The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 101

Walking through Edinburgh, the last time I was here I stole Mary Stewart’s belt buckle, mostly because I could, and held it to ransom until the Museum of Scotland very grudgingly paid a cut-price £12,000 for its safe return, very hush hush, very much against Lothian Police’s advice.

The snow began to fall more heavily, and I walked. Up through Morningside, past shops selling alpaca yarn and baby boots, past the second-hand booksellers and hair-styling salons, £95 to have a trim, £130 if you want the full spa experience. Past the purveyors of nonsense and kitsch, the sellers of cupping and ear-wax treatments, the aromatherapists who can cure your irritable bowel syndrome, the yoga studios for beautiful people looking to find themselves through stretching, past the organic yoghurt shops and authentic dealers of finest tartan, made in the Philippines. For a minute, I could burn it all. Yoghurt is nice; yoga is good, but this isn’t yoghurt, this is the organic yoghurt experience, eat it and be beautiful. Be beautiful. Be perfect.

I could burn the fucking city to the ground.

I walked until I reached Bruntsfield Links, the thickening snow driving back the last warmth of the day, beginning to settle on the grass, only one golfer left near the kirk, one last hold-out of Scottish sporting passion that even the settling dark cannot drive away.

I walked, the castle rising to my left and the taller, denser apartment blocks of Newington rising to my right, and realised after a while that I was counting my steps, and stopped, and stood in the middle of the street and screamed a wordless scream of frustration and rage, and people turned to look at me, and I screamed again then stopped, and felt a bit better, and kept on walking.

I had booked a room in the hotel where Gauguin was staying, and now I cancelled that booking.

“Filipa is being indicted tomorrow,” he mumbled. “The money — it’s all running out. People don’t take my calls any more, and she’s, I know she’s not her, but she’s… It’s not much, but I should be there, for the end, I just should…” His voice trailed away. A shadow man, who’d spend his days chasing shadows and found no illumination from the process.

I moved to a hall of residence beneath the Crags.

Looked up at Arthur’s Seat, thought about climbing it, thought about snow and ice, felt the sun go down, stayed in the warmth of my thin-carpeted, plywood-desked little student room, felt at home. This was better than a hotel; in term time, people lived here, worked here, had sex here, ate baked beans here, pinned posters to the wall, smeared toothpaste over the sink, grew squalid and settled. I could almost close my eyes, and pretend it was a kind of home.

I opened up a laptop, connected to the slow Wi-Fi, downloaded every note and every photo I’d ever taken of Byron’s life all the time I’d known her, and started again.

Knowledge.

What should I do with this place inside me where experience — tears of joy, shrieks of laughter, the anxiety of work, the warmth of friends, the love of family, the expectations of the world — what should I do with that place which was never filled?

I put knowledge there.

And in knowledge, I find myself.

This sounds like an intellectual void where heart should be, but look and you may find…

The speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair… I say to you, my friends… I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.

The history of the Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan raised it in love of his wife.

Should guilty seek asylum here, like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin. The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs; and the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.

The European Space Agency launched the Rosetta mission in March 2004, and ten years later it woke up after a journey of 6 billion kilometres to land a probe on a comet travelling at 15,000 km/h around the sun.

After killing hundreds of billions of people down the ages, smallpox was eradicated in 1980. Before Edward Jenner tested his first cowpox vaccine; before Lady Mary Wortley Montagu marvelled at the Ottoman physicians of the 1600s inoculating their children with the pus from a smallpox scab, a Buddhist nun up a mountain in China attempted her own inoculations, by grinding up smallpox scabs and blowing them up the noses of willing patients, becoming an anonymous mother of variolation.

“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.” Hypatia of Alexandria — philosopher, mathematician, astronomer. Died while the great library burned.

Google search for feminism:

feminism is

wrong

for everybody

bad

sexism

the radical notion

destroying America

What is knowledge?

It is inspiration. It is a call to battle. It is a reminder that there is nothing which cannot be achieved. It is humanity in all its forms, in my heart.

Byron is in Scotland.

I am sure of it, and being sure, I trawl through every file, every note, everything I’ve ever had on her.

“I live alone in a place where no one ever comes. I work alone. I walk by the sea, I go to the shops and hide my face. I dodge cameras, travel by false passport, make no friends, have no need of company. My work is all that matters. I would give my life to see it done.”

The bank account with which she rented a flat in Morningside was opened with cash and a false ID; the false ID came from the darknet, hard to trace, even the sellers don’t know who they’re selling to, so long as the price is right.

Files and dead ends, phone records going nowhere, paper trails ending with nothing, Gauguin sends me messages, where are you, are you there, we’re leaving now, we’re leaving. They’re opening proceedings against Filipa on Tuesday, I have to be there. Will you come? Are you there? (Are you real?)

I watch the TV reports of the first hearings into the 206 in Milan. Filipa smiles for the cameras, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she is most suspected, and Gauguin is just on the edge of the frame, holding her hand as she climbs the steps to the courthouse. Where be your lawyers now, your PR machine and your men who hold doors ajar? All fleeing, all fled, as Prometheus dies.

A week, another, just reading, planning, searching, Byron, Byron, where are you?

A committee is set up in America; another in Brussels to investigate Perfection. Said the head of the US inquiry: “Not just America, but all the nations of the world suffered a loss when the victims of the 206 were so viciously attacked and slaughtered, and it is the duty of any freedom-loving nation to make inquiries into these events.”

Said Fox News: “So, yeah, we think that Perfection is, maybe, reprogramming your brain.”

(And ten minutes later: “Tonight we’re asking the question: Is Islam fundamentally violent and incompatible with the American way of life?”)

In the end, I settled on Byron’s spectacles. I photographed them, when was this? Korea — the first time I broke into Byron’s room, I photographed everything she had, but her glasses might be the best thing I have to go on.

I bought a map of Scotland from the student union shop, pinned it to my bedroom wall. Marked a dot for every single optician in the country. Not as many as I’d feared, really, not once you were north of Dundee. Couple of hundred at most.

Printed out Byron’s picture, from several angles, over several years.

Printed out a blown-up picture of her glasses.

Printed onto thick paper wrapped in plastic a reasonable approximation of a Lothian Police warrant card, and then bought an antique badge that looked legal enough to stick to the inside of my wallet for flashing in a stranger’s face. How many people knew what an actual warrant looked like?

Checked out of the hall of residence after a breakfast of baked beans, fried eggs, fried sausages, fried bacon, fried potatoes and a glass of cold milk, and with my one rucksack of worldly goods on my back went forth to find opticians.