That you could open one of them and start turning the pages and that, instead of time slowing down and refusing to pass, you would look up at the clock (
that clock, in its mesh cage
) and the deadly, endless afternoon ahead of you would have vanished.
I thought of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Scotsman’s Return From Abroad’, where Stevenson says ‘The king o’ drinks, as I conceive it, Talisker, Isla, or Glenlivet!’
What had you said? ‘
Rather than be treated like, like a fucking . . . I don’t know
. . .’ But you did know. ‘A fucking errand boy.’ That had been the phrase forming on your lips. But to say it out loud was to make it real and neither of you wantedthat. No – you definitely didn’t want that. This Scotsman wouldn’t be returning home. Ever.
* * *
The last time I saw my mother was late November 1982, the height of the trial and all the publicity.
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